Georgia Agricultural Water Use Metering Program: Using Results To Benefit Farmers And The State

In their adoption of HB 579, the apparent legislative intent was to obtain clear and accurate information on the patterns and amounts of such use, which information is essential to proper management of water resources by the state and useful to farmers for improving efficiency and effectiveness of their use of water. As a part of their charge to implement this program of measuring agricultural water use, GSWCC is required to read metering devices annually, and to compile and report findings.This paper suggests approaches that might be used by the GSWCC in responding to these legislative mandates. Using data drawn from meters installed during the meter installation program's first year -- 2004 -- examples are given for types of summary statistics that might serve the GSWCC's interests in using metering data for purposes that support their more general mission of assisting farmers in their efforts to improve the management and conservation of land and water resources. We also suggest the structure of an analytical model that can be used to several important purposes, most important among which are to explore primary determinants of water use in the agricultural sector, and to assess the effectiveness of public policies in improving water use efficiency. While the peculiarities of hydrological conditions in 2004, coupled with expected data problems during the meter installation program's initial year of operation, does not allow for meaningful applications of the model when 2004 data are used, we suggest that it will play its intended role for data analyses in future years as improved data become available from the metering program.Finally, we describe a program that we are in the process of developing that will carry results from the metering program directly to the farmer in ways that should be useful to him or her in efforts to optimally manage land and water resources. This program will involve making available to farmers a secure, on-line means for accessing data, and an ability to compare their individual performance (in terms of such measures as yields and water use) with average performance measures from farms with similar characteristics. Working Paper Number 2005-00

America\u27s Quandary-- Masking Injustice: Ideological Analyses of America\u27s Moves Towards its Promise | A Pedagogical Primer on Rhetoric

AMERICA’S QUANDARY— MASKING INJUSTICE: IDEOLOGICAL ANALYSES OF AMERICA’S MOVES TOWARDS ITS PROMISE | A PEDAGOGICAL PRIMER ON RHETORIC by RONALD JERRY WALKER Under the Direction of George Pullman, PhD, and Elizabeth Sanders Lopez, PhD ABSTRACT Rhetoric, persuasive discourse, and rhetorical analysis, art and science of rhetorical text scrutiny, are invaluable aspects of composition pedagogy. Rhetoric commands our world. This dissertation project manifests four features. First, it reveals America’s promise through rhetorical artifact texts. Second, the project presents an academic investigation—America’s moves towards its promise. Third, it recounts the continuing injustices suffered by women and peoples of color, all hidden behind (rhetorical) masks, that continue to plague America. And fourth, this collection altogether serves as a pedagogical primer on rhetoric. Founding documents and public monuments serve as a ruse that masks injustice and inequality. This is America’s quandary, a reality that unfortunately escapes journalistic focus. Masks enable the American hegemony of sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and classism to thrive. This nation’s affluent “founders” completely ignored and erased the vast majority of peoples co-inhabiting our boundless lands—millions of indigenous Native American nations; women, not mentioned anywhere among America’s founding documents; abducted African (forced) laborers commanded to toil generational lives, as chattel; and poor whites. Later immigrants, especially peoples of color, would also be denied their “liberty and justice for all.” Today, the USA is World Number One—in obesity, in opioid addiction, in female prison incarceration, in male prison incarceration, in military defense spending, in military weaponry (international spread), and in war (today Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Niger). And in international intrigue (arrogance). America’s quandary is our lack of universal healthcare, the antiquated Electoral College, the rising 1%, the shrinking middle class, the widening gap between America’s rich and poor, and our obsessive desire to police and command the world. This project interrogates rhetoric “to unmask and demystify” America’s rhetorical hegemony of disadvantage and inequality; while America faces a bleak future. We English teachers are First Responders for our culture. Our democratic republic must have—to survive—a committed populace of engaged citizens whose critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and civic responsibility can invigorate American culture. If We are successful, America will be successful; if We fail, America will fail. Perhaps if We could just make America better, all would work out. INDEX WORDS: Rhetorical analysis, Rhetorical devices, Critical thinking, Argument essa

Matching Contributions and the Voluntary Provision of a Pure Public Good: Experimental Evidence

Laboratory experiments are used to study the voluntary provision of a pure public good in the presence of an anonymous external donor. The external funds are used in two different settings, lump-sum matching and one-to-one matching, to examine how allocations to the public good are affected. The experimental results reveal that allocations to the public good under lumpsum matching are significantly higher, and have significantly lower within-group dispersion, relative to one-to-one matching and a baseline setting without external matching funds.public goods, free riding, laboratory experiments

Melanoma mimicking malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor with spread to the cerebellopontine angle: Utility of next-generation sequencing in diagnosis

Cutaneous spindle cell malignancy is associated with a broad differential diagnosis, particularly in the absence of a known primary melanocytic lesion. We present an unusually challenging patient who presented with clinical symptoms involving cranial nerves VII and VIII and a parotid-region mass, which was S100-positive while lacking in melanocytic pigment and markers. Over a year after resection of the parotid mass, both a cutaneous primary lentigo maligna melanoma and a metastatic CP angle melanoma were diagnosed in the same patient, prompting reconsideration of the diagnosis in the original parotid-region mass. Next-generation sequencing of a panel of cancer-associated genes demonstrated 19 identical, clinically significant mutations as well as a high tumor mutation burden in both the parotid-region and CP angle tumors, indicating a metastatic relationship between the two and a melanocytic identity of the parotid-region tumor