A Farm-Level Evaluation of Conditions Under Which Farmers Will Supply Biomass Feedstocks for Energy Production

This study evaluated the risk management potential of including biomass crops as a diversification strategy for a grain farm in northwest Tennessee. Results indicate that adding biomass crops to the farm enterprise mix could improve mean net revenues and reduced net revenue variability.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

COVID-19: Beyond Washing Your Hands and Social Distancing

A pandemic due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus was declared as of March 2020. The authors provide perspective towards preventing and/or mitigating the impact of contracting the virus known as COVID-19. The authors posit straightforward strategies that an individual could implement that may decrease the likelihood of developing COVID-19, help lessen the severity of the symptoms related to the COVID-19 and potentially mitigate the transmission of the virus. The authors consider their comments as food for thought and not as professional medical advice. If you believe you have contracted the COVID-19 virus seek the advice of your healthcare provider

Tactical Masters Athletes: BMI Index Classifications

Understanding the nexus between aging, physical activity, and obesity has been a source of ongoing investigation. A considerable amount of research has focused on Masters athletes in this regard, suggesting a beneficial relationship between Masters sport participation and a healthy body mass index (BMI). Some consider Active Duty military personnel as tactical athletes. As such, it is of interest to determine if aging Active Duty military personnel (or Masters Tactical Athletes) might have a similar BMI as other Masters athletes (MA). As such, this investigation examined previously recorded data of Active Duty Enlisted United States Marines (n = 402, male, 46–50 years old). The BMI of the Marines was stratified into categories of: underweight, normal, overweight, and obese. The Marines obesity prevalence was compared to US adult males (40–59 years) as well as male North American MA who competed at the 2009 Sydney World Masters Games. The Marines obesity prevalence was significantly lower than US adult males (p \u3c 0.001) and those MA that competed in softball (p \u3c 0.001); however, it was similar to MA that competed in football, track/field, swimming, and volleyball (p \u3e 0.05). The average Marine BMI = 26.7 kg/m2 was similar to MA who competed in football, swimming, and volley ball (p \u3e 0.05); however, it was higher than MA who competed in track/field (p \u3c 0.05) and lower than MA who played softball (p \u3c 0.05). It should be noted that the average BMI for the Marines and all MA sport categories were classified as being overweight. Within the parameters of this investigation, Tactical MA (i.e., aging US Marines) enjoy a similar beneficial BMI as other North American MA

Argonia Cup senior capstone competition: Final presentation

The goal of this project was to design and develop a rocket that could get a payload golf ball to at least 8,000 AGL and then return it as close to the X on the ground as possible. In order to achieve this goal, we decided to design an integrated deployable quadcopter UAC that would deploy at apogee and then autonomously fly itself back to the designated target location. This concept has never been achieved before and therefore we wanted to be the first to successfully complete the mission. Despite our work and determination we were unsuccessful of a true recovery however we believe we have made the most progress and had the most success of anyone attempting such a feat at the high-powered rocketry level

Rocket launched autonomous quadcopter final report

The goal of this project was to design and develop a rocket that could get a payload golf ball to at least 8,000 AGL and then return it as close to the X on the ground as possible. In order to achieve this goal, we decided to design an integrated deployable quadcopter UAC that would deploy at apogee and then autonomously fly itself back to the designated target location. This concept has never been achieved before and therefore we wanted to be the first to successfully complete the mission. Despite our work and determination we were unsuccessful of a true recovery however we believe we have made the most progress and had the most success of anyone attempting such a feat at the high-powered rocketry level

Determining the nanoflare heating frequency of an X-ray Bright Point observed by MaGIXS

Nanoflares are thought to be one of the prime candidates that can heat the solar corona to its multi-million kelvin temperature. Individual nanoflares are difficult to detect with the present generation instruments, however their presence can be inferred by comparing simulated nanoflare-heated plasma emissions with the observed emission. Using HYDRAD coronal loop simulations, we model the emission from an X-ray bright point (XBP) observed by the Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS), along with nearest-available observations from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) onboard Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and X-Ray Telescope (XRT) onboard Hinode observatory. The length and magnetic field strength of the coronal loops are derived from the linear-force-free extrapolation of the observed photospheric magnetogram by Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) onboard SDO. Each loop is assumed to be heated by random nanoflares, whose magnitude and frequency are determined by the loop length and magnetic field strength. The simulation results are then compared and matched against the measured intensity from AIA, XRT, and MaGIXS. Our model results indicate the observed emissions from the XBP under study could be well matched by a distribution of nanoflares with average delay times 1500 s to 3000 s, which suggest that the heating is dominated by high-frequency events. Further, we demonstrate the high sensitivity of MaGIXS and XRT to diagnose the heating frequency using this method, while AIA passbands are found to be the least sensitive.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ

A scalable, fully automated process for construction of sequence-ready human exome targeted capture libraries

Genome targeting methods enable cost-effective capture of specific subsets of the genome for sequencing. We present here an automated, highly scalable method for carrying out the Solution Hybrid Selection capture approach that provides a dramatic increase in scale and throughput of sequence-ready libraries produced. Significant process improvements and a series of in-process quality control checkpoints are also added. These process improvements can also be used in a manual version of the protocol