Taking the Sustainable Agriculture Challenge: Recontextualizing Rural Sociology

Agroecosystems Analysis (SusAg 509), a required course for all majors in Iowa State University’s Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture, provides an immersion experience in the situated challenges of sustainable agriculture. The field portion of SusAg 509, which takes place every year during the first two weeks of August, brings students face-to-face with different understandings of sustainability and the diverse complexity of Midwestern agriculture. Dialogue and reflection turn the raw stuff of experience into learning, as students discover the power and validity of multiple perspectives. More than two dozen site visits help make abstract concepts, such as the economy and social relationships, real. The course succeeds (based on evidence such as capacity enrollments, course evaluations, and program exit interviews) because of its problem-focus and immediacy: it engages the real world, as it is now, not as it has become institutionalized in disciplinary departments

Experiential educational engagement with working groups and communities of practice

An ISU graduate class in sustainable agriculture was used to foment student interest in community-based projects related to the heightened interest in Iowa food, fiber and energy enterprises

The Market for Goat Meat in Siouxland

A demand/supply mismatch characterizes the market for goat meat in the Siouxland region of western Iowa. Onfarm purchasing satisfies some but not all demand. The consumer market is small and growing, but also highly segmented by specific consumer preferences as to goat age, seasonal use, cut, and slaughter practices. The absence of fresh goat meat in retail outlets is a “catch 22” situation: more would eat goat meat if it were more readily available, but grocers who have stocked it report slow turnover and subsequent spoilage or expiration in the freezer. The ability of Iowa producers to capitalize on emerging demand is also limited by inexpensive imports from New Zealand and Australia

Assessing the market potential for goat meat among recent immigrants to Siouxland

The niche market for goat meat is expanding with Iowa\u27s immigrant population. Researchers consider how farmers can tap into that market

Improving veterinary care for organic livestock producers

Organic producers and Iowa veterinarians were questioned about the existing veterinary systems and care available to organic livestock producers

Organic Livestock Systems: Views of Veterinarians and Organic Producers

Find how organic producers use veterinary care and the veterinarians\u27 attitudes toward and experience with organic systems. This report also addresses the adequacy of current veterinary education about organic systems. Shows perspectives from both veterinarians and organic livestock producers.https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/extension_pubs/1014/thumbnail.jp

The Lantern Vol. 10, No. 3, May 1942

• Isn\u27t This Fine Weather? • Girls\u27 Rules Through Twenty Years • Lost: Imagination--Gained: Sanitation • Ursinus During the First World War • Inspirations From a Concert Hall • Brother Jones • The Sea and Cloud and Sky--No More • Literary Prattle • War and Memories • Springhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/lantern/1027/thumbnail.jp

An Overview of Rural Development Strategies for the Baltics

Historically, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have been known primarily as agricultural countries. This description has determined the significance of all the changes and reforms that have been undertaken in the agrarian sector, including both the production and social spheres. The current agricultural reform is not a completely unexpected new development; it was prepared and shaped as a result of almost two centuries of changes in the countryside

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis