IDENTIFICATION OF BONA FIDE FARMERS

Farm Management,

Building a Sports Marketing Program in a College or School of Business

The purpose of this paper is to serve as one roadmap for helping marketing and business faculty understand better how to build a Sports Marketing program within a college or school of business. Specifically, this paper lays out specific coursework that can comprise a robust and industry-relevant sports marketing program and provides connected sports business and sports analytics classes and content that can undergird and support a new or growing sports marketing program. This business education development solves a curriculum problem related often to the need for new, innovative, and industry-relevant business curriculum and new occupational pathways for business students. Finally, this paper lays out a blueprint for intentional collegiality and partnership amongst marketing and business faculty, alumni, advisory board members, and industry partners in helping a newly created sports marketing program not only grow, but be connected to strong industry internships, job placements, and newly related occupational pathways for business students

Soil Microbial Networks Shift Across a High-Elevation Successional Gradient.

While it is well established that microbial composition and diversity shift along environmental gradients, how interactions among microbes change is poorly understood. Here, we tested how community structure and species interactions among diverse groups of soil microbes (bacteria, fungi, non-fungal eukaryotes) change across a fundamental ecological gradient, succession. Our study system is a high-elevation alpine ecosystem that exhibits variability in successional stage due to topography and harsh environmental conditions. We used hierarchical Bayesian joint distribution modeling to remove the influence of environmental covariates on species distributions and generated interaction networks using the residual species-to-species variance-covariance matrix. We hypothesized that as ecological succession proceeds, diversity will increase, species composition will change, and soil microbial networks will become more complex. As expected, we found that diversity of most taxonomic groups increased over succession, and species composition changed considerably. Interestingly, and contrary to our hypothesis, interaction networks became less complex over succession (fewer interactions per taxon). Interactions between photosynthetic microbes and any other organism became less frequent over the gradient, whereas interactions between plants or soil microfauna and any other organism were more abundant in late succession. Results demonstrate that patterns in diversity and composition do not necessarily relate to patterns in network complexity and suggest that network analyses provide new insight into the ecology of highly diverse, microscopic communities

A Rubbish Idea: The material dump, and casting trash talk in a new light

Inspired by the trash-art creations of artists such as Tim Noble and Sue Webster, this creative article-assemblage was gathered together over several months by the UNNC Litter Lovers collective. The aleatoric article attempts to provocatively explore alternative ways of thinking about (or with) trash, modern life and recycling. The article is formed by found, chanced upon, and recycled fragments of used cultural material, at times united by original-organic discussions and catalytic ideas, but ultimately demands the intellectual light of the reader to cast the concepts into relief. The collective utilises form and content to generate new ways of seeing and thinking about waste and rubbish, and like the actual trash heaps and trash-art that inspired this work, they attempt to show how matter itself and (used) material is not inert and passive but rather vibrant, expressive and alive: boasting productive powers and forces capable of bringing about unforeseen reactions and new forms of synthesis. The article is designed to ignite new processes within, between, across and ‘below’ the chaotically assembled fragments. The piece is in part motivated by a drive to ethically recycle in an inspiring and creative way, and be part of new things emerging out of the old. This alternative intellectual happening is also in part designed to help people ‘clean’ their collective conscience and learn to 'love rubbish.' We hope that this is in part achieved by de-centering the human, and foregrounding a polysemous concept of the material dump that forces readers to reinterrogate everyday (non-thought) notions of waste, nature, (human) resources, thought and art.Additional co-author: the UNNC Litter Lovers (a creative academic collective

Mechanical thrombectomy in patients with acute ischemic stroke: A cost-effectiveness and value of implementation analysis

BACKGROUND Recent clinical trials have demonstrated the efficacy of mechanical thrombectomy in acute ischemic stroke. AIMS To determine the cost-effectiveness, value of future research, and value of implementation of mechanical thrombectomy. METHODS Using UK clinical and cost data from the Pragmatic Ischemic Stroke Thrombectomy Evaluation (PISTE) trial, we estimated the cost-effectiveness of mechanical thrombectomy over time horizons of 90-days and lifetime, based on a decision-analytic model, using all existing evidence. We performed a meta-analysis of seven clinical trials to estimate treatment effects. We used sensitivity analysis to address uncertainty. Value of implementation analysis was used to estimate the potential value of additional implementation activities to support routine delivery of mechanical thrombectomy. RESULTS Over the trial period (90 days), compared with best medical care alone, mechanical thrombectomy incurred an incremental cost of £5207 and 0.025 gain in QALY (incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) £205,279), which would not be considered cost-effective. However, mechanical thrombectomy was shown to be cost-effective over a lifetime horizon, with an ICER of £3466 per QALY gained. The expected value of perfect information per patient eligible for mechanical thrombectomy in the UK is estimated at £3178. The expected value of full implementation of mechanical thrombectomy is estimated at £1.3 billion over five years. CONCLUSION Mechanical thrombectomy was cost-effective compared with best medical care alone over a patient’s lifetime. On the assumption of 30% implementation being achieved throughout the UK healthcare system, we estimate that the population health benefits obtained from this treatment are greater than the cost of implementation

Mechanical thrombectomy in patients with acute ischemic stroke: a cost-effectiveness and value of implementation analysis

Background: Recent clinical trials have demonstrated the efficacy of mechanical thrombectomy in acute ischemic stroke. Aims: To determine the cost-effectiveness, value of future research, and value of implementation of mechanical thrombectomy. Methods: Using UK clinical and cost data from the Pragmatic Ischemic Stroke Thrombectomy Evaluation (PISTE) trial, we estimated the cost-effectiveness of mechanical thrombectomy over time horizons of 90-days and lifetime, based on a decision-analytic model, using all existing evidence. We performed a meta-analysis of seven clinical trials to estimate treatment effects. We used sensitivity analysis to address uncertainty. Value of implementation analysis was used to estimate the potential value of additional implementation activities to support routine delivery of mechanical thrombectomy. Results: Over the trial period (90 days), compared with best medical care alone, mechanical thrombectomy incurred an incremental cost of £5207 and 0.025 gain in QALY (incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) £205,279), which would not be considered cost-effective. However, mechanical thrombectomy was shown to be cost-effective over a lifetime horizon, with an ICER of £3466 per QALY gained. The expected value of perfect information per patient eligible for mechanical thrombectomy in the UK is estimated at £3178. The expected value of full implementation of mechanical thrombectomy is estimated at £1.3 billion over five years. Conclusion: Mechanical thrombectomy was cost-effective compared with best medical care alone over a patient’s lifetime. On the assumption of 30% implementation being achieved throughout the UK healthcare system, we estimate that the population health benefits obtained from this treatment are greater than the cost of implementation. Trial registration: NCT01745692

On the luminosity distance and the epoch of acceleration

Standard cosmological models based on general relativity (GR) with dark energy predict that the Universe underwent a transition from decelerating to accelerating expansion at a moderate redshift $z_{acc} \sim 0.7$. Clearly, it is of great interest to directly measure this transition in a model-independent way, without the assumption that GR is the correct theory of gravity. We explore to what extent supernova (SN) luminosity distance measurements provide evidence for such a transition: we show that, contrary to intuition, the well-known "turnover" in the SN distance residuals $\Delta\mu$ relative to an empty (Milne) model does not give firm evidence for such a transition within the redshift range spanned by SN data. The observed turnover in that diagram is predominantly due to the negative curvature in the Milne model, {\em not} the deceleration predicted by $\Lambda$CDM and relatives. We show that there are several advantages in plotting distance residuals against a flat, non-accelerating model $(w = -1/3)$, and also remapping the $z-$axis to $u = \ln(1+z)$; we outline a number of useful and intuitive properties of this presentation. We conclude that there are significant complementarities between SNe and baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs): SNe offer high precision at low redshifts and give good constraints on the net {\em amount} of acceleration since $z \sim 0.7$, but are weak at constraining $z_{acc}$; while radial BAO measurements are probably superior for placing direct constraints on $z_{acc}$.Comment: Latex, 13 pages, 7 figures. Accepted by MNRAS. For the busy reader, Figs 4 and 6 are the main result