An Analysis of the Tradeoffs between Policy Instruments to Induce Dairy Producers in California to Participate in a Centralized Digester

Tradeoff between different utility rates and policy intervention to induce dairy producer to join a regional digester are studied. Results demonstrate that a regional digester for the dairy industry in California is feasible given the digester receives $0.05 per kWh and government intervention or$0.0925 per kWh with no intervention.Agricultural and Food Policy, Livestock Production/Industries,

Survey of 1985 Periodical Cicada (Homoptera: Magicicada) Emergence Sites in Washington County, Arkansas, With Reference to Ecological Implications

Systematic roadside surveys were conducted in June 1985 in Washington County, Arkansas, to locate areas where 13-year periodical cicadas had emerged during May. Although cicadas were found in a variety of upland and bottom land forest habitats, the present cicada distribution reflects the original forest and prairie pattern in the county, even though those boundaries are now largely lost. This suggests a high degree of philopatry whereby emergency areas have remained in the same area for the last 100 years. All present day emergence areas are within the White River drainage, suggesting that it was the main cicada dispersal route into northwestern Arkansas. It now probably marks the western limit of Brood XIX in northwestern Arkansas

A Lunar Laser Ranging Retroreflector Array for the 21st Century

Abstract To date, lunar laser ranging to the Apollo retroreflector arrays, which are still operational after four decades, has produced some of the best tests of General Relativity. Since the ground Observatories have improved their accuracy by a factor of 200, the lunar hardware, due to the lunar librations, now limits the ranging accuracy. The Lunar Laser Ranging Retroreflector Array for the 21st Century program plans to deploy new packages that will improve the ranging accuracy by a factor of ten to one hundred in the next few years

Baker Institute for Animal Health Annual Report 2008

Baker Institute for Animal Health Annual Report 2008Topics in this Annual Report include: Director's Message (Douglas F. Antczak); Research; 2008 Publications; Faculty Accomplishments; Research Laboratory Overviews; News and Events; Volunteer and Donor Highlights; Memorial Gift Program; Honor Roll of Giving; Financial Summary; Advisory Council; Faculty, Staff and Student Directory

Migration motivations for population turnaround in nonmetropolitan areas

Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-31)

The utilization of location specific capital in migration decision-making

Includes bibliographical references (p. 16)

Convergence analysis for sequential Monte Carlo receivers in communications applications

Recently, sequential Monte Carlo methods have been used in the telecommunications field, finding application in receiver design. Several properties of these receivers make their designs very attractive. These receivers do not require channel state information or training. Therefore, they are bandwidth efficient and no communication bandwidth needs to be wasted on training. The receivers are optimal in the sense that they achieve a minimum symbol error rate regardless of the noise distribution, nonlinearities in the system, or distribution of the transmitted symbol. Moreover, these receivers are capable of producing soft-information outputs, which enables the designer to utilize iterative receiver architectures for near-optimal performance. In this work we investigate the convergence properties of these algorithms when utilized in various types of receivers. We quantify the convergence rate. We describe how various parameters (e.g., noise power, channel fading rate, etc) and factors (e.g., state-space model mismatch) affect the convergence rate and point out the factors that should be improved first to gain speed and accuracy in the convergence

Regional astrocyte IFN signaling restricts pathogenesis during neurotropic viral infection

Type I IFNs promote cellular responses to viruses, and IFN receptor (IFNAR) signaling regulates the responses of endothelial cells of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) during neurotropic viral infection. However, the role of astrocytes in innate immune responses of the BBB during viral infection of the CNS remains to be fully elucidated. Here, we have demonstrated that type I IFNAR signaling in astrocytes regulates BBB permeability and protects the cerebellum from infection and immunopathology. Mice with astrocyte-specific loss of IFNAR signaling showed decreased survival after West Nile virus infection. Accelerated mortality was not due to expanded viral tropism or increased replication. Rather, viral entry increased specifically in the hindbrain of IFNAR-deficient mice, suggesting that IFNAR signaling critically regulates BBB permeability in this brain region. Pattern recognition receptors and IFN-stimulated genes had higher basal and IFN-induced expression in human and mouse cerebellar astrocytes than did cerebral cortical astrocytes, suggesting that IFNAR signaling has brain region–specific roles in CNS immune responses. Taken together, our data identify cerebellar astrocytes as key responders to viral infection and highlight the existence of distinct innate immune programs in astrocytes from evolutionarily disparate regions of the CNS

Perspectives on safety culture

Overviewing selected elements from the literature, this paper locates the notion of safety culture within its parent concept of organisational culture. A distinction is drawn between functionalist and interpretive perspectives on organisational culture. The terms ‘culture’ and ‘climate’ are clarified as they are typically applied to organisations and to safety. A contrast is drawn between strategic top down and data-driven bottom up approaches to human factors as an illustrative aspect of safety. A safety case study is used to illustrate two measurement approaches. Key issues for future study include valid measurement of safety culture and developing methods to adequately represent mechanisms through which safety culture might influence, and be influenced by, other safety factors