Evaluation of JULES-crop performance against site observations of irrigated maize from Mead, Nebraska

We use the results to point to future priorities for model development and describe how our methodology can be adapted to set up model runs for other sites and crop varietie

Recommendations for Sustaining Sustainability Initiatives in City Government

The report analyzes four U.S. cities' financial conditions and then compares and contrasts their sustainability initiatives and financing mechanisms. Based on the analysis, the report provides recommendations for other green cities that may make their sustainability initiatives more financially sustainable in today's fiscal environment.The report was a service learning project of a MPA class, Resource Allocation and Control, taught by Dr. Alfred T. Ho at the School of Public Affairs and Administration, University of Kansas in spring, 2012

How can hackathons accelerate corporate innovation?

IFIP WG 5.7 International Conference, APMS 2018, Seoul, Korea, August 26-30, 2018, Proceedings, Part I In recent years, the way corporates innovate has changed significantly. Going from ‘behind closed doors’ innovation to open innovation where collaboration with outsiders is encouraged, companies are in the pursuit of more effective ways to accelerate their innovation outcomes. As a result, many companies are investing to create more entrepreneurial environments, which not only empower employees to proactively propose and test new ideas, but also reach beyond company walls to involve many others in the co-creation of new solutions. In this paper, we outline the most notable benefits of hackathons from the perspective of large organizations, and present the benefits and a methodology for organizing hackathons, i.e. competition-based events where participants work in small teams over a short period of time to ideate, design, rapidly prototype and test their ideas with a user-centric approach to solve a determined challenge. This paper also provides a brief insight into the CEMEX Hackathon, which was organized following the aforementioned methodology

Association between rheumatoid arthritis disease activity, progression of functional limitation and long-term risk of orthopaedic surgery : Combined analysis of two prospective cohorts supports EULAR treat to target DAS thresholds

Objectives: To examine the association between disease activity in early rheumatoid arthritis (RA), functional limitation and long-term orthopaedic episodes. Methods: Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) disability scores were collected from two longitudinal early RA inception cohorts in routine care; Early Rheumatoid Arthritis Study and Early Rheumatoid Arthritis Network from 1986 to 2012. The incidence of major and intermediate orthopaedic surgical episodes over 25 years was collected from national data sets. Disease activity was categorised by mean disease activity score (DAS28) annually between years 1 and 5; remission (RDAS≤2.6), low (LDAS>2.6-3.2), low-moderate (LMDAS≥3.2-4.19), high-moderate (HMDAS 4.2-5.1) and high (HDAS>5.1). Results: Data from 2045 patients were analysed. Patients in RDAS showed no HAQ progression over 5 years, whereas there was a significant relationship between rising DAS28 category and HAQ at 1 year, and the rate of HAQ progression between years 1 and 5. During 27 986 person-years follow-up, 392 intermediate and 591 major surgeries were observed. Compared with the RDAS category, there was a significantly increased cumulative incidence of intermediate surgery in HDAS (OR 2.59 CI 1.49 to 4.52) and HMDAS (OR 1.8 CI 1.05 to 3.11) categories, and for major surgery in HDAS (OR 2.48 CI 1.5 to 4.11), HMDAS (OR 2.16 CI 1.32 to 3.52) and LMDAS (OR 2.07 CI 1.28 to 3.33) categories. There was no significant difference in HAQ progression or orthopaedic episodes between RDAS and LDAS categories. Conclusions: There is an association between disease activity and both poor function and long-term orthopaedic episodes. This illustrates the far from benign consequences of persistent moderate disease activity, and supports European League Against Rheumatism treat to target recommendations to secure low disease activity or remission in all patients.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio