Factor Price Disparity in the Feeder Cattle Market and Retained Ownership Decision Making: An Application of Farm-Level Feed-Out Data

This study uses farm-level data from a university feed-out program to evaluate how the value of feeder cattle ultimately realized through finishing and grid pricing differs from their market value at public auction. Results indicate that uncertainty related to feedlot performance, final carcass merits, and fed cattle prices likely contribute to significant risk premiums in the feeder cattle market. This is consistent with the theory of factor price disparity. This result indicates that producers of cattle with known feedlot performance and/or carcass potential may be better off retaining ownership of their calves or marketing them in a way that communicates the information that is known about their potential performance directly to the buyer.Marketing,

A Reference Grammar of Oklahoma Cherokee

The majority of Native American Languages are threatened with extinction within the next 100 years, a loss that will entail the destruction of the unique cultural identity of the peoples that speak them. This dissertation is a reference grammar of one such language, the Cherokee language of Oklahoma. Cherokee is the sole member of the southern branch of the Iroquoian language family. If current trends continue, it will cease to exist as a living language in two generations. Among the three federally-recognized tribes there is a strong commitment to language revitalization; furthermore, there is a large number of active speakers compared to other Native American languages. This current work aims to serve as a reference work for Cherokees interested in learning about the grammar of their language as well as for educators who are developing language materials. This dissertation also offers the academic community a comprehensive descriptive presentation of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the language. Cherokee has a relatively small inventory of sounds, and vowels are distinguished by length and tone. One of the goals of this work is to allow the reader a better understanding of complex phonological rules involving vowel deletion, metathesis, and aspiration by using contextualized examples of these phenomena throughout this work. To this end an emphasis is based on using stem forms rather than natural citation forms. The use of tone as a syntactic device for creating subordinate clauses is also stressed throughout this work. The four parts of speech are verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Cherokee is a polysynthetic language and has complex verbal morphology. Verbs are complete utterances as they always carry pronominal prefixes indicating their subject and object. Prepronominal prefixes as well as clitics add considerably to the expressive range of the Cherokee verb. Nouns and adjectives, many of which are derived from verbs, often have these prefixes as well. All of the affixes and clitics are methodically described; throughout the grammar their usage is demonstrated by numerous everyday examples accompanied by an underlying morpheme breakdown and a morpheme-by-morpheme gloss. This grammar also contains a description of the rich variety of valency-adjusting operations, including Causative, Applicative and Middle voice affixes. This dissertation uses a Romanized writing system that marks tone and vowel length; all words and sentences are also written in the Cherokee Syllabary in order that the information can be useful to those already literate or those who wish to become literate in the traditional writing system. The inclusion of both systems reflects the need to serve the linguistic community as well as the Cherokee community, for whom use of the syllabary is a powerful cultural symbol. This dissertation includes three texts in the final chapter. Two are traditional narratives involving a race between two animals; the third is a short historical narrative. Excerpts from these narratives, as well as examples from the New Testament and newspaper articles, are given throughout the grammar to underline the importance of the context is establishing word order and grammatical relations

The Craft of Incentive Prize Design: Lessons from the Public Sector

In the last five years, incentive prizes have transformed from an exotic open innovation tool to a proven innovation strategy for the public, private and philanthropic sectors. This report offers practical lessons for public sector leaders and their counterparts in the philanthropic and private sectors to help understand what types of outcomes incentive prizes help to achieve, what design elements prize designers use to create these challenges and how to make smart design choices to achieve a particular outcome. It synthesizes insights from expert interviews and analysis of more than 400 prize

Formal Mentoring in the U.S. Military—Research Evidence, Lingering Questions, and Recommendations

Organizations that mentor produce members who are more rapidly promoted, more confident, and more likely to achieve leadership positions. Informal mentoring has flourished in the military for centuries, but should the military institutionalize the process

The Changing Face of Veterinary Practice: A Special Focus on Rural America

Rural and food animal veterinary practice is evolving in response to changes in society, veterinary student demographics, and business opportunities available in the 21st century. The gravitation of veterinarians toward metropolitan areas has created a perception of under-serviced animal health needs in rural communities. Many rural communities are heavily reliant on agriculture; therefore, this perceived need for veterinarians influences the food animal industry as a whole. Veterinary colleges have changed in response to the increased number of students who are interested in companion animal medicine. These changes have resulted in diminished large animal content in the professional curricula, attrition of the number of faculty teaching food animal medicine, increases in the number of faculty dedicated to small animal curriculum, and an overwhelming sense that the veterinary program is centered around training in preparation for a career in companion animal practice. A multitude of factors likely contribute to the continued gravitation of veterinary students toward small animal practice. Veterinary colleges must strive to maintain a balanced, open-minded view of the profession so that students have an equal opportunity to choose a path that best suits their desires and interests

Dynamic Rupture Modeling of the Transition from Thrust to Strike-Slip Motion in the 2002 Denali Fault Earthquake, Alaska

We use three-dimensional dynamic (spontaneous) rupture models to investigate the nearly simultaneous ruptures of the Susitna Glacier thrust fault and the Denali strike-slip fault. With the 1957 M_w 8.3 Gobi-Altay, Mongolia, earthquake as the only other well-documented case of significant, nearly simultaneous rupture of both thrust and strike-slip faults, this feature of the 2002 Denali fault earthquake provides a unique opportunity to investigate the mechanisms responsible for development of these large, complex events. We find that the geometry of the faults and the orientation of the regional stress field caused slip on the Susitna Glacier fault to load the Denali fault. Several different stress orientations with oblique right-lateral motion on the Susitna Glacier fault replicate the triggering of rupture on the Denali fault about 10 sec after the rupture nucleates on the Susitna Glacier fault. However, generating slip directions compatible with measured surface offsets and kinematic source inversions requires perturbing the stress orientation from that determined with focal mechanisms of regional events. Adjusting the vertical component of the principal stress tensor for the regional stress field so that it is more consistent with a mixture of strike-slip and reverse faulting significantly improves the fit of the slip-rake angles to the data. Rotating the maximum horizontal compressive stress direction westward appears to improve the fit even further

Student Perceptions of Teaching Presence, Social Presence, and Cognitive Presence in a Virtual World

Presence - or having a sense of active participation - in distance education has increased with the expanding use of and affordances of communications technologies. Virtual worlds have been on the forefront of popular and education technology in the last three years and innovative methods of teaching and learning are emerging in these contexts. Using the recently validated community of inquiry (COI) instrument, this study focuses on students’ perceptions of teaching, social and cognitive presence in virtual world contexts. The authors examine whether the COI Instrument can effectively be applied to virtual world learning events. The results are exciting: in a diverse sample, virtual world learners perceive teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence

A TEMPORAL ANALYSIS OF A STRONGMAN EVENT: THE TYRE FLIP

The purpose of this study was to characterize the temporal aspects of a strongman event, the tyre flip, as performed by five athletes. A two-dimensional video analysis of each athlete performing two sets of six flips of a 232 kg tyre was performed. Descriptive statistics were calculated for all trials as well as the fastest and slowest three repetitions for each athlete. The slowest section of the tyre flip occurred when the tyre was 300-600 above horizontal. Comparison of the fastest vs slowest trials revealed that several temporal variables, particularly those occurring between 30o-60o above horizontal took significantly longer for the slowest than fastest repetitions. These results suggest that the ability to maintain a certain level of tyre angular velocity through the transition phase (300- 600 above horizontal) is a strong determinant of tyre flip performance