Impact of Capital Gains and Urban Pressure on Farmland Values: A Spatial Correlation Analysis

Farmland is a major component of wealth in the farm sector as well as wealth of farm households. This study contributes to our knowledge of variations in farmland prices by examining the extent to which farmland values are spatially correlated and to what extent that this spatial correlation can be explained by income to farmland.land values, spatial correlation, Land Economics/Use,

Disaster capitalism? Examining the politicisation of land subsidence crisis in pushing Jakarta’s seawall megaproject

This paper offers an analysis of 'disaster capitalism', in which fear of disaster is exploited to facilitate the entry of a capitalist project, with regard to Jakarta’s flood policy. After a major flood hit the city in 2013, the Indonesian government launched a flagship megaproject, the National Capital Integrated Coastal Development (NCICD), as the solution for the city’s sinking problem. The plan involves closing Jakarta Bay by means of a 32-kilometre offshore sea wall and reclaiming 5100 hectares (ha) of land. Following a corruption scandal in a related reclamation project (for 17 artificial islands), the NCICD plan was evaluated for six months in 2016. Although many criticisms of the plan surfaced during the evaluation period, they were not able to bring about radical change, i.e. cancellation of the project. Informed by the concept of 'critical juncture' (an analytical approach focusing on a short period of time in which actors’ decisions have a higher probability of affecting a particular outcome), we analyse the extent to which the framing of the sinking crisis by political actors can explain such a 'near-miss' critical juncture, where change is both possible and plausible but not achieved. Drawing data from newspaper discourse, interviews, and policy documents, we find that the project’s proponents have eloquently framed the sinking crisis in order to ensure preference for the seawall policy, including the project concerning the 17 islands that was claimed by the critics as the capitalist part of the project. It can be concluded that the 'disaster capitalism' notion helps understand this 'near-miss' outcome

Aerobic stability of heat and orchardgrass round-bale silage

In Arkansas, silage is typically stored as balage in long rows of round bales wrapped in plastic film. It is important to evaluate the aerobic stability of this fermented forage when it is exposed to air, especially during the winter months when most of it is fed to livestock or sold as a cash crop. Two types of forage, orchardgrass (Dactylis glomerata) and wheat (Triticum aestivum), were harvested in May 2002 and stored as balage. Twenty-one bales of each balage type were unwrapped and exposed to air on 10 Dec. 2002 for 0, 2, 4, 8, 16, 24, or 32 d to evaluate aerobic stability. For both orchardgrass and wheat balage, final bale weight, dry matter (DM) content, and pH were not affected (P \u3e 0.05) by exposure time. Across both balage types, DM recoveries were ≥97% for all bales, indicating that both types of balage were very stable when exposed to air. Concentrations of neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and 48-h ruminal in situ digestibility were not affected (P \u3e 0.05) by exposure time for either balage type. Concentrations of N were greater (P = 0.045) for orchardgrass balage exposed to air for 16 d or longer compared to balage sampled at exposure (d 0), but this response was not observed (P \u3e 0.05) for wheat balage. These results suggest that the balage evaluated in this trial was very stable after exposure to air for up to 32 d. This should allow for considerable flexibility with respect to feeding, transport, and marketing of balage during winter months without significant aerobic deterioration

Masers and the Massive Star Formation Process: New Insights Through Infrared Observations

Our mid-infrared and near-infrared surveys over the last five years have helped to strengthen and clarify the relationships between water, methanol, and OH masers and the star formation process. Our surveys show that maser emission seems to be more closely associated with mid-infrared emission than cm radio continuum emission from UC HII regions. We find that masers of all molecular species surveyed trace a wide variety of phenomena and show a proclivity for linear distributions. The vast majority of these linear distributions can be explained by outflows or shocks, and in general do not appear to trace circumstellar disks as was previously thought. Some water and methanol masers that are not associated with radio continuum emission appear to trace infrared-bright hot cores, the earliest observable stage of massive stellar life before the onset of a UC HII region.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of IAU Symposium 227: "Massive Star Birth: A Crossroads of Astrophysics", version with full-resolution images available at http://www.ctio.noao.edu/~debuize

Postcard: No. 2.Cow Boy\u27s Delight. Bringing Calves to Brand

This black and white photographic postcard features two men on horses roping calves. One cow on the right follows the calf and the rest of the herd is in the background. Written text is at the bottom of the card. Handwriting is on the back of the card. (Note indicates the photo was taken by Liberal, Kansas photographer Hal Reid.)https://scholars.fhsu.edu/tj_postcards/2331/thumbnail.jp

Reducing the Effects of Unequal Number of Games on Rankings

Ranking is an important mathematical process in a variety of contexts such as information retrieval, sports and business. Sports ranking methods can be applied both in and beyond the context of athletics. In both settings, once the concept of a game has been defined, teams (or individuals) accumulate wins, losses, and ties, which are then factored into the ranking computation. Many settings involve an unequal number of games between competitors. This paper demonstrates how to adapt two sports rankings methods, the Colley and Massey ranking methods, to settings where an unequal number of games are played between the teams. In such settings, the standard derivations of the methods can produce nonsensical rankings. This paper introduces the idea of including a super-user into the rankings and considers the effect of this fictitious player on the ratings. We apply such techniques to rank batters and pitchers in Major League baseball, professional tennis players, and participants in a free online social game. The ideas introduced in this paper can further the scope that such methods are applied and the depth of insight they offer

Harmonic Maa{\ss}-Jacobi forms of degree 1 with higher rank indices

We define and investigate real analytic weak Jacobi forms of degree 1 and arbitrary rank. En route we calculate the Casimir operator associated to the maximal central extension of the real Jacobi group, which for rank exceeding 1 is of order 4. In ranks exceeding 1, the notions of H-harmonicity and semi-holomorphicity are the same.Comment: 28 page