Federal Road Charge Tax Administration Process

The gasoline tax is one of the primary sources of revenue for transportation infrastructure funding. However, recent revenue shortfalls due to a combination of inflation, fuel efficiency improvements, and vehicle electrification have led to discussions of alternative funding mechanisms such as the road user charge where drivers would pay fees by miles driven rather than gallons consumed. In this report, researchers investigate the institutional structure of the current gasoline tax at the federal level including historical changes, how the tax is collected, and how it is allocated and disbursed to fund infrastructure projects. In outlining the structure of the current gasoline tax, they identify key opportunities for a road user charge to be integrated into the current funding system. These include considerations for tax evasion, simplification of state level allocated disbursement formulas, re-allocation of funds, and designating spending for fuel-specific infrastructure.View the NCST Project Webpag

Understanding the Potential Utility of TamArkTM Grain Sorghum

Herbicide-resistant crops have been commonly used in corn, cotton, and soybean since the 1990s to control numerous different grass and broadleaf weeds. However, this technology has not been available for grain sorghum producers whom have faced challenges controlling grass weeds. Recently a collaboration between the University of Arkansas and Texas A&M University has resulted in a new bred line of grain sorghum, TamArkTM, which is resistant to ACCase inhibitor herbicides which have been previously used to control grass weeds in broadleaf crops. Multiple studies were conducted to determine the sensitivity of TamArkTM and problematic grass weeds to ACCase inhibitor herbicides, and to determine if johnsongrass in major sorghum producing states is resist to new herbicides that could be used in herbicide resistant grain sorghum. It was determined that TamArkTM grain sorghum was not sensitive to ACCase inhibitors from the aryloxyphenoxypropionate and phenylpyrozolin families. These herbicides also resulted in greater than 90% control of problematic grass weeds in grain sorghum. Johnsongrass resistance was found with fluazifop, nicosulfuron, imazamox, and glyphosate but was not deemed widespread

Understanding the Potential Utility of TamArkTM Grain Sorghum

Herbicide-resistant crops have been commonly used in corn, cotton, and soybean since the 1990s to control numerous different grass and broadleaf weeds. However, this technology has not been available for grain sorghum producers whom have faced challenges controlling grass weeds. Recently a collaboration between the University of Arkansas and Texas A&M University has resulted in a new bred line of grain sorghum, TamArkTM, which is resistant to ACCase inhibitor herbicides which have been previously used to control grass weeds in broadleaf crops. Multiple studies were conducted to determine the sensitivity of TamArkTM and problematic grass weeds to ACCase inhibitor herbicides, and to determine if johnsongrass in major sorghum producing states is resist to new herbicides that could be used in herbicide resistant grain sorghum. It was determined that TamArkTM grain sorghum was not sensitive to ACCase inhibitors from the aryloxyphenoxypropionate and phenylpyrozolin families. These herbicides also resulted in greater than 90% control of problematic grass weeds in grain sorghum. Johnsongrass resistance was found with fluazifop, nicosulfuron, imazamox, and glyphosate but was not deemed widespread

Center for Violence Prevention - Communities in Motion

Prevention is Education. Education is Prevention. The UNI Center for Violence Prevention (CVP) collaborates with and supports Iowa’s PreK-12 school districts, colleges and universities, and community agencies who serve youth and families by providing gender violence and bullying prevention training and programming, implementation strategies, on-going practice opportunities and evaluation services. Prevention strategies are delivered within the context of a multi-level and multi-systemic approach so as to maximize buy-in and support from a broad array of school and community stakeholders. The CVP’s “Community in Motion” Tour demonstrates the CVP\u27s philosophy and approach to cultivating leadership capacity across Iowa and beyond at the grassroots level by working closely with individual champions for change and justice, as well as with established educational and community-based service organizations seeking partnerships and plans decreasing and eliminating all forms of violence and abuse. The CVP is committed to providing affordable and effective comprehensive prevention services and continues to be resourceful in securing funding from both public and private entities. The CVP utilizes the Spectrum of Prevention model as a framework for change and intervention throughout the state of Iowa. This model seeks to support organizations and multiple systems within communities to identify strengths and weakness pertaining to policies and practices, collaboration, networking and partnerships, changing practices and protocol, professional development and training, and building skills and knowledge around primary prevention strategies

Remote functionalisation via sodium alkylamidozincate intermediates : access to unusual fluorenone and pyridyl ketone reactivity patterns

Treating fluorenone or 2-benzoylpyridine with the sodium zincate [(TMEDA)center dot Na(mu-Bu-t)(mu-TMP)Zn(Bu-t)] in hexane solution, gives efficient Bu-t addition across the respective organic substrate in a highly unusual 1,6-fashion, producing isolable organometallic intermediates which can be quenched and aerobically oxidised to give 3-tert-butyl-9H-fluoren-9-one and 2-benzoyl-5-tert-butylpyridine respectively

The evidence for automated grading in diabetic retinopathy screening

Peer reviewedPostprin

Analysis of uncertainties and geometric tolerances in assemblies of parts

Computer models of the geometry of the real world have a tendency to assume that the shapes and positions of objects can be described exactly. However, real surfaces are subject to irregularities such as bumps and undulations and so do not have perfect, mathematically definable forms. Engineers recognise this fact and so assign tolerance specifications to their designs. This thesis develops a representation of geometric tolerance and uncertainty in assemblies of rigid parts. Geometric tolerances are defined by tolerance zones which are regions in which the real surface must lie. Parts in an assembly can slop about and so their positions are uncertain. Toleranced parts and assemblies of toleranced parts are represented by networks of tolerance zones and datums. Each arc in the network represents a relationship implied by the tolerance specification or by a contact between the parts. It is shown how all geometric constraints can be converted to an algebraic form. Useful results can be obtained from the network of tolerance zones and datums. For example it is possible to determine whether the parts of an assembly can be guaranteed to fit together. It is also possible to determine the maximum slop that could occur in the assembly assuming that the parts satisfy the tolerance specification. Two applications of this work are (1) tolerance checking during design and (2) analysis of uncertainty build-up in a robot assembly plan. I n the former, a designer could check a proposed tolerance specification to make sure that certain design requirements are satisfied. In the latter, knowledge of manufacturing tolerances of parts being manipulated can be used to determine the constraints on the positions of the parts when they are in contact with other parts

Multi-core Cyclic Executives for Safety-Critical Systems

In a cyclic executive, a series of pre-determined frames are executed in sequence; once the series is complete the sequence is repeated. Within each frame individual units of computation are executed, again in a pre-specified sequence. The implementation of cyclic executives upon multi-core platforms is considered. A Linear Programming (LP) based formulation is presented of the problem of constructing cyclic executives upon multiprocessors for a particular kind of recurrent real-time workload – collections of implicit-deadline periodic tasks. Techniques are described for solving the LP formulation under different kinds of restrictions in order to obtain preemptive and non-preemptive cyclic executives

Multi-core cyclic executives for safety-critical systems

In a cyclic executive, a series of pre-determined frames are executed in sequence; once the series is complete the sequence is repeated. Within each frame individual units of computation are executed, again in a pre-specified sequence. Although they suffer from a number of limitations, cyclic executives have the advantage of being fully deterministic, and may be implemented with very low runtime overhead; as a consequence of these advantages, run-time schedulers in highly safety-critical real-time systems have historically been implemented as cyclic executives. Industrial applications of the cyclic executive framework are currently primarily restricted to uniprocessor platforms; in this paper, we consider the implementation of cyclic executives upon multi-core platforms. We present a Linear Programming (LP) based formulation of the problem of constructing cyclic executives upon multiprocessors for a particular kind of recurrent real-time workload — collections of implicit-deadline periodic tasks. We describe techniques for solving the LP formulation under different kinds of restrictions in order to obtain preemptive and non-preemptive cyclic executives. Our algorithms for constructing preemptive cyclic executives have running time polynomial in the size of the cyclic executive. We present an exact algorithm for constructing non-preemptive cyclic executives that has worst-case running time exponential in the size of the cyclic executive; however, state-of-the-art LP solvers appear to often be able to construct fairly large cyclic executives in a reasonable amount of time. We also present an approximation algorithm for constructing non-preemptive cyclic executives that does run in polynomial time, and evaluate the effectiveness of this approximation algorithm both theoretically via the speedup factor metric, and experimentally via experiments on synthetically generated workloads. We additionally identify a particular restricted kind of workload that is quite commonly found in practice, for which non-preemptive cyclic executives can be constructed more efficiently than in the general case

Conservation Tillage: Repackaging the Message for Farmers

Improved agricultural conservation practices can benefit both the environment and farmers. A sample of farmers in the Western Lake Erie Basin Watershed were asked about conservation tillage, including where they learned about practices they use and why they adopted them. The study reported here found that farmers more commonly consult other farmers, magazines or newspapers, and family members to obtain information about tillage practices than they use Extension agents. Farmers said they practiced conservation tillage mainly because it saves time and fuel. Extension agents can increase their effectiveness by recognizing economics and using the popular press when delivering their findings