A FINANCIAL TRAINING PROGRAM FOR USDA/FSA BORROWERS: EVOLUTION AND IMPACTS

A financial training program designed by Cooperative Extension specialists was provided to over 2,000 USDA/FSA borrowers from the Northeast during the period 1994-1999. Key to the success of the workshops was an in-depth, user friendly curriculum that evolved over time, eventually replacing satellite-feed instruction with pre-taped videos. Cluster analysis classified nearly 70% of workshop participants as "Low Finance Priority" or "Low Finance Knowledge." Farmers in these clusters received a relatively greater educational benefit from the program than those not in these clusters. Impact analysis indicated that perceived annual gain in farm net worth from application of workshop tools ranged from approximately $5,000 to$10,000. The training addressed the needs of producers typically isolated from Cooperative Extension because the workshop was the only extension program attended that year by nearly two-thirds of them.Agricultural Finance,

Convergent synthesis of a steroidal antiestrogen-mitomycin C hybrid using “click” chemistry

A convergent synthesis of a novel estrogen receptor-targeted drug hybrid was developed based on structures of the potent anti-proliferative mitomycin C and the steroidal anti-estrogen RU 39411. The steroidal antiestrogen was prepared with an azido-triethylene glycoloxy linker while the mitomycin C derivative (porfirimycin) incorporated a complementary 7-N-terminal alkyne. The two components were ligated using the Huisgen [3 + 2] cycloaddition (“click”) reaction. Preliminary biological assays demonstrated that the final hybrid compound retained both potent anti-estrogenic and anti-proliferative activities.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant PHS 5R01 CA 086061-09

Status, Trends, and Conservation of Eelgrass in Atlantic Canada and the Northeastern United States: Workshop Report

Eelgrass (Zostera marina L) is the dominant seagrass occurring in eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, where it often forms extensive meadows in coastal and estuarine areas. Eelgrass beds are extremely productive and provide many valuable ecological functions and ecosystem services. They serve as critical feeding and nursery habitat for a wide variety of commercially and recreationally important fish and shellfish and as feeding areas for waterfowl and other waterbirds. Eelgrass detritus is also transported considerable distances to fuel offshore food webs. In addition, eelgrass beds stabilize bottom sediments, dampen wave energy, absorb nutrients from surrounding waters, and retain carbon through burial

Synthesis and Preliminary Evaluation Steroidal AntiestrogenGeldanamycin Conjugates

Three novel steroidal antiestrogen-geldanamycin conjugates were prepared using a convergent strategy. The antiestrogenic component utilized the 11β-(4-functionalized-oxyphenyl) estradiol scaffold, while the geldanamycin component was derived by replacement of the 17-methoxy group with an appropriately functionalized amine. Ligation was achieved in high yield using azide alkyne cyclization reactions. Evaluation of the products against two breast cancer cell lines indicated that the conjugates retained significant antiproliferative activity

Immobilization on a Nanomagnetic Co/C Surface Using ROM Polymerization: Generation of a Hybrid Material as Support for a Recyclable Palladium Catalyst

A novel hybrid material is reported as support for a recyclable palladium catalyst via surface immobilization of a ligand onto Co-based magnetic nanoparticles (NPs). A standard “click” reaction is utilized to covalently attach a norbornene tag (Nb-tag) to the surface of the carbon coated cobalt NPs. The hybrid magnetic nanoparticles are produced by initiating polymerization of a mixture containing both Nb-tagged ligand (Nb-tagged PPh 3) and Nb-tagged carbon coated cobalt NPs. In turn, the norbornene units are suitably functionalized to serve as ligands for metal catalysts. A composite material is thus obtained which furnishes a loading that is one order of magnitude higher than the value obtained previously for the synthesis of functionalized Co/C-nanopowders. This allows for its application as a hybrid support with high local catalyst concentrations, as demonstrated for the immobilization of a highly active and recyclable palladium complex for Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reactions. Due to the explicit magnetic moment of the cobalt- NPs, the overall magnetization of this organic/inorganic framework is significantly higher than of polymer coated iron oxide nanoparticles with comparable metal content, hence, its rapid separation from the reaction mixture and recycling via an external magnetic field is not hampered by the functionalized polymer shell

A Hot DQ White Dwarf in the Open Star Cluster M35

We report the discovery of a hot DQ white dwarf, NGC 2168:LAWDS 28, that is a likely member of the 150-Myr old cluster NGC 2168 (Messier 35). The spectrum of the white dwarf is dominated by CII features. The effective temperature is difficult to estimate but likely > 20,000 K based on the temperatures of hot DQs with similar spectra. NGC2168:LAWDS 28 provides further evidence that hot DQs may be the ``missing'' high-mass helium-atmosphere white dwarfs. Based on published studies, we find that the DBA WD LP 475-242 is likely a member of the Hyades open cluster, as often assumed. These two white dwarfs are the entire sample of known He-atmosphere white dwarfs in open clusters with turnoff masses >2 solar masses. Based on the number of known cluster DA white dwarfs and a redetermination of the H-atmosphere:He-atmosphere ratio, commonly known as the DA:DB ratio, we re-examine the hypothesis that the H- to He-atmosphere ratio in open clusters is the same as the ratio in the field. Under this hypothesis, we calculate that five He-atmosphere WDs are expected to have been discovered, with a probability of finding fewer than three He-atmosphere white dwarfs of 0.08, or at the ~ 2-sigma level.Comment: 9 pages with 2 figures, uses LaTeX/AASTeX 5.2. Accepted for publications in ApJ Letter

The Role of Magnetic Field Dissipation in the Black Hole Candidate Sgr A*

The compact, nonthermal radio source Sgr A* at the Galactic Center appears to be coincident with a 2.6 million solar mass point-like object. Its energy source may be the release of gravitational energy as gas from the interstellar medium descends into its potential well. Simple attempts at calculating the spectrum and flux based on this picture have come close to the observations, yet have had difficulty in accounting for the low efficiency in this source. There now appear to be two reasons for this low conversion rate: (1) the plasma separates into two temperatures, with the protons attaining a significantly higher temperature than that of the radiating electrons, and (2) the magnetic field, B, is sub-equipartition, which reduces the magnetic bremsstrahlung emissivity, and therefore the overall power of Sgr A*. We investigate the latter with improvement over what has been attempted before: rather than calculating B based on a presumed model, we instead infer its distribution with radius empirically with the requirement that the resulting spectrum matches the observations. Our ansatz for B(r) is motivated in part by earlier calculations of the expected magnetic dissipation rate due to reconnection in a compressed flow. We find reasonable agreement with the observed spectrum of Sgr A* as long as its distribution consists of 3 primary components: an outer equipartition field, a roughly constant field at intermediate radii (~1000 Schwarzschild radii), and an inner dynamo (more or less within the last stable orbit for a non-rotating black hole) which increases B to about 100 Gauss. The latter component accounts for the observed sub-millimiter hump in this source.Comment: 33 pages including 2 figures; submitted to Ap

EVM and Achievable Data Rate Analysis of Clipped OFDM Signals in Visible Light Communication

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been considered for visible light communication (VLC) thanks to its ability to boost data rates as well as its robustness against frequency-selective fading channels. A major disadvantage of OFDM is the large dynamic range of its time-domain waveforms, making OFDM vulnerable to nonlinearity of light emitting diodes (LEDs). DC biased optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM) and asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM) are two popular OFDM techniques developed for the VLC. In this paper, we will analyze the performance of the DCO-OFDM and ACO-OFDM signals in terms of error vector magnitude (EVM), signal-to-distortion ratio (SDR), and achievable data rates under both average optical power and dynamic optical power constraints. EVM is a commonly used metric to characterize distortions. We will describe an approach to numerically calculate the EVM for DCO-OFDM and ACO-OFDM. We will derive the optimum biasing ratio in the sense of minimizing EVM for DCO-OFDM. Additionally, we will formulate the EVM minimization problem as a convex linear optimization problem and obtain an EVM lower bound against which to compare the DCO-OFDM and ACO-OFDM techniques. We will prove that the ACO-OFDM can achieve the lower bound. Average optical power and dynamic optical power are two main constraints in VLC. We will derive the achievable data rates under these two constraints for both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel and frequency-selective channel. We will compare the performance of DCO-OFDM and ACO-OFDM under different power constraint scenarios

Shifting perspectives on coastal impacts and adaptation

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports reflect evolving attitudes in adapting to sea-level rise by taking a systems approach and recognizing that multiple responses exist to achieve a less hazardous coast.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Monomer-on-Monomer (MoM) Mitsunobu Reaction: Facile Purification Utilizing Surface-Initiated Sequestration

A monomer-on-monomer (MoM) Mitsunobu reaction utilizing norbornenyl-tagged (Nb-tagged) reagents is reported, whereby purification was rapidly achieved by employing ring-opening metathesis polymerization which is initiated by any of three methods utilizing Grubbs catalyst (i) free catalyst in solution, (ii) surface-initiated catalyst-armed silica or (iii) surface-initiated catalyst-armed Co/C magnetic nanoparticles