FARM LEVEL IMPACTS OF THE 2002 FARM BILL ON A GEORGIA AND NORTH CAROLINA FARM

The 2002 Farm Bill eliminates the peanut quota program and establishes a marketing loan program for peanuts. A Georgia and North Carolina peanut model farm are developed to examine farm level impacts of program changes. Results indicate more revenue derived from the government and an increase in net farm income.Agricultural and Food Policy,

An economic and environmental analysis of potential water quality regulations on dairy farms in the Big Limestone Watershed

Recently, greater environmental awareness has resulted in placing greater value on the proper management of animal waste. Dairy farmers have become concerned about the possibilities of future regulations that may affect their farm income. Nitrates associated with agricultural practices is a major water quality concern. Dairy farms in particular have been cited as contributors to the water quality degradation because of animal waste and high use of nitrogen fertilizer. Best Management Practices (BMP) have been developed to address the unique issues associated with nonpoint source pollution. BMP\u27s to control animal waste are usually associated with some type of waste storage. It is generally accepted the storage structures will allow better timing of manure disposal, thus reducing nitrogen loss. This study examined the effects farm income effects on including a waste storage system. Most dairy farms in East Tennessee do not have a waste storage system. A recent survey found less than 70 percent of dairies used a daily haul system. The specific objectives of the study were to develop a linear programming model to evaluate the farm level effects of adding a waste storage system. The third objective was to evaluate the ability of each system to met a nitrogen loss restriction. A linear programming model and a simulation model were integrated in this analysis. A simulation model was used to develop a nitrogen loss coefficient. Daily haul system was compared to five typical systems; dry stack, earthen pit, earthen pit with irrigation, lagoon and lagoon with irrigation. The income effects of adding the five systems were compared to the daily haul. It was assumed that waste system would differ in their ability to met nitrogen loss reductions because of timing and crop utilization of nitrogen. Partial budgeting was used to develop coefficients for two farm sizes. Information needed the partial budgeting came from survey and extension specialist. Earthen pit with irrigation increased income as compared to the daily haul system for the 60 cow dairy. Earthen pit with irrigation, lagoon and lagoon with irrigation increased income for the 100 cow dairy. This increase in income as compared to daily haul can be attributed to better timing and utilization of nitrogen fertilizer and labor savings with the irrigation systems. A marginal cost curve of reducing the amount of allowable nitrogen loss was developed for each system. The 100 cow dairy could best meet the nitrogen loss constraint with the daily haul system. While the earthen pit with irrigation was better able to meet the nitrogen loss constraint

A three-phased model to support the design and development of core competency education for liaison mental health clinicians

Purpose This paper aims to provide an insight into the design, development and delivery proposals for a first of its kind “Liaison Mental Health Training Programme”. In the UK, there has been a significant investment in Liaison Mental Health Services and an expansion of the workforce (NHS England, 2016). However, the complexity and varied presentations of patients who attend to acute physical health services now requires a dedicated strategy to address any skills deficit in the mental health liaison workforce and to support core competency development (DOH, 2016). Design/methodology/approach This paper provides an overview of preparations to develop a regional educational pilot programme using a three-phased model: Phase 1 – Review of policy and best practice guidelines; Phase 2 – Stakeholder Data Collection; and Phase 3 – Synthesis and Development. Findings An insight into the developmental processes undertaken to shape a core competency liaison mental health training programme is presented. Additionally, the authors provide insight into educational theory and an overview of the LMH Core Competency Curricula. Practical implications This paper provides the reader with an insight into our findings and a focussed core competency training model for those working within LMH services. This programme development was reviewed throughout by both those using LMH services and the LMH practitioners working within them, ensuring the curriculum proposed was endorsed by key stakeholders. The three-phased model has transferable benefits to other training development initiatives. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this training is the first of its kind in the UK and addresses the education of essential core competencies of a regional liaison mental health workforce. The collaboration of clinical and academic expertise and model of co-production makes this endeavour unique

Clinical practice as research for a rare condition: Systematic research review of qualitative research exploring patients' experiences of penile cancer

Background: Penile cancer is a rare but destructive malignancy. The aim of this study was to identify published qualitative research exploring patients' experiences of being diagnosed and treated for penile cancer. As only one study met our inclusion criteria and yet there were five borderline studies, a secondary aim that emerged was to discuss those studies to see what, if anything, we could learn. Methods: We searched ASSIA, CINAHL, EMBASE, PUBMED/MEDLINE, PsycINFO & Web of Science and found 313 papers published since 1990. Two reviewers independently selected 17 papers for potential inclusion using titles and abstracts, which were obtained and independently assessed. A synthesis was not possible as only one study met our inclusion criteria. Five borderline studies, covering 4 countries, invited closer inspection because they are often reported in guidelines on penile cancer. Results: The 5 borderline studies reported using a mixed methods design combining a psychometric measure with interviews. Unfortunately, none of these studies reported the method or process used for analysing qualitative data or for integrating the interview and psychometric findings, making it difficult to understand the interview element of their research. Conclusions: If we are to understand and improve the long-term consequences of treatment for penile cancer, qualitative studies of patients’ experiences need to be conducted with high quality analysis and reporting. While pen-and-paper questionnaires may take up little of the time of clinicians conducting research about rare conditions, time could be better used by using methodologies that explore patients experiences

Switching the World's Salt Supply—Learning from Iodization to Achieve Potassium Enrichment

Sodium is an essential dietary component, but excess sodium intake can lead to high blood pressure and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Many national and international bodies, including the World Health Organization, have advocated for population-wide sodium reduction interventions. Most have been unsuccessful due to inadequate sodium reduction by food industry and difficulties in persuading consumers to add less salt to food. Recent research highlights potassium-enriched salt as a new, feasible, acceptable, and scalable approach to reducing the harms caused by excess sodium and inadequate potassium consumption. Modeling shows that a global switch from regular salt to potassium-enriched salt has the potential to avert millions of strokes, heart attacks, and premature deaths worldwide each year. There will be many challenges in switching the world's salt supply to potassium-enriched salt, but the success of universal salt iodization shows that making a global change to the manufacture and use of salt is a tractable proposition. This in-depth review of universal salt iodization identified the importance of a multisectoral effort with strong global leadership, the support of multilateral organizations, engagement with the salt industry, empowered incountry teams, strong participation of national governments, understanding the salt supply chain, and a strategic advocacy and communication plan. Key challenges to the implementation of the iodization program were costs to government, industry, and consumers, industry concerns about consumer acceptability, variance in the size and capabilities of salt producers, inconsistent quality control, ineffective regulation, and trade-related regulatory issues. Many of the opportunities and challenges to universal salt iodization will likely also be applicable to switching the global salt supply to iodized and potassium-enriched salt

The development and validation of a scoring tool to predict the operative duration of elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background: The ability to accurately predict operative duration has the potential to optimise theatre efficiency and utilisation, thus reducing costs and increasing staff and patient satisfaction. With laparoscopic cholecystectomy being one of the most commonly performed procedures worldwide, a tool to predict operative duration could be extremely beneficial to healthcare organisations. Methods: Data collected from the CholeS study on patients undergoing cholecystectomy in UK and Irish hospitals between 04/2014 and 05/2014 were used to study operative duration. A multivariable binary logistic regression model was produced in order to identify significant independent predictors of long (> 90 min) operations. The resulting model was converted to a risk score, which was subsequently validated on second cohort of patients using ROC curves. Results: After exclusions, data were available for 7227 patients in the derivation (CholeS) cohort. The median operative duration was 60 min (interquartile range 45–85), with 17.7% of operations lasting longer than 90 min. Ten factors were found to be significant independent predictors of operative durations > 90 min, including ASA, age, previous surgical admissions, BMI, gallbladder wall thickness and CBD diameter. A risk score was then produced from these factors, and applied to a cohort of 2405 patients from a tertiary centre for external validation. This returned an area under the ROC curve of 0.708 (SE = 0.013, p  90 min increasing more than eightfold from 5.1 to 41.8% in the extremes of the score. Conclusion: The scoring tool produced in this study was found to be significantly predictive of long operative durations on validation in an external cohort. As such, the tool may have the potential to enable organisations to better organise theatre lists and deliver greater efficiencies in care

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

FARM LEVEL IMPACTS OF THE 2002 FARM BILL ON A GEORGIA AND NORTH CAROLINA FARM

The 2002 Farm Bill eliminates the peanut quota program and establishes a marketing loan program for peanuts. A Georgia and North Carolina peanut model farm are developed to examine farm level impacts of program changes. Results indicate more revenue derived from the government and an increase in net farm income

Lab-otomy : producing the virtual engineer

Economic rationalisation within universities has seen a trend for larger classes, higher student/staff ratios and a reduction in high cost program components such as laboratory work. The historical trend for engineering schools and faculties has been to adopt the “easy” approach and reduce the amount of laboratory work contained within degree programs or to replace the classical “hands-on” approach with computer based simulations or “virtual laboratories”. Both approaches allow a reduction in hours spent by academic staff in laboratories and fewer technical staff needed to support laboratory activities. The paper describes how the School of Civil Engineering at QUT has approached the resourcing problem and cites a pilot project where a geotechnical unit was redesigned to achieve lower costs and assist in the development of generic skills. The pilot project involved producing a geotechnical site investigation video to be used to extend the students’ technical skills, introduce the basic concepts of design, and enhance the students’ ability to see foundation design in an overall engineering context. It was also perceived that the generic skills of communication, teamwork, and problem identification and formulation were developed. The project was a success with students and the School has enjoyed reduced laboratory costs. The same concept has now been applied to upgrade the School’s construction materials laboratories. It has been concluded that while virtual laboratories are a useful tool, the tactile experience in hands-on laboratories remains an essential component of preparing graduating engineers for the real world