Developing an agro-forestry system for production of a commercial organic chicken flock focusing on profits on a 'Triple bottom Line'

In most modern free-range poultry systems birds do not fully utilise the range provided. Knowledge of the ancestral history of the domestic chicken, and research observations suggests benefits of agro-forestry systems for chickens. A commercial organic poultry agro-forestry system was developed for Sheepdrove Organic Farm, Berkshire, UK, affording the benefi ts of an agro-forestry system, whilst retaining commercial viability. Five avenues of highly diverse parallel hedges incorporating tree, shrub and herb species were planted. On-going monitoring of the system was put in place to evaluate its development and help assess the types of ‘profits’ the system delivers. Conventionally profits tend to be viewed purely in terms of economic gain. However, in an organic farming system more emphasis is placed on the intrinsic and sustainable qualities it has. Organic farming adopts a holistic approach to profit, viewing it in environmental, social and economic terms. The profits afforded by the system are discussed

NASA TileWorld manual (system version 2.2)

The commands are documented of the NASA TileWorld simulator, as well as providing information about how to run it and extend it. The simulator, implemented in Common Lisp with Common Windows, encodes a particular range in a spectrum of domains, for controllable research experiments. TileWorld consists of a two dimensional grid of cells, a set of polygonal tiles, and a single agent which can grasp and move tiles. In addition to agent executable actions, there is an external event over which the agent has not control; this event correspond to a 'gust of wind'

Priority setting for research in health care: An application of value of information analysis to glycoprotein IIb/IIIa antagonists in non-ST elevation acute coronary syndrome

The purpose of this study is to explain the rationale for the value of information approach to priority setting for research and to describe the methods intuitively for those familiar with basic decision analytical modeling. A policy-relevant case study is used to show the feasibility of the method and to illustrate the type of output that is generated and how these might be used to frame research recommendations. The case study relates to the use of glycoprotein IIb/IIIa antagonists for the treatment of patients with non-ST elevation acute coronary syndrome. This is an area that recently has been appraised by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence

L-configuration re-attachment of distal biceps tendon rupture

In distal biceps tendon ruptures, re-attachment to the radial tuberosity should ensure adequate tendon to bone contact for optimal healing

Independent Practice for Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetics in he Rural Setting

Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) are competent in delivering cost-effective , quality anes ti 1es1· a care. Therefore, rural communities rely on CRNAs to provide anesthesia care in their facilities. With the shortage of CRNAs and anesthesiologists recruiting anesthesia providers to the mral communities has become a major issue. Without anesthesia services many rural facilities are unable to provide their community members with procedures that require anesthesia monitoring. Rural communities, unlike urban, are unable to recruit CRNAs using financial incentives. This project will provide CRNAs information needed to practice independently in the mral setting. The sole anesthesia providers in many mral medical facilities are CRNAs; however, due to the shortage of CRNAs many rural facilities are experiencing difficulties recruiting. Rural facilities lack the monetary advantages of an urban community and therefore, are unable to recrnit CRNAs using monetary incentives . Self-employment offers many advantages over employed practice and could help recruit CRNAs back to the mral setting. This project will provide the CRNA with a guideline to follow in order to develop an independent practice. This project will include, (a) discussions with current CRNAs who are independent practioners, (b) what a business plan is, what the purpose of one is, and how to develop one; (c) where to get financing, (d) how to find business, (e) what type of contract is needed, (f) how to develop a contract, (g) what type of insurance is needed and where to get that insurance, and (h) how to bill for services administered . In order to develop a guideline for CRNAs, a majority of this project will be personal contacts. The author will contact at least two CRNAs that have successful independent practices. Infonnation obtained from these individuals will give ins~ght to the reader of how they started their practice, how they were able to finance it, and the advantages/disadvantages of this type of practice . The author will also contact the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists, Blue Cross Blue Shield and the Small Business Center at the University of North Dakota. Infom1ation will be gained regarding, what states allow CRNAs to practice independently, rules/regulations that may apply to an independent CRNA practice, billing, financing, office space and contracting. The author may also contact a lawyer that specializes in this area to gain additional information. Independent practice for CRNAs is new to the nurse anesthesia practice. Many adult learners prefer to have written instructions to follow as they encounter a new area. CRNAs are adults and therefore the author will provide them with this guideline for developing their own practice. The area that is in need for a CRNA independent practice is the rural community. This guideline will help recruit CRNAs to the rural communit

Construction Cost Sensitivity of a Lignocellulosic Ethanol Biorefinery

The technology has been developed to convert feedstock with cellulose content into ethanol. However, ethanol produced from cellulosic feedstock is the same as ethanol distilled from grain. The objective of research is to determine the price per gallon of ethanol needed so that producing lignocellulosic based ethanol become economically feasible.Environmental Economics and Policy, Production Economics,

Voting Trusts and Antitrust: Rethinking the Role of Shareholder Rights and Private Litigation in Public Regulation, 1880s to 1930s

Scholars have long recognized that the states’ authority to charter corporations bolstered their antitrust powers in ways that were not available to the federal government. But they have also argued that the growth of large-scale enterprises operating in national and even international markets forced states to stop prosecuting monopolistic combinations out of fear of doing serious damage to their domestic economies. Our paper has revised this conventional view by focusing attention on the lawsuits that minority shareholders brought against their own companies in state courts of law and equity, especially suits that challenged the anticompetitive use of voting trusts. Historically judges had been reluctant to intervene in corporations’ internal affairs and had displayed a particular wariness of shareholders’ private actions. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, they had begun to revise their views and to see shareholders’ private actions as useful checks on economic concentration. Although the balance between judges’ suspicion of and support for shareholders’ activism shifted back and forth over time, the long-run effect was to make devices like voting trusts unsuitable for the purposes of economic concentration

A scientometric review of the synergetic effects of emotions on the travel motivation of senior tourists

This paper seeks to make three contributions to the senior tourism literature. The first apllies a scientometric review to analyse when, how and why the subject title has potential value in scientific domain; the second measure and validate senior tourists’ emotional experiences when vacationing in Lisbon, adapting Hosany and Gilbert Destination Emotion Scale (DES); and the third identifies the effect of positive emotions on push motivations. The scientometric review over 18479 bibliographical records published since 1900, were retrieved by terms from the Web-of-Science and exported to CiteSpace. A sample of 464 senior tourists vacationing in Lisbon was conducted to analyses the synergetic effect of emotions on the travel motivations of senior tourists, applying structural equations modeling (SEM). The results shows the association between positive emotions, place attachment and push motivations in seniors tourist experience, through the connection between ten areas of research in the knowledge domain: the first seven major clusters (#0 to #6), and three small clusters: #10 with the reference Jang, (2009); # 41, with the reference Sangpikul, (2008) and cluster #48 with the reference Pearce, (2005)

Measaurement of the intelectual contribution of the issue: Synergetic effect of emotions on the travel motivation of senior tourists

Detecting the signs of potential valuable ideas has theoretical and practical implications in order to safeguard the integrity of scientific knowledge. A critical part is to discern whether the study of a new idea is cognitively demanding. Not only do we need to have an up-do-date understanding of the scientific field’s intellectual structure as we must be able to identify exactly how the newly idea is connected to the intellectual structure as well. The perceived value of this paper is to provide specific trails of evidence to show why and how “The Synergetic Effect of Emotions on Travel Motivation of Senior Tourists” is novel in the scientific domain. The prediction of its potential value is going to be made in computational terms, using the program CiteSpace, showing the degree of changes introduced by it due to its connection with previously disparate patches of knowledge, creating a network of ideas. CiteSpace supports the modeling and visualization of our topic from bibliographical sources in terms of networks of several types of entities, including cited references, co-authors, co-occuring keywords and identify centrality between pivotal points as a measure of the importance of those nodes. This paper centered on document citations and co-citations networks in order to deliver accurate results for the knowledge of each domain. Individual nodes in the network can be aggregated into different thematic concentrations or clusters, based on their interconnectivity. Other points of interest include articles highly cited, strong bursts and hight frequency of occurance

Mycobacterium tuberculosis type VII secretion system effectors differentially impact the ESCRT endomembrane damage response

Mycobacterium tuberculosis causes tuberculosis, which kills more people than any other infection. M. tuberculosis grows in macrophages, cells that specialize in engulfing and degrading microorganisms. Like many intracellular pathogens, in order to cause disease, M. tuberculosis damages the membrane-bound compartment (phagosome) in which it is enclosed after macrophage uptake. Recent work showed that when chemicals damage this type of intracellular compartment, cells rapidly detect and repair the damage, using machinery called the endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT). Therefore, we hypothesized that ESCRT might also respond to pathogen-induced damage. At the same time, our previous work showed that the EsxG-EsxH heterodimer of M. tuberculosis can inhibit ESCRT, raising the possibility that M. tuberculosis impairs this host response. Here, we show that ESCRT is recruited to damaged M. tuberculosis phagosomes and that EsxG-EsxH undermines ESCRT-mediated endomembrane repair. Thus, our studies demonstrate a battle between host and pathogen over endomembrane integrity.Intracellular pathogens have varied strategies to breach the endolysosomal barrier so that they can deliver effectors to the host cytosol, access nutrients, replicate in the cytoplasm, and avoid degradation in the lysosome. In the case of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium perforates the phagosomal membrane shortly after being taken up by macrophages. Phagosomal damage depends upon the mycobacterial ESX-1 type VII secretion system (T7SS). Sterile insults, such as silica crystals or membranolytic peptides, can also disrupt phagosomal and endolysosomal membranes. Recent work revealed that the host endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) machinery rapidly responds to sterile endolysosomal damage and promotes membrane repair. We hypothesized that ESCRTs might also respond to pathogen-induced phagosomal damage and that M. tuberculosis could impair this host response. Indeed, we found that ESCRT-III proteins were recruited to M. tuberculosis phagosomes in an ESX-1-dependent manner. We previously demonstrated that the mycobacterial effectors EsxG/TB9.8 and EsxH/TB10.4, both secreted by the ESX-3 T7SS, can inhibit ESCRT-dependent trafficking of receptors to the lysosome. Here, we additionally show that ESCRT-III recruitment to sites of endolysosomal damage is antagonized by EsxG and EsxH, both within the context of M. tuberculosis infection and sterile injury. Moreover, EsxG and EsxH themselves respond within minutes to membrane damage in a manner that is independent of calcium and ESCRT-III recruitment. Thus, our study reveals that T7SS effectors and ESCRT participate in a series of measures and countermeasures for control of phagosome integrity