Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Comparison Of 'Organic' And 'Conventional' Grains And Soybean Prices In The Northern Great Plains And Upper Midwest: 1995 Through 2003, Nicholas Streff, Thomas L. Dobbs

Economics Pamphlet Series

Price premiums for organic crops drew the attention of an increasing number of farmers throughout the 1990s. Premiums contributed to the expansion of U.S. farmland managed under organic farming systems during that time period. Expansion of organic farming systems continued at least through 2001. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service's most recent data on organic farming systems, U.S. farmers and ranchers added almost one million acres of certified organic farmland between 1997 and 2001, an increase of 74 percent. Over that same time frame, certified organic cropland increased by 53 percent). The USDA implemented national …

An Evaluation Of The Us High Production Volume (Hpv) Chemical-Testing Programme: A Study In (Ir)Relevance, Redundancy And Retro Thinking, Andrew Nicholson, Jessica Sandler, Troy Seidle

Experimentation Collection

Under the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) High Production Volume (HPV) Challenge Programme, chemical companies have volunteered to conduct screening-level toxicity tests on approximately 2800 widely-used industrial chemicals. Participating companies are committed to providing available toxicity information to the EPA and presenting testing proposals for review by the EPA and posting on the EPA Web site as public information. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and a coalition of animal protection organisations have reviewed all the test plans submitted by the participating chemical companies for compliance with the original HPV framework, as well as with animal welfare guidelines …

Sweto: Large-Scale Semantic Web Test-Bed, Boanerges Aleman-Meza, Chris Halaschek, Amit P. Sheth, I. Budak Arpinar, Gowtham Sannapareddy

Kno.e.sis Publications

The emergent Semantic Web community needs a common infrastructure for testing the scalability and quality of new techniques and software which use machine processable data. Since ontologies are a centerpiece of most approaches, we believe that for an accurate evaluation of tools for quality, scalability and performance, the research community needs a freely available ontology with a large description base. If the use of tools is to be for advanced semantic applications, such as those in business intelligence and national security, then instances in the knowledge base should be highly interconnected. Thus, we propose and describe a Semantic WEb Technology …

Science-Based Organic Farming: A Resource For Educators, Charles A. Francis, Mindi Schneider, Brad Kindler

Publications from the Center for Applied Rural Innovation (CARI)

Organic farming is an important and growing part of the United States food system. The organic sector has grown by at least 20% per year for the past two decades, and currently shows no indication of slowing in this growth. There is increasing consumer concern about where and how food is produced, and people want to be assured access to safe and healthy food products. Interest and concern about food security, and discussion about the merits of a local food system as compared to the vulnerable globalized marketplace are also becoming increasingly important. In Nebraska we have only limited local …

Semantic Web Technology Evaluation Ontology (Sweto): A Test Bed For Evaluating Tools And Benchmarking Applications, Boanerges Aleman-Meza, Amit P. Sheth, I. Budak Arpinar, Chris Halaschek

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Slides: Nepa And Adaptive Management, Denise A. Dragoo

Best Management Practices and Adaptive Management in Oil and Gas Development (May 12-13)

Presenter: Denise A. Dragoo, Partner, Snell & Wilmer L.L.P., Salt Lake City, UT

22 slides

Slides: Lessons Learned From The Development And Implementation Of An Adaptive Management Plan At Three Hydropower Plants In Northeastern Washington State, Bob Dach

Best Management Practices and Adaptive Management in Oil and Gas Development (May 12-13)

Presenter: Bob Dach, Federal Activities Specialist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Mountain-Prairie Region, Lakewood, CO

11 slides

Slides: Lessons From The Pinedale Anticline Adaptive Management Process, Peter Aengst

Best Management Practices and Adaptive Management in Oil and Gas Development (May 12-13)

Presenter: Peter Aengst, Regional Associate, The Wilderness Society, Northern Rockies Office

24 slides

Slides: Adaptive Management, Tim Salt

Best Management Practices and Adaptive Management in Oil and Gas Development (May 12-13)

Presenter: Tim Salt, Western Regional Staff Assistant, U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM)

19 slides

Slides: Industry's View Of 'Lessons Learned' From Pinedale Anticline Eis Adaptive Management, Robin Smith

Best Management Practices and Adaptive Management in Oil and Gas Development (May 12-13)

Presenter: Robin Smith, Mountaintop Consulting, LLC

19 slides

Slides: Pinedale Anticline Project Area: The Adaptive Management Process, Prill Mecham

Best Management Practices and Adaptive Management in Oil and Gas Development (May 12-13)

Presenter: Prill Mecham, Pinedale BLM Field Manager

35 slides

Slides: Adaptive Management: Pros, Cons, And Lessons Learned, Pete Morton

Best Management Practices and Adaptive Management in Oil and Gas Development (May 12-13)

Presenter: Pete Morton, Ph.D., The Wilderness Society

21 slides

Agenda: Best Management Practices And Adaptive Management In Oil And Gas Development, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Best Management Practices and Adaptive Management in Oil and Gas Development (May 12-13)

Agenda includes summaries of speakers' presentations

Workshop held May 12-13, 2004 at the University of Colorado School of Law and sponsored by the Natural Resources Law Center with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, BP America and Calpine Corporation

Government agencies, industry and others are beginning to apply the concepts of best management practices and adaptive management to oil and gas development. This free workshop will examine what is going on in the Rocky Mountain Region with these innovative management approaches. This timely workshop will be kicked off with a presentation on the Western Governors' Association Coalbed Methane …

Slides: Technologies To Reduce Methane Emissions From Natural Gas Production Activities, Roger Fernandez

Best Management Practices and Adaptive Management in Oil and Gas Development (May 12-13)

Presenter: Roger Fernandez, EPA Gas STAR Program

31 slides

Slides: Bpi Best Practices Initiative: A Collaborative Approach To Leadership For Improving Management Practices On The Working Landscape, Peter Zimmerman

Best Management Practices and Adaptive Management in Oil and Gas Development (May 12-13)

Presenter: Peter Zimmerman, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society

19 slides

Slides: Adaptive Management And Best Management Practices On The Southern Ute Indian Reservation, Bob Zahradnik

Best Management Practices and Adaptive Management in Oil and Gas Development (May 12-13)

Presenter: Bob Zahradnik, Red Willow Production Company

38 slides

Casting Health Messages In Terms Of Responsibility For Dietary Change: Increasing Fruit And Vegetable Consumption, Pamela Williams-Piehota, Ashley R. Cox, Stephanie A. Navarro Silvera, Linda Z. Mowad, Sharon Garcia, Nicole A. Katulak, Peter Salovey

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Objective

To compare the effectiveness of messages emphasizing the importance of either personal or social responsibility for dietary behavior change in increasing fruit and vegetable intake.

Design/Setting

Randomly assigned individually or socially oriented messages were delivered at baseline, 1 week, and 2 and 3 months later. Telephone surveys were conducted at baseline and 1 and 4 months later.

Participants

528 callers to a cancer information hotline who were not meeting the “5 A Day” dietary recommendation.

Interventions

A brief telephone-delivered message and 3 mailings of pamphlets and promotional items encouraging fruit and vegetable intake that emphasized either personal or social …

Free-Stall Dimensions: Effects On Preference And Stall Usage, Cassandra B. Tucker, Daniel M. Weary, David Fraser

Housing and Confinement of Farm Animals Collection

In 2 experiments, free-stall dimensions were examined to determine how they affected stall preference, usage, cleanliness, and milk production in Holstein dairy cattle. In experiment 1, stall width (112 or 132 cm) and stall length (229 and 274 cm from curb to wall) were compared in a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of stall treatments using 15 individually housed, non-lactating animals. Cows showed no clear preference for stall size as measured by lying time. When animals had no choice between stalls, average lying time was higher in the wide stalls than in the narrow stalls (10.8 vs. 9.6 ± 0.3 …

Indexing Genomic Databases, Gina Cooper, Michael L. Raymer, Travis E. Doom, Dan E. Krane, Natsuhiko Futamura

Kno.e.sis Publications

Current biological sequence comparison tools utilize full database searches to find approximate matches between a database and a query. A new approach to sequence comparisons can be performed by indexing the database using a novel indexing scheme. An indexed scheme can immediately eliminate highly mismatched sequences thereby improving performance and accuracy. iBlast is proposed as an indexed version of BLAST. In its initial implementation, iBlast uses a sequence-based index to catalog genomic databases in an NCR Teradata RDBMS. Several types of indexes and querying methods are explored to determine the most efficient solution utilizing the parallel nature of the Teradata …

Sempl: A Semantic Portal, Matthew Perry, Eric Stiles

Kno.e.sis Publications

Semantic Web technology is intended for the retrieval, collection, and analysis of meaningful data with significant automation afforded by machine understandability of data [1]. As one illustration of semantic web technology in action, we present SEMPL, a semantic web portal for the Large Scale Distributed Information Systems lab (LSDIS) at the University of Georgia. SEMPL, which is powered by a state of the art commercial system, Semagix Freedom [7], uses an ontology-driven approach to provide semantic browsing, linking, and contextual querying of content within the portal. By using the ontology based information integration technique, SEMPL can specify the context of …

Meteor-S Web Service Annotation Framework, Abhijit A. Patil, Swapna A. Oundhakar, Amit P. Sheth, Kunal Verma

Kno.e.sis Publications

The World Wide Web is emerging not only as an infrastructure for data, but also for a broader variety of resources that are increasingly being made available as Web services. Relevant current standards like UDDI, WSDL, and SOAP are in their fledgling years and form the basis of making Web services a workable and broadly adopted technology. However, realizing the fuller scope of the promise of Web services and associated service oriented architecture will requite further technological advances in the areas of service interoperation, service discovery, service composition, and process orchestration. Semantics, especially as supported by the use of ontologies, …

Draft Aquaculure Plan For Exmouth Gulf, Department Of Fisheries

Fisheries management papers

The Plan’s objective is to provide a sound strategy for developing future aquaculture activities in Exmouth Gulf, while at the same time conserving the unique environment of Exmouth Gulf for present and future generations, and minimising conflict with existing and future users of Exmouth Gulf.

Reflections On Animal Selves, Marc Bekoff, Paul W. Sherman

Sentience Collection

Is self-cognizance a uniquely human attribute, or do other animals also have a sense of self? Although there is considerable interest in this question, answers remain elusive. Progress has been stymied by misunderstandings in terminology, a focus on a narrow range of species, and controversies over key concepts, experimental paradigms and interpretations of data. Here, we propose a new conceptual and terminological framework, emphasizing that degrees of self-cognizance differ among animals because of the cognitive demands that their species-specific social structures and life-history characteristics have placed upon them over evolutionary time. We suggest that the self-cognizance of an organism falls …

Qtc Is Associated With Obesity And Physical Activity Level For African American Females, C. Jayne Brahler

Health and Sport Science Faculty Publications

Long QT syndrome (LQTS) is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular or ischemic disease mortality. Obesity as a cause for acquired LQTS in otherwise healthy individuals is rapidly gaining the attention of the scientific community. African American people have a higher incidence of obesity compared to Caucasians, yet race-specific information is not available for their prevalence of LQTS. Chronic physical activity can help reduce the incidence of obesity, yet little is known about the effects of chronic physical activity on acquired LQTS. Subjects in this study were a volunteer sample of African American mothers (21-53 yr, n = 44) and …

Nativeness, Invasiveness And Nation In Australian Plants, Lesley M. Head, Pat Muir

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

The conceptualization of alien invasive species conflates two axes of variability that have become unhelpfully blurred. The nativeness/alienness axis refers to the presumed belonging of a species in ecological or social space. Invasiveness refers to the behavior of the species in question, particularly in relation to other species. The overlay of nation introduces further variability. Teasing these axes apart is important for more effective environmental management. We examine these concepts using two influential forms of ecological knowledge: the biogeographical and ecological literature and the vernacular experiences of suburban backyarders. Three case studes, the invasive native Pittosporum undulatum and two invasive …

Comparison Of Solvent Regimes For The Extraction Of Photosynthetic Pigments From Leaves Of Higher Plants, J. L. Dunn, J. D. Turnbull, Sharon A. Robinson

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

The relative efficiency of methanol- and acetone-based solvents for the extraction of pigments from photosynthetic tissues of plant was compared, together with the advantages of multiple versus single extractions. The two commonly employed triple acetone extractions (100:80:80% and 85:100:100%) performed comparably for most pigments and for all plant species tested. Single extractions with either 96% methanol or 85% acetone failed to extract the more hydrophobic pigments, especially ?-carotene. We conclude that multiple extractions that combine pure and aqueous (80–85%) acetone are preferable for extraction of the full range of pigments. These results suggest that previous studies that have utilised aqueous …

Quality Of Service For Workflows And Web Service Processes, Jorge Cardoso, Amit P. Sheth, John A. Miller, Jonathan Arnold, Krzysztof J. Kochut

Kno.e.sis Publications

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) have been used to support various types of business processes for more than a decade now. In workflows or Web processes for e-commerce and Web service applications, suppliers and customers define a binding agreement or contract between the two parties, specifying quality of service (QoS) items such as products or services to be delivered, deadlines, quality of products, and cost of services. The management of QoS metrics directly impacts the success of organizations participating in e-commerce. Therefore, when services or products are created or managed using workflows or Web processes, the underlying workflow engine must accept …

Ten Suggestions To Strengthen The Science Of Ecology, Gary E. Belovsky, Daniel B. Botkin, Todd A. Crowl, Kenneth W. Cummins, Jerry F. Franklin, Malcolm L. Hunter, Anthony Joern, David B. Lindenmayer, James A. Macmahon, Chris R. Margules, J. Michael Scott

Papers in Ecology

There are few well-documented, general ecological principles that can be applied to pressing environmental issues. When they discuss them at all, ecologists often disagree about the relative importance of different aspects of the science’s original and still important issues. It may be that the sum of ecological science is not open to universal statements because of the wide range of organizational, spatial, and temporal phenomena, as well as the sheer number of possible interactions.We believe, however, that the search for general principles has been inadequate to establish the extent to which generalities are possible.We suggest that ecologists may need to …

National Inquiry On Bushfire Mitigation And Management, S. Ellis, P. Kanowski, R. J. Whelan

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

Bushfires are an inherent part of the Australian environment. We cannot prevent them, but we can minimise the risks they pose to life, property and infrastructure, production systems, and the environment. Australia has a large and very capable force of volunteer and career firefighters, advanced firefighting technologies, and significant firefighting resources. But the geographical scale of our country, the large and expanding rural–urban interface, and the potential for rapid bushfire development and spread under adverse weather conditions mean that individual Australians cannot rely solely on fire agencies to protect their lives and property from bushfires. Bushfires have a fundamental and …

Trace Gas Emissions From Biomass Burning Inferred From Aerosol Optical Depth, Clare Paton-Walsh, N. B. Jones, Stephen R. Wilson, A. Meier, N. Deutscher, D. W. Griffith, R. Mitchell, S. Campbell

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

We have observed strong correlations between simultaneous and co-located measurements of aerosol optical depth and column amounts of carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde and ammonia in bushfire smoke plumes over SE Australia during the Austral summers of 2001/2002 and 2002/2003. We show how satellite-derived aerosol optical depth maps may be used in conjunction with these correlations to determine the total amounts of these gases present in a fire-affected region. This provides the basis of a method for estimating total emissions of trace gases from biomass burning episodes using visible radiances measured by satellite.