scholarly journals Feeding and lighting practices on small-scale extensive pastured poultry commercial farms in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 785-788
Author(s):  
Maurice Pitesky ◽  
Alison Thorngren ◽  
Deb Niemeier
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aeriel D Belk ◽  
Toni Duarte ◽  
Casey Quinn ◽  
David A. Coil ◽  
Keith E. Belk ◽  
...  

Abstract Background. The United States’ large-scale poultry meat industry is energy and water intensive, and opportunities may exist to improve sustainability during the broiler chilling process. After harvest, the internal temperature of the chicken is rapidly cooled to inhibit bacterial growth that would otherwise compromise the safety of the product. This step is accomplished most commonly by water immersion chilling in the United States, while air chilling methods dominate other global markets. A comprehensive understanding of the differences between these chilling methods is lacking. Therefore, we assessed the meat quality, shelf-life, microbial ecology, and technoeconomic impacts of chilling methods on chicken broilers in a university meat laboratory setting. Results. We discovered that air-chilling (AC) methods resulted in superior chicken odor and shelf-life, especially prior to 14 days of dark storage. Moreover, we demonstrated that AC resulted in a more diverse microbiome that we hypothesize may delay the dominance of the spoilage organism Pseudomonas. Finally, a technoeconomic analysis highlighted potential economic advantages to AC when compared to water-chilling (WC) in facility locations where water costs are a more significant factor than energy costs. Conclusions. In this pilot study, AC chilling methods resulted in a superior product compared to WC methods and may have economic advantages in regions of the U.S. where water is expensive. As a next step, a similar experiment should be done in an industrial setting to confirm these results generated in a small-scale university lab facility.


Author(s):  
Cheon-Pyo Lee ◽  
Merrill Warkentin

The last decade has witnessed the rapid growth of mobile communication devices and wireless technologies across the globe. The convergence of mobile devices and wireless technologies has not only changed the way many activities are conducted, but has also provided a foundation for a new type of technology-aided commerce called mobile commerce (m-commerce). As e-commerce’s next evolutionary stage, m-commerce opens up new business opportunities in business-to-consumer (B2C) markets in addition to extending current operations in e-commerce and traditional brick-and-mortar businesses (Varshney & Vetter, 2002). The significant power of m-commerce is primarily a result of the anytime-anywhere connectivity of wireless devices, which provides unique experiences and services (Figge, 2004; Zwass, 2003). One of the most promising and value-added m-commerce services is mobile banking (Lee, McGoldrick, Keeling, & Doherty, 2003; Mallat, Rossi, & Tuunainen, 2004). Mobile banking is the newest electronic delivery channel to be offered by banks in which technology has become an increasingly vital element, and it provides convenience and enhanced value to both banks and customers. With its clear benefits, mobile banking is now gaining rapid popularity in European and Asian countries with the significant market penetration of mobile handsets and the optimally designed marketing tactics of service providers (Suoranta & Mattila, 2004). However, mobile banking is still marginally adopted across the globe, and especially in the U.S., the growth appears much slower than anticipated (Mallat et al., 2004). In the United States, there are only a small number of banks that have actually introduced mobile banking services, and most other mobile banking efforts are in small-scale trials (Charny, 2001). Therefore, the technology which will be employed in the United States market has been of interest not only to financial institutions, but also to mobile technology developers and future users.


2019 ◽  
Vol 112 (4) ◽  
pp. 1509-1525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariela I Haber ◽  
Nathalie A Steinhauer ◽  
Dennis vanEngelsdorp

Abstract The parasitic mite Varroa destructor (Acari: Varroidae) is a major cause of overwintering honey bee (Apis mellifera) colony losses in the United States, suggesting that beekeepers must control Varroa populations to maintain viable colonies. Beekeepers have access to several chemical varroacides and nonchemical practices to control Varroa populations. However, no studies have examined large-scale patterns in Varroa control methods in the United States. Here we used responses from 4 yr of annual surveys of beekeepers representing all regions and operation sizes across the United States to investigate use of Varroa control methods and winter colony losses associated with use of different methods. We focused on seven varroacide products (amitraz, coumaphos, fluvalinate, hop oil, oxalic acid, formic acid, and thymol) and six nonchemical practices (drone brood removal, small-cell comb, screened bottom boards, powdered sugar, mite-resistant bees, and splitting colonies) suggested to aid in Varroa control. We found that nearly all large-scale beekeepers used at least one varroacide, whereas small-scale beekeepers were more likely to use only nonchemical practices or not use any Varroa control. Use of varroacides was consistently associated with the lowest winter losses, with amitraz being associated with lower losses than any other varroacide product. Among nonchemical practices, splitting colonies was associated with the lowest winter losses, although losses associated with sole use of nonchemical practices were high overall. Our results suggest potential control methods that are effective or preferred by beekeepers and should therefore inform experiments that directly test the efficacy of different control methods. This will allow beekeepers to incorporate Varroa control methods into management plans that improve the overwintering success of their colonies.


Author(s):  
Conor Tobin

In December 1979, Soviet troops entered the small, poor, landlocked, Islamic nation of Afghanistan, assassinated the communist president, Hafizullah Amin, and installed a more compliant Afghan leader. For almost ten years, Soviet troops remained entrenched in Afghanistan before finally withdrawing in February 1989. During this period, the United States undertook a covert program to assist the anti-communist Afghan insurgents—the mujahideen—to resist the Soviet occupation. Beginning with President Jimmy Carter’s small-scale authorization in July 1979, the secret war became the largest in history under President Ronald Reagan, running up to $700 million per year. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) acted as the war’s quartermaster, arranging supplies of weapons for the mujahideen, which were funneled through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), in coordination with Saudi Arabia, China, Egypt, and others. No Americans were directly involved in the fighting, and the overall cost to the American taxpayer was in the region of $2 billion. The Afghan cost was much higher. Over a million Afghans were killed, a further two million wounded, and over six million refugees fled to neighboring Pakistan and Iran. For the Soviet Union, the ten-year war constituted its largest military action in the postwar era, and the long and protracted nature of the conflict and the failure of the Red Army to subdue the Afghans is partially responsible for the internal turmoil that contributed to the eventual breakup of the Soviet empire at the end of the 1980s. The defeat of the Soviet 40th Army in Afghanistan proved to be the final major superpower battle of the Cold War, but it also marked the beginning of a new era. The devastation and radicalization of Afghan society resulted in the subsequent decades of continued conflict and warfare and the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism that has shaped the post-Cold War world.


1995 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dietrich Neumann

Prismatic glass, which was a highly successful building material in the United States between the turn of the century and the 1920s, promised to refract daylight from the façades deep into a building and thus would help to save energy, create healthier working environments, and contribute to the development of a new modern architecture. The Luxfer Prism Companies were the inventors and most prominent producers of this material. The article examines selected examples of the firms' commissions in the U. S. and abroad to show the influence that both a product's real or assumed qualities and the promoting skills of its producers could have on the formal and structural decisions of architects. These projects present the architect less as the dominating force in the design process than as a participant in a complex dialogue among different partners. Luxfer contributed to the contemporary architectural debate by promoting the small-scale pattern of its glass installations as a competing vision of architectural modernity to that of the emerging aesthetic of steel and glass façades. In the early 1930s prismatic glass finally lost the competition with electrical lighting and new structural daylighting devices such as hollow glass blocks.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Rintsch ◽  
Jessica L. McCarty

<p>Crop residue and rangeland burning is a common practice in the United States but verified ground-based estimates for the frequency of these fires is sparse. We present a comparison between known fire locations collected during the summer 2019 NOAA/NASA FIREX-AQ field campaign with several satellite-based active fire detections to estimate the occurrence of small-scale fires in agroecosystems. Many emissions inventories at the state-, country-, and global-level are driven by active fire detections and not burned area estimates for small fires in agroecosystems. The study area is focused on the southern Great Plains and Mississippi Delta of the United States. We combined fire occurrence data from 375 m Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (VIIRS), 1 km Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and 2 km Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) active fires with 30 m land use data from U.S. Department of Agriculture Cropland Data Layer (CDL). The detections were compared to fires and land use validated in the field during the NOAA/NASA FIREX-AQ mission. GOES detected these fires at a higher frequency than MODIS or VIIRS. For example, MODIS detected 873 active fires and VIIRS detected 2,859, while GOES detected 13,634 active fires. Additionally, a large amount of the fires documented in the field, approximately 41%, were not detected by any satellite instrument used in the study. If GOES detections are excluded, approximately 5% of the documented fires were detected. This suggests that a large amount of cropland and rangeland burning are not detected by current active fire products from polar orbiting satellites like MODIS and VIIRS, with implications for regional air pollution monitoring, emissions inventories, and climate impacts of open burning.  </p>


1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Nackenoff

During the past fifteen years, several economists, historians and sociologists have propounded a sectoral model of economic growth and change in the United States. According to this analysis, as large-scale, monopolistic enterprises began to emerge in the late nineteenth century, different investment considerations and labour market requirements were also evolving. A dual economy was beginning to be formed. The large-scale capital sector, and the small-scale capital sector each had its own economic environment of conduct. Each sector tended, too, to develop its own corresponding labour market, with monopoly sector or ‘core’ firms holding out certain economic advantages for employees: money, job security, benefits, and opportunities for advancement within the firm. Thus, the work experience in these two sectors increasingly diverged. Even if the large-scale capital sector did offer economic advantages, growth tended to be capital-intensive, and the growth of employment in this sector slowed down, and then stopped by the end of the Second World War. Employment shifted to trades and services, with lower wage rates, and, of course, to the public sector, which currently employs nearly a third of the American workforce.


1973 ◽  
Vol 30 (12) ◽  
pp. 2386-2392
Author(s):  
W. F. Royce

The salmon fishery of the United States illustrates the major principles and problems of fishery management: regulation of the fishery, maintenance of the environment, and artificial augmentation of the stocks. It also includes controls both in fresh water and on the high seas. The industry has experienced the age-old conflicts between large- and small-scale fisheries, and administrators have had to wrestle with the problem of allocating the catch among various contenders. This problem has been confused with that of conservation. Prohibition of salmon traps, restrictions on size and mode of operation of purse seines, and prohibition of monofilament gillnets are examples of the kinds of compromises made between allocation and conservation.Dams, pollution, and other modifications of the freshwater environment have endangered salmon stocks. An early response was to raise salmon artificially and release them. For many years this technique was unsuccessful, and when it was evaluated most hatcheries were closed. In recent years the preservation of the genetic identity of the stock and improved diets and schedules of release have resulted in greater success of hatcheries. Spawning channels show promise of additional success. Another practice of value has been development of devices to pass fish over dams, both upstream and down.Control of fishing to provide adequate spawning has concentrated on manipulation of individual population units, an enormously complicated task since the number of these in United States streams is in the order of 10,000. Of these about 100 major ones are under separate control. Regulations depend on forecasts, since fishing takes place before the salmon reach spawning grounds. Forecasts have improved greatly in recent years, although much remains to be done.Among problems on which no great progress has been made are: extent and consequences of genetic change produced by selective fishing; causes of cycles, and alterations in these; effects of changing environment, especially subtle ones of temperature, dissolved oxygen, and pollution; control of recruitment, including release of hardy young. Difficult economic problems include: the tendency for regulations to favor inefficient operators; high costs of research and regulation, borne not by users but by public funds.Administrative achievements include: a high degree of environmental protection; remarkably parallel regulations in the three States principally involved, Alaska, Washington, and Oregon; successful joint regulation of international fisheries in cooperation with Canada and Japan.Problems which will continue to exist and increase in difficulty include protection of the environment of the salmon, rivalries between many diverse interest groups, and improvement in culture operations. The major step of restricting entry into the commercial salmon fishery is being contemplated in several locations.


1956 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. S. Phillips

Immature nutfall, caused by the Coreid, Amblypelta cocophaga China, was prevalent in the coconut plantations of the British Solomon Islands before the late war, and was increasing in extent and intensity. Good crops were borne by palms inhabited by colonies of Oecophylla smaragdina (F.), as this ant destroyed Amblypelta; and the same was true, to a lesser extent, of another ant, Anoplolepis longipes (Jerd.). The smaller species, Pheidole megacephala (F.) and Iridomyrmex myrmecodiae Emery, did not destroy Amblypelta and consequently palms bearing these species suffered from nutfall. These non-beneficial ants were extending their areas of occupation and becoming dominant in the plantations of the Protectorate.Attempts to control Amblypelta by introducing parasites from Indonesia, Queensland and Fiji have all proved ineffective, and so also have past efforts to change the balance of ant populations in the plantations in favour of the beneficial species.After the war, it was noticed that certain plantations in Guadalcanal, which had suffered severely from nutfall for several years, were recovering and bearing well. In 1948, it was found that this recovery was correlated with changes in the ant populations, Oecophylla having occupied much of the area, displacing Pheidole, which had previously been dominant. The investigators concluded that this was due to ecological changes in the. plantation undergrowth, resulting from neglect of cleaning and brushing during the war.The present paper deals with a re-examination of the position in 1952–53. The author found a further improvement in the yield and an extension of the area of recovery on the plantation in question; Pheidole had completely disappeared, but in many parts Oecophylla had been driven back by Anoplolepis, which had now become the dominant ant. The only nutfall areas that remained here were occupied by Iridomyrmex.A fuller examination of these and other plantations did not support the theory that nutfall recovery was due to ecological changes in the undergrowth, for these had occurred everywhere in the Protectorate during the war, yet on most other plantations yields had decreased, and Pheidole had greatly extended its pre-war area of occupation. The areas in which recovery had occurred were adjacent to wartime military installations that had been subject to regular weekly anti-malarial spraying from the air, and it is suggested that this had affected Amblypelta, both directly, and indirectly by having differentially affected the populations of Pheidole and Oecophylla. It seemed more likely that it had been caused by the long-sustained spraying programme carried out by the United States forces during and after the war.Small-scale tests carried out with insecticidal sprays confirmed this theory: the harmful species, Pheidole and Iridomyrmex, were found to be very severely affected, while the beneficial ones, Oecophylla and Anoplolepis, suffered far less. In plots with mixed ant populations it was found possible to increase temporarily the number of palms occupied by beneficial species by spraying the palm-bases with insecticide. With the equipment available it was not possible to spray the boles and crowns: consequently, these trees were often reoccupied later by the harmful species Iridomyrmex from colonies in the crowns.The sprays were also found to be fatal to Coreid bugs, both on contact and for a considerable residual period.


2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Bellman ◽  
Seth E. Spielman ◽  
Rachel S. Franklin

While population growth has been consistently tied to decreasing racial segregation at the metropolitan level in the United States, little work has been done to relate small-scale changes in population size to integration. We address this question through a novel technique that tracks population changes by race and ethnicity for comparable geographies in both 2000 and 2010. Using the Theil index, we analyze the fifty most populous metropolitan statistical areas in 2010 for changes in multigroup segregation. We classify local areas by their net population change between 2000 and 2010 using a unique unit of analysis based on aggregating census blocks. We find strong evidence that growing parts of rapidly growing metropolitan areas of the United States are crucial to understanding regional differences in segregation that have emerged in past decades. Multigroup segregation declined the most in growing parts of growing metropolitan areas. Comparatively, growing parts of shrinking or stagnant metropolitan areas were less diverse and had smaller declines in segregation. We also find that local areas with shrinking populations had disproportionately high minority representation in 2000 before population loss took place. We conclude that the regional context of population growth or decline has important consequences for the residential mixing of racial groups.


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