HETEROGENEITY IN THE HINTERLAND: A TYPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF OHIO EXURBAN AREAS

Located between suburban and rural regions, exurban areas are among the fastest growing regions in the U.S. To better understand exurban changes and their policy implications, we develop a typology of rural-urban places and use statistical methods to examine township patterns of exurban change in Ohio.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

A biomechanical analysis of the stand-up paddle board stroke: A comparative study

Background: Stand-up paddle boarding (SUP) is a rapidly growing global aquatic sport, with increasing popularity among participants within recreation, competition and rehabilitation. To date, few scientific studies have focused on SUP. Further, there is no research examining the biomechanics of the SUP paddle stroke. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether variations in kinematics existed among experienced and inexperienced SUP participants using three-dimensional motion analysis. This data could be of significance to participants, researchers, coaches and health practitioners to improve performance and inform injury minimization strategies. Methods: A cross-sectional observational design study was performed with seven experienced and 19 inexperienced paddlers whereby whole-body kinematic data were acquired using a six-camera Vicon motion capture system. Participants paddled on a SUP ergometer while three-dimensional range of motion (ROM) and peak joint angles were calculated for the shoulders, elbows, hips and trunk. Mann-Whitney U tests were conducted on the non-normally distributed data to evaluate differences between level of expertise. Results: Significant differences in joint kinematics were found between experienced and inexperienced participants, with inexperienced participants using greater overall shoulder ROM (78.9° ± 24.9° vs 56.6° ± 17.3°, p = 0.010) and less hip ROM than the experienced participants (50.0° ± 18.5° vs 66.4° ± 11.8°, p = 0.035). Experienced participants demonstrated increased shoulder motion at the end of the paddle stoke compared to the inexperienced participants (74.9° ± 16.3° vs 35.2° ± 28.5°, p = 0.001 minimum shoulder flexion) and more extension at the elbow (6.0° ± 9.2° minimum elbow flexion vs 24.8° ± 13.5°, p = 0.000) than the inexperienced participants. Discussion: The results of this study indicate several significant kinematic differences between the experienced and inexperienced SUP participants. These variations in technique were noted in the shoulder, elbow and hip and are evident in other aquatic paddling sports where injury rates are higher in these joints. These finding may be valuable for coaches, therapists and participants needing to maximize performance and minimize injury risk during participation in SUP.Full Tex

The interactional community: a structural network analysis of community action in three Midwestern towns

The research examines how the structure of individual and organizational interaction within a community influences community action. The analysis is based on data from three rural, Midwestern communities. Data from a survey of community residents, leadership and organizational network data, and profiles of local community action projects are used to examine the relationship between the structure of local interaction and community action. The findings support a structural approach to the interactional community and confirm that social capital (the structure and character of individual interaction) and social infrastructure (the structure of group-level interaction patterns) influence community action processes. The findings have a number of implications for future community research and community development practice, such as the inclusion of network theory and methods as a tool for development of place-based communities

Analysis of the Organization and Challenges of Contract Farming in Tanzania: A Case of Mtibwa Sugarcane Outgrower Scheme

Aims: To analyze the organization and challenges of contract farming in Tanzania. Study Design: Cross sectional. Place and Duration of the Study: Turiani division in Mvomero District. Data collection began in February 2013 and ended in March of the same year. Methodology: The paper utilizes the qualitative data to answer the research questions. Results: Sugarcane growers are contracted through their organizations. Five main challenges of contract farming in the study area were identified. They include delayed payment, lack of fairness in allocation of quotas, lack of transparency in determining the content of sucrose (rendement), lack of transparency in determining the weight of sugarcane and low price of sugarcane. Conclusion: Contract farming in the study area has the potential to overcome sugarcane marketing constraints. However, the challenges identified require an immediate attention

Explaining Residential Energy Consumption: A Focus on Location and Race Differences in Natural Gas Use

Researchers have long considered factors related to residential energy consumption. We contribute to this genre of work by exploring how residential location (rural-urban) and race are related to residential natural gas consumption. We also consider whether these relationships, if they exist, are functions of differences in housing characteristics, investment in energy efficiency, and weather conditions. Analyzing four waves of the Residential Energy Consumption Surveys, we find that natural gas consumption differs by residential location only to the extent that investment in energy efficiency and weather conditions are not taken into consideration. We also find race differences in natural gas consumption, with African-Americans consuming more per year than whites. African-Americans’ higher natural gas consumption persists even after the effects of housing characteristics, investment in energy efficiency, weather conditions, and other critical covariates of energy consumption are statistically held constant. More work, especially field research, is needed to understand why African-Americans consume more natural gas than other groups

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): Building Community Among Farmers and Non-Farmers

Conflict at the rural-urban interface may often be due to a lack of social connections or communication between farmers and non-farmers. Extension educators may be at a loss as to how to bring these two groups together. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), or a variation of CSA, may be one avenue for developing connections. Findings from a qualitative study of a Midwestern CSA reveal a number of ways CSA met the goals of participants while also building community among farmers and non-farmers. Extension personnel might promote CSA at the rural-urban interface to build community and support for local agriculture

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): Building Community Among Farmers and Non-Farmers

Conflict at the rural-urban interface may often be due to a lack of social connections or communication between farmers and non-farmers. Extension educators may be at a loss as to how to bring these two groups together. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), or a variation of CSA, may be one avenue for developing connections. Findings from a qualitative study of a Midwestern CSA reveal a number of ways CSA met the goals of participants while also building community among farmers and non-farmers. Extension personnel might promote CSA at the rural-urban interface to build community and support for local agriculture

The Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer (PIPER)

The Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer (PIPER) is a balloon-borne cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarimeter designed to search for evidence of inflation by measuring the large-angular scale CMB polarization signal. BICEP2 recently reported a detection of B-mode power corresponding to the tensor-to-scalar ratio r = 0.2 on ~2 degree scales. If the BICEP2 signal is caused by inflationary gravitational waves (IGWs), then there should be a corresponding increase in B-mode power on angular scales larger than 18 degrees. PIPER is currently the only suborbital instrument capable of fully testing and extending the BICEP2 results by measuring the B-mode power spectrum on angular scales $\theta$ = ~0.6 deg to 90 deg, covering both the reionization bump and recombination peak, with sensitivity to measure the tensor-to-scalar ratio down to r = 0.007, and four frequency bands to distinguish foregrounds. PIPER will accomplish this by mapping 85% of the sky in four frequency bands (200, 270, 350, 600 GHz) over a series of 8 conventional balloon flights from the northern and southern hemispheres. The instrument has background-limited sensitivity provided by fully cryogenic (1.5 K) optics focusing the sky signal onto four 32x40-pixel arrays of time-domain multiplexed Transition-Edge Sensor (TES) bolometers held at 140 mK. Polarization sensitivity and systematic control are provided by front-end Variable-delay Polarization Modulators (VPMs), which rapidly modulate only the polarized sky signal at 3 Hz and allow PIPER to instantaneously measure the full Stokes vector (I, Q, U, V) for each pointing. We describe the PIPER instrument and progress towards its first flight.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures. To be published in Proceedings of SPIE Volume 9153. Presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2014, conference 915