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The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the financial outcomes from forage production and RI-PRF insurance interval for two locations in Nebraska. Both locations provide historical forage production and precipitation data, allowing the authors to examine the relation between RI-PRF net income and forage production.

The authors focus on evaluating the producer net income and risk (measured as variance of net income) by examining the relation between farm precipitation and production and comparing multiple insurance intervals to no insurance. Each insurance interval will likely have a different relation (basis risk) between observed production and return from insurance and, therefore, a different impact on the variance of net incomes. The impact on variance of net incomes identifies the risk-reducing aspects of RI-PRF insurance intervals. The authors then rank each scenario into four mutually exclusive zones that describe the risk-reducing effectiveness and whether the subsidy is working correctly.

The authors found both risk increasing and decreasing insurance intervals exist at both locations. One insurance scenario (low in BBR) provided the highest net income while increasing risk, suggesting a profit maximizing opportunity. RI-PRF reduces net income risk with intervals insuring during high expected precipitation (growing season); while net income risk increases with intervals insuring low expected precipitation (non-growing season, winter months). The farmer would want to insure during the high expected precipitation months, which coincides with the growing season, since RI-PRF lowers the net income risk. For the government, removing net income risk increasing intervals improves the allocation of government resources.

In this paper, the authors modeled the relation between RI-PRF interval selection using the historical forage production data at two locations in Nebraska. The use of historical forage production data allowed the authors to precisely identify the risk-reducing effectiveness of RI-PRF interval selection.

At the beginning of the production year producers face a complex risk management decision environment given by risks specific to their operation, multiple crop insurance contracts and hedging opportunities. The purpose of this paper is to provide a producer-level framework for risk management decision making, focusing on the interaction between crop insurance and hedging.

The authors develop a Monte Carlo simulation model that generates a producer’s net income (NI) distribution that incorporates historical producer risk, price-yield correlation via a copula, price risk, and production costs. The authors evaluate the NI distribution through a modified Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) decision framework. The authors use the modified MPT decision framework to explore tradeoffs between expected NI and farm ruin (defined as 1 or 5 percent expected shortfall) from different crop insurance contracts and pre-harvest hedging options.

Only revenue protection and the highest two levels of coverage level exist on the efficient frontier. The level of hedging on the efficient frontier ranges from 0 to 55 percent of Actual Production History. The authors find that increasing coverage level 5 percent (from 80 to 85 percent) negatively impacts the optimal hedging amount by 26 percentage points (from 35 to 9 percent).

The model provides the precise identification of financial benefits from different risk management strategies by incorporating producer-level historical yield data, using a copula to capture yield-price dependency structure and producer production cost in generating the NI distribution. This model can be applied to any producer’s characteristics and data.

This paper encourages teachers and scholars of English Language Arts to engage deliberately with literary ambiguity.

Through close attention to ambiguous moments in commonly taught texts, the essay argues that explicit attention to ambiguity can support four enduring goals in the field: fostering social justice, developing students’ personal growth, cultivating dispositions and skills for democracy and engendering disciplinary literacy skills.

The readings suggest the following: first, wrestling with ambiguities in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird may foster critical orientations needed in the fight for social justice; second, ambiguities in Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese may support students’ personal development; third, questions generated by Walter Dean Myers’ Monster invite readers to practice skills needed for democracy; finally, exploring divergent interpretations of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak may develop students’ disciplinary literacy skills.

In an era marked by standardization and accountability, it may be difficult for teachers and scholars to linger with literary ambiguity. By underscoring the instrumental potential of literary ambiguity, the essay illustrates why and how teachers might reject this status quo and embrace the indeterminacy of literary ambiguity.

In this space I complement an article published earlier in Social Studies Research and Practice 8(1), 2012 by providing a wise practice lesson and its ancillary materials. As sophisticated technologies continue to immerse modern students in potent visual data, teachers should help students develop equally potent visual literacy skills. Students who are more visually literate are better prepared to evaluate the visual messages surrounding them and act, not in rote-response visual stimuli, but rather according to their well-informed conscience. The lesson shared here demonstrates the educative potential of employing visual documents, historical photographs, in an inquiry-based approach to social studies instruction. Together, the coupled articles present a pragmatic example of academic research informing classroom practice in meaningful ways to promote students’ civic competence.

Organizations nowadays require services supplied by shared service centers (SSCs) to achieve organizational responsiveness. Previous contributions focused on distinct qualitative-explorative factors for explaining successful SSC implementation but failed to consider the interdependencies and combined effects between factors.

Drawing on complexity and configuration theories, this research employed a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). A unique dataset of 121 international firms was obtained to examine the combined effects of five conditions (factors), namely, modularization, standardization, decision-rights, portfolio and customer-orientation .

The findings show that multiple configurations of conditions (or solutions) can lead to successful SSC implementation. The fsQCA results indicated that portfolio and standardization are perceived as core conditions in all configurations. Firms that focus on portfolio and continuous evaluation of customer-orientation are more likely to be successful. Furthermore, in some configurations, the size of the firm size matters.

The cross-sectional survey data might be a potential limitation. In future research, a more extensive survey can be collected to help generalize the results.

Success factors are dependent on the SSC configuration. Standardization, portfolio management and regular evaluations of changing customer services by executive management are needed.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no academic study that examines SSC implementation based on salient conditions using a configurational thinking approach. As such, the findings of the research allow us to better understand the causal complexity and interdependencies between essential SSC factors.

Two years ago David Walters carried out his well publicised “Delphi” study which attempted to establish cause and effect relationships between changes in retailing and developments in physical distribution (RDM, September/October 1973). This article, proceeding logically from the study, looks into the future development of physical distribution in terms of changes in the grocery retailing environment. For the High Street supermarket, more efficient forecasting and inventory control programmes are already available which should help offset the supermarket's lack of storage space and need to be serviced by small vehicles. Supermarkets in edge‐of‐town locations have fewer problems; storage space is generous and volume is such that orders can be delivered in unit loads on pallets or containers.

The action taken by the Council of the British Medical Association in promoting a Bill to reconstitute the Local Government Board will, it is to be hoped, receive the strong support of public authorities and of all who are in any way interested in the efficient administration of the laws which, directly or indirectly, have a bearing on the health and general well‐being of the people. In the memorandum which precedes the draft of the Bill in question it is pointed out that the present “Board” is not, and probably never was, intended to be a working body for the despatch of business, that it is believed never to have met that the work of this department of State is growing in variety and importance, and that such work can only be satisfactorily transacted with the aid of persons possessing high professional qualifications, who, instead of being, as at present, merely the servants of the “Board” tendering advice only on invitation, would be able to initiate action in any direction deemed desirable. The British Medical Association have approached the matter from a medical point of view—as might naturally have been expected—and this course of action makes a somewhat weak plank in the platform of the reformers. The fourth clause of the draft of the Bill proposes that there should be four “additional” members of the Board, and that, of such additional members, one should be a barrister or solicitor, one a qualified medical officer of health, one a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and one a person experienced in the administration of the Poor‐law Acts. The work of the Local Government Board, however, is not confined to dealing with medical, engineering, and Poor‐law questions, and the presence of one or more fully‐qualified scientific experts would be absolutely necessary to secure the efficient administration of the food laws and the proper and adequate consideration of matters relating to water supply and sewage disposal. The popular notion still exists that the “doctor” is a universal scientific genius, and that, as the possessor of scientific knowledge and acumen, the next best article is the proprietor of the shop in the window of which are exhibited some three or four bottles of brilliantly‐coloured liquids inscribed with mysterious symbols. The influence of these popular ideas is to be seen in the tendency often exhibited by public authorities and even occasionally by the legislature and by Government departments to expect and call upon medical men to perform duties which neither by training nor by experience they are qualified to undertake. Medical Officers of Health of standing, and medical men of intelligence and repute are the last persons to wish to arrogate to themselves the possession of universal knowledge and capacity, and it is unfair and ridiculous to thrust work upon them which can only be properly carried out by specialists. If the Local Government Board is to be reconstituted and made a thing of life—and in the public interest it is urgently necessary that this should be done—the new department should comprise experts of the first rank in all the branches of science from which the knowledge essential for efficient administration can be drawn.

THE Newcastle school, like most others, was established after the second world war to provide full‐time education in librarianship as an alternative to the part‐time system which until 1946 was the only one available to the majority of librarians. At first most of the students were returning servicemen whose library careers had been interrupted by the war and they were followed by students direct from libraries, universities and schools. From a handful of students and one full‐time member of staff in the first year the school has grown steadily until there were 53 students and five staff during the session 1962–3 which was the last course held for the Registration Examination.

This monograph considers recent developments in management techniques and proposes their use in physical distribution system planning. The recent developments in physical distribution management are reviewed and the author considers how such techniques as missions analysis and systems thinking may be combined into a useful planning model with which the problems of physical distribution system design may be analysed and solved. The monograph is not specific in that it does not offer management “ten easy steps to system design”. It takes a broad view of the problems involved and is concerned with an approach to system planning rather than specific problem solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the rates of HIV risk-taking behavior and sexual violence among clients with co-occurring addiction and intimate partner violence (IPV). The current study also aims to determine whether HIV risk-taking behaviors (e.g. trading sex for money or drugs, having unprotected sex with multiple partners) differ among substance using IPV offenders with and without a history of sexual aggression.

Secondary analyses were conducted from Easton et al.’s (2017) randomized controlled trial of substance use domestic violence treatment among substance using IPV offenders. Correlational analyses were conducted to assess the relationship between pre-treatment sexual aggression, HIV risk-taking behaviors, substance use and aggression. Analyses of covariance were conducted in order to determine differences in participants’ HIV risk-taking behaviors based on their history of sexual aggression while controlling for hours of contact with the female partners.

In a sample of 63 participants, males with higher rates of sexual aggression were more likely to engage in sexual risk-taking behaviors. This study encountered a correlation between pre-treatment risk-taking behavior and verbal and physical aggression, as well as a correlation between pre-treatment risk-taking behaviors and cocaine use. Results neither suggest a relationship between sexual aggression and alcohol use nor HIV risk-taking behaviors and alcohol use at pre-treatment.

The present study is limited by sample size and power.

This study is among the first of its kind to investigate HIV risk-taking behaviors among substance using offenders of IPV. This study provides support for the inclusion of treatment targeting HIV risk-taking behaviors among IPV offenders.