Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the rise in crossbred cow numbers in the US dairy herd. Methods used look at well managed herds to see if crossbreeding provides a management tool that producers are using to maintain profitability.

The authors estimate a Translog stochastic production frontier (SPF) for US dairy farms to examine the competitiveness of crossbred and non-crossbred dairy herds by system and region.

The bottom-line conclusion is that WM or highly efficient crossbred herds solidly compete on a financial basis with larger WM Western Holstein herds, the most technically efficient managed group, based on the SPF results in the authors’ study. The study finds that net return on assets for crossbred herds are not different from Western Holstein herds and that there is no significant difference in amount of milk per cow produced annually.

Because of a need to unmask the advantages of crossbreeding as a technology it was necessary to separate WM herds from poorly managed herds. That was done by frontier estimates that robustly ranked operation and corrected for endogeneity, tested for selectivity bias, and incorporated the NASS survey design.

For the first time, the 2010 Dairy Cost and Returns questionnaire version of the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (Dairy CAR) design allows researchers to expand survey observations to represent the vast majority of the US dairy farm population and to sort dairy farms into crossbred/non-crossbred herds.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the drivers of economic financial success of US cow-calf operations.

This research uses a system of equations (DuPont analysis) in conjunction with 2008 farm-level data from the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Resource Management Survey to evaluate the factors driving cow-calf profitability, namely net profit margins, asset turnover ratio, and asset-to-equity ratio.

The study finds that the main drivers of return on equity are region, number of harvested acres on the farm, diversification of the farm, operator off-farm work, spousal off-farm work, and adoption of technologies. Of these factors, those for which producers can make short-term adjustments include off-farm work decisions and adoption of technologies. Longer-term adjustments can be made for farm diversification.

To the authors’ knowledge, no existing research has used farm-level data across US production regions to examine the factors affecting returns to equity of US cow-calf operations. These research results may be used to identify strategies producers can use to improve their farm's economic viability, areas where extension services can assist farmers in making better financial decisions and economic factors that are likely to lead to structural changes in the beef industry.

The following is a complete list of World's Records as officially homologated by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale up to December 31, 1929

The purpose of this article is to give an overview of scholarly monographs on rock music from 1980 to the present. It aims to provide an overview to the literature for practical purposes of collection development as well as giving the reader insight into key issues and trends related to a interdisciplinary topic that attracts scholars from many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

This bibliographic essay, focusing on works related to American culture and of a general nature, includes an overview and historical background; a discussion of how music and ethnomusiciological scholars approach the topic; geographic approaches; literature on four key icons (Elvis, Dylan, Springsteen, and Madonna); American studies; subcultures and genres; other methodologies; and concludes by discussing notable recent works.

The scholarly literature on rock incorporates a wide variety of approaches and methodologies. Many music‐related scholars appropriate methodology from other disciplines and some non‐music‐related scholars use the formalistic analysis of music scholars. Authenticity is a major theme in the literature on rock.

This essay covers the widest range of monographs on the topic, providing insight into not only the key scholars but also the diversity of approaches to the topic. The historical approach to the literature gives the reader a sense of how the academic discourse on rock has evolved. This essay is of interest to librarians, scholars of rock music, and others concerned with how American scholarship in the humanities and the social sciences has grown since the advent of cultural studies.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce management historians to the long‐forgotten work of Frank George Woollard (1883‐1957), who in the mid‐1920s established flow production in the British motor industry, and its remarkable similarity to current‐day production principles and practices used by Toyota Motor Corporation, also known as lean production.

Overview of Frank Woollard's life and work obtained from newly discovered journal papers, his 1954 book, Principles of Mass and Flow Production, newly discovered archives, and new first‐hand testimony from a close friend and from a long‐time family friend.

Frank Woollard was a pioneer in the establishment of flow production in the British motor industry in the mid‐1920s and the principal developer of automatic transfer machinery. His accomplishments are comparable to Taiichi Ohno, regarded as the architect of Toyota's production system.

Woollard's accomplishments in flow production are a fruitful area for future research given the speed and completeness with which flow production was established at Morris Motors Ltd, Engines Branch. Newly discovered papers describing his flow production system have yet to be studied in detail by academics.

Woollard's application of flow production beginning in 1923 means that timelines for discoveries and attributions of key accomplishments in lean management must be reexamined and revised.

Woollard's work fills important gaps in the literature on the history of flow production generally and in the British motor industry in particular. His work constitutes an early application of current‐day lean principles and practices, and is therefore noteworthy and relevant to management historians and the operations and production management community. It is hoped that this paper will inspire management historians to study Woollard's work and place him in the context of other early twentieth‐century pioneers in industrial management and flow production.

DURING the past 40‐odd years or so, a number of experimental aeroplane types have been invented, visualized, designed, constructed and even flown which, in a quite unorthodox manner, had neither behind the wing nor in front of it any sort of stabilizing and/or controlling surfaces.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the chemistry of organic compounds with a liquid crystal phase and their application in flat panel electronic displays.

The paper is a review of liquid crystal display (LCD) technology. It provides an introduction to liquid crystals and LCDs, with an emphasis on their historical development, various LCD technologies employed, their electronic interconnection to driver circuitry and failure analysis.

The current world market for LCDs is being driven by flat panel television sales. As well as their use in television sets, they are to be found in aircraft cockpit instrumentation, computer monitors, mobile phones and digital cameras, all of which would not exist in their present form without liquid crystals.

The paper provides an introduction to LCDs for electronic engineers working in this area, who may be unfamiliar with the chemistry of liquid crystals, LCD technology, electronic interconnection and failure analysis.

THE complexity of the problems which are associated with the lateral stability and directional control of tailless aeroplanes was not realized until rather late.

This case study paper has the purpose of showing that both processes of hardwiring and soft wiring together is essential for embedding corporate responsibility across a global organisation to achieve lasting change.

The approach taken in this paper is first to describe the experiences in the Shell Group in terms of tools and approaches. In Shell, governance and business processes are being aligned, “hardwired”, while communications, leadership development programmes and competency frameworks reach the “hearts and minds” of Shell people – “soft wiring”. Informal networks tap into the enthusiasm of people, developing intrinsic motivation. These experiences of Shell are then compared with the sense making model of Cramer et al.

The findings show a high level of alignment.

The practical implication of this finding is that hardwiring and softwiring processes appear to be a vital combination for changing the way business do things.

The value of this paper lies in making the business efforts of embedding corporate responsibility into business practice more effective by focussing on hardwiring and softwiring at the same time.