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The purpose of this paper is to determine which financial record‐keeping system farmers use, as well as what system attributes farmers value and to what degree.

This research uses a choice experiment to examine farmer's demand for attributes of financial record‐keeping systems. A sample from the general Michigan farm population is compared to samples from university and agribusiness record system clients.

Results reveal that university and agribusiness clients are willing to pay considerably more for a farm‐specific record system to backstop their farm management decisions.

The results provide an understanding of farmer demands for farm financial record systems and can be used to position record‐keeping systems to meet those demands.

This paper describes and analyzes farm financial accounting system use and preferences by type.

As the interest in renewable energy increases and the number of federal and state incentives to support renewable energy has also grown in recent years, it seems worthwhile to explore the economics of using small wind energy systems to offset electricity costs on farms. The purpose of this paper is to explore the economics of small wind turbine installations on a dairy in Michigan through case study analysis.

An Excel‐based capital budgeting model is developed that contains two sub‐modules: one that estimates the value of the wind energy based on the measured wind resource, and an investment module that includes factors such as investment cost, financing parameters, sales of electricity; grants and tax credits and tax information. Cases using 20 and 50 kW turbine systems are analyzed.

The results of the case studies show that in a favorable wind resource, the federal tax and United States Department of Agriculture incentives as well as state policies such as net metering can make wind turbines a good investment with an internal rate of return of 12.5 percent in this example. However, if the wind resource is not sufficient, even favorable renewable energy policies will not offset the lost value of the power generation, and thus a wind turbine will be a poor investment decision. Farm businesses should carefully consider all factors before investing in a wind turbine.

This paper is the first in recent years to combine capital budgeting analysis, wind resource data and the implications of federal and state policies to determine if small wind turbines are a sound investment decision for farm businesses.

Status is a central aspect of teamwork relationships and successful collaboration in teams, both online and offline. Status group membership and status perception shape behavioural expectations and norm perceptions of what is appropriate, but despite their importance have been neglected in previous research. Status effects are of special interest in online collaboration, e.g. via email, where no immediate feedback or non-verbal/paraverbal communication and direct observation is possible. The purpose of this study is to address this gap in research.

An experimental scenario study with two different professional status groups (lecturers and students) tested status effects on causal attributions, intergroup bias and emotional and collaborative responses to perceived norm violations in emails.

Results overall showed three key findings: a “black-sheep-effect” with harsher negative attributions for same status members, more aggression and less cooperation towards lower status senders and stronger (negative) emotional reactions towards high status senders.

The findings are important for managing professional online communication because negative personal attributions, strong emotions and aggressive behaviours can increase team conflict, lead to mistakes and generally undermine performance.

In Poetic Justice, Martha Nussbaum (1996) offers one version of an argument frequently repeated in the history of law-and-literature scholarship; to wit, that the literary imagination performs a salutary function with regard to many domains of modern public life. While law and economics are governed by logics of bureaucratic rationality and utilitarian calculus, literature, in particular the novel, presents a counterdiscourse, inviting us to empathize with others, expanding our moral sense, emphasizing the importance of affect and imagination in the making of a just, humane, and democratic society. Nussbaum's broad goal is a commendable one; concerned that “cruder forms of economic utilitarianism and cost-benefit analysis that are…used in many areas of public policy-making and are frequently recommended as normative for others” are, in effect, dehumanizing, she argues for the importance to public life of “the sort of feeling and imagining called into being” by the experience of reading literary texts (1996, p. 3). This sort of feeling and imagining, Nussbaum explains, fosters sympathetic understanding of others who may be quite different from us and a deepened awareness of human suffering.

For the expected increase in the capacity of existing transportation systems and efficient energy utilisation, smart maintenance solutions that are supported by online and integrated condition monitoring systems are required. Industrial internet is one of the smart maintenance solutions which enables real-time acquisition and analysis of asset condition by linking intelligent devices with different stakeholders’ applications and databases. The purpose of this paper is to present some aspects of industrial internet application as required for integrating weather information and floating road condition data from vehicle mounted sensors to enhance effective and efficient winter maintenance.

The concept of real-time road condition assessment using in-vehicle sensors is demonstrated in a case study of a 3.5 km road section located in Northern Sweden. The main floating data sources were acceleration and position sensors from a smartphone positioned on the dash board of a truck. Features extracted from the acceleration signal were two road roughness estimations. To extract targeted information and knowledge, the floating data were further processed to produce time series data of the road condition using Kalman filtering. The time series data were thereafter combined with weather data to assess the condition of the road.

In the case study, examples of visualisation and analytics to support winter maintenance planning, execution and resource allocation were presented. Reasonable correlation was shown between estimated road roughness and annual road survey data to validate and prove the presented results wider applicability.

The paper describes a concept of floating data for an industrial internet application for efficient road maintenance. The resulting improvement in winter maintenance will promote dependable, safe and sustainable transportation of goods and people, especially in Northern Nordic region with harsh and sometimes unpredictable weather conditions.

Framed by the intersectionality perspective and results from prior research, we examined the effects of race/ethnicity, gender, probation violations, and type of violation on juvenile justice case outcomes in a Mid-Atlantic state.

Bivariate and multivariate analyses in the form of logistic regression were used to assess the extent race and ethnicity, gender, probation violations, and the type of violation, individually and in combination, impact case outcomes.

The findings indicate that the race/ethnicity of the youth, his or her gender, and whether involved in a probation violation and to some degree the type of violation, individually and in some cases, jointly, effect juvenile justice decision making. These relationships often involve receiving both harsh and lenient outcomes. We interpret the results as evidence that stereotyping plays out differently when race/ethnicity and gender intersect.

The study contributes to the general literature by (1) examining the neglected combination effects of race/ethnicity and gender with increased social control within juvenile justice proceedings; (2) including Hispanic youth; and (3) looking at the interrelationships among race/ethnicity and gender with the treatment of probation violators.

This paper, based on an analysis of print and electronic discussions and on experience at ‘the front lines’ in collection development and reference in an American academic health science library, questions the wisdom of permitting visions of the electronic library to drive library budgets and strategic planning. To market these visions, librarians may promise more than they can deliver, given the harsh social and economic realities predicted to intensify over the next several decades. The electrification of the delivery of traditional products and services is inadequate in itself to respond proactively to the needs for new products and services. Identification of new solutions to emerging needs would make long‐range planning efforts more effective. The effort to identify and fulfil needed new roles to librarians and libraries demands new social and organizational concepts, in addition to technical expertise. The paper concludes with a proposed agenda for action.

Tipped to be a major technology of the next decade, fibre‐optic sensors are already making some waves in the laboratory, as Stephen McClelland explains.