Building a Better Future.... Together, We Can: Iowa's Program and Budget Fiscal Years 2016-2017, January 2015

Governor Terry E. Branstad's FY2016-17 budget in brief

Iowa Crop Progress & Condition, December 31, 2015

Report produced by the The Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Climatology Bureau. Weather report released by the USDA National Agricultural Statistical Service. The report is released weekly from April through October. Formally titled: Iowa Crop and Weather Report

Corruption in building the image of politics in television news broadcasts

This work analyses the political news of eight Spanish television channels in order to see what image is built of politics, and particularly how the news of corruption affects the image of politics in Spanish news broadcasts. Different cases of corruption such as Gürtel, Palma Arena and those associated with judge Baltasar Garzón in his final stage in office, occupy part of the study. A new methodology is therefore proposed that enables the quality of the political information emitted from inside and outside the political content of the news programmes to be observed. Particular attention is paid to the news broadcasts of Televisión Española and Cuatro as those which offer a more balanced view of politics, and channels such as La Sexta, which give priority to a narrative construction of politics in the news programmes around causes of corruption.

A Framework for Building Hypercubes Using MapReduce

The European Space Agency's Gaia mission will create the largest and most precise three dimensional chart of our galaxy (the Milky Way), by providing unprecedented position, parallax, proper motion, and radial velocity measurements for about one billion stars. The resulting catalogue will be made available to the scientific community and will be analyzed in many different ways, including the production of a variety of statistics. The latter will often entail the generation of multidimensional histograms and hypercubes as part of the precomputed statistics for each data release, or for scientific analysis involving either the final data products or the raw data coming from the satellite instruments. In this paper we present and analyze a generic framework that allows the hypercube generation to be easily done within a MapReduce infrastructure, providing all the advantages of the new Big Data analysis paradigmbut without dealing with any specific interface to the lower level distributed system implementation (Hadoop). Furthermore, we show how executing the framework for different data storage model configurations (i.e. row or column oriented) and compression techniques can considerably improve the response time of this type of workload for the currently available simulated data of the mission. In addition, we put forward the advantages and shortcomings of the deployment of the framework on a public cloud provider, benchmark against other popular solutions available (that are not always the best for such ad-hoc applications), and describe some user experiences with the framework, which was employed for a number of dedicated astronomical data analysis techniques workshops.

A Framework for Building Hypercubes Using MapReduce

The European Space Agency's Gaia mission will create the largest and most precise three dimensional chart of our galaxy (the Milky Way), by providing unprecedented position, parallax, proper motion, and radial velocity measurements for about one billion stars. The resulting catalogue will be made available to the scientific community and will be analyzed in many different ways, including the production of a variety of statistics. The latter will often entail the generation of multidimensional histograms and hypercubes as part of the precomputed statistics for each data release, or for scientific analysis involving either the final data products or the raw data coming from the satellite instruments. In this paper we present and analyze a generic framework that allows the hypercube generation to be easily done within a MapReduce infrastructure, providing all the advantages of the new Big Data analysis paradigmbut without dealing with any specific interface to the lower level distributed system implementation (Hadoop). Furthermore, we show how executing the framework for different data storage model configurations (i.e. row or column oriented) and compression techniques can considerably improve the response time of this type of workload for the currently available simulated data of the mission. In addition, we put forward the advantages and shortcomings of the deployment of the framework on a public cloud provider, benchmark against other popular solutions available (that are not always the best for such ad-hoc applications), and describe some user experiences with the framework, which was employed for a number of dedicated astronomical data analysis techniques workshops.

The State of the Judiciary, 2015

My job today as chief justice is to inform you and all Iowans of the condition of the Iowa Judicial Branch. The judicial branch is accountable to do its work so that Iowans can see the value of its fair and impartial courts. It is accountable every day for the resources it is given and the important responsibilities with which it has been entrusted. We best meet these obligations by becoming the best court system we can be. I am honored to report the progress the judicial branch has made towards becoming the best court system in the nation and the value of this progress for all Iowans. Both my grandfathers were carpenters. Like others who build with their hands, they could look at their work at the end of the day and see progress since the beginning of the day. Building Iowa’s court system consistent with its goals may not reveal progress at the end of every day as easily as the work of a carpenter. It is a long, careful process that requires the hands of many, working every day. But, certain days do come along when progress can be seen and our goals are closer within reach. Again this year, the goals of the judicial branch are to:  Protect Iowa’s children;  Provide full-time access to justice;  Operate an efficient, full-service court system;  Provide faster and less costly resolution of legal disputes;  Remain open and transparent; and  Provide fair and impartial justice for all.

Iowa Crop Progress & Condition, February 3, 2016

Report produced by the The Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Climatology Bureau. Weather report released by the USDA National Agricultural Statistical Service. The report is released weekly from April through October. Formally titled: Iowa Crop and Weather Report

Fiscal Year 2015 Report on the Condition of Affirmative Action, Diversity, and Multi-cultural Programs in State Government and Fiscal Year 2016 Plan, September 30, 2015

Each agency is invited and encouraged to send a representative to a quarterly Department of Administrative Services State Recruitment Coordinating Committee “Committee” meeting. This Committee conducts strategic planning sessions to identify top goals and initiatives for the next 2-3 years.

Iowa Veterans Home Building A Future On The Foundation Of Our Past FY 2012 Annual,

Annual report for the Iowa Veterans Home. To provide a continuum of care to Iowa’s veterans and their spouses in an environment focusing on individualized services to enhance their quality of life.

Iowa Crop Progress & Condition, March 3, 2016

Report produced by the The Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Climatology Bureau. Weather report released by the USDA National Agricultural Statistical Service. The report is released weekly from April through October. Formally titled: Iowa Crop and Weather Report

Water Quality Monitoring Report - 2005-2009 Monitoring of Prairie Pothole Wetlands

Prior to European settlement, wetland basins covered 4 to 6 million acres, or approximately 11% of Iowa's surface area. Wetlands were part of every watershed in the state, but nearly 95% of them have been drained for agriculture. As Iowa was settled wetlands were drained and developed, resulting in the loss of wildlife habitat, damage to water quality, rapid topsoil erosion, and increased incidents and severity of flooding. The condition of Iowa’s remaining wetlands is poorly known. The goal of this project was to assess the ecological condition of prairie pothole wetlands in a defined region of north-central Iowa. This project has worked to develop and establish our wetland sampling methods, while providing baseline data regarding the basic chemical, physical, and biological status of Iowa’s permanent and semi-permanent wetland resources. The baseline data obtained from our monitoring methods is mainly in the form of numerical values derived from the lab analyses of our samples. This data will be used to begin building a database to interpret ecological condition changes in Iowa’s wetlands as the sampling regime and assessment methodology are repeated over time.

Iowa Crop Progress & Condition, March 4, 2016

Report produced by the The Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Climatology Bureau. Weather report released by the USDA National Agricultural Statistical Service. The report is released weekly from April through October. Formally titled: Iowa Crop and Weather Report

Iowa Crop Progress & Condition, March 5, 2016

Report produced by the The Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Climatology Bureau. Weather report released by the USDA National Agricultural Statistical Service. The report is released weekly from April through October. Formally titled: Iowa Crop and Weather Report