Research Highlights, August 2004

Provide an outstanding educational program that enables our graduates to become leaders in their professions by imparting fundamental principles, skills, and tools to innovate and excel. Pursue the discovery of fundamental knowledge and its applications to position the department among the leaders in research. Respond to the needs of the State of Iowa and the nation by building a strong outreach program that serves industry and the engineering profession.

Iowa Developments, July 2007, Vol. 16, no. 4

Business News from the Iowa Department of Economic Development

Iowa Developments, February 2009, Vol. 18, no. 1

Business Development news from the Iowa Department of Economic Development

TV or not TV? Subtitling and English skills

We study the influence of television translation techniques on the quality of the English spoken across the EU and OCDE. We identify a large positive effect for subtitled original version as opposed to dubbed television, which loosely corresponds to between four and twenty years of compulsory English education at school. We also show that the importance of subtitled television is robust to a wide array of specifications.We then find that subtitling and better English skills have an influence on high-tech exports, international student mobility, and other economic and social outcomes.

Irreversible investment in stochastically cyclical markets

This paper presents a new framework for studying irreversible (dis)investment whena market follows a random number of random-length cycles (such as a high-tech productmarket). It is assumed that a firm facing such market evolution is always unsure aboutwhether the current cycle is the last one, although it can update its beliefs about theprobability of facing a permanent decline by observing that no further growth phasearrives. We show that the existence of regime shifts in fluctuating markets suffices for anoption value of waiting to (dis)invest to arise, and we provide a marginal interpretationof the optimal (dis)investment policies, absent in the real options literature. Thepaper also shows that, despite the stochastic process of the underlying variable has acontinuous sample path, the discreteness in the regime changes implies that the samplepath of the firm s value experiences jumps whenever the regime switches all of a sudden,irrespective of whether the firm is active or not.

Iowa Developments, April 2009

Business development news from the Iowa Department of Economic Development

Iowa Developments, August 2009, Vol. 18, no. 4

Business Development news from the Iowa Department of Economic Development

Iowa Communications Network Fiscal Year 2010 Annual Report

Use of ICN’s Internet and data services have continued to increase exponentially, which reflects the capacity needed for greater access to high-speed Internet (Broadband). Users are incorporating more web-based applications, which uses larger amounts of bandwidth; such as transmitting hospital MRIs, video streaming, and web-based systems.

ICN Insider Newsletter, November 2010

This is a newsletter produced by the Department of Iowa Communication Network. This newsletter updates what is going on with the ICN through out the state of Iowa.

ICN Insider Newsletter, December, 2010

This is a newsletter produced by the Department of Iowa Communication Network. This newsletter updates what is going on with the ICN through out the state of Iowa.

ICN Insider Newsletter, February 2011

This is a newsletter produced by the Department of Iowa Communication Network. This newsletter updates what is going on with the ICN through out the state of Iowa.

ICN Insider Newsletter, January 2011

This is a newsletter produced by the Department of Iowa Communication Network. This newsletter updates what is going on with the ICN through out the state of Iowa.

Effects of different management systems on porosity of oxisols in Paraná, Brazil

Soils play a fundamental role in the production of human foods. The Oxisols in the state of Paraná are among the richest and most productive soils in Brazil, but degradation and low porosity are frequently documented, due to intensive farming involving various management strategies and the application of high-tech solutions. This study aims to investigate changes in the porosity of two Red Oxisols (Latossolos Vermelhos), denoted LVef (eutroferric) and LVdf (dystroferric) under conventional and no-tillage soil management, with a succession of annual crops of soybean, maize and wheat over a continuous period of more than 20 years. After describing the soil profiles under native forest, no-tillage management and conventional tillage using the crop profile method, deformed and non-deformed soil samples were collected from the volumes most compacted by human intervention and the physical, chemical and mineralogical properties analyzed. The various porosity classes (total pore volume, inter-aggregate porosity between channels and biological cavities) and intra-aggregate porosity (determined in 10 cm³ saturated clods subjected to a pressure of -10 kPa to obtain a pore volume with a radius (r eq), > 15 μm and < 15 μm). The results showed that the effects of no-tillage farming on porosity are more pronounced in both soil types. Porosity of the LVdf was higher than pf the LVef soil, whatever the management type. In the LVdf soil, only pores with a radius of > 15 μm were affected by farming whereas in the LVef soil, pores with a radius of < 15 μm were affected as well.

ICN Insider Newsletter, November 2011

This is a newsletter produced by the Department of Iowa Communication Network. This newsletter updates what is going on with the ICN through out the state of Iowa.

ICN Insider Newsletter, January 2012

This is a newsletter produced by the Department of Iowa Communication Network. This newsletter updates what is going on with the ICN through out the state of Iowa.