Radio-Ready Soundbites

This week on our show: bipolar disorder.  It's a mental illness marked by extreme emotional highs and lows, and is also referred to as manic depressive illness.  Our Medical Editor Doctor Rick Holm speaks with his guest, Doctor Anthony Vaca from Avera Midwest Psychiatric Medicine, about the topic.

 TRT(3:10 sec) MP3

For more information about On Call medical radio contact:

Tami Watson

Producer, "On Call"

AgBio Communications

SDSU

Ph: 605-688-5620

http://oncall.sdstate.org

This week On Call Medical Radio touches upon Emergency Preparedness. Medical Editor Dr. Rick Holm speaks with Bill Chalcraft from the S.D. Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response and Dr. Matt Owens from the Redfield Community Memorial Hospital and Clinic about being ready for emergencies.

TRT(3:11 sec) MP3

For more information about On Call medical radio contact:

Tami Watson

Producer, "On Call"

AgBio Communications

SDSU

Ph: 605-688-5620

http://oncall.sdstate.org

AgBIO COMMUNICATIONS UNIT
SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY

For release: July 3, 2008

SDSU publication offers cattle risk management information

BROOKINGS, S.D. - A new SDSU publication can help cattle producers evaluate profitability and risk management strategies.

SDSU Extension Risk Management Specialist Matthew Diersen, (DEER-sen) defines fed cattle basis in the publication.

Diersen explains that in a nutshell, the basis is the difference between a cash price and a futures price, and the most commonly used basis for South Dakota would be the Sioux Falls cash price for fed cattle, minus the nearby live cattle futures price from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Matthew Diersen: "The publication looks at and defines what basis is on fed cattle, this would be cattle that are ready for the slaughter market, and it establishes just the historic basis that we've observed in Sioux Falls, and I relate that to the basis level you'd see in general in South Dakota." TRT (0:18 sec) MP3

Diersen: "Over the last seven or eight years, basis has fluctuated quite a bit from year to year, so you might be thinking that basis would be $2 under the futures price at one time of the year and a $1 over at another time of the year. And then when you sit down and look at how the prices actually played out, you find that those price levels tend to be different over time, and you tend to have a trend that kind of continues for a while, maybe three to six months before things revert back to longer-run trend or average. And that's what we've seen again here in the last couple of years, transportation costs have gone up, that's probably been the main driver responsible for a wider basis or a cash price less than expected, relative to the futures price that we've seen for about the last year and one-half." TRT (0:59 sec) MP3

Diersen goes on to say that there are three main uses for basis. One is just to evaluate profitability or expected profitability, you can look at the futures price, adjust it with the historic basis levels that are in the publication, and get some idea of the profitability of feeding cattle. The second thing you could use it for is to compare futures price that you'd see to a forward contract bid to get some idea of the relative profitability of using those two different tools. And the third thing you can use the basis information for is to get additional understanding of some of the underlying changes happening in the market so you can put transportation costs for example that we're seeing now, you can put those costs into perspective, and have some idea of their impact on profitability.

Contact: Matthew Diersen, (605) 688-4864

Author: Jarett Bies, (605) 688-4642

This week on "On Call Medical Radio" - pregnancy and health risks.  Medical Editor Doctor Rick Holm visits with Doctor Marvin Buehner from Black Hills Obstetrics & Gynnecology and Doctor Naomi Wahl from Avera Maternal Fetal Medicine about the topic.

 TRT(3:14 sec) MP3

For more information about On Call medical radio contact:

Tami Watson

Producer, "On Call"

AgBio Communications

SDSU

Ph: 605-688-5620

http://oncall.sdstate.org

AgBIO COMMUNICATIONS UNIT

SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY

For release: July 1, 2008

Southeast Farm tour includes soil fertility information

BROOKINGS, S.D. - The July 9 Summer Crop Tour at the SDSU Southeast Research Farm will include timely information on soil fertility in a wet, cool year.

That's according to Ron Gelderman, manager of the SDSU Soils Testing Laboratory.

Ron Gelderman: "It's been extremely cool and wet, but we've had other seasons like this, and from our experience starter responses are very apparent with corn, and we've seen that this spring, where starter didn't get applied or putting corn in a stressful situation, like corn-on-corn, starter really shows up. The other thing we've been seeing in a cool, wet year is sulfur deficiencies on corn that shows up for a couple of reasons. Number one, we've had all this rain and it can wash some of the sulfur down out of the root zone and it takes a while before the plant roots will get down there. Secondly, organic matter, it's too cool for it to really start decaying and releasing some sulfur, so once it starts to warm up some of this sulfur becomes available and then the plants usually grow out of it. And that's what we're seeing now, some of the plants are growing out of this, so there's really no need for concern on most situations.

"The other thing we are seeing, some of these areas like Beresford had 10 inches of moisture this spring, and so we did a little experiment where we measured nitrates last fall and we measured them this spring and we'll be showing the results of that little study and seeing where that nitrate is now, and so those are the things we're looking at in cool, cool wet year." TRT(1:35 sec)MP3

Gelderman: "We'll show there's been a major change, of course, in fertilizer prices getting higher, but corn and soybean prices have also gotten higher, so we need to look at the ratio between the two, and in general we can say that nitrogen economics haven't changed a whole lot from four or five years ago, but phosphorus and potassium have, so we'll concentrate on those, on what we can do to be more efficient, and try to manage those costs on P and K, for producers, for corn, soybean, and wheat." TRT(37 sec)MP3

Gelderman: "First off in the soil fertility area, Anthony Bly, our research associate, will be talking about zinc, zinc responses with corn and soybeans, and he's summarized a lot of work we've done over the years and came up with some real interesting, I think useful results for producers. Secondly I will be talking about a number of different issues for 2008, and beyond, in the area of soil fertility. Some of these will be starter responses, nitrogen losses, sulfur deficiencies, and a little bit about fertilizer prices." TRT(38 sec)MP3

Contact: Ron Gelderman, (605) 688-4770

Author: Jarett Bies, (605) 688-4642

-30-

SDSU RESEARCH NEWS

SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY

For release: June 30, 2008

NASA grant will fund satellite data project

BROOKINGS, S.D. - A major grant from NASA will help South Dakota State University scientists make satellite data easier to use.

                The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has awarded $3.29 million to a five-year project led by professor David Roy in SDSU's Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence. The project also combines data from two different satellite systems in order to fill in gaps in satellite record - where cloud cover obscures part of an image, for example.

David Roy: We anticipate it to be extremely high-profile and extremely utilized. The user community is going to utilize it greatly."   TRT(07 sec) MP3

Roy: "The proposal essentially is to take Landsat observations every 16 days for the whole of the contiguous United States and also for all of Alaska for a seven-year period and process those data so that they're available to the user community over the Internet in a seamless manner.

Right now if you're in a high school or you're in the geography department of a university and you want to use Landsat data, you have to be an expert in processing the data, or you have to have quite a high level of education in accessing the data." TRT(37 sec) MP3

Roy: "The point here is that the user community really wants to be able to obtain the data much more simply. The concept here would be to make the data processed to a certain level and make it available in a very simple and intuitive manner over the Internet."  TRT(16 sec) MP3

Contact: David Roy, (605) 690-4536

Author: Lance Nixon, (605) 688-4653