PageSpring Archives - Page 3 of 3

The Eternal Music

“Heard melodies are sweet,
but those unheard are sweeter…”
John Keates (Ode on a Grecian Urn)

Click image

Lively Arts 300

History of Western Civilization Told Through the Acoustics of its Worship Spaces

One characteristic of the “customer experience” of school children, dormitory residents, patients in university-affiliated hospitals and attendees of large athletic events is the quality of food. School districts and large research universities are responsible for hundreds of food service enterprises for communities that are sensitive to various points along the food supply chain.

The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) is one of the first names in standards setting for the technology and management of the major components of the global food supply chain. It has organized its ANSI-accredited standards setting enterprise into about 200 technical committees developing 260-odd consensus documents*. It throws off a fairly steady stream of public commenting opportunities; many of them relevant to agricultural equipment manufacturers (i.e, the Producer interest where the most money is) but enough of them relevant to consumers (i.e. the User interest where the least money is) and agricultural economics academic programs that we follow the growth of its best practice bibliography.

A few of the ASABE consensus documents that may be of interest to faculty and students in agricultural and environmental science studies are listed below:

Safety for Farmstead Equipment
Safety Color Code for Educational and Training Laboratories
Recommended Methods for Measurement and Testing of LED Products for Plant Growth and Development
Distributed Ledger Technology applications to the global food supply chain

The ASABE bibliography is dominated by product-related standards; a tendency we see in many business models of standards setting organizations because of the influence of global industrial conglomerates who can bury the cost of their participation into a sold product. Our primary interest lies in the movement of interoperability standards — much more difficult — as discussed in our ABOUT.

The home page for the ASABEs standards setting enterprise is linked below:

ASABE Standards Development

michigan state university farm agriculture needs attribution 1919 721

the university of oklahoma spring flowers facebook cover 1921 721

university of georgia spring aerial 1921 721

texas a&m university spring facebook cover 1921 721

Vermont Tech farm spring facebook timeline farm agri 1922 721

As of this posting we find no live consultation notices for interoperability standards relevant to educational settlements. Sometimes you can find them ‘more or less concurrently’ posted at the linked below:

ANSI Standards Action

We always encourage our colleagues to participate directly in the ASABE standards development process. Students are especially welcomed into the ASABE Community. Jean Walsh (walsh@asabe.org) and Scott Cederquist (cedarq@asabe.org) are listed as contacts.

University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment facebook cover horses 1919 723

EQsS5HmXsAM7Pxc University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center 1919 721

You’ll rarely need a doctor, lawyer, or policeman

But every day, three times a day, you need a farmer pic.twitter.com/X4CTPe11eT

— Conor Lynch (@c_k_lynch) July 25, 2022

Category: Food

Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Jack Janveja, Richard Robben

More

Why Industry Standards Matter https://t.co/Nn7CgfEdAV

— Scott Cedarquist (@CedarquistASABE) March 4, 2019

Lovely 1873 view of New York. Source: https://t.co/rixNirgB8S pic.twitter.com/tQz6SsXUv9

— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) January 27, 2025

Gallery: Dance

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Transilvania Fashion

Textiles

On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring

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Spring Week 18 | April 28 – May 4

Monday | April 28 | Colloquium 15:00 UTC

Morning Ablutions

Tuesday | April 29 | Colloquium 15:00 UTC

Recommended Practice for Electrical Equipment Maintenance

Wednesday | April 30| Colloquium 15:00 UTC

Schenkingen

Thursday | May 1 | Colloquium 15:00 UTC

Ædificare & Utilization

Friday | May 2 | Colloquium 15:00 UTC

Lively Arts 300

Sammie Purcell (Vanderbilt University) & Maggie Adams (Belmont University)

Saturday | May 3

Sunday | May 4

Today in History

Spring Equinox

The Earth’s precession is a slow, cyclical motion of the rotational axis that causes the position of the celestial poles to change over time. This motion is caused by the gravitational influence of the Moon and Sun on the Earth’s equatorial bulge, and it has a period of about 26,000 years.

Over astronomical time, the Earth’s precession has caused a number of changes in the position of the stars and constellations in the sky. For example, due to precession, the position of the North Star, or Polaris, has shifted over time, and in ancient times, other stars, such as Thuban, were used as celestial markers for navigation. Additionally, precession can cause changes in the length and timing of the seasons over long timescales.

The Earth’s precession is affected by a number of factors, including the gravitational pull of other planets, the shape of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and the distribution of mass within the Earth itself. These factors can cause slight variations in the rate and direction of precession over time.

Overall, while the effects of precession on the Earth’s rotation and position in the sky are not easily observable on human timescales, they are an important component of the Earth’s long-term astronomical behavior.

Gallery: Other Ways of Knowing Climate Change

DRINKING, WASTEWATER & STORMWATER SYSTEMS

“Fille romaine à la fontaine” 1875 Léon Bonnat

Civilization has historically flourished around rivers and major waterways. Mesopotamia, the so-called cradle of civilization, was situated between the major rivers Tigris and Euphrates; the ancient society of the Egyptians depended entirely upon the Nile. Rome was also founded on the banks of the Italian river Tiber. Large metropolises like Rotterdam, London, Montreal, Paris, New York City, Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Tokyo, Chicago, and Hong Kong owe their success in part to their easy accessibility via water and the resultant expansion of trade. Islands with safe water ports, like Singapore, have flourished for the same reason. In places such as North Africa and the Middle East, where water is more scarce, access to clean drinking water was and is a major factor in human development.*

With this perspective, and our own “home waters” situated in the Great Lakes, we are attentive to water management standardization activity administered by International Organization Standardization Technical Committee 224 (ISO TC/224). The scope of the committee is multidimensional; as described in the business plan linked below:

BUSINESS PLAN ISO/TC 224

Water-related management standards define a very active space; arguably, as fast-moving a space as electrotechnology. The ISO TC/224 is a fairly well accomplished committee with at least 16 consensus products emerging from a 34 nations led by Association Française de Normalisation (@AFNOR) as the global Secretariat and 34 participating nations. The American Water Works Association is ANSI’s US Technical Advisory Group administrator to the ISO.

We do not advocate the user interest in this standard at the moment but encourage educational institutions with resident expertise — either on the business side or academic side of US educational institutions — to participate in it. You are encouraged to communicate directly with Paul Olson at AWWA, 6666 W. Quincy Avenue, Denver, CO 80235, Phone: (303) 347-6178, Email: polson@awwa.org.

The work products of TC 224 (and ISO 147 and ISO TC 282) are also on the standing agendas of our Water, Global and Bucolia colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting, open to everyone.

Issue: [13-163]

Category: Global, Water

Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Christine Fischer, Jack Janveja. Richard Robben, Larry Spielvogel

Standing Agenda / Water

Qualität der Wasserversorgung

Preserving the Maine Harvest: Freezing Rhubarb and Greens

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