stry equipment, predicted that its overall sales this year will rise 21% to 23% over last year, up from the 18% to 20% increase forecast in February. The company now sees full-year net income of $2.65 billion, a $150 million increase from its pervious outlook. The higher view comes amid rising prices for steel, copper and other materials and negative effects from the Japan earthquake and tsunami amounting to about $300 million in sales and $70 million in operating profit this year. The company relies on components from Japan to produce construction excavators in a joint venture with Japan's Hitachi machinery company. Deere's farm machinery sales in the quarter rose 24% from a year ago, as operating income increased 22%. But the company's operating margin on farm equipment slipped slightly to 16.6% from 16.8%, indicating profit pressure from rising costs and suggesting the lower-margin equipment accounted for much of the sales increase in the quarter. "The expectation is that if you're doing well on the sales side it's going to trickle through to the margin side," said Jeff Windau, an analyst with Edward Jones. "There are some [cost] pressures building on the company." The company announced Wednesday that it will build a farm machinery plant in Northeast China. The $80 million plant, Deere's seventh manufacturing site in China, is expected to be up and running late next year. Sales of construction and forestry equipment soared 45% off the depressed levels of a year ago. Profit more than doubled, even as the Moline, Ill., company acknowledged that weakness in residential and commercial construction continues to be a headwind for equipment demand. The operatbia center. Ailments lasting longer are rare, he said. The Mississippi flooding began May 2, when officials blew up part of a levee in Missouri to protect a town in Illinois. As high water rolled downriver to the Deep South, they were diverted through floodgates into the Atchafalaya Basin, prompting hundreds to evacuate. On Monday, the river's crest is expected to reach Morgan City, La., where the flood waters empty into the Gulf of Mexico. The extra lead time many victims in that area have had could reduce stress in the end, said Irwin Redlener, director of Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness. If you can get yourself and your family out safely with important papers and even emotionally important keepsakes, "you can restart your life," he said. And, because injury and bereavement are major causes of psychological distress, warnings "are indirectly probably our greatest mental health intervention" by getting people out of harm's way, said Fran Norris, director and principal investigator of the National Center for Disaster Mental Health Research. Even the warning 24 minutes before the tornado hit in Joplin, Mo., killing 132, was substantial, Abramson said. "In Israel, the warning systems for incoming missile attacks are 15 seconds," he said. The problem, typically, is getting people to pay attention to warnings. "It's kind of the opposite of the popular myth that if you warn people of disaster they'll panic," said Dennis Mileti, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado's Natural Hazards Center in Boulder. "The problem is the opposite — getting them off the couch." Photographs and video of earlier spring floods probably made it easier to convince people farther downriver to protect their property and leave, he said. The psychologically taxing piece as people return from the disaster will be coping with all the questions: Where will we live? Where will the children go to school? Diane Austin, 47, and her parents, aunt and uncle all got safely away from their homes in the Cutoff community, but they haven't been able to go back and survey the damage. "I'm concerned about what I'll find. I'm more concerned about if they'll let us back," Austin said. It may not be until sometime this week, and those who have to rebuild will have to meet new FEMA regulations, said Larry Liddell, spokesman for the Tunica County Emergency Management Agency. And "with all the rules and regulations, you have to be a millionaire to get everything back up to code," Austin said. Over in Tuscaloosa, Ala., F