A MULTI-COUNTRY ASSESSMENT OF CONSUMER ATTITUDES OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR NEW LABELING SYSTEM

This paper estimates the willingness to pay (WTP) for non-genetically modified (GM) vegetable oil and tofu in Korea by using contingent valuation (CV) method and compares this WTP with Japan, Norway, Taiwan and the U.S. It also recovers the distribution of WTP by using a bootstrapping approach to provide a better measure of consumer's WTP on non-GM foods. Especially, we pay attention to the different characteristics of vegetable oil and tofu; vegetable oil made from GM soybeans doesn't have genetically altered protein, but tofu made from GM soybean has genetically altered protein. For this reason, vegetable oil made from GM soybeans is excluded from mandatory GM labeling system in Korea. Therefore, in this paper, the potential differences between WTP for non-GM vegetable oil and non-GM tofu are also investigated in order to evaluate the questions regarding the relevance of the introduction of new labeling system in Korea.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Mass splittings of SU(3) baryons within a chiral soliton model

Considering simultaneously isospin and SU(3) flavor symmetry breakings, we investigate the complete mass splittings of SU(3) baryons within a chiral soliton model, a {}"model-independent approach" being employed. In linear order several new mass relations are derived, which are mostly generalizations of existing mass formulae. The dynamical quantities appearing in the expressions for the masses are fixed by fitting them to the masses of the baryon octet and the masses of $\Omega^{-}$ and $\Theta^{+}$ as input rather than by extracting them from a calculated self-consistent soliton profile. In particular, the consideration of isospin symmetry breaking allows us to use the experimental data of the whole octet baryon masses as input. We predict the masses of the baryon decuplet and antidecuplet without any further adjustable free parameter. In addition, we also obtain the pion-nucleon sigma term which turns out to be $\Sigma_{\pi N} = 36.4\pm3.9\,\mathrm{MeV}$. We get the ratio of the current light quark masses $R = 58.1\pm1.3$. The present results indicate that the recent experimental data for the $\Theta^{+}(1524)$ are compatible with the experimental data of the octet and decuplet masses.Comment: 13 pages. No figure. Final version accepted for publication in Prog. Theor. Phys. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1102.178

Impacts of Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions on Livestock Trade Flows

The policies that regulate greenhouse gas emissions would provide a significant burden to emission industries as well as final consumers, which can lead to a strong influence on international trade flows of commodities. This study examines the impact of regulating greenhouse gas emissions on livestock trade flows using a commodity specific gravity model approach. This study finds that regulating greenhouse gas emissions has a negative effect on livestock trade flows from countries restricting greenhouse gas emissions to unrestricting countries, from restricting to restricting countries, and from unrestricting to restricting countries.gravity model, livestock, regulating greenhouse gas emission, trade, Environmental Economics and Policy, Livestock Production/Industries,

Expanding Universe and Dynamical Compactification Using Yang-Mills Instantons

We consider an eight-dimensional Einstein-Yang-Mills theory to explore whether Yang-Mills instantons formed in extra dimensions can induce the dynamical instability of our four-dimensional spacetime. We show that the Yang-Mills instantons in extra dimensions can trigger the expansion of our universe in four-dimensional spacetime as well as the dynamical compactification of extra dimensions. We also discuss a possibility to realize a reheating mechanism via the quantum back-reaction from the contracting tiny internal space with a smeared instanton.Comment: v3; 26 pages, 6 figures, version to be published in JHE