Demand for differentiated milk products : implications for price competition

We apply the Berry, Levinsohn and Pakes (1995) model to scanner data from Boston\ud supermarkets augmented with consumer characteristics data in order to analyze consumer\ud choices and price competition in a differentiated fluid milk market. Milk characteristics include\ud price, fat content, brand name and the organic and/or lactose-free nature of the product.\ud Empirical results show that consumer valuation of fat decreases with income but increases with\ud the number of children. Low-fat and specialty milks, such as organic and lactose-free milks, are\ud preferred by high-income consumers with no children. Although all milks are price elastic at the\ud individual brand level, the cross-price elasticities are quite low and negligible for specialty milks.\ud Based on calculated Lerner indexes, private label milks have the highest percent markups\ud despite their lower prices, while specialty milks have the lowest markups despite their higher\ud prices, which attests to a greater degree of market power for conventional and particularly for\ud private label milk

Carbon and oxygen abundances from recombination lines in low-metallicity star-forming galaxies. Implications for chemical evolution

We present deep echelle spectrophotometry of the brightest emission-line knots of the star-forming galaxies He 2-10, Mkn 1271, NGC 3125, NGC 5408, POX 4, SDSS J1253-0312, Tol 1457-262, Tol 1924-416 and the HII region Hubble V in the Local Group dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822. The data have been taken with the Very Large Telescope Ultraviolet-Visual Echelle Spectrograph in the 3100-10420 {\AA} range. We determine electron densities and temperatures of the ionized gas from several emission-line intensity ratios for all the objects. We derive the ionic abundances of C$^{2+}$ and/or O$^{2+}$ from faint pure recombination lines (RLs) in several of the objects, permitting to derive their C/H and C/O ratios. We have explored the chemical evolution at low metallicities analysing the C/O vs. O/H, C/O vs. N/O and C/N vs. O/H relations for Galactic and extragalactic HII regions and comparing with results for halo stars and DLAs. We find that HII regions in star-forming dwarf galaxies occupy a different locus in the C/O vs. O/H diagram than those belonging to the inner discs of spiral galaxies, indicating their different chemical evolution histories, and that the bulk of C in the most metal-poor extragalactic HII regions should have the same origin than in halo stars. The comparison between the C/O ratios in HII regions and in stars of the Galactic thick and thin discs seems to give arguments to support the merging scenario for the origin of the Galactic thick disc. Finally, we find an apparent coupling between C and N enrichment at the usual metallicities determined for HII regions and that this coupling breaks in very low-metallicity objects.Comment: 27 pages, 12 figures, Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societ

Philosophers’ appraisals of bibliometric indicators and their use in evaluation: from recognition to knee‑jerk rejection

Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. No funding was received for conducting this study.The authors would like to thank Daniel Pallarés-Domínguez for his help in the data collection process and Mark Andrews for the English translation. We would also like to thank the three main Spanish philosophy and ethics associations, Asociación Española de Ética y Filosofía Política (AEEFP), Sociedad Académica de Filosofía (SAF) and Red Española de Filosofía (REF), for their collaboration during the research process and their endorsement of the data collection report.The knowledge and stance of researchers regarding bibliometric indicators is a feld of study that has gained weight in recent decades. In this paper we address this issue for the little explored areas of philosophy and ethics, and applied to a context, in this case Spain, where bibliometric indicators are widely used in evaluation processes. The study combines data from a self-administered questionnaire completed by 201 researchers and from 14 in-depth interviews with researchers selected according to their afliation, professional category, gender and area of knowledge. The survey data suggest that researchers do not consider bibliometric indicators a preferred criterion of quality, while there is a fairly high self-perception of awareness of a number of indicators. The qualitative data points to a generalised perception of a certain rejection of the specifc use of indicators, with four main positions being observed: (1) disqualifcation of the logic of metrics, (2) scepticism about the possibility of assessing quality with quantitative methods, (3) complaints about the incorporation of methods that are considered to belong to other disciplines, and (4) criticism of the consequences that this generates in the discipline of philosophy.CRUE-CSI

Impact of Climate Change on Zoonotic Diseases in Latin America

La Convención Marco de Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático (CMNUCC), con sede en Bonn, Alemania, define el cambio climático como "un cambio de clima atribuido directa o indirectamente a la actividad humana que altera la composición de la atmósfera mundial y que se suma a los recursos naturales variabilidad del clima observada durante períodos de tiempo comparables ". Aunque muchas otras definiciones se pueden encontrar y se han declarado por muchos autores y grupos de investigación, el mensaje clave importante, es que el cambio climático supone una seria amenaza para el mundo, que puede generar agitación social, los desplazamientos de población, las dificultades económicas y ambientales la degradación, entre muchas otras consecuencias relevantes. Con el fin de llegar a un verde como World menos impacto antropogénico, de acuerdo con las nuevas tendencias ecológicas en la sociedad, la mitigación del cambio climático debe ser una prioridad para la sociedad y sus gobiernos (Rodríguez-Morales, 2011). Como se ha indicado anteriormente, el cambio climático ya es un problema ampliamente conocido por múltiples disciplinas (Rodríguez-Morales, 2005). Aunque sus orígenes pueden converger en un complejo de múltiples fenómenos de interacción, para algunas disciplinas, como las ciencias biológicas y médicas, sus consecuencias son más estudiados y destacan por sus implicaciones actuales y más.Aún más, sus impactos y chillidos son motivo de preocupación a nivel global (Rodríguez-Morales et al, 2010 ). Esta amenaza creciente constituye en el siglo XXI un reto importante para la humanidad. Sus efectos aún son muchos los aspectos que se han estudiado no por la sociedad en diferentes niveles.The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), located in Bonn,Germany, defines climate change as “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods”. Although many other definitions can be found and have been stated by many authors and research groups, the important key message, is that global climate change poses a serious threat to the World, which can generate social upheaval, population displacement, economic hardships, and environmental degradation, among many other relevant consequences. In order to reach a green as less anthropogenically impacted World, according to the new ecological trends in the society, mitigation of global climate change should be a priority for the society and its governments (Rodriguez-Morales, 2011). As has been previously stated, climate change is already a widely known problem to multiple disciplines (Rodriguez-Morales, 2005). Although its origins can converge in a complex of multiple interacting phenomena, for some disciplines, such as biological and medical sciences, their consequences are more studied and highlighted for their current and further implications. Even more, its impacts and squeals are cause of concern at a global level (Rodriguez-Morales et al, 2010). This growing threat represents in the XXI century a significant challenge for the humankind. Its effects even include many aspects that have been not studied by the society at different levels

Structural and morphological evolution of powders nanostructured ceramics: transitional aluminas

This work aims with the study of the transformation of boehmite into transitional aluminas. Boehmite was obtained by a sol-gel method from an aluminium hazardous waste. The thermal behaviour of boehmite was followed by thermogravimetry and differential thermal analysis to determine the transformation temperatures.  By calcinations of boehmite at temperatures ranging between 250-1000ºC, transitional aluminas (?, ? , ?-Al2O3)  were synthesized and characterized by XRD, TEM and FTIR. All the transitional aluminas exhibit nanometric crystallite size, ranging from 2.5-15nm. ?-Al2O3 was obtained as a nanostructured material at 500ºC with a cell parameter a=7.923Å. ?-phase stars to appear at 850ºC with a crystallite size of 6nm and cell parameters a=5.672Å and c=24.600Å. For ?-Al2O3 the cell parameters, in Å, were a=11.817, b=2.912, c=5.621 and ?=103.8º. The progressive conversion of the transitional phase ?-Al2O3 into the stable polymorph ?-alumina, takes place gradually and a four-phases region is achieved at 1000ºC, where coexist with other transitional phase such as  ?- and ?-Al2O3

Comparación de los hábitos de consumo de carne de conejo entre consumidores jóvenes y compradores tradicionales de Sevilla

Se estudiaron los hábitos de consumo de carne de conejo de 499 estudiantes universitarios y de 399 compradores en mercados tradicionales de Sevilla (España). Los estudiantes universitarios afirmaron haber probado (67,9%) y consumir actualmente (38,6%) la carne de conejo en menor proporción que los compradores tradicionales (prueban: 84,5%; consumen: 46,6%). Ambos grupos afirman que les gusta esta carne en la misma proporción (78%).Las mujeres, sobre todo jóvenes, afirmaron haber probado y que les gusta en menor proporción esta carne que en el caso de los hombres. Se reveló además un mayor hábito de consumo y preferencia por la carne de conejo de monte en comparación con la del de granja, siendo la carne de conejo de monte preferida a la del de granja por un 88,2% de los consumidores sin distinción de grupo. Se dedujo una disminución del consumo de la carne de conejo entre los jóvenes en comparación con los compradores en mercados tradicionales

Can we use Google Scholar to identify highly-cited documents?

The main objective of this paper is to empirically test whether the identification of highly-cited documents through Google Scholar is feasible and reliable. To this end, we carried out a longitudinal analysis (1950 to 2013), running a generic query (filtered only by year of publication) to minimise the effects of academic search engine optimisation. This gave us a final sample of 64,000 documents (1,000 per year). The strong correlation between a document’s citations and its position in the search results (r= -0.67) led us to conclude that Google Scholar is able to identify highly-cited papers effectively. This, combined with Google Scholar’s unique coverage (no restrictions on document type and source), makes the academic search engine an invaluable tool for bibliometric research relating to the identification of the most influential scientific documents. We find evidence, however, that Google Scholar ranks those documents whose language (or geographical web domain) matches with the user’s interface language higher than could be expected based on citations. Nonetheless, this language effect and other factors related to the Google Scholar’s operation, i.e. the proper identification of versions and the date of publication, only have an incidental impact. They do not compromise the ability of Google Scholar to identify the highly-cited papers

Paleoliquefaction in the Bajo Segura basin (eastern Betic Cordillera)

The Bajo Segura basin, in the eastern Betic Cordillera, displays a seismic activity characterized by small-magnitude earthquakes (1.5-4.5 mb), with some occasional moderate to high-magnitude events (> 5.0 mb). These earthquakes are produced by the activity of blind faults without surface ruptures. For this reason, the detection of paleoearthquakes in the geological record is limited to indirect evidence of paleoseismicity, mainly liquefaction features. Moreover, such evidence is abundant in the historical record of the 1829 Torrevieja earthquake, in some of its aftershocks and in the 1919 Jacarilla earthquake. In this study several layers of Holocene seismites previously described in the basin were analyzed, and correlated with various radiometric 14C datings. This analysis enabled a recurrence period of approx. 1000 yr to be established for the moderate to high-magnitude earthquakes in the Bajo Segura basin