The impact of switching costs on closing of service branches

The paper deals with the optimal location of service branches. Consumers can receive service from different firms and branches offering substitute services. The consumer chooses the firm and the branch. Examples are banking services (which firm and branch?), healthcare providers, insurance companies and their agents, brokerage firms and their branches. With the change in the accessibility of the internet, the service industry witnesses the impact of the change in technology. More customers prefer acquiring services over the internet, and less require face to face contacts. The industry has to respond in limiting the number of branches. The paper deals with the question which branches to close. In the first period, each consumer selects to receive service from the branch that minimizes the overall costs incurred, composed of price per service plus transportation costs. In the second period, the branches' configuration changes. A branch is closed by one of the firms in alternative locations. When a consumer wants to switch firms, he incurs additional costs, "exogenous switching costs", the cost of information, learning costs transaction costs. These costs are incurred by the consumers, and are different from "endogenous switching costs" that are incurred by the firm, e.g., the frequent flier case. The paper investigates how the market area and market share of the branches and firms change with the closure of a branch. The loss varies between no loss to losing the whole market. Given the prices, the switching costs and the location, we identify the branches to be closed.

Forecasting the Number of Visitors in a Unique Recreational Site- A Retrospective View

We examine in the research forecasts prepared by us fifteen years ago. We examine the assumptions made as well as the results, comparing the forecasts to reality. We concentrate on the forecasts of number of visitors, which enables to examine economic impact, and is crucial in analyzing ecological carrying capacity. Our case study was a wetland that was drained in the '50s, resulting in severe environmental damages. In the '90s part of the area was re-flooded and a small lake was created. We forecasted the number of visitors, the expected revenues and benefits. The area is currently called Agmon Hula, located in the previous Hula marsh (North of Israel). The commodity planned was a site which offers safari, birds' sanctuary, horse riding, swimming in a pool, picnicking. We asked recreationists in adjacent national parks and nature reserves on their willingness to visit the planned park and their willingness to pay (WTP), using CVM methods. In reality, the site started operation in 2005 as a birds' sanctuary, due to its success in attracting birds. 500 million birds pass the area twice per year migrating to the south in the fall and returning north in the spring. Our forecast for 380 thousand visitors in the first year of operation did not materialize. We could have predicted a smaller number closer to the real number (220 thousand) if we would have considered the percentage that ranked birds' sanctuary as one of their two favorite activities. The prediction assumed an annual increase in the number of visitors of 2-6%, but actually, the increase in the first five years of operation is 8% annually. In the prediction, we disregarded tourists, but they were 7-17% of the visitors. Updating the prediction of number of visitors is easy, and is a crucial aspect in predicting carrying capacity.

BELIEFS AND ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR: THE MODERATING EFFECT OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE.

Recent decades have seen a proliferation of studies aiming to explain how proenvironmental behavior is shaped by attitudes, values and beliefs. In this study, we have included an aspect in our analysis that has been rarely touched upon until now, that is, the intelligent use of emotions as a possible component of pro-environmental behavior. We applied the Trait Meta Mood Scale-24 (TMMS-24) and the New Environmental Paradigm scale to a sample of 184 male and female undergraduate students. We also carried out correlation and hierarchical regression analyses of blocks. The results show the interaction effects of the system of environmental beliefs and the dimensions of emotional intelligence on glass recycling attitudes, intentions and behavior. The results are discussed from the perspective of research on how the management of emotions guides thought and behavior

Los tesoros ocultos del Museo del Prado

Looking at the Madonna by Antonello of Messina in the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, we are faced with (at least) three questions. Is the Virgin of the Annunciation, the Immaculate Mother of God who is about to receive the news that she is going to carry the Son of God in her womb? Or is it a portrait, perhaps of a person we know or could know? But does it matter? No. What matters is that we respond to her as if she were a human being, not a divine or transcendent being, as if she were someone we could meet, even in our wildest dreams. What matters is that almost instantly it arouses our interest, that with the right hand it seems to force us to stop, that we are drawn to the face, beautiful and mysterious, and that we recognize in it someone whose feelings we thought we might understand, someone whose emotional state we could access. Immediately, as soon as we set our sights on it, we feel involved; immediately we notice the shadow that crosses the forehead and the left eye, as well as, in the right half of the face, the slight pout of the mouth, sensual but at the same time enigmatic.' What does all this mean? You have been reading; is raising his hand right now, as if requesting a pause, reflecting, no doubt, on something he has just seen

Dose-Sparing H5N1 A/Indonesia/05/2005 Pre-pandemic Influenza Vaccine in Adults and Elderly Adults: A Phase III, Placebo-Controlled, Randomized Study

Background. Highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 viruses remain a threat to human health, with potential to become pandemic agents

A922 Sequential measurement of 1 hour creatinine clearance (1-CRCL) in critically ill patients at risk of acute kidney injury (AKI)

Meeting abstrac

Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases

The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs) can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e. iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead