Consumer Preferences for Kitchen Cabinets Made from Red Alder: A Comparison to Other Hardwoods

In Alaska, red alder (Alnus rubra Bong.) is an abundant but commercially underutilized species despite having properties suitable for higher value products, including furniture and cabinetry. However, it lacks the name recognition of more traditional hardwoods. Our research measured the effect of this lack of familiarity on consumer preferences for red alder products, allowing the development of more effective marketing strategies for the species. Our study was conducted in two West Coast market—Seattle, WA, and Anchorage, AK, where attendees at home shows were surveyed about their preferences for cabinet doors made from several different species: cherry (Prunus spp.), red oak (Quercus rubra), hickory (Carya spp.), maple (Acer spp.), and three red alder doors with different levels of stain. Two measures of consumer preference were used: relative popularity (percent of time chosen as favorite), and willingness to pay (the price premium consumers were willing to pay for their favorite versus second favorite door). Maple and cherry doors were overall the most popular doors, as measured by percent of time chosen as favorite. Cherry and red oak showed large increases in popularity when their species names were known, whereas all other species declined in popularity (based on chi-square evaluations). All three alder doors declined in popularity when their names were known, with heavy-stained alder exhibiting the steepest decline. Estimates of mean willingness to pay ranged from $15.70 for moderate-stained alder to$39.30 for maple, suggesting that consumers are willing to pay a significant price premium for their favorite door. With the exception of oak and cherry, doors that were chosen as favorite more (less) often, commanded a higher (lower) price premium. Therefore, doors that are more popular have potential advantages in achieving higher market shares and greater price premiums. Results suggest that when marketing red alder products little, if any, emphasis should be placed on the red alder name; rather emphasis should be placed on red alder's visual characteristics

Patient-centred consent in women's health: does it really work in antenatal and intra-partum care?

BACKGROUND: Legal and social changes mean that information sharing and consent in antenatal and intrapartum settings is contentious, poorly understood and uncertain for healthcare professionals. This study aimed to investigate healthcare professionals' views and experiences of the consent process in antenatal and intrapartum care. METHODS: Qualitative research performed in a large urban teaching hospital in London. Fifteen healthcare professionals (obstetricians and midwives) participated in semi-structured in-depth interviews. Data were collectively analysed to identify themes in the experiences of the consent process. RESULTS: Three themes were identified: (1) Shared decision-making and shared responsibility -engaging women in dialogue is often difficult and, even when achieved, women are not always able or do not wish to share responsibility for decisions (2) Second-guessing women - assessing what is important to a woman is inherently difficult so healthcare professionals sometimes feel forced to anticipate a woman's views (3) Challenging professional contexts - healthcare professionals are disquieted by consent practice in the Labour ward setting which is often at odds with legal and professional guidance. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that there is a mismatch between what is required of healthcare professionals to effect an antenatal or intrapartum consent process concordant with current legal and professional guidance and what can be achieved in practice. If consent, as currently articulated, is to remain the barometer for current practice, healthcare professionals need more support in ways of enabling women to make decisions which healthcare professionals feel confident are autonomous whatever the circumstances of the consultation

The Effects of Mild Chemical Extractions on the Dimensional Stability of uf and pf Bonded Red Oak Flakeboard

Red oak (Quercus rubra L.) flakes were chemically extracted under mild conditions to determine the effects on red oak flakeboard properties, particularly dimensional stability. Flakes were extracted with weak acetic acid solutions or water under selected treatment pressures and treatment times. Weight loss values of extracted flakes ranged from 4 to 25%. Phenol formaldehyde (PF) and urea formaldehyde (UF) bonded flakeboards were manufactured using either red oak or chemically extracted red oak flakes. Physical and mechanical properties evaluated were modulus of elasticity, modulus of rupture, internal bond, water immersion related properties, and linear expansion. Static bending properties of flakeboards using extracted flakes for both resins, even at high levels of flake weight loss, were similar to boards from unextracted flakes. Internal bond average values for the extracted flakes were lower for the PF boards compared to the controls. Internal bond values for the UF boards were similar to the controls. Dimensional stability values for the PF boards were similar for the extracted and control boards. Dimensional stability tests on the UF boards produced the following results: (1) 2-hour dimensional stability values were improved for the extracted versus control boards; (2) 24-hour dimensional stability values for the extracted boards were similar to the control boards; and (3) linear expansion values for the extracted boards were similar to the control values

Constraints on the Progenitor of SN 2016gkg From Its Shock-Cooling Light Curve

SN 2016gkg is a nearby Type IIb supernova discovered shortly after explosion. Like several other Type IIb events with early-time data, SN 2016gkg displays a double-peaked light curve, with the first peak associated with the cooling of a low-mass extended progenitor envelope. We present unprecedented intranight-cadence multi-band photometric coverage of the first light-curve peak of SN 2016gkg obtained from the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope network, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, the Swift satellite and various amateur-operated telescopes. Fitting these data to analytical shock-cooling models gives a progenitor radius of ~25-140 solar radii with ~2-30 x 10^-2 solar masses of material in the extended envelope (depending on the model and the assumed host-galaxy extinction). Our radius estimates are broadly consistent with values derived independently (in other works) from HST imaging of the progenitor star. However, the shock-cooling model radii are on the lower end of the values indicated by pre-explosion imaging. Hydrodynamical simulations could refine the progenitor parameters deduced from the shock-cooling emission and test the analytical models.Comment: Accepted by ApJ

Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor delta from Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma in the ob/ob mouse.

BACKGROUND: The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) are ligand-activated transcription factors and members of the nuclear receptor superfamily. The PPAR family consists of three members: PPARalpha, PPARgamma, and PPARdelta. PPARdelta controls the transcription of genes involved in multiple physiological pathways, including cellular differentiation, lipid metabolism and energy homeostasis. The receptor is expressed almost ubiquitously, with high expression in liver and skeletal muscle. Although the physiological ligands of PPARdelta remain undefined, a number of high affinity synthetic ligands have been developed for the receptor as a therapeutic target for type 2 diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia and the metabolic syndrome. METHODS: In this study, the metabolic role of PPARdelta activation has been investigated in liver, skeletal muscle, blood serum and white adipose tissue from ob/ob mice using a high affinity synthetic ligand and contrasted with PPARgamma activation. To maximize the analytical coverage of the metabolome, (1)H-nuclear magnetic resonance ((1)H-NMR) spectroscopy, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and ultra performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS) were used to examine metabolites from tissue extracts. RESULTS: Analysis by multivariate statistics demonstrated that PPARdelta activation profoundly affected glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, the TCA cycle and linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid essential fatty acid pathways. CONCLUSIONS: Although activation of both PPARdelta and PPARgamma lead to increased insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance, PPARdelta activation was functionally distinct from PPARgamma activation, and was characterized by increased hepatic and peripheral fatty acid oxidative metabolism, demonstrating the distinctive catabolic role of this receptor compared with PPARgamma

Excavations and the afterlife of a professional football stadium, Peel Park, Accrington, Lancashire: towards an archaeology of football

Association football is now a multi-billion dollar global industry whose emergence spans the post-medieval to the modern world. With its professional roots in late 19th-century industrial Lancashire, stadiums built for the professionalization of football first appear in frequency in the North of England. While many historians of sport focus on consumerism and ‘topophilia’ (attachment to place) regarding these local football grounds, archaeological research that has been conducted on the spectator experience suggests status differentiation within them. Our excavations at Peel Park confirm this impression while also showing a significant afterlife to this stadium, particularly through children’s play

Monitoring neonicotinoid exposure for bees in rural and peri-urban areas of the UK during the transition from pre- to post-moratorium

Concerns regarding the impact of neonicotinoid exposure on bee populations recently led to an EU-wide moratorium on the use of certain neonicotinoids on flowering crops. Currently evidence regarding the impact, if any, the moratorium has had on bees’ exposure is limited. We sampled pollen and nectar from bumblebee colonies in rural and peri-urban habitats in three UK regions; Stirlingshire, Hertfordshire and Sussex. Colonies were sampled over three years; prior to the ban (2013), during the initial implementation when some seed-treated winter-sown oilseed rape was still grown (2014), and following the ban (2015). To compare species-level differences, in 2014 only, honeybee colonies in rural habitats were also sampled. Over half of all samples were found to be contaminated (n=408), with thiamethoxam being the compound detected at the highest concentrations in honeybee- (up to 2.29 ng/g in nectar in 2014, median≤0.1 ng/g, n=79) and bumblebee-collected pollen and nectar (up to 38.77 ng/g in pollen in 2013, median ≤0.12 ng/g, n=76). Honeybees were exposed to higher concentrations of neonicotinoids than bumblebees in 2014. While neonicotinoid exposure for rural bumblebees declined post-ban (2015), suggesting a positive impact of the moratorium, the risk of neonicotinoid exposure for bumblebees in peri-urban habitats remained largely the same between 2013 and 2015

A field expansions method for scattering by periodic multilayered media

The interaction of acoustic and electromagnetic waves with periodic structures plays an important role in a wide range of problems of scientific and technological interest. This contribution focuses upon the robust and high-order numerical simulation of a model for the interaction of pressure waves generated within the earth incident upon layers of sediment near the surface. Herein described is a boundary perturbation method for the numerical simulation of scattering returns from irregularly shaped periodic layered media. The method requires only the discretization of the layer interfaces (so that the number of unknowns is an order of magnitude smaller than finite difference and finite element simulations), while it avoids not only the need for specialized quadrature rules but also the dense linear systems characteristic of boundary integral/element methods. The approach is a generalization to multiple layers of Bruno and Reitich’s “Method of Field Expansions” for dielectric structures with two layers. By simply considering the entire structure simultaneously, rather than solving in individual layers separately, the full field can be recovered in time proportional to the number of interfaces. As with the original field expansions method, this approach is extremely efficient and spectrally accurate

An Exploratory Study into the Factors Impeding Ethical Consumption

Although consumers are increasingly engaged with ethical factors when forming opinions about products and making purchase decisions, recent studies have highlighted significant differences between consumers’ intentions to consume ethically, and their actual purchase behaviour. This article contributes to an understanding of this “ethical purchasing gap” through a review of existing literature, and the inductive analysis of focus group discussions. A model is suggested which includes exogenous variables such as moral maturity and age which have been well covered in the literature, together with further impeding factors identified from the focus group discussions. For some consumers, inertia in purchasing behaviour was such that the decision-making process was devoid of ethical considerations. Several manifested their ethical views through post-purchase dissonance and retrospective feelings of guilt. Others displayed a reluctance to consume ethically due to personal constraints, a perceived negative impact on image or quality, or an outright negation of responsibility. Those who expressed a desire to consume ethically often seemed deterred by cynicism, which caused them to question the impact they, as an individual, could achieve. These findings enhance the understanding of ethical consumption decisions and provide a platform for future research in this area