PRICE, QUALITY, AND PESTICIDE RELATED HEALTH RISK CONSIDERATIONS IN FRUIT AND VEGETABLE PURCHASES: AN HEDONIC ANALYSIS OF TUCSON, ARIZONA SUPERMARKETS

National opinion polls indicate that pesticide residues on fresh fruits and vegetables remain an important concern of American consumers, despite a decade-long increase in per capita consumption levels for fresh fruits and vegetables. Increased availability of organically grown fruits and vegetables may change consumer produce purchase behavior which is often dominated by appearance considerations. Domestic consumers likely consider and tradeoff price, visual appearance, and health risk when buying fresh produce. This paper uses an hedonic framework to examine price, appearance, and health risk considerations made by Tucson, Arizona shoppers in 1994.Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis,

Emotion and language: valence and arousal affect word recognition

Emotion influences most aspects of cognition and behavior, but emotional factors are conspicuously absent from current models of word recognition. The influence of emotion on word recognition has mostly been reported in prior studies on the automatic vigilance for negative stimuli, but the precise nature of this relationship is unclear. Various models of automatic vigilance have claimed that the effect of valence on response times is categorical, an inverted U, or interactive with arousal. In the present study, we used a sample of 12,658 words and included many lexical and semantic control factors to determine the precise nature of the effects of arousal and valence on word recognition. Converging empirical patterns observed in word-level and trial-level data from lexical decision and naming indicate that valence and arousal exert independent monotonic effects: Negative words are recognized more slowly than positive words, and arousing words are recognized more slowly than calming words. Valence explained about 2% of the variance in word recognition latencies, whereas the effect of arousal was smaller. Valence and arousal do not interact, but both interact with word frequency, such that valence and arousal exert larger effects among low-frequency words than among high-frequency words. These results necessitate a new model of affective word processing whereby the degree of negativity monotonically and independently predicts the speed of responding. This research also demonstrates that incorporating emotional factors, especially valence, improves the performance of models of word recognition

Thermal plume entrainment of ichthyoplankton at the VEPCO Surry Nuclear Power Station : progress report, October 1975

Plume entrainment studies at Vepco Nuclear Power Plant located near Surry, Virginia were initiated in August, 1975 by the Ichthyology department of Virginia Institute of Marine Science. The program was undertaken to define the amount and kinds of fish eggs and larvae that are. present in the Cobham Bay area of the James River and become entrained by the heated effluent

Assessment of mechanical damage to entrained ichthyoplankton, VEPCO Surry Nuclear Power Station

Thermal plume ichthyopla~kton sampling during November and December 1976 was cancelled since Units 1 and 2 of VEPCO Surry Nuclear Power Station were non-operational due to refueling. In lieu of the thermal plume ichthyoplankton entrainment program, a sampling program to estimate mortality from mechanical damage was initiated. Four sampling sites were selected for determination of quantity and condition of organisms entering and leaving the plant. Sites were selected at points preceding and following critical areas where the likelihood of damage was greatest. Net .sets were made using a 0.5 meter paired net apparatus. All sets were at bottom strata to maximize catch of postlarval and juvenile croaker, the dominant species during the sampling period. Specimen condition was ranked into three categories; alive, stunned, and dead. Relative specimen condition; e.g. swimming upside down, broken in half, etc., was also noted. Replicate samples were examined after a time lag to determine latent mortality,if any

L-band radar sensing of soil moisture

The performance of an L-band, 25 cm wavelength imaging synthetic aperture radar was assessed for soil moisture determination, and the temporal variability of radar returns from a number of agricultural fields was studied. A series of three overflights was accomplished over an agricultural test site in Kern County, California. Soil moisture samples were collected from bare fields at nine sites at depths of 0-2, 2-5, 5-15, and 15-30 cm. These gravimetric measurements were converted to percent of field capacity for correlation to the radar return signal. The initial signal film was optically correlated and scanned to produce image data numbers. These numbers were then converted to relative return power by linear interpolation of the noise power wedge which was introduced in 5 dB steps into the original signal film before and after each data run. Results of correlations between the relative return power and percent of field capacity (FC) demonstrate that the relative return power from this imaging radar system is responsive to the amount of soil moisture in bare fields. The signal returned from dry (15% FC) and wet (130% FC) fields where furrowing is parallel to the radar beam differs by about 10 dB

An integrated study of earth resources in the State of California using remote sensing techniques

The author has identified the following significant results. The supply, demand, and impact relationships of California's water resources as exemplified by the Feather River project and other aspects of the California Water Plan are discussed

G3-homogeneous gravitational instantons

We provide an exhaustive classification of self-dual four-dimensional gravitational instantons foliated with three-dimensional homogeneous spaces, i.e. homogeneous self-dual metrics on four-dimensional Euclidean spaces admitting a Bianchi simply transitive isometry group. The classification pattern is based on the algebra homomorphisms relating the Bianchi group and the duality group SO(3). New and general solutions are found for Bianchi III.Comment: 24 pages, few correction

An integrated study of earth resources in the State of California based on ERTS-1 and supporting aircraft data

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Factorizations of Elements in Noncommutative Rings: A Survey

We survey results on factorizations of non zero-divisors into atoms (irreducible elements) in noncommutative rings. The point of view in this survey is motivated by the commutative theory of non-unique factorizations. Topics covered include unique factorization up to order and similarity, 2-firs, and modular LCM domains, as well as UFRs and UFDs in the sense of Chatters and Jordan and generalizations thereof. We recall arithmetical invariants for the study of non-unique factorizations, and give transfer results for arithmetical invariants in matrix rings, rings of triangular matrices, and classical maximal orders as well as classical hereditary orders in central simple algebras over global fields.Comment: 50 pages, comments welcom