From Coffee Beans to Microchips: Export Diversification and Economic Growth in Costa Rica

During the early 1980s Costa Rica experienced its worst economic crisis since World War II, which led to the abandonment of the import substitution model of development adopted in the 1960s. This severe economic downturn also spurred the implementation of a series of new policies supporting foreign investment in high-value-added industries and the diversification of the nation’s exports. As a result, Costa Rica has diversified its economic activity, moved away from its historical dependence on agricultural exports, and gained new competitive advantages in the manufacturing sector. This study presents a straightforward generalization of the model proposed by Herzer and Nowak-Lehnmann’s (2006) to test the hypothesis that export diversification has influenced economic growth in Costa Rica via externalities of learning-by-exporting and learning-by-doing. To examine whether a long-run relationship exists between export diversification and economic growth, two types of statistical methodologies are used: the bounds test to cointegration within a distributed lag (ARDL) framework and the dynamic OLS (DOLS). Overall results sufficiently conclude that, at least in the Granger’s sense, there is no long-run causality between export diversification and economic growth in Costa Rica over the period of 1965 to 2006.International Relations/Trade,

Economic Performance of U.S. Multinational Agribusinesses: Foreign Direct Investment and Firm Strategy

This paper empirically assesses the sequential relationships among firm strategic factors, FDI activity, and economic performance for a sample of U.S.-based Multinational agribusinesses. The most important findings of this research is a positive direct effect of FDI on performance, the complementary effect between FDI and firm strategic factors (positive and significant interaction terms) on performance, and the positive effect of FDI on performance given some thresholds of firm strategic factors. Specifically, it provides insights about the direct effect of FDI on performance, as well as about the joint effect of firm size and FDI, marketing intensity and FDI, and capital intensity and FDI on performance. These findings provide evidence that FDI activity is an important factor for U.S. agribusiness financial strength.Economic performance, Foreign direct investment, Firm strategic factors, Agribusiness, Agribusiness, International Relations/Trade, Marketing, F230, L250,

Assessment of the Impact of Viticulture Extension Programs in Virginia

The study discussed in this article assessed the impact of Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE) on the Virginia wine grape industry. An online survey was developed and administered to members of the Virginia Vineyards Association. The results indicate that the resources and recommendations VCE and Virginia Tech have provided have been beneficial to Virginia grape growers, although growers who operate larger farms, produce wine commercially, or have higher levels of viticulture training are less likely to benefit from the relevant programs. Growers operating near where the programs are often delivered and those with higher levels of experience have benefited the most

Analysis of Media Agenda-Setting Effects on Consumer Confidence in the Safety of the U.S. Food System

Results from continuous tracking of consumer confidence and media coverage of food safety events over a 67 week period between May 2008 and August 2009 are reported. An ordered probit model is used to test the hypothesis that media coverage of food safety events affects consumer confidence in the safety of the U.S. food system. The results show that media coverage significantly and negatively affected consumer confidence in the safety of nation’s food supply during the sample period. Socioeconomic and demographic factors such as geographic region, use of media source, household size, age, ethnicity, education, and gender also had significant affects on consumer confidence in the safety of United States food supply.Food Safety, Consumer Confidence, Mass media, ordered probit, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Consumer Confidence in the Food System, Media Coverage and Stock Prices of Food Companies: A Regression Analysis

A series of recent and serious food safety incidents have generated a national debate over the significant costs that they impose on various stakeholders - consumers, industry, or the government. This paper examines the impact of media coverage of food safety and defense issues on consumer confidence in food safety, and measures the response of stock prices of food companies to changes in consumer confidence. Results show that, increases in media coverage have a negative impact on consumer confidence, and that decreases in the levels of consumer confidence on food safety have a negative impact on stock prices of food companies, in particular for the larger firms. These findings confirm that the financial performance of food the industry is negatively affected by category-specific food safety events, and the effects of media coverage on consumer confidence in the safety of the food system.Agribusiness, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Integration of ROS navigation stack with dynamic environment information in gazebo simulation

Sensing the environment is a crucial task that robots have to perform to navigate autonomously. Furthermore, it must be well executed to make navigation safer and collision- free. As autonomous mobile robots are being deployed in several applications, they often encounter dynamic habitats, where sensing and perceiving the environment becomes harder. This work proposes integrating a wireless sensor network with the Robotic Operating System to incorporate data into layered costmaps used by the robot to navigate, feeding the algorithms with advanced information about the territory. The architecture was tested in simulation, where we could validate the structure and collect data showing improved paths calculated and reduced computational load through better parametrization. Thus, this strategy ensures that the advanced information about the environment has improved the navigation process.The authors are grateful to the Research Centre in Digitalization and Intelligent Robotics (CeDRI) for sharing its facilities and material, and also to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support as mentioned earlier.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Raman-amplified pump and its use for parametric amplification and phase conjugation

We experimentally demonstrate the use of a discrete Raman amplifier for generating a high power, narrow linewidth pump for use within a fiber optical parametric amplifier (FOPA). We demonstrate the suitability of the Raman-amplified pump for parametric amplification by characterizing its optical signal to noise ratio and relative intensity noise (RIN). The amplified pump is subsequently employed within a FOPA obtaining net gain of up to 24.9 dB and a gain of >11 dB over 35 nm. The approach described here offers the key advantage over traditional EDFA-based pump generation of wavelength tuneability outside the EDFA bands. In principle this allows to place the parametric pump at any wavelength within the low fiber attenuation window. Here we additionally demonstrate Raman-assisted optical phase conjugation to provide positive conversion efficiency over 60 nm whilst employing the phase-conjugating pump power of <10 mW not requiring an amplification by EDFA. We consider this technique to show a significant promise for broadband optical phase conjugation and wavelength conversion as well as the prospect for implementation of these important phenomena outside of the EDFA bands

Classification of brain tumor extracts by high resolution ¹H MRS using partial least squares discriminant analysis

High resolution proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹H MRS) can be used to detect biochemical changes in vitro caused by distinct pathologies. It can reveal distinct metabolic profiles of brain tumors although the accurate analysis and classification of different spectra remains a challenge. In this study, the pattern recognition method partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was used to classify 11.7 T ¹H MRS spectra of brain tissue extracts from patients with brain tumors into four classes (high-grade neuroglial, low-grade neuroglial, non-neuroglial, and metastasis) and a group of control brain tissue. PLS-DA revealed 9 metabolites as the most important in group differentiation: &#947;-aminobutyric acid, acetoacetate, alanine, creatine, glutamate/glutamine, glycine, myo-inositol, N-acetylaspartate, and choline compounds. Leave-one-out cross-validation showed that PLS-DA was efficient in group characterization. The metabolic patterns detected can be explained on the basis of previous multimodal studies of tumor metabolism and are consistent with neoplastic cell abnormalities possibly related to high turnover, resistance to apoptosis, osmotic stress and tumor tendency to use alternative energetic pathways such as glycolysis and ketogenesis.14916

Ictiofauna De Riachos Das Cabeceiras Da Bacia Hidrográfica Do Alto Paranapanema

The Paraná River basin has about 600 fish species. In the Upper Paraná, 310 fish species were recorded, with 52 species were registered in the streams and headwaters of the Paranapanema River. The aim of this study was to characterize the stream fish communities in the Upper Paranapanema River basin. Samplings were conducted with electrofishing during the dry season in the year of 2014. The collection effort consisted of 30 streams stretches. As a result, 41 species of stream fish were recorded in the Upper Paranapanema River basin, distributed in 26 genera, 11 families and 7 orders. Thirty-nine percent of the species can be considered rare, 41% intermediate and 20% common. We captured approximately eight species by stream stretch and the estimated richness (Schao2) was 40 ± 6 species. Around 40% of the individuals had less than 50 mm in length. © 2016, Universidade Estadual de Campinas UNICAMP. All rights reserved.16

Stream Fish Fauna From The Tributaries Of The Upper Itapetininga River, Upper Paranapanema River Basin, State Of São Paulo, Brazil

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)The study area, which is located in urban and rural areas within the upper Paranapanema River basin, is undergoing several types of anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic impacts, such as chemical alterations, habitat disruption, and biological invasions. The aim of this study is to describe the fish faunal composition from tributaries of the Itapetininga River, upper Paranapanema River basin, state of São Paulo, Brazil. Herein, we include a list of 49 fish species, belonging to seven orders, 19 families and 35 genera, captured from September 2009 to November 2013. Thus, the present study fills part of the knowledge gap about the fish fauna from tributaries of the Paranapanema basin by adding data from small tributaries not studied so far. Moreover, our findings can help inform future conservational and/or management strategies within the upper Paranapanema basin. © 2016 Check List and Authors.12207/50981-7, FAPESP, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo07/50982-3, FAPESP, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo2012/09346-4, FAPESP, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São PauloFundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP