My Grazing Experience: Reflections and Observations

My pastures are utilized by a beef operation consisting primarily of a small cow/calf herd (30 cows), and a stocker operation numbering from 300-350 head annually, which are grazed only, from spring until fall. These stockers are purchased, continental breed calves, weighing from 500-550 pounds. In the fall, they are sold to Laura’s Lean Beef, usually at a forward contracted price after adding 300 pounds of gain. Occasionally, the stocking includes calves not eligible for Laura’s Lean which are then sold in truckload lots through internet sales

Political advertising in democratic Taiwan: audiences' perspectives on political figures through image-building advertisements

One can gain important insights into the effects of political advertising by looking at decoding and interpretation in audience perception studies. This essay considers two genres of political advertisement-celebrity endorsement and emotional appeal-through six focus groups formed by either Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) or Kuomintang (KMT) identifiers. It focuses on three key themes for comparison: the participants’ involvement, their interpretations of the key messages, and opinions that were important to them. This study aims to further the understanding of how political advertisements are interpreted and to bring some practical knowledge to the field by comparing the perspectives of audiences of differing political orientations

Evaluating service marketing in airline industry and its influence on student passengers' purchasing behaviour-using Taipei-London route as an example.

This paper reports an empirical study into airline consumer purchase behaviour on a major global route, that between the United Kingdom and Taipei. It focuses on the factors influencing airline choice for a sample of 60 Taiwanese students based at UK Universities and travelling on five airlines: British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, China Airlines, EVA Airways and Royal Dutch Airways. Several stages of data-gathering were undertaken and a well-established analytical framework for services marketing was used to identify gaps between the desired and received service. The main findings suggest that service quality, including in-flight entertainment, cabin crew attitude and seating comfort, can be as important as, or more important than, price in student purchase decisions for long-haul flights. Other important factors in carrier choice included student discounts, baggage allowances and airline safety record. Key Words: Service Marketing, Airline Industry, Consumer Behaviour, Taiwan, Touris

Hit-and-run transcriptional control by bZIP1 mediates rapid nutrient signaling in Arabidopsis

The dynamic nature of gene regulatory networks allows cells to rapidly respond to environmental change. However, the underlying temporal connections are missed, even in kinetic studies, as transcription factor (TF) binding within at least one time point is required to identify primary targets. The TF-regulated but unbound genes are dismissed as secondary targets. Instead, we report that these genes comprise transient TF-target interactions most relevant to rapid signal transduction. We temporally perturbed a master TF (Basic Leucine Zipper 1, bZIP1) and the nitrogen (N) signal it transduces and integrated TF regulation and binding data from the same cell samples. Our enabling approach could identify primary TF targets based solely on gene regulation, in the absence of TF binding. We uncovered three classes of primary TF targets: (i) poised (TF-bound but not TF-regulated), (ii) stable (TF-bound and TF-regulated), and (iii) transient (TF-regulated but not TF-bound), the largest class. Unexpectedly, the transient bZIP1 targets are uniquely relevant to rapid N signaling in planta, enriched in dynamic N-responsive genes, and regulated by TF and N signal interactions. These transient targets include early N responders nitrate transporter 2.1 and NIN-like protein 3, bound by bZIP1 at 1-5 min, but not at later time points following TF perturbation. Moreover, promoters of these transient targets are uniquely enriched with cis-regulatory motifs coinherited with bZIP1 binding sites, suggesting a recruitment role for bZIP1. This transient mode of TF action supports a classic, but forgotten, "hit-and-run" transcription model, which enables a "catalyst TF" to activate a large set of targets within minutes of signal perturbation

Advertising at the threshold: paratextual promotion in the era of media convergence

In the media convergence era, brands are embracing hybrid forms of advertising communication such as branded content, product placement and sponsored TV ‘pods’, brand blogs, shareable video, programmatic advertising, ‘native’ advertising and more, as alternatives to, and extensions of, traditional mass media advertising campaigns. In this article, we draw on Genette’s theory of transtextuality to reframe this phenomenon from a paratextual purview. We suggest that the analogy of the paratext articulates the iterative, ambiguous, participative and intertextual character of much contemporary brand communication. We describe extended examples of paratextual advertising and promotion that illustrate the fluid and mutually contingent relation of advertising text to paratext, and we outline an analytical framework for future research and practice