953 research outputs found
Tobacco consumption in the home: impact on social relationships and marking territory
In this paper we move beyond viewing the home as a mere context for consumer decision-making to explore consumption practices and socio-spatial relationships within the home in relation to tobacco consumption. Based on focus groups conducted across ten European countries, our findings suggest that smokers view the home as a safe haven where they are sheltered from the outside regulatory environment. However, tension between smokers and nonsmokers demonstrates that consumption practices within the home may become a process of negotiation, resulting in smokers marking territory in efforts to avoid conflict
Self-concept, emotions and consumer coping : smoking across Europe
Whereas much previous research focuses on the ways consumers strive to gain social approval, consumption that may result in social disapproval must be considered. In order to do so, the purpose of this paper is to explore consumers' self-concepts within a risky consumption context, namely smoking. Self-concept discrepancies and the resulting emotions and coping strategies are identified. A qualitative methodology based on 30 focus groups conducted across ten European countries is employed. Findings demonstrate self-concept discrepancies between both the actual self and ought/ideal guiding end states, as well as between the 'I' and social selves. Such discrepancies generate negative emotions and result in emotion-focused coping strategies. In addition, the accuracy of smokers' social self-concepts with reference to the actual perceptions of non-smokers is discussed. Important implications for the design of effective anti-smoking advertising are discussed, based on the findings. It is suggested that counter advertising should encourage dialogue between smokers and non-smokers and that message themes should centre on building the self-efficacy of smokers. The reason why the social context should be an integral part of consumer self-concept research is highlighted. Moreover, the importance of moving beyond merely understanding the existence of self-discrepancies, to focus on the emotions that are generated by these discrepancies and the consequent coping strategies employed to resolve them is identified. As such, the potential contributions that may arise by recognising the intersection between two bodies of literature that are often treated separately, namely, consumer coping and the self-concept, are highlighted
Interacting Electrons, Spin Statistics, and Information Theory
We consider a nearly (or quasi) uniform gas of interacting electrons for which spin statistics play a crucial role. A previously developed procedure, based on the extension of the Levy–Lieb constrained search principle and Monte Carlo sampling of electron configurations in space, allows us to approximate the form of the kinetic-energy functional. For a spinless electron gas, this procedure led to a correlation term, which had the form of the Shannon entropy, but the resulting kinetic-energy functional does not satisfy the Lieb–Thirring inequality, which is rigorous and one of the most general relations regarding the kinetic energy. In this paper, we show that when the fermionic character of the electrons is included via a statistical spin approach, our procedure leads to correlation terms, which also have the form of the Shannon entropy and the resulting kinetic-energy functional does satisfy the Lieb–Thirring inequality. In this way we further strengthen the connection between Shannon entropy and electron correlation and, more generally, between information theory and quantum mechanics
Extreme gravitational lensing in vicinity of Schwarzschild-de Sitter black holes
We have developed a realistic, fully general relativistic computer code to
simulate optical projection in a strong, spherically symmetric gravitational
field. The standard theoretical analysis of optical projection for an observer
in the vicinity of a Schwarzschild black hole is extended to black hole
spacetimes with a repulsive cosmological constant, i.e, Schwarzschild-de Sitter
spacetimes. Influence of the cosmological constant is investigated for static
observers and observers radially free-falling from the static radius.
Simulations include effects of the gravitational lensing, multiple images,
Doppler and gravitational frequency shift, as well as the intensity
amplification. The code generates images of the sky for the static observer and
a movie simulations of the changing sky for the radially free-falling observer.
Techniques of parallel programming are applied to get a high performance and a
fast run of the BHC simulation code
Strategies for the evolution of sex
We find that the hypothesis made by Jan, Stauffer and Moseley [Theory in
Biosc., 119, 166 (2000)] for the evolution of sex, namely a strategy devised to
escape extinction due to too many deleterious mutations, is sufficient but not
necessary for the successful evolution of a steady state population of sexual
individuals within a finite population. Simply allowing for a finite
probability for conversion to sex in each generation also gives rise to a
stable sexual population, in the presence of an upper limit on the number of
deleterious mutations per individual. For large values of this probability, we
find a phase transition to an intermittent, multi-stable regime. On the other
hand, in the limit of extremely slow drive, another transition takes place to a
different steady state distribution, with fewer deleterious mutations within
the asexual population.Comment: RevTeX, 11 pages, multicolumn, including 12 figure
Is cosmology consistent?
We perform a detailed analysis of the latest CMB measurements (including
BOOMERaNG, DASI, Maxima and CBI), both alone and jointly with other
cosmological data sets involving, e.g., galaxy clustering and the Lyman Alpha
Forest. We first address the question of whether the CMB data are internally
consistent once calibration and beam uncertainties are taken into account,
performing a series of statistical tests. With a few minor caveats, our answer
is yes, and we compress all data into a single set of 24 bandpowers with
associated covariance matrix and window functions. We then compute joint
constraints on the 11 parameters of the ``standard'' adiabatic inflationary
cosmological model. Out best fit model passes a series of physical consistency
checks and agrees with essentially all currently available cosmological data.
In addition to sharp constraints on the cosmic matter budget in good agreement
with those of the BOOMERaNG, DASI and Maxima teams, we obtain a heaviest
neutrino mass range 0.04-4.2 eV and the sharpest constraints to date on gravity
waves which (together with preference for a slight red-tilt) favors
``small-field'' inflation models.Comment: Replaced to match accepted PRD version. 14 pages, 12 figs. Tiny
changes due to smaller DASI & Maxima calibration errors. Expanded neutrino
and tensor discussion, added refs, typos fixed. Combined CMB data, window and
covariance matrix at http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/consistent.html or from
[email protected]
Caribbean Current variability and the influence of the Amazon and Orinoco freshwater plumes
Author Posting. © Elsevier, 2007. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers 54 (2007): 1451-1473, doi:10.1016/j.dsr.2007.04.021.The variability of the Caribbean Current is studied in terms of the influence on its dynamics of the freshwater inflow from the Orinoco and Amazon rivers. Sea-surface salinity maps of the eastern Caribbean and SeaWiFS color images show that a freshwater plume from the Orinoco and Amazon Rivers extends seasonally northwestward across the Caribbean basin, from August to November, 3 to 4 months after the peak of the seasonal rains in northeastern South America. The plume is sustained by two main inflows from the North Brazil Current and its current rings. The southern inflow enters the Caribbean Sea south of Grenada Island and becomes the main branch of the Caribbean Current in the southern Caribbean. The northern inflow (14°N) passes northward around the Grenadine Islands and St. Vincent. As North Brazil Current rings stall and decay east of the Lesser Antilles, between 14°N and 18°N, they release freshwater into the northern part of the eastern Caribbean Sea merging with inflow from the North Equatorial Current. Velocity vectors derived from surface drifters in the eastern Caribbean indicate three westward flowing jets: (1) the southern and fastest at 11°N; (2) the center and second fastest at 14°N; (3) the northern and slowest at 17°N. The center jet (14°N) flows faster between the months of August and December and is located near the southern part of the freshwater plume. Using the MICOM North Atlantic simulation, it is shown that the Caribbean Current is seasonally intensified near 14°N, partly by the inflow of river plumes. Three to four times more anticyclonic eddies are formed during August-December, which agrees with a pronounced rise in the number of anticyclonic looper days in the drifter data then. A climatology-forced regional simulation embedding only the northern (14°N) Caribbean Current (without the influence of the vorticity of the NBC rings), using the ROMS model, shows that the low salinity plume coincides with a negative potential vorticity anomaly that intensifies the center jet located at the salinity front. The jet forms cyclones south of the plume, which are moved northwestward as the anticyclonic circulation intensifies in the eastern Caribbean Sea, north of 14°N. Friction on the shelves of the Greater Antilles also generates cyclones, which propagate westward and eastward from 67°W.The study was supported by National Science Foundation grants OCE 03-271808 and OCE 01-36477
Solar Wind Turbulence and the Role of Ion Instabilities
International audienc
Search for lepton-flavor violation at HERA
A search for lepton-flavor-violating interactions and has been performed with the ZEUS detector using the entire HERA I
data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 130 pb^{-1}. The data
were taken at center-of-mass energies, , of 300 and 318 GeV. No
evidence of lepton-flavor violation was found, and constraints were derived on
leptoquarks (LQs) that could mediate such interactions. For LQ masses below
, limits were set on , where
is the coupling of the LQ to an electron and a
first-generation quark , and is the branching ratio of
the LQ to the final-state lepton ( or ) and a quark . For
LQ masses much larger than , limits were set on the four-fermion
interaction term for LQs that couple to an electron and a quark
and to a lepton and a quark , where and are
quark generation indices. Some of the limits are also applicable to
lepton-flavor-violating processes mediated by squarks in -Parity-violating
supersymmetric models. In some cases, especially when a higher-generation quark
is involved and for the process , the ZEUS limits are the most
stringent to date.Comment: 37 pages, 10 figures, Accepted by EPJC. References and 1 figure (Fig.
6) adde
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