The export strategy of the Spanish wine industry

Aim of study: This study analyses how business strategy has influenced the export performance of the Spanish wine industry. In recent decades, Spain has been among those countries that have significantly increased their wine exports. Area of study: We used data collected from a survey comprising 339 Spanish wine-making companies Material and methods: The empirical analysis was carried out by sending a survey and subsequent telephone call to all the independent wineries belonging to PDOs, the number of responses was 339, 14% of the sample. Using the Heckman methodology, we analysed the variables that determine the decision to export and the export intensity. Main results: Spanish firms have successfully used different combined strategies in order to achieve an intensification of exports. This implies that the joint use of strategies that seek efficiency (through cost reduction) while increasing value for the customer (through innovation and improved communication processes and distribution) achieve an increase in the internationalisation of the company. Therefore, the results of this study add new strategic alternatives to those traditionally proposed by the literature Research highlights: Firm strategy also has an effect on export performance in the Spanish wine industry. To grow in international markets, companies can use a combination of different strategic options

Cooperatives and sustainability drivers in the Spanish wine sector. What differences do we find with investor owner firms?

The fight against climate change has become a basic vector for agri-food business strategies. In Spain, commercial wineries (Investor Owner Firms, IOFs) and cooperatives are facing major challenges in adapting to the most stringent environmental requirements and in becoming sustainable and environmentally responsible companies. The European winemaking model, unlike its “new world” competitors, has a very distinct configuration with the predominance of the social economy in parallel with capitalist enterprises. However, these two forms of business organization are different in terms of objectives, position in the value chain, type of organization and form of management. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether these two types of companies have a different orientation towards sustainability, and which are the drivers that facilitate a greater approach to sustainability in each group. With a sample of 411 wineries, the results of the study show a lower orientation towards sustainability among the cooperatives, without a relevant alignment of their resources towards this objective. However, IOFs orient their resources towards sustainability in a consistent and strategic way. This may infer that the European model, with a clear advantage in the social component, could be somewhat more limited in the environmental aspect

Discriminative Bernoulli Mixture Models for Handwritten Digit Recognition

Bernoulli-based models such as Bernoulli mixtures or Bernoulli HMMs (BHMMs), have been successfully applied to several handwritten text recognition (HTR) tasks which range from character recognition to continuous and isolated handwritten words. All these models belong to the generative model family and, hence, are usually trained by (joint) maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). Despite the good properties of the MLE criterion, there are better training criteria such as maximum mutual information (MMI). The MMI is a widespread criterion that is mainly employed to train discriminative models such as log-linear (or maximum entropy) models. Inspired by the Bernoulli mixture classifier, in this work a log-linear model for binary data is proposed, the so-called mixture of multiclass logistic regression. The proposed model is proved to be equivalent to the Bernoulli mixture classifier. In this way, we give a discriminative training framework for Bernoulli mixture models. The proposed discriminative training framework is applied to a well-known Indian digit recognition task.Work supported by the EC (FEDER/FSE) and the Spanish MEC/MICINN under the MIPRCV “Consolider Ingenio 2010” program (CSD2007-00018), iTrans2 (TIN2009-14511) and MITTRAL (TIN2009-14633-C03-01) projects. Also supported by the IST Programme of the European Community, under the PASCAL2 Network of Excellence, IST-2007-216886, and by the Spanish MITyC under the erudito.com (TSI-020110-2009-439).Giménez Pastor, A.; Andrés Ferrer, J.; Juan Císcar, A.; Serrano Martinez Santos, N. (2011). Discriminative Bernoulli Mixture Models for Handwritten Digit Recognition. En Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 2011 International Conference on. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). 558-562. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDAR.2011.118S55856

Outcomes, controversies and gastric volume after laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy in the treatment of obesity

AbstractBackgroundLaparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy is a surgical procedure for the treatment of morbid obesity. However, there are still controversies regarding its efficiency in terms of weight reduction and incidence of complications. In this prospective study, the experience is presented of a referral centre for the treatment of morbid obesity with laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy.Material and methodsA prospective study on 73 patients subjected to laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy from February 2009 to September 2013. Patients were followed-up for a period of 12 months, evaluating the development of complications, reduction of gastric volume, and the weight loss associated with the surgery, as well as their impact on the improvement of comorbidities present at beginning of the study.ResultsThere was a statistically a significantly reduction between the preoperative body mass index (BMI) and the BMI at 12 months after laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (p<0.001), despite there being an increase in the gastric volume during follow-up, measured at one month and 12 months after surgery (p<0.001). Five patients (6.85%) had complications, with none of them serious and with no deaths in the whole series.ConclusionsLaparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy is a safe and effective technique for the treatment of morbid obesity. Its use is associated with a significant reduction in the presence of comorbidities associated with obesity. Multicentre studies with a longer period of monitoring are required to confirm the efficacy and safety of this surgical technique

Redes verticales versus horizontales y desempeño de las exportaciones en la industria vitivinícola española

Las bodegas españolas apuestan por la internacionalización, ya que los mercados locales no tienen capacidad para absorber su producción. Pero solo las empresas más grandes con una mayor productividad pueden cubrir los costos fijos necesarios para ingresar a los mercados de exportación. La teoría de redes sugiere que las empresas pueden superar sus limitaciones de recursos y capacidad cooperando con otras empresas. La pertenencia a una red puede permitir a las empresas adquirir el conocimiento que necesitan sobre los mercados internacionales potenciales, obtener los recursos necesarios para penetrar en ellos y lograr sinergias a través de costos y riesgos. Este estudio busca determinar qué tipo de red (vertical u horizontal) tiene un mayor impacto en el éxito internacional de la firma. Nos basamos en una muestra de 182 bodegas españolas y examinamos las principales variables independientes mediante un modelo de Heckman. Encontramos que la participación en redes tiene un efecto positivo en la intensidad de las exportaciones, y resultando especialmente relevante las redes horizontales, mientras que en las verticales destacan las descendentes sobre las ascendentes

Habitat fragmentation influences nestling growth in Mediterranean blue and great tits

In patchy forest areas, the size of the forest patch where birds breed has a strong influence on their breeding success. However, the proximate effects contributing to lowering the breeding success in small forest patches remain unclear; and a shortage of crucial resources in those forest patches has been suggested to account in some degree for this failure. With the aim to further investigate this issue, we have monitored the breeding cycle of blue and great tits in three ‘large’ forest patches (ranging between 26.5-29.6 ha) and twelve ‘small’ forest patches (ranging between 1.1-2.1 ha) in a Mediterranean area in central Spain, during three years (2011-2013). We also recorded the nestling diet inside the nest-boxes with the aid of handy-cams. Only males significantly differed between forest patch size categories; being on average younger and with better body condition in small patches for great and blue tits respectively. Reproductive traits did not vary between forest patch size categories, but the body condition of blue tit nestlings and the size of great tit nestlings did, being significantly better and larger respectively in large forest patches. The recruitment rate of blue tit nestlings was also higher in large patches. Regarding nestling diet, blue tits did not differ but great tits did, delivering a larger amount of caterpillars in large forest patches. Most variation in the reproductive traits occurred between years, probably due to annual differences in environmental conditions. This study suggests that food supply could be limiting the breeding success of birds above all in small patches, but also in large patches under particular environmental conditions.Funding was provided by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (CGL2010-21933-C02-01) and Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha and European Social Fund (POIC10-0269-7632). ESF and JBE are both supported by a doctoral scholarship from Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha-European Social Fund. RB benefited from the JCCM-FSE 2007/2013 postdoctoral program and from a “Juan de la Cierva” post-doctoral contract (JCI-2011-10945) and ESD enjoyed a pre-doctoral fellowship from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.Peer reviewe

Domestic clustered networks and internationalization of agrifood SMEs

This paper examines how participating in domestic clustered networks in the agri-food industry affects the export status and export intensity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The Uppsala internationalization process model has been revisited in light of the knowledge that these networks can contribute to promoting the presence of SMEs abroad. The study uses a sample of companies in the Spanish wine industry and characterizes 76 domestic clustered business networks (Protected Designations of Origin). The value and originality of the paper reside in its contribution in terms of measuring the degree of internationalization of domestic clustered networks to which SMEs belong. It also assesses the effect of these networks on the internationalization process of the agri-food industry, considering that domestic clustered networks with a strong international commitment generate greater internationalization opportunities. EconLit Citations: F14, M21, Q13, Q17]

Lung Volume Calculation in Preclinical MicroCT: A Fast Geometrical Approach

Lung; Preclinical imaging; VolumePulmón; Imágenes preclínicas; VolumenPulmó; Imatges preclíniques; VolumIn this study, we present a time-efficient protocol for thoracic volume calculation as a proxy for total lung volume. We hypothesize that lung volume can be calculated indirectly from this thoracic volume. We compared the measured thoracic volume with manually segmented and automatically thresholded lung volumes, with manual segmentation as the gold standard. A linear regression formula was obtained and used for calculating the theoretical lung volume. This volume was compared with the gold standard volumes. In healthy animals, thoracic volume was 887.45 mm3, manually delineated lung volume 554.33 mm3 and thresholded aerated lung volume 495.38 mm3 on average. Theoretical lung volume was 554.30 mm3. Finally, the protocol was applied to three animal models of lung pathology (lung metastasis and transgenic primary lung tumor and fungal infection). In confirmed pathologic animals, thoracic volumes were: 893.20 mm3, 860.12 and 1027.28 mm3. Manually delineated volumes were 640.58, 503.91 and 882.42 mm3, respectively. Thresholded lung volumes were 315.92 mm3, 408.72 and 236 mm3, respectively. Theoretical lung volume resulted in 635.28, 524.30 and 863.10.42 mm3. No significant differences were observed between volumes. This confirmed the potential use of this protocol for lung volume calculation in pathologic models

Cognitive rehabilitation in a case of traumatic brain injury using EEG-based neurofeedback in comparison to conventional methods.

Severe traumatic brain injury residual cognitive impairments significantly impact the quality of life. EEG-based neurofeedback is a technique successfully used in traumatic brain injury and stroke to rehabilitate cognitive and motor sequelae. There are not individualized comparisons of the effects of EEG-based neurofeedback versus conventional neuropsychological rehabilitation. We present a case study of a traumatic brain injury subject in whom eight sessions of a neuropsychological rehabilitation protocol targeting attention, executive functions, and working memory as compared with a personalized EEG-based neurofeedback protocol focused on the electrodes and bands that differed from healthy subjects (F3, F1, Fz, FC3, FC1, and FCz), targeting the inhibition of theta frequency band (3 Hz−7 Hz) in the same number of sessions. Quantitative EEG and neuropsychological testing were performed. Clear benefits of EEG-based neurofeedback were found in divided and sustained attention and several aspects related to visuospatial skills and the processing speed of motor-dependent tasks. Correlative quantitative EEG changes justify the results. EEG-based neurofeedback is probably an excellent complementary technique to be considered to enhance conventional neuropsychological rehabilitation.post-print1462 K

Challenges for recovery of large carnivores in humanized countries: attitudes and knowledge of sheep farmers towards brown bear in Western Pyrenees, Spain

During 2017, we studied knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes towards brown bears by extensive mountain sheep farmers in the Western Pyrenees, using a structured questionnaire, specifically, whether the scarce bear presence, or the administrative region, was influential. Livestock raising practices are mainly family properties and have suffered a strong decline in the last decades. Despite its low abundance (only 2 bear individuals during the study period in the area), there was a generalized negative attitude towards the presence of bears. Farmers considered bear presence as incompatible with sheep mountain herding. One third of them have experienced bear damages, although this was not the main difficulty for the viability of farming practices. They were able to change husbandry practices after wildlife and dog’s damages, increasing vigilance, hiring shepherds, and using livestock guarding dogs, whose work is perceived as satisfactory. Farmers considered that information available about bear and compensation systems for damages was insufficient, and should be improved