Willingness to pay for locally produced foods: A customer intercept study of direct market and grocery store shoppers

Increasingly, grocery stores are marketing foods differentiated as locally produced. Freshness and taste are obvious reasons for consumer preference for these goods, but also important may be home-bias. Whatever the motive, there is substantial evidence that some consumers are willing to pay premium prices for food characterized as locally produced. A customer-intercept survey and a choice experiment of food shoppers in direct markets and traditional grocery stores was analyzed using Conjoint methods to evaluate WTP for characteristics related to locally grown fresh strawberries. Our results suggest that consumers are willing to pay more for locally produced berries: Customers intercepted in grocery stores would pay an average of 64 cents more per quart, while those intercepted at direct markets would pay nearly $1.17 more per carton of strawberries that was grown locally rather than berries identified simply as "produced in the U.S." These conclusions provide a solid rationale for the existence of niche market potential for local berry producers.Consumer/Household Economics,

Use of a cerclage cable-plate system to stabilize a periprosthetic femoral fracture after total hip replacement in a dog

OBJECTIVE: To report the successful use of cerclage cables around the periprosthetic region of a femoral fracture after total hip replacement (THR) in a dog with bone stock too limited for other methods of fixation. STUDY DESIGN: Case report. ANIMAL: 6-year-old male neutered, golden retriever. METHODS: Locking plate fixation of a type-B1 diaphyseal periprosthetic femoral fracture (PFF) failed 14 days after cementless THR and 6 days after initial femoral fracture repair. Total hip replacement implants seemed unchanged on radiographs, but lateral retraction of the screw-plate construct from the proximal segment was evident. Bone stock was assessed as insufficient for adequate screw purchase, prompting revision of the fixation with cerclage cable fixation of the proximal segment; the cables were anchored to the original locking plate construct with threaded positioning pins that screwed into the locking holes. RESULTS: Acceptable union was documented on radiographs by 3 months after revision. No lameness and good range of motion of the hip were observed on clinical examination 13 months after surgery. Radiographs at 13 months documented static implant positioning and remodeling at the fracture site. CONCLUSION: Use of a cable-plate construct to stabilize a type-B1 PFF led to successful long-term outcome in this dog. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Use of a cable-plate construct may be considered to treat type-B1 PFF with limited bone stock

Determining the Value of Drought-Stressed Corn

Drought-stressed corn for grain or silage does not automatically signal disaster, as both crops can provide high-quality forage for ruminant animals. Drought-stressed corn or corn that is unpollinated will produce little or no grain crop for the crop farmer to sell, but dairy producers can use the unpollinated corn for silage. On a dry matter basis, the drought-stressed corn will be approximately equal in feeding value to normal corn silage

Scanning electrochemical cell microscopy : a versatile technique for nanoscale electrochemistry and functional imaging

Scanning electrochemical cell microscopy (SECCM) is a new pipette-based imaging technique purposely designed to allow simultaneous electrochemical, conductance, and topographical visualization of surfaces and interfaces. SECCM uses a tiny meniscus or droplet, confined between the probe and the surface, for high-resolution functional imaging and nanoscale electrochemical measurements. Here we introduce this technique and provide an overview of its principles, instrumentation, and theory. We discuss the power of SECCM in resolving complex structure-activity problems and provide considerable new information on electrode processes by referring to key example systems, including graphene, graphite, carbon nanotubes, nanoparticles, and conducting diamond. The many longstanding questions that SECCM has been able to answer during its short existence demonstrate its potential to become a major technique in electrochemistry and interfacial science

Percolation properties of the 2D Heisenberg model

We analyze the percolation properties of certain clusters defined on configurations of the 2--dimensional Heisenberg model. We find that, given any direction \vec{n} in O(3) space, the spins almost perpendicular to \vec{n} form a percolating cluster. This result gives indications of how the model can avoid a previously conjectured Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition at finite temperature T.Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps figures. Revised version (more clear abstract, some new references

α-Syntrophin Modulates Myogenin Expression in Differentiating Myoblasts

α-Syntrophin is a scaffolding protein linking signaling proteins to the sarcolemmal dystrophin complex in mature muscle. However, α-syntrophin is also expressed in differentiating myoblasts during the early stages of muscle differentiation. In this study, we examined the relationship between the expression of α-syntrophin and myogenin, a key muscle regulatory factor.The absence of α-syntrophin leads to reduced and delayed myogenin expression. This conclusion is based on experiments using muscle cells isolated from α-syntrophin null mice, muscle regeneration studies in α-syntrophin null mice, experiments in Sol8 cells (a cell line that expresses only low levels of α-syntrophin) and siRNA studies in differentiating C2 cells. In primary cultured myocytes isolated from α-syntrophin null mice, the level of myogenin was less than 50% that from wild type myocytes (p<0.005) 40 h after differentiation induction. In regenerating muscle, the expression of myogenin in the α-syntrophin null muscle was reduced to approximately 25% that of wild type muscle (p<0.005). Conversely, myogenin expression is enhanced in primary cultures of myoblasts isolated from a transgenic mouse over-expressing α-syntrophin and in Sol8 cells transfected with a vector to over-express α-syntrophin. Moreover, we find that myogenin mRNA is reduced in the absence of α-syntrophin and increased by α-syntrophin over-expression. Immunofluorescence microscopy shows that α-syntrophin is localized to the nuclei of differentiating myoblasts. Finally, immunoprecipitation experiments demonstrate that α-syntrophin associates with Mixed-Lineage Leukemia 5, a regulator of myogenin expression.We conclude that α-syntrophin plays an important role in regulating myogenesis by modulating myogenin expression

Existence of a critical point in the phase diagram of the ideal relativistic neutral Bose gas

We explore the phase transitions of the ideal relativistic neutral Bose gas confined in a cubic box, without assuming the thermodynamic limit nor continuous approximation. While the corresponding non-relativistic canonical partition function is essentially a one-variable function depending on a particular combination of temperature and volume, the relativistic canonical partition function is genuinely a two-variable function of them. Based on an exact expression of the canonical partition function, we performed numerical computations for up to hundred thousand particles. We report that if the number of particles is equal to or greater than a critical value, which amounts to 7616, the ideal relativistic neutral Bose gas features a spinodal curve with a critical point. This enables us to depict the phase diagram of the ideal Bose gas. The consequent phase transition is first-order below the critical pressure or second-order at the critical pressure. The exponents corresponding to the singularities are 1/2 and 2/3 respectively. We also verify the recently observed `Widom line' in the supercritical region.Comment: 1+25 pages, 6 B/W figures: Comment on the Widom line added. Minor improvement. Version to appear in `New Journal of Physics

The components of empirical multifractality in financial returns

We perform a systematic investigation on the components of the empirical multifractality of financial returns using the daily data of Dow Jones Industrial Average from 26 May 1896 to 27 April 2007 as an example. The temporal structure and fat-tailed distribution of the returns are considered as possible influence factors. The multifractal spectrum of the original return series is compared with those of four kinds of surrogate data: (1) shuffled data that contain no temporal correlation but have the same distribution, (2) surrogate data in which any nonlinear correlation is removed but the distribution and linear correlation are preserved, (3) surrogate data in which large positive and negative returns are replaced with small values, and (4) surrogate data generated from alternative fat-tailed distributions with the temporal correlation preserved. We find that all these factors have influence on the multifractal spectrum. We also find that the temporal structure (linear or nonlinear) has minor impact on the singularity width $\Delta\alpha$ of the multifractal spectrum while the fat tails have major impact on $\Delta\alpha$, which confirms the earlier results. In addition, the linear correlation is found to have only a horizontal translation effect on the multifractal spectrum in which the distance is approximately equal to the difference between its DFA scaling exponent and 0.5. Our method can also be applied to other financial or physical variables and other multifractal formalisms.Comment: 6 epl page