Market Power in Direct Marketing of Fresh Produce: Community Supported Agriculture Farms

CSA farms establish a loyal customer base and, potentially, market power. A new empirical industrial organization (NEIO) approach and survey data from Northeast CSA farms are used to determine whether CSA farms have market power and the extent to which they exercise their market power. Results suggest CSA farms exert about two percent of their potential monopoly power.Community Supported Agriculture; New Empirical Industrial Organization; Market Power; Fresh Produce; Organic Agriculture

Cultural Sensitivity Training in the U. S. Military: Is There Enough of the Right Stuff?

This study evaluated the quantity and quality of the intercultural and cultural sensitivity training that the United States Military receives, specifically focusing on Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC) cadets. Academic and military journals were consulted to determine the current training practices analyzed for this study, as were doctrine from the United States Air Force and the current university training regimen for future Air Force Officers. A comprehensive set of best-practice standards was deduced from the intercultural sensitivity literature, and the current training regimen for AFROTC cadets then was evaluated based on those standards. Findings, limitations to those findings, and recommendations for changes as well as affirmations of current practices are provided

Some identities on derangement and degenerate derangement polynomials

In combinatorics, a derangement is a permutation that has no fixed points. The number of derangements of an n-element set is called the n-th derangement number. In this paper, as natural companions to derangement numbers and degenerate versions of the companions we introduce derangement polynomials and degenerate derangement polynomials. We give some of their properties, recurrence relations and identities for those polynomials which are related to some special numbers and polynomials.Comment: 12 page

Quantum computing on encrypted data

The ability to perform computations on encrypted data is a powerful tool for protecting privacy. Recently, protocols to achieve this on classical computing systems have been found. Here we present an efficient solution to the quantum analogue of this problem that enables arbitrary quantum computations to be carried out on encrypted quantum data. We prove that an untrusted server can implement a universal set of quantum gates on encrypted quantum bits (qubits) without learning any information about the inputs, while the client, knowing the decryption key, can easily decrypt the results of the computation. We experimentally demonstrate, using single photons and linear optics, the encryption and decryption scheme on a set of gates sufficient for arbitrary quantum computations. Because our protocol requires few extra resources compared to other schemes it can be easily incorporated into the design of future quantum servers. These results will play a key role in enabling the development of secure distributed quantum systems

Light Scattering and Electron Microscopy Study of the Surface Morphology of GaAs Films Grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy

The surface morphology of thermally quenched GaAs films grown by molecular beam epitaxy on GaAs substrates has been studied by elastic light scattering, by scanning electron microscopy and by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) in air. STM shows that the oxide-desorbed surface of GaAs is pitted, but smooths after deposition of a few hundred nanometers of material. Light scattering shows that, after the surface has smoothed, the power spectral density of the surface approaches a q-2 dependence on spatial frequency over the spatial frequency range 0.2 μm-1 \u3c q \u3c 20 μm-1 that is accessible to the light scattering measurements at 488 nm. This result is in agreement with the predictions of dynamical scaling theory in the case where the time evolution of the surface morphology is described by an Edwards-Wilkinson type equation

The Future of History: Investigating the Preservation of Information in the Digital Age

Abstract This study investigates the challenges of preserving information in the digital age, and explores how this may affect the future of historical knowledge. The study is based on a series of semi-structured interviews with forty-one historians, archivists, librarians, and web researchers. While the results reject the idea of a single ‘digital black hole’ in historical records, they emphasize the importance of the issue for the future of history, and the complexity of the solutions to be adopted. The need for planning, for education, and for cooperation between historians and the information professions is also emphasized

Forecasting of emerging therapeutic monoclonal antibodies patents based on a decision model

Therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) market is strongly contributing to the rising growth of the biotechnology industry. Despite the increasing number of inventions over time, a few therapeutic mAbs are currently marketed. This paper focuses on developing an emerging score to select/rank promising therapeutic mAbs patents, based on a hierarchical decision model using expert's opinion. Six attributes related to each factor concerning patent status, patent owner's profile and mAbs medical relevance were analyzed. The desirability levels of each attribute were also assessed. Our data shows the medical relevance factor as the most important, contributing 50% of the emerging score. Among the attributes, the most important under patent status was proper geographic coverage and wider patent scope; for organization's profile was the preexistence of approved drugs; and for medical relevance, the clinical phase performance. A group of 1053 patents related to therapeutic mAb were scored, and the most promising were concerning combination therapy using immune checkpoint inhibitors. The study has managerial implications related to patent portfolio management and patent valuation, and provides instructions to rank mAbs patents according to the emerging score defined by attribute's importance in order to improve the identification of future innovations pathways

Wage led aggregate demand in the United Kingdom

The wage led aggregate demand hypothesis is examined for the United Kingdom over the period 1971 - 2007. Existing studies disagree on the aggregate demand regime for the UK, and this appears to be due to differing empirical approaches. Studies relying on equation-by-equation estimation procedures tend to find support for wage led aggregate demand in the UK, while the single study using systems estimation finds no support for the hypothesis. In order to resolve this incongruity, we test the wage led aggregate demand hypothesis in the UK using VAR models estimated on quarterly data. We use a liberal partial identification strategy based on movements in real earnings rather than in the labour share. The results provide support for the wage led aggregate demand hypothesis during the period of study