The Economic Effects of New Product Beef Promotion in Guatemala

The implementation of the Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) has expanded trade opportunities for U.S. agricultural producers. U.S. beef is an important product affected by the agreement, and the United States Meat Export Federation (USMEF) invested in a new product promotion program to increase exports of U.S. beef to Guatemala. Consumer responsiveness and the effectiveness of the U.S. branded beef promotion program are analyzed in this study. Demand responses to promotion activities that launched three new U.S. beef value cuts in Guatemala’s Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional (HRI) sector were estimated by applying the Parks Model of Generalized Least Squares regression to pooled, time-series and cross sectional data. Results show a negative relationship between own price and sales quantity, while the effect of advertising on quantity sold is positive. Demand for the U.S. beef value cuts increased as a result of the promotion, although the costs of the promotion program exceeded the additional revenue generated as a result of promotion activities.Livestock Production/Industries, Marketing,

Mobile User\u27s Privacy Decision Making: Integrating Economic Exchange and Social Justice Perspectives

Recent advances in wireless computing and communication have led to the proliferation of location-based services (LBS). While LBS offer users the flexibility of accessing network services on the move, potential privacy violations have emerged as a contentious issue because details of user identities, movements and behaviors are available to LBS providers. Drawing on the economic exchange and social justice theories, this research addresses privacy issues by examining key mechanisms that can alleviate users’ privacy concerns. A theoretical framework is developed to link three privacy assurance mechanisms (technology control, industry self-regulation, and government legislation) to the individual privacy decision making process. In addition, as the individual privacy decision making is usually dynamic and context-specific, the research model will be tested in three different contexts with three different types of LBS applications (safety, advertising, and social networking applications). This research contributes to a better understanding of the dynamic and dialectic nature of information privacy through a combination of theoretical and empirical research efforts. The interplay between social and technological issues associated with the privacy assurance will be the interests for application developers, service providers and policy makers

The detection of ultra-relativistic electrons in low Earth orbit

Aims. To better understand the radiation environment in low Earth orbit (LEO), the analysis of in-situ observations of a variety of particles, at different atmospheric heights, and in a wide range of energies, is needed. Methods. We present an analysis of energetic particles, indirectly detected by the Large Yield RAdiometer (LYRA) instrument on board ESA's Project for On-board Autonomy 2 (PROBA2) satellite as background signal. Combining Energetic Particle Telescope (EPT) observations with LYRA data for an overlapping period of time, we identified these particles as electrons with an energy range of 2 to 8 MeV. Results. The observed events are strongly correlated to geo-magnetic activity and appear even during modest disturbances. They are also well confined geographically within the L=4-6 McIlwain zone, which makes it possible to identify their source. Conclusions. Although highly energetic particles are commonly perturbing data acquisition of space instruments, we show in this work that ultra-relativistic electrons with energies in the range of 2-8 MeV are detected only at high latitudes, while not present in the South Atlantic Anomaly region.Comment: Topical Issue: Flares, CMEs and SEPs and their space weather impacts; 20 pages; 7 figures; Presented during 13th European Space Weather Week, 201

Managing Risk in a Dynamic World Economy

4 pp.,1 tableThis publication provides an overview of the globalization of U.S. agriculture, with special emphasis on implications for risk management. To be successful in a rapidly changing global environment, farmers will need a clear understanding of risk and how to manage it

The Global Competitiveness of the North American Livestock Industry

Livestock Production/Industries, F14, Q17,

wConnect: A Developmental Community for Women in Computer and Information Science

Non

End-user oriented strategies to facilitate multi-organizational adoption of emergency management information systems

11 pages, 4 figures.Response to large-scale emergencies is a cooperative process that requires the active and coordinated participation of a variety of functionally independent agencies operating in adjacent regions. In practice, this essential cooperation is sometimes not attained or is reduced due to poor information sharing, non-fluent communication flows, and lack of coordination. We report an empirical study of IT-mediated cooperation among Spanish response agencies and we describe the challenges of adoption, information sharing, communication flows, and coordination among agencies that do not share a unity of command. We analyze three strategies aimed at supporting acceptance and surmounting political, organizational and personal distrust or skepticism: participatory design, advanced collaborative tools inducing cognitive absorption, and end-user communities of practice.This work has been funded by the Grant (PR2007-0271) and the Research Project (TSI2007-60388) of Spanish Ministry of Education and Science. SIGAME is a project funded by Dirección General de Protección Civil y Emergencias of Spanish Ministry of Interior.Publicad

Sustaining Computer Use and Learning in Community Computing Contexts: Making Technology Part of Who They are and What They Do

In this paper, we describe our work promoting technological sustainability among community organizations in Centre County, Pennsylvania (USA). We define sustainability as a dynamic process in which IT professionals, designers, and researchers work with community groups in ways that give them greater control over technology in their organization. Promoting sustainability involves finding ways of encouraging technology learning and planning in community groups. We report on the efforts of a community organization (CentreConnect) that works with area nonprofits to promote IT adoption and a participatory design research project (Civic Nexus) aimed at helping community groups use technology to solve problems that they think are important. We report on a joint effort to provide web design training for area nonprofits using this shared experience to consider ways of bridging research and practice when addressing sustainability in community computing contexts