Determinants of Food Choice in a Transitional Economy: Insights from the Theory of Reasoned Action

This paper draws upon a consumer survey carried out in Bucharest (Romania) to explore determinants of food choice in a transition economy. An adapted version of the Theory of Reasoned Action was developed. This included attitude toward intention, habit and preference as independent variables. The structural equations modelling carried out in 'Analysis of MOment Structures' AMOS showed a significant positive influence of all variables. Similar to other studies conducted in European Union (EU) countries (Saba, Di Natale, 1998) habit outweighed the other variables. The study emphasises the heterogeneity of consumer beliefs about food. Furthermore it was suggested that there is scope for noneconomic variables in explaining food choices and consumer behaviour in these emerging economies, though the influence of these variables may be still limited relative the economic factors. Further research on special groups is required to quantify the influence of non-economic factors and compare the results estimated in Romania with other countries which are candidates to EU accession.Theory of Reasoned Action, food choice, transition economy, Consumer/Household Economics,

Features of hadronic and deconfined matter from AGS to LHC energies

Previous extensive studies on the dependence of the average transverse momentum, its slope as a function of the hadron mass and the average transverse expansion on the particle multiplicity per unit rapidity and unit transverse overlap area of the colliding partners are extended to the ratio of the energy density to the entropy density. The behaviour of the ratio between the average transverse momentum and the square root of the particle multiplicity per unit rapidity and unit transverse overlap area $\langle p_T \rangle/\sqrt{\langle dN/dy\rangle/S_{\perp}}$ as a function of collision energy for a given centrality or as a function of centrality for a given collision energy supports the predictions of CGC and percolation based approaches. The dependence of the ratio of the energy density $\langle dE_{T}/dy\rangle/S_{\perp}$ to the entropy density $\langle dN/dy\rangle/S_{\perp}$ at different collision centralities for A-A collisions from AGS, SPS, RHIC and LHC energies is presented. The trend of this ratio towards a plateau at the highest RHIC energies followed by a steep rise at LHC energies is in agreement with theoretical predictions made 40 years ago that indicate this behaviour as a signature of a phase transition. This pattern strongly depends on the collision geometry, converging towards the dependence that characterizes the pp minimum bias (MB) collisions for the most peripheral A-A collisions. Expected similarities between pp and Pb-Pb collisions at LHC energies are confirmed

Extrapolation method in shell model calculations with deformed basis

An extrapolation method in shell model calculations with deformed basis is presented, which uses a scaling property of energy and energy variance for a series of systematically approximated wave functions to the true one. Such approximated wave functions are given by variation-after-projection method concerning the full angular momentum projection. This extrapolation needs energy variance, which amounts to the calculation of expectation value of square of Hamiltonian $\hat{H}^2$. We present the method to evaluate this matrix element and show that large reduction of its numerical computation can be done by taking an advantage of time-reversal symmetry. The numerical tests are presented for $fp$ shell calculations with a realistic residual interaction.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.