THE USE OF CHOICE EXPERIMENTS TO ANALYZE CONSUMER PREFERENCES FOR ORGANIC PRODUCE IN COSTA RICA

Choice Experiments are used to elicit Costa Rican consumer preferences for different attributes of organic and conventional vegetables in a hypothetical market. Focus groups identified a primary concern with the food safety and a secondary interest on the environmental impact of production practices. Two alternative national certification seals were proposed: 1) a "Blue Seal" certifying the Department of Public Health's approval for food safety; and 2) a "Green Seal" certifying Ministry of Agriculture's approval for environmentally sound production practices. Three other attributes were selected: "Appearance", "Size", and "Price". These attributes, together with the proposed labels, were presented in different combinations to a sample of 432 Costa Rican consumers at ten supermarkets located in the urban Central Valley. The results of the multinomial logit model demonstrate that the attributes "Appearance" and "Price" the have the strongest influence over the probability choosing alternative scenarios. Also, there was a significant preference for the "Blue Seal" and the "Blue Seal" and "Green Seal" combined. The socioeconomic variables turned out to be not significant in consumer choice. The results show a MWTP of 20% for the "Blue Seal" certifying healthy produce, and an additional 19% for the "Green Seal". The favorable acceptance of the certification seals on the part of the Costa Rican consumer can imply a large internal market for organic and ecologically healthy produce.Consumer/Household Economics,

Strange-Making: a study of curation

The curatorial project “Strange-Making,” a three-person exhibition held at Apothecary Gallery in March 2018, is the culmination of creative research on the application of the term “ostranenie” to contemporary painting in the region surrounding Chattanooga, Tennessee. The technique of “ostranenie” or “enstrangement” is defined in Viktor Shklovsky’s Art, As Device, 1917, as the technique of describing something familiar in a way that makes it appear unknown. “Ostranenie” was originally discussed in terms of imagery in literature. This exhibition and the curatorial statement reveals the direct connection between the role description plays in representational painting as a physical construction of an image, and the role of description of an image in prose. Artwork was selected from three artists: Eleanor Aldrich (Knoxville, Tennessee), David Onri Anderson (Nashville, Tennessee), and Amy Pleasant (Birminghan, Alabama). A two- or three-person exhibition holds greater professional significance because of the focus given to each work in the gallery space and in writing. This paper is an analysis of “enstrangement” in selected artworks as a counter to the automatization of perception that occurs through repetition, routine, and familiarity

Supporting cognition in systems biology analysis: findings on users' processes and design implications

Abstract Background Current usability studies of bioinformatics tools suggest that tools for exploratory analysis support some tasks related to finding relationships of interest but not the deep causal insights necessary for formulating plausible and credible hypotheses. To better understand design requirements for gaining these causal insights in systems biology analyses a longitudinal field study of 15 biomedical researchers was conducted. Researchers interacted with the same protein-protein interaction tools to discover possible disease mechanisms for further experimentation. Results Findings reveal patterns in scientists' exploratory and explanatory analysis and reveal that tools positively supported a number of well-structured query and analysis tasks. But for several of scientists' more complex, higher order ways of knowing and reasoning the tools did not offer adequate support. Results show that for a better fit with scientists' cognition for exploratory analysis systems biology tools need to better match scientists' processes for validating, for making a transition from classification to model-based reasoning, and for engaging in causal mental modelling. Conclusion As the next great frontier in bioinformatics usability, tool designs for exploratory systems biology analysis need to move beyond the successes already achieved in supporting formulaic query and analysis tasks and now reduce current mismatches with several of scientists' higher order analytical practices. The implications of results for tool designs are discussed.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134554/1/13009_2008_Article_29.pd

From Page to Screen: Television and the Decline of Fiction in Magazines

My Capstone project explores how the rise of television contributed to the decline of fiction in magazines and the decline of general interest magazines in America. I argue that television appealed more to advertisers as a mass-market medium than general interest magazines. Magazines had to find a new way to appeal to advertisers, and they did so by becoming niche publications that could offer advertisers a specific type of audience, rather than just a huge amount of readers. Fiction had been used in magazines as a form of mass-market entertainment; with magazines become geared towards specialized interests, fiction fell by the wayside. To make my argument I studied The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s Weekly, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire. I looked at the history of literary tradition in each magazine. I researched why the magazines that are now closed shut down and what changes they made before they closed. For the still-open magazines I compared the amount of fiction each used to run versus the amount they still do and looked at what kind of content had replaced fiction. Magazines used to give emerging writers a place to make a name for themselves and for established writers to test-drive new stories or novel ideas. My paper examines how the American reader has changed since the rise of television, and how the role of the American magazine has had to adapt

Emigranti romani si statistica oflciala din Romania

Subiectut relevantei validitatii rezuitatetor sondajetor de opinie electorate este unul care preocupa evident atat opinia publica si formatorii de opinie, cat si comunltatea stiintifica, mai ales in perioadele de dinaintea alegeritori, cand devine mai vizibil ca de obicei.In rindurile care urmeaza vom propane o manierd de neutralizare a doua dintre capcaneie in care putem cadea atunci cand facem analize longitudinale ale estimarii intentiei de vot: capcana fotosirii unor baze diferite de comparatie si capcana ignorarii emigrantilor informali, cei care nu sunt cuprinsi in statisticile oficiale