Studies on the purification and characterisation of the major albumin seed proteins from pea (pisum sativum L.)

PLA does not contain methionine, but contains a relatively high-level of cysteine (4 residues per polypeptide) suggesting a possible role as a sulphur storage protein. However, its sequence is not homologous to low Mr (2S) storage proteins from castor bean (Ricinus communis) or rape (Brassica napus); PLA therefore represents a new type of low Mr seed protein. The putative storage role of PMA and PLA is not supported by studies on germinating seeds which show that PMA-L, PMA-S and PLA are not significantly degraded. on or after germination during the period in which the major globulin fraction storage proteins are utilised. It is possible that these proteins have no significant role in seed physiology, since a few different pea lines are shown to lack either PMA-L, PMA (L + S), or other proteins of the albumin solubility fractions, although none lack PLA. Further evidence for the non-functional role of PMA is provided by its species distribution; preliminary screening indicates the presence of homologous major albumin proteins only in closely related legume species

Consumers’ Willingness to Pay (WTP) for Organically Farmed Fish in Bangladesh

This study aims to assess the market potential for organically farmed shrimp. The rank-ordered logit model was employed to investigate consumer perceptions; the findings reveal that consumers prefer organic shrimp from mariculture, and inland-farmed shrimp to the coastal version. The willingness to pay (WTP) for conventional shrimp amongst consumers with low knowledge is less than that for organic shrimp amongst highly knowledgeable ones. In addition, the lower WTP for organic shrimp compared with safe shrimp amongst those with a medium knowledge level shows that the organically farmed shrimp market is lagging behind due to limited knowledge and confusion

Forecast of Total Electron Content over Europe for disturbed ionospheric Conditions

A general picture of the occurrence of ionospheric storms as function of local time, season and location is known from numerous studies over the past 50 years. Nevertheless, it is not yet possible to say how the ionosphere will actually respond to a given space weather event because the measurements of the onset time, location of maximum perturbation, amplitude and type of storm (positive or negative) deviate much from the climatology. However, statistical analyses of numerous storm events observed in the Total Electron Content (TEC) since 1995 enable to estimate and predict a most probable upcoming perturbed TEC over Europe based on forecasts of geomagnetic activity. A first approach will be presented here. The forecast of perturbed TEC is part of the Forecast System Ionosphere build under the umbrella of the FP7 project AFFECTS∗ (Advanced Forecast For Ensuring Communication Through Space). It aims to help users mitigating the impact on communication system

Evaluation of E Layer Dominated Ionosphere Events Using COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 and CHAMP Ionospheric Radio Occultation Data

At certain geographic locations, especially in the polar regions, the ionization of the ionospheric E layer can dominate over that of the F2 layer. The associated electron density profiles show their ionization maximum at E layer heights between 80 and 150 km above the Earth’s surface. This phenomenon is called the “E layer dominated ionosphere” (ELDI). In this paper we systematically investigate the characteristics of ELDI occurrences at high latitudes, focusing on their spatial and temporal variations. In our study, we use ionospheric GPS radio occultation data obtained from the COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 (Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate/Formosa Satellite Mission 3) and CHAMP (Challenging Minisatellite Payload) satellite missions. The entire dataset comprises the long period from 2001 to 2018, covering the previous and present solar cycles. This allows us to study the variation of the ELDI in different ways. In addition to the geospatial distribution, we also examine the temporal variation of ELDI events, focusing on the diurnal, the seasonal, and the solar cycle dependent variation. Furthermore, we investigate the spatiotemporal dependency of the ELDI on geomagnetic storms

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A Multi-Disciplinary Approach For Determining Adoption Of Agricultural Price Risk Management Strategies

Australian wool producers have been slow to adopt price risk management strategies to stabilise the income from their wool sales. The highly volatile auction system accounts for 85% of raw wool sales while the remainder is sold by forward contract, futures and other hedging methods. Qualitative analysis was used to find behavioural factors associated with the adoption of price risk management strategies (specifically futures and forward contracts) for selling raw wool. Consideration was given to Diffusion of Innovations and the Theory of Planned Behaviour as theoretical frameworks in order to answer the research question: Are there any non-traditional behavioural factors that need to be incorporated into existing frameworks to determine adoption of price risk management strategies for selling raw wool? In contrast to these prominent theories, data from four focus groups conducted with wool producers in regional Western Australia showed that trust, habit and social cohesion were the major behavioural determinants that governed the adoption of price risk management strategies. The significance of this paper lies in its multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the dimensions of farm-level decision making.Qualitative analysis, trust, habit, social cohesion, forward contracts, wool., Agricultural Finance, Risk and Uncertainty,

Acted vs. natural frustration and delight: many people smile in natural frustration

This work is part of research to build a system to combine facial and prosodic information to recognize commonly occurring user states such as delight and frustration. We create two experimental situations to elicit two emotional states: the first involves recalling situations while expressing either delight or frustration; the second experiment tries to elicit these states directly through a frustrating experience and through a delightful video. We find two significant differences in the nature of the acted vs. natural occurrences of expressions. First, the acted ones are much easier for the computer to recognize. Second, in 90% of the acted cases, participants did not smile when frustrated, whereas in 90% of the natural cases, participants smiled during the frustrating interaction, despite self-reporting significant frustration with the experience. This paper begins to explore the differences in the patterns of smiling that are seen under natural frustration and delight conditions, to see if there might be something measurably different about the smiles in these two cases, which could ultimately improve the performance of classifiers applied to natural expressions

Modeling volatility in foreign currency option pricing

This paper presents a general optimization framework to forecast put and call option prices by exploiting the volatility of the options prices. The approach is flexible in that different objective functions for predicting the underlying volatility can be modified and adapted in the proposed framework. The framework is implemented empirically for four major currencies, including Euro. The forecast performance of this framework is compared with the forecast performance of the Multiplicative Error Model (MEM) of implied volatility and the GARCH(1,1). The results indicate that the proposed framework is capable of producing reasonably accurate forecasts for put and call prices