DIRECT MARKETING IN THE 1990S: TENNESSEE'S NEW FARMERS' MARKETS

Marketing,

SUPERMARKET PATRONAGE: AN ANALYSIS OF CUSTOMER COUNTS AMONG OUTLETS WITHIN A GEOGRAPHIC AREA

As new supermarket management tools are introduced, the need for an improved understanding of store patronage is growing. Weekly customer counts for five supermarkets located in a Southeastern metropolitan area covering 261 weeks are analyzed. Descriptive statistics indicate that food shopper patterns vary by outlet. Regression equations are estimated for each location. Results point to store specific relationships. They indicate that evaluation of television and radio ads and double couponing can be quite involved.Consumer/Household Economics,

LOCATION AND OTHER MARKET ATTRIBUTES AFFECTING FARMER'S MARKET PATRONAGE: THE CASE OF TENNESSEE

Consumer/Household Economics,

FORECASTING ITEM MOVEMENT WITH SCAN DATA: BOX-JENKINS RESULTS

Preliminary forecasts using the Box-Jenkins methodology for supermarket scan data for ground beef and roast item movement are described. The functional form and the accuracy of the forecasts vary by product. Results suggest that further analyses incorporating price and advertising may increase the accuracy of the forecasts.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Marketing,

The investigation of crime:the myths and the reality

Initially the study focussed on the factors affecting the ability of the police to solve crimes. An analysts of over twenty thousand police deployments revealed the proportion of time spent investigating crime contrasted to its perceived importance and the time spent on other activities. The fictional portrayal of skills believed important in successful crime investigation were identified and compared to the professional training and 'taught skills’ given to police and detectives. Police practitioners and middle management provided views on the skills needed to solve crimes. The relative importance of the forensic science role. fingerprint examination and interrogation skills were contrasted with changes in police methods resulting from the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and its effect on confessions. The study revealed that existing police systems for investigating crime excluding specifically cases of murder and other serious offences, were unsystematic, uncoordinated, unsupervised and unproductive in using police resources. The study examined relevant and contemporary research in the United States and United Kingdom and with organisational support introduced an experimental system of data capture and initial investigation with features of case screening and management. Preliminary results indicated increases in the collection of essential information and more effective use of investigative resources. In the managerial framework within which this study has been conducted, research has been undertaken in the knowledge elicitation area as a basis for an expert system of crime investigation and the potential organisational benefits of utilising the Lap computer in the first stages of data gathering and investigation. The conclusions demonstrate the need for a totally integrated system of criminal investigation with emphasis on an organisational rather than individual response. In some areas the evidence produced is sufficient to warrant replication, in others additional research is needed to further explore other concepts and proposed systems pioneered by this study

Development of Ground-testable Phase Fresnel Lenses in Silicon

Diffractive/refractive optics, such as Phase Fresnel Lenses (PFL's), offer the potential to achieve excellent imaging performance in the x-ray and gamma-ray photon regimes. In principle, the angular resolution obtained with these devices can be diffraction limited. Furthermore, improvements in signal sensitivity can be achieved as virtually the entire flux incident on a lens can be concentrated onto a small detector area. In order to verify experimentally the imaging performance, we have fabricated PFL's in silicon using gray-scale lithography to produce the required Fresnel profile. These devices are to be evaluated in the recently constructed 600-meter x-ray interferometry testbed at NASA/GSFC. Profile measurements of the Fresnel structures in fabricated PFL's have been performed and have been used to obtain initial characterization of the expected PFL imaging efficiencies.Comment: Presented at GammaWave05: "Focusing Telescopes in Nuclear Astrophysics", Bonifacio, Corsica, September 2005, to be published in Experimental Astronomy, 8 pages, 3 figure

On the detection of myocardial scar based on ECG/VCG analysis

In this paper, we address the problem of detecting the presence of myocardial scar from standard ECG/VCG recordings, giving effort to develop a screening system for the early detection of scar in the point-of-care. Based on the pathophysiological implications of scarred myocardium, which results in disordered electrical conduction, we have implemented four distinct ECG signal processing methodologies in order to obtain a set of features that can capture the presence of myocardial scar. Two of these methodologies: a.) the use of a template ECG heartbeat, from records with scar absence coupled with Wavelet coherence analysis and b.) the utilization of the VCG are novel approaches for detecting scar presence. Following, the pool of extracted features is utilized to formulate an SVM classification model through supervised learning. Feature selection is also employed to remove redundant features and maximize the classifier's performance. Classification experiments using 260 records from three different databases reveal that the proposed system achieves 89.22% accuracy when applying 10- fold cross validation, and 82.07% success rate when testing it on databases with different inherent characteristics with similar levels of sensitivity (76%) and specificity (87.5%)

Capital Budgeting for Small Businesses: An Appropriate Modification of Net Present Value

This paper sets forth a capital budgeting technique that is both theoretically correct and sensitive to the special financing needs of the small business. This technique involves evaluating cash flows and determining if they are sufficient to meet the loan payment schedule. A sufficient amount of cash flow must remain after debt obligations are met to compensate the equity investment. Net operating cash flows are discounted at the cost of equity while the tax shield from interest and depreciation is discounted at the cost of debt

A Proposed Capital Budgeting Technique For Liquidity Constrained Small Businesses

Although the ad vantages of capital budgeting models using discounted cash flaws are well known, small businesses continue to rely on non-discounted techniques in making capital budgeting decisions. This paper analyzes the financial environment in which small businesses operate that makes traditional capital budgeting models inappropriate. A capital budgeting technique is developed that is sensitive to the needs of small businesses and also meets the three-fold criteria for capital budgeting methods.