Regional differences in willingness to pay for organic vegetables

The concern about vegetable safety, together with a booming population and the rise of the middle class has made Vietnam become a potential market for organic vegetables. This paper investigates the determinants of willingness to pay (WTP) for organic vegetables in Hanoi, Vietnam with a particular attention to regional differences and the effect of risk perception. Using Contingent Valuation Method to analyze the data from a sample of 498 consumers in Hanoi, the paper shows that the perceived use values of organic vegetables, trust in organic labels, and disposable family income increased WTP for organic vegetables in both urban and rural regions.Though risk perception of conventional vegetables was high in both regions, such heightened risk perception just translated into the WTP in the rural region. In addition, the percentage of home-grown vegetables in the total vegetable consumption of the family influenced the WTP in the rural region only. Moreover, being an organic purchaser was positively related to the WTP in the urban region but not in the rural region. The paper also discusses three policy implications for Vietnam to boost the demand for organic food.fals

Fractional excitations in the Luttinger liquid

We reconsider the spectrum of the Luttinger liquid (LL) usually understood in terms of phonons (density fluctuations), and within the context of bosonization we give an alternative representation in terms of fractional states. This allows to make contact with Bethe Ansatz which predicts similar fractional states. As an example we study the spinon operator in the absence of spin rotational invariance and derive it from first principles: we find that it is not a semion in general; a trial Jastrow wavefunction is also given for that spinon state. Our construction of the new spectroscopy based on fractional states leads to several new physical insights: in the low-energy limit, we find that the $S_{z}=0$ continuum of gapless spin chains is due to pairs of fractional quasiparticle-quasihole states which are the 1D counterpart of the Laughlin FQHE quasiparticles. The holon operator for the Luttinger liquid with spin is also derived. In the presence of a magnetic field, spin-charge separation is not realized any longer in a LL: the holon and the spinon are then replaced by new fractional states which we are able to describe.Comment: Revised version to appear in Physical Review B. 27 pages, 5 figures. Expands cond-mat/9905020 (Eur.Phys.Journ.B 9, 573 (1999)

K Means Segmentation of Alzheimers Disease in PET scan datasets: An implementation

The Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan image requires expertise in the segmentation where clustering algorithm plays an important role in the automation process. The algorithm optimization is concluded based on the performance, quality and number of clusters extracted. This paper is proposed to study the commonly used K Means clustering algorithm and to discuss a brief list of toolboxes for reproducing and extending works presented in medical image analysis. This work is compiled using AForge .NET framework in windows environment and MATrix LABoratory (MATLAB 7.0.1)Comment: International Joint Conference on Advances in Signal Processing and Information Technology, SPIT201

Is Massage Therapy Effective in Reducing Labor Pain in Intrapartum Women?

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this selective EBM review is to determine whether massage therapy is an effective intervention in reducing pain in intrapartum women. STUDY DESIGN: A systematic review of two randomized controlled trails (RCTs) and one case study published between 2009-2019. All studies were published in English. DATA SOURCES: The two double-blind RCTs and case study were found via PubMed. All sources were published in peer reviewed journals and chosen based on their relevance to the clinical question. OUTCOMES: Pain reduction was the outcome measured in all three studies using visual analog scale. In this systematic review, pain level was evaluated as change from baseline. RESULTS: In the double-blind RCT conducted by Gallo et.al, there was a statistically significant reduction in pain at -17mm with massage therapy. In the quasi-experimental study viewed as a case study conducted by Hajiamini et.al, ice massage was found to reduce pain from baseline by 1.74cm and 1.57cm at zero and thirty minutes, respectively, with a p-value \u3c0.05. However, pain reduction was not found to be statistically significant at sixty minutes after intervention. Lastly, in a double-blind RCT by Taghinejad et.al, the massage therapy group reported 36.3% less pain than the music therapy group with a p-value \u3c0.001. CONCLUSIONS: Both a clinical and statistically significant reduction in pain were demonstrated by all three studies. Thus, the results of this review are conclusive in that massage therapy is an effective method in reducing pain in intrapartum women. Furthermore, massage therapy is an inexpensive, informal, and widely available therapeutic method with the added benefit of having no side effects

Long-term stability studies of a semiconductor photoelectrode in three-electrode configuration

Improving the stability of semiconductor materials is one of the major challenges for sustainable and economic photoelectrochemical water splitting. N-terminated GaN nanostructures have emerged as a practical protective layer for conventional high efficiency but unstable Si and III-V photoelectrodes due to their near-perfect conduction band-alignment, which enables efficient extraction of photo-generated electrons, and N-terminated surfaces, which protects against chemical and photo-corrosion. Here, we demonstrate that Pt-decorated GaN nanostructures on an n+-p Si photocathode can exhibit an ultrahigh stability of 3000 h (i.e., over 500 days for usable sunlight ∼5.5 h per day) at a large photocurrent density (>35 mA cm-2) in three-electrode configuration under AM 1.5G one-sun illumination. The measured applied bias photon-to-current efficiency of 11.9%, with an excellent onset potential of ∼0.56 V vs. RHE, is one of the highest values reported for a Si photocathode under AM 1.5G one-sun illumination. This study provides a paradigm shift for the design and development of semiconductor photoelectrodes for PEC water splitting: stability is no longer limited by the light absorber, but rather by co-catalyst particles