EFFECTS OF SOCIOECONOMIC AND DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS ON CONSUMPTION OF SELECTED FOOD NUTRIENTS

The effects of socioeconomic and demographic factors on the consumption of food energy, protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, calcium, phosphorus, and iron are examined. Socioeconomic and demographic factors analyzed are urbanization, region, race, ethnicity, sex, employment status, food stamp participation, household size, weight, height, age, and income. Several of these factors significantly affect consumption of certain nutrients. Income is an important factor affecting the consumption of vitamin A, vitamin C, and calcium. Income elasticities are relatively small at low income levels. For example, income elasticities range from 0.016 for calcium to 0.123 for vitamin C at an income level of $20,000.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Animal Welfare Attributes in Dairy Products: Evidence From Experimental Auctions

Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, Livestock Production/Industries,

Direct and alignment-insensitive measurement of cantilever curvature

We analytically derive and experimentally demonstrate a method for the simultaneous measurement of deflection for large arrays of cantilevers. The Fresnel diffraction patterns of a cantilever independently reveals tilt, curvature, cubic and higher order bending of the cantilever. It provides a calibrated absolute measurement of the polynomial coefficients describing the cantilever shape, without careful alignment and could be applied to several cantilevers simultaneously with no added complexity. We show that the method is easily implemented, works in both liquid mediums and in air, for a broad range of displacements and is especially suited to the requirements for multi-marker biosensors.Comment: 5 Pages, 4 figures, letter forma

CONSUMPTION OF CONVENIENCE MEAT PRODUCTS: RESULTS FROM AN EXPLORATORY NEW JERSEY SURVEY

This exploratory study examines the effect of various factors on the decision to consume convenience meat products. Factors important to the decision by consumers to try convenience meat products are fat consciousness, number of adults and children in the household, education level, ownership of a microwave oven, average time to cook dinner, age, and to some extent, income.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

DETERMINANTS OF FARMER-TO-CONSUMER DIRECT MARKET VISITS BY TYPE OF FACILITY: A LOGIT ANALYSIS

This study identifies several socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of individuals who visited farmer-to-consumer direct markets in New Jersey. The analysis was performed for each type of direct marketing facility: pick-your-own farms, roadside stands, farmers' markets, and direct farm markets. Logit analysis results indicate that various factors affect visitation to each type of facility. Factors examined include consumers' consumption and variety of fruits and vegetables, price expectation, purpose of buying, age, sex, education, race, income, urbanization, and presence of home garden.Consumer/Household Economics,

Perturbative method for generalized spectral decompositions

Imposing analytic properties to states and observables we construct a perturbative method to obtain a generalized biorthogonal system of eigenvalues and eigenvectors for quantum unstable systems. A decay process can be described using this generalized spectral decomposition, and the final generalized state is obtained.Comment: 21 Page

Multiple dinosaur egg-shell occurrence in an Upper Cretaceous nesting site from Patagonia

The discovery of hundreds of megaloolithid-type egg-clutches (some including embryos of an indeterminate species of titanosaur sauropods) in several stratigraphical levels of the Late Cretaceous nesting site of Auca Mahuevo (Chiappe et al., 2005) unveiled important aspects of the reproductive behavior of sauropod dinosaurs and stimulated further work at other Patagonian dinosaur egg sites. In November of 2003, a join expedition of the National University of Comahue (Neuquén), the Museo Carmen Funes (Plaza Huincul) and the Museo de Lamarque (Lamarque) conducted fieldwork in several Late Cretaceous localities of Bajo Santa Rosa (center-north Río Negro Province, Argentina) bearing the remains of dinosaur eggs and other terrestrial vertebrates (figure 1). The main focus of this expedition was to assess the diversity of dinosaur eggs, to fine-tune the stratigraphy of the egg-bearing layers, and to document the spatial distribution of the egg-clutches. The overall results of this research were reported elsewhere (Salgado et al., 2007). In this contribution, we make focus in one of the fossil localities worked, Berthe IV, where the association of egg clutches likely belonging to different dinosaur species was detected (figure 1.2). Collected eggshells were observed with a binocular loupe ‘‘Stemi SV6 Zeiss’’, at magnifications of x1.0 and x3.2 (for macrocharacters). Microcharacters were observed in transverse thin section using a polarizing microscope (‘‘Zeiss Axioplan’’) at magnifications of x0.4 and x10. The eggshells were photographed using this polarizing microscope equipped with a digital camera. Prior to analysis, the eggshells were submitted to a process of cleaning using ultrasound (see Salgado et al., 2007 for further methodological details).Fil: Coria, Rodolfo Anibal. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Provincia del Neuquen. Municipalidad de Plaza Huincul. Museo "Carmen Funes"; ArgentinaFil: Salgado, Leonardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigación en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Museo de Geologia y Paleontologia; ArgentinaFil: Chiappe, Luis M.. Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Dinosaur Institute; Estados Unido

Topological self-dual configurations in a Maxwell--Higgs model with a CPT-odd and Lorentz-violating nonminimal coupling

We have studied the existence of topological self-dual configurations in a nonminimal CPT-odd and Lorentz-violating (LV) Maxwell-Higgs model, where the LV interaction is introduced by modifying the minimal covariant derivative. The Bogomol'nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield formalism has been implemented, revealing that the scalar self-interaction implying self-dual equations contains a derivative coupling. The CPT-odd self-dual equations describe electrically neutral configurations with finite total energy proportional to the total magnetic flux, which differ from the charged solutions of other CPT-odd and LV models previously studied. In particular, we have investigated the axially symmetrical self-dual vortex solutions altered by the LV parameter. For large distances, the profiles possess general behavior similar to the vortices of Abrikosov-Nielsen-Olesen. However, within the vortex core, the profiles of the magnetic field and energy can differ substantially from ones of the Maxwell-Higgs model depending if the LV parameter is negative or positive.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figures, Latex2

Theory of weakly nonlinear self sustained detonations

We propose a theory of weakly nonlinear multi-dimensional self sustained detonations based on asymptotic analysis of the reactive compressible Navier-Stokes equations. We show that these equations can be reduced to a model consisting of a forced, unsteady, small disturbance, transonic equation and a rate equation for the heat release. In one spatial dimension, the model simplifies to a forced Burgers equation. Through analysis, numerical calculations and comparison with the reactive Euler equations, the model is demonstrated to capture such essential dynamical characteristics of detonations as the steady-state structure, the linear stability spectrum, the period-doubling sequence of bifurcations and chaos in one-dimensional detonations and cellular structures in multi- dimensional detonations