MARKET SEGMENTATION AND WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR ORGANIC PRODUCTS IN SPAIN

In recent years, consumer concerns on environmental and health issues related to food products have increased and, as a result, the demand for organically grown production has grown. Higher costs of production and retailer margins generate a gap between real prices and those that consumers are willing to pay for organic food. In this article, consumer willingness to pay for organic food in two Spanish regions is analyzed. Markets in both regions are segmented considering consumers lifestyles. Results indicate that consumers concerned about healthy diet and environmental degradation are the most likely to buy organic food, and are willing to pay a high premium. Organic attributes are easily identified in perishable products as the premium consumers would pay for organic meat, fruits, and vegetables is higher.Demand and Price Analysis,

Redes sociales y reflexividad: su importancia en la construcción de la sociedad civil en México

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar algunos de los principales rasgos que presenta la reflexividad de las redes sociales en México, y su importancia en la autoconstrucción de la sociedad civil. Se ofrece una revisión de las principales orientaciones teóricas sobre redes sociales en el país, así como un esquema en el que se plantean tres tipos de reflexividad: autoconsciente, autorreferente y constitutiva, como vías específicas para la diferenciación del caso de estudio

Gravitational capture opportunites for asteroid retrieval missions

Asteroids and comets are of strategic importance for science in an effort to uncover the formation, evolution and composition of the Solar System. Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are of particular interest because of its accessibility from Earth, but also because of their speculated wealth of resources. The exploitation of these resources has long been discussed as a means to lower the cost of future space endeavours. In this paper, we analyze the possibility of retrieving entire objects from accessible heliocentric orbits and moving them into the Earth’s neighbourhood. The asteroid retrieval transfers are sought from the continuum of low energy transfers enabled by the dynamics of invariant manifolds; specifically, the retrieval transfers target planar, vertical Lyapunov and halo orbit families associated with the collinear equilibrium points of the Sun-Earth Circular Restricted Three Body problem. The judicious use of these dynamical features provides the best opportunity to find extremely low energy Earth transfers for asteroidal material. With the objective to minimise transfer costs, a global search of impulsive transfers connecting the unperturbed asteroid’s orbit with the stable manifold phase of the transfer is performed. A catalogue of asteroid retrieval opportunities of currently known NEOs is presented here. Despite the highly incomplete census of very small asteroids, the catalogue can already be populated with 12 different objects retrievable with less than 500 m/s of Δv. All, but one, of these objects have an expected size and transfer requirements that can be met by current propulsion technologies. Moreover, the methodology proposed represents a robust search for future retrieval candidates that can be automatically applied to a growing survey of NEOs

Seasonal dynamic factor analysis and bootstrap inference : application to electricity market forecasting

Year-ahead forecasting of electricity prices is an important issue in the current context of electricity markets. Nevertheless, only one-day-ahead forecasting is commonly tackled up in previous published works. Moreover, methodology developed for the short-term does not work properly for long-term forecasting. In this paper we provide a seasonal extension of the Non-Stationary Dynamic Factor Analysis, to deal with the interesting problem (both from the economic and engineering point of view) of long term forecasting of electricity prices. Seasonal Dynamic Factor Analysis (SeaDFA) allows to deal with dimensionality reduction in vectors of time series, in such a way that extracts common and specific components. Furthermore, common factors are able to capture not only regular dynamics (stationary or not) but also seasonal one, by means of common factors following a multiplicative seasonal VARIMA(p,d,q)×(P,D,Q)s model. Besides, a bootstrap procedure is proposed to be able to make inference on all the parameters involved in the model. A bootstrap scheme developed for forecasting includes uncertainty due to parameter estimation, allowing to enhance the coverage of forecast confidence intervals. Concerning the innovative and challenging application provided, bootstrap procedure developed allows to calculate not only point forecasts but also forecasting intervals for electricity prices.Dynamic factor analysis, Bootstrap, Forecasting, Confidence intervals

Confidence in the Beef Production System as a Key Factor to Mitigate the Impact of BSE on Beef Consumption

Recent food scares in the food market has caused a reduction in consumer's confidence in the food system that it has induced a significant reduction in consumption in a sector, the beef sector that was already characterized by a saturated trend in quantity terms. In this context, all participants in the beef production system are facing to a great challenge, to retrieve consumer's confidence in the food chain and to mitigate the reduction in beef consumption. The aim of the paper is to analyse the impact of consumer's confidence in the food system as well as other factors on the explanation of food consumption reduction. A structural modelling approach has been used to analyse factors affecting the reduction in beef consumption in two different regions characterised by different production systems and different marketing strategies (PGI beef label). Results indicate that main factor explaining the reduction in beef consumption is the confidence in the beef and a positive relation has been found. Moreover, confidence in a product is directly related to the perceived quality offered by farmers and other decision makers on the beef chain, and to the consumer involvement with the product. Therefore, the main implication is that participants in the food chain has to develop adequate communication strategies such as quality labelling in order to increase consumers perceive quality because, higher quality perception will recover consumers' confidence in beef, and therefore, it will mitigate beef consumption reduction.food confidence, consumer behaviour, structural equation modelling, beef sector, quality label, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Soft Skills: A Comparative Analysis Between Online and Classroom Teaching

Currently the Spanish universities are making a great effort to effectively incorporate the development and assessment of generic skills in their training programs. Information and communications technologies (ICT) offer a wide range of possibilities but create uncertainty among teachers about the process and results. It is considered of interest to conduct a study to analyze the extent to which social skills like commitment, communication and teamwork are acquired by students and teachers. It seeks to ascertain the influence of the learning context, online or classroom training, in the development of these personal skills among the participants in the sample. For this study two universities have been chosen, Universidad a Distancia de Madrid (UDIMA) offering online training environment, and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) with classroom training modality. A total of 257 individuals, 230 students and 27 teachers have answered the survey called Evalsoft. This instrument was designed in the project with the same name by a research team from Universidad Complutense of Madrid (UCM). Some interesting conclusions can be highlighted: it is in the online context where there are higher levels of commitment and teamwork than in the classroom modality; teachers have higher social skills that students and these improve with age. Sex and the training program appear to influence these social skills

Wine routes in Spain: A case study

Spain is a country with an enormous wine-growing tradition and with a huge tourist industry, although it has not made the importance of wine tourism profitable. Thus, it was not until 2000 that different official wine routes seemed to appear, with the main objective, amongst others, being to help develop rural areas where wine production is of crucial importance and to offer alternatives to traditional sun and beach tourism. In this paper, we will present an analysis of wine tourism in Spain based on the premise that wine (and regional cuisine) may be, and very frequently is, the main reason for visiting a certain area. To investigate this, we will present the results of an empirical study carried out in one of the official wine routes of Andalusia, a Spanish region where sun and beach tourism and cultural tourism represent a highly significant part of tourist activity. We have analysed how this tourist route is bringing about significant socioeconomic changes to the geographical area. To achieve this aim, we have conducted a survey of the companies involved in the wine route in order to ascertain their opinions on the impact and influence of the route. The main results of the study demonstrate the need to consolidate the development of such routes through collaboration between public institutions, ensuring the participation of all the different social actors involved

La articulación pobreza-desigualdad-violencia en la vida cotidiana de los jóvenes

El artículo realiza un estudio exploratorio en torno al sistema de relaciones pobreza-desigualdades-violencia en el caso dejóvenes de diversas clases sociales en el valle de Toluca, México. En términos metodológicos se acepta una articulación entre perspectivas cuantitativas y cualitativas, en donde lo cualitativo adquiere un papel central en el proceso de comprensión y descubrimiento de sistemas relacionales. El trabajo encuentra que las condiciones de pobreza material adquieren sentido social como parte de una red de situaciones de exclusión y discriminación en donde la violencia resulta el eje articulador de la narrativa de los sujetos sociales. En este sentido las formas de violencia se vuelven determinantes en el curso biográfico y en la vida cotidiana de los jóvenes

Evaluación formativa y desempeño docente, en los maestros de comunicación de la Unidad de Gestión Educativa Local N°13 – Yauyos, 2020

La presente investigación titulada: Evaluación Formativa y Desempeño Docente, en los maestros de Comunicación de la Unidad de Gestión Educativa Local N°13 – Yauyos, 2020. Tiene el objetivo de determinar la relación entre Evaluación Formativa y Desempeño Docente aplicado por los maestros del área de comunicación en la UGEL Nº13 Yauyos 2020. La investigación desarrollada ha sido clasificada como cuantitativa, no-experimental, aplicativa, descriptiva, transversal y correlacional: ya que no se generan cambios entre las unidades de análisis, los datos se recopilan en un solo momento y se propone determinar el grado de relación entre las variables analizadas y que son aplicadas por los docentes del área de comunicación de la UGEL Nº13 que está ubicada en la provincia de Yauyos, la unidad de análisis fue cada docente que labora en el área de comunicación de la UGEL 13. Como resultado de la investigación se ha encontrado que se concluye que existe relación directa y significativa (Rho de Spearman= 0.564 y Sig. = 0,000), entre la variable Evaluación Formativa aplicada por los docentes y el Desempeño Docente que aplican en el área de comunicación de la UGEL Nº13 Yauyos 2020

El distrito histórico de Bedford (Brooklyn, NY), entre 1878-1898 : materia, ornamento y color

Estudio sistemático de la relación entre color y materialidad, tipologías y estilos arquitectónicos en la arquitectura residencial de Nueva York del siglo XIX. Propuesta de una metodología y comparación con aquellas desarrolladas en Europa.Garcia Sanchez, AM. (2014). El distrito histórico de Bedford (Brooklyn, NY), entre 1878-1898 : materia, ornamento y color. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/48965.Archivo delegad