Marketing Wine on the Web

E-commerce is penetrating agriculture, particularly for selling products directly to consumers. The wine industry is a case in point. The industry has long-term experience in direct marketing. Many wineries welcome patrons at their premises for wine tasting and for selling wine to them. Moreover, where the practice is allowed, shipping wine directly to consumers without the assistance of trade intermediaries is a significant sales channel. E-commerce was adopted early in the wine industries of wired high-income countries and the wine industry provides an opportunity for studying the adoption, use, and impact of e-commerce. Moreover, because e-commerce has not spread evenly through all branches of agriculture, lessons learned from the wine industry may provide useful insights for entrepreneurs and policy makers concerned with sections of agriculture or the food industry where e-commerce adoption lags behind. The specific objectives of the dissertation research project which we report here therefore were: (1) to assess the extent of e-commerce diffusion in the wine industries of Australia, California, Germany; (2) to identify e-commerce practices used by wineries for marketing wine; (3) to explain differences in wineries' e-commerce practices, and (4) to derive insights and implications for sections of agriculture that lag behind in ecommerce adoption.Marketing,

Exploring nonlocal observables in shock wave collisions

We study the time evolution of 2-point functions and entanglement entropy in strongly anisotropic, inhomogeneous and time-dependent N=4 super Yang-Mills theory in the large N and large 't Hooft coupling limit using AdS/CFT. On the gravity side this amounts to calculating the length of geodesics and area of extremal surfaces in the dynamical background of two colliding gravitational shockwaves, which we do numerically. We discriminate between three classes of initial conditions corresponding to wide, intermediate and narrow shocks, and show that they exhibit different phenomenology with respect to the nonlocal observables that we determine. Our results permit to use (holographic) entanglement entropy as an order parameter to distinguish between the two phases of the cross-over from the transparency to the full-stopping scenario in dynamical Yang-Mills plasma formation, which is frequently used as a toy model for heavy ion collisions. The time evolution of entanglement entropy allows to discern four regimes: highly efficient initial growth of entanglement, linear growth, (post) collisional drama and late time (polynomial) fall off. Surprisingly, we found that 2-point functions can be sensitive to the geometry inside the black hole apparent horizon, while we did not find such cases for the entanglement entropy.Comment: 28 pp, 9 figs; v2: updated references, changed color bars in Figure 2 and Figure

Fluid Automation - A Definition and an Application in Remanufacturing Production Systems

Production systems must be able to quickly adapt to changing requirements. Especially in the field of remanufacturing, the uncertainty in the state of the incoming products is very high. Several adaptation mechanisms can be applied leading to agile and changeable production systems. Among these, adapting the degree of automation with respect to changeover times and high investment costs is one of the most challenging mechanisms. However, not only long-term changes, but also short-term adaptations can lead to enormous potentials, e.g. when night shifts can be supported by robots and thus higher labor costs and unfavorable working conditions at night can be avoided. These changes in the degree of automation on an operational level are referred to as fluid automation, which will be defined in this paper. The mechanisms of fluid automation are presented together with a case study showing its application on a disassembly station for electrical drives

Dislocation multiplication by cross-slip and glissile reaction in a dislocation based continuum formulation of crystal plasticity

Modeling dislocation multiplication due to interaction and reactions on a mesoscopic scale is an important task for the physically meaningful description of stage II hardening in face centered cubic crystalline materials. In recent Discrete Dislocation Dynamics simulations it is observed that dislocation multiplication is exclusively the result of mechanisms, which involve dislocation reactions between different slip systems. These findings contradict multiplication models in dislocation based continuum theories, in which density increase is related to plastic slip on the same slip system. An application of these models for the density evolution on individual slip systems results in self-replication of dislocation density. We introduce a formulation of dislocation multiplication in a dislocation based continuum formulation of plasticity derived from a mechanism-based homogenization of cross-slip and glissile reactions in three-dimensional face-centered cubic systems. As a key feature, the presented model includes the generation of dislocations based on an interplay of dislocation density on different slip systems. This particularly includes slip systems with vanishing shear stress. The results show, that the proposed dislocation multiplication formulation allows for a physically meaningful microstructural evolution without self-replication of dislocations density. The results are discussed in comparison to discrete dislocation dynamics simulations exposing the coupling of different slip systems as the central characteristic for the increase of dislocation density on active and inactive slip systems. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

The Illusion of Being Located in Dynamic Virtual Environments. Can Eye Movement Parameters Predict Spatial Presence?

Attention allocation towards the mediated environment is assumed to be a necessary precondition to feel localized in a virtual world. In presence research, however, the potential of eye movement research has not been fully exploited so far. In this study, participants (N=44) rode on a virtual roller coaster simulation. We compare participants scoring high versus low on presence. During the ride, the eye movements and subjective ex post presence judgments were assessed. We found high sensations of presence to be associated with fewer fixations and a tendency towards longer fixation durations. In contrast to the immersive tendency trait, eye movement parameters can predict presence

Chronic Delivery of a Thrombospondin-1 Mimetic Decreases Skeletal Muscle Capillarity in Mice

Angiogenesis is an essential process for normal skeletal muscle function. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1), a potent antiangiogenic protein in tumorigenesis, is an important regulator of both physiological and pathological skeletal muscle angiogenesis. We tested the hypothesis that chronic exposure to a TSP-1 mimetic (ABT-510), which targets the CD36 TSP-1 receptor, would decrease skeletal muscle capillarity as well as alter the balance between positive and negative angiogenic proteins under basal conditions. Osmotic minipumps with either ABT-510 or vehicle (5% dextrose) were implanted subcutaneously in the subscapular region of C57/BL6 mice for 14 days. When compared to the vehicle treated mice, the ABT-510 group had a 20% decrease in capillarity in the superficial region of the gastrocnemius (GA), 11% decrease in the plantaris (PLT), and a 35% decrease in the soleus (SOL). ABT-510 also decreased muscle protein expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in both the GA (−140%) and SOL (−62%); however there was no change in VEGF in the PLT. Serum VEGF was not altered in ABT-510 treated animals. Endogenous TSP-1 protein expression in all muscles remained unaltered. Tunnel staining revealed no difference in muscle apoptosis between ABT-510 and vehicle treated groups. These data provide evidence that the anti-angiogenic effects of TSP-1 are mediated, at least in part, via the CD36 receptor. It also suggests that under physiologic conditions the TSP-1/CD36 axis plays a role in regulating basal skeletal muscle microvessel density

Assessment of Middle Ear Anatomy Teaching Methodologies Using Microscopy versus Endoscopy: A Randomized Comparative Study.

Teaching methodologies for the anatomy of the middle ear have not been investigated greatly due to the middle ear's highly complex structure and hidden location inside of the temporal bone. The aim of this randomized study was to quantitatively compare the suitability of using microscope- and endoscope-based methods for teaching the anatomy of the middle ear. We hypothesize that the endoscopic approach will be more efficient compared to the microscopic approach. To answer the study questions, 33 sixth-year medical students, residents and otorhinolaryngology specialists were randomized either into the endoscopy or the microscopy group. Their anatomical knowledge was assessed using a structured anatomical knowledge test before and after each session. Each participant received tutoring on a human cadaveric specimen using one of the two methods. They then performed a hands-on dissection. After 2-4 weeks, the same educational curriculum was repeated using the other technique. The mean gains in anatomical knowledge for the specialists, residents, and medical students were +19.0%, +34.6%, and +23.4%, respectively. Multivariate analyses identified a statistically significant increase in performance for the endoscopic method compared to the microscopic technique (P < 0.001). For the recall of anatomical structures during dissection, the endoscopic method outperformed the microscopic technique independently of the randomization or the prior training level of the attendees (P < 0.001). In conclusion, the endoscopic approach to middle ear anatomy education is associated to an improved gain in knowledge as compared to the microscopic approach. The participants subjectively preferred the endoscope for educational purposes

Statistical analysis of discrete dislocation dynamics simulations: initial structures, cross-slip and microstructure evolution

Over the past decades, discrete dislocation dynamics simulations have been shown to reliably predict the evolution of dislocation microstructures for micrometer-sized metallic samples. Such simulations provide insight into the governing deformation mechanisms and the interplay between different physical phenomena such as dislocation reactions or cross-slip. This work is focused on a detailed analysis of the influence of the cross-slip on the evolution of dislocation systems. A tailored data mining strategy using the \u27discrete-to-continuous (D2C) framework\u27 allows to quantify differences and to quantitatively compare dislocation structures. We analyze the quantitative effects of the cross-slip on the microstructure in the course of a tensile test and a subsequent relaxation to present the role of cross-slip in the microstructure evolution. The precision of the extracted quantitative information using D2C strongly depends on the resolution of the domain averaging. We also analyze how the resolution of the averaging influences the distribution of total dislocation density and curvature fields of the specimen. Our analyzes are important approaches for interpreting the resulting structures calculated by dislocation dynamics simulations