Understanding the Influence of Brand Information in Online Purchase Decisions for Health Products

In 2016, over 6% of all retail spending at health and personal care firms was done through an electronic medium. Purchasing health products online provides an interesting challenge to consumers, as not only do consumers often have limited knowledge about which health goods that will best suit their needs (as these tend to be experience goods bought infrequently), but they also face the additional challenge of having to discern the quality of a good only based on its online listing. Hence in this context, a signal, such as the brand information of a good, may be useful in identifying its quality. Additionally, given that online purchasing decisions occur in private, we can rule out some other explanations for consumers choosing branded products, such as reputational concerns. Using data from a health goods retailer operating through Amazon.com from 2013 and 2014, we test whether brand information in the product’s listing influences the demand for health-related goods. We find that having branded information displayed in the product’s listing photo significantly increases the probability consumers consider a health good in their choice set (measured as page views) but not the demand for the goods, except for the case of bandages and dressings

Irrigation Adoption, Groundwater Demand and Policy in the U.S. Corn Belt, 2040-2070

Climate change across the U.S. Corn Belt will significantly increase precipitation variability and temperatures by midcentury. Corn and soybean producers will seek to find strategies that may help to mitigate the potentially negative effects on yield. The adoption of irrigation technology has increased over the last several decades to improve yields in areas with insufficient rainfall, and is currently being adopted by producers who are choosing to minimize risk due to weather variability. To see if this trend in irrigation adoption has the potential to expand in the wake of climate change, this study uses weather data from four General Circulation Models (GCMs) under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 and crop yields, and water use from a crop model to evaluate the profitability of the irrigation investment. The data drives Net Present Value and internal rate of return calculations of investment in irrigation equipment for the present (1980-2005) and midcentury (2040-2070). Simulations of potential water applied for irrigated crops is also examined in contemporary and future time periods, to see how relative water demand may shift for current irrigators, and potential new irrigators. A companion online decision support tool was developed for extension audiences based on the contemporary climate data and default economic parameters developed in this thesis. The Net Present Value of irrigation investment for midcentury producers is largely driven by the yield response to irrigation by soybeans under future climate conditions. While the irrigation of corn is profitable in some locations, namely the western Corn Belt, the locations where irrigating corn is profitable in the future is largely the same as in the contemporary period. Under future weather conditions, the area where irrigating soybeans becomes profitable is greatly expanded, likely due to CO2 fertilization effects and higher temperatures in the northern Corn Belt. Projected irrigation water demand increases across the entire Corn Belt, both from a relative increase in applications from current irrigators, and an increase in the total number of irrigators across the central and eastern Corn Belt. The increase in the profitability of irrigation, and the potential increases in water demanded have important policy implications for the future, if we are to mitigate the potential impacts of climate change while ensuring water supplies are available and safe for the future

Connecting to God : exploring the language, motivation, and three strategic evidences in conversion to Christ

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/1213/thumbnail.jp

De epulis: Een klinische en histomorfologische studie van 227 epuliden

Over de goedaardige afwijkingen welke aan het tandvlees voorkomen en die bekend zijn onder de naam epulis, bestaan vele en uiteenlopende opvattingen. Het ontbreken van een uniforme terminologie heeft de verwarring nog doen toenemen. In klinisch zowel als in histologisch opzicht kunnen epuliden zich in verscheidene vormen voordoen. Herhaaldelijk wordt beschreven dat de epuliden verschillende ontwikkelingsstadia doormaken en in elkaar kunnen overgaan. Door middel van de literatuur en door de klinisch-histomorfologische bewerking van 227 epuliden wordt in dit onderzoek getracht tot een eigen oordeel te komen. Er werd uitgegaan van de klinische indeling van AXHAUSEN als zijnde de meest praktische. Gestreefd werd naar een meer nauwkeurige klassifikatie door de verschillende epulisvonnen aan de hand van de histomorfologie in een pathologischanatomische indeling te rangschikken. Zo bleek het tenslotte mogelijk de volgende vormen te onderscheiden: epulis granulomatosa epulis teleangiectatica epulis gravidarum epulis fibrosa epulis gigantocellularis. ... Zie: Samenvattin

Multi-sensor Object Recognition: The Case of Electronics Recycling

In automated object recognition systems, measurements from a single source of information do not always suffice for the reconstruction of the underlying scene. Incompleteness, inaccuracy and unreliability of the information often leaves room for multiple interpretations of the world which are consistent with the available data. Combination of scene descriptions from multiple sensors can in these cases help to resolve the ambiguity. This thesis discusses the issues involved in the design of a multi-sensor system for object recognition and illustrates these issues in the light of a system for recycling of electronic components mounted on printed circuit boards. Integrated circuits, electrolytic capacitors, batteries and oscillators are the main electronic components of interest that are encountered on printed circuit boards, because these objects are either valuable for re-use or harmful for the environment when they are incinerated. The shape and surface material of these electronic components contain sufficient clues for the discrimination of the different object classes. In order to capture these properties, a pilot system was built which incorporates a range image sensor, a colour camera a high-resolution grey-level camera and an eddy current sensor

Amino acid sequence of retinal transducin at the site ADP-ribosylated by cholera toxin

Transducin was [32P]ADP-ribosylated by cholera toxin in bovine retinal rod outer segments and then partially purified on ω-amino octyl agarose to remove other ADP-ribosylated proteins. Trypsin digestion of the ADP-ribosylated transducin and further purification using boronate-polyacrylamide beads and high performance liquid chromatography yielded a single radiolabeled tetrapeptide, Ser-Arg-Val-Lys. The ADP-ribose is linked to the guanidinium group of arginine

Laboratory Experiments of Entrainment in Dry Convective Boundary Layers

Entrainment in dry convective boundary layers was studied. A saline convection tank set-up was used as a laboratory model for a dry convective atmospheric boundary layer. The entrainment flux was measured using planar laser induced fluorescence (PLIF). It was found that the entrainment flux reveals a much stronger dependence on the inversion strength than large eddy simulations tend to do