Economics of Change in Market Structure, Conduct, and Performance The Baking Industry 1947-1958

Baking is one of the largest industries in the United States. Its sales, which exceed $4 billion annually, rank it third among the food processing industries, and thirteenth among all manufacturing industries. Bakery products account for nearly$1 out of every $10 spent by American consumers for food. Almost half of the domestic consumption of wheat flour is in the form of bread, rolls, cake, pie, doughnuts, sweet goods, and other perishable bakery products. While this study encompasses the perishable bakery products industry as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, it focuses primarily on wholesale markets for white bread. Since World War II, important changes have occurred in the bread baking industry. A decline in the per capita demand for bread products coupled with changes in technology and costs has affected the relationships between baking companies, their market behavior, and the resulting level of efficiency and price performance. In an industrial economy, the farming, milling, baking, retailing, and consuming functions are integrally related. Changes in the organization and practices in one may induce changes in others. The baking industry occupies a strategic position in this process, and as a result, consumers, farmers, millers, and retailers, as well as bakers themselves, have a vital interest in the way the baking industry performs. Changes in market structure and firm behavior in the baking industry have been the subject of study and concern by several interested individuals and groups. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has followed with increased concern the widening of the market margin and the declining farmer share of consumer bread prices. The Senate Agricultural Committee has completed a study of average cost and returns of bakery operations.The Federal Trade Commission has followed the pricing practices of many baking companies with frequent cease and desist orders. I\u3e The Justice Department, through periodic prosecutions, has kept baking firms aware of the limitation imposed by the antitrust laws. The Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly has studied the impact of discriminatory pricing by large baking companies on small independent bakers.7 The industry has encouraged economic study of the historic development of baking and changes in market organization and practices.s Most recently, the F.T.C. studied buyer concentration and the integration of retail grocery organizations into baking and other food processing industries

Vapor condensation process produces slurry of magnesium particles in liquid hydrocarbons

Vapor condensation apparatus produces a physically stable, homogeneous slurry of finely divided magnesium and liquid hydrocarbons. The magnesium is vaporized and the resultant vapor is cooled rapidly with a liquid hydrocarbon spray, which also serves as the dispersing medium for the condensed magnesium particles

Apparatus for making a metal slurry product Patent

Apparatus for producing hydrocarbon slurry containing small particles of magnesium for use as jet aircraft fue

Use of sensitivity analysis to predict pilot performance as a function of different displays

A technique for objectively evaluating different displays by sensitivity analysis is described. First, the mathematical model used to analyze static displays is developed. The technique is based on formulating functional relationships between the state variables and the variables observable in the display. The matrix of the partial derivatives of the display variables with respect to the state variables, together with the observer's acuity function, is used to calculate expected errors in the state vector estimation. The technique is expanded by the use of Kalman filtering to process a time series of observation vectors. This provides a tool for analyzing displays of dynamic processes by means of a dynamic display evaluation computer program. Results are reported using this program to simulate an Instrument Landing System approach

ISM gas studies towards the TeV PWN HESS J1825-137 and northern region

HESS J1825-137 is a pulsar wind nebula (PWN) whose TeV emission extends across ~1 deg. Its large asymmetric shape indicates that its progenitor supernova interacted with a molecular cloud located in the north of the PWN as detected by previous CO Galactic survey (e.g Lemiere, Terrier & Djannati-Ata\"i 2006). Here we provide a detailed picture of the ISM towards the region north of HESS J1825-137, with the analysis of the dense molecular gas from our 7mm and 12mm Mopra survey and the more diffuse molecular gas from the Nanten CO(1-0) and GRS $^{13}$CO(1-0) surveys. Our focus is the possible association between HESS J1825-137 and the unidentified TeV source to the north, HESS J1826-130. We report several dense molecular regions whose kinematic distance matched the dispersion measured distance of the pulsar. Among them, the dense molecular gas located at (RA, Dec)=(18.421h,-13.282$^{\circ}$) shows enhanced turbulence and we suggest that the velocity structure in this region may be explained by a cloud-cloud collision scenario. Furthermore, the presence of a H$\alpha$ rim may be the first evidence of the progenitor SNR of the pulsar PSR J1826-1334 as the distance between the H$\alpha$ rim and the TeV source matched with the predicted SNR radius R$_{\text{SNR}}$~120 pc. From our ISM study, we identify a few plausible origins of the HESS J1826-130 emission, including the progenitor SNR of PSR J1826-1334 and the PWN G018.5-0.4 powered by PSR J1826-1256. A deeper TeV study however, is required to fully identify the origin of this mysterious TeV source.Comment: 19 figures, 27 pages, accepted by MNRA

ISSUES IN NONMARKET VALUATION AND POLICY APPLICATION: A RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE

While issues in estimating nonmarket values continue to cause concern, resource economists have more reason now than ever before to be optimistic. More progress toward improved measurement has been made in the past six years than in the previous quarter century since development of the contingent valuation and travel cost methods. The new challenge is to learn how to adjust past studies to estimate nonmarket values for future policy analysis. The process involves developing an understanding of the important variables that explain the observed difference in estimates. This paper illustrates how the results thus far could be adjusted to develop some tentative estimates of the recreation-use value of Forest Service resources.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

A large scale extinction map of the Galactic Anticenter from 2MASS

We present a 127deg x 63deg extinction map of the Anticenter of the Galaxy, based on and colour excess maps from 2MASS. This 8001 square degree map with a resolution of 4 arcminutes is provided as online material. The colour excess ratio / is used to determine the power law index of the reddening law (\beta) for individual regions contained in the area (e.g. Orion, Perseus, Taurus, Auriga, Monoceros, Camelopardalis, Cassiopeia). On average we find a dominant value of \beta=1.8+-0.2 for the individual clouds, in agreement with the canonical value for the interstellar medium. We also show that there is an internal scatter of \beta values in these regions, and that in some areas more than one dominant \beta value is present. This indicates large scale variations in the dust properties. The analysis of the A_V values within individual regions shows a change in the slope of the column density distribution with distance. This can either be attributed to a change in the governing physical processes in molecular clouds on spatial scales of about 1pc or an A_V dilution with distance in our map.Comment: 18 pages, 29 Figures, 1 Table, Accepted for publication by MNRAS, A version with higher resolution figures can be found at http://astro.kent.ac.uk/~df

Both doublecortin and doublecortin-like kinase play a role in cortical interneuron migration

Type I lissencephaly, a genetic disease characterized by disorganized cortical layers and gyral abnormalities, is associated with severe cognitive impairment and epilepsy. Two genes, LIS1 and doublecortin (DCX), have been shown to be responsible for a large proportion of cases of type I lissencephaly. Both genes encode microtubule-associated proteins that have been shown to be important for radial migration of cortical pyramidal neurons. To investigate whether DCX also plays a role in cortical interneuron migration, we inactivated DCX in the ganglionic eminence of rat embryonic day 17 brain slices using short hairpin RNA. We found that, when DCX expression was blocked, the migration of interneurons from the ganglionic eminence to the cerebral cortex was slowed but not absent, similar to what had previously been reported for radial neuronal migration. In addition, the processes of DCX-deficient migrating interneurons were more branched than their counterparts in control experiments. These effects were rescued by DCX overexpression, confirming the specificity to DCX inactivation. A similar delay in interneuron migration was observed when Doublecortin-like kinase (DCLK), a microtubule-associated protein related to DCX, was inactivated, although the morphology of the cells was not affected. The importance of these genes in interneuron migration was confirmed by our finding that the cortices of Dcx, Dclk, and Dcx/Dclk mutant mice contained a reduced number of such cells in the cortex and their distribution was different compared with wild-type controls. However, the defect was different for each group of mutant animals, suggesting that DCX and DCLK have distinct roles in cortical interneuron migration

No stratification without representation

Sortition is an alternative approach to democracy, in which representatives are not elected but randomly selected from the population. Most electoral democracies fail to accurately represent even a handful of protected groups. By contrast, sortition guarantees that every subset of the population will in expectation fill their fair share of the available positions. This fairness property remains satisfied when the sample is stratified based on known features. Moreover, stratification can greatly reduce the variance in the number of positions filled by any unknown group, as long as this group correlates with the strata. Our main result is that stratification cannot increase this variance by more than a negligible factor, even in the presence of indivisibilities and rounding. When the unknown group is unevenly spread across strata, we give a guarantee on the reduction in variance with respect to uniform sampling. We also contextualize stratification and uniform sampling in the space of fair sampling algorithms. Finally, we apply our insights to an empirical case study.Accepted manuscrip