The Value of Terroir: Hedonic Estimation of Vineyard Sale Prices

We examine the value of terroir, which refers to the special characteristics of a place that impart unique qualities to the wine produced. We do this by conducting a hedonic analysis of vineyard sales in the Willamette Valley of Oregon to ascertain whether site attributes, such as slope, aspect, elevation, and soil types, or designated appellations are more important determinants of price. We find that prices are strongly determined by sub-AVA appellation designations, but not by specific site attributes. These results indicate that the concept of terroir matters economically, although the reality of terroir--as proxied for by locational attributes--is not significant.

The Value of Terroir: Hedonic Estimation of Vineyard Sale Prices

We examine the value of terroir, which refers to the special characteristics of a place that impart unique qualities to the wine produced. We do this by conducting a hedonic analysis of vineyard sales in the Willamette Valley of Oregon to ascertain whether site attributes, such as slope, aspect, elevation, and soil types, or designated appellations are more important determinants of price. We find that prices are strongly determined by sub-AVA appellation designations, but not by specific site attributes. These results indicate that the concept of terroir matters economically, although the reality of terroir –- as proxied for by locational attributes –- is not significant.swine, vineyard, hedonic price analysis

The Value of Terroir: Hedonic Estimation of Vineyard Sale Prices

We examine the value of terroir, which refers to the special characteristics of a place that impart unique qualities to the wine produced. We do this by conducting a hedonic analysis of vineyard sales in the Willamette Valley of Oregon to ascertain whether site attributes, such as slope, aspect, elevation, and soil types, or designated appellations are more important determinants of price. We find that prices are strongly determined by sub-AVA appellation designations, but not by specific site attributes. These results indicate that the concept of terroir matters economically, although the reality of terroir – as proxied for by locational attributes – is not significantWine, Vineyard, Hedonic Price Analysis

Dynamics and Steady States in excitable mobile agent systems

We study the spreading of excitations in 2D systems of mobile agents where the excitation is transmitted when a quiescent agent keeps contact with an excited one during a non-vanishing time. We show that the steady states strongly depend on the spatial agent dynamics. Moreover, the coupling between exposition time ($\omega$) and agent-agent contact rate (CR) becomes crucial to understand the excitation dynamics, which exhibits three regimes with CR: no excitation for low CR, an excited regime in which the number of quiescent agents (S) is inversely proportional to CR, and for high CR, a novel third regime, model dependent, here S scales with an exponent $\xi -1$, with $\xi$ being the scaling exponent of $\omega$ with CR

Cross-Cultural Perspectives of Knowledge Sharing for Different Virtual Classroom Environments: A Case Study of Thai Students in Thai and Australian Universities

Collaborative learning has been accepted as an effective learning style that can enhance students‘ and instructors‘ ability to create knowledge and develop understanding. To enhance an effective collaboration learning environment needs the sharing of similar knowledge, background and experience through information communication technologies (ICT). There are a number of ways in which culture influences the use of these information technologies. The cultural characteristics, which can be viewed as the influencing factors on knowledge sharing in a virtual classroom, are power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and collectivism. The main purpose of this study was to investigate how the differences in cultural values affect the way Thai students in both Thailand and Australia access and share knowledge in a virtual classroom. According to Hofstede, the national culture between Thais and Australians are different in the degree of power distance, uncertainty avoidance and individualism/collectivism. Thais are likely to have high power distance, high uncertainty avoidance and collectivism while Australians have low power distance, low uncertainty avoidance and individualism. A qualitative method using t-test and Multiple Regression analysis was chosen to test the research hypotheses that Thai students in Thai universities have greater difficulty in knowledge sharing than Thai students in Australian universities. A questionnaire survey designed to identify cultural differences was administrated to 100 students in Thai universities and 100 students in Australian universities who used ICT for sharing knowledge in their virtual classroom. The findings of the study and recommendations will be outlined. The research outcome of the study can assist project managers in implementing effective open-wide knowledge exchange systems

Designing novel applications for emerging multimedia technology

Current R&D in media technologies such as Multimedia, Semantic Web and Sensor Web technologies are advancing in a fierce rate and will sure to become part of our important regular items in a 'conventional' technology inventory in near future. While the R&D nature of these technologies means their accuracy, reliability and robustness are not sufficient enough to be used in real world yet, we want to envision now the near-future where these technologies will have matured and used in real applications in order to explore and start shaping many possible new ways these novel technologies could be utilised. In this talk, some of this effort in designing novel applications that incorporate various media technologies as their backend will be presented. Examples include novel scenarios of LifeLogging application that incorporate automatic structuring of millions of photos passively captured from a SenseCam (wearable digital camera that automatically takes photos triggered by environmental sensors) and an interactive TV application incorporating a number of multimedia tools yet extremely simple and easy to use with a remote control in a lean-back position. The talk will conclude with remarks on how the design of novel applications that have no precedence or existing user base should require somewhat different approach from those suggested and practiced in conventional usability engineering methodology

Exploring the planetary-mass population in the Upper Scorpius association

We aim at identifying very low-mass isolated planetary-mass member candidates in the nearest OB association to the Sun, Upper Scorpius (145 pc; 5-10 Myr), to constrain the form and shape of the luminosity function and mass spectrum in this regime. We conducted a deep multi-band ($Y$=21.2, $J$=20.5, $Z$=22.0 mag) photometric survey of six square degrees in the central region of Upper Scorpius. We extend the current sequence of astrometric and spectroscopic members by about two magnitudes in $Y$ and one magnitude in $J$, reaching potentially T-type free-floating members in the association with predicted masses below 5 Jupiter masses, well into the planetary-mass regime. We extracted a sample of 57 candidates in this area and present infrared spectroscopy confirming two of them as young L-type members with characteristic spectral features of 10 Myr-old brown dwarfs. Among the 57 candidates, we highlight 10 new candidates fainter than the coolest members previously confirmed spectroscopically. We do not see any obvious sign of decrease in the mass spectrum of the association, suggesting that star processes can form substellar objects with masses down to 4-5 Jupiter masses.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, 1 appendix with 3 tables that will be public through Vizier at CDS, accepted by MNRA