FOOD RETAILING CONSOLIDATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

Agribusiness,

WHAT'S DRIVING FOOD DISTRIBUTION - FORCES FOR CHANGE

Agribusiness, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

CHANGE AND FIRM VALUATION IN U.S. FOOD RETAILING AND MANUFACTURING

The competitive environment in the agri-food sector is evolving as the food manufacturing and retailing industries become more concentrated. Evolving industry structure and new firm investment portend changes in future firm competitiveness and performance. This research describes how large food-manufacturing and retail firm performance has shifted and how firm valuation signals expected future change in performance. While there have been expectations that return on investment of large food retailers would increase relative to large packaged-food manufacturers, we find that this has not yet happened and that market valuations imply that retailers are not likely to gain on manufacturers in the future.Agribusiness,

Exploring Food Purchase Behavior of Low-Income Households: How Do They Economize?

This report compares food purchases by U.S. households of different income levels and finds that low-income shoppers spend less on food purchases despite some evidence that they face generally higher purchase prices. Households can economize on food spending by purchasing more discounted products, favoring private-label (generic) products over brand, pursuing volume discounts, or settling for a less expensive product (for example, less lean beef within a product class. A 1998 sample of food store purchase data shows that low-income households adhere to these practices when possible, but that the typically smaller size of food stores in urban and rural locations may sometimes preclude them from doing so.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

U.S. Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Marketing: Emerging Trade Practices, Trends, and Issues

In the past year, trade practices between fresh produce shippers and food retailers gained national attention. Shippers are concerned that recent retail consolidation has led to market power and the growing incidence of fees and services. Retailers argue that these new trade practices reflect their costs of doing business and the demands of consumers. Trade practices include fees such as volume discounts and slotting fees, as well as services like automatic inventory replenishment, special packaging, and requirements for third-party food safety certification. Trade practices also refer to the overall structure of a transaction-for example, long-term relationships or contracts versus daily sales with no continuing commitment. This study compares trade practices in 1999 with those prevalent in 1994, placing them in the broader context of the evolving shipper/retailer relationship. Most shippers and retailers reported that the incidence and magnitude of fees and services associated with transactions has increased over the last 5 years. Fees paid to retailers are usually around 1-2 percent of sales for most of the commodities we examined, but 1-8 percent for bagged salads. Information on the incidence and magnitude of these new practices is scarce. To augment information that is publicly available, we interviewed a limited number of shippers, retailers, and wholesalers about their firms and trade practices. We received a high level of voluntary cooperation from the interviewed firms.produce, fresh fruit and vegetables, fresh-cut produce, trade practices, fees and services, slotting fees, retail consolidation, produce shipper consolidation, Crop Production/Industries, Marketing,

Method of Dehalogenation using Diamonds

A method for preparing olefins and halogenated olefins is provided comprising contacting halogenated compounds with diamonds for a sufficient time and at a sufficient temperature to convert the halogenated compounds to olefins and halogenated olefins via elimination reactions

Middle and Late Pleistocene environmental history of the Marsworth area, south-central England

To elucidate the Middle and Late Pleistocene environmental history of south-central England, we report the stratigraphy, sedimentology, palaeoecology and geochronology of some deposits near the foot of the Chiltern Hills scarp at Marsworth, Buckinghamshire. The Marsworth site is important because its sedimentary sequences contain a rich record of warm stages and cold stages, and it lies close to the Anglian glacial limit. Critical to its history are the origin and age of a brown pebbly silty clay (diamicton) previously interpreted as weathered till. The deposits described infill a river channel incised into chalk bedrock. They comprise clayey, silty and gravelly sediments, many containing locally derived chalk and some with molluscan, ostracod and vertebrate remains. Most of the deposits are readily attributed to periglacial and fluvial processes, and some are dated by optically stimulated luminescence to Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6. Although our sedimentological data do not discriminate between a glacial or periglacial interpretation of the diamicton, amino-acid dating of three molluscan taxa from beneath it indicates that it is younger than MIS 9 and older than MIS 5e. This makes a glacial interpretation unlikely, and we interpret the diamicton as a periglacial slope deposit. The Pleistocene history reconstructed for Marsworth identifies four key elements: (1) Anglian glaciation during MIS 12 closely approached Marsworth, introducing far-travelled pebbles such as Rhaxella chert and possibly some fine sand minerals into the area. (2) Interglacial environments inferred from fluvial sediments during MIS 7 varied from fully interglacial conditions during sub-stages 7e and 7c, cool temperate conditions during sub-stage 7b or 7a, temperate conditions similar to those today in central England towards the end of the interglacial, and cool temperate conditions during sub-stage 7a. (3) Periglacial activity during MIS 6 involved thermal contraction cracking, permafrost development, fracturing of chalk bedrock, fluvial activity, slopewash, mass movement and deposition of loess and coversand. (4) Fully interglacial conditions during sub-stage 5e led to renewed fluvial activity, soil formation and acidic weathering

Combining a thermal-imaging diagnostic with an existing imaging VISAR diagnostic at the National Ignition Facility (NIF)

Optical diagnostics are currently being designed to analyze high-energy density physics experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Two independent line-imaging Velocity Interferometer System for Any Reflector (VISAR) interferometers have been fielded to measure shock velocities, breakout times, and emission of targets having sizes of 1–5 mm. An 8-inch-diameter, fused silica triplet lens collects light at f/3 inside the 30-foot-diameter NIF vacuum chamber. VISAR recordings use a 659.5-nm probe laser. By adding a specially coated beam splitter to the interferometer table, light at wavelengths from 540 to 645 nm is spilt into a thermal-imaging diagnostic. Because fused silica lenses are used in the first triplet relay, the intermediate image planes for different wavelengths separate by considerable distances. A corrector lens on the interferometer table reunites these separated wavelength planes to provide a good image. Thermal imaging collects light at f/5 from a 2-mm object placed at Target Chamber Center (TCC). Streak cameras perform VISAR and thermal-imaging recording. All optical lenses are on kinematic mounts so that pointing accuracy of the optical axis may be checked. Counter-propagating laser beams (orange and red) are used to align both diagnostics. The red alignment laser is selected to be at the 50 percent reflection point of the beam splitter. This alignment laser is introduced at the recording streak cameras for both diagnostics and passes through this special beam splitter on its way into the NIF vacuum chamber

Erythroid-Specific Expression of β-globin from Sleeping Beauty-Transduced Human Hematopoietic Progenitor Cells

Gene therapy for sickle cell disease will require efficient delivery of a tightly regulated and stably expressed gene product to provide an effective therapy. In this study we utilized the non-viral Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon system using the SB100X hyperactive transposase to transduce human cord blood CD34+ cells with DsRed and a hybrid IHK–β-globin transgene. IHK transduced cells were successfully differentiated into multiple lineages which all showed transgene integration. The mature erythroid cells had an increased β-globin to γ-globin ratio from 0.66±0.08 to 1.05±0.12 (p = 0.05), indicating expression of β-globin from the integrated SB transgene. IHK–β-globin mRNA was found in non-erythroid cell types, similar to native β-globin mRNA that was also expressed at low levels. Additional studies in the hematopoietic K562 cell line confirmed the ability of cHS4 insulator elements to protect DsRed and IHK–β-globin transgenes from silencing in long-term culture studies. Insulated transgenes had statistically significant improvement in the maintenance of long term expression, while preserving transgene regulation. These results support the use of Sleeping Beauty vectors in carrying an insulated IHK–β-globin transgene for gene therapy of sickle cell disease