A Hedonic Analysis of Sheep and Goat Prices in a Changing Environment: The Role of Consumers and Implications for Management

This paper examines whether buyers of live lambs and goats in the Northeast region have systematic preferences for specific live product attributes (age, weight, market class, sales lot size, market location and timing of sale) and whether they pay significantly different prices for these attributes consistent with their preferences. Non-linear hedonic models are estimated using auction price and quality data for live lambs and goats in specific Northeast markets. The results indicate that both lamb and goat buyers have systematic preferences for specific weight, market class and timing of sale, and that these preferences are implicitly reflected in prices offered in traditional auction markets. Producers can capitalize on price differences based on these attributes by targeting specific weight and market class categories and by better timing production and marketing undertakings.Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

The role of hypoxia and complement receptor 2 or toll-like receptor 2 on B1 B cell effector function

Master of ScienceDivision of BiologySherry D. FlemingProfessional phagocytes play a critical role in maintaining homeostasis within a host through phagocytic, microbicidal, and inflammatory activity. Complement receptors (CR) and toll-like receptors (TLRs) aid in phagocytosis and stimulate these cells to enhance the immune response. Environmental factors such as hypoxia, prevalent at sites of tissue damage or infection, induce a similar effect. Systemic components such as opsonins may further enhance phagocyte activity. Similar to professional phagocytes, B1 B cells exhibit a broad range of immunological activity as well as expression of CRs and TLRs. Despite extensive studies with other phagocytes, the effects of CRs and TLRs expression, hypoxic stimulation, or opsonization on B1 B cell function remain unclear. We tested the hypothesis that TLR2 stimulation, hypoxia, CR2 expression, or opsonins would enhance B1 B cell phagocytic and inflammatory activity. Negatively selected peritoneal cavity B1 B cells from the (PerC) of wild type, Tlr2[superscript]-[superscript]/[superscript]-, and Cr2[superscript]-[superscript]/[superscript]- mice, or a B1 B-like cell line, Wehi 231, were subjected to normoxia or hypoxia with or without particles for phagocytosis, TLR2 agonists, or CR2 ligands. The PerC of Tlr2[superscript]-[superscript]/[superscript]- mice contained an altered B1 B cell subset distribution while Cr2[superscript]-[superscript]/[superscript]- mice exhibited a normal repertoire. We demonstrated that hypoxia significantly downregulated inflammatory cytokine production by B1 B cells, while upregulating phagocytic activity in a TLR2 or CR2 dependent manner. TLR2 or CR2 deficiency altered constitutive production of B1 B cell associated cytokines. The CR2 ligand C3d, an opsonin, significantly enhanced the phagocytic activity of B1 B cells but failed to stimulate cytokine production. However, Cr2[superscript]-[superscript]/[superscript]- B1 B cells phagocytosed C3d-coated particles suggesting multiple CR may play a role in B1 B cell phagocytosis. Overall, the data suggest TLRs, CRs, hypoxia, and opsonization all contribute to B1 B cell effector function similar to professional phagocytes

Reluctant leaders : an analysis of middle managers' perceptions of leadership in further education in England

The research that forms the basis for this article draws attention to a group of middle managers who are reluctant to become leaders because they seek more space and autonomy to stay in touch with their subject, their students, and their own pedagogic values and identities, family commitments and the balance between work and life. This reluctance is reinforced by their scepticism that leadership in Further Education (FE) is becoming less hierarchical and more participative. In a sector that has had more than its fair share of reformist intervention, there is some scepticism of the latest fad of distributed and transformative leadership as a new panacea to cure all the accumulated 'ills' of Further Education in England. Although focused primarily on this one sector in an English context, the article draws some inferences where there are parallels with wider sectors of public sector reform and where the uneasy (and incomplete) transitions from 'old' to 'new' public management have been underpinned by invasive audit, inspection and performance cultures

Challenging dualism : public professionalism in ‘troubled’ times

In recent decades neo-liberal reform has significantly impacted on public sector professionals. Sociological interest in such impact has tended to focus on professionals as subjects of such reform: as either de-professionalized ‘victims’ who feel oppressed by the structures of control or strategic operators seeking to contest the spaces and contradictions of market, managerial and audit cultures. Such a dualism is reflective of wider separations of agency and structure that have plagued sociology down the years. Our approach challenges modernizing agendas which seek to re-professionalize or empower professionals without examining the changing conditions of their work or the neo-liberal conditions which frame their practice. It also questions the policy outcomes of reconciling the dualism between agency and structure through a ‘third way’ politics that purports to remove the tensions and conflicts between professions and various stakeholders, the private and the public, and markets and civic society

Keyboard instruments and their repertoire, 1560-1780

The eleven chapters included here are the outcome of interactions between many aspects of musical study, including historical musicology, music analysis, archival work, data management, editing, organology, performance and teaching. Keyboards and their music are a valuable area of study, as their uses and design are critically related to the development of music and performance over several centuries. This was a period that saw the rise of the public concert, significant technological developments in organology, the development of notated teaching methods and the origins of idiomatic instrumental composition. The four sections cover repertoire, composers, sources and instruments from the mid-16thto the late 18th centuries. Discussion of the virginalists includes a fundamental reexamination of the surviving information relating to ornamentation and performance practice, together with a historiographical discussion of Giles Farnaby and his music. Four studies of Bach include practice-led research project, a consideration of a neglected group of pieces with intermittent pedal parts, a typological analysis of cadence types in Bach’s cantata recitatives, and an edition of all the surviving keyboard duos by J. S., W. F., C. P. E. and J. C. Bach. The third section describes a late 17th-century liturgical organ book and an early 18th-century teaching manuscript, while the fourth, devoted to the clavichord, includes a comprehensive discography, a discussion of the role the instrument may have played in French musical culture, and an examination of the sole surviving English clavichord

Silicon-based organic light-emitting diode operating at a wavelength of 1.5 mu m

Copyright 2000 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. This article appeared in Applied Physics Letters 77, 2271 (2000) and may be found at