1,546 research outputs found
Molecular marketing, personalised information and willingness-to-pay for functional foods: Vitamin D enriched eggs
Increasingly, the health claims made by food products focus on the marketing of specific molecular enrichments. Research exploring consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for health claims assumes that individuals hold perfect information on the benefits of the enrichment, and that their valuations depend solely on whether or not they need to improve their health. While health interventions are aimed at individuals at higher health risk, consumers may be unaware of the health risks that they face, limiting the effectiveness of a generic targeting strategy. Using an orthogonal experimental design, we explore the impact of two factors on the WTP for vitamin D enrichment in eggs: whether the information is person-specific or generic; and the presence of a health claim explaining the vitamin D enrichment. Results indicate that it is the provision of information, not the health claim, that influences WTP. Both generic and personalised information lead to similar increases in the WTP for vitamin D enrichment. While we only observe a direct effect of generic information on the WTP for vitamin D enrichment, personal information may also operate by increasing the perceived risk of vitamin D deficiency. Our results support the use of personalised health information during the choice task as a means of increasing the sales of healthy products
Traffic related noise and air quality valuations: evidence from stated preference residential choice models
This paper reports on research which has estimated valuations of changes in traffic related noise levels and air quality and which contributes to the body of knowledge and to methodology in this area. There are several novel aspects of this research. Firstly, there have been relatively few stated preference studies of the monetary valuations of traffic related noise and air quality. A feature of this analysis is the examination of variations in values according to the size and sign of the environmental change, the currently experienced level of the attribute and various socio-economic factors. Secondly, the important issue of presentation is addressed, with two different methods used in the valuation of air quality and links made between valuations and physical measures. Thirdly, the results from stated preference and the contingent valuation method are compared. Finally, we bring together evidence from other studies and compare them with the findings obtained here
A Search for Hydroxylamine (NH2OH) toward Select Astronomical Sources
Observations of 14 rotational transitions of hydroxylamine (NH2OH) using the
NRAO 12 m Telescope on Kitt Peak are reported towards IRC+10216, Orion KL,
Orion S, Sgr B2(N), Sgr B2(OH), W3IRS5, and W51M. Although recent models
suggest the presence of NH2OH in high abundance, these observations resulted in
non-detection. Upper limits are calculated to be as much as six orders of
magnitude lower than predicted by models. Possible explanations for the lower
than expected abundance are explored.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, 3 table
Controlled laser texturing of titanium results in reliable osteointegration
We have developed a laser-textured superhydrophilic Ti-6Al-4V surface with unique surface chemistry and topography that substantially promotes osteoblast adhesion in culture. Here we investigate the osteointegration of laser-textured implants in an ovine model. Our hypothesis was that laser-textured implants, without any surface coating (LT), would encourage comparable amounts of bone-implant contact and interfacial strength when compared with widely accepted hydroxyapatite (HA) coated implants. Additionally, we hypothesized that LT would significantly increase bony integration compared with machine-finished (MF) and grit-blasted (GB) implants. Forty-eight tapered transcortical pins were implanted into six sheep. Four experimental groups (LT, HA, MF, and GB) were investigated (n = 12) and implants remained in vivo for 6 weeks. Bone apposition rates, interfacial shear strength, and bone-implant contact (BIC) were quantified. The interfacial strength of LT and HA implants were found to be significantly greater than GB (p = 0.032 and p = 0.004) and MF (p = 0.004 and p = 0.004, respectively), but no significant difference between LT and HA implants was observed. Significantly increased BIC was measured adjacent to HA implants when compared with both LT and GB implant surfaces (p = 0.022 and p = 0.006, respectively). No significant difference was found when LT and GB implants were compared. However, all surface finishes encouraged significantly increased BIC when compared with the MF surface. Maximizing implant fixation to host bone is vital for its long-term success. The production of an LT surface is a simple and cheap manufacturing process and this study demonstrated that laser-textured implants are a very promising technical development that warrants further research. © 2016 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res
Parameterizing the interstellar dust temperature
The temperature of interstellar dust particles is of great importance to
astronomers. It plays a crucial role in the thermodynamics of interstellar
clouds, because of the gas-dust collisional coupling. It is also a key
parameter in astrochemical studies that governs the rate at which molecules
form on dust. In 3D (magneto)hydrodynamic simulations often a simple expression
for the dust temperature is adopted, because of computational constraints,
while astrochemical modelers tend to keep the dust temperature constant over a
large range of parameter space. Our aim is to provide an easy-to-use parametric
expression for the dust temperature as a function of visual extinction () and to shed light on the critical dependencies of the dust temperature on
the grain composition. We obtain an expression for the dust temperature by
semi-analytically solving the dust thermal balance for different types of
grains and compare to a collection of recent observational measurements. We
also explore the effect of ices on the dust temperature. Our results show that
a mixed carbonaceous-silicate type dust with a high carbon volume fraction
matches the observations best. We find that ice formation allows the dust to be
warmer by up to 15% at high optical depths ( mag) in the
interstellar medium. Our parametric expression for the dust temperature is
presented as , where is in units of the Draine (1978) UV fieldComment: 16 pages, 17 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in A&A.
Version 2: the omission of factor 0.921 in equation 4 is correcte
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