Investigating the Effect of Nudges on Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Genetically Modified Corn Oil

Shifting from conventional methods of food production to genetic modification methods benefits sustainable agri-food production and environmental preservation. However, one of the main problems genetically modified food manufacturers have ever had to deal with is the public acceptability of GM foods. This study has two major objectives. First, it intends to apply principles from behavioral economics to investigate how consumers’ willingness to pay for GM corn oil can be affected. For this purpose, two different nudges are tested by providing consumers with positive information regarding GMO and changing the wording of the GMO label. Then, a comparison between the effectiveness of each of them is provided. Second, it investigates the impact of trust in GM food institutions, GMO information, and perceived GMO risk on both WTP for GM edible oil and the effectiveness of each nudge. A between-subjects choice experiment with a sample size of 550 Iranian corn oil consumers was conducted in Mashhad from March to April 2021. The results of mixed logit models indicate that both nudges affected consumer valuation of GM corn oil significantly, while their effectiveness differed according to the consumer level of trust in the GM food institutions and the perceived risk of GMO. Increasing consumer trust and information raises the WTP for GM corn oil; however, perceived risk has no effect. This study introduces effortless tools that GM food manufacturers can consider in their marketing strategies to affect consumers in the desired way

What is the right theory for Anderson localization of light?

Anderson localization of light is traditionally described in analogy to electrons in a random potential. Within this description the disorder strength -- and hence the localization characteristics -- depends strongly on the wavelength of the incident light. In an alternative description in analogy to sound waves in a material with spatially fluctuating elastic moduli this is not the case. Here, we report on an experimentum crucis in order to investigate the validity of the two conflicting theories using transverse-localized optical devices. We do not find any dependence of the observed localization radii on the light wavelength. We conclude that the modulus-type description is the correct one and not the potential-type one. We corroborate this by showing that in the derivation of the traditional, potential-type theory a term in the wave equation has been tacititly neglected. In our new modulus-type theory the wave equation is exact. We check the consistency of the new theory with our data using a field-theoretical approach (nonlinear sigma model)

Deriving optimal operational policies for off-stream man-made reservoir considering conjunctive use of surface- and groundwater at the Bar dam reservoir (Iran)

Study region: The off-stream artificial Bar lake, built in 2015 to store the flood flows of the Bar river for domestic and industrial needs and with the objective to intentionally recharge the aquifer, is situated in the Razavi Khorasan province (Iran). Study focus: We present a methodology, based on the combination of a MODFLOW groundwater flow model for estimating seepage rates, and an optimization model, for the management and operation of an artificial reservoir considering surface/groundwater interactions for satisfying 12 Mm3/year of water demand. We simulated the reliable amount of water that can be supplied from the reservoir, considering reservoir seepage, maximizing water supply yields subject to the water supply reliability requirements, and the additional intentional volume of groundwater recharge. New hydrological insights for the region: Our results demonstrate the reliability of conjunctive use of surface-and ground-water in water scarce areas by exploiting reservoir infrastructures with relevant leakage losses, also for creating additional aquifer storage. In such systems, man-induced changes of lake stages can significantly affect the volume of water that seeps through the lakebed. The aquifer, under managed aquifer recharge operations, may then provide the resource not satisfied by the reservoir release, fulfilling 100 % reliability of water supply. The conjunctive use of surface- and ground-water, by improving water security, may open new sustainability views for leaking reservoirs, even if they were not initially designed for increasing aquifer recharge, in many areas worldwide

Comparison between Binary Particles Swarm Optimization (BPSO) and Binary Artificial Bee Colony (BABC) for nonlinear autoregressive model structure selection of chaotic data

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Classification of visualization exudates fundus images results using support vector machine

This paper classifies the characteristics of normal and exudates fundus images by determine its accuracy for diagnostic purposes. Image normalization was performed on 149 fundus images (81 normal and 68 exudates) from MESSIDOR databases to standardize the colours in the fundus images. The OD removed fundus image and fundus image with the exudates areas removed. The SVM1 classifier was applied to 30 test fundus images to determine the best optimal parameter. The kernel function settings; linear, polynomial, quadratic and RBF have an effect on the classification results. For SVM1, the best parameter in classifying pixels is linear kernel function. The visualization results using CAC and radar chart are classified using ts accuracy. It has proven to discriminated exudates and non exudates pixels in fundus image using linear kernel function of SVM1 to diagnose DR.Keywords: Diabetic retinopathy (DR); Optic disc (OD); Support Vector Machine (SVM); AC); Radial Basis Function (RBF)

A study of the lower gastrointestinal tract cancer with emphasis on gender and age of the patients in western Iran (Kermanshah) over 2006-2011

Given that the incidence of cancers in the coming years will have a growing trend due to the increased average age of the world's population, the partial control of communicable diseases, and the rapid growth of the environmental risk factors. The present work was a descriptive, comparative and analytical study. The statistical population consisted of all patients residing in Kermanshah who had been suffering from the lower gastrointestinal tract cancer for five years. The results of the present study revealed that 46.10% were male, and 53.90% were female. Further, the results indicated that the age of patients and the intensity of cancer differentiation were significantly correlated.It seemed that the lack of early diagnosis would ensue from a lack of periodic screening programs at early ages and lack of forums in which specialists could get together due to the unavailability of comparative statistics.Keywords: Cancer, Lower Gastrointestinal Tract Cancer, Western Iran, Kermanshah Cit

The Effect of the Marketing Mix and Specialized Knowledge on the Export Performance of SMEs Exporting Dry Fruits

Export is a crucial driver of economic growth in various countries and significantly contributes to a country's entry into global markets and enhances economic success. In developing countries such as Iran, economic and social development programs prioritize the expansion of exports, particularly high value added agricultural products. The growth in non-oil exports, such as dried fruits, and the entry of domestic producers into new global markets have led to an increased demand for Iran's export products. This has also resulted in higher production levels, increased employment opportunities, and higher value added in the related activities. To enhance export performance, which is a crucial measure of a company's success in utilizing its resources and capabilities in the international arena over a specific period of time, it is important to focus on improving marketing strategies and specialized knowledge. Therefore, this research aims to examine the impact of marketing mix and specialized marketing knowledge on the export performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) involved in exporting dried fruits in Mashhad, Iran in 2022. A total of 80 questionnaires were distributed among senior managers, board members, and business managers of dried fruits SMEs using the available sampling method. Structural equation modeling was employed for data analysis and test of research hypotheses. The statistical data and structural equation modeling revealed that the joint impact of marketing mix and specialized marketing knowledge has a positive and significant influence on export performance. In order to improve the company's profitability, it is essential for senior managers and sales managers to recognize the significance of these two factors and undergo relevant training to acquire the necessary skills. Moreover, managers should make effective use of appropriate distribution channels to expand their exports. Simultaneously, they should consider adapting product quality and packaging to align with the preferences of foreign buyers

On Actively Teaching the Crowd to Classify

Is it possible to teach workers while crowdsourcing classification tasks? Amongst the challenges: (a) workers have different (unknown) skills, competence, and learning rate to which the teaching must be adapted, (b) feedback on the workers’ progress is limited, (c) we may not have informative features for our data (otherwise crowdsourcing may be unnecessary). We propose a natural Bayesian model of the workers, modeling them as a learning entity with an initial skill, competence, and dynamics. We then show how a teaching system can exploit this model to interactively teach the workers. Our model uses feedback to adapt the teaching process to each worker, based on priors over hypotheses elicited from the crowd. Our experiments carried out on both simulated workers and real image annotation tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turk show the effectiveness of crowd-teaching systems

Gait recognition using kinect and locally linear embedding

This paper presents the use of locally linear embedding (LLE) as feature extraction technique for classifying a person’s identity based on their walking gait patterns. Skeleton data acquired from Microsoft Kinect camera were used as an input for (1). Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and (2). LLE with MLP. The MLP classification accuracy result was used for comparison between both. Several MLP and LLE properties were tested to find the optimal number of setting that can improve the MLP performance. Based on the two methods used, the neural network implemented with LLE showed the better accuracy compared to the neural network alone.Keywords: locally linear embedding; neural network; multilayer perceptron

Experimental Study of Natural Convective Flow over a Hot Horizontal Rhombus Cylinder Immersed in Water via PIV Technique

Natural convective flow over a horizontal cylinder is a phenomenon used in many industries such as heat transfer from an electrical wire, heat exchanger, pipe heat transfer, etc. In this research, fluid dynamics of natural convective flow over a horizontal rhombus cylinder, with uniform heat flux, is investigated by using two-dimensional Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) Technique. Experiments are carried out in a cubical tank full of water having an interface with air and the cylinder is placed horizontally inside the tank. The heater is turned on for 40s and the effects of heater's power and the height of water above the cylinder are surveyed. The experiments are carried out in three different heights of water and two different heater’s powers in which Rayleigh number changes from 1.33×107 to 1.76×107. The emitted heat flux causes the buoyancy force to be made and the main branch of flow to be formed. Then, moving up the main branch flow through the stationary water generates two equal anti-direction vortexes. These vortexes are developed when they reach the free surface. The results indicate that the flow pattern changes for different values of water height and heater’s power