Trusting Labels: A Matter of Numbers?

Labelling is an increasingly popular way to deal with the problem of non-observability of quality inherent in the consumption of credence goods. I present a model in which the number of labelled products a monopolist offers serves as a signal for the non-observable endogenous quality. An increase in the number of labelled products increases the risk of losing consumer trust by increasing the possibility of detecting wrong labels. This lowers the incentive to produce low quality in the first place.credence goods; labels; product quality; consumer trust

Monitoring Eco-Labels: You Can Have Too Much of a Good Thing

An increasing number of product labels is making environmental claims. Typically, these claims are non-verifiable to consumers, they represent a credence attribute of the product. The usual way to handle this problem is external monitoring of such labels. We consider a model where firms in a competitive market choose product quality and the intensity of monitoring. It is shown that all the firms producing the high quality credence good will choose the same level of monitoring, i.e., an industry standard will evolve. However, in a competitive equilibrium there will be more monitoring than is socially desirable.credence goods; labels; monitoring; product quality

The Demand for Tests

Many consumption goods have inherent attributes that are unknown to both consumers and producers of the good. This is reflected for example by the current discussion about potential harms of food products containing genetically modified organisms. The underlying paper analyzes consumers’ demand for product tests in a surrounding of symmetric but imperfect information. It is shown that the demand for information of existing customers is higher than that of potential new ones. In addition, the introduction of an information market unambiguously lowers the product price. This is true, even though expected positive or negative quality news is symmetric in terms of monetary valuation

The Resurrection of Christ: A Bayesian Analysis of Explanatory Hypotheses

The goal of this thesis is to determine under which circumstances a supernatural hypothesis should be preferred over the most probable natural hypothesis to explain a set of historical facts. The supernatural hypotheses include the objective vision hypothesis and the resurrection hypothesis, while the subjective vision hypothesis is taken to be the most probable natural hypothesis. Each of them can be found in the recent literature on the Resurrection and is still advocated by major proponents. The facts by which these three hypotheses are judged are agreed upon by most scholars. They include (1) Jesus’ death by crucifixion, (2) the disciples’ claim that Jesus was raised and appeared to them alive after his death, and (3) the transformative experience of Paul. This thesis argues that, unless it is extremely improbable that God exists and that He would raise Jesus from the dead, the best historical explanation for the set of historical facts herein considered is that Jesus appeared alive in bodily form after being crucified

Validation study of small-angle X-ray scattering tensor tomography

Small-angle scattering tensor tomography (SASTT) is a recently developed technique able to tomographically reconstruct the 3D reciprocal space from voxels within a bulk volume. SASTT extends the concept of X-ray computed tomography, which typically reconstructs scalar values, by reconstructing a tensor per voxel, which represents the local nanostructure 3D organization. In this study, the nanostructure orientation in a human trabecular-bone sample obtained by SASTT was validated by sectioning the sample and using 3D scanning small-angle X-ray scattering (3D sSAXS) to measure and analyze the orientation from single voxels within each thin section. Besides the presence of cutting artefacts from the slicing process, the nanostructure orientations obtained with the two independent methods were in good agreement, as quantified with the absolute value of the dot product calculated between the nanostructure main orientations obtained in each voxel. The average dot product per voxel over the full sample containing over 10 000 voxels was 0.84, and in six slices, in which fewer cutting artefacts were observed, the dot product increased to 0.91. In addition, SAXS tensor tomography not only yields orientation information but can also reconstruct the full 3D reciprocal-space map. It is shown that the measured anisotropic scattering for individual voxels was reproduced from the SASTT reconstruction in each voxel of the 3D sample. The scattering curves along different 3D directions are validated with data from single voxels, demonstrating SASTT\u27s potential for a separate analysis of nanostructure orientation and structural information from the angle-dependent intensity distribution

Wohnortfinder Zürioberland

Die Wohnungssuche in der Schweiz kann sich als sehr umständlich gestalten und jeder Wohnungssuchende hat andere Ansprüche an seinen perfekten Wohnort. Der Wohnortfinder als Webapplikation bietet eine Plattform, auf welcher der Wohnungssuchende seine individuellen Kriterien definieren kann und so die idealste Wohnregion im Zürcher Oberland ermitteln kann. Das Backend (API und CMS) wurde mit Hilfe des Python Microframeworks Flask umgesetzt, wobei für die persistente Datensicherung auf das Datenbanksystem PostgreSQL zurückgegriffen wird. Weiter ist eine REDISDatenbank für die Verwaltung von Tasks im Hintergrund eingesetzt. Als JavaScript- Framework wird AngularJS verwendet, welches dem Entwickler eine saubere Strukturierung des Codes ermöglicht und so die Wartbarkeit des Gesamtsystems gewährleistet. Die Kriterien werden hierbei einerseits direkt von OpenStreetMap heruntergeladen, andererseits werden zusätzliche – für OpenStreetMap nicht relevante – Daten in separaten Tabellen der PostgreSQL-Datenbank abgelegt. Bei der Entwicklung der Benutzeroberfläche wurde vor allem auf das Leaflet Plugin und die Stylesheets, die von Zürioberland Wohnen zur Verfügung gestellt wurden, gesetzt. Durch das Testingframework Jasmine wird mittels Behavior- Driven Tests die Lauffähigkeit und Korrektheit des JavaScript-Codes sichergestellt. Im Backend wird das Python Testingframework Nosetest eingesetzt

Ein kleiner Eingriff mit grossen Auswirkungen : praxisrelevantes Wissen für Pflegefachpersonen im Umgang mit Frauen mit einer Hysterektomie

Einleitung: Die Hysterektomie ist die zweithäufigste Operation in der Gynäkologie. Mögliche negative Auswirkungen dieses Eingriffs auf die sexuelle Gesundheit einer Frau werden in der Praxis nicht priorisiert und die Betreuung dieser Patientinnengruppe ist folglich häufig unzureichend. Ziel: Die vorliegende Bachelorarbeit untersucht, welche negativen Auswirkungen die Hysterektomie auf die sexuelle Gesundheit einer Frau haben kann und welche pflegerischen Interventionen zur Förderung der sexuellen Gesundheit in der aktuellen Literatur vorhanden sind. Methode: Zur Beantwortung der Forschungsfrage erfolgte zusätzlich zur Handsuche eine systematisierte Literaturrecherche in den Datenbanken CINAHL, MEDLINE und PsycINFO. Insgesamt wurden vier Studien zu den Auswirkungen und drei Studien zu den Interventionen miteinbezogen. Ergebnisse: Die Thematik dieser Bachelorarbeit ist wenig erforscht. Mögliche postoperative Auswirkungen einer Hysterektomie auf die sexuelle Gesundheit sind zahlreich (z.B. Körperbildstörung, Scham und soziale Isolation) können je nach soziokulturellem Hintergrund stark variieren. Es wurden sieben Ansätze für pflegerische Interventionen herausgearbeitet: Caring, Familienzentrierte Pflege, Personenzentrierte Gesprächsführung und Aktives Zuhören, Interprofessionelle Zusammenarbeit, Edukation, Anonymität, Austausch in Peergruppen. Schlussfolgerung: Pflegende sollen durch die erarbeiteten Ergebnisse auf die Thematik sensibilisiert werden, um eine professionelle Pflege zu bieten. Weitere Forschung wird benötigt, um evidenzbasierte Assessmentinstrumente und pflegerische Interventionen zu entwickeln

The salt curve revisited - Electrostatic charges govern the viscoelastic properties of micellar solutions

In ionic surfactant micelles, interactions among surfactant monomers, their counterion, and additives are fundamental to tune molecular self-assembly and thus the rheological properties (see Figure 1). Here we propose a combination of 1H-NMR, integrated small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) and small-angle X-ray scattering, and rheology to probe the molecular arrangements of the individual molecules within the micelle and the resulting flow properties [1, 2]. Shifts in the 1H-NMR signal show the penetration of counterions and additives into the micellar surfactant structure while SANS and SAXS determine specific intramicellar length scales and intermicellar interactions. SANS signals are sensitive to the contrast between the solvent (deuterium) and the hydrocarbonic tails in the micellar core (hydrogen) and SAXS access the inner structure of the polar shell because the headgroups, counterions, and penetrated salt have higher electron densities compared to the solvent and to the micellar core. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Investigating the missing wedge problem in small-angle x-ray scattering tensor tomography across real and reciprocal space

Small-angle scattering tensor tomography is a technique for studying anisotropic nanostructures of millimeter-sized samples in a volume-resolved manner. It requires the acquisition of data through repeated tomographic rotations about an axis which is subjected to a series of tilts. The tilt that can be achieved with a typical setup is geometrically constrained, which leads to limits in the set of directions from which the different parts of the reciprocal-space map can be probed. Here, we characterize the impact of this limitation on reconstructions in terms of the missing wedge problem of tomography, by treating the problem of tensor tomography as the reconstruction of a three-dimensional field of functions on the unit sphere, represented by a grid of Gaussian radial basis functions. We then devise an acquisition scheme to obtain complete data by remounting the sample, which we apply to a sample of human trabecular bone. Performing tensor tomographic reconstructions of limited data sets as well as the complete data set, we further investigate and validate the missing wedge understanding of data incompleteness by investigating reconstruction errors due to data incompleteness across both real and reciprocal space. Finally, we carry out an analysis of orientations and derived scalar quantities, to quantify the impact of this missing wedge problem on a typical tensor tomographic analysis. We conclude that the effects of data incompleteness are consistent with the predicted impact of the missing wedge problem, and that the impact on tensor tomographic analysis is appreciable but limited, especially if precautions are taken. In particular, there is only limited impact on the means and relative anisotropies of the reconstructed reciprocal space maps.Comment: Main: 32 pages, 9 figures; Supplementary: 9 pages, 7 figuer