To Fund or Not to Fund: Assessment of the Potential Impact of a Regional Promotion Campaign

This paper develops a framework for assessing the potential economic impact of a regional promotion campaign combining contingent valuation methods with a partial displacement equilibrium model. The proposed approach is applied to the evaluation of the potential economic impact of the locally grown campaign in South Carolina. Results reveal that the first season of the promotion campaign increased consumer willingness to pay for produce by 3.4%. The change in consumer preferences and the corresponding shift in demand increased producer surplus by $3.09 million. This economic benefit, combined with the 2007 promotion campaign investment, resulted in a benefit-cost ratio of 6.18.contingent valuation, economic impact, equilibrium displacement model, regional promotion campaign, Consumer/Household Economics,

Measuring the Potential Economic Impact of a Regional Agricultural Promotion Campaign: The Case of South Carolina

This study evaluated the impact of the South Carolina (SC) agricultural promotion campaign after its first season. Analysis of the survey data revealed that consumer demand for state grown produce has increased by 3.4% which could result in an increase in producer surplus of $2.9 million. Since the SC Department of Agriculture invested$500,000 in the promotion program in 2007, this figure indicates a benefit-cost ratio of 5.8.Demand for local products, state branding and promotion programs, contingent valuation, equilibrium displacement models, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Demand and Price Analysis,

A recalibration of IUE NEWSIPS low dispersion data

While the low dispersion IUE NEWSIPS data products represent a significant improvement over original IUE SIPS data, they still contain serious systematic effects which compromise their utility for certain applications. We show that NEWSIPS low resolution data are internally consistent to only 10-15% at best, with the majority of the problem due to time dependent systematic effects. In addition, the NEWSIPS flux calibration is shown to be inconsistent by nearly 10%. We examine the origin of these problems and proceed to formulate and apply algorithms to correct them to ~ 3% level -- a factor of 5 improvement in accuracy. Because of the temporal systematics, transforming the corrected data to the IUE flux calibration becomes ambiguous. Therefore, we elect to transform the corrected data onto the HST FOS system. This system is far more self-consistent, and transforming the IUE data to it places data from both telescopes on a single system. Finally, we argue that much of the remaining 3% systematic effects in the corrected data is traceable to problems with the NEWSIPS intensity transformation function (ITF). The accuracy could probably be doubled by rederiving the ITF.Comment: Submitted to ApJ Supplement, 35 pages, 13 figures, LaTeX - AASTEX aas2pp4.st

Time properties of the the rho-class burst of the microquasar GRS 1915+105 observed with BeppoSAX in April 1999

We present a temporal analysis of a BeppoSAX observation of GRS 1915+105 performed on April 13, 1999 when the source was in the rho class, which is characterised by quasi-regular bursting activity. The aim of the present work is to confirm and extend the validity of the results obtained with a BeppoSAX observation performed on October 2000 on the recurrence time of the burst and on the hard X-ray delay. We divided the entire data set into several series, each corresponding to a satellite orbit, and performed the Fourier and wavelet analysis and the limit cycle mapping technique using the count rate and the average energy as independent variables. We found that the count rates correlate with the recurrence time of bursts and with hard X-ray delay, confirming the results previously obtained. In this observation, however, the recurrence times are distributed along two parallel branches with a constant difference of 5.2+/-0.5 s.Comment: Accepted for publication in Section 7. Stellar structure and evolution of Astronomy and Astrophysic

An Iterative Procedure for Combining the Advantages of a Multi-Frequency and Multi-Resolution Inversion Algorithm

Starting from the iterative multi�]scaling approach previously studied for monochromatic illuminations, two multi�]resolution strategies for dealing with multi�]frequency inverse scattering experiments have been developed. The first procedure is based on the integration of the iterative multi�]scaling algorithm into a frequency�]hopping reconstruction scheme, while in the second one the multi�]frequency data are simultaneously processed exploiting a multi�]resolution expansion of the problem unknowns. The numerical and the experimental analysis presented in this contribution concern with a preliminary assessment of the reconstruction effectiveness of the proposed approaches in comparison with a monochromatic multi�]step process. This is the author's version of the final version available at IEEE

Quantum mechanics with time-dependent parameters

Smooth composite bundles provide the adequate geometric description of classical mechanics with time-dependent parameters. We show that the Berry's phase phenomenon is described in terms of connections on composite Hilbert space bundles.Comment: 7 pages, LaTe

Do interactions between plant roots and the rhizosphere affect parasitoid behaviour?

Multitrophic interactions are powerful forces shaping the structure of living communities. Plants encounter a great diversity of organisms in their environment: some of these interactions are beneficial (e.g. symbiotic fungi and insect pollinators) while some are detrimental (e.g. herbivorous insects and pathogenic micro-organisms). Multitrophic interactions between below-ground and above-ground organisms are receiving increasing attention because they may influence plant defences against biotic and abiotic stresses. In this study we show that an arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis makes tomato plants significantly more resistant towards aphids, by enhancing both direct defences, both attractivity towards aphid parasitoids

An analysis of the shapes of interstellar extinction curves. VII Milky Way spectrophotometric optical-through-ultraviolet extinction and its R-dependence

We produce a set of 72 NIR-through-UV extinction curves by combining new Hubble Space Telescope/STIS optical spectrophotometry with existing International Ultraviolet Explorer spectrophotometry (yielding gapless coverage from 1150 to 10000 ?) and NIR photometry. These curves are used to determine a new, internally consistent NIR-through-UV Milky Way mean curve and to characterize how the shapes of the extinction curves depend on R(V). We emphasize that while this dependence captures much of the curve variability, considerable variation remains that is independent of R(V). We use the optical spectrophotometry to verify the presence of structure at intermediate wavelength scales in the curves. The fact that the optical-through-UV portions of the curves are sampled at relatively high resolution makes them very useful for determining how extinction affects different broadband systems, and we provide several examples. Finally, we compare our results to previous investigations