Which factors affect the Italian consumer's intention to insect-eating? An application of an integrated attitude-intention-eating model

This research explored the role of key socio-psychological dimensions on individuals' intention to eat insectbased foods (IEIBF). In particular, the theoretical framework included biospheric values and social norms, whose impact on pro-environmental choices has been largely evidenced, but also those factors related to animal welfare and neophobia/neophilia attitudes. An online survey was carried out in different Italian regions intercepting 1402 individuals to verify the relationships predicted by our proposed model, i.e. the Integrated Sustainable Neophilic Insect-based Eating Model (ISNIEM), for predicting IEIBF. Participants completed a survey containing measures of IEIBF, biospheric values, general pro-environmental beliefs, attitude toward sustainability, food neophilia, concern for insect welfare, and social norms (both injunctive and descriptive). Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique was used for testing the ISNIEM. The main findings show that individuals having higher concern about environmental and ethical sustainability are more open to eating insects, especially if the latter are treated ethically. Overall, these results suggest that a typical consumer of insect foods is likely to be driven to their consumption from one side by curiosity (related to the neophilia dimension), and from the other side either by the sense of responsibility towards the environment or by the concern for ethical issues (i.e., animal welfare). The integrated attitude-food-intention model used to explore intention to eat insect foods (IEIBF) with a visual scheme represents an innovative approach in the study of consumer behaviour

Search for strongly interacting massive particles generating trackless jets in proton-proton collisions at s = 13 TeV

A search for dark matter in the form of strongly interacting massive particles (SIMPs) using the CMS detector at the LHC is presented. The SIMPs would be produced in pairs that manifest themselves as pairs of jets without tracks. The energy fraction of jets carried by charged particles is used as a key discriminator to suppress efficiently the large multijet background, and the remaining background is estimated directly from data. The search is performed using proton-proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 16.1 fb - 1 , collected with the CMS detector in 2016. No significant excess of events is observed above the expected background. For the simplified dark matter model under consideration, SIMPs with masses up to 100 GeV are excluded and further sensitivity is explored towards higher masses