Search

International audience

Country-of-Origin Labeling (COOL) legislation for fish and shellfish was passed as part of the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002. Farm-raised and wild-caught seafood items caught after December 4, 2004, began COOL in April 4, 2005. COOL requires retailers to display the country of origin on seafood. Using a nonlinear AIDS model the demand for 3 salmon products was estimate--precooked, uncooked fresh, and uncooked frozen. COOL had no significant impact on consumer demand for the three products. The 3 salmon products were all found to be inelastic, but uncooked fresh was found to be more price sensitive than precooked and uncooked frozen salmon.

Why do users of social networking sites recommend some applications to their friends while rejecting others? What value do they obtain from applications? This exploratory study investigates the value users derive from ‘cool’ Facebook applications, and explores the features that either encourage or discourage users to recommend applications to their friends. Our qualitative data reveal consumers derive a combination of functional value along with either social or emotional value from the applications. Female Facebook users indicate self-expression as important motivators, while males tend to use Facebook applications to socially compete. Three broad categories emerged for application features; symmetrical features can both encourage or discourage recommendation, polar features where different levels of the same feature encourage or discourage, and uni-directional features only encourage or discourage but not both. Recommending or not recommending an application tends to be the result of a combination of features and context, rather than one feature in isolation.

Teaching Note for "Managing a Border Threat: BSE and COOL Effects on the Canadian Beef Industry" by Carlberg et al. Review of Agricultural Economics—Volume 31, Number 4—Pages 952–962. The note discusses BSE and COOL trade impact using three panel trade diagrams and reviews other policy options facing Canadian policy makers.

As the remaining agriculture-related NAFTA clauses became fully implemented on January 1st, 2008, there is much evidence of the Agreement’s benefits to all three members in the forms of the agricultural trade expansion within the region and the growth of foreign direct investments in members’ agri-food value chains. Better coordination would help the three governments to successfully address ongoing challenges such as trade disputes, security measures and animal health diseases. It would also help their economies and the agricultural sectors to continue capitalizing on opportunities that freer trade offers.

In fashion, as in the rest of the economy, the globalisation of taste, power and production now plays a major role. The industry is dominated by fashion capitals like Paris, London or New York, populated by star designers like Tom Ford, Karl Lagerfeld or Jean-Paul Gaultier and controlled through MNC giants like Prada, Gucci, DKNY and Dior, who together influence consumer preferences on a global scale. However, there are numerous smaller actors that compete successfully in the fashion industry. Sweden is one such example, where fashion is a growing. In this thesis, there is a focus on group of small and medium sized Swedish fashion firms with a brand focused business strategy. Their products are design intensive, but their main competitive advantage rests on the brand and brand management. This group of firms are proficient at ‘putting fashion into clothes’ (Weller 2004). In other words, their main competitive advantage rests neither on price, nor on the most experimental design. More exactly, they produce clothes for a fashion conscious but not too adventurous consumer group. In the thesis it is argued that they are better described as trend forerunners than as trend setters. The subject of this thesis is this group of firms within the Swedish fashion industry and the aim is to improve understanding of their innovation processes, competitiveness, and the systemic character of the business they are a part of. As with most other fashion firms in high cost countries, Swedish companies has outsourced the garment production. They secure their competitive edge through high value added activities like design, marketing and retail. This points to the fact that fashion has both material and immaterial dimensions: it relates to clothing, design, textile and quality, but also to consumers’ subjective feelings and attitudes towards the clothes and their brands. This is a study of the interface between these dimensions, with a focal point on the production of immaterial and symbolic value. The systemic nature of fashion can hardly be overestimated. This goes for both the practical part of clothes production, but also for the production of a belief system created not only by fashion producers but by a whole set of institutional actors. This thesis has an analysis of fashion firms’ relations to business partners, competitors, media, and consumers. It is argued that the nature of these relations is critical for competition and success. The thesis is a collection of papers, which illuminates different parts of innovation, competition and business strategies in the fashion industry. The papers cover the central activity areas for fashion firms: how branding is affecting industrial structure and innovation, how symbolic is value created, and how ‘cool’ is used as a strategic resource.

Two recently identified transient receptor potential (TRP) channels, TRPM8 and TRPA1, have been proposed to play an important role in mammalian cool and cold peripheral sensory transduction. When expressed in cell-lines the cloned TRPM8 and TRPA1 receptors have distinct pharmacological and temperature response characteristics. Although these receptors are also transported to the central terminals of primary afferents, little is known about their centrally mediated actions. In this thesis, I use an in vitro electrophysiological approach to investigate the dorsal horn processing of cool afferent modalities and the role of TRP ion channels. The results of this thesis provide further information on thermal processing, indicate direction for further research and suggest possible therapeutic targets for the management of abnormal cold sensory processing. Initial experiments demonstrate that the cooling agents and known TRPM8 and TRPA1 agonists, menthol and icilin, inhibit primary afferent evoked excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) in rat spinal cord dorsal horn neurons. In addition, temperature reduction, menthol and icilin increase the frequency of miniature EPSCs without affecting amplitude distribution or kinetics. Little or no direct postsynaptic effect on dorsal horn neurons, GABAergic or glycinergic transmission was found. In combination, these observations demonstrate that temperature reduction, menthol and icilin act presynaptically to increase the probability of glutamate release from primary afferent fibres. Further examination of the changes in glutamatergic synaptic transmission induced by temperature reduction, menthol and icilin reveals a subset of neurons sensitive to innocuous cool (< 29 oC) and low concentrations of icilin (3-10 µM) which closely match the temperature activation and pharmacological profile of TRPM8. In addition, the majority of lamina I and II neurons displayed characteristics partly consistent with TRPA1-activation, including a concentration-dependent response to icilin and blockade by ruthenium red. The present experiments did not allow thermal characterisation of these TRPA1-like responses. Together these observations indicate that the effects of menthol and icilin on glutamatergic synaptic transmission in the superficial dorsal horn are mediated by TRPM8 and possibly by TRPA1. Examination of the anatomical location of neurons activated by temperature reduction, menthol, icilin and capsaicin allowed the central termination pattern of thermoreceptive primary afferent fibres with specific TRP-like response characteristics to be determined. TRPM8-like presynaptic activation was confined to a subpopulation of neurons located in lamina I and outer lamina II, while the majority of neurons throughout laminae I and II received inputs sensitive to menthol, high concentrations of icilin and capsaicin. These findings suggest that innocuous cool sensation projects to a specific subpopulation of superficial dorsal horn neurons unlike other modalities (mediated by TRPV1, possibly TRPA1 and other receptors), which non-selectively engage circuits within the entire superficial dorsal horn. No morphological specificity was identified for recovered neurons after electrophysiological characterisation. Finally, mu-opioids were shown to inhibit basal glutamatergic synaptic transmission as well as menthol- and icilin-induced transmission in the superficial dorsal horn. Of particular interest, delta-opioids selectively inhibited icilin-induced synaptic transmission within the same location. The selective effect of delta-opioids suggests a possible role in modulating receptors activated by icilin (TRPM8 and TRPA1). Overall, this thesis provides further evidence that TRPM8 is responsible for the transduction of innocuous cold sensation in mammals and is a potential therapeutic target in humans with cold hyperaesthesia secondary to abnormal thermal processing. The use of delta-opioid agonists warrants further investigation in cold hypersensitivity states and potentially other forms of pain.

In Verteilten System ist Interoperabilität eine Grundvoraussetzung für jede Interaktion zwischen verteilten Komponenten. Dieses Paper führt durch die unterschiedlichen Ebenen, auf denen versucht wird, Interoperabilität zu erreichen, mit einem Fokus auf der Service Interoperabilität. Unsere Untersuchungen motivieren die Einführung der Kontextebene als neue Ebene der Service Interoperabilität. Es wird gezeigt, wie der Kontext im Verhältnis zur Interoperabilität steht, und warum es sinnvoll ist, kontextuelle Service Interoperabilität auf einer eigenen Ebene zu behandeln. Insbesondere die Ubiquitous Computing Systeme profitieren von einem von uns vorgeschlagenen Verfahren zur dynamischen Kontext Assoziation, das sowohl für die Server- wie auch die Client-Seite den Zugriff auf verteilte, sich schnell ändernde Kontext Informationen ermöglicht. Dies wird u.a. durch eine neue, auf XML basierende Context Ontology Language (CoOL) erreicht, mit der ein “gemeinsames Verständnis” der Beziehungen ...

Established and supported under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centre Program

Department of Chemistry, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 SQQ, Scotland Manuscript received 29 July 1998 An ether extract of fresh Jungermαnnlαobovαtα yielded two new monoterpenoid hydroperoxides, 4-hydroperoxy-p-mentha-1,8-diene (10) and 8-hydroperoxy-p-mentha-1,3,5-triene (11).