The application and estimation of expected utility based decision models would benefit from having additional simple and flexible functional forms to represent risk preferences. The literature so far has provided these functional forms for the utility function itself. This work shows that functional forms for the marginal utility function are as useful, are easier to provide, and can represent ...

Broiler feeding is an efficient way of evaluating growth performance, health, and welfare status. This assessment might include the number meals, meal period, ingestion rate, intervals, proportion time spent eating. These parameters can be predicted by studying birds’ pecking activity. The present study aims to design, examine, validate classifying algorithms determine individual bird patterns ...

Microinjections of the dopamine agonist apomorphine into the nucleus basalis prosencephali of pigeons elicit stereotyped pecking behaviour. Injections of 6-hydroxydopamine, a toxic dopamine antagonist, into the same nucleus impair stereotyped pecking induced by systemic apomorphine administration, but do not interfere with pecking in the normal feeding context.

Based on two sub-samples of SMEs: i) 135 high-tech SMEs; and ii) 330 non high-tech SMEs, using panel data models and the two-step estimation method, this study investigates if the capital structure decisions of high-tech SME and non high-tech SMEs are closer to what is predicted by Pecking Order Theory, or if they are closer to what is predicted by Trade-Off Theory. The results suggest that the...

The production and coordination of rhythmic activities in birds is seldom investigated. Here we describe the pecking and breathing rhythms of pigeons under different conditions. When feeding from a heap of small grains, hungry pigeons pecked at regular intervals of about 0.3 s. The pecking rhythm was slightly slo,":,er in the afternoon. The pecking rhythm induced by the dopaminergic drug apomor...