Food design, or designer foods, or functional foods, or nutritionally modified foods, or genetically modified foods --are some of the myriad of terms that appear in the popular and scientific food and nutrition press. The similarities and differences in the meanings of these terms, and the implications for nutritional composition are not always clear. The goal of this paper will be to explore t...

Dynamic price setting mechanisms such as online auctions typify the new generation of mercantile processes being used on the WWW. However, arbitrary pricing mechanisms can result in loss of revenue and social capital in markets characterized by tight margins. This work presents a relatively risk-free and cost-effective approach to managing innovation in the area of web-based dynamic price setti...

The online Yankee auction sells multiple units of the same good to multiple buyers using an ascending and open auction mechanism. One of the important controllable factors of the Yankee auction is the minimum bid increment, specified at the beginning of an auction. Bidders can bid only in the multiples of this bid increment even if they are willing to bid higher than the minimum required bid. T...

In 1889, Mark Twain described a rather resourceful character in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by writing that ‘‘She was wise, subtle, and knew more than one way to skin a cat’’; that is, she had in her toolbox more than one way to get what she wanted. The exact origins of the phrase are unclear, but most of us interpret this expression as meaning that there are certain tasks that ...