title: Louis Dreyfus Company

text: The company makes up about 10% of the world's agricultural product trade flows, and it is the world's largest cotton and rice trader. It is also regarded by many as the second-largest player in the world's sugar market. LDC Metals expanded to become the world's third biggest trader of copper, zinc and lead concentrate, behind only Glencore and Trafigura.


title: Louis Dreyfus Company

text: Louis Dreyfus Company has its head office in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The company's parent, Louis Dreyfus Holding B.V., has its headquarters at the World Trade Center in Amsterdam. Louis Dreyfus companies are present in more than 100 countries, with 72 offices. Major offices are located in Geneva, London, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Paris, São Paulo, Singapore, New York City and Connecticut.


title: Louis Dreyfus Company

text: Aggregate average annual gross sales in recent years have exceeded US$120 billion. The company employs more than 22,000 people globally at peak season.


title: Louis Dreyfus Company

text: In 1851, the company was founded in the Alsace region of France by Léopold Dreyfus, the 18-year-old Alsatian Ashkenazi Jewish son of a farmer from Sierentz, under the name of his father, Louis Dreyfus. Léopold purchased wheat from local farmers in Alsace and transported it to Basel in Switzerland, away. Léopold developed a fortune whilst still a teenager through cross border cereal trading. He rapidly diversified across shipping, weapons manufacturing, agriculture, oil and banking, thus establishing one of the wealthiest dynasties in Europe. His descendants still own the company to this day. By the early 20th century, the Louis-Dreyfus family was described as one of the "top five biggest fortunes of France".


title: Louis Dreyfus Company

text: As a Jewish family during the Second World War much of the family assets were confiscated by the Vichy government and some members of the family fled to America. In 1941 a temporary non-Jewish administrator was appointed to run the Louis Dreyfus Corn Dealers company.


title: Louis Dreyfus Company

text: Léopold Louis-Dreyfus's great-grandson, Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, was chairman of Louis Dreyfus Energy Services, a subsidiary of the group involved in crude-oil trading, gas investments and infrastructure. Gérard is also the father of American actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the Emmy-winning star of "Seinfeld" and "Veep". Another branch of the dynasty, based in Paris, was headed by Robert Louis-Dreyfus (who was also the CEO of Adidas) until his death in 2009. It is currently overseen by his widow, Russian-born Margarita Bogdanova Louis-Dreyfus. A third branch of the family's business is headed by Philippe Louis-Dreyfus (born 1945) and is concerned primarily with offshore industrial activities and freight shipping operations.


title: Louis Dreyfus Company

text: On 11 May 2018, Louis Dreyfus Company sold its metals platform (LDC Metals, or LDCM) to NCCL Natural Resources Investment Fund. The final price of the transaction was US$466 million.


title: Louis Dreyfus Company

text: A noteworthy case of transfer mispricing came to light in 2011 in Argentina involving the world's four largest grain traders: ADM, Bunge, Cargill and LDC. Argentina's revenue and customs service began an investigation into the four companies when prices for agricultural commodities spiked in 2008 and yet very little profit for the four companies had been reported to the office. As a result of the investigation, it was alleged that the companies had submitted false declarations of sales and routed profits through tax havens or through their headquarters. In some cases, they were said to have used phantom firms to buy grain and had inflated costs in Argentina in order to reduce the recorded profits earned in the country. According to the country's revenue and customs service, the outstanding taxes amounted to almost US$1 billion. The companies involved have denied the allegations. To date, the Argentinian tax authorities have not replied to the Swiss NGO Public Eye’s request regarding the current state of the case. In its 2018 annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Bunge mentioned provisions which suggest that the case is still ongoing: "[A]s of December 31, 2018, Bunge's Argentine subsidiary had received income tax assessments relating to 2006 through 2009 of approximately 1,276 million Argentine pesos (approximately $34 million), plus applicable interest on the outstanding amount of approximately 4,246 million Argentine pesos (approximately $113 million)."


The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC; ) is an annual political conference attended by conservative activists and elected officials from across the United States and beyond. CPAC is hosted by the American Conservative Union (ACU). The first CPAC took place in 1974.


title: Conservative Political Action Conference

text: The conference was founded in 1974 by the American Conservative Union and Young Americans for Freedom as a small gathering of dedicated conservatives. Ronald Reagan gave the inaugural keynote speech at CPAC in 1974. The presidential hopeful used it to share his vision for the country—"A Shining City Upon A Hill," words borrowed from John Winthrop.


text: The 2010 CPAC featured co-sponsorship for the first time from GOProud, a gay conservative group. GoProud is credited in the media for initiating talks with ACU to invite Donald Trump to speak at CPAC 2011. The 2011 CPAC speech Trump gave, is credited for helping kick-start his political career within the Republican Party. Christopher R. Barron, co-founder of GOProud who would later not only endorse Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, but also launch LGBT for Trump, said he "would love to see Mr. Trump run for president".


text: In 2014, CPAC extended an invitation to American Atheists, which was immediately withdrawn on the same day due to controversial statements by AA's president David Silverman, who declared his group was going to "enlighten conservatives" and that "the Christian right should be threatened by us". The 2015 CPAC featured Jamila Bey who became the first atheist activist to address CPAC's annual meeting.


text: The 2016 CPAC featured co-sponsorship for the first time from the Log Cabin Republicans. In December 2016, CPAC extended an invitation to conservative blogger Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at the event, despite his history of controversial views on feminism, racial minorities, and transgender issues. The invitation was canceled when the "Reagan Battalion" re-posted a video of 2016 and 2015 YouTube videos in which Yiannopoulos is heard making comments defending sexual relationships between adult men and 13-year-old boys, citing his own sexual experiences at that age with a Catholic priest.


text: Richard Spencer, a figurehead of the alt-right and a white supremacist, entered the lobby of the Gaylord National Hotel on February 23, 2017 in an attempt to access CPAC. Organizers of the conference ejected him from the hotel as soon as his presence was discovered, citing his "repugnant [views which] ... have absolutely nothing to do with conservatism or what we do here" as cause for rejecting his admission to CPAC. ACU's Executive Director Dan Schneider castigated Spencer and the alt-right in a main-stage speech, calling them "garden-variety, left-wing fascists," and saying that the alt-right "despises everything [conservatives] believe in". Media members across the political spectrum condemned the intrusion as yet another attempt by groups like the alt-right to conceal their extremist views within a legitimate philosophy. Opinion columns in "The New York Times", and articles in "Mother Jones" and "Rolling Stone" voiced concern about the 2017 interview of ex-Trump Adviser Steve Bannon and ex-Trump Chief of Staff Reince Priebus with ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp, advocating for the American Right to reject the tenets of the alt-right (e.g. homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, racism, etc.).


text: The 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference was held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Maryland, from February 27 to March 2, 2019. The event was headlined by President Trump, with many additional speakers. Themes throughout the conference were fighting against socialism; criminal justice reform; China; and criticizing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Green New Deal.


text: In 2020, CPAC hosted its main event in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic despite the public health risks. On Saturday, March 7, 2020, ACU confirmed that an attendee at the 2020 CPAC later tested positive for COVID-19. Senator Ted Cruz, Representatives Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Doug Collins, and Mark Meadows had direct contact with the unnamed carrier, and announced their self-quarantine.


text: In 2021, CPAC hosted its main event live during the COVID-19 pandemic. The previous customary venue for CPAC, (Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center) in National Harbor, Maryland was subject to public health restrictions in Maryland, issued by Republican governor Larry Hogan, which restricted gathering sizes to a maximum of 10, to curb the spread of the disease.


text: As a result, the conference was relocated to Orlando, Florida, which had removed all prior pandemic-related limits on gathering sizes. The event was still subject to Orlando mandatory mask-wearing rules. Notwithstanding those restrictions, numerous attendees chose to not wear masks during the event, despite frequent announcements by the event's organizers and hotel staff, requesting attendees to comply with the local mask-wearing mandate. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis characterized the state's resistance to pandemic gathering-size limits as comporting with the state's status as "an oasis of freedom." The conference's theme, "America Uncancelled", sought to highlight alleged attempts by social media companies, the Democratic Party, U.S. universities and progressive organizations to censor conservatives' public expression of their political views. The conference's main event was a closing address by former U.S. president Donald Trump, his first public address and political speech since leaving office. Trump spent significant portions of the speech criticizing his successor, Joe Biden. The speech received significant media coverage in anticipation of Trump's announcement of his post-presidential political activity.


text: A second 2021 conference was held in Dallas from July 9 to 11 at the Hilton Anatole hotel. The theme of the conference was immigration policy and border security, in the context of the ongoing migrant crisis at the U.S. Southern Border.


text: The 2022 conference was held on February 24 to 27 in Orlando, Florida. Speakers included Trump, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard.


text: As in 2021, a second conference was held in Dallas, Texas from August 4 to 6. Speakers included Trump, Arizona Republican Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, and many congressional representatives.


text: As part of one of the 2022 break-out sessions, the CPAC displayed a banner across their main stage with the phrase "We are all domestic terrorists."


text: The annual CPAC straw poll vote traditionally serves as a barometer for the feelings of the conservative movement. During the conference, attendees are encouraged to fill out a survey that asks questions on a variety of issues. The questions regarding the most popular possible presidential candidates are the most widely reported. One component of CPAC is evaluating conservative candidates for president, and the straw poll serves generally to quantify conservative opinion.


text: Overall, former U.S. President Donald Trump holds the record of winning more CPAC straw polls than any other individual, with five. Mitt Romney follows with four, and Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and Rand Paul follow with three wins each, followed by Ron Paul with two wins. Of these five, the Pauls are the only two to win more than one straw poll, yet never appear on a Republican presidential ticket in any election (although Ron Paul did receive one Electoral College vote in 2016). Despite his former popularity, Romney was not invited from CPAC in 2020 because of his vote to hear additional witnesses in the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump and was also not invited to the 2021 CPAC after having voted to convict Trump on one count in his second impeachment trial. CPAC's chairman had said he could not ensure Romney's "physical safety" at the 2020 CPAC conference.


text: Australia's first CPAC was held in August 2019, with guest speakers including former prime minister Tony Abbott, Brexit campaign leader Nigel Farage, former "Breitbart News" editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam and NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham. Liberal Senator Amanda Stoker and Craig Kelly MP were at the event. There were calls for Kassam to be banned from coming into the country before the event.


text: The second conference was held in November 2020. Canadian alt-right YouTuber Lauren Southern was initially scheduled to appear, but her invitation was rescinded by the organizers.


text: The 2022 conference was held in Sydney on October 1. Attendees included Tony Abbott, Eric Abetz, Katherine Deves, Nigel Farage, Jacinta Price and Amanda Stoker.


text: The first CPAC in Brazil took place on 11–12 October 2019, in the city of São Paulo, attended by leading American conservatives including ACU chairman Matt Schlapp and his wife Mercedes Schlapp, Utah senator Mike Lee, Fox News especialist Walid Phares, as well as Brazilian figures including President Jair Bolsonaro's son Eduardo Bolsonaro, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Ernesto Araújo, and the Prince Imperial of Brazil Bertrand Maria José de Orléans e Bragança and others.


text: In September 2021, Jason Miller, a former senior adviser to Donald Trump, and other American right-wing media personalities in his traveling party, were detained and questioned for three hours at Brasília International Airport following participation in the 2021 CPAC Brazil Conference. The investigation was part of an inquiry by Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes into misinformation allegedly perpetuated by the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro. Miller had praised Bolsonaro’s supporters as "proud patriots" and claimed they had been deplatformed and shadow banned by Brazilian authorities. Miller continued to advise Jair Bolsonaro after his October 2022 election defeat, meeting with the president's son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, in November 2022, as protests and election challenges continued.


text: A conservative conference billed by the organizers as CPAC Hungary was held on May 19-20, 2022 in Budapest, Hungary. Speakers included Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Spain's Vox party leader Santiago Abascal, Eduardo Bolsonaro, right-wing US commentator Candace Owens, Ernst Roets the Deputy CEO of AfriForum, and former US White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, as well as far-right US conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and Hungarian journalist Zsolt Bayer. According to "The Guardian", Bayer has previously "called Jews 'stinking excrement', referred to Roma as 'animals' and used racial epithets to describe Black people".


text: The first international CPAC was hosted in Tokyo on December 16–17, 2017 by the Japanese Conservative Union (JCU) in conjunction with the American Conservative Union (ACU). JCU and ACU have continued to co-host J-CPACs every year since. Participants have included notable lawmakers and conservatives from the U.S., Japan, and around the world. They include ACU chairman Matt Schlapp and executive director Dan Schneider, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, U.S. Representatives Bruce Westerman, and Paul Gosar, Fmr. METI Minister Akira Amari, Fmr. Defense Minister Gen Nakatani, Fmr. Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, Fmr. Taiwanese Finance Minister and WTO ambassador , journalist Sara Carter, then-SEC commissioner Michael Piwowar, Asia expert and commentator Gordon G. Chang, to name just a few. Hong Kong localist activist Andy Chan Ho-tin attended Japanese CPAC 2019 by video after he was arrested in Hong Kong on his way to Tokyo to make a live appearance.


text: The first CPAC in Mexico (CPAC México) took place on November 18–19, 2022 at a Westin hotel in Santa Fe, Mexico City. Speakers included former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon, American anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson, Eduardo Bolsonaro, Argentinian presidential candidate Javier Milei, former Chilean presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, and Juan Iván Peña Neder, the President of the Mexican Republicans. It was organized by Mexican anti-abortion activist Eduardo Verástegui. At the start of the conference, a group of anti-fascist protesters wearing Che Guevara shirts and waving red hammer and sickle flags showed up at the hotel; Matt Schlapp dubbed the protest "CPAC Derangement Syndrome".


text: The first CPAC in South Korea (KCPAC) took place between 3 October 2019, in the city of Seoul. They include ACU chairman Matt Schlapp and executive director Dan Schneider, Fmr. acting United States Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, Fmr. Deputy National Security Advisor of the United States K. T. McFarland, Asia expert and commentator Gordon G. Chang, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, Founder of the New Institute Andrew Crilly, Fox News Contributor Sara A. Carter, Professor of law at Handong International Law School Eric Enlow, Professor emeritus at Yonsei University Kim Dong-gil, Fmr. public security prosecutor Koh Young-ju, Co-Chairperson KCPAC Annie M. H. Chan, Fmr. Prime minister of South Korea Hwang Kyo-ahn, Liberty Korea Party members of the National Assembly Kim Jin-tae and Chun Hee-kyung and Min Kyung-wook, Director of the International Strategic Research Institute Kim Jung-min, Director of Korea Institute for Crisis Management Analysis Huh Nam-sung, Fmr. Director of Korea Institute for National Unification Kim Tae-woo, Founder and former Chief of Pennmike Chung Kyu-jae, Lawyer Chae Myung-sung, Leader of Dawn of Liberty Party Park Kyul, Leader of Truth Forum Kim Eun-koo.


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: Freaks is a 2018 science fiction thriller film written and directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein. Starring Emile Hirsch, Bruce Dern, Grace Park, Amanda Crew, and Lexy Kolker, the film follows a seven-year-old girl (Kolker) who leaves her home for the first time after being kept inside by her father (Hirsch).


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2018, and was released commercially in North America on September 13, 2019, by Well Go USA Entertainment. It received positive reviews, with praise for Kolker's performance.


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: Seven-year-old Chloe Lewis has spent her entire life confined to a decrepit house with her father Henry, who forbids her from leaving under the threat of being killed by "the bad men". Despite her father's warnings, Chloe longs to experience the world outside her home and desires a maternal figure in her life, due to never meeting her deceased mother Mary. To help Chloe have a normal life, Henry seeks to educate her on general social behavior so she will one day be able to pose as a member of the neighboring Reed family. Chloe observes strange occurrences in the house, such as Henry expelling blood from his eyes and visions of a woman in her closet. Over time, she learns about "abnormals", individuals with superhuman abilities who are hunted by the government's Abnormal Defense Force (ADF) and contained in an underground facility known as Madoc Mountain.


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: When Chloe eventually manages to leave the house, she discovers her own abnormal power of telepathy at the prodding of an elderly ice cream truck driver. The ice cream truck driver reveals he is Chloe's maternal grandfather Alan, who believes his daughter Mary is still alive. Chloe realizes that the ghostly woman in her closet is Mary, who is being held captive at Madoc Mountain. Henry and Alan are also revealed as abnormals, identified by their bleeding eyes. Henry uses his time-altering powers to cause only a few months to pass outside of the house during his seven years with Chloe. Upon discovering that Chloe has left the house and been in contact with Alan, Henry brings her to the Reeds with a large sum of money, only to be turned away when Chloe uses her abilities on the Reed matriarch Nancy. Nancy subsequently contacts the ADF to deal with Chloe and her family, but Chloe tricks the agents into believing the Reeds are abnormals and they kill Nancy.


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: Using her telepathic abilities, Chloe begins to help Mary escape from Madoc Mountain, but is hindered by the arrival of ADF Agent Cecilia Ray at the house. When Henry and Alan attempt to deal with Ray, the agent reveals she knows the truth about their family and a drone strike will be ordered on the house if they kill her. Ray offers to place Chloe under governmental care, but upon realizing Henry and Alan are stalling, a scuffle ensues that leads to Ray killing Alan and mortally wounding Henry before she is killed by Chloe. Henry manages to delay the ADF agents long enough for Chloe to ensure Mary's escape, then uses his abilities to manipulate time and carry his daughter out of the house as it is destroyed by the missile.


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: After Henry succumbs to his injuries, Mary arrives using her flight abilities and kills the remaining ADF agents. Mary promises to keep Chloe hidden at a new location, but Chloe refuses to continue hiding, believing that no one can stop them from living wherever they want. Moved by her daughter's confidence, Mary agrees and flies off with Chloe.


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: Additionally, R. J. Fetherstonhaugh portrays a police officer who encounters Chloe and Alan at a park. Dakota Daulby appears as the Madoc Mountain executioner and Dean Redman plays an ADF captain.


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: "Freaks" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2018. Two days later, Well Go USA Entertainment acquired distribution rights to the film.


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: After Toronto, the film screened at over 40 film festivals around the world, including the Sitges Film Festival in Spain, the Santa Barbara Film Festival, the Cinequest Film Festival, Cleveland Film Festival, and the Vancouver International Film Festival, where it was awarded the Emerging Director award. The Vancouver festival programmers wrote "Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein's skewed sci-fi thriller ratchets up the go-for-broke audacity as it laces the family drama of "Room" with genre confections indebted to vintage Spielberg."


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: "Freaks" won the Asteroide Award, the top prize at the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival in Italy, and the Audience Award at Utopiales in France. It won Best Film and the Audience Award at the Paris International Fantastic Film Festival and won the Silver Raven Jury Prize at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival.


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: "Freaks" was released in theaters in the U.S. and Canada on September 13, 2019. It was released for online sales and VOD on December 3, 2019, with a Blu-ray and DVD release on December 10, 2019.


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: "Freaks" grossed $276,591 in the United States and Canada, and $73,531 in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $350,112.


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "Stocked with solid performances, "Freaks" is a clever sci-fi/horror hybrid that suggests a bright future for co-writers/co-directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 63 out of 100 based on 16 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: Germain Lussier of "io9" called "Freaks" "a wonderful, exciting film, filled with complex, robust ideas that not only have a unique twist to them but a realistic grounding that makes them more relatable and impactful."


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: In "The Hollywood Reporter", Justin Lowe praised the film's lead performances, stating that young Lexy Kolker's "semi-improvised performance couldn't be any more authentic and she's well matched with Hirsch, drawing on his own parental experience, as her conflicted and overprotective father. The ever-versatile Dern delivers a slyly subversive turn as Mr. Snowcone, whose hidden agenda involves much more than frozen treats."


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: Other reviewers praised Kolker as well. "Collider"s Perri Nemiroff called her performance "truly unforgettable work" and "Variety"s Andrew Barker said "relative newcomer Kolker carries the film effortlessly." In its summary of the Toronto Film Festival, "TheWrap" listed Kolker as a potential award contender.


title: Freaks (2018 film)

text: In December 2018, the Toronto International Film Festival named the film to its annual year-end Canada's Top Ten list. After its online release in December 2019, "Freaks" topped the charts as the bestselling independent film on iTunes.


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: Moses ( ; c. 1513–1515) is a sculpture by the Italian High Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti, housed in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. Commissioned in 1505 by Pope Julius II for his tomb, it depicts the biblical figure Moses with horns on his head, based on a description in chapter 34 of Exodus in the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible used at that time.


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to build his tomb in 1505 and it was finally completed in 1545; Julius II died in 1513. The initial design by Michelangelo was massive and called for over 40 statues. The statue of Moses would have been placed on a tier about 3.74 meters high (12 ft 3 in), opposite a figure of St. Paul. In the final design, the statue of Moses sits in the center of the bottom tier.


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: Giorgio Vasari in the "Life of Michelangelo" wrote: "Michelangelo finished the Moses in marble, a statue of five braccia, unequaled by any modern or ancient work. Seated in a serious attitude, he rests with one arm on the tablets, and with the other holds his long glossy beard, the hairs, so difficult to render in sculpture, being so soft and downy that it seems as if the iron chisel must have become a brush. The beautiful face, like that of a saint and mighty prince, seems as one regards it to need the veil to cover it, so splendid and shining does it appear, and so well has the artist presented in the marble the divinity with which God had endowed that holy countenance. The draperies fall in graceful folds, the muscles of the arms and bones of the hands are of such beauty and perfection, as are the legs and knees, the feet were adorned with excellent shoes, that Moses may now be called the friend of God more than ever, since God has permitted his body to be prepared for the resurrection before the others by the hand of Michelangelo. The Jews still go every Saturday in troops to visit and adore it as a divine, not a human thing."


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: The English translation of Sigmund Freud's "The Moses of Michelangelo" also provides a basic description of the sculpture: "The Moses of Michelangelo is represented as seated; his body faces forward, his head with its mighty beard looks to the left, his right foot rests on the ground, and his left leg is raised so that only the toes touch the ground. His right arm links the Tables of the Law with something that looks like a book in the right palm of his hand with a portion of his beard; his left arm lies in his lap."


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: Jonathan Jones of the English newspaper, "The Guardian", provides another description: "Moses's right hand protects the stone tablets bearing the Commandments; his left hand, veins throbbing, muscles tense, appears to be holding back from the violent action. When he came down from Mount Sinai, Moses found his people worshipping the Golden Calf — the false idol they had made. His anger defies the prison of stone, the limits of the sculptor's art. Few can resist the impression of a real mind, real emotions, in the figure that glares from his marble seat. Today, he glares at the tourists who mob the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome. He outfaces them, just as he outfaced Sigmund Freud, who spent three weeks in 1913 trying to figure out the sculpture's emotional effect. Moses's vitality has made this work popular since the 16th century; according to Vasari, Rome's Jewish population adopted the statue as their own. Its power must have something to do with the rendition of things that should be impossible to depict in stone; most quirkily, the beard — so ropy and smoky, its coils gave fantastic, snaking life. But where others might astonish us with technique, Michelangelo goes beyond this, leading us from formal to intellectual surprise, making us wonder why Moses fondles his beard, why Michelangelo has used this river of hair — in combination with the horns that were a conventional attribute of Moses — to give him an inhuman, demonic aspect."


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: In his 1914 essay entitled "The Moses of Michelangelo", Sigmund Freud associates the moment in the biblical narrative when Moses descends from the mountain the first time, carrying the tablets, and finds the Hebrew people worshipping the Golden Calf, as described in Exodus 32. Freud describes Moses in a complex psychological state: We may now, I believe, permit ourselves to reap the fruits of our endeavors. We have seen how many of those who have felt the influence of this statue has been compelled to interpret it as representing Moses agitated by the spectacle of his people fallen from grace and dancing round an idol. But this interpretation had to be given up, for it made us expect to see him spring up in the next moment, break the Tables and accomplish the work of vengeance. Such a conception, however, would fail to harmonize with the design of making this figure, together with three (or five) more seated figures, a part of the tomb of Julius II. We may now take up again the abandoned interpretation, for the Moses we have reconstructed will neither leap up nor cast the Tables from him. What we see before us is not the inception of violent action but the remains of a movement that has already taken place. In his first transport of fury, Moses desired to act, to spring up and take vengeance and forget the Tables; but he has overcome the temptation, and he will now remain seated and still, in his frozen wrath and his pain mingled with contempt. Nor will he throw away the Tables so that they will break on the stones, for it is on their particular account that he has controlled his anger; it was to preserve them that he kept his passion in check. In giving way to his rage and indignation, he had to neglect the Tables, and the hand which upheld them was withdrawn. They began to slide down and were in danger of being broken. This brought him to himself. He remembered his mission and for its sake renounced an indulgence of his feelings. His hand returned and saved the unsupported Tables before they had fallen to the ground. In this attitude, he remained immobilized, and in this attitude, Michelangelo has portrayed him as the guardian of the tomb. As our eyes travel down it, the figure exhibits three distinct emotional strata. The lines of the face reflect the feelings which have won the ascendancy; the middle of the figure shows the traces of suppressed movement, and the foot still retains the attitude of the projected action. It is as though the controlling influence had proceeded downwards from above. No mention has been made so far of the left arm, and it seems to claim a share in our interpretation. The hand is laid in the lap in a mild gesture and holds as though in a caress the end of the flowing beard. It seems as if it is meant to counteract the violence with which the other hand had misused the beard a few moments ago.


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: Another view, put forward by Malcolm Macmillan and Peter J. Swales in their essay, "Observations from the Refuse-Heap: Freud, Michelangelo's "Moses", and Psychoanalysis," relates the sculpture to the second set of Tables and the events mentioned in Exodus 33 and 34. They note that Moses is holding blank tablets, which God had commanded Moses to make in preparation for the second giving of the Law; they also note that Moses is depicted with "horns," which the biblical texts describe Moses as having only after he returned to the Hebrew people after the second giving of the Law. They argue that the statue depicts the moment when Moses sees God, as described in Exodus 33: "The incident in question is the most significant part of the Old Testament story of the exodus. Moses, full of doubt about his own standing and that of his people, takes the considerable risk of requesting—even demanding—that they are forgiven, that he be granted the Lord's grace, and that the Lord resume his place and lead them to the Promised Land. Emboldened by his success, he then risks all by asking that the Lord reveal his glory. Little imagination is required to sense the intense emotion with which such a Moses would have awaited the Lord: Will he come? Will he renew the Covenant? Will he reveal his glory?" They further argue that both Paul and Moses experienced God directly, an idea and pairing that were important to the Florentine Neo-Platonists, a group that the authors view both Michelangelo and Pope Julius II as being akin to. Finally, the authors state the key emotion on Moses' face is "awe at being face to face with the creator."


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: Following the iconographic convention common in Latin Christianity, the statue has two horns on its head.


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: The depiction of a horned Moses stems from the description of Moses' face as "" ("horned") in the Latin Vulgate translation of the passage found at Exodus chapter 34, specifically verses 29, 30 and 35, in which Moses returns to the people after receiving the commandments for the second time. The Douay-Rheims Bible translates the Vulgate as, "And when Moses came down from the Mount Sinai, he held the two tablets of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord."


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: This was Jerome's effort to faithfully translate the difficult, original Hebrew text, which uses the term , "qāran" (based on the root, "qeren", which often means "horn"); the term is now interpreted to mean "shining" or "emitting rays" (somewhat like horns).


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: Although some historians believe that Jerome made an outright error, Jerome himself appears to have seen "qeren" as a metaphor for "glorified", based on other commentaries he wrote, including one on Ezekiel, where he wrote that Moses' face had "become 'glorified', or as it says in the Hebrew, 'horned'." Another interpretation was that qeren also represented 'rings of light' as when Moses became enlightened after his journey. The Greek Septuagint, which Jerome also had available, translated the verse as "Moses knew not that the appearance of the skin of his face was glorified." Medieval theologians and scholars believed that Jerome had intended to express a glorification of Moses' face, by his use of the Latin word for "horned." The understanding that the original Hebrew was difficult and was not likely to mean "horns" persisted into and through the Renaissance.


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: Although Jerome completed the Vulgate in the late 4th century, the first known applications of the literal language of the Vulgate in art are found in an English illustrated book written in the vernacular from around 1050: the Aelfric Paraphrase of the Pentateuch and Joshua. For the next 150 years or so, evidence for further images of a horned Moses is sparse. Afterward, such images proliferated and can be found, for example, in the stained glass windows at Chartres Cathedral, the Sainte-Chapelle, and Notre Dame Cathedral, even as Moses continued to be depicted many times without horns. In the 16th century, the prevalence of depictions of a horned Moses steeply diminished.


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: In the Christian art of the Middle Ages depicting Moses with horns, this is sometimes done to depict him in glory, as a prophet and precursor of Jesus, but also in negative contexts, especially about Pauline contrasts between faith and law; the iconography was not clear-cut.


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: Melinkoff (1970) speculated that while the horns of Moses in origin were in no way associated with those of the Devil, the horns may nevertheless have developed a negative connotation with the development of anti-Jewish sentiment in the early modern period.


title: Moses (Michelangelo)

text: A book published in 2008 advanced a theory that the "horns" on Michelangelo's statue were never meant to be seen and that it is wrong to interpret them as horns: "[The statue] never had horns. The artist had planned "Moses" as a masterpiece not only of sculpture but also of special optical effects worthy of any Hollywood movie. For this reason, the piece had to be elevated and facing straight forward, looking in the direction of the front door of the basilica. The two protrusions on the head would have been invisible to the viewer looking up from the floor below — the only thing that would have been seen was the light reflected off of them." This interpretation has been contested.


title: Matter wave

text: Matter waves are a central part of the theory of quantum mechanics, being an example of wave–particle duality. All matter exhibits wave-like behavior. For example, a beam of electrons can be diffracted just like a beam of light or a water wave. In most cases, however, the wavelength is too small to have a practical impact on day-to-day activities.


title: Matter wave

text: The concept that matter behaves like a wave was proposed by French physicist Louis de Broglie () in 1924. It is also referred to as the "de Broglie hypothesis". Matter waves are referred to as "de Broglie waves".


title: Matter wave

text: The "de Broglie wavelength" is the wavelength, , associated with a massive particle (i.e., a particle with mass, as opposed to a massless particle) and is related to its momentum, , through the Planck constant, :


title: Matter wave

text: Wave-like behavior of matter was first experimentally demonstrated by George Paget Thomson's thin metal diffraction experiment, and independently in the Davisson–Germer experiment, both using electrons; and it has also been confirmed for other elementary particles, neutral atoms and even molecules. For formula_2 its value is the same as the Compton wavelength.


title: Matter wave

text: At the end of the 19th century, light was thought to consist of waves of electromagnetic fields which propagated according to Maxwell's equations, while matter was thought to consist of localized particles (see history of wave and particle duality). In 1900, this division was exposed to doubt, when, investigating the theory of black-body radiation, Max Planck proposed that light is emitted in discrete quanta of energy. It was thoroughly challenged in 1905. Extending Planck's investigation in several ways, including its connection with the photoelectric effect, Albert Einstein proposed that light is also propagated and absorbed in quanta; now called photons. These quanta would have an energy given by the Planck–Einstein relation:


title: Matter wave

text: where (lowercase Greek letter nu) and (lowercase Greek letter lambda) denote the frequency and wavelength of the light, the speed of light, and the Planck constant. In the modern convention, frequency is symbolized by "f" as is done in the rest of this article. Einstein's postulate was confirmed experimentally by Robert Millikan and Arthur Compton over the next two decades.


title: Matter wave

text: De Broglie, in his 1924 PhD thesis, proposed that just as light has both wave-like and particle-like properties, electrons also have wave-like properties. De Broglie did not simplify his equation into the one that bears his name. He did conclude that . He also referred to Einstein’s famous relativity equation. Thus, it was a simple step to get to the equation that bears his name. Also, by rearranging the momentum equation stated in the above section, we find a relationship between the wavelength, , associated with an electron and its momentum, , through the Planck constant, :


title: Matter wave

text: The relationship has since been shown to hold for all types of matter: all matter exhibits properties of both particles and waves.


title: Matter wave

text: In 1926, Erwin Schrödinger published an equation describing how a matter wave should evolve – the matter wave analogue of Maxwell's equations — and used it to derive the energy spectrum of hydrogen. Frequencies of solutions of the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation differ from de Broglie waves by the Compton frequency since the energy corresponding to the rest mass of a particle is not part of the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation.


title: Matter wave

text: Matter waves were first experimentally confirmed to occur in George Paget Thomson's cathode ray diffraction experiment and the Davisson-Germer experiment for electrons, and the de Broglie hypothesis has been confirmed for other elementary particles. Furthermore, neutral atoms and even molecules have been shown to be wave-like.


title: Matter wave

text: In 1927 at Bell Labs, Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer fired slow-moving electrons at a crystalline nickel target. The angular dependence of the diffracted electron intensity was measured, and was determined to have the same diffraction pattern as those predicted by Bragg for x-rays. At the same time George Paget Thomson at the University of Aberdeen was independently firing electrons at very thin metal foils to demonstrate the same effect. Before the acceptance of the de Broglie hypothesis, diffraction was a property that was thought to be exhibited only by waves. Therefore, the presence of any diffraction effects by matter demonstrated the wave-like nature of matter. When the de Broglie wavelength was inserted into the Bragg condition, the predicted diffraction pattern was observed, thereby experimentally confirming the de Broglie hypothesis for electrons.


title: Matter wave

text: This was a pivotal result in the development of quantum mechanics. Just as the photoelectric effect demonstrated the particle nature of light, the Davisson–Germer experiment showed the wave-nature of matter, and completed the theory of wave–particle duality. For physicists this idea was important because it meant that not only could any particle exhibit wave characteristics, but that one could use wave equations to describe phenomena in matter if one used the de Broglie wavelength.


title: Matter wave

text: Experiments with Fresnel diffraction and an atomic mirror for specular reflection of neutral atoms confirm the application of the de Broglie hypothesis to atoms, i.e. the existence of atomic waves which undergo diffraction, interference and allow quantum reflection by the tails of the attractive potential. Advances in laser cooling have allowed cooling of neutral atoms down to nanokelvin temperatures. At these temperatures, the thermal de Broglie wavelengths come into the micrometre range. Using Bragg diffraction of atoms and a Ramsey interferometry technique, the de Broglie wavelength of cold sodium atoms was explicitly measured and found to be consistent with the temperature measured by a different method.


title: Matter wave

text: This effect has been used to demonstrate atomic holography, and it may allow the construction of an atom probe imaging system with nanometer resolution. The description of these phenomena is based on the wave properties of neutral atoms, confirming the de Broglie hypothesis.


title: Matter wave

text: The effect has also been used to explain the spatial version of the quantum Zeno effect, in which an otherwise unstable object may be stabilised by rapidly repeated observations.


title: Matter wave

text: Recent experiments even confirm the relations for molecules and even macromolecules that otherwise might be supposed too large to undergo quantum mechanical effects. In 1999, a research team in Vienna demonstrated diffraction for molecules as large as fullerenes. The researchers calculated a De Broglie wavelength of the most probable C velocity as 2.5 pm.


title: Matter wave

text: More recent experiments prove the quantum nature of molecules made of 810 atoms and with a mass of 10,123 u. As of 2019, this has been pushed to molecules of 25,000 u.


title: Matter wave

text: Still one step further than Louis de Broglie go theories which in quantum mechanics eliminate the concept of a pointlike classical particle and explain the observed facts by means of wavepackets of matter waves alone.


title: Matter wave

text: The de Broglie equations relate the wavelength to the momentum , and frequency to the total energy of a free particle:


title: Matter wave

text: where is the reduced Planck constant, is the wave vector, is the phase constant, and is the angular frequency.


title: Matter wave

text: In each pair, the second equation is also referred to as the Planck–Einstein relation, since it was also proposed by Planck and Einstein.


title: Matter wave

text: Using two formulas from special relativity, one for the relativistic mass energy and one for the relativistic momentum


title: Matter wave

text: where formula_12 denotes the particle's rest mass, formula_13 its velocity, formula_14 the Lorentz factor, and formula_15 the speed of light in a vacuum. See below for details of the derivation of the de Broglie relations. Group velocity (equal to the particle's speed) should not be confused with phase velocity (equal to the product of the particle's frequency and its wavelength). In the case of a non-dispersive medium, they happen to be equal, but otherwise they are not.


title: Matter wave

text: Albert Einstein first explained the wave–particle duality of light in 1905. Louis de Broglie hypothesized that any particle should also exhibit such a duality. The velocity of a particle, he concluded, should always equal the group velocity of the corresponding wave. The magnitude of the group velocity is equal to the particle's speed.


title: Matter wave

text: Both in relativistic and non-relativistic quantum physics, we can identify the group velocity of a particle's wave function with the particle velocity. Quantum mechanics has very accurately demonstrated this hypothesis, and the relation has been shown explicitly for particles as large as molecules.


title: Matter wave

text: De Broglie deduced that if the duality equations already known for light were the same for any particle, then his hypothesis would hold. This means that


title: Matter wave

text: where is the total energy of the particle, is its momentum, is the reduced Planck constant. For a free non-relativistic particle it follows that


title: Matter wave

text: where is the rest mass of the particle and is the speed of light in a vacuum. But (see below), using that the phase velocity is , therefore


title: Matter wave

text: In quantum mechanics, particles also behave as waves with complex phases. The phase velocity is equal to the product of the frequency multiplied by the wavelength.


title: Matter wave

text: where "E" is the total energy of the particle (i.e. rest energy plus kinetic energy in the kinematic sense), "p" the momentum, formula_14 the Lorentz factor, "c" the speed of light, and β the speed as a fraction of "c". The variable "v" can either be taken to be the speed of the particle or the group velocity of the corresponding matter wave. Since the particle speed formula_23 for any particle that has mass (according to special relativity), the phase velocity of matter waves always exceeds "c", i.e.


title: Matter wave

text: and as we can see, it approaches "c" when the particle speed is in the relativistic range. The superluminal phase velocity does not violate special relativity, because phase propagation carries no energy. See the article on "Dispersion (optics)" for details.


title: Matter wave

text: Likewise, the relation between group/particle velocity and phase velocity is given in frame-independent form by:


title: Matter wave

text: The purpose of de Broglie’s 81 page thesis was to create an improved version of the Bohr atom through pilot wave theory. De Broglie presented his thesis on pilot wave theory at the 1927 Solvay Conference.


title: Matter wave

text: The thesis of de Broglie involved the hypothesis that a standing wave guided the electrons in the Bohr model of the atom. The thesis had an unusual analysis that higher energy photons obey the Wien Law and are particle-like while lower energy photons obey the Rayleigh–Jeans law and are wave-like. Particle physics tends to treat all forces by particle-particle interaction causing Richard Feynman to say that there are no waves just particles. And recently, there have been some theories that try to explain the Interpretations of quantum mechanics which try to resolve whether either the particle or the wave aspect is fundamental in nature, seeking to explain the other as an emergent property. Some interpretations, such as hidden variable theory, treat the wave and the particle as distinct entities. Yet others propose some intermediate entity that is neither quite wave nor quite particle but only appears as such when we measure one or the other property. The Copenhagen interpretation states that the nature of the underlying reality is unknowable and beyond the bounds of scientific inquiry.


title: Matter wave

text: Schrödinger's acknowledges that his quantum mechanical equation is based in part on the thesis of de Broglie. Schrödinger emphasized that his equation was different in that it was in multi-dimensional space. In his lecture as both wave mechanics and matrix mechanics were both new concepts, he tries to imply his formula is superior as does Heisenberg in his speech.


title: Matter wave

text: In 1955, Heisenberg showed that the waves of the quantum mechanical equations were reinterpreted as probabilities rather than classical waves stating:


title: Matter wave

text: It is mentioned above that the "displaced quantity" of the Schrödinger wave has values that are dimensionless complex numbers. According to Heisenberg, rather than being of some ordinary physical quantity such as, for example, Maxwell's electric field intensity, or mass density, the Schrödinger-wave packet's "displaced quantity" is a probability amplitude. He wrote that instead of using the term 'wave packet', it is preferable to speak of a probability packet. The Schrödinger equation probability amplitude is interpreted as the calculation of the probability of the location or momentum of discrete particles. Heisenberg recites Duane's account of particle diffraction by probabilistic quantal translation momentum transfer, which allows, for example in Young's two-slit experiment, each diffracted particle probabilistically to pass discretely through a particular slit. Schrödinger originally proposed that his matter wave was 'composed of smeared matter,’ but the Born rule changed the psi function to be understood as a description of probability rather than a description of the actual electron charge density.


title: Matter wave

text: These ideas may be expressed in ordinary language as follows. In the account of ordinary physical waves, a 'point' refers to a position in ordinary physical space at an instant of time, at which there is specified a 'displacement' of some physical quantity. But in the account of quantum mechanics, a 'point' refers to a configuration of the system at an instant of time, every particle of the system being in a sense present in every 'point' of configuration space, each particle at such a 'point' being located possibly at a different position in ordinary physical space. There is no explicit definite indication that, at an instant, this particle is 'here' and that particle is 'there' in some separate 'location' in configuration space. This conceptual difference entails that, in contrast to de Broglie's pre-quantum mechanical wave description, the quantum mechanical probability packet description does not directly and explicitly express the Aristotelian idea, referred to by Newton, that causal efficacy propagates through ordinary space by contact, nor the Einsteinian idea that such propagation is no faster than light. In contrast, these ideas are so expressed in the classical wave account, through the Green's function, though it is inadequate for the observed quantal phenomena. The physical reasoning for this was first recognized by Einstein.


title: Matter wave

text: De Broglie's thesis started from the hypothesis, "that to each portion of energy with a proper mass one may associate a periodic phenomenon of the frequency , such that one finds: . The frequency is to be measured, of course, in the rest frame of the energy packet. This hypothesis is the basis of our theory." (This frequency is also known as Compton frequency.)


title: Matter wave

text: De Broglie followed his initial hypothesis of a periodic phenomenon, with frequency , associated with the energy packet. He used the special theory of relativity to find, in the frame of the observer of the electron energy packet that is moving with velocity formula_13, that its frequency was apparently reduced to


title: Matter wave

text: De Broglie reasoned that to a stationary observer this hypothetical intrinsic particle periodic phenomenon appears to be in phase with a wave of wavelength formula_32 and frequency formula_33 that is propagating with phase velocity formula_34. De Broglie called this wave the "phase wave" («onde de phase» in French).


title: Matter wave

text: This was his basic matter wave conception. He noted, as above, that formula_35, and the phase wave does not transfer energy.


title: Matter wave

text: While the concept of waves being associated with matter is correct, de Broglie did not leap directly to the final understanding of quantum mechanics with no missteps. There are conceptual problems with the approach that de Broglie took in his thesis that he was not able to resolve, despite trying a number of different fundamental hypotheses in different papers published while working on, and shortly after publishing, his thesis.


title: Matter wave

text: These difficulties were resolved by Erwin Schrödinger, who developed the wave mechanics approach, starting from a somewhat different basic hypothesis.


title: Yoru ni Kakeru

text: The song and story depict a man who is fascinated by a personification of death, Thanatos, who sent him a message "goodbye" and he tries to stop his girlfriend from suicide by jumping. The English version, titled "Into the Night", was released on July 2, 2021, the same day as their tenth single "Sangenshoku" and the stand-alone single version of "Encore", as Yoasobi's first English song. It was translated by Konnie Aoki.


title: Yoru ni Kakeru

text: The accompanying music video of "Yoru ni Kakeru" was published on Ayase's YouTube channel on November 16, 2019 and its view count surpassed 10 million in 5 months. Soon after its release, the song topped the popularity charts on Spotify and Line Music, as well as went viral on social media such as TikTok during COVID-19 pandemic in Japan began.


title: Yoru ni Kakeru

text: "Yoru ni Kakeru" peaked at number one on the "Billboard" Japan Hot 100 for the issue date of June 1, 2020, and topped for three consecutive weeks, total six weeks. The song finished 2020 as the year's top Japan Hot 100 song, becoming the first single not released on CD to top the year-end chart. The song certified diamond for streaming by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) on October 25, 2021, making it the first ever diamond-certified song for streaming in RIAJ history.


title: Yoru ni Kakeru

text: On May 15, 2020, Yoasobi's member Ikura appeared on the YouTube channel "The First Take" to perform the re-arranged version of "Yoru ni Kakeru", as "The Home Take". Yoasobi gave the televised debut performance of "Yoru ni Kakeru" as a duo with band members at 71st NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen on December 31, broadcast from Kadokawa Culture Center. During their first EP "The Book" promotion in 2021, they also performed the song at "CDTV Live! Live!" on January 18, alongside "Encore", and "Music Station" on January 22.


title: Monopolistic competition

text: Monopolistic competition is a type of imperfect competition such that there are many producers competing against each other, but selling products that are differentiated from one another (e.g. by branding or quality) and hence are not perfect substitutes. In monopolistic competition, a company takes the prices charged by its rivals as given and ignores the impact of its own prices on the prices of other companies. If this happens in the presence of a coercive government, monopolistic competition will fall into government-granted monopoly. Unlike perfect competition, the company maintains spare capacity. Models of monopolistic competition are often used to model industries. Textbook examples of industries with market structures similar to monopolistic competition include restaurants, cereals, clothing, shoes, and service industries in large cities. The "founding father" of the theory of monopolistic competition is Edward Hastings Chamberlin, who wrote a pioneering book on the subject, "Theory of Monopolistic Competition" (1933). Joan Robinson published a book "The Economics of Imperfect Competition" with a comparable theme of distinguishing perfect from imperfect competition. Further work on monopolistic competition was undertaken by Dixit and Stiglitz who created the Dixit-Stiglitz model which has proved applicable used in the sub fields of international trade theory, macroeconomics and economic geography.


title: Monopolistic competition

text: The long-run characteristics of a monopolistically competitive market are almost the same as a perfectly competitive market. Two differences between the two are that monopolistic competition produces heterogeneous products and that monopolistic competition involves a great deal of non-price competition, which is based on subtle product differentiation. A firm making profits in the short run will nonetheless only break even in the long run because demand will decrease and average total cost will increase. This means in the long run, a monopolistically-competitive company will make zero economic profit. This illustrates the amount of influence the company has over the market; because of brand loyalty, it can raise its prices without losing all of its customers. This means that an individual company's demand curve is downward sloping, in contrast to perfect competition, which has a perfectly elastic demand schedule.


title: Monopolistic competition

text: MC companies sell products that have real or perceived non-price differences. Examples of these differences could include physical aspects of the product, location from which it sells the product or intangible aspects of the product, among others. However, the differences are not so great as to eliminate other goods as substitutes. Technically, the cross price elasticity of demand between goods in such a market is positive. In fact, the cross elasticity of demand would be high. MC goods are best described as close but imperfect substitutes. The goods perform the same basic functions but have differences in qualities such as type, style, quality, reputation, appearance, and location that tend to distinguish them from each other. For example, the basic function of motor vehicles is the same—to move people and objects from point to point in reasonable comfort and safety. Yet there are many different types of motor vehicles such as motor scooters, motor cycles, trucks and cars, and many variations even within these categories.


title: Monopolistic competition

text: There are many companies in each MC product group and many companies on the side lines prepared to enter the market. A product group is a "collection of similar products". The fact that there are "many companies" means that each company has a small market share. This gives each MC company the freedom to set prices without engaging in strategic decision making regarding the prices of other companies (no mutual independence) and each company's actions have a negligible impact on the market. For example, a company could cut prices and increase sales without fear that its actions will prompt retaliatory responses from competitors.


title: Monopolistic competition

text: The number of companies that an MC market structure will support at market equilibrium depends on factors such as fixed costs, economies of scale, and the degree of product differentiation. For example, the higher the fixed costs, the fewer companies the market will support.


title: Monopolistic competition

text: Like perfect competition, under monopolistic competition also, the companies can enter or exit freely. The companies will enter when the existing companies are making super-normal profits. With the entry of new companies, the supply would increase which would reduce the price and hence the existing companies will be left only with normal profits. Similarly, if the existing companies are sustaining losses, some of the marginal firms will exit. It will reduce the supply due to which price would rise and the existing firms will be left only with normal profit.


title: Monopolistic competition

text: Each MC company independently sets the terms of exchange for its product. The company gives no consideration to what effect its decision may have on its competitors. The theory is that any action will have such a negligible effect on the overall market demand that an MC company can act without fear of prompting heightened competition. In other words, each company feels free to set prices as if it were a monopoly rather than an oligopoly.


title: Monopolistic competition

text: MC companies have some degree of market power, although relatively low. Market power means that the company has control over the terms and conditions of exchange. All MC companies are price makers. An MC companies can raise its prices without losing all its customers. The company can also lower prices without triggering a potentially ruinous price war with competitors. The source of an MC company's market power is not barriers to entry since they are low. Rather, an MC company has market power because it has relatively few competitors, those competitors do not engage in strategic decision making and the companies sells differentiated product. Market power also means that an MC company faces a downward sloping demand curve. In the long run, the demand curve is highly elastic, meaning that it is sensitive to price changes although it is not completely "flat". In the short run, economic profit is positive, but it approaches zero in the long run.


title: Monopolistic competition

text: There are two sources of inefficiency in the MC market structure. The first source of inefficiency is that, at its optimum output, the company charges a price that exceeds marginal costs. The MC company maximises profits where marginal revenue equals marginal cost. Since the MC company's demand curve is downwards-sloping, the company will charge a price that exceeds marginal costs. The monopoly power possessed by a MC company means that at its profit-maximising level of production, there will be a net loss of consumer (and producer) surplus. The second source of inefficiency is the fact that MC companies operate with excess capacity. That is that the MC company's profit-maximising output is less than the output associated with minimum average cost. Both an MC and PC company will operate at a point where demand or price equals average cost. For a PC company, this equilibrium condition occurs where the perfectly elastic demand curve equals minimum average cost. A MC company's demand curve is not flat but is downwards-sloping. Thus, the demand curve will be tangential to the long-run average cost curve at a point to the left of its minimum. The result is excess capacity.


title: Monopolistic competition

text: Monopolistically-competitive companies are inefficient, it is usually the case that the costs of regulating prices for products sold in monopolistic competition exceed the benefits of such regulation. A monopolistically-competitive company might be said to be marginally inefficient because the company produces at an output where average total cost is not a minimum. A monopolistically-competitive market is productively inefficient market structure because marginal cost is less than price in the long run. Monopolistically-competitive markets are also allocative-inefficient, as the company charges prices that exceed marginal cost. Product differentiation increases total utility by better meeting people's wants than homogenous products in a perfectly competitive market.


title: Monopolistic competition

text: Another concern is that monopolistic competition fosters advertising. There are two main ways to conceive how advertising works under a monopolistic competition framework. Advertising can either cause a company's perceived demand curve to become more inelastic; or advertising causes demand for the company's product to increase. In either case, a successful advertising campaign may allow a company to sell a greater quantity or to charge a higher price, or both, and thus increase its profits. This allows the creation of brand names. Advertising induces customers into spending more on products because of the name associated with them rather than because of rational factors. Defenders of advertising dispute this, arguing that brand names can represent a guarantee of quality and that advertising helps reduce the cost to consumers of weighing the trade-offs of numerous competing brands. There are unique information and information processing costs associated with selecting a brand in a monopolistically competitive environment. In a monopoly market, the consumer is faced with a single brand, making information gathering relatively inexpensive. In a perfectly competitive industry, the consumer is faced with many brands, but because the brands are virtually identical information gathering is also relatively inexpensive. In a monopolistically competitive market, the consumer must collect and process information on a large number of different brands to be able to select the best of them. In many cases, the cost of gathering information necessary to selecting the best brand can exceed the benefit of consuming the best brand instead of a randomly selected brand. The result is that the consumer is confused. Some brands gain prestige value and can extract an additional price for that.


title: Monopolistic competition

text: Evidence suggests that consumers use information obtained from advertising not only to assess the single brand advertised, but also to infer the possible existence of brands that the consumer has, heretofore, not observed, as well as to infer consumer satisfaction with brands similar to the advertised brand.


title: Monopolistic competition

text: In many markets, such as toothpaste, soap, air conditioning, smartphones and toilet paper, producers practice product differentiation by altering the physical composition of products, using special packaging, or simply claiming to have superior products based on brand images or advertising.


title: Chasten Buttigieg

text: Chasten James Glezman Buttigieg ( ; born June 23, 1989) is an American teacher, writer, and LGBTQ rights advocate. He is married to Pete Buttigieg, the current U.S. secretary of transportation. He was an advisor, spokesperson, and social media campaigner during his husband's 2020 presidential campaign. In September 2020, Buttigieg released his debut memoir, "I Have Something to Tell You".


title: Chasten Buttigieg

text: Buttigieg was born Chasten James Glezman, on June 23, 1989, in Traverse City, Michigan, to Sherri (née Pelon) and Terry Glezman, owners of a landscaping business. The youngest of three brothers, he was raised in Chums Corner in a conservative Roman Catholic family. As a teenager, Buttigieg worked at a cherry products store called Cherry Republic and drove tractors on his grandfather's cherry farm in Suttons Bay. He won a blue ribbon in pit spitting at the National Cherry Festival.


title: Chasten Buttigieg

text: Buttigieg attended Traverse City West Senior High School and spent his senior year as an exchange student in Germany. He took classes at Northwestern Michigan College before attending the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire; he graduated in 2014 with a bachelor's degree in theater and global studies. Later, Buttigieg attended DePaul University in Chicago where he received a Master of Education degree in 2017. That summer, Buttigieg began a AMS/MACTE certificate from Xavier University.


title: Chasten Buttigieg

text: After graduating from college, Buttigieg moved to Milwaukee, where he worked as a Teaching Artist for First Stage as well as in classroom settings in the greater Milwaukee area.


title: Chasten Buttigieg

text: While pursuing his graduate degree, he was a substitute teacher in both Chicago and South Bend public schools. In fall 2017, Buttigieg began as a junior high humanities teacher at the Montessori Academy in Mishawaka, Indiana. He also taught theater and ran a diversity club. He took a leave of absence to support his husband's campaign. In January 2019, Buttigieg joined the Civic Education Team of the South Bend Civic Theatre as the Director of Curriculum.


title: Chasten Buttigieg

text: In 2016, Buttigieg was a State Democratic Delegate for St. Joseph County. He was the first gentleman of South Bend, Indiana from June 16, 2018, to January 1, 2020.


title: Chasten Buttigieg

text: Buttigieg was a campaign spokesperson, advisor, and social media campaigner for his husband Pete Buttigieg's campaign He was called Pete's “not-so-secret public-relations weapon.” If his husband had been elected, Chasten identified improving the nation's public schools, arts education, and mental health as the areas he would have focused on as First Gentleman. He also supports LGBTQ rights.


title: Chasten Buttigieg

text: After his husband's withdrawal from the race, both endorsed Joe Biden and campaigned for him. Pete Buttigieg ended up placing fifth in terms of number of delegates. Since the campaign, Buttigieg now considers Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff close friends.


title: Chasten Buttigieg

text: Buttigieg was a Harvard Institute of Politics Fellow for the fall 2020 virtual semester. On September 1, 2020, Buttigieg released his debut memoir, "I Have Something to Tell You". The hardcover edition debuted at number 12 on "The New York Times" Best Seller list for hardcover non-fiction. In December 2020, Buttigieg criticized Joseph Epstein's op-ed about Jill Biden's academic credentials, calling it sexist.


title: Chasten Buttigieg

text: Buttigieg came out to his family at 18 and soon moved out, living with friends and in his car. In 2020, Buttigieg shared in his memoir that he was sexually assaulted by a friend of a friend when he was 18. The experience left him feeling ashamed for years. Buttigieg now has a "great relationship" with his parents.


title: Chasten Buttigieg

text: Buttigieg lives in Washington, D.C. with his husband, Pete Buttigieg, who is the current U.S. Secretary of Transportation. The two first met on the dating app Hinge in summer 2015. They met in person that August while Chasten was in graduate school. They got engaged in December 2017 at O'Hare International Airport and married on June 16, 2018, at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. James in South Bend; the two appeared at the South Bend Gay Pride block party following their nuptials. On August 17, 2021, Buttigieg announced on his personal Twitter account that he and his husband had become parents. On September 4, Pete Buttigieg tweeted a photo of the couple with their newborn twins, a son and a daughter.


title: Organic food

text: Organic food, ecological food or biological food are food and drinks produced by methods complying with the standards of organic farming. Standards vary worldwide, but organic farming features practices that cycle resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Organizations regulating organic products may restrict the use of certain pesticides and fertilizers in the farming methods used to produce such products. Organic foods typically are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or synthetic food additives.


title: Organic food

text: In the 21st century, the European Union, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and many other countries require producers to obtain special certification to market their food as "organic". Although the produce of kitchen gardens may actually be organic, selling food with an organic label is regulated by governmental food safety authorities, such as the National Organic Program of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) or European Commission (EC).


title: Organic food

text: From an environmental perspective, fertilizing, overproduction, and the use of pesticides in conventional farming may negatively affect ecosystems, soil health,<ref name="10.1016/bs.agron.2015.12.003"></ref><ref name="10.1007/s13165-019-00275-1"></ref> biodiversity, groundwater, and drinking water supplies. These environmental and health issues are intended to be minimized or avoided in organic farming.


title: Organic food

text: Demand for organic foods is primarily driven by consumer concerns for personal health and the environment, such as the detrimental environmental impacts of pesticides. From the perspective of science and consumers, there is insufficient evidence in the scientific and medical literature to support claims that organic food is either substantially safer or healthier to eat than conventional food.


title: Organic food

text: Organic agriculture has higher production costs and lower yields, higher labor costs, and higher consumer prices as compared to conventional farming methods.


title: Organic food

text: For the vast majority of its history, agriculture can be described as having been organic; only during the 20th century was a large supply of new products, generally deemed not organic, introduced into food production. The organic farming movement arose in the 1940s in response to the industrialization of agriculture.


title: Organic food

text: In 1939, Lord Northbourne coined the term "organic farming" in his book "Look to the Land" (1940), out of his conception of "the farm as organism", to describe a holistic, ecologically balanced approach to farming—in contrast to what he called "chemical farming", which relied on "imported fertility" and "cannot be self-sufficient nor an organic whole". Early soil scientists also described the differences in soil composition when animal manures were used as "organic", because they contain carbon compounds, whereas superphosphates and Haber process nitrogen do not. Their respective use affects humus content of soil. This is different from the scientific use of the term "organic" in chemistry, which refers to a class of molecules that contain carbon, especially those involved in the chemistry of life. This class of molecules includes everything likely to be considered edible, as well as most pesticides and toxins too, therefore the term "organic" and, especially, the term "inorganic" (sometimes wrongly used as a contrast by the popular press) as they apply to organic chemistry is an equivocation fallacy when applied to farming, the production of food, and to foodstuffs themselves. Properly used in this agricultural science context, "organic" refers to the methods grown and processed, not necessarily the chemical composition of the food.


title: Organic food

text: Ideas that organic food could be healthier and better for the environment originated in the early days of the organic movement as a result of publications like the 1943 book The Living Soil and "Farming and Gardening for Health or Disease" (1945).


title: Organic food

text: In the industrial era, organic gardening reached a modest level of popularity in the United States in the 1950s. In the 1960s, environmentalists and the counterculture championed organic food, but it was only in the 1970s that a national marketplace for organic foods developed.


title: Organic food

text: Early consumers interested in organic food would look for non-chemically treated, non-use of unapproved pesticides, fresh or minimally processed food. They mostly had to buy directly from growers. Later, "Know your farmer, know your food" became the motto of a new initiative instituted by the USDA in September 2009. Personal definitions of what constituted "organic" were developed through firsthand experience: by talking to farmers, seeing farm conditions, and farming activities. Small farms grew vegetables (and raised livestock) using organic farming practices, with or without certification, and the individual consumer monitored. Small specialty health food stores and co-operatives were instrumental to bringing organic food to a wider audience. As demand for organic foods continued to increase, high-volume sales through mass outlets such as supermarkets rapidly replaced the direct farmer connection. Today, many large corporate farms have an organic division. However, for supermarket consumers, food production is not easily observable, and product labeling, like "certified organic", is relied upon. Government regulations and third-party inspectors are looked to for assurance.


title: Organic food

text: In the 1970s, interest in organic food grew with the rise of the environmental movement and was also spurred by food-related health scares like the concerns about Alar that arose in the mid-1980s.


title: Organic food

text: Organic food production is distinct from private gardening. In the EU, organic farming and organic food are more commonly known as ecological or biological, or in short 'eco' and 'bio'.


title: Organic food

text: Currently, the European Union, the United States, Canada, Japan, and many other countries require producers to obtain special certification based on government-defined standards to market food as organic within their borders. In the context of these regulations, foods marketed as organic are produced in a way that complies with organic standards set by national governments and international organic industry trade organizations.


title: Organic food

text: In the United States, organic production is managed in accordance with the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 (OFPA) and regulations in Title 7, Part 205 of the Code of Federal Regulations to respond to site-specific conditions by integrating cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. If livestock are involved, the livestock must be reared with regular access to pasture and without the routine use of antibiotics or growth hormones.


title: Organic food

text: Processed organic food usually contains only organic ingredients. If non-organic ingredients are present, at least a certain percentage of the food's total plant and animal ingredients must be organic (95% in the United States, Canada, and Australia). Foods claiming to be organic must be free of artificial food additives, and are often processed with fewer artificial methods, materials and conditions, such as chemical ripening, food irradiation, and genetically modified ingredients. Pesticides are allowed as long as they are not synthetic. However, under US federal organic standards, if pests and weeds are not controllable through management practices, nor via organic pesticides and herbicides, "a substance included on the National List of synthetic substances allowed for use in organic crop production may be applied to prevent, suppress, or control pests, weeds, or diseases". Several groups have called for organic standards to prohibit nanotechnology on the basis of the precautionary principle in light of unknown risks of nanotechnology. The use of nanotechnology-based products in the production of organic food is prohibited in some jurisdictions (Canada, the UK, and Australia) and is unregulated in others.


title: Organic food

text: To be certified organic, products must be grown and manufactured in a manner that adheres to standards set by the country they are sold in:


title: Organic food

text: In the U.S., the food label "natural" or "all natural" does not mean that the food was produced and processed organically."


title: Organic food

text: From an environmental perspective, fertilizing, overproduction and the use of pesticides in conventional farming has caused, and is causing, enormous damage worldwide to local ecosystems, soil health, biodiversity, groundwater and drinking water supplies, and sometimes farmers' health and fertility.


title: Organic food

text: Organic farming typically reduces some environmental impact relative to conventional farming, but the scale of reduction can be difficult to quantify and varies depending on farming methods. In some cases, reducing food waste and dietary changes might provide greater benefits. A 2020 study at the Technical University of Munich found that the greenhouse gas emissions of organically-farmed plant-based food were lower than conventionally-farmed plant-based food. The greenhouse gas costs of organically produced meat were approximately the same as non-organically produced meat. However, the same paper noted that a shift from conventional to organic practices would likely be beneficial for long-term efficiency and ecosystem services, and probably improve soil over time.


title: Organic food

text: There is little scientific evidence of benefit or harm to human health from a diet high in organic food, and conducting any sort of rigorous experiment on the subject is very difficult. A 2012 meta-analysis noted that "there have been no long-term studies of health outcomes of populations consuming predominantly organic versus conventionally produced food controlling for socioeconomic factors; such studies would be expensive to conduct." A 2009 meta-analysis noted that "most of the included articles did not study direct human health outcomes. In ten of the included studies (83%), a primary outcome was the change in antioxidant activity. Antioxidant status and activity are useful biomarkers but do not directly equate to a health outcome. Of the remaining two articles, one recorded proxy-reported measures of atopic manifestations as its primary health outcome, whereas the other article examined the fatty acid composition of breast milk and implied possible health benefits for infants from the consumption of different amounts of conjugated linoleic acids from breast milk." In addition, as discussed above, difficulties in accurately and meaningfully measuring chemical differences between organic and conventional food make it difficult to extrapolate health recommendations based solely on chemical analysis.


title: Organic food

text: According to a newer review, studies found adverse effects of certain pesticides on children's cognitive development at current levels of exposure. Many pesticides show neurotoxicity in laboratory animal models and some are considered to cause endocrine disruption.


title: Organic food

text: As of 2012, the scientific consensus is that while "consumers may choose to buy organic fruit, vegetables and meat because they believe them to be more nutritious than other food... the balance of current scientific evidence does not support this view." The evidence of beneficial health effects of organic food consumption is scarce, which has led researchers to call for more long-term studies. In addition, studies that suggest that organic foods may be healthier than conventional foods face significant methodological challenges, such as the correlation between organic food consumption and factors known to promote a healthy lifestyle. When the American Academy of Pediatrics reviewed the literature on organic foods in 2012, they found that "current evidence does not support any meaningful nutritional benefits or deficits from eating organic compared with conventionally grown foods, and there are no well-powered human studies that directly demonstrate health benefits or disease protection as a result of consuming an organic diet."


title: Organic food

text: Prevalent use of antibiotics in livestock used in non-organic meat is a key driver of antibiotic resistance.<ref name="10.1186/s12940-017-0315-4"></ref>


title: Organic food

text: Claims of improved safety of organic food have largely focused on pesticide residues. These concerns are driven by the facts that "(1) acute, massive exposure to pesticides can cause significant adverse health effects;


title: Organic food

text: (2) food products have occasionally been contaminated with pesticides, which can result in acute toxicity; and (3) most, if not all, commercially purchased food contains trace amounts of agricultural pesticides." However, as is frequently noted in the scientific literature: "What does not follow from this, however, is that chronic exposure to the trace amounts of pesticides found in food results in demonstrable toxicity. This possibility is practically impossible to study and quantify;" therefore firm conclusions about the relative safety of organic foods have been hampered by the difficulty in proper study design and relatively small number of studies directly comparing organic food to conventional food.


title: Organic food

text: Additionally, the Carcinogenic Potency Project, which is a part of the US EPA's Distributed Structure-Searchable Toxicity (DSSTox) Database Network, has been systemically testing the carcinogenicity of chemicals, both natural and synthetic, and building a publicly available database of the results for the past ~30 years. Their work attempts to fill in the gaps in our scientific knowledge of the carcinogenicity of all chemicals, both natural and synthetic, as the scientists conducting the Project described in the journal, "Science", in 1992: Toxicological examination of synthetic chemicals, without similar examination of chemicals that occur naturally, has resulted in an imbalance in both the data on and the perception of chemical carcinogens. Three points that we have discussed indicate that comparisons should be made with natural as well as synthetic chemicals.


title: Organic food

text: 1) The vast proportion of chemicals that humans are exposed to occur naturally. Nevertheless, the public tends to view chemicals as only synthetic and to think of synthetic chemicals as toxic despite the fact that every natural chemical is also toxic at some dose. The daily average exposure of Americans to burnt material in the diet is ~2000 mg, and exposure to natural pesticides (the chemicals that plants produce to defend themselves) is ~1500 mg. In comparison, the total daily exposure to all synthetic pesticide residues combined is ~0.09 mg. Thus, we estimate that 99.99% of the pesticides humans ingest are natural. Despite this enormously greater exposure to natural chemicals, 79% (378 out of 479) of the chemicals tested for carcinogenicity in both rats and mice are synthetic (that is, do not occur naturally).


title: Organic food

text: 2) It has often been wrongly assumed that humans have evolved defenses against the natural chemicals in our diet but not against the synthetic chemicals. However, defenses that animals have evolved are mostly general rather than specific for particular chemicals; moreover, defenses are generally inducible and therefore protect well from low doses of both synthetic and natural chemicals.


title: Organic food

text: 3) Because the toxicology of natural and synthetic chemicals is similar, one expects (and finds) a similar positivity rate for carcinogenicity among synthetic and natural chemicals. The positivity rate among chemicals tested in rats and mice is ~50%. Therefore, because humans are exposed to so many more natural than synthetic chemicals (by weight and by number), humans are exposed to an enormous background of rodent carcinogens, as defined by high-dose tests on rodents. We have shown that even though only a tiny proportion of natural pesticides in plant foods have been tested, the 29 that are rodent carcinogens among the 57 tested, occur in more than 50 common plant foods. It is probable that almost every fruit and vegetable in the supermarket contains natural pesticides that are rodent carcinogens.


title: Organic food

text: While studies have shown via chemical analysis, as discussed above, that organically grown fruits and vegetables have significantly lower pesticide residue levels, the significance of this finding on actual health risk reduction is debatable as both conventional foods and organic foods generally have pesticide levels well below government established guidelines for what is considered safe. This view has been echoed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the UK Food Standards Agency.


title: Organic food

text: A study published by the National Research Council in 1993 determined that for infants and children, the major source of exposure to pesticides is through diet. A study published in 2006 by Lu et al. measured the levels of organophosphorus pesticide exposure in 23 school children before and after replacing their diet with organic food. In this study it was found that levels of organophosphorus pesticide exposure dropped from negligible levels to undetectable levels when the children switched to an organic diet, the authors presented this reduction as a significant reduction in risk. The conclusions presented in Lu et al. were criticized in the literature as a case of bad scientific communication.


title: Organic food

text: More specifically, claims related to pesticide residue of increased risk of infertility or lower sperm counts have not been supported by the evidence in the medical literature. Likewise, the American Cancer Society (ACS) has stated their official position that "whether organic foods carry a lower risk of cancer because they are less likely to be contaminated by compounds that might cause cancer is largely unknown." Reviews have noted that the risks from microbiological sources or natural toxins are likely to be much more significant than short term or chronic risks from pesticide residues.


title: Organic food

text: Organic farming has a preference for using manure as fertilizer, compared to conventional farming in general. This practise seems to imply an increased risk of microbiological contamination, such as , from organic food consumption, but reviews have found little evidence that actual incidence of outbreaks can be positively linked to organic food production. The , however, was blamed on organically farmed fenugreek sprouts.


title: Organic food

text: There is a widespread public belief that organic food is safer, more nutritious, and better tasting than conventional food, which has largely contributed to the development of an organic food culture. Consumers purchase organic foods for different reasons, including concerns about the effects of conventional farming practices on the environment, human health, and animal welfare.


title: Organic food

text: While there may be some differences in the nutrient and antinutrient contents of organically and conventionally produced food, the variable nature of food production, shipping, storage, and handling makes it difficult to generalize results. Claims that "organic food tastes better" are generally not supported by tests, but consumers often perceive organic food produce like fruits and vegetables to taste better.


title: Organic food

text: In general, it seems that the appeal of organic food varies with demographic group and attitudinal characteristics. USA research has found that women, young adults, liberals and college graduates were significantly more likely to buy organic food regularly when compared to men, older age groups, people of different political affiliations and lower-educated individuals. Income level and race/ethnicity did not appear to affect interest in organic foods in this same study. Furthermore, individuals who are only moderately-religious were more likely to purchase organic foods than individuals who were less religious or highly-religious. Additionally, the pursuit of organic foods was positively associated with valuing vegetarian/vegan food options, valuing "natural" food options and valuing USA-made food options. Organic food may also be more appealing to people who follow other restricted diets. One study found that individuals who adhered to vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian diet patterns incorporated substantially more organic foods in their diet when compared to omnivores.


title: Organic food

text: The most important reason for purchasing organic foods seems to be beliefs about the products' health-giving properties and higher nutritional value. These beliefs are promoted by the organic food industry, and have fueled increased demand for organic food despite higher prices and difficulty in confirming these claimed benefits scientifically. Organic labels also stimulate the consumer to view the product as having more positive nutritional value.


title: Organic food

text: Psychological effects such as the "halo" effect are also important motivating factors in the purchase of organic food. For example, one study demonstrated that organic cookies are perceived to be lower in calories compared to other cookies.


title: Organic food

text: In China the increasing demand for organic products of all kinds, and in particular milk, baby food and infant formula, has been "spurred by a series of food scares, the worst being the death of six children who had consumed baby formula laced with melamine" in 2009 and the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, making the Chinese market for organic milk the largest in the world as of 2014. A Pew Research Center survey in 2012 indicated that 41% of Chinese consumers thought of food safety as a very big problem, up by three times from 12% in 2008.


title: Organic food

text: A 2020 study on marketing processed organic foods shows that, after much growth in the fresh organic foods sector, consumers have started to buy processed organic foods, which they sometime perceive to be just as healthy or even healthier than the non-organic version – depending on the marketing message.


title: Organic food

text: There is no good evidence that organic food tastes better than its non-organic counterparts. There is evidence that some organic fruit is drier than conventionally grown fruit; a slightly drier fruit may also have a more intense flavor due to the higher concentration of flavoring substances.


title: Organic food

text: Some foods which are picked when unripe, such as bananas, are cooled to prevent ripening while they are shipped to market, and then are induced to ripen quickly by exposing them to propylene or ethylene, chemicals produced by plants to induce their own ripening; as flavor and texture changes during ripening, this process may affect those qualities of the treated fruit.


title: Organic food

text: With respect to chemical differences in the composition of organically grown food compared with conventionally grown food, studies have examined differences in nutrients, antinutrients, and pesticide residues. These studies generally suffer from confounding variables, and are difficult to generalize due to differences in the tests that were done, the methods of testing, and because the vagaries of agriculture affect the chemical composition of food; these variables include variations in weather (season to season as well as place to place); crop treatments (fertilizer, pesticide, etc.); soil composition; the cultivar used, and in the case of meat and dairy products, the parallel variables in animal production. Treatment of the foodstuffs after initial gathering (whether milk is pasteurized or raw), the length of time between harvest and analysis, as well as conditions of transport and storage, also affect the chemical composition of a given item of food. Additionally, there is evidence that organic produce is drier than conventionally grown produce; a higher content in any chemical category may be explained by higher concentration rather than in absolute amounts.


title: Organic food

text: Many people believe that organic foods have higher content of nutrients and thus are healthier than conventionally produced foods. However, scientists have not been equally convinced that this is the case as the research conducted in the field has not shown consistent results.


title: Organic food

text: A 2009 systematic review found that organically produced foodstuffs are not richer in vitamins and minerals than conventionally produced foodstuffs. This systematic review found a lower nitrogen and higher phosphorus content in organic produced compared to conventionally grown foodstuffs. Content of vitamin C, calcium, potassium, total soluble solids, copper, iron, nitrates, manganese, and sodium did not differ between the two categories.


title: Organic food

text: A 2012 survey of the scientific literature did not find significant differences in the vitamin content of organic and conventional plant or animal products, and found that results varied from study to study. Produce studies reported on ascorbic acid (vitamin C) (31 studies), beta-carotene (a precursor for vitamin A) (12 studies), and alpha-tocopherol (a form of vitamin E) (5 studies) content; milk studies reported on beta-carotene (4 studies) and alpha-tocopherol levels (4 studies). Few studies examined vitamin content in meats, but these found no difference in beta-carotene in beef, alpha-tocopherol in pork or beef, or vitamin A (retinol) in beef. The authors analyzed 11 other nutrients reported in studies of produce. A 2011 literature review found that organic foods had a higher micronutrient content overall than conventionally produced foods.


title: Organic food

text: Similarly, organic chicken contained higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids than conventional chicken. The authors found no difference in the protein or fat content of organic and conventional raw milk.