Factors underlying support or opposition to biotechnology among Australian food consumers and implications for retailer-led food regulation

Despite current findings that consumers, on average, have negative attitudes to biotechnologies such as cloning and genetic engineering, considerable variability can be found in the direction and strength of these attitudes. This paper presents a path analysis of attitudinal, motivational, demographic and behavioural variables that influence consumer dispositions towards biotechnology. Among these variables, those found to be most important were: consumers' level of motivation to find natural foods; the extent to which they were motivated by convenience; whether they did the shopping for their household on a regular basis; and their sex. In terms of direct effects on dispositions to biotechnology, motivation to find natural foods had a very strong negative effect while convenience had a very strong positive effect. Sex had a moderate direct effect with women less likely to be positively disposed towards biotechnology than men. In an apparent contradiction, taking responsibility for household shopping had an equally strong positive effect on both naturalness and convenience. However, sex also played a crucial role here with a very strong effect on motivation to find natural foods (women more motivated), a minor effect on convenience (women less motivated) and a strong effect on responsibility for household shopping (women more likely to shop). The policy implications of these findings are important, given the apparent oppositional trends of some sections of the food industry to endorse biotechnology, and of the supermarkets to deliver `clean and green' non-GM foods to consumers. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Supply chain management as beyond operational efficiency

The orthodoxy of supply chain management (SCM) emphasises competitive advantage through increased operational efficiency and market responsiveness from production and distribution processes into the hands of consumers. It anticipates that future competition will be between chains rather than between firms. While well established in other industry sectors, the SCM concept is newly developed in the Australian agri-food sector. Critical review of the concept has identified key issues of power among channel members, processes of chain initiation and innovation, and the inability of SCM to offer a viable business strategy for some firms. Building on those insights, this paper examines the supply chain concept for horticulture. Horticultural products are characterised by perishability, heterogeneity and lags in production response to market signals. Producers’ profits are vulnerable to quantity, timing of supply and product specification. Many supply chains in smaller industries are loose, fragmented, interwoven, unstable and unique! Firms operating within these environments need an astute understanding of the chains, the hierarchy of channel members and their relative position. Effective business strategies – for individual firms and supply chains - need to be developed and redeveloped to accommodate the dynamic nature of horticulture. Two case studies are discussed as contributions to this early stage of the theoretical development of supply chain management. The SCM concept also has implications for horticultural researchers, involving a wider range of industry stakeholders, technical problems and research skills. As for business management, the usefulness of the concept will depend on its capacity to increase responsiveness to customers’ preferences and customer value.

A companison of socially responsible and conventional investors

Socially responsible investment is a rapidly emerging phenomenon within the field of personal investment. However, the factors that lead investors to choose socially responsible investment products are not well understood, especially in an Australian context. This study provides a comparative examination of conventional and socially responsible investors, with the aim of identifying such factors. A total of 55 conventional investors and 54 ethical investors participated in the study by completing mailed questionnaires about their investment and general behaviour and their attitudes and beliefs. Results indicated some important differences between socially responsible and conventional investors in their beliefs of the importance of ethical issues, their investment decision-making style, and their perceptions of moral intensity. These results support the notion that socially responsible investors differ in critical ways to conventional investors, and are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications.

Ecology and evolution of primate colour vision

More than one hundred years ago, Grant Allen suggested that colour vision in primates, birds and insects evolved as an adaptation for foraging on colourful advertisements of plants-fruits and flowers. Recent studies have shown that well developed colour vision appeared long before fruits and flowers evolved. Thus, colour vision is generally beneficial for many animals, not only for those eating colourful food. Primates are the only placental mammals that have trichromatic colour vision. This may indicate either that trichromacy is particularly useful for primates or that primates are unique among placental mammals in their ability to utilise the signals of three spectrally distinct types of cones or both. Because fruits are an important component of the primate diet, primate trichromacy could have evolved as a specific adaptation for foraging on fruits. Alternatively, primate trichromacy could have evolved as an adaptation for many visual tasks. Comparative studies of mammalian eyes indicate that primates are the only placental mammals that have in their retina a pre-existing neural machinery capable of utilising the signals of an additional spectral type of cone. Thus, the failure of non-primate placental mammals to evolve trichromacy can be explained by constraints imposed on the wiring of retinal neurones.

Characterization of the highly efficient sucrose isomerase from Pantoea dispersa UQ68J and cloning of the sucrose isomerase gene

Sucrose isomerase (SI) genes from Pantoea dispersa UQ68J, Klebsiella planticola UQ14S, and Erwinia rhapontici WAC2928 were cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli. The predicted products of the UQ14S and WAC2928 genes were similar to known SIs. The UQ68J SI differed substantially, and it showed the highest isomaltulose-producing efficiency in E. coli cells. The purified recombinant WAC2928 SI was unstable, whereas purified UQ68J and UQ14S SIs were very stable. UQ68J SI activity was optimal at pH 5 and 30 to 35 degrees C, and it produced a high ratio of isomaltulose to trehalulose (> 22:1) across its pH and temperature ranges for activity (pH 4 to 7 and 20 to 50 degrees C). In contrast, UQ14S SI showed optimal activity at pH 6 and 35 degrees C and produced a lower ratio of isomaltulose to trehalulose (< 8:1) across its pH and temperature ranges for activity. UQ68J SI had much higher catalytic efficiency; the K-m was 39.9 mM, the V-max was 638 U mg(-1), and the K-cat/K-m was 1.79 x 104 M-1 s(-1), compared to a K-m of 76.0 mM, a V-max. of 423 U mg(-1), and a K-cat/K-m of 0.62 x 104 M-1 s(-1) for UQ14S SI. UQ68J SI also showed no apparent reverse reaction producing glucose, fructose, or trehalulose from isomaltulose. These properties of the P. dispersa UQ68J enzyme are exceptional among purified SIs, and they indicate likely differences in the mechanism at the enzyme active site. They may favor the production of isomaltulose as an inhibitor of competing microbes in high-sucrose environments, and they are likely to be highly beneficial for industrial production of isomaltulose.

The roles of natural and sexual selection during adaptation to a novel environment

The net effect of sexual selection on nonsexual fitness is controversial. On one side, elaborate display traits and preferences for them can be costly, reducing the nonsexual fitness of individuals possessing them, as well as their offspring, In contrast, sexual selection may reinforce nonsexual fitness if an individual's attractiveness and quality are genetically correlated. According to recent models, such good-genes mate choice should increase both the extent and rate of adaptation. We evolved 12 replicate populations of Drosophila serrata in a powerful two-way factorial experimental design to test the separate and combined contributions of natural and sexual selection to adaptation to a novel larval food resource. Populations evolving in the presence of natural selection had significantly higher mean nonsexual fitness when measured over three generations (13-15) during the course of experimental evolution (16-23% increase). The effect of natural selection was even more substantial when measured in a standardized, monogamous mating environment at the end of the experiment (generation 16; 52% increase). In contrast, and despite strong sexual selection on display traits, there was no evidence from any of the four replicate fitness measures that sexual selection promoted adaptation. In addition, a comparison of fitness measures conducted under different mating environments demonstrated a significant direct cost of sexual selection to females, likely arising from some form of male-induced harm. Indirect benefits of sexual selection in promoting adaptation to this novel resource environment therefore appear to be absent in this species, despite prior evidence suggesting the operation of good-genes mate choice in their ancestral environment. How novel environments affect the operation of good-genes mate choice is a fundamental question for future sexual selection research.

It's all very well, in theory: Theoretical perspectives and their applications in contemporary pedagogical research

Current debates about educational theory are concerned with the relationship between knowledge and power and thereby issues such as who possesses a truth and how have they arrived at it, what questions are important to ask, and how should they best be answered. As such, these debates revolve around questions of preferred, appropriate, and useful theoretical perspectives. This paper overviews the key theoretical perspectives that are currently used in physical education pedagogy research and considers how these inform the questions we ask and shapes the conduct of research. It also addresses what is contested with respect to these perspectives. The paper concludes with some cautions about allegiances to and use of theories in line with concerns for the applicability of educational research to pressing social issues.

Pedagogical work and the 'cult of the body': Considering the role of HPE in the context of the 'new public health'

Physical education, now often explicitly identified with health in contemporary school curricula, continues to be implicated in the (re)production of the 'cult of the body'. We argue that HPE is a form of health promotion that attempts to 'make' healthy citizens of young people in the context of the 'risk society'. In our view there is still work to be done in understanding how and why physical education (as HPE) continues to be implicated in the reproduction of values associated with the cult of body. We are keen to understand why HPE continues to be ineffective in helping young people gain some measure of analytic and embodied 'distance' from the problematic aspects of the cult of the body. This paper offers an analysis of this enduring issue by using some contemporary analytic discourses including 'governmentality', 'risk society' and the 'new public health'.

Emotional Intelligence, emotional Self-Awareness, and Team Effectiveness

An issue at the forefront of recent emotional intelligence debates revolves around whether emotional intelligence can be linked to work performance. Although many authors continue to develop new and improved measures of emotional intelligence (e.g. Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 2001) to give us a better understanding of emotional intelligence, the links to performance in work settings, especially in the context of group effectiveness, have received much less attention. In this chapter, we present the results of a study in which we examined the role of emotional self-awareness and emotional intelligence as a predictor of group effectiveness. The study also addresses the utility of self- and peer assessment in measureing emotional self-awareness and emotional intelligence.