Aspects of the production of viscous capsular material by the yoghurt starter, streptococcus thermophilus

The technology of modern fermented milk production is not complicated and relies largely on the characteristics of the microorganisms used in its manufacture. Biochemical substances excreted by the starter cultures contribute to the chemical, physical and organoleptic properties of cultured milks. Chemical and organoleptic properties of yoghurt starter cultures have been widely studied over several decades. Conversely the biosynthetic processes and genetic control of the production of viscous extracellular material (slime) by selected thermophillic streptococci is still insufficiently understood. This study attempted to elucidate physiological aspects and the genetic control of slime production. An attempt to chemically induce ropiness was also preformed. Twenty strains of Gram positive, thermo-tolerant, milk dotting, catalase negative cocci were collected from a variety of sources. All strains were identified as Streptococcus thermophilus. Four of the isolates were identified as capable of producing an extracellular, ‘ropy’ capsular material. A negative staining method for highlighting capsular material under light microscopy was described. Ropy isolates displayed thick capsular zones of between 6-8 μm. The isolates graded as non-ropy produced only small capsular zones (less than 2 μm); two variants displayed no capsular material. Instability of the ropy phenotype during subculture and prolonged storage was described for all four ropy isolates at varied temperatures. Instability during transfer was reported as moderate with a loss of no more than 45% of ropy colonies after 15 subcultures at 48°C A significant increase in instability, during transfer, associated with an increase in incubation temperature (37-48°C) was also reported. Prolonged storage of ropy variants over ten days resulted in a drop in the number of ropy colonies. The loss was minimal when cultures were stored at 8°C, but excessive (approaching 100%) at 37°C This suggested the presence of capsular degradative substances. Analysis of the plasmid profiles of 20 strains identified only two strains harboured plasmid DNA. All plasmids were small, less than 23kilobases, and each strain possessed a single plasmid species. Only one ropy strain contained plasmid DNA that was shown, with the aid of curing experiments, not to be linked to production of the ropy phenotype. The amino acid analogue p-fluoro-DL-phenylalanine was unsuccessful in generating ropy colonies from non-ropy variants of Streptococcus thermophilus at low concentrations. Some technological considerations for the use of ropy variants of Streptococcus thermophilus in yoghurt starter cultures were made.

Youth, media and culture in the Asia Pacific region

Youth, Media and Culture in the Asia Pacific Region presents an analysis of youth media activities in a diverse, but geographically connected Asia Pacific region. The region, which is spatially connected by its colonial and imperial past, is becoming a significant player in the globalized world. In this context, youth situated in these economically, politically and socially structured communities are redefining their locales through their patterns of media use. The discourse of ‘youth’ in this disparate region is manifest in the media through their identity articulations and social activism. The book illustrates that these ‘youth subcultures’ in the Asia Pacific are part of the well marketed global consumerism culture, and yet at other times independent of the commodifying impetus of global capital. It draws on case studies to examine some of the media practices youth in the region are engaged in and elucidates the process of social change taking place in some Asia Pacific nations.

'This book contributes to the important and growing field of youth media studies. The regionalization of media research is necessarily recuperated here, bringing large populations of media users into a frame of reference that allows critical reflection on the new waves of use and sociality in the Asia Pacific region.'

Bloods, Crips and Southern Cross Soldiers: we are all gangbangers now!

This paper presents findings from the author's PhD thesis exploring violent youth subcultures in Australia. It addresses whether growing uncertainties around issues of cultural identity and belonging in an era of risk has produced more defensive models of DIY youth culture at a local scale. Theoretically, the author examines whether globalisation has unsettled normative youth subject positions associated with the nation-state, problematising conventional logics of youth cultural formation (i.e. which view questions of race and racism through a white/black, mainstream/subculture binary). As Beck (1992;1999) argues, the de-bounding influence of globalisation has led to an ambivalent set of relations where forms of youth identity have become freed from the nation-state and class based forms of community and must be self-organised. In particular, he argues that this has produced cosmopolitan subjects and social movements as well as ‘counter-modern’ subjects and cultures. This paper applies Beck’s theories alongside theories focused on global/local influences on youth culture to an ethnographic study of two violent youth subcultures in Australia, these being the white ‘patriotic’ youth formation which emerged in the Cronulla riots and youth gang formations in Melbourne’s western suburbs. In doing so the author examines the extent to which violent youth subcultures in Australia can be regarded as strategic responses intended to restore forms of collective cultural belonging at a local scale vis a vis ‘the global’ and its destabilizing influences.

Erasure, exclusion by inclusion, and the absence of intersectionality: introducing bisexuality in education

Even though many schools and educational systems, from elementary to tertiary, state that they endorse antihomophobic policies, pedagogies, and programs, there appears to be an absence of education about, and affirmation of, bisexuality, and minimal specific attention to bi-phobia in curriculum, policy, and student welfare. Bisexuality continues to fall into the gap between the binary of heterosexuality and homosexuality across all educational sectors. These absences and erasures leave bisexual students, family members, and educators feeling silenced and invisibilized within school communities. Indeed, these absences and erasures have been considered a major factor in bisexual young people, family members, and educators in school communities experiencing worse mental, emotional, sexual, and social health than their homosexual or heterosexual counterparts. Also of interest is the persistence of bisexual erasure in adult-developed resources and programs, even though there is increasing evidence of sexual identities and practices in youth subcultures that are adopting shifting discursive and societal constructs of sexuality, characterized by notions of fluidity, ambisexuality, and a reluctance to label their sexuality according to the heterosexual/homosexual binary. The articles in this issue profoundly engage with and problematize the three impediments to education systems when those systems engage with sexual diversity instead of sexual duality, namely, erasure, exclusion by inclusion into gay and lesbian categories, and the absence of intersectionality (wherein other facets of identity and experience that interweave with sexuality are not taken into account, such as class, gender, Indigeneity/Aboriginality, ethnicity, geographical location, and religion). 

Shifts in thinking and practice: reflecting on an applied learning programme

The implementation of the first iteration of a curriculum for an applied learning programme for police trainers received a hostile response from participants. It was perceived as irrelevant and supplanting, rather than augmenting, trainers’ fixed and untested training practices. This paper presents the reflections on my journey as a nonpolice person straddling an outsider-insider position while challenging that which is taken-for-granted and introducing an educative intent, as opposed to a doctrinal, technical intent, to police training. On a daily basis I simultaneously work within and against the prevailing D/discourses and dominant subcultures, while establishing and nurturing relationships with police trainers: being teacher, coach and ‘critical friend’. The response to the second and now third iterations of the learning programme has been increasingly positive, revealing shifts in trainers’ thinking and practice.

Negotiating discursive positions within a police culture: critical reflections of a student researcher

I traverse a number of identity boundaries every day within a work context. This paper discusses the blurred boundary of two identities - (1) a part-time PhD student undertaking a cross-jurisdictional study of police training and education and (2) a full-time, ‘unsworn’ employee advising on education and training at a police academy. Study and work are concurrent. I describe myself as a token insider – different, partly accepted, yet tolerated, or alternatively as an outsider-insider. It is taxing to maintain an outsider’s standpoint in a police organisation. My role regularly places me in a position of challenging the dominant ideology, D/discourse (words, beliefs, thinking styles) and subcultures whilst experiencing the imposition of power by the dominant to accept the status quo. Frustration combined with a desire to name and reframe everyday experiences has led me to engage in critical reflection, enlist a critical friend, and undertake doctoral research. As an outsider- nsider, critical reflection is a tool that enables me to negotiate discursive positions by questioning my engagement and subject position within and against the taken-for-granted and unquestioned dominant D/discourses.

Pedagogy, police training, D/discourses – “truth” and situated identities and meanings

Qualitative and quantitative methods were used in this research to distinguish the prevailing D/discourses (words, tools, beliefs, thinking styles) in police training and to analyse the ‘discourse-practice’ (Cherryholmes 1988, p.1) framework of policing in a training environment. The manifestations, functions and consequences of the D/discourses raise concerns about the efficacy of training (its doctrinal intent and value versus its educative intent and value) and its implications for individuals’ identity, subjectivity, agency, learning, and “membership” within the policing community. The literature revealed that police training acts as a formally sanctioned vehicle for police culture, subcultures, and D/discourses. This is complicated by (a) the predominance of pedagogical training practices that support a trainer-centred approach and standardised lecture format for training, (b) police training focusing predominantly on law enforcement at the cost of higher-order conceptual skills, and (c) Australian and international studies of police management education which reveal a subculture resistant to theoretical analysis and critical reflection, and a set of unconscious and unchallengeable assumptions regarding police work, conduct, and leadership. A backdrop to this research and findings is the agenda of Australian and New Zealand police services for police to become a profession.

Australia’s strategic culture: constraints and opportunities in security policymaking

 This article draws on fourth generation strategic culture debates to show the gap between the rhetoric of Australian defence and the more modest reality. Our analysis shows that these limits derive from tensions between national strategic culture and organizational strategic subcultures. There are serious debates in the nation regarding the preferred course of the Australian military and security policy. This article frames these debates by examining the ‘keepers’ of Australia's national strategic culture, the existence of several competing strategic subcultures, and the importance of norm entrepreneurs in changing defence and national security thinking. Strategic subcultures foster compartmentalization, constraints, and bureaucratic silos that narrow national conceptions of security threats and opportunities, and impinge on the formation of coherent foreign and defence policy in relation to the Asia-Pacific region. This analysis shows that a distinct national strategic culture and organizational strategic subcultures endure beyond individual governments, placing potential limits on Australia's interface with other Asia-Pacific strategic cultures in the future.

Pluralist risk cultures: the sociology of childbirth

Western medical approaches to childbirth typically locate risk in women’s bodies,making it axiomatic that ‘good’ maternity care is associated with medically trainedattendants. This logic has been extrapolated to developing societies, like Vanuatu, anIsland state in the Pacific, struggling to provide good maternity care in line with theWorld Health Organization’s Millennium Development Goals. These goals include thereduction of maternal mortality by two-thirds by 2015, but Vanuatu must overcomechallenging hurdles – medical, social and environmental – to achieve this goal.Vanuatu is a hybridised society: one where the pre-modern and modern coincide inparallel institutions, processes and practices. In 2010, I undertook an inductive study of30 respondents from four main subcultures – women living in outer rural communitieswith limited access to Western-trained health workers; women from inner urbancommunities with ease of access to medical clinics; traditional birth attendants whoare formally untrained but highly specialised and practised mainly in remote communities;and Western-trained medical clinicians (obstetricians and midwives). I invitedall the participants to comment on what constituted a ‘good birth’. In this article, Ishow that participants interpreted this variously according to how they believed theuncertainties of childbirth could be managed. Objectivist approaches that define risk asan objective reality amenable to quantifiable measurement are thus rendered inadequate.Interpretivist approaches better explain the reality that social actors not only findrisk in different sites but gravitate towards different practices, discourses and individualsthey can trust especially those with whom they feel a strong sense of community.Strategies are, therefore, formed less through scientific rationality but according tofeelings and emotions and the lived experience. The concept of risk cultures conveysthis complexity; they are formed around values rather than calculable rationalities. Riskcultures form self-reflexively to manage contingent circumstances.

Security networks and occupational culture: understanding culture within and between organisations

Security networks are organisational forms involving public, private and hybrid actors or nodes that work together to pursue security-related objectives. While we know that security networks are central to the governance of security, and that security networks exist at multiple levels across the security field, we still do not know enough about how these networks form and function. Based on a detailed qualitative study of networks in the field of ‘high’ policing in Australia, this article aims to advance our knowledge of the relational properties of security networks. Following the organisational culture literature, the article uses the concept of a ‘group’ as the basis with which to analyse and understand culture. A group can apply to networks (‘network culture’), organisations (‘organisational culture’) and sections within and between organisations (‘occupational subcultures’). Using interviews with senior members of security, police and intelligence agencies, the article proceeds to analyse how cultures form and function within such groups. In developing a network perspective on occupational culture, the article challenges much of the police culture(s) literature for concentrating too heavily on police organisations as independent units of analysis. The article moves beyond debates between integrated or differentiated organisational cultures and questions concerning the extent to which culture shapes particular outcomes, to analyse the ways in which security nodes relate to one another in security networks. If there is one thing that should be clear it is that security nodes experience cultural change as they work together in and through networks.

Gestão de transferência de inovações tecnológicas para empresas do setor produtivo: complexidade no relacionamento entre organizações de culturas diferentes

The motivation of this study is based on the expectation of understanding, at least in part, the reason why the brazilian academic production ¿ which is among the largest if compared to the developing countries, has not been translated in a useful way into concrete technology transference for the production sector. The supposition that different cultures and subcultures, in terms of values, behavior, practices among organizations and groups of selected actors involved in that process,- which is the central problem of this study, and peculiar to the technology context, has elected that relationship process the object of this research this study theoretical fundaments rely on culture and technology to analyze the subcultures which manifest themselves through the typified groups of researchers, in the public organizations, small scale employers, acting on technology based companies in the private sector (ebts) and mediators. Who also act in the process the preliminary step was the case study. Several qualitative methods an procedures were used. And the investigation has advanced toward interacting interviews, at the end added by the focal group method. The conclusions reject the existence of incompatibility among the subject groups points of view, however, points out some divergent values, the presence of mutual stereotypes and also confirms the supposition that the research platform is strongly influenced by the financial factor. Although, the study reveals that the presence of common objectives which lay behind the cited divergences make possible to present a core of practical suggestions to implement the studied relationships for the benefit of the production sector as well. The peculiarities perceived while dealing with that singular context suggest futures research to clarify possible new and obscure areas in that complex relationships.

Um estudo empírico sobre a construção da identidade social do consumidor de toy art

O objetivo deste trabalho é compreender como os consumidores de Toy Art utilizam o seu bem para constituir a sua identidade social, além de explorar este relacionamento de consumo, investigando os fatores que desencadeiam o processo de extensão de si no Toy Art. A sustentação teórica deste trabalho se deu pelo aprofundamento dos temas já levantados anteriormente por Campbell & Barbosa (2006) e McCracken (2003), em seus estudos sobre cultura e consumo; Schouten & McAlexander (1995) em sua pesquisa sobre subculturas de consumo; Hall (2005), que expôs suas teorias sobre a formação da identidade no mundo moderno; Douglas & Isherwood (2004), que estudaram os rituais de consumo; Belk (1988), com suas pesquisas sobre a extensão do self. Este estudo é de caráter exploratório, e foi conduzido com entrevistas em profundidade com o intuito de deixar emergir os sentimentos e emoções dos respondentes, para uma melhor orientação na direção das análises dos dados obtidos. Os dados foram coletados junto a 14 consumidores de Toys, de ambos os sexos, com idades entre 19 e 38 anos, residentes nos estados de Belo Horizonte, Paraná, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, São Paulo e o Distrito Federal, durante os meses de julho e agosto de 2009. Para atingir os objetivos propostos, o método de pesquisa adotado foi qualitativo, com priorização do sujeito e da subjetividade, utilizando-se uma forma interpretativa para a análise dos dados. Os resultados demonstraram que os consumidores de Toy Art utilizam o seu bem para constituir sua identidade social e como uma forma de diferenciação e expressão. A extensão de si se dá exatamente durante essa busca pelo incomum, por um bem que o distinga dos demais. Conclui-se o trabalho, fazendo-se recomendações gerenciais com o intuito de beneficiar e desenvolver a indústria deste segmento.

Survey for Foot-and-mouth Disease in the Endangered Marsh Deer (Blastocerus dichotomus) from Marshlands of the Parana River Basin, Brazil

Habitat fragmentation and diseases have resulted in a decline of the marsh deer (Blastocerus (dichotomus) throughout its South American range. Our objectives were to determine whether marsh deer intended for translocation from a region of the Rio Parana Basin had been infected previously by foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) and whether they were carrying virus We captured marsh deer from June to October 1998 and collected blood from 108 animals and esophageal-pharyngeal fluid from 53 Serum was tested for antibodies against three FMDV serotypes (O, A, and C) by liquid-phase-blocking sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) Esophageal-pharyngeal fluid was tested for FMDV RNA by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and inoculation into three successive baby hamster kidney (BHK-21) cell subcultures, followed by RT-PCR of cultures We detected low log(10) titers (range 1 0-1 5) to FM DV subtype A(24) Cruzeiro in 19 of 108 sampled marsh deer, but failed to isolate FMDV or detect FMDV RNA in any samples we conclude that marsh deer from our study site were unlikely to carry FMDV, however, as a preventive measure, the 19 animals with titers for FMDV were not sent to FMDV-free Brazilian states

Micropropagação de babosa (Aloe vera L.)

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Propagação in vitro de Cattleya trianaei (Linden & Reichenbach fil.) (Orchidaceae) em meios de culturas e com doses de fertilizante comercial

The use of culture media produced with commercial fertilizers can represent a simple and low cost alternative for commercial orchid propagation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the in vitro growth of plantlets of Cattleya trianaei in culture medium MS reduced and and formulated with Peters® NPK 10-30-20 in different doses. 90 day-old plantlets with two leaflets were submitted to five treatments (T1 - reduced MS; T2 - Peters® 1 g L -1; T3 - Peters® 2 g L-1; T4 - Peters® 3 g L -1 and T5 - Peters® 5 g L-1) arranged in a completely randomized design with five replicates with 25 plantlets for each treatment and incubated during 180 days, with subcultures at each 60 days, when the number of roots, root length, number of leaves, shoot length and shoot fresh matter were evaluated. The simplified culture medium with fertilizer Peters® 3 g L -1 presented results statistically different as for the number of roots, number of leaves, shoot length and shoot fresh matter and it can be recommended for in vitro growth of this ornamental orchid.