Variegated National Retail Markets: Negotiating Transformation through Regulation in Malaysia and Thailand

10.1080/00130095.2018.1476060Economic Geography95190-11

Sustainability, Climate Change, Creative Sector, Storytelling, Public Narratives

This discussion paper introduces the Critical Sustainability Stories (CriSS) Tool as a route for increasing creative sector and professional storyteller use of climate science and sustainability research. The framework is designed to grow the reflective and iterative learning capacity of storytellers when exploring climate change and sustainability issues. It supports the production of research rich stories, which translate complex ideas, and explore connected processes and alternate future societal pathways for their audiences. We aim to stimulate debate amongst our peers in the academy and to prompt action to tackle local and global sustainability challenges through storytelling and creative mediums. The discussion first considers the growing climate imaginaries literature and extant discourses on the role of storytelling in communicating climate science and sustainability research. It then emphasizes the potential impact of the creative sector and professional storytellers in informing public narratives on sustainable futures. We then present the Critical Sustainability Stories Tool, which is comprised of key guiding questions within six topics. The CriSS Tool was informed by geographical and cross-disciplinary sustainability literatures and developed through stakeholder engagement and participatory action research

Digital disruption: Towards a research agenda for sustainability and business in a digital world

Businesses and organisations across the world are adopting various digital tools, technologies and infrastructure to support their strategic and operational objectives. The remarkable growth of market leaders, such as Amazon, Uber and Google is indicative of the global impact of digital innovation more broadly. Despite the rise and continued innovation of digital products and services, there is considerable uncertainty over how such innovations tackle sustainability issues at different scales. This is a pertinent point considering the climate emergency and the need to tackle social as well as environmental issues in both the Global North and Global South. In this chapter, we provide a high-level overview of the sustainability impacts associated with digital innovation, and offer a way forward in terms of a research agenda. The chapter is organised into three main parts. First, we define the digital innovations terminology and identify a range of existing business applications for digital technologies. Second, we critically examine the sustainability impacts of digital innovations focusing on questions of resource efficiency and the sharing economy. Third, we identify four promising research themes and propose key research methods

Modification of the Interleukin-6 Response to Air Pollution by Interleukin-6 and Fibrinogen Polymorphisms

BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests that cardiovascular effects of air pollution are mediated by inflammation and that air pollution can induce genetic expression of the interleukin-6 gene (IL6). OBJECTIVES: We investigated whether IL6 and fibrinogen gene variants can affect plasma IL-6 responses to air pollution in patients with cardiovascular disease. METHODS: We repeatedly determined plasma IL-6 in 955 myocardial infarction survivors from six European cities (n = 5,539). We conducted city-specific analyses using additive mixed models adjusting for patient characteristics, time trend, and weather to assess the impact of air pollutants on plasma IL-6. We pooled city-specific estimates using meta-analysis methodology. We selected three IL6 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and one SNP each from the fibrinogen alpha-chain gene (FGA) and beta-chain gene (FGB) for gene-environment analyses. RESULTS: We found the most consistent modifications for variants in IL6 rs2069832 and FBG rs1800790 after exposure to carbon monoxide (CO; 24-hr average; p-values for interaction, 0.034 and 0.019, respectively). Nitrogen dioxide effects were consistently modified, but p-values for interaction were larger (0.09 and 0.19, respectively). The strongest effects were seen 6-11 hr after exposure, when, for example, the overall effect of a 2.2% increase in IL-6 per 0.64 mg/m(3) CO was modified to a 10% (95% confidence interval, 4.6-16%) increase in IL-6 (p-value for interaction 0.002) for minor homozygotes of FGB rs1800790. CONCLUSIONS: The effect of gaseous traffic-related air pollution on inflammation may be stronger in genetic subpopulations with ischemic heart disease. This information could offer an opportunity to identify postinfarction patients who would benefit more than others from a cleaner environment and antiinflammatory treatment