Controlled overproduction of proteins by lactic acid bacteria

Lactic acid bacteria are widely used in industrial food fermentations, contributing to flavour, texture and preservation of the fermented products. Here we describe recent advances in the development of controlled gene expression systems, which allow the regulated overproduction of any desirable protein by lactic acid bacteria. Some systems benefit from the fact that the expression vectors, marker genes and inducing factors can be used directly in food applications since they are all derived from food-grade lactic acid bacteria. These systems have also been employed for the development of autolytic bacteria, suitable for various industrial applications.

Continued Value Creation in Crowdsourcing from Creative Process Engagement

Purpose Crowdsourcing delivers creative ideas for the issuing firm, but participants’ engagement in the creative process also creates additional benefits to firms and participating customers. To investigate if these spill-over values endure over time, this study uses data from two time points, i.e. at submission and after announcement of the contest winners, to investigate the relationship between the degree of a participant’s creative process engagement (CPE) and value creation from a crowdsourcing contest, and how these perceptions of value change over time. Design/methodology/approach Data was collected from 154 participants in a crowdsourcing contest at two time points with an online survey: at submission, and after receiving feedback (in term of rankings, rewards, and comments) from the community. Partial Least Square (PLS) path modelling was used to estimate both main and moderating effects. Findings CPE increases the perceived value of customers (social and epistemic value) and firms alike (knowledge-sharing intention and customer loyalty), though all but epistemic value decrease over time. Disconfirmation of expectations and need for recognition moderate these effects. Originality/value This paper is the first longitudinal study that helps understanding the effect of CPE on value creation from crowdsourcing across time. It also uses the theoretical lens of the honeymoon hangover effect to explain how perceived value changes. The resulting insights into the role of customer engagement in crowdsourcing contests and subsequent value creation will be beneficial to the growing research stream on consumer value co-creation and user innovation

The Formation of a Cross-Selling Initiative Climate and its Interplay with Service Climate

Purpose— This study explores the formation and consequences of a cross-selling initiative climate, as well as how a service climate, which provides an important boundary condition, affects both its formation and its ultimate impact on service–sales performance. This article identifies two important predictors of a cross-selling initiative climate: frontline employees’ perceptions of supervisors’ bottom-line mentality and their own sense of accountability. Design/methodology/approach— The multilevel data set includes 180 frontline staff and supervisors (team leaders) from 31 teams employed by a spa/beauty salon chain. Hierarchical linear modelling and partial least squares methods serve to analyse the data. Findings— Supervisors’ bottom-line mentality disrupts a cross-selling initiative climate; a sense of accountability exerts a positive impact, at both individual and team levels. A service climate at the team level weakens the impact of a sense of accountability on a cross-selling initiative climate. A cross-selling initiative climate has a positive effect on team-level service–sales performance, but this effect is weakened by the service climate. Originality/value— This study conceptualises an important frontline work unit attribute as a climate. It offers an initial argument that a cross-selling initiative climate is a central factor driving a work unit’s service–sales performance, which can increase firms’ productivity and competitive advantages. With this initial attempt to explore the antecedents and consequences of a cross-selling initiative climate, the study also offers novel insights into the interplay between a service and a cross-selling initiative climate

A Hierarchical Model of Virtual Experience and Its Influences on the Perceived Value and Loyalty of Customers

Many businesses use virtual experience (VE) to enhance the overall customer experience, though extant research offers little guidance for how to improve consumers’ VE. This study, anchored in activity theory, examines key drivers of VE and its influences on value perceptions and customer loyalty. A hierarchical model indicates that VE comprises second-order variables (i.e., social presence, social capital, flow experience, and situational involvement) and third-order variables (i.e., communal and individual experience). The results obtained from a substantive model further reveal that VE positively influences perceptions of both economic and social value and thus influences loyalty in both the real world and virtual environments

Communication in the Gig Economy: Buying and Selling in Online Freelance Marketplaces

The proliferating gig economy relies on online freelance marketplaces, which support relatively anonymous interactions by text-based messages. Informational asymmetries thus arise that can lead to exchange uncertainties between buyers and freelancers. Conventional marketing thought recommends reducing such uncertainty. However, uncertainty reduction and uncertainty management theories indicate that buyers and freelancers might benefit more from balancing, rather than reducing, uncertainty, such as by strategically adhering to or deviating from common principles. With dyadic analyses of calls for bids and bids from a leading online freelance marketplace, this study reveals that buyers attract more bids from freelancers when they provide moderate degrees of task information and concreteness, avoid sharing personal information, and limit the affective intensity of their communication. Freelancers’ bid success and price premiums increase when they mimic the degree of task information and affective intensity exhibited by buyers. However, mimicking a lack of personal information and concreteness reduces freelancers’ success, so freelancers should always be more concrete and offer more personal information than buyers do. These contingent perspectives offer insights into buyer–seller communication in two-sided online marketplaces; they clarify that despite, or sometimes due to, communication uncertainty, both sides can achieve success in the online gig economy

Entropy and information in neural spike trains: Progress on the sampling problem

The major problem in information theoretic analysis of neural responses and other biological data is the reliable estimation of entropy--like quantities from small samples. We apply a recently introduced Bayesian entropy estimator to synthetic data inspired by experiments, and to real experimental spike trains. The estimator performs admirably even very deep in the undersampled regime, where other techniques fail. This opens new possibilities for the information theoretic analysis of experiments, and may be of general interest as an example of learning from limited data.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures; referee suggested changes, accepted versio

Geographies of discontent: sources, manifestations and consequences

Introduction: great disruptions: the new normal? Recent history has not been kind to Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ thesis, expounded thirty years ago (Fukuyama, 1989, 1992). Writing back then, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the break-up of the Soviet Union, Fukuyama’s contention concerned what he saw as the triumph of Western-style liberal-democratic free-market capitalism. Subsequent events have thrown such celebratory claims of the success of global political and economic liberalism into question. The resurgence of Russia, the ascendancy of China’s state authoritarianism, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism are all proof that major ideological contests have far from disappeared. Yet further, over the past two decades or so, disruptions and upheavals within and among the capitalist West itself have revealed the fragility of market-based democracies