The Best I Can Be: How Self-Accountability Impacts Product Choice in Technology-Mediated Environments

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this recordTechnology-mediated environments are important not only as the location for an increasing proportion of purchases, but also as an even more pervasive part of the purchase journey. While most research into online consumer behavior focuses on attitudes as an antecedent of product choice, this article focuses on an important but hardly explored variable that may be impacted by technology-mediated environments: self-accountability. Laboratory experiments suggest that self-accountability may influence online purchases, but this has not been confirmed in field studies. Furthermore, although this prior work suggests that self-accountability may impact product choice through the elicitation of guilt, the role of positive emotions has not been explored. Using two surveys with online retailers, this paper (a) shows that in a technology-mediated environment, self-accountability influences product choice; (b) proposes and confirms a complementary route for this effect through pride that is stronger than that through guilt; and (c) evidences the relationship between self-accountability and perceived consumer effectiveness. These results show a clear opportunity for digital marketers to encourage self-accountability, to thereby elicit pride and not just guilt, and hence to impact consumer decision making in technology-mediated environments, particularly when choices have sustainability implications

Live to cheat another day: bacterial dormancy facilitates the social exploitation of beta-lactamases

The breakdown of antibiotics by β-lactamases may be cooperative, since resistant cells can detoxify their environment and facilitate the growth of susceptible neighbours. However, previous studies of this phenomenon have used artificial bacterial vectors or engineered bacteria to increase the secretion of β-lactamases from cells. Here, we investigated whether a broad-spectrum β-lactamase gene carried by a naturally occurring plasmid (pCT) is cooperative under a range of conditions. In ordinary batch culture on solid media, there was little or no evidence that resistant bacteria could protect susceptible cells from ampicillin, although resistant colonies could locally detoxify this growth medium. However, when susceptible cells were inoculated at high densities, late-appearing phenotypically susceptible bacteria grew in the vicinity of resistant colonies. We infer that persisters, cells that have survived antibiotics by undergoing a period of dormancy, founded these satellite colonies. The number of persister colonies was positively correlated with the density of resistant colonies and increased as antibiotic concentrations decreased. We argue that detoxification can be cooperative under a limited range of conditions: if the toxins are bacteriostatic rather than bacteridical; or if susceptible cells invade communities after resistant bacteria; or if dormancy allows susceptible cells to avoid bactericides. Resistance and tolerance were previously thought to be independent solutions for surviving antibiotics. Here, we show that these are interacting strategies: the presence of bacteria adopting one solution can have substantial effects on the fitness of their neighbours

Isolation and characterization of Hofbauer cells from human placental villi.

Hofbauer cells are a major cell type of the human placental villous core and they are particularly numerous at the beginning of pregnancy. In the present study we describe a method suitable to obtain HC suspensions in a highly purified form. These suspensions have been analyzed for surface markers using a battery of monoclonal antibodies. Of all the surface markers used, Hofbauer cells were only positive for 4F2, LeuM2 and LeuM3 monoclonals which mainly detect cells of the monocyte-macrophage lineage. Hofbauer cells were consistently negative for HLA-DR antigens, C3bR and T- or B-cell markers. Hofbauer cells appeared capable of phagocytosing latex beads, adhering to and spreading over plastic surface and secreting lysozyme. In contrast, they failed to originate an efficient respiratory burst in response to appropriate stimulation. Hofbauer cells were positive for ANAE with a perinuclear localization of the enzyme activity, but consistently negative for peroxidase. These observations suggest that they share a number of features with cells of the monocyte-macrophage lineage and yet have some distinctive properties