Food Purchasing Behaviours of Youth in Northern Thailand

This project seeks to understand the relationship between changing retail formats, youth consumer decision-making and the campaigns of local food advocates and their impacts on food cultures. General research objectives are to determine how youth in Chiang Mai understand their current eating practices and determine why youth involvement in the alternative agricultural (AA) movement is limited and to investigate how AA organizations can better involve youth. A multi-method approach was employed which included; semi-structured interviews (N=33), a questionnaire survey (N=35) and food journals (N=9). Data collected from youth participants revealed that the top three factors considered when making food decision are taste, proximity and price. Further research revealed that youth were actively interested in safe and healthy food. These results suggest an opening for how AA organizations could more effectively engage youth by building on their interest in healthy food while taking into account the factors that influence their food choices

Progression into engineering Building the bridges between education, training and emploument

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:3661.958F(ED--302633)(microfiche) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Divergent and narrower climatic niches characterize polyploid species of European primroses in Primula sect. Aleuritia

Aim It is hypothesized that the ecological niches of polyploids should be both distinct and broader than those of diploids – characteristics that might have allowed the successful colonization of open habitats by polyploids during the Pleistocene glacial cycles. Here, we test these hypotheses by quantifying and comparing the ecological niches and niche breadths of a group of European primroses. Location Europe. Methods We gathered georeferenced data of four related species in Primula sect. Aleuritia at different ploidy levels (diploid, tetraploid, hexaploid and octoploid) and used seven bioclimatic variables to quantify niche overlap between species by applying a series of univariate and multivariate analyses combined with modelling techniques. We also employed permutation-based tests to evaluate niche similarity between the four species. Niche breadth for each species was evaluated both in the multivariate environmental space and in geographical space. Results The four species differed significantly from each other in mono-dimensional comparisons of climatological variables and occupied distinct habitats in the multi-dimensional environmental space. The majority of the permutation-based tests either indicated that the four species differed significantly in their habitat preferences and ecological niches or did not support significant niche similarity. Furthermore, our results revealed narrower niche breadths and geographical ranges in species of P. sect. Aleuritia at higher ploidy levels. Main conclusions The detected ecological differentiation between the four species of P. sect. Aleuritia at different ploidy levels is consistent with the hypothesis that polyploids occupy distinct ecological niches that differ from those of their diploid relative. Contrary to expectations, we find that polyploid species of P. sect. Aleuritia occupy narrower environmental and geographical spaces than their diploid relative. These results on the ecological niches of closely related polyploid and diploid species highlight factors that potentially contribute to the evolution and distribution of polyploid species