The ecology of organizational forms in local and regional food systems: exploring the scaling-up challenge via a species concept

Includes vita.Over the past 30 years, Western nations have developed alternative systems for exchanging agrofood products which incorporate social values into the transactional environment. These systems are comprised of many different exchange relationships, structured to transmit information about social values and attach credence attributes to the products. New organizational forms, institutions, and networks arise to achieve the values demanded by the underlying social movement. One movement centers on the social value of a commitment to place. It seeks to create relocalized and socially embedded means of exchange. Policy initiatives have responded, making investments in local and regional food systems. The primary challenge faced by these initiatives: how to increase the of scale while maintaining the value premiums associated with the movement's objectives. I view these complex networks as ecologies and seek to understand how different organizational forms interact to scale-up LRFSs. I make three crucial developments: (1) a framework to define LRFSs; (2) a model on the metaphysics of social objects and their kinds; and (3) an Organizational Species Concept to consistently identify organizational forms. Together these developments enable an ecological approach by providing a means of identifying distinct organizational populations. I apply my OSC to the case of food hubs – coordinating intermediaries identified as a key for increased scale. This yields six "species". I find that each fills a different functional role and contributes differently to scaling-up LRFSs. I highlight how this is helpful for targeted policymaking.Includes bibliographical references (pages 286-301

Age and Attentional Capacity

Accident and fatality rates begin to increase after age 55. Previous research indicated only weak relationships between crash involvement and poor acuity. The other factor that may influence driving performance is impaired attentional function. Green and Bavelier (2003) showed that action-video-game players have greater attention capacity than non-video-game players. More important, non-video-game players can be trained to enhance the capacity of visual attention and its spatial distribution. In that study, all participants were young adults (aged from 18 to 23). It is not clear whether the reduced driving capability of older adults is due to a decreased attention capacity. In this paper, attention capacity of young and older drivers was examined using a flanker task paradigm. Participants were asked to respond to two shapes (diamond/square) in one of six circles arranged in a ring. At the same time, a distractor (a square/a diamond) was displayed on the left or the right of the ring. The workload of the task was manipulated by presenting different shapes in all the other circles or only one shape was present in the ring. The influence of the irrelevant shape on the performance (flanker effect) under different load conditions was compared between older and younger drivers. Consistent with previous research, the reaction time under the high-load condition was longer than in the low-load condition and older drivers’ reaction time was slower than younger drivers’. However, for both age groups, flanker effect only existed for the low-load condition and tends to disappear in the high-load condition

Gulls identified as major source of fecal pollution in coastal waters: a microbial source tracking study

GGulls were reported as sources of fecal pollution in coastal environments and potential vectors of human infections. Microbial source tracking (MST) methods were rarely tested to identify this pollution origin. This study was conducted to ascertain the source of water fecal contamination in the Berlenga Island, Portugal. A total of 169 Escherichia coli isolates from human sewage, 423 isolates from gull feces and 334 water isolates were analyzed by BOX-PCR. An average correct classification of 79.3% was achieved. When an 85% similarity cutoff was applied 24% of water isolates were present in gull feces against 2.7% detected in sewage. Jackknifing resulted in 29.3% of water isolates classified as gull, and 10.8% classified as human. Results indicate that gulls constitute a major source of water contamination in the Berlenga Island. This study validated a methodology to differentiate human and gull fecal pollution sources in a real case of a contaminated beach