Exploring emotions and irrationality in attitudes towards consumer indebtedness: Individual perspectives of UK payday loan consumption.

The aim of this research is to explore contemporary consumers’ emotions and irrationality in attitudes towards indebtedness, using the UK payday loan industry as a focus point. UK consumers’ have recently experienced a significant financial crisis, the result of which is expected to alter consumers’ spending, saving and borrowing habits. By using existential-phenomenological interviews to discuss individuals’ experiences of these activities, we observe some of the key issues emerging from this context. A primary theme is the influence of emotions on decision making, and how this shapes ‘irrationality’. This article aims to draw attention to this emotive thinking, which may be significant in thinking about how payday loans are communicated to users in the future

The biosynthesis and functionality of the cell-wall of lactic acid bacteria.

The cell wall of lactic acid bacteria has the typical gram-positive structure made of a thick, multilayered peptidoglycan sacculus decorated with proteins, teichoic acids and polysaccharides, and surrounded in some species by an outer shell of proteins packed in a paracrystalline layer (S-layer). Specific biochemical or genetic data on the biosynthesis pathways of the cell wall constituents are scarce in lactic acid bacteria, but together with genomics information they indicate close similarities with those described in Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis, with one notable exception regarding the peptidoglycan precursor. In several species or strains of enterococci and lactobacilli, the terminal D-alanine residue of the muramyl pentapeptide is replaced by D-lactate or D-serine, which entails resistance to the glycopeptide antibiotic vancomycin. Diverse physiological functions may be assigned to the cell wall, which contribute to the technological and health-related attributes of lactic acid bacteria. For instance, phage receptor activity relates to the presence of specific substituents on teichoic acids and polysaccharides; resistance to stress (UV radiation, acidic pH) depends on genes involved in peptidoglycan and teichoic acid biosynthesis; autolysis is controlled by the degree of esterification of teichoic acids with D-alanine; mucosal immunostimulation may result from interactions between epithelial cells and peptidoglycan or teichoic acids