THE GROWING NATURAL FOODS MARKET: OPPORTUNITIES AND OBSTACLES FOR MASS MARKET SUPERMARKETS

Seven serious obstacles hinder the success of mass market grocery stores that try to succeed in the natural foods market. Finding timely and complete market information, linking with natural foods suppliers, and pricing and marketing natural foods are the three most important. Uncertainty about future standards for natural foods is the only major obstacle for natural foods stores. The problems facing mass market stores trying to succeed in the natural foods market are related to the market structure for natural food, to compatibility between standard operating procedures in the mass market and natural foods market, and to inadequate data collection about prices and other market characteristics. The problem for natural food stores is due to policy, primarily the lack of strong standards for natural foods. In the survey that forms the basis for these conclusions, almost half of mass market retailers had increased the scale of their natural foods operations and diversified their natural foods offerings. But few were satisfied with the degree of success of this approach. More successful strategies included developing labels (i.e. brands) for natural foods and hiring special staff for natural foods. These strategies are uncommon among mass market stores. Natural foods retailers tried them more often. Both mass market and natural foods retailers considered these strategies to be successful. How can mass market retailers overcome the obstacles they face and take advantage of the opportunities that the natural foods market provides? One key requirement for a healthy market is consumer confidence. There are two steps that mass market retailers can take to bolster consumer confidence. First, they can work to ensure that the natural foods in their stores are consistent with the standards that natural foods consumers demand. Second, they can make the effort to incorporate the concepts behind the natural foods movement into their strategic planning (e.g. adding organic product promotions to advertising plans, and by taking account of the environmental implications of their own operations). In addition, by working in concert with other retailers, trade organizations and appropriate non-profit organizations and governmental agencies, mass market retailers can help create a healthy business environment for natural foods in the long term.Agribusiness, Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing,

Readily accessible sp3-rich cyclic hydrazine frameworks exploiting nitrogen fluxionality

Increased molecular complexity correlates with improved chances of success in the drug development process. Here, a strategy for the creation of sp3-rich, non-planar heterocyclic scaffolds suitable for drug discovery is described that obviates the need to generate multiple stereogenic centers with independent control. Asymmetric transfer hydrogenation using a tethered Ru-catalyst is used to efficiently produce a range of enantiopure cyclic hydrazine building blocks (up to 99% ee). Iterative C–N functionalization at the two nitrogen atoms of these compounds produces novel hydrazine and hydrazide based chemical libraries. Wide chemical diversification is possible through variation in the hydrazine structure, use of different functionalization chemistries and coupling partners, and controlled engagement of each nitrogen of the hydrazine in turn. Principal Moment of Inertia (PMI) analysis of this small hydrazine library reveals excellent shape diversity and three-dimensionality. NMR and crystallographic studies confirm these frameworks prefer to orient their substituents in three-dimensional space under the control of a single stereogenic center through exploitation of the fluxional behavior of the two nitrogen atoms

Pemetaan Spasio-temporal Ikan-ikan Herbivora di Kepulauan Spermonde, Sulawesi Selatan [Spatio-temporal Mapping Of Herbivorous Fishes At Spermonde Islands, South Sulawesi]

Ikan herbivora di terumbu karang menjadi salah satu indikator tingkat kesehatan ekosistem. Pada terumbu karang yang sehat biasanya ditandai dengan kelimpahan ikan herbivora yang tinggi. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memetakan distribusi spasial dan temporal ikan herbivora dalam kaitannya dengan kondisi kesehatan karang. Pendataan jumlah jenis dan kepadatan ikan herbivora dengan metode transek sabuk dan pencacahan dengan teknik visual sensus, sedangkan penilaian kesehatan karang dengan metode transek kuadran. Data sebaran diplot dengan teknik pemetaan sedangkan data kepadatan dikelompokkan berdasarkan pulau dan dianalisis perbedaannya dengan analisis ragam. Hubungan antara kepadatan ikan herbivora dengan kesehatan karang dilakukan dengan menggunakan regresi sederhana. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan rata-rata kepadatan ikan herbivora periode April-Agustus dengan kisaran 0,014-0,532 ekor.m-2. Hasil analisis ragam menunjukkan bahwa ada perbedaan kepadatan ikan herbivora antarpulau. Hubungan antara kepadatan ikan herbivora dengan kondisi kesehatan karang berkorelasi positif dan nyat

Non-CG DNA methylation is a biomarker for assessing endodermal differentiation capacity in pluripotent stem cells.

Non-CG methylation is an unexplored epigenetic hallmark of pluripotent stem cells. Here we report that a reduction in non-CG methylation is associated with impaired differentiation capacity into endodermal lineages. Genome-wide analysis of 2,670 non-CG sites in a discovery cohort of 25 phenotyped human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) lines revealed unidirectional loss (Δβ=13%, P<7.4 × 10(-4)) of non-CG methylation that correctly identifies endodermal differentiation capacity in 23 out of 25 (92%) hiPSC lines. Translation into a simplified assay of only nine non-CG sites maintains predictive power in the discovery cohort (Δβ=23%, P<9.1 × 10(-6)) and correctly identifies endodermal differentiation capacity in nine out of ten pluripotent stem cell lines in an independent replication cohort consisting of hiPSCs reprogrammed from different cell types and different delivery systems, as well as human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines. This finding infers non-CG methylation at these sites as a biomarker when assessing endodermal differentiation capacity as a readout.We thank Kerra Pearce (UCL Genomics) for array processing, and Tim Fell and Jonathan Best (CellCentric), Jason Wray (UCL) and Rosemary Drake (TAP Biosystems) for discussions. We also thank Minal Patel, Chris Kirton, Anja Kolb-Kokocinski, Willem H. Ouwehand, Richard Durbin and Fiona M. Watt on behalf of the Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Initiative (HipSci) funded by grant WT098503 from the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council, for sharing data and materials. This work was supported in part by a TSB/EPSRC grant (TS/H000933/1). The Vallier lab is supported by the Cambridge Hospitals National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Center and an ERC Starting Grant (Relieve IMDS). F.A.C.S. is funded by a PhD studentship from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (SFRH/BD/69033/2010). The Ferguson-Smith lab is supported by grants from the MRC and Wellcome Trust, and EU-FP7 projects EPIGENESYS (257082) and BLUEPRINT (282510). The Beck lab is supported by the Wellcome Trust (084071), a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (WM100023), and EU-FP7 projects EPIGENESYS (257082) and BLUEPRINT (282510).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1045

Digital phenotyping and the COVID-19 pandemic:Capturing behavioral change in patients with psychiatric disorders

Contains fulltext : 227418.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented societal changes limiting us in our mobility and our ability to connect with others in person. These unusual but widespread changes provide a unique opportunity for studies using digital phenotyping tools. Digital phenotyping tools, such as mobile passive monitoring platforms (MPM), provide a new perspective on human behavior and hold promise to improve human behavioral research. However, there is currently little evidence that these tools can reliably detect changes in behavior. Considering the Considering the COVID-19 pandemic as a high impact common environmental factor we studied potential impact on behavior of participants using our mobile passive monitoring platform BEHAPP that was ambulatory tracking them during the COVID-19 pandemic. We pooled data from three MPM studies involving Schizophrenia (SZ), Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Bipolar Disorder (BD) patients (N = 12). We compared the data collected on weekdays during three weeks prior and three weeks subsequent to the start of the quarantine. We hypothesized an increase in communication and a decrease in mobility. We observed a significant increase in the total time spent on communication applications (median 179 and 243 min per week respectively, p = 0.005), and a significant decrease in the number of unique places visited (median 6 and 3 visits per week respectively, p = 0.007), while the total time spent at home did not change significantly (median 64 and 77 h per week, respectively, p = 0.594). The data provides a proof of principle that digital phenotyping tools can identify changes in human behavior incited by a common external environmental factor.6 p

Emotional Biases and Recurrence in Major Depressive Disorder. Results of 2.5 Years Follow-Up of Drug-Free Cohort Vulnerable for Recurrence

An interesting factor explaining recurrence risk in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) may be neuropsychological functioning, i.e., processing of emotional stimuli/information. Negatively biased processing of emotional stimuli/information has been found in both acute and (inconclusively) remitted states of MDD, and may be causally related to recurrence of depression. We aimed to investigate self-referent, memory and interpretation biases in recurrently depressed patients in remission and relate these biases to recurrence. We included 69 remitted recurrent MDD-patients (rrMDD-patients), 35–65 years, with ≥2 episodes, voluntarily free of antidepressant maintenance therapy for at least 4 weeks. We tested self-referent biases with an emotional categorization task, bias in emotional memory by free recall of the emotion categorization task 15 min after completing it, and interpretation bias with a facial expression recognition task. We compared these participants with 43 never-depressed controls matched for age, sex and intelligence. We followed the rrMDD-patients for 2.5 years and assessed recurrent depressive episodes by structured interview. The rrMDD-patients showed biases toward emotionally negative stimuli, faster responses to negative self-relevant characteristics in the emotional categorization, better recognition of sad faces, worse recognition of neutral faces with more misclassifications as angry or disgusting faces and less misclassifications as neutral faces (0.001 &lt; p &lt; 0.05). Of these, the number of misclassifications as angry and the overall performance in the emotional memory task were significantly associated with the time to recurrence (p ≤ 0.04), independent of residual symptoms and number of previous episodes. In a support vector machine data-driven model, prediction of recurrence-status could best be achieved (relative to observed recurrence-rate) with demographic and childhood adversity parameters (accuracy 78.1%; 1-sided p = 0.002); neuropsychological tests could not improve this prediction. Our data suggests a persisting (mood-incongruent) emotional bias when patients with recurrent depression are in remission. Moreover, these persisting biases might be mechanistically important for recurrence and prevention thereof

A new synthesis and preliminary evaluation of some analogues of mecamylamine – a compound with anti-addiction properties

A new synthesis of mecamylamine – a known anti-hypertensive drug with anti-addictive properties is described. The new route allowed access to two novel analogues whose activity at two nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subtypes was assessed

Participation in physical play and leisure : developing a theory- and evidence-based intervention for children with motor impairments

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