Big Food, Food Systems, and Global Health

In an article that forms part of the PLoS Medicine series on Big Food, guest editors David Stuckler and Marion Nestle lay out why more examination of the food industry is necessary, and offer three competing views on how public health professionals might engage with Big Food

Precio de transacción y precio regular en el modelo hedónico de la industria del vino

The purpose of the current research is to address the use of regular price to assess the long term attributes of products in the hedonic model within the Chilean wine industry. Regular price is widely used in marketing, but has not been used to assess the stable characteristics of a product across time. Using regular price when permanent attributes are being assessed allows for the avoidance of potential bias in hedonic functions due to margin changes in the product, and it allows the control of endogenous movements within prices. To show its best performance, we used a store panel that includes a two-year period. Two hedonic functions are constructed. One of them uses transaction price and the other one uses regular price. Regular price function performs better because it displays a better adjustment of the data and its results show that the product’s permanent key characteristics are its most significant attributes.Esta investigación tiene como propósito plantear la utilización del precio regular para evaluar los atributos de largo plazo de los productos, dentro del modelo hedónico, en la industria chilena de vino. El precio regular, que es un concepto muy utilizado en los modelos de marketing, no ha sido utilizado para la evaluación de las características del producto estables a través del tiempo en los modelos hedónicos. El utilizar el precio regular cuando se están evaluando atributos permanentes de un producto tiene el beneficio de evitar posibles sesgos en las funciones hedónicas debido a cambios de margen del producto y también ayuda a controlar movimientos endógenos de los precios. Para mostrar su mejor desempeño, se utilizó un panel de tiendas que considera un periodo de dos años, con el cual se construyen dos funciones hedónicas, en una de ellas se utiliza el precio de transacción y en la otra el precio regular. La función que utiliza el precio regular tiene un mejor desempeño debido a que se ajusta mejor a los datos y sus resultados muestran que las características permanentes y esenciales del producto son las únicas significativas

Innovation in food and beverage multinationals

Con autorización de la editorial para este capítulo.In this chapter, we analyze technical and design innovation in multinationals, the world’s most important innovators in the Food & Beverages field, and review some of the research on this topic.Peer reviewe

Using google search patterns to explain the demand for wild edible mushrooms

9 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables.-- Under a Creative Commons licenseThe demand for quality wild fungi has been continually increasing over the past few years. However, problems arise when modelling this demand, owing to the difficulty of finding precise data on their origin or value chain. Nor is there any reliable information on the preferences of consumers; therefore, in this work, we aimed to analyse the influence of internet search engines on the demand for porcini mushrooms, a highly appreciated wild fungus. For this purpose, weekly figures for their prices and the amounts sold over nine years in one of the main central markets in Spain have been recorded for diverse wild (porcini, saffron milk caps, and king oyster mushrooms) and cultivated fungi. In addition, for the same period, searches for wild mushrooms using Google Trends and Google search engines were analysed. The results show that these searches improve the classic demand model, presenting different signs with regard to their influence on the price of the mushroom analysed. An increase in searches over time was also verified, which could be considered as an indicator of an increase in demand. Lastly, no complementarity relationships or substitutions for any other emblematic mushroom in Spain (saffron milk caps), or for any cultivated fungi, were observedPeer reviewe

Economic evaluation of small desalination plants from brackish aquifers. Application to Campo de Cartagena (SE Spain)

In recent years, the Mediterranean area has witnessed an increasing water shortage trend, mainly due to: increasing population and tourism (especially in coastal areas), new agricultural developments, decreased rainfall and water management issues. In some Mediterranean areas, precipitation is lower than 300 mm/year; the temporal variability of precipitation controls and affects both the quantity and quality of water resources, and is a source of freshwater availability inequalities. Droughts, as a result of temporal precipitation irregularities, are common in all areas and lead to lack of temporal water resources.Departament d'Enginyeria Agroalimentària i Biotecnologia, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, EspañaDepartament d'Enginyeria Civil i Ambiental, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, EspañaUnidad de Murcia, Instituto Geológico y Minero de España, Españ

c-Jun and Hypoxia-Inducible Factor 1 Functionally Cooperate in Hypoxia-Induced Gene Transcription

Under low-oxygen conditions, cells develop an adaptive program that leads to the induction of several genes, which are transcriptionally regulated by hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1). On the other hand, there are other factors which modulate the HIF-1-mediated induction of some genes by binding to cis-acting motifs present in their promoters. Here, we show that c-Jun functionally cooperates with HIF-1 transcriptional activity in different cell types. Interestingly, a dominant-negative mutant of c-Jun which lacks its transactivation domain partially inhibits HIF-1-mediated transcription. This cooperative effect is not due to an increase in the nuclear amount of the HIF-1α subunit, nor does it require direct binding of c-Jun to DNA. c-Jun and HIF-1α are able to associate in vivo but not in vitro, suggesting that this interaction involves the participation of additional proteins and/or a posttranslational modification of these factors. In this context, hypoxia induces phosphorylation of c-Jun at Ser(63) in endothelial cells. This process is involved in its cooperative effect, since specific blockade of the JNK pathway and mutation of c-Jun at Ser(63) and Ser(73) impair its functional cooperation with HIF-1. The functional interplay between c-Jun and HIF-1 provides a novel insight into the regulation of some genes, such as the one for VEGF, which is a key regulator of tumor angiogenesis