Consumer acceptance of nutrigenomics based personalised nutrition

Nutrigenomics is a new and promising development in nutritional science which aims to understand the fundamental molecular processes affected by foods. Despite general agreement on its promise for better understanding diet¿health relationships, less consensus exists among experts on the potential of spin-offs aimed at the consumer such as personalised nutrition. Research into consumer acceptance of such applications is scarce. The present study develops a set of key hypotheses on public acceptance of personalised nutrition and tests these in a representative sample of Dutch consumers. An innovative consumer research methodology is used in which consumers evaluate short films which are systematically varied scenarios for the future of personalised nutrition. Consumer evaluations of these films, which are pre-tested in a pilot study, allow a formal test of how consumer perceptions of personalised nutrition drive consumer acceptance and through which fundamental psychological processes these effects are mediated. Public acceptance is enhanced if consumers can make their genetic profile available free at their own choice, if the actual spin-off products provide a clearly recognisable advantage to the consumer, and are easy to implement into the daily routine. Consumers prefer communication on nutrigenomics and personalised nutrition by expert stakeholders to be univocal and aimed at building support with consumers and their direct environments for this intriguing new development. Additionally, an exploratory segmentation analysis indicated that people have different focal points in their preferences for alternative scenarios of personalised nutrition. The insights obtained from the present study provide guidance for the successful further development of nutrigenomics and its applications

Beer foam physics

The physical aspects of beer foam behavior were studied in terms of the four physical processes, mainly involved in the formation and breakdown of foam. These processes are, bubble formation, drainage, disproportionation and coalescence. In detail, the processes disproportionation and coalescence were studied. The mechanism of coalescence was determined using, amongst others, a falling film apparatus. The spreading of surface active material on the film surface proved to initiate coalescence. Disproportionation in a foam is mainly influenced by partial gas pressure differences. Surface rheological aspects dominate the rate of disproportionation when the gas composition throughout a foam is uniform. The effect of the four physical processes on various foam phenomena can be explained. The disappearance of beer foam is a result of the combined action of drainage and gas diffusion from the foam to the surrounding atmosphere. When spreading substances are added to beer foam from an external source, coalescence is initiated and foam collapse occurs. The four physical processes have a different effect on foam behavior. Therefore, a distinction between these processes was made using an optical glass-fibre probe technique. With this technique the bubble-size distribution, the gas fraction in the foam, the height of the foam and the level of the foam-liquid interface can be measured as a function of time

Assessing the performance of international water management at Lake Titicaca

In this article, we study the performance of international water management at Lake Titicaca in order to assess the empirical applicability of a new concept for measuring policy performance. This performance measurement concept (PER) is a function of three variables: optimum performance (OP), actual performance (AP), and counterfactual performance (CP). In examining the joint management of Lake Titicaca by Bolivia and Peru, we identify practical difficulties in applying PER and suggest extensions of the concept to assess uncertainty. We find that this measurement concept has several advantages: it takes into account counterfactual performance; the analysis can be performed in a structured, standardized, and transparent manner; and the formal framework allows for an assessment of uncertainty. Problems in applying the concept include: choice of attributes, identification of optimum performance, time-scale, and subjectivity of information. We conclude that, on balance, this approach is superior to other policy performance assessment measures developed to dat

Het gezonde van biologisch voedsel: de beleving van consumenten

On the basis of a literature study, group interviews and an online questionnaire, an investigation was carried out into what light users - people who occasionally buy organic products - believe makes food in general - and organic food in particular - health

Myrthe Ronteltap vertelt

Na haar studie Bestuurskunde, het Rijkstraineeprogramma en de kilometerprijs, werkt Myrthe Ronteltap nu bij de directie Luchtvaart van het Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Milieu. Dit is een beleidsterrein met vele internationale componenten. Ook is het een terrein waarbij multi-level governance duidelijk te herkennen is, voornamelijk in de regelgeving die vanuit Europa invloed heeft op het nationale beleid. In deze rubriek vertelt ze over haar studietijd, loopbaan en de luchtvaart

Design, Implementation and Evaluation of PsyWeb, a Learning Environment in a Problem Based Learning Curriculum.

In this article we describe the design and implementation of PsyWeb, a rich learning environment for the new problem based study in Psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam Experiences are reported for the first five (of eight) courses of the first year of the new study. Students opinions have been collected as part of a survey at the end of each course. Results indicate that students are positive about PsyWeb. The overall appreciation shows a slight increase over time. Starting with the second course, usage of PsyWeb has been logged. Usage has been quantified in terms of the number of unique IP-addresses per day. Using this measure we assume that PsyWeb has a student reach between 25% and 100% per day. Usage shows a slight increase over the courses. The implementation of a series of additions to PsyWeb has been planned for the next year

Consumers' intention to use health recommendation systems to receive personalized nutrition advice

Background: Sophisticated recommendation systems are used more and more in the health sector to assist consumers in healthy decision making. In this study we investigate consumers' evaluation of hypothetical health recommendation systems that provide personalized nutrition advice. We examine consumers' intention to use such a health recommendation system as a function of options related to the underlying system (e.g. the type of company that generates the advice) as well as intermediaries (e.g. general practitioner) that might assist in using the system. We further explore if the effect of both the system and intermediaries on intention to use a health recommendation system are mediated by consumers' perceived effort, privacy risk, usefulness and enjoyment. Methods. 204 respondents from a consumer panel in the Netherlands participated. The data were collected by means of a questionnaire. Each respondent evaluated three hypothetical health recommendation systems on validated multi-scale measures of effort, privacy risk, usefulness, enjoyment and intention to use the system. To test the hypothesized relationships we used regression analyses. Results: We find evidence that the options related to the underlying system as well as the intermediaries involved influence consumers' intention to use such a health recommendation system and that these effects are mediated by perceptions of effort, privacy risk, usefulness and enjoyment. Also, we find that consumers value usefulness of a system more and enjoyment less when a general practitioner advices them to use a health recommendation system than if they use it out of their own curiosity. Conclusions: We developed and tested a model of consumers' intention to use a health recommendation system. We found that intermediaries play an important role in how consumers evaluate such a system over and above options of the underlying system that is used to generate the recommendation. Also, health-related information services seem to rely on endorsement by the medical sector. This has considerable implications for the distribution as well as the communication channels of health recommendation systems which may be quite difficult to put into practice outside traditional health service channels

T cell retargeting with MHC class I-restricted antibodies: the CD28 costimulatory domain enhances antigen-specific cytotoxicity and cytokine production

T cells require both primary and costimulatory signals for optimal activation. The primary Ag-specific signal is delivered by engagement of the TCR. The second Ag-independent costimulatory signal is mediated by engagement of the T cell surface costimulatory molecule CD28 with its target cell ligand B7. However, many tumor cells do not express these costimulatory molecules. We previously constructed phage display derived F(AB), G8, and Hyb3, Ab-based receptors with identical specificity but distinct affinities for HLA-A1/MAGE-A1, i.e., "TCR-like" specificity. These chimeric receptors comprised the FcepsilonRI-gamma signaling element. We analyzed whether linking the CD28 costimulation structure to it (gamma + CD28) could affect the levels of MHC-restricted cytolysis and/or cytokine production. Human scFv-G8(POS) T lymphocytes comprising the gamma + CD28 vs the gamma signaling element alone produced substantially more IL-2, TNF-alpha, and IFN-gamma in response to HLA-A1/MAGE-A1(POS) melanoma cells. Also a drastic increase in cytolytic capacity of scFv-G8(POS) T cells, equipped with gamma + CD28 vs the gamma-chain alone was observed