Cooperatives and family businesses

Cooperatives provide a significant contribution to the economy, a large proportion of the UK’s economy is also supported by family businesses. Indeed, it is estimated that family businesses account for almost 25% of the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP). As such these two areas are of increasing importance when considering the accountability and governance responsibilities of organisations. With new questions arising every day to challenge the contributions that cooperatives and family business make to our communities, it is essential that we have the tools to clearly demonstrate their worth. Likewise, given the importance of the role boards play in the success or failure of cooperative organisations and family businesses, and the importance of these organisations in the wider economy, it is prudent to develop some knowledge and understanding of the complexities of the way in which these boards are structured and the role that they play in achieving accountability and governance within their organisation. The chapter considers the following: who governs; board roles and board relationships with management; board size and director selection processes; the importance of board members participation; and the input of managers in relation to accountability and governance in these two sectors. The chapter begins with a short overview of the evolution of cooperatives and what constitutes a family business. This is followed by a discussion of the organisational model and governance structures and their effectiveness

A comparative study of benchmarking approaches for non-domestic buildings: Part 1 – Top-down approach

Benchmarking plays an important role in improving energy efficiency of non-domestic buildings. A review of energy benchmarks that underpin the UK’s Display Energy Certificate (DEC) scheme have prompted necessities to explore the benefits and limitations of using various methods to derive energy benchmarks. The existing methods were reviewed and grouped into top-down and bottom-up approaches based on the granularity of the data used. In the study, two top-down methods, descriptive statistics and artificial neural networks (ANN), were explored for the purpose of benchmarking energy performances of schools. The results were used to understand the benefits of using these benchmarks for assessing energy efficiency of buildings and the limitations that affect the robustness of the derived benchmarks. Compared to the bottom-up approach, top-down approaches were found to be beneficial in gaining insight into how peers perform. The relative rather than absolute feedback on energy efficiency meant that peer pressure was a motivator for improvement. On the other hand, there were limitations with regard to the extent to which the energy efficiency of a building could be accurately assessed using the top-down benchmarks. Moreover, difficulties in acquiring adequate data were identified as a key limitation to using the top-down approach for benchmarking non-domestic buildings. The study suggested that there are benefits in rolling out of DECs to private sector buildings and that there is a need to explore more complex methods to provide more accurate indication of energy efficiency in non-domestic buildings

On log concavity for order-preserving and order-non-reversing maps of partial orders

Stanley used the Aleksandrov-Fenchel inequalities from the theory of nixed volumes to prove the following result. Let P be a partially ordered set with n elements, and let x ∊ P. If Ni* is the number of linear extensions , ⋋ : P + (1 , 2,...,n) satisfying ⋋ (x) = i, then the sequence N*1,…,N*n is log concave (and therefore unimodal). Here the analogous results for both order-preserving and order-non-reversing maps are proved using an explicit injection. Further, if vc is the number of order-preserving maps of P into a chain of length c, then vc is shown to be 1-og concave, and the corresponding result is established for order-non-reversing maps

Transcriptome-wide analysis reveals different categories of response to a standardised immune challenge in a wild rodent

Individuals vary in their immune response and, as a result, some are more susceptible to infectious disease than others. Little is known about the nature of this individual variation in natural populations, or which components of immune pathways are most responsible, but defining this underlying landscape of variation is an essential first step to understanding the drivers of this variation and, ultimately, predicting the outcome of infection. We describe transcriptome-wide variation in response to a standardised immune challenge in wild field voles. We find that markers can be categorised into a limited number of types. For the majority of markers, the response of an individual is dependent on its baseline expression level, with significant enrichment in this category for conventional immune pathways. Another, moderately sized, category contains markers for which the responses of different individuals are also variable but independent of their baseline expression levels. This category lacks any enrichment for conventional immune pathways. We further identify markers which display particularly high individual variability in response, and could be used as markers of immune response in larger studies. Our work shows how a standardised challenge performed on a natural population can reveal the patterns of natural variation in immune response

Fat transforms ascorbic acid from inhibiting to promoting acid-catalysed N-nitrosation

<b>Background</b>: The major potential site of acid nitrosation is the proximal stomach, an anatomical site prone to a rising incidence of metaplasia and adenocarcinoma. Nitrite, a pre-carcinogen present in saliva, can be converted to nitrosating species and N-nitroso compounds by acidification at low gastric pH in the presence of thiocyanate. <b>Aims</b>: To assess the effect of lipid and ascorbic acid on the nitrosative chemistry under conditions simulating the human proximal stomach. <b>Methods</b>: The nitrosative chemistry was modelled in vitro by measuring the nitrosation of four secondary amines under conditions simulating the proximal stomach. The N-nitrosamines formed were measured by gas chromatography–ion-trap tandem mass spectrometry, while nitric oxide and oxygen levels were measured amperometrically. <b>Results</b>: In absence of lipid, nitrosative stress was inhibited by ascorbic acid through conversion of nitrosating species to nitric oxide. Addition of ascorbic acid reduced the amount of N-nitrosodimethylamine formed by fivefold, N-nitrosomorpholine by .1000-fold, and totally prevented the formation of N-nitrosodiethylamine and N-nitrosopiperidine. In contrast, when 10% lipid was present, ascorbic acid increased the amount of Nnitrosodimethylamine, N-nitrosodiethylamine and N-nitrosopiperidine formed by approximately 8-, 60- and 140-fold, respectively, compared with absence of ascorbic acid. <b>Conclusion</b>: The presence of lipid converts ascorbic acid from inhibiting to promoting acid nitrosation. This may be explained by nitric oxide, formed by ascorbic acid in the aqueous phase, being able to regenerate nitrosating species by reacting with oxygen in the lipid phase

Outbreak of encephalitic listeriosis in red-legged partridges (Alectoris rufa)

An outbreak of neurological disease was investigated in red-legged partridges between 8 and 28 days of age. Clinical signs included torticollis, head tilt and incoordination and over an initial eight day period approximately 30–40 fatalities occurred per day. No significant gross post mortem findings were detected. Histopathological examination of the brain and bacterial cultures followed by partial sequencing confirmed a diagnosis of encephalitis due to Listeria monocytogenes. Further isolates were obtained from follow-up carcasses, environmental samples and pooled tissue samples of newly imported day-old chicks prior to placement on farm. These isolates had the same antibiotic resistance pattern as the isolate of the initial post mortem submission and belonged to the same fluorescent amplified fragment length polymorphism (fAFLP) subtype. This suggested that the isolates were very closely related or identical and that the pathogen had entered the farm with the imported day-old chicks, resulting in disease manifestation in partridges between 8 and 28 days of age. Reports of outbreaks of encephalitic listeriosis in avian species are rare and this is to the best of our knowledge the first reported outbreak in red-legged partridges

Infinite dimensional integrals beyond Monte Carlo methods: yet another approach to normalized infinite dimensional integrals

An approach to (normalized) infinite dimensional integrals, including normalized oscillatory integrals, through a sequence of evaluations in the spirit of the Monte Carlo method for probability measures is proposed. in this approach the normalization through the partition function is included in the definition. For suitable sequences of evaluations, the ("classical") expectation values of cylinder functions are recoveredComment: Submitted as a communication in the ICMSQUARE conference, september 201

Pacific Islands families study: risk and protective factors associated with delinquent behaviour in Pacific 11-year-olds

This paper examines risk and protective factors associated with delinquent behaviour among Pacific youth living in New Zealand (NZ). As part of the longitudinal Pacific Islands Families study, 11-year-olds Pacific youth participated in multidisciplinary interviews which included questions about involvement in delinquent behaviours. Peer pressure was the strongest risk factor for delinquency, and protective factors were higher self-perception, teacher evaluation scores, and perceived support from friends. Pacific boys reported significantly more delinquent behaviours than Pacific girls. Maternal acculturation was significantly associated with the delinquent behaviour of youth. Youth of mothers categorized as integrators (high Pacific/high NZ) having lower odds for delinquency than youth of mothers categorized as assimilators (low Pacific/high NZ). Youth from the largest Pacific Island groups (Samoa, Tonga and Cook Islands) were also significantly more likely to engage in delinquent behaviour than those from smaller island groups. Implications of these findings for prevention and further research are discussed