The climate emergency across business, community and campaign groups: motivations and barriers to driving change for the common good

Initiatives to help tackle the climate emergency have tended to focus on large-scale actions that governments can take and smaller-scale actions for individuals, with relatively limited attention given to the mass of groups that form society between these two ends of the spectrum. The aim here is to help close that gap and the chosen areas of study are business, community, and campaign groups. The approach was to assess the existing literature and to conduct three focus groups to identify what motivates these groups to take actions on climate change, while also uncovering the barriers that may drive choices of inaction. The findings indicate that multiple factors motivate environmental engagements across business, community, and campaign groups, but personal ethics and concern for the future play the most vital roles. The most common barriers cited were difficulties in accessing support schemes, a lack of clear accessible information, and financial implications. Better networking and knowledge exchange are considered essential for meaningful progress. This research provides a new framework, upon which many organisations can be better motivated to take actions in helping deal with the global climate emergency facing humanity. Practical action guides may be developed from existing materials, and small taskforces could be trained to provide direct hands-on support to groups across society, especially those in SMEs and local communities. The energies of younger people and campaigners, combined with the experiences of other generations, would create a powerful force for good

The climate emergency across business, community and campaign groups: Motivations and barriers to driving change for the common good

Initiatives to help tackle the climate emergency have tended to focus on large-scale actions that governments can take and smaller-scale actions for individuals, with relatively limited attention given to the mass of groups that form society between these two ends of the spectrum. The aim here is to help close that gap and the chosen areas of study are business, community, and campaign groups. The approach was to assess the existing literature and to conduct three focus groups to identify what motivates these groups to take actions on climate change, while also uncovering the barriers that may drive choices of inaction. The findings indicate that multiple factors motivate environmental engagements across business, community, and campaign groups, but personal ethics and concern for the future play the most vital roles. The most common barriers cited were difficulties in accessing support schemes, a lack of clear accessible information, and financial implications. Better networking and knowledge exchange are considered essential for meaningful progress. This research provides a new framework, upon which many organisations can be better motivated to take actions in helping deal with the global climate emergency facing humanity. Practical action guides may be developed from existing materials, and small taskforces could be trained to provide direct hands-on support to groups across society, especially those in SMEs and local communities. The energies of younger people and campaigners, combined with the experiences of other generations, would create a powerful force for good

Management actions to address the climate emergency: Motivations and barriers for SMEs and other societal micro/meso-level groups

Initiatives to tackle the climate emergency have tended to focus on large-scale actions that governments and investors (societal macro-levels) can take and smaller-scale individual habits, with limited attention given to the groups that form society between those ends of the spectrum (societal micro/meso-levels). This research aims to traverse that gap by studying three societal micro/meso-level groups; from the private, public and voluntary sectors, as represented by business, community and campaign groups. Existing literature and focus groups are used to identify what motivates actions on climate change, while exposing barriers that may drive choices of inaction. The study shows that concerns for the future and personal ethics play vital roles across business, community and campaign groups, while the principal barriers include difficulties in accessing support schemes and changes in political priorities. Better networking and knowledge exchange are considered essential for meaningful progress. This provides a new framework for management education to support organisations in tackling climate-related issues. Action guides may be developed and task-forces trained to provide hands-on support, especially for SMEs and local communities. The enthusiasm of younger people and campaigners, combined with others’ experiences, would create a powerful platform for climate emergency actions

Applicability and sensitivity of PCR-SSCP method for milk species identification in cheese

Species identification in food has become a prominent issue in recent years as the importance of consumer protection has increased. DNA-based species identification methods were developed by researchers in the last two decades, as these are reliable, accurate, and low-cost techniques for species identification in raw and processed food products as well. In our study, universal primers were designed to conserved regions of mitochondrial 12S rRNA. Amplicons were heat-denatured and a PCR single strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) method was developed to identify cattle, buffalo, sheep, and goat DNA. Sensitivity of this technique was tested on DNA mixtures of cattle-sheep, cattle-goat, and cattle-buffalo and the threshold limit of cattle DNA was 5%, 5%, and 3%, respectively. One hundred and five cheeses were purchased and collected from Bosnian and Hungarian farmers, retails, and supermarkets to reveal fraud, 32 percent of them (34 cheeses) were found to be mislabelled by species

Superdeformed rotational bands in Pu-240

The intermediate structure of the fission resonances has been observed in Pu-240. A resonance structure found around the excitation energy of 4.5 MeV was interpreted as a group of K-pi = 0(+) superdeformed rotational bands. The moments of inertia and level density distributions were also deduced for the individually observed band-heads

Chia-Yang Chen, clarinet

Max RegerKrzysztof PendereckiPaul PierneRoberto SierraGeorge Gershwi