Community owned trading enterprises : their uniqueness and performance : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Studies at Massey University

Community ownership of trading enterprises has not been so favoured as a concept during the latter part of the 20th century as successive New Zealand Governments pursued market forces policies. The face of the New Zealand public ownership business scene radically changed from the mid 1980's as telecommunications, railways, the ports, Coal Corp, energy ... were all restructured in pursuit of the market model. Why was the public or community ownership model apparently not supported? The empirical evidence did not unequivocally uphold privatisation and the market model as being inherently more efficient as a structure. Notably also, community ownership was much enjoyed as a concept. This research, therefore, looks at the concept of community ownership and seeks to define its uniqueness and identify its performance in operating trading enterprises. The electricity companies in New Zealand were the area selected. The results moderately support the view that social/community goals are of more importance to community owned trading enterprises than their private ownership equivalents. Notably community ownership outperformed private enterprise as measured by ROE and ROA. Thus the contention that community ownership as a concept had much to offer, and was not inherently less efficient, was not disproved by this research. Further research in other fields is worthy of pursuit

Mass-spectrometry-based metabolomics: limitations and recommendations for future progress with particular focus on nutrition research

Mass spectrometry (MS) techniques, because of their sensitivity and selectivity, have become methods of choice to characterize the human metabolome and MS-based metabolomics is increasingly used to characterize the complex metabolic effects of nutrients or foods. However progress is still hampered by many unsolved problems and most notably the lack of well established and standardized methods or procedures, and the difficulties still met in the identification of the metabolites influenced by a given nutritional intervention. The purpose of this paper is to review the main obstacles limiting progress and to make recommendations to overcome them. Propositions are made to improve the mode of collection and preparation of biological samples, the coverage and quality of mass spectrometry analyses, the extraction and exploitation of the raw data, the identification of the metabolites and the biological interpretation of the results

Evaluation and Characterization of Bacterial Metabolic Dynamics with a Novel Profiling Technique, Real-Time Metabolotyping

BACKGROUND: Environmental processes in ecosystems are dynamically altered by several metabolic responses in microorganisms, including intracellular sensing and pumping, battle for survival, and supply of or competition for nutrients. Notably, intestinal bacteria maintain homeostatic balance in mammals via multiple dynamic biochemical reactions to produce several metabolites from undigested food, and those metabolites exert various effects on mammalian cells in a time-dependent manner. We have established a method for the analysis of bacterial metabolic dynamics in real time and used it in combination with statistical NMR procedures. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We developed a novel method called real-time metabolotyping (RT-MT), which performs sequential (1)H-NMR profiling and two-dimensional (2D) (1)H, (13)C-HSQC (heteronuclear single quantum coherence) profiling during bacterial growth in an NMR tube. The profiles were evaluated with such statistical methods as Z-score analysis, principal components analysis, and time series of statistical TOtal Correlation SpectroScopY (TOCSY). In addition, using 2D (1)H, (13)C-HSQC with the stable isotope labeling technique, we observed the metabolic kinetics of specific biochemical reactions based on time-dependent 2D kinetic profiles. Using these methods, we clarified the pathway for linolenic acid hydrogenation by a gastrointestinal bacterium, Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens. We identified trans11, cis13 conjugated linoleic acid as the intermediate of linolenic acid hydrogenation by B. fibrisolvens, based on the results of (13)C-labeling RT-MT experiments. In addition, we showed that the biohydrogenation of polyunsaturated fatty acids serves as a defense mechanism against their toxic effects. CONCLUSIONS: RT-MT is useful for the characterization of beneficial bacterium that shows potential for use as probiotic by producing bioactive compounds

Artificial Synapse: Spatiotemporal Heterogeneities in Dopamine Electrochemistry at a Carbon Fiber Ultramicroelectrode

An artificial synapse is developed that mimics ultramicroelectrode (UME) amperometric detection of single cell exocytosis. It comprises the nanopipette of a scanning ion conductance microscope (SICM), which delivers rapid pulses of neurotransmitter (dopamine) locally and on demand at >1000 defined locations of a carbon fiber (CF) UME in each experiment. Analysis of the resulting UME current-space-time data reveals spatiotemporal heterogeneous electrode activity on the nanoscale and submillisecond time scale for dopamine electrooxidation at typical UME detection potentials. Through complementary surface charge mapping and finite element method (FEM) simulations, these previously unseen variations in electrochemical activity are related to heterogeneities in the surface chemistry of the CF UME