Buying seafood: Understanding barriers to purchase across consumption segments

Most consumers have positive attitudes toward seafood and consider it to be an important part of a healthy and balanced diet. However when purchasing seafood, consumers also weigh up various risks which may act as barriers to consumption. In this paper, the findings of an online survey of Australian consumers (. n=. 899) which explored both drivers and barriers to seafood consumption are discussed. The primary focus of this paper is to explore the perceived risks of seafood consumption and how these vary across consumption levels. Perceived risks associated with seafood consumption include functional, social, physical, psychological, and financial risk. With the exceptions of physical and financial risk, perceptions of risk varied across regular, light and very light seafood consumption segments. Lighter fish consumers were more likely to perceive functional risk associated with being less informed and less familiar with fish, experience more difficulties with selecting fish, recognising if fish is fresh, and preparing and serving fish than more regular fish consumers. Regular seafood consumers were less likely than lighter seafood consumers to perceive social risk arising from other members of their household not liking fish. Moreover, regular seafood consumers were less likely to perceive psychological risks associated with unpleasant past experiences or unpleasant sensory qualities, such as not liking the smell of fish and not liking to touch fish. Based on these results strategies for reducing perceived risks as a means of stimulating fish consumption are proposed for further investigation. © 2012

Altered dynamics may drift pathological fibrillization in membraneless organelles

Protein phase transition can generate non-membrane bound cellular compartments, which can convert from liquid-like to solid-like states. While the molecular driving forces of phase separation have been largely understood, much less is known about the mechanisms of material-state conversion. We apply a recently developed algorithm to describe the weak interaction network of multivalent motifs, and simulate the effect of pathological mutations. We demonstrate that linker dynamics is critical to the material-state of biomolecular condensates. We show that linker flexibility/mobility is a major regulator of the weak, heterogeneous meshwork of multivalent motifs, which promotes phase transition and maintains a liquid-like state. Decreasing linker dynamics increases the propensity of amyloid-like fragments via hampering the motif-exchange and reorganization of the weak interaction network. In contrast, increasing linker mobility may compensate rigidifying mutations, suggesting that the meshwork of weak, variable interactions may provide a rescue mechanism from aggregation. Motif affinity, on the other hand, has a moderate impact on fibrillization. Here we demonstrate that the fuzzy framework provides an efficient approach to handle the intricate organization of membraneless organelles, and could also be applicable to screen for pathological effects of mutations

A Preliminary Analysis of Relationships Between Traveller Characteristics and Hotel Review Ratings

School of Hotel and Tourism Management2016-2017 > Academic research: refereed > Refereed conference paperbcw

Fish for Transparency:Challenges of environmental governance from the perspective of food-driven protests

In the aftermath of a mass fish death along the coastal area of Central Vietnam in April 2016, disdain and frustration of the public soon escalated into widespread protests. These protests arose in response to evasion and oppressive tactics from the government. Using discourse analysis, this chapter identifies the different narratives between the government and the activists. This mismatch reveals challenges to governance in Vietnam in the form of a lack of participatory platform. The chapter explores how the theme of fish contributed to the narrative of protestors in rural and urban areas in Vietnam and where they differ. Our analysis indicates that food, as a socio-political lens, has seemingly unified the voices of rural and urban protestors and might have potential to consolidate the existing discourses on civil society. The socio-political imagery of masses of dead fish depicted a life-threatening reality that transcended mere everyday discomfort or technical failures. The fish death, as reconstructed through various media sources, highlighted the role of food as a medium for transboundary socio-political activism. In this sense, food and the related discourse has a bounding effect on some narratives but also functions as a frame to illustrate the challenged relationship between the government and its people

An automated Design-Build-Test-Learn pipeline for enhanced microbial production of fine chemicals

The microbial production of fine chemicals provides a promising biosustainable manufacturing solution that has led to the successful production of a growing catalog of natural products and high-value chemicals. However, development at industrial levels has been hindered by the large resource investments required. Here we present an integrated Design–Build-Test–Learn (DBTL) pipeline for the discovery and optimization of biosynthetic pathways, which is designed to be compound agnostic and automated throughout. We initially applied the pipeline for the production of the flavonoid (2S)-pinocembrin in Escherichia coli, to demonstrate rapid iterative DBTL cycling with automation at every stage. In this case, application of two DBTL cycles successfully established a production pathway improved by 500-fold, with competitive titers up to 88 mg L−1. The further application of the pipeline to optimize an alkaloids pathway demonstrates how it could facilitate the rapid optimization of microbial strains for production of any chemical compound of interest