Specialty coffee consumption amongst consumers in Gauteng

Abstract : The coffee industry has been associated with the economic and cultural history of many countries. Since the 20th century the culture of coffee has grown globally with the emergence of the specialty coffee industry in the international hospitality markets. Specialty coffee is now a high quality product of the industry as more attention is given to brewing methods by knowledgeable baristas which has changed consumer behaviour towards artisanal beverages. The specialty coffee trend has also increased in South Africa. This study, therefore, investigates the development and influence of consumer profile and interest in the product in Gauteng, South Africa. A convergent parallel mixed method is used with survey design elements: firstly, quantitative data is gathered using questionnaires for speciality coffee consumers in Gauteng and analysed with descriptive and inferential statistics. Secondly, qualitative data is collected through transcribed interviews with specialty coffee industry experts and analysed using an inductive content analysis. This study finds that the knowledge and positive perceptions of specialty coffee relates to more informed consumers who understand and appreciate the product. In this age of globalisation, travel experiences have added to consumer knowledge and increased demand in the local industry for quality specialty coffee and customer experience. While this has driven improvements to the local product; a gap in knowledge still exists between consumer demand and industry offering. A recommendation of this study is for the specialty coffee industry to emphasise their product development and educating consumers alongside a better consumer specialty coffee experience particularly as consumers in Gauteng are experiencing the African wave of coffee by blending local expectations with global practices.M.Com. (Tourism and Hospitality Management

Aluminium-mediated carbon–carbon coupling of an isonitrile

Cp*Al reacts with diphenylacetylene to form a Cp*-substituted 1,4-dialuminacyclohexene, which mediates the coupling of isonitriles to form a new zwitterionic diamide ligand with a carbocationic backbone.</p

Communication in the Gig Economy: Buying and Selling in Online Freelance Marketplaces

The proliferating gig economy relies on online freelance marketplaces, which support relatively anonymous interactions by text-based messages. Informational asymmetries thus arise that can lead to exchange uncertainties between buyers and freelancers. Conventional marketing thought recommends reducing such uncertainty. However, uncertainty reduction and uncertainty management theories indicate that buyers and freelancers might benefit more from balancing, rather than reducing, uncertainty, such as by strategically adhering to or deviating from common principles. With dyadic analyses of calls for bids and bids from a leading online freelance marketplace, this study reveals that buyers attract more bids from freelancers when they provide moderate degrees of task information and concreteness, avoid sharing personal information, and limit the affective intensity of their communication. Freelancers’ bid success and price premiums increase when they mimic the degree of task information and affective intensity exhibited by buyers. However, mimicking a lack of personal information and concreteness reduces freelancers’ success, so freelancers should always be more concrete and offer more personal information than buyers do. These contingent perspectives offer insights into buyer–seller communication in two-sided online marketplaces; they clarify that despite, or sometimes due to, communication uncertainty, both sides can achieve success in the online gig economy

Diversity in STEMM: Establishing a Business Case

This report sets out the results of research commissioned by the Royal Society as part of their BIS-funded programme entitled ‘Leading the way: increasing diversity in the scientific workforce’. The research explored whether there is a business case for diversity in STEMM occupations (scientific, technical, engineering, mathematical and medical roles) and whether diverse teams are more likely to do ‘good’ science. The research focused on three of the nine protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010: gender, ethnicity and disability

Ligand coordination modulates reductive elimination from aluminium(III)

Oxidative addition to low-valent main-group centres is a major class of reactivity for these species. Here, we present a mechanistic study of the much rarer reverse process – reductive elimination – in Al(iii) systems, and unravel ligand effects in this process.</p

Research encounters, reflexivity and supervision

Reflexivity in qualitative and ethnographic social science research can provide a rich source of data, especially regarding the affective, performative and relational aspects of interviews with research subjects. This paper explores by means of three case examples different ways of accessing and using such reflexivity. The examples are drawn from an empirical psycho-social study into the identity transitions of first-time mothers in an inner-city multicultural environment. Fieldnotes and supervision were used to engage with researcher subjectivity, to enhance the productive use of reflexivity and to address the emotional work of research. The methodology of the supervision was psychoanalytic, in its use of a boundaried frame and of psychoanalytic forms of noticing oneself, of staying engaged emotionally as well as creating a reflective distance. The examples illustrate how this can enhance the knowledge gained about the research subjects

Reference Ontologies to Support the Development of New Product-Service Lifecycle Systems

In competitive and time sensitive market places, organisations are tasked with providing Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) approaches to achieve and maintain competitive advantage, react to change and understand the balance of possible options when making decisions on complex multi-faceted problems, Global Production Networks (GPN) in one such domain in which this applies. When designing and configuring GPN to develop, manufacture and deliver product-service provision, information requirements that affect decision making become more complex. The application of reference ontologies to a domain and its related information requirements can enhance and accelerate the development of new product-service lifecycle systems with a view towards the seamless interchange of information or interoperability between systems and domains. This paper present preliminary results for the capture and modelling of end-user information and an initial higher level reference core ontology for the development of reference ontologies to ameliorate product-service lifecycle management for GPNPalmer, C.; Urwin, E.; Pinazo-Sanchez, J.; Sánchez Cid, F.; Pajkovska-Goceva, S.; Young, R. (2014). Reference Ontologies to Support the Development of New Product-Service Lifecycle Systems. En Advances in Production Management Systems: Innovative and Knowledge-Based. Springer Verlag. 642-649. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-44736-9_78S642649Vandermerwe, S., Rada, J.: Servitization of business: adding value by adding services. European Management Journal 6(4), 314–324 (1988)Coe, N.M., Dicken, P., Hess, M.: Global production networks: realizing the potential. Economic Geography Research Group, Working Paper Series No. 05.07 (2007)Young, R.I.M., Gunendran, A.G., Chungoora, N., Harding, J.A., Case, K.: Enabling interoperable manufacturing knowledge sharing in PLM. In: Proceedings of the Sixth Interna-tional Conference on Product Life Cycle Management PLM 2009, University of Bath, Bath, UK, July 6-8, pp. 130–138. Inderscience Enterprises Ltd., Switzerland (2009)Chungoora, N., Young, R.I.M.: The configuration of design and manufacture know-ledge models from a heavyweight ontological foundation. International Journal of Production Research 49(15), 4701–4725 (2011)Chungoora, N., Cutting-Decelle, A.-F., Young, R.I.M., Gunendran, G., Usman, Z., Harding, J.A., Case, K.: Towards the ontology-based consolidation of production-centric standards. International Journal of Production Research 51(2), 327–345 (2013a)Hastilow, N.: An Ontological Approach to Manufacturing Systems Interoperability in Dynamic Change Environments. PhD Thesis. School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough University, UK (2013)Highfleet Ontology Library Reference. Highfleet Inc., Baltimore (2014)International Standards Society, ISO/IEC 15288:2008 Systems and Software Engineering – System lifecycle processes. ISO, Genève (2008)Banathy, B.H.: A systems view of education: Concepts and principles for effective practice. Educational Technology (1992)OMG, 2012 OMG unified modeling language (OMG UML), superstructure and infrastructure version 2.4.1 (2012), http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/2.4.1/ (accessed May 9, 2014)Mizoguchi, R., Kozaki, K., Kitamura, Y.: Ontological analyses of roles. In: 2012 Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS), pp. 489–496. IEEE (September 2012)FIPS PUBs: Integration definition for function modelling (IDEF0). Federal information processing standards publication, 183 (1993)POP* Revised framework Work package – A1.8, Athena European integrated project no. 507849 public deliverable (2006

Generation Y’s perceived preference for green hotels

Abstract:The global business environment and hospitality industry have followed the trend of showing a significant increase in environmentally friendly (EF) practices and facilities. Generation Y consumers are a socially conscious generation), who are known to think of the negative impact on the environment. Internationally, consumers have become more aware and action-orientated of the greening trend, as there is an increased market demand towards environmentally friendly business approaches. The objective of the study was to identify the perceived impact of environmentally friendly facilities and practices that Generation Y consumers have towards the greening trend within the hospitality industry. The research followed a quantitative survey research design, with a non-probability convenience sample of 100 personally administrated questionnaires that were completed, collected and analysed. The results indicated that Generation Y consumers have shown a shift towards requesting greening within hotels but not to the extent of international consumers. The findings agreed with international research in terms of respondents having a positive environmental awareness, showing that 83% were willing to stay in a green hotel. Respondents generally agreed to environmentally friendly facilities and practices within hotels. Generation Y consumers in South Africa have moved consciously towards demanding greening within the hospitality industry, which will have a positive impact on the hotel market. This trend is expected to grow to match international positive perceptions of greening within the hospitality industry. An increased effort by hotels to promote greening would increase awareness and improve the competitive advantage of these

Dephasing time of disordered two-dimensional electron gas in modulated magnetic fields

The dephasing time of disordered two-dimensional electron gas in a modulated magnetic field is studied. It is shown that in the weak inhomogeneity limit, the dephasing rate is proportional to the field amplitude, while in strong inhomogeneity limit the dependence is quadratic. It is demonstrated that the origin of the dependence of dephasing time on field amplitude lies in the nature of corresponding single-particle motion. A semiclassical Monte Carlo algorithm is developed to study the dephasing time, which is of qualitative nature but efficient in uncovering the dependence of dephasing time on field amplitude for arbitrarily complicated magnetic-field modulation. Computer simulations support analytical results. The crossover from linear to quadratic dependence is then generalized to the situation with magnetic field modulated periodically in one direction with zero mean, and it is argued that this crossover can be expected for a large class of modulated magnetic fields.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

Corneal infection models : tools to investigate the role of biofilms in bacterial keratitis

Bacterial keratitis is a corneal infection which may cause visual impairment or even loss of the infected eye. It remains a major cause of blindness in the developing world. Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa are common causative agents and these bacterial species are known to colonise the corneal surface as biofilm populations. Biofilms are complex bacterial communities encased in an extracellular polymeric matrix and are notoriously difficult to eradicate once established. Biofilm bacteria exhibit different phenotypic characteristics from their planktonic counterparts, including an increased resistance to antibiotics and the host immune response. Therefore, understanding the role of biofilms will be essential in the development of new ophthalmic antimicrobials. A brief overview of biofilm-specific resistance mechanisms is provided, but this is a highly multifactorial and rapidly expanding field that warrants further research. Progression in this field is dependent on the development of suitable biofilm models that acknowledge the complexity of the ocular environment. Abiotic models of biofilm formation (where biofilms are studied on non-living surfaces) currently dominate the literature, but co-culture infection models are beginning to emerge. In vitro, ex vivo and in vivo corneal infection models have now been reported which use a variety of different experimental techniques and animal models. In this review, we will discuss existing corneal infection models and their application in the study of biofilms and host-pathogen interactions at the corneal surface