Certify or not? An analysis of organic food supply chain with competing suppliers

Customers expect companies to provide clear health-related information for the products they purchase in a big data environment. Organic food is data-enabled with the organic label, but the certification cost discourages small-scale suppliers from certifying their product. This lack of a label means that product that satisfies the organic standard is regarded as conventional product. By considering the trade-off between the profit gained from organic label and additional costs of certification, this paper investigates an organic food supply chain where a leading retailer procures from two suppliers with different brands. Customers care about both the brand-value and quality (more specifically, if food is organic or not) when purchasing the product. We explore the organic certification and wholesale pricing strategies for suppliers, and the supplier selection and retail pricing strategies for the retailer. We find that when two suppliers adopt asymmetric certification strategy, the retailer tends to procure the product with organic label. The supplier without a brand name can compensate with organic certification, which leads to more profits than the branded rival. As the risk of being abandoned by the retailer increases, the supplier without a brand name is more eager than the rival to obtain the organic label. If both suppliers certify the product, however, they will fall into a prisoner’s dilemma under situation with low health utility from organic label and high certification cost

Neurodevelopmental disorder with microcephaly, ataxia, and seizures syndrome: expansion of the clinical spectrum

Neurodevelopmental disorder with microcephaly, ataxia, and seizures (NEDMAS) syndrome is a rare neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by moderate intellectual disability (ID), thin body habitus, microcephaly, seizures, ataxia, muscle weakness, and speech impairment. So far, only two families with NEDMAS have been reported. We report the clinical and molecular characteristics of three unrelated Turkish families with four NEDMAS patients. Whole-exome sequencing was used to search for the disease-causing variant. The main manifestations of the probands are severe developmental delay and ID, thin body habitus, and severe hypotonia. Brain imaging revealed bilateral cerebral and cerebellar diffuse atrophy. Sequencing results showed that both patients carried a novel missense variant c.1196C>T (p.Thr399Met) in the seryl-tRNA synthetase gene. Our findings help expand the variant spectrum of NEDMAS and provide additional information for diagnosing cases with atypical features. © 2022 Lippincott Williams and Wilkins. All rights reserved

Çankırı yöresinde koyun ve keçilerde Toxaplasma gondii seropozitifliğinin Sabin-Feldman boya testi ile saptanması.

Översvämningar är ett stort globalt problem som förväntas bli allt mer frekventa. Syftet med denna studie är att utreda hur klimatanpassningsarbetet kring översvämningsrisker hanteras på lokal nivå, i detta fall i Halmstad kommun. Syftet menar också att jämföra beskrivningen av hur arbetet bedrivs i praktiken med teori och tidigare forskning. Frågeställningarna som ska besvara syftet är om hur Halmstad kommun beskriver dess arbete och vad det finns för förklaring till detta samt hur detta kan tolkas och förklaras utifrån forskningsteoretiska begrepp ‘evidens’ och ‘urban resiliens’.   Studien har utförts som en kvalitativ fallstudie genom en intervju med kommunal tjänsteperson och innehållsanalys av styrdokument relevanta för kommunens klimatanpassningsarbete. Det teoretiska ramverket består av begreppen ‘resiliens’ och ‘evidens’ som förklaras med en sammankopplad figur. Studiens resultat visar att klimatanpassningsarbetet är komplext då flera aspekter måste avvägas men Halmstad kommun är välutvecklade inom frågan främst då de är en resursrik kommun. Flooding is a global issue that’s becoming more frequent. This study means to investigate how climate adaptation may be managed on a local level, by performing a case study of Halmstad municipality. We mean to investigate and compare how the work is described in practice and theory. This will be done by answering questions on how the municipality describes their work, how it can be explained and how it can be interpreted in the context of the theoretical concepts' ‘evidence’ and ‘urban resilience’.  The study is based on qualitative methods, an interview and content analyses of strategic documents. The theory consists of the terms ‘resilience’ and ‘evidence’ that are interpreted with an explanatory figure.  The studies' result highlights the complexity of climate adaptation since many aspects of climate risk must be acknowledged. Halmstad can, however, be considered developed in this area which is explained by the resources at their disposal