How consumers link traceability to food quality and safety: An international investigation

It is not yet understood whether the implementation of traceability systems can contribute towards restoring consumer confidence in food quality and safety, one of the goals of the European Food Law. To date, little is known about how consumers perceive the role and potential impact of traceability within the supply chain. This paper aims to provide insight into how traceability information can offer guarantees of food quality and safety, and contribute towards increased consumer confidence. Data, collected in four EU countries, examines salient cognitions and attitudes that underpin consumer beliefs about product traceability that will influence their decision making. It will link traceability- related food attributes to perceived benefits (in terms of quality and safety) and important consumer values. Furthermore, variations between different consumer s are examined to illustrate how the concepts of food safety and food quality may have different meanings and consequences in the various European countries. Understanding which benefits consumer s associate with traceability will assist in providing consumers with traceability information in line with their requirement s.Traceability, Consumer Perception, Food Safety, Food Quality, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

A non-traumatic, blue-purple auricle: case report

Abstract Objective: We report a typical case of earlobe lymphocytoma. Method: A case report and literature review are presented. Results: A 10-year-old girl presented with a blue-coloured earlobe. A diagnosis of Lyme disease was confirmed by serological tests. Lyme borreliosis is the most common tick-borne disease in the northern hemisphere. It is caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato. The patient was successfully treated with antibiotics. Conclusion: The diagnostic process and ENT symptomatology of Lyme disease and borrelial lymphocytoma are summarised and discusse

Being more honest but not necessarily more intelligent than others: Generality and explanations for the Muhammed Ali effect

Two questionnaire studies were conducted ({N} = 80 and {N} = 175) ti examine the structure and the social anchoring of the organizing principles of personal and governmental involvement concerning human rights. The results indicated that these organizing principles had, as hypothesized one abstract and one applied dimension. The second study evaluated the correlations between these dimensions and values. Results were consistent with Schwartz's (1992) model predicting both the internal structure of values and their relations with other variables. Amongst other results, self-transcendence values were positively correlated with the abstract involvements and the applied personal involvement, and negatively with the applied governmental involvement. The results concerning the links between different levels of social anchorings, particularly between the value types and variables such as religious affiliation and practice political preferences, and social and political activism were also presented and discussed

Consequences of fragmentation for the ability to adapt to novel environments in experimental <i>Drosophila</i> metapopulations

We used experimental populations of Drosophila melanogaster, which had either been subdivided (metapopulations) or kept undivided for 40 generations, to study the consequences of population subdivision for the tolerance and adaptive response after six generations of exposure to novel environmental factors (high temperature, medium with ethanol or salt added) for traits with different genetic architectures. In this setup, we attempted to separate the effects of the loss of fitness due to inbreeding (i.e., the survival upon first exposure to stress) from the loss of adaptive potential due to the lack of genetic variation. To place our experimental results in a more general perspective, we used individual-based simulations combining different options of levels of gene flow, intensity of selection and genetic architecture to derive quantitative hypotheses of the effects of these factors on the adaptive response to stress. We observed that population subdivision resulted in substantial inter-deme variation in tolerance due to redistribution of genetic variation from within demes to among demes. In line with the simulation results, the adaptive response was generally lower in the subdivided than in the undivided populations, particularly so for high temperature. We observed pronounced differences between stress factors that are likely related to the different genetic architectures involved in resistance to these factors. From a conservation genetics viewpoint, our results have two important implications: (i) Long-term fragmentation in combination with restricted gene flow will limit the adaptive potential of individual subpopulations because adaptive variation will become distributed among populations rather than within populations. (ii) The genetic architecture of the trait(s) under selection is of great significance to understand the possible responses to novel stresses that may be expected