Managing asymmetrical supply chain relationships : psychological ownership and commitment in the agri-food sector

PurposeIn this paper, the authors integrate the psychological ownership theory with the concept of commitment to contribute to the discussion on agricultural supply chain management. The purpose of this study is to examine how farmers experience their commitment to the business relationship with the processor and how this is conveyed through the routes of psychological ownership. Design/methodology/approachThe empirical data are based on 14 in-depth face-to-face Finnish farmer interviews. To understand the farmers' routes to psychological ownership, the critical incidents technique was used. FindingsAccording to the three routes to psychological ownership - control, profound knowledge and self-investment - the authors argue that farmers mainly consider their routes to be more or less blocked because of the asymmetrical power and information distribution in the business relationship with the processor. Furthermore, based on farmers' perceptions of psychological ownership, the authors provide a farmer typology that reflects in the farmers' willingness to commit to the business relationship. The identified types are named as satisfied, captives and leavers. Originality/valueBy integrating the theory of psychological ownership with the concept of commitment, this study provides a more robust understanding of how farmers experience their commitment to the business relationship, thus, contributing to the literature on supply chain management in the agri-food business context. Implementation of these findings can help business partners to proactively improve their business relationships through the perceived level of commitment and to deal with critical incidents influencing the effectiveness of the whole chain.Peer reviewe

Entrepreneurial identity and farmers' protein crop cultivation choices

Protein crops are important in enhancing sustainable and self-contained agriculture and food security in Europe. Individual farmers are key players in protein crop production. The aim of this research is to understand how an entrepreneurial identity affects strategic cultivation decisions in the context of protein-rich crop farming. In this study, entrepreneurial identity consists of a farmer's personal and entrepreneurial orientations. Data on 308 Finnish farmers were gathered and statistically tested. Our findings clarify that entrepreneurial identity increases the probability of beginning protein-rich crop cultivation, especially if the farmer in question is innovative, a risk-taker and highly educated. This article contributes to the understanding of agricultural entrepreneurship and strategic cultivation decisions made by different kinds of farmers. We further claim that profitable but risky and demanding crops have tempted farmers with a high entrepreneurial identity for the most part, which would not suffice for protein crops to become mainstream.Peer reviewe

Dental staining after doxycycline use in children

Background: The use of doxycycline has been avoided before 8 years of age due to known dental staining caused by tetracyclines, although doxycycline differs from classical tetracyclines in many ways. Doxycycline is still an important antimicrobial agent, but its dental safety is not well studied. Objectives: To examine the state of permanent teeth after doxycycline exposure in children,8 years of age. Methods: Details of doxycycline treatment were collected from medical records. After the eruption of permanent teeth the dental status was examined by an experienced paediatric dentist for detection of dental staining and enamel hypoplasia. The resulting dental photographs were evaluated by a second independent experienced paediatric dentist. Results: The mean age of 38 study subjects at the time of doxycycline treatment was 4.7 years (range 0.6-7.9 years, SD 2.3). The doxycycline dose was 10 mg/kg/day (varying from 8 to 10 mg/kg/day) for the first 2-3 days and 5mg/kg/day (varying from 2.5 to 10mg/kg/day) thereafter. The mean length of the treatment was 12.5days (SD 6.0) and ranged from 2 to 28 days. Tetracycline-like staining or enamel hypoplasia of developing teeth was detected in none of the subjects. Conclusions: Doxycycline treatment of small children does not seem to induce permanent tooth staining.Peer reviewe

The Dynamics of (De)Stigmatization : Boundary construction in the nascent category of organic farming

This study finds that it is possible for organizations in emerging categories to resist stigmatization through discursive reconstruction of the central and distinctive characteristics of the category in question. We examined the emerging market of organic farming in Finland and discovered how resistance to stigmatization was both an internal and an external power struggle in the organic farming community. Over time, the label of organic farming was manipulated and the practice of farming was associated with more conventional and familiar contexts, while the stigma was diverted at the same time to biodynamic farming. We develop a process model for removal of stigma from a nascent category through stigma diversion. We find that stigma diversion forces the core community to (re)define themselves in relation to the excluded community and the mainstream. We also discuss how notoriety can be an individuating phenomenon that helps categorical members conduct identity work and contributes to stigma removal.Peer reviewe

Placing resilience in context: Investigating the changing experiences of Finnish organic farmers

Understanding how farmers are resilient is critical for effective government and individual management responses in an increasingly uncertain world. Through an inter-temporal focus on Finnish organic farmers, we explore changing identities, attitudes and practices, and reflect on ramifications for farming resilience. Despite the essentialising binaries perpetuated by discussions of conventionalisation and bifurcation in the organic movement, organic production systems are, and always have been, heterogeneous. This paper offers a nuanced analysis of the fluctuating and mixed practices and identities that compose the sector. Considering the experiences of both ‘pioneer’ and ‘contemporary’ organic farmers highlights the multiple, changeable and, critically, contextual nature of strategies for resilience at the farm level. It emphasizes too the fluid, hybrid and strategic subjectivities of the organic producers themselves that are always dependent on the demands of particular contexts; therefore, although ‘best practices’ may offer possible pathways for action, varying spatialities and temporalities cannot be homogenised into an ideal type resilience

Methods for time series analysis of RNA-seq data with application to human Th17 cell differentiation

Motivation: Gene expression profiling using RNA-seq is a powerful technique for screening RNA species’ landscapes and their dynamics in an unbiased way. While several advanced methods exist for differential expression analysis of RNA-seq data, proper tools to anal.yze RNA-seq time-course have not been proposed. Results: In this study, we use RNA-seq to measure gene expression during the early human T helper 17 (Th17) cell differentiation and T-cell activation (Th0). To quantify Th17-specific gene expression dynamics, we present a novel statistical methodology, DyNB, for analyzing time-course RNA-seq data. We use non-parametric Gaussian processes to model temporal correlation in gene expression and combine that with negative binomial likelihood for the count data. To account for experiment-specific biases in gene expression dynamics, such as differences in cell differentiation efficiencies, we propose a method to rescale the dynamics between replicated measurements. We develop an MCMC sampling method to make inference of differential expression dynamics between conditions. DyNB identifies several known and novel genes involved in Th17 differentiation. Analysis of differentiation efficiencies revealed consistent patterns in gene expression dynamics between different cultures. We use qRT-PCR to validate differential expression and differentiation efficiencies for selected genes. Comparison of the results with those obtained via traditional timepoint-wise analysis shows that time-course analysis together with time rescaling between cultures identifies differentially expressed genes which would not otherwise be detected. Availability: An implementation of the proposed computational methods will be available at http://research.ics.aalto.fi/csb/software/Academy of Finland (Centre of Excellence in Moleculary Systems Immunology and Physiology Research (2012-2017) Grant 135320)Seventh Framework Programme (European Commission) (Grant EC-FP7-SYBILLA-201106)EU ERASysBio ERA-NETSigrid Juslius FoundationFICS Graduate Schoo

PriorsEditor: a tool for the creation and use of positional priors in motif discovery

Summary: Computational methods designed to discover transcription factor binding sites in DNA sequences often have a tendency to make a lot of false predictions. One way to improve accuracy in motif discovery is to rely on positional priors to focus the search to parts of a sequence that are considered more likely to contain functional binding sites. We present here a program called PriorsEditor that can be used to create such positional priors tracks based on a combination of several features, including phylogenetic conservation, nucleosome occupancy, histone modifications, physical properties of the DNA helix and many more

The effect of music performance on the transcriptome of professional musicians

Music performance by professional musicians involves a wide-spectrum of cognitive and multi-sensory motor skills, whose biological basis is unknown. Several neuroscientific studies have demonstrated that the brains of professional musicians and non-musicians differ structurally and functionally and that musical training enhances cognition. However, the molecules and molecular mechanisms involved in music performance remain largely unexplored. Here, we investigated the effect of music performance on the genome-wide peripheral blood transcriptome of professional musicians by analyzing the transcriptional responses after a 2-hr concert performance and after a 'music-free' control session. The up-regulated genes were found to affect dopaminergic neurotransmission, motor behavior, neuronal plasticity, and neurocognitive functions including learning and memory. Particularly, candidate genes such as SNCA, FOS and DUSP1 that are involved in song perception and production in songbirds, were identified, suggesting an evolutionary conservation in biological processes related to sound perception/production. Additionally, modulation of genes related to calcium ion homeostasis, iron ion homeostasis, glutathione metabolism, and several neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases implied that music performance may affect the biological pathways that are otherwise essential for the proper maintenance of neuronal function and survival. For the first time, this study provides evidence for the candidate genes and molecular mechanisms underlying music performance.Peer reviewe

The effect of listening to music on human transcriptome

Peer reviewe

Integrative genomics and transcriptomics analysis of human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells

Peer reviewe