ON THE ROLE OF THE BROKERAGE INSTITUTION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ETHIOPIAN AGRICULTURAL MARKETS

The recognition that policies aimed at “getting prices right” in less developed countries were failing due to incomplete markets has spurred a new wave of reforms, directed instead at “getting markets and institutions right”. Although previous studies have documented the potentially crucial role of the brokerage institution in crop commercialisation, few have investigated what determines wholesalers’ decisions to use brokers. Using data collected in 2006/07 by Gabre-Madhin, IFPRI and EDRI, we examine Ethiopian traders’ decisions regarding whether or not they should use brokers, and how much. Independent variables are human, financial and social asset availability, implemented trading practices, access to infrastructure and institutions, location, travelled distance and traded crops. Results show that brokerage services are particularly valuable for wholesalers lacking social capital and storage capacity, who are based in areas with low population density, and who trade at a distance especially when roads are not asphalted. Buyers in drought-prone domains rely on brokers more for their long-distance purchases, while sellers in moisture-reliable domains employ brokers more for their long-distance sales. These results provide useful indications regarding where and how the recent formalisation of brokerage functions through the ECX could be most beneficial for the functioning of Ethiopian agricultural markets.Agribusiness, O12, O13, O18,

The Social Construction of Consumer Literacy: Consumer Empowerment among Adult Literacy Learners

This study explores how adult literacy learners negotiate the consumer marketplace. Findings challenge the functional model of literacy and support the conceptualization of consumer literacy as a social practice

Programming of adipose tissue miR-483-3p and GDF-3 expression by maternal diet in type 2 diabetes.

Nutrition during early mammalian development permanently influences health of the adult, including increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying such programming are poorly defined. Here we demonstrate that programmed changes in miRNA expression link early-life nutrition to long-term health. Specifically, we show that miR-483-3p is upregulated in adipose tissue from low-birth-weight adult humans and prediabetic adult rats exposed to suboptimal nutrition in early life. We demonstrate that manipulation of miR-483-3p levels in vitro substantially modulates the capacity of adipocytes to differentiate and store lipids. We show that some of these effects are mediated by translational repression of growth/differentiation factor-3, a target of miR-483-3p. We propose that increased miR-483-3p expression in vivo, programmed by early-life nutrition, limits storage of lipids in adipose tissue, causing lipotoxicity and insulin resistance and thus increasing susceptibility to metabolic disease.This work was funded by the BBSRC (project grants BB/F-15364/1 and BB/F-14279/1). SEO is a British Heart Foundation Senior Fellow (FS/09/029/27902), MB is an MRC Senior Fellow and AEW is a BBSRC Professorial Fellow. KS and SEO are members of the MRC Centre for Obesity and Related Metabolic Diseases (MRC-CORD), which also provided a studentship for MW. KS is a member of the European Union COST Action BM0602

The Practice of Transformative Consumer Research - Some Issues and Suggestions

Transformative consumer research (TCR) is a new academic initiative among researchers committed to studying the role consumption plays in the major social problems of our day. These problems may involve the over consumption of products among the obese, the addicted, and the materialistic, or the under consumption of products among the hungry, the homeless, and the poor. The goal of transformative research is to do practical research that can be used by consumers, activists, policy makers, and businesses to improve consumer well-being. In this article, we propose rethinking the way that research is traditionally conducted in consumer research to make it more conducive to achieving TCR objectives. We start with the conventional approaches to consumer research and then offer alternative approaches to increase the likelihood that research will deliver useful and useable results

A mouse model of gestational diabetes shows dysregulated lipid metabolism post-weaning, after return to euglycaemia

Background: Gestational diabetes is associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease for the mother in the decade after delivery. However, the molecular mechanisms that drive these effects are unknown. Recent studies in humans have shown that lipid metabolism is dysregulated before diagnosis of and during gestational diabetes and we have shown previously that lipid metabolism is also altered in obese female mice before, during and after pregnancy. These observations led us to the hypothesis that this persistent dysregulation reflects an altered control of lipid distribution throughout the organism.Methods: We tested this in post-weaning (PW) dams using our established mouse model of obese GDM (high fat, high sugar, obesogenic diet) and an updated purpose-built computational tool for plotting the distribution of lipid variables throughout the maternal system (Lipid Traffic Analysis v2.3).Results: This network analysis showed that unlike hyperglycaemia, lipid distribution and traffic do not return to normal after pregnancy in obese mouse dams. A greater range of phosphatidylcholines was found throughout the lean compared to obese post-weaning dams. A range of triglycerides that were found in the hearts of lean post-weaning dams were only found in the livers of obese post-weaning dams and the abundance of odd-chain FA-containing lipids differed locally in the two groups. We have therefore shown that the control of lipid distribution changed for several metabolic pathways, with evidence for changes to the regulation of phospholipid biosynthesis and FA distribution, in a number of tissues.Conclusions: We conclude that the control of lipid metabolism is altered following an obese pregnancy. These results support the hypothesis that obese dams that developed GDM maintain dysregulated lipid metabolism after pregnancy even when glycaemia returned to normal, and that these alterations could contribute to the increased risk of later type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease

Willingness to test for BRCA1/2 in High Risk Women: Influenced by Risk Perception and Family Experience, rather than by Objective or Subjective Numeracy?

Genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancer can help target prevention programs, and possibly reduce morbidity and mortality. A positive result of BRCA1/2 is a substantial risk factor for breast and ovarian cancer, and its detection often leads to risk reduction interventions such as increased screening, prophylactic mastectomy and oophorectomy. We examined predictors of the decision to undergo cancer related genetic testing: perceived risk, family risk of breast or ovarian cancer, and numeracy as predictors of the decision to test among women at high risk of breast cancer. Stepwise regression analysis of survey responses from 459 women registered in the Cancer Genetics Network revealed greater likelihood to test for women with more family history, higher perceived risk of mutation, or Ashkenazi descent. Neither subjective nor objective numeracy was associated with the decision to test, although we replicated an earlier finding that subjective numeracy predicted willingness to pay for testing. Findings underscore the need for genetic counselling that disentangles risk perception from objective information to promote better decision-making in the context of genetic testing. Highlighting these factors is crucial for public health campaigns, as well as to clinic-based testing and direct-to-consumer testing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved

Developing differences: early-life effects and evolutionary medicine

Variation in early-life conditions can trigger developmental switches that lead to predictable individual differences in adult behaviour and physiology. Despite evidence for such early-life effects being widespread both in humans and throughout the animal kingdom, the evolutionary causes and consequences of this developmental plasticity remain unclear. The current issue aims to bring together studies of early-life effects from the fields of both evolutionary ecology and biomedicine to synthesise and advance current knowledge of how information is used during development, the mechanisms involved, and how early-life effects evolved. We hope this will stimulate further research into early-life effects, improving our understanding of why individuals differ and how this might influence their susceptibility to disease. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Developing differences: early-life effects and evolutionary medicine’.</p

Suckling a protein-restricted rat dam leads to diminished albuminuria in her male offspring in adult life: a longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have shown that in male rats, exposure to maternal protein restriction either in utero or whilst suckling can have profound effects on both longevity and kidney telomere lengths. This study monitored albuminuria longitudinally in male rats whose mothers had been protein restricted either during pregnancy or lactation. METHODS: Pregnant Wistar rats were fed either a 20% ('control') or an 8% protein ('low protein') diet. At two days of age some of the pups were cross-fostered to dams fed the diet that was not given to their biological mothers. At weaning all pups were fed standard chow. Urine samples were collected for the measurement of albumin and creatinine at monthly intervals from two months-of-age. Longitudinal analysis was then performed using repeated measures analysis of variance. RESULTS: Overall estimated marginal geometric mean (95 % confidence interval) urine albumin to creatinine ratios were: control animals 79.5 (57.2 to approximately 110.6) g/mol (n = 6 litters, 24 animals in total), those exposed in utero to maternal protein restriction 71.0 (47.4 to approximately 106.5) (n = 4 litters, 16 animals in total), those exposed to maternal protein restriction whilst suckling 21.2 (14.7 to approximately 30.4) (n = 5 litters, 20 animals in total) (p < 0.001). These latter animals had lower albumin to creatinine ratios than either of the two other groups (both p < 0.001), which had ratios that were indistinguishable from each other (p = 1.0). Similar results were gained using 24 h. urine albumin excretion rates. These differences became evident from three months-of-age and were long-lasting. CONCLUSION: Animals exposed to maternal protein restriction whilst suckling exhibited lower urine albumin excretions during much of adult life. As urine albumin can be nephrotoxic, these rats therefore appeared to be relatively protected against future nephron damage like that previously observed in animals exposed to maternal protein restriction in utero