Consumer preferences towards local food products in Austria and Portugal

Locally produced food has increasingly gained attention in recent years. Consumers are getting more and more conscious about their consumption behavior and often buy a product for reasons that relate to their priorities or perceptions, such as the environmental or economic impact. Although substantial literature on conventional and organic food is available, the topic of local food products is not well explored yet. Moreover, consumption behavior towards local food in Austria and Portugal and, subsequently, the cultural impact has not been analysed yet. Therefore, this study aims to explore consumer preferences towards local food products in both countries. In order to get a better understanding of consumer behavior towards locally produced food, both primary and secondary research was conducted. For this purpose, a survey among 198 people in Austria and Portugal was performed. The main findings of this paper indicate that consumers prefer local food to foreign products, with product attributes, environmental protection and economic welfare being the most important drivers. In addition, the study revealed that Austrian consumers have a higher preference and willingness-to-pay for local food products than Portuguese. Moreover, willingness-to-pay was not found to be sensitive to information cues relating to the environment or the economy. A possible explanation for this result is that consumers are already aware of the environmental and economic benefits of local food.A produção de alimentos localmente tem ganhado atenção nos últimos anos. Os consumidores preocupam-se cada vez mais com os seus hábitos de consumo e muitas vezes adquirem um produto por razões relacionadas com as suas prioridades ou percepções, relativamente, por exemplo, ao impacto ambiental ou económico que os produtos possam ter. Embora exista bastante literatura sobre alimentação convencional ou orgânica, o tema “produção local” ainda não está bem explorado. Além disso, os comportamentos em relação à temática dos alimentos produzidos localmente na Áustria e em Portugal e o seu impacto cultural ainda não foram analisados. Este estudo explora as preferências dos consumidores em relação aos produtos localmente produzidos em ambos os países. Para esse efeito, foi realizada uma revisão da literatura relevante e um estudo quantitativo, que incluiu um inquérito com 198 participantes, tanto austríacos como portugueses. As principais conclusões indicam que os consumidores preferem alimentos produzidos localmente, em detrimento dos produzidos no estrangeiro. Os factores mais importantes que determinam esta preferência são as características do produto, o impacto ambiental e o impacto económico. O estudo revelou também que os austríacos têm uma preferência mais forte e estão dispostos a pagar mais por produtos localmente produzidos do que os portugueses. Os consumidores de ambas as nacionalidades estão já cientes dos benefícios ambientais e económicos dos produtos locais, o que faz com que não haja grande sensibilidade da disposição a pagar a novas informações relacionadas com o ambiente e com a economia

희귀 신경근 질환의 유전체, 전사체 통합 분석 연구

학위논문(석사)--서울대학교 대학원 :의과대학 의과학과,2019. 8. 최무림.Whole exome sequencing (WES)은 비용 및 데이터 처리의 용이성으로 인하여 희귀질환 진단등에 매우 효과적인 방법이 되었다. 그러나 variant of unknown significances (VUS)를 해석하는 어려움과non-coding 변이형을 확인할 수 없다는 점 등의 이유로 WES 기반의 희귀질환 진단률은 대부분 50%를 넘지 못한다. 따라서, 본 연구에서는 희귀질환 진단의 보완적인 접근법으로 새로이 전사체 분석법을 도입할 것을 제시하고자 한다. 이를 위하여 서울대학교 어린이병원 소아신경과에서 임상적으로 진단되지 못한 근신경질환 환자 94 명을 대상으로 WES 분석을 실시하고, 이미 알려진 근신경질환의 원인 유전자 변이들을 분석하였다. 추가적으로, 기존에 WES 분석이 수행된 63명의 환자군과 이 외의 10명의 환자군을 추가하여 전사체 분석을 수행하였다. 전사체 데이터를 이용하여 damaging 변이 분석, allele-specific expression 분석, 환자군과 정상군에서 다르게 발현하는 유전자 (DEG) 및 비정상적인 splicing 양상을 탐색하는 분석을 수행하였다. 또한, non-negative matrix factorization 분석 기법을 통해 유전자 발현 프로파일을 기반으로 한 군집화를 수행하고, 각 군집을 특징 짓는 유전자 그룹을 도출하였다. 그 결과, WES 분석을 통하여 49%의 환자에서 후보 원인 변이를 확인하였으며, 그 중 83%의 환자에서는 알려진 근신경질환 원인 유전자의 변이를 확인하였다. 12명의 환자에서는 그 기능성이 확실하지 않은 구조 변이를 확인하였다. 전사체 데이터 기반의 변이 분석을 통하여, WES 을 수행하지 않은 5 명의 환자를 포함한 총 9 명의 환자에서 heterozygous 변이를 추가로 발견하였다. Allele-specific expression 분석을 통하여 2개의 후보 원인유전자를 발견하였고, DEG 분석 결과, 4명의 환자에서 잠재적인 원인 유전자 그룹을 선별할 수 있었다. 또한, 4 명의 환자에게서 DMD, TTN, MICU1 유전자들의 비정상적인 splicing이 확인되었다. non-negative matrix factorization 기반 군집화 분석 결과, 유전자 발현 양상을 기반으로 한 6개의 군집을 확인할 수 있었다. 본 연구를 통하여 전사체 분석법이 기존의 WES 기법 기반 분석의 효과적인 보완 기법이 될지의 여부를 확인하고자 하였다. 전사체 분석 결과, WES 기법을 통해 원인 유전자 변이가 확인된 환자들 중 9명에게서 같은 맥락의 전사체 이상을 확인할 수 있었으며, WES을 수행하지 않은 환자들 중 18명에게서도 잠재적인 원인 유전자 변이를 확인하였다. 따라서 전사체 분석법은 기존의 분석기법으로 원인 유전자 변이를 발견할 수 없는 증례의 진단에 유용한 도구로 사용될 수 있음을 시사한다.Introduction. Whole exome sequencing has become a robust and standard tool for rare diseases diagnosis thanks to advantages in cost and data handling. However, whole exome sequencing-based diagnosis rates typically do not exceed 50%, which can be attributed to the difficulty of interpreting variants of uncertain significance, as well as to the disregard of non-coding variants, including variants in intronic and regulatory regions in the genome. Therefore, I explored the utility of transcriptome sequencing as a compensatory approach in rare neuromuscular disorders diagnosis. Methods. Whole exome sequencing of 94 patients with undiagnosed neuromuscular disorders was collected from Seoul National University Childrens Hospital and analyzed for variants in known neuromuscular disease genes. Additional transcriptome sequencing was performed for 63 of the whole exome sequenced patients and for ten patients without genome data. Transcriptome data were utilized for cryptic damaging variants, differentially expression, aberrant splicing and allele specific expression analysis. Furthermore, non-negative matrix factorization was applied to identify expression-based clustering and cluster-specific gene ontology was derived. Results. Whole exome sequencing analysis identified candidate variants in 49% of patients, with 83% of them located within known disease genes. Structural variants with questionable pathogenicity were discovered in twelve cases. RNA-Sequencing based variant calling lead to further discovery of heterozygous candidate variants in nine samples, five of which did not undergo whole exome sequencing. Allele specific expression identified two likely candidate genes and differential gene expression analysis lead to the prioritization of sets of genes in an additional four samples. Lastly, aberrant splicing of DMD, TTN and MICU1 was detected in each of four samples. Non-negative matrix factorization-based clustering resulted in the identification of six clusters with distinct gene expression profiles. Discussion. Firstly, I aimed to evaluate whether transcriptome sequencing can provide additional evidence for the interpretation of whole exome sequencing variants. Overall, transcriptome sequencing was able to detect abnormalities associated with the previously identified mutation in less than 30% of positive whole exome sequencing cases. For samples without whole exome sequencing result, I successfully used transcriptome sequencing to identify potential pathogenic causes in 18 cases. In conclusion, transcriptome sequencing proved to be a useful tool for the diagnosis of whole exome sequencing negative samples, but did not prove to have great utility for the interpretation of pathogenic whole exome sequencing variants.1. INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................1 1.1. Advancement through next generation sequencing...................1 1.2. Genetics of neuromuscular disorders (NMD)..............................3 1.3. Transcriptome sequencing-based NMD diagnosis.......................8 2. METHODS............................................................................................12 2.1. Data collection.........................................................................12 2.2. Whole exome sequencing data analysis....................................13 2.3. Transcriptome sequencing analysis...........................................15 2.4. Non-negative matrix factorization based clustering...................19 3. RESULTS...............................................................................................22 3.1. Data collection.........................................................................22 3.2. Phenotype information.............................................................23 3.3. Whole exome sequencing results..............................................25 3.4. Transcriptome sequencing quality control..................................28 3.5. Transcriptome-based clustering.................................................31 3.6. Exome variants in transcriptome sequencing.............................35 3.7. Transcriptome-sequencing based diagnosis...............................39 4. DISCUSSION..........................................................................................48 5. REFERENCES.........................................................................................57 6. APPENDIX.............................................................................................63 6.1. Supplementary Figures..............................................................63 6.2. Supplementary Tables................................................................67 7. 국문초록.................................................................................................71Maste

Modification of nuclear transitions in stellar plasma by electronic processes: K-isomers in 176Lu and 180Ta under s-process conditions

The influence of the stellar plasma on the production and destruction of K-isomers is studied for the examples 176Lu and 180Ta. Individual electromagnetic transitions are enhanced predominantly by nuclear excitation by electron capture, whereas the other mechanisms of electron scattering and nuclear excitation by electron transition give only minor contributions. It is found that individual transitions can be enhanced significantly for low transition energies below 100 keV. Transitions with higher energies above 200 keV are practically not affected. Although one low-energy transition in 180Ta is enhanced by up to a factor of 10, the stellar transition rates from low-K to high-K states via so-called intermediate states in 176Lu and 180Ta do not change significantly under s-process conditions. The s-process nucleosynthesis of 176Lu and 180Ta remains essentially unchanged.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, Phys. Rev. C, accepte

A cross-correlation of WMAP and ROSAT

We cross-correlate the recent CMB WMAP 1 year data with the diffuse soft X-ray background map of ROSAT. We look for common signatures due to galaxy clusters (SZ effect in CMB, bremsstrahlung in X-rays) by cross-correlating the two maps in real and in Fourier space. We do not find any significant correlation and we explore the different reasons for this lack of correlation. The most likely candidates are the possibility that we live in a low $\sigma _8$ universe ($\sigma_8 < 0.9$) and/or systematic effects in the data especially in the diffuse X-ray maps which may suffer from significant cluster signal subtraction during the point source removal process.Comment: To appear in New Astronomy Reviews, Proceedings of the CMBNET Meeting, 20-21 February, 2003, Oxford, U