Consumers motivations for buying local and organic products in developing vs developed countries

Despite numerous studies reporting on organic consumer profiles, there is a gap in thorough understanding of consumers motivations for buying local and organic products. More precisely, do consumers prefer local products because they want to support local producers or do environment and the question of food miles matter in their choice ? Besides, very little is known about organic consumers in developing countries, since most surveys are conducted in most developed countries. Our purpose is to fill this double gap, by conducing qualitative surveys based on individual interviews in four developing countries (Brazil, Egypt, Uganda and China) and two European countries, France and Denmark, in order to study consumers choice for organic products from supermarkets, farmers markets or local organic food network. Products were selected to cover examples of imported organic products that compete with comparable products of local origin. First results from Brazil and France show that French consumers are more concerned by environment than Brazilian consumers, but that most consumers in both samples are not concerned by food miles and their subsequent environmental impacts. Results also shed light on different patterns related to commitment to supporting small or local farmers, and suggest implications for policy makers

Information structure and voice alternation in Kalanguya

Kalanguya is a Southern Cordilleran language spoken in northern Philippines. Like other Philippine languages, it has a voice system in which the semantic role of an argument is specified by the affix attached to the verb. The paper examines the choice of the voice type in connection with the information status of the participants involved, and looks closely into the correlation between information structure and voice alternation. It will be argued that the topicality and givenness of participants are indicated not just by NP markers but also by voice affixes. Two types of antipassive, which have been given little attention by previous works on the voice system of Philippine languages, will be proposed and explored. Through showing that different grammatical and pragmatic strategies, one of which is alternating between the antipassive and transitive, are used to signal the information status of referents, this paper highlights the importance of discourse-based analysis in studying the properties of the voice system of Philippine-type languages

SOCIOCULTURAL AND ECONOMIC VALUES – ORGANIC FOOD CONSUMPTION IN FAIRS AND SUPERMARKETS IN CAMPINAS, SP. BRAZIL

This scientific research was meant to encompass the meaning of economic and sociocultural consumption and its relationship to human values such as: environmental respect, commitment to health principles, solidarity among rural and urban social groups, and economic aspects (prices etc.)

Development and current situation of organic agriculture in Brazil and the State of Sao Paulo.

A description of the organic production in Brazil as well as an in-depth analysis of the organic sector in the State of Sao Paulo

A tetraoxane-based antimalarial drug candidate that overcomes PfK13-C580Y dependent artemisinin resistance

Documento escrito por un elevado número de autores/as, solo se referencia el/la que aparece en primer lugar y los/as autores/as pertenecientes a la UC3M.K13 gene mutations are a primary marker of artemisinin resistance in Plasmodium falciparum malaria that threatens the long-term clinical utility of artemisinin-based combination therapies, the cornerstone of modern day malaria treatment. Here we describe a multinational drug discovery programme that has delivered a synthetic tetraoxane-based molecule, E209, which meets key requirements of the Medicines for Malaria Venture drug candidate profiles. E209 has potent nanomolar inhibitory activity against multiple strains of P. falciparum and P. vivax in vitro, is efficacious against P. falciparum in in vivo rodent models, produces parasite reduction ratios equivalent to dihydroartemisinin and has pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic characteristics compatible with a single-dose cure. In vitro studies with transgenic parasites expressing variant forms of K13 show no cross-resistance with the C580Y mutation, the primary variant observed in Southeast Asia. E209 is a superior next generation endoperoxide with combined pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic features that overcome the liabilities of artemisinin derivatives.This work was supported by grants from the European Union (Antimal, FP6, S.A.W., P.M.O’N.), the Medicines for Malaria Venture (S.A.W., P.M.O’N., G.A.B., G.L.N., R.K.A.), the NIH (R01 AI109023 to D.A.F.), the Global Health and Innovative Technology (GHIT) Fund (G2015-120, S.A.W., P.M.O’N., G.A.B, G.L.N.) and Medical Research Council, United Kingdom (G0700654, M.H.-L.W., A.E.M., I.M.C.)

Influence of chronic azithromycin treatment on the composition of the oropharyngeal microbial community in patients with severe asthma

Background: This study of the oropharyngeal microbiome complements the previously published AZIthromycin in Severe ASThma (AZISAST) clinical trial, where the use of azithromycin was assessed in subjects with exacerbationprone severe asthma. Here, we determined the composition of the oropharyngeal microbial community by means of deep sequencing of the amplified 16S rRNA gene in oropharyngeal swabs from patients with exacerbationprone severe asthma, at baseline and during and after 6 months treatment with azithromycin or placebo. Results: A total of 1429 OTUs were observed, of which only 59 were represented by more than 0.02% of the reads. Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Fusobacteria, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria were the most abundant phyla and Streptococcus and Prevotella were the most abundant genera in all the samples. Thirteen species only accounted for two thirds of the reads and two species only, i.e. Prevotella melaninogenica and Streptococcus mitis/pneumoniae, accounted for one fourth of the reads. We found that the overall composition of the oropharyngeal microbiome in patients with severe asthma is comparable to that of the healthy population, confirming the results of previous studies. Long term treatment (6 months) with azithromycin increased the species Streptococcus salivarius approximately 5-fold and decreased the species Leptotrichia wadei approximately 5-fold. This was confirmed by Boruta feature selection, which also indicated a significant decrease of L. buccalis/L. hofstadtii and of Fusobacterium nucleatum. Four of the 8 treated patients regained their initial microbial composition within one month after cessation of treatment. Conclusions: Despite large diversity of the oropharyngeal microbiome, only a few species predominate. We confirm the absence of significant differences between the oropharyngeal microbiomes of people with and without severe asthma. Possibly, long term azithromycin treatment may have long term effects on the composition of the oropharygeal microbiome in half of the patients