Using big data to understand consumer behaviour on ethical issues

The Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) was established by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and launched its data services in 2015. The project is led by the University of Leeds and UCL, with partners at the Universities of Liverpool and Oxford. It is working with consumer-related organisations and businesses to open up their data resources to trusted researchers, enabling them to carry out important social and economic research

An exploration of intervention options to enhance the management of supply chain greenhouse gas emissions in the UK

The management of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGEs) within the supply chains of large organisations is receiving increasing attention as a way to achieve climate mitigation objectives. Climate mitigation policy for direct GHGEs and organisations' role in managing environmental impacts within supply chains is well covered in the literature. However, the targeting of indirect GHGE from the supply chain, and the intervention options that exist are still underdeveloped, especially in terms of information and informal based interventions, or support and capacity building approaches. Interview data was collected on the supply chain GHGE management actions of large supply chain leading organisations in the UK such as brand companies and public sector organisations. This is used to construct framework through which an initial and exploratory assessment of the efficacy and likely impacts of a range of interventions, designed to increase levels of supply chain GHGE management by supply chain leading organisations, is conducted. It is demonstrates that the management of indirect GHGEs could form an additional strategy for climate mitigation objectives, with information based options representing a good option for policymakers

Using big data to understand consumer behaviour on ethical issues

The Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) was established by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and launched its data services in 2015. The project is led by the University of Leeds and UCL, with partners at the Universities of Liverpool and Oxford. It is working with consumer-related organisations and businesses to open up their data resources to trusted researchers, enabling them to carry out important social and economic research

Financial Well-Being: Psychological Factors that Affect African Americans\u27 Financial Well-Being

Most families strive toward financial security and well-being, which would allow them to weather financial shocks and accomplish their long-term goals. However, African Americans have not experienced the same level of financial well-being as others, and this study explored psychological factors that may affect their financial well-being. Data from the 2016 National Financial Well-Being survey (NFWBS), including the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) Financial Well-Being scale, was utilized in this study. Researchers found that the following factors had a significant positive relationship with the financial well-being of African Americans; grasp of financial skills (confidence), mistreatment with financial services (trust), and health status. Whereas materialism and planning had no significant association with African Americans’ financial well-being

Changing Behaviour: Successful Environmental Programmes in the Workplace

There is an increasing focus on improving the pro-environmental attitudes, behaviour and habits of individuals whether at home, in education, traveling, shopping or in the workplace. This article focuses on the workplace by conducting a multi-disciplinary literature review of research that has examined the influence of organisation-based behaviour change initiatives. The review includes only research evidence that measured actual environmental performance (e.g. energy use) rather than solely using self-reported methods (e.g. questionnaires). The authors develop an ‘Employee Pro-Environmental Behaviour’ (e-PEB) framework that contains individual, group, organisational and contextual factors that have predictive relevance across different behaviours and organisations. The review shows that the strongest predictors are environmental awareness, performance feedback, financial incentives, environmental infrastructure management support and training. A key finding from this review is that attitude change is not necessarily a pre-requisite for behaviour change in the workplace

Predicting wildlife reservoirs and global vulnerability to zoonotic Flaviviruses.

Flaviviruses continue to cause globally relevant epidemics and have emerged or re-emerged in regions that were previously unaffected. Factors determining emergence of flaviviruses and continuing circulation in sylvatic cycles are incompletely understood. Here we identify potential sylvatic reservoirs of flaviviruses and characterize the macro-ecological traits common to known wildlife hosts to predict the risk of sylvatic flavivirus transmission among wildlife and identify regions that could be vulnerable to outbreaks. We evaluate variability in wildlife hosts for zoonotic flaviviruses and find that flaviviruses group together in distinct clusters with similar hosts. Models incorporating ecological and climatic variables as well as life history traits shared by flaviviruses predict new host species with similar host characteristics. The combination of vector distribution data with models for flavivirus hosts allows for prediction of  global vulnerability to flaviviruses and provides potential targets for disease surveillance in animals and humans

Use of novel serum markers in clinical follow-up of Sertoli-Leydig cell turnours

Background: Sertoli-Leyclig cell tumours of the ovary account for only 0.2% of malignant ovarian tumours. Two-thirds of all patients become apparent due to the tumour's hormone production. Methods: A 41-year-old patient (gravida 4, para 4) presented with dyspnoea, enlarged abdominal girth and melaena. Diagnostic imaging was suspicious for an ovarian cancer. The standard tumour marker for ovarian cancer (CA 125) was elevated to 984 U/mL. Results: Surgical exploration of the abdomen revealed a mouldering tumour of both adnexes extending to the level of the navel. Frozen sections showed an undifferentiated carcinoma of unknown origin. Radical surgery was performed. The final histological report described a malignant sex-cord stroma tumour, a Sertoli-Leydig cell tumour, emanating from both ovaries. Analysis of preoperative blood serum showed elevated levels of CYFRA 21-1 (10.4 ng/mL), neuron-specific enolase (36.2 ng/mL), oestradiol (485 pg/mL) and CA-125 (984 U/mL). Adjuvant chemotherapy and regional hyperthermia were performed due to the malignant potential and incomplete resection of the tumour. Conclusions: Undifferentiated Sertoli-Leyclig cell tumours show a poor clinical course. As only two-thirds of patients with this rare disease present with elevated hormone levels, new markers deserve further investigation to offer more specific, individualised tumour monitoring

Global shifts in mammalian population trends reveal key predictors of virus spillover risk.

Emerging infectious diseases in humans are frequently caused by pathogens originating from animal hosts, and zoonotic disease outbreaks present a major challenge to global health. To investigate drivers of virus spillover, we evaluated the number of viruses mammalian species have shared with humans. We discovered that the number of zoonotic viruses detected in mammalian species scales positively with global species abundance, suggesting that virus transmission risk has been highest from animal species that have increased in abundance and even expanded their range by adapting to human-dominated landscapes. Domesticated species, primates and bats were identified as having more zoonotic viruses than other species. Among threatened wildlife species, those with population reductions owing to exploitation and loss of habitat shared more viruses with humans. Exploitation of wildlife through hunting and trade facilitates close contact between wildlife and humans, and our findings provide further evidence that exploitation, as well as anthropogenic activities that have caused losses in wildlife habitat quality, have increased opportunities for animal-human interactions and facilitated zoonotic disease transmission. Our study provides new evidence for assessing spillover risk from mammalian species and highlights convergent processes whereby the causes of wildlife population declines have facilitated the transmission of animal viruses to humans

Effect of biochars pyrolyzed in N2 and CO2, and feedstock on microbial community in metal(loid)s contaminated soils

Little is known about the effects of applying amendments on soil for immobilizing metal(loid)s on the soil microbial community. Alterations in the microbial community were examined after incubation of treated contaminated soils. One soil was contaminated with Pb and As, a second soil with Cd and Zn. Red pepper stalk (RPS) and biochars produced from RPS in either N2 atmosphere (RPSN) or CO2 atmosphere (RPSC) were applied at a rate of 2.5% to the two soils and incubated for 30 days. Bacterial communities of control and treated soils were characterized by sequencing 16S rRNA genes using the Illumina MiSeq sequencing. In both soils, bacterial richness increased in the amended soils, though somewhat differently between the treatments. Evenness values decreased significantly, and the final overall diversities were reduced. The neutralization of pH, reduced available concentrations of Pb or Cd, and supplementation of available carbon and surface area could be possible factors affecting the community changes. Biochar amendments caused the soil bacterial communities to become more similar than those in the not amended soils. The bacterial community structures at the phylum and genus levels showed that amendment addition might restore the normal bacterial community of soils, and cause soil bacterial communities in contaminated soils to normalize and stabilize

Social media is not the ‘silver bullet’ to reducing household food waste, a response to Grainger and Stewart (2017)

In our reply to Grainger and Stewart (2017) we concur with their observation on the need for evidence-based synthesis in examining the efficacy of behaviour change interventions. We argue that our paper (Young et al. , 2017) makes a contribution to the body of knowledge on behaviour change and in so doing it provides an important piece of the jigsaw in understanding the influence of social media on food waste behaviour