Market Movements: Nongovernmental Organization Strategies to Influence Global Production and Consumption

This article analyzes nongovernmental organization (NGO) "market campaigns" that seek to motivate changes in global consumption and production patterns. Through campaigns targeting products as diverse as paper, shoes, and computers, advocacy groups seek to use existing concerns of consumers to influence producers, and simultaneously, to expand and deepen consumer demand for more sustainable products and services. NGOs deploy both negative information to critique leading brands, and positive information to help build new markets for improved products. Successful market campaigns construct networks of actors that identify points of leverage within global production and trading regimes; coordinate research, exposure, direct action, and negotiations with brands; identify solutions; advance new multi-stakeholder standards and monitoring and certification schemes; build new nongovernmental regulatory institutions; and occasionally attempt to strengthen state regulation. Through an assessment of three market campaigns focused on Staples, Nike, and Dell, this article describes the nature of these campaigns, discusses how they function, assesses their central strategies and tactics, and analyzes whether they are actually having an impact. The article concludes by discussing the relevance and implications of these campaigns for the field of industrial ecology, and how industrial ecology might support future efforts to advance more sustainable production and consumption.     

Recording brain waves at the supermarket: what can we learn from a shopper's brain?

Communication and marketing campaigns have traditionally been divided into two lines: above the line (ATL) and below the line (BTL). ATL campaigns refer to communications such as TV, print, and outdoor displays that are intended to reach large audiences. The effects of ATL are inherently difficult to measure; we do not see the direct consequences of viewing an advertisement (i.e., a talking baby giving financial advice) and actual purchase of the product. ATL is intended to indirectly improve the impression of a brand. BTL campaigns refer to promotions and in-store displays and are designed to affect the point-of-purchase behavior. The effects of BTL are easier to measure; we see direct consequences of viewing a display (i.e., “Today Only, Two for the Price of One”) and eventual purchase of the product. BTL is intended to directly improve the impression of a brand. Neuroscience plays an important role in measuring the effects of marketing campaigns. Traditional methods of measurement (such as surveys and interviews) depend on the verbal ability of the consumer to articulate their motivations for purchasing a product. It is well known that participants are poor at introspective reasoning, leading to an eventual purchase that omits emotional elements. Recently, methods normally employed in cognitive neuroscience have been adapted for use in the evaluation of campaign effectiveness. These methods have increased our understanding of factors leading to economic decisions. The application of neuroscience in ATL campaigns is relatively straightforward. Participants view TV commercials, for example, seated in a comfortable setting with minimal movement while electroencephalogram (EEG) measures are monitored. These brain waves reveal cognitive events related to the media. Participants are exposed to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner to monitor changes in blood flow in various regions of the brain. Both of these methods are sensitive to underlying cognitive and emotional activity and are complimentary. EEG is more sensitive to time-locked events (i.e., story lines), whereas fMRI is more sensitive to the brain regions involved. The application of neuroscience in BTL campaigns is significantly more difficult to achieve. Participants move unconstrained in a shopping environment while EEG and eye movements are monitored. In this scenario, fMRI is not possible. fMRI can be used with virtual store mock-ups, but it is expensive and seldom used. We have developed a technology that allows for the measurement of EEG in an unobtrusive manner. The intent is to record the brain waves of participants during their day-to-day shopping experience. A miniaturized video recorder, EEG amplifiers, and eye-tracking systems are used. Digital signal processing is employed to remove the substantial artifact generated by eye movements and motion. Eye fixations identify specific viewings of products and displays, and they are used for synchronizing the behavior with EEG response. The location of EEG sources is determined by the use of a source reconstruction software.     

Crowdfunding,stem cell interventions and autism spectrum disorder: comparing campaigns related to an international “stem cell clinic” and US academic medical center

Background aimsStudies examining crowdfunding campaigns for stem cell interventions have typically focused on campaigns seeking funds to send individuals to businesses marketing unlicensed and unproven stem cell products. However, some crowdfunding campaigns identify academic medical centers as destinations for individuals seeking access to stem cell products provided either in clinical studies or on an expanded access basis. This study examines crowdfunding campaigns seeking funds to enable children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder access to stem cell interventions.MethodsThis study compares and contrasts crowdfunding campaigns, identifying an international stem cell clinic marketing a purported umbilical cord blood-derived stem cell treatment for autism spectrum disorder, with campaigns soliciting donations intended to help children with autism spectrum disorder either participate in clinical studies or obtain expanded access to stem cell products provided at an academic medical center in the US.ResultsCampaigns connected to both sites contained inaccurate claims. However, campaigns identifying the international clinic as the intended destination site made stronger claims about efficacy and were more reliant upon testimonials than campaigns listing the US-based academic medical center as the planned clinical site. Acknowledging these important distinctions, clinical studies and press releases associated with the academic medical center played an important role in lending the perception of credibility to the putative stem cell treatments marketed by the international clinic.ConclusionsThe study's findings emphasize how important it is for researchers at academic medical centers and comparable research facilities to avoid engaging in stem cell hyperbole; highlight the preliminary nature of early clinical studies; ensure that any claims about safety and efficacy are based upon robust and reliable evidence; and promote responsible science communication by exercising restraint when crafting press releases, conducting media interviews and otherwise publicizing clinical research findings.     

USING HIGH-LEVEL CONSUMER-RESEARCH METHODS TO CREATE A TOOL-DRIVEN GUIDEBOOK AND DATABASE FOR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING

We present aspects and data for a tool‐driven database for marketing and product development, which are publicly accessible. The objective is to create a method whereby knowledge of concepts and products can be archived using overviews of a specific product category. The first phase of the database comprises systematic analysis of product concepts, which contain elements dealing both with features and emotions. The concept phase provides an idea about responses to statements about product features, along with responses to emotional elements and brands. The second phase comprises an analysis of the competitive frame of products, even before systematic product development is initiated. This second phase identifies expected and thus reasonable ranges of product‐sensory features, levels of acceptance of typical products, relations between liking and sensory attributes and segmentation of sensory preferences. Together, the two phases provide a guide to product developers new in a category, archive current knowledge and provide a sourcebook for marketers and developers alike, which is accessible using research tools. The two phases allow product development to become more scientific, more based on common experience rather than individual expertise and thus more efficient, without compromising corporate knowledge of specific ingredients, processes or business opportunities.     

Consumer nueroscience: a new area of study for biomedical engineers

In scientific literature, the most accepted definition of consumer neuroscience or neuromarketing is that it is a field of study concerning the application of neuroscience methods to analyze and understand human behavior related to markets and marketing exchanges. First, it might seem strange that marketers would be interested in using neuroscience to understand consumer's preferences. Yet in practice, the basic goal of marketers is to guide the design and presentation of products in such a way that they are highly compatible with consumer preferences. To understand consumers preferences, several standard research tools are commonly used by marketers, such as personal interviews with the consumers, scoring questionnaries gathered from consumers, and focus groups. The reason marketing researchers are interested in using brain imaging tools instead of simply asking people for their preferences in front of marketing stimuli, arises from the assumption that people cannot (or do not want to) fully explain their preference when explicitly asked. Researchers in the field hypothesize that neuroimaging tools can access information within the consumer's brain during the generation of a preference or the observation of a commercial advertisement. The question of will this information be useful in further promoting the product is still up for debate in marketing literature. From the marketing researchers point of view, there is a hope that this body of brain imaging techniques will provide an efficient tradeoff between costs and benefits of the research. Currently, neuroscience methodology includes powerful brain imaging tools based on the gathering of hemodynamic or electromagnetic signals related to the human brain activity during the performance of a relevant task for marketing objectives. These tools are briefly reviewed in this article.     

Kinship appeals and conservation social marketing

Increasing environmental problems and the need to obtain public support to help address them make effective appeals in conservation fundraising campaigns indispensable. However, social marketing messages based on data, characteristics of focal species, self-interest, and moral responsibility tend to work best on targeted, and so limited, audiences. As conservation organizations reach out to broader audiences, they will require strategies that appeal to more potential donors. This paper argues that use of kinship symbolism to describe non-human species should make conservation marketing campaigns more effective. Evolutionary theories of altruism predict the power of kinship-recognition cues in encouraging and reinforcing sacrifice in non-kin, unreciprocated contexts, and these cues can be manipulated in marketing campaigns to protect threatened species and resources. People often behave altruistically toward “fictive” kin, and the labeling of non-humans as kin in many traditional, small-scale societies appears to be associated with environmental resource management. Characterizing non-human species, and even non-living resources, as kin to humans in marketing campaigns may promote a willingness to contribute to conservation-related causes.     

Encoding brain network response to free viewing of videos

A challenging goal for cognitive neuroscience researchers is to determine how mental representations are mapped onto the patterns of neural activity. To address this problem, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) researchers have developed a large number of encoding and decoding methods. However, previous studies typically used rather limited stimuli representation, like semantic labels and Wavelet Gabor filters, and largely focused on voxel-based brain patterns. Here, we present a new fMRI encoding model to predict the human brain’s responses to free viewing of video clips which aims to deal with this limitation. In this model, we represent the stimuli using a variety of representative visual features in the computer vision community, which can describe the global color distribution, local shape and spatial information and motion information contained in videos, and apply the functional connectivity to model the brain’s activity pattern evoked by these video clips. Our experimental results demonstrate that brain network responses during free viewing of videos can be robustly and accurately predicted across subjects by using visual features. Our study suggests the feasibility of exploring cognitive neuroscience studies by computational image/video analysis and provides a novel concept of using the brain encoding as a test-bed for evaluating visual feature extraction.     

Human auditory cortical activation during self-vocalization

During speaking, auditory feedback is used to adjust vocalizations. The brain systems mediating this integrative ability have been investigated using a wide range of experimental strategies. In this report we examined how vocalization alters speech-sound processing within auditory cortex by directly recording evoked responses to vocalizations and playback stimuli using intracranial electrodes implanted in neurosurgery patients. Several new findings resulted from these high-resolution invasive recordings in human subjects. Suppressive effects of vocalization were found to occur only within circumscribed areas of auditory cortex. In addition, at a smaller number of sites, the opposite pattern was seen; cortical responses were enhanced during vocalization. This increase in activity was reflected in high gamma power changes, but was not evident in the averaged evoked potential waveforms. These new findings support forward models for vocal control in which efference copies of premotor cortex activity modulate sub-regions of auditory cortex.     

Comparison of Algorithms for an Electronic Nose in Identifying Liquors

When the electronic nose is used to identify different varieties of distilled liquors, the pattern recognition algorithm is chosen on the basis of the experience, which lacks the guiding principle. In this research, the different brands of distilled spirits were identified using the pattern recognition algorithms （principal component analysis and the artificial neural network）. The recognition rates of different algorithms were compared. The recognition rate of the Back Propagation Neural Network （BPNN） is the highest. Owing to the slow convergence speed of the BPNN, it tends easily to get into a local minimum. A chaotic BPNN was tried in order to overcome the disadvantage of the BPNN. The convergence speed of the chaotic BPNN is 75.5 times faster than that of the BPNN.     

Descending brain neurons in the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus (de Geer): auditory responses and impact on walking

The activity of four types of sound-sensitive descending brain neurons in the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus was recorded intracellularly while animals were standing or walking on an open-loop trackball system. In a neuron with a contralaterally descending axon, the male calling song elicited responses that copied the pulse pattern of the song during standing and walking. The accuracy of pulse copying increased during walking. Neurons with ipsilaterally descending axons responded weakly to sound only during standing. The responses were mainly to the first pulse of each chirp, whereas the complete pulse pattern of a chirp was not copied. During walking the auditory responses were suppressed in these neurons. The spiking activity of all four neuron types was significantly correlated to forward walking velocity, indicating their relevance for walking. Additionally, injection of depolarizing current elicited walking and/or steering in three of four neuron types described. In none of the neurons was the spiking activity both sufficient and necessary to elicit and maintain walking behaviour. Some neurons showed arborisations in the lateral accessory lobes, pointing to the relevance of this brain region for cricket audition and descending motor control.     

Sleep deprivation under sustained hypoxia protects against oxidative stress

We previously showed that total sleep deprivation increased antioxidant responses in several rat brain regions. We also reported that chronic hypoxia enhanced antioxidant responses and increased oxidative stress in rat cerebellum and pons, relative to normoxic conditions. In the current study, we examined the interaction between these two parameters (sleep and hypoxia). We exposed rats to total sleep deprivation under sustained hypoxia (SDSH) and compared changes in antioxidant responses and oxidative stress markers in the neocortex, hippocampus, brainstem, and cerebellum to those in control animals left undisturbed under either sustained hypoxia (UCSH) or normoxia (UCN). We measured changes in total nitrite levels as an indicator of nitric oxide (NO) production, superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity and total glutathione (GSHt) levels as markers of antioxidant responses, and levels of thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (TBARS) and protein carbonyls as signs of lipid and protein oxidation products, respectively. We found that acute (6h) SDSH increased NO production in the hippocampus and increased GSHt levels in the neocortex, brainstem, and cerebellum while decreasing hippocampal lipid oxidation. Additionally, we observed increased hexokinase activity in the neocortex of SDSH rats compared to UCSH rats, suggesting that elevated glucose metabolism may be one potential source of the enhanced free radicals produced in this brain region. We conclude that short-term insomnia under hypoxia may serve as an adaptive response to prevent oxidative stress.     

Simultaneous quantification of GMP, AMP, cyclic GMP and cyclic AMP by liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry

Phosphodiesterases are drug targets for treating various diseases. Inhibition of these can increase cAMP and cGMP levels, which can affect a variety of physiological responses. Here we report a new method for determining PDE activity by combining high-performance liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry. Characteristic peaks of the substrates, cGMP or cAMP and products, GMP or AMP, were identified in positive-ion electrospray ionization using multiple reaction monitoring. The method can be applied to determine activity of PDE inhibitors. Our results showed that this new method was fast, sensitive and highly reproducible.     

Evoked Acetylcholine Release by Immortalized Brain Endothelial Cells Genetically Modified to Express Choline Acetyltransferase and/or the Vesicular Acetylcholine Transporter

Immortalized rat brain endothelial RBE4 cells do not express choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), but they do express an endogenous machinery that enables them to release specifically acetylcholine (ACh) on calcium entry when they have been passively loaded with the neurotransmitter. Indeed, we have previously reported that these cells do not release glutamate or GABA after loading with these transmitters. The present study was set up to engineer stable cell lines producing ACh by transfecting them with an expression vector construct containing the rat ChAT. ChAT transfectants expressed a high level of ChAT activity and accumulated endogenous ACh. We examined evoked ACh release from RBE4 cells using two parallel approaches. First, Ca2+-dependent ACh release induced by a calcium ionophore was followed with a chemiluminescent procedure. We showed that ChAT-transfected cells released the transmitter they had synthesized and accumulated in the presence of an esterase inhibitor. Second, ACh released on an electrical depolarization was detected in real time by a whole-cell voltage-clamped Xenopus myocyte in contact with the cell. Whether cells synthesized ACh or whether they were passively loaded with ACh, electrical stimulation elicited the release of ACh quanta detected as inward synaptic-like currents in the myocyte. Repetitive stimulation elicited a continuous train of responses of decreasing amplitudes, with rare failures. Amplitude analysis showed that the currents peaked at preferential levels, as if they were multiples of an elementary component. Furthermore, we selected an RBE4 transgenic clone exhibiting a high level of ChAT activity to introduce the Torpedo vesicular ACh transporter (VAChT) gene. However, as the expression of ChAT was inactivated in stable VAChT transfectants, the potential influence of VAChT on evoked ACh release could only be studied on cells passively loaded with ACh. VAChT expression modified the pattern of ACh delivery on repetitive electrical stimulation. Stimulation trains evoked several groups of responses interrupted by many failures. The total amount of released ACh and the mean quantal size were not modified. As brain endothelial cells are known as suitable cellular vectors for delivering gene products to the brain, the present results suggest that RBE4 cells genetically modified to produce ACh and intrinsically able to support evoked ACh release may provide a useful tool for improving altered cholinergic function in the CNS.     

The modulation of mitochondrial nitric-oxide synthase activity in rat brain development

Different mitochondrial nitric-oxide synthase (mtNOS) isoforms have been described in rat and mouse tissues, such as liver, thymus, skeletal muscle, and more recently, heart and brain. The modulation of these variants by thyroid status, hypoxia, or gene deficiency opens a broad spectrum of mtNOS-dependent tissue-specific functions. In this study, a new NOS variant is described in rat brain with an M(r) of 144 kDa and mainly localized in the inner mitochondrial membrane. During rat brain maturation, the expression and activity of mtNOS were maximal at the late embryonic stages and early postnatal days followed by a decreased expression in the adult stage (100 +/- 9 versus 19 +/- 2 pmol of [(3)H]citrulline/min/mg of protein, respectively). This temporal pattern was opposite to that of the cytosolic 157-kDa nNOS protein. Mitochondrial redox changes followed the variations in mtNOS activity: mtNOS-dependent production of hydrogen peroxide was maximal in newborns and decreased markedly in the adult stage, thus reflecting the production and utilization of mitochondrial matrix nitric oxide. Moreover, the activity of brain Mn-superoxide dismutase followed a developmental pattern similar to that of mtNOS. Cerebellar granular cells isolated from newborn rats and with high mtNOS activity exhibited maximal proliferation rates, which were decreased by modifying the levels of either hydrogen peroxide or nitric oxide. Altogether, these findings support the notion that a coordinated modulation of mtNOS and Mn-superoxide dismutase contributes to establish the rat brain redox status and participate in the normal physiology of brain development.     

Cellular neural networks (CNN) with linear weight functions for a prediction of epileptic seizures

In this paper, we present a novel approach to the prediction of epileptic seizures using boolean CNN with linear weight functions. Three different binary pattern occurrence behaviours will be discussed and analysed for several invasive recordings of brain electrical activity. Furthermore analogic binary pattern detection algorithms will be introduced for a possible prediction of epileptic seizures.     

Physio-biochemical and proteome analysis of chickpea in early phases of cold stress

Intensive and short-term strategies can aid in more rapid screening with informative and reliable results for long-term investigations under cold stress (CS). The integration of cellular analysis of chickpea during 0, 2, 4, 8, and 12 h CS supplied us with novel possible responsive components and the possible interactions embedded inside, still remaining a Maze. Seedlings showed a biphasic pattern of responses over time. The transitory phase happened after 8 h, when cells are presumably experiencing a new stage of responses and setting the stage for long-term adjustments. Physio-biochemical analysis confirmed the direct effect of fatty acids composition, lipoxygenase activity and antioxidant systems in cell responses under CS. Also, proteome results using MALDI-TOF-TOF and/or LC–MS/MS were able to differentiate changes in early phases of CS. Two-dimensional gel analysis results showed the possible targets of CS as mitochondria, chloroplast, organelle–nucleus communications, storage resources, stress and defense, protein degradation and signal transduction that confirmed the cell intended to re-establish a new homeostasis, in energy and primary metabolites to adapt to long-term CS. Here we propose a time course dynamic assessing multi-dimensional approaches for CS studies as one of the first studies in short-term treatment to progressively fill in the gaps between physio-biochemical and molecular events and touch the cell architecture for a better comprehension of the nature of plant stress response.     

Cytophotometric analyses of thalamic neuronal RNA in soman intoxicated rats

Quantitative azure B-RNA cytophotometry was used to monitor metabolic responses of individual neurons within the ventrobasal nuclear complex (VBC) and nucleus reticularis (NR) of the rat thalamus following administration of soman (0.5, 0.9 or 1.5 LD₅₀, sc). A dose-dependent depression in brain acetylcholinesterase (AChE) was evidenced. With respect to thalamic RNA responses, a complex pattern of RNA alterations was evidenced, with these two regions generally exhibiting opposite patterns of dose-related RNA changes. With sub-lethal dosages of soman, RNA accumulation was evidenced in the acetylcholine (ACh) mediated excitatory VBC region and RNA depletion in the ACh mediated inhibitory NR neurons. With a lethal dose, an opposite RNA response pattern observed in both thalamic regions. It is postulated that the observed RNA response pattern with sub-lethal dosages of soman is what one would anticipate with cholinergic brainstem reticular formation activation. The absence of such a response with lethal doses strongly suggests some disruption of functional excitatory cholinergic activity and perhaps also an impairment of inhibitory cholinergic synaptic activity.     

A new perspective on cannabinoid signalling: complementary localization of fatty acid amide hydrolase and the CB1 receptor in rat brain.

CB1-type cannabinoid receptors in the brain mediate effects of the drug cannabis. Anandamide and sn-2 arachidonylglycerol (2-AG) are putative endogenous ligands for CB1 receptors, but it is not known which cells in the brain produce these molecules. Recently, an enzyme which catalyses hydrolysis of anandamide and 2-AG, known as fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH), was identified in mammals. Here we have analysed the distribution of FAAH in rat brain and compared its cellular localization with CB1-type cannabinoid receptors using immunocytochemistry. High concentrations of FAAH activity were detected in the cerebellum, hippocampus and neocortex, regions of the rat brain which are enriched with cannabinoid receptors. Immunocytochemical analysis of these brain regions revealed a complementary pattern of FAAH and CB1 expression with CB1 immunoreactivity occurring in fibres surrounding FAAH-immunoreactive cell bodies and/or dendrites. In the cerebellum, FAAH was expressed in the cell bodies of Purkinje cells and CB1 was expressed in the axons of granule cells and basket cells, neurons which are presynaptic to Purkinje cells. The close correspondence in the distribution of FAAH and CB1 in rat brain and the complementary pattern of FAAH and CB1 expression at the cellular level provides important new evidence that FAAH may participate in cannabinoid signalling mechanisms of the brain.