Painfully Aware: The Effects of Dissonance on Attitudes toward Factory Farming

ABSTRACT

We examine the moderating effects of cognitive dissonance on the persuasiveness of a message designed to influence attitudes and behaviors supportive of intensive-production animal agriculture, or “factory farming.” Existing research on human attitudes toward nonhuman animals indicates that generic disapproval of their suffering gratuitously at human hands is a social norm. However, studies also reveal an absence of related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors seemingly implied by this stance. Such apparent inconsistencies may persist due to lack of awareness about and/or engagement with the issue of farm animal welfare. We used a two-group, between-subjects experimental design, and the subject pool consisted of 62 non-vegetarian university students. Following random assignment to either the commitment condition or a non-commitment control group, all participants received an informational booklet arguing for the prevalence of neglect and abuse in industrial animal agriculture. Commitment participants, however, first responded privately to a dichotomous, single-item questionnaire, either agreeing or disagreeing that “animals should not suffer needlessly in the production of meat.” Given that the need to resolve or avoid self-contradiction can motivate attitudinal realignment, we hypothesized that an educational intervention would be more sympathetically received by individuals who had already volunteered support for its central premise, than by those never invited to adopt a stance. Results supporting three of four hypotheses indicated significantly heightened receptivity to an anti-factory farming message following commitment to a pro-welfare position. Commitment participants tended to be more open to eating less meat, concerned with the issue, and accepting of the message's basic claims. A fourth hypothesis was not supported: participants across groups were ambivalent about source credibility. We infer that animal advocacy efforts may more effectively generate public support for the cause by framing appeals to capitalize on what polls show most people already believe (i.e., that animal cruelty ought to be prevented).     

Lettuce plant growth and tipburn occurrence as affected by airflow using a multi-fan system in a plant factory with artificial light

A multi-fan system (MFS) for single culture beds was developed to improve the airflow in a plant factory with artificial light. The MFS had seven fans which were installed on both the front and back sides of culture beds to generate airflow from two opposite horizontal directions. The fans that push the air into the culture bed were air inlets while those that pull the air out of the culture bed were air outlets. In this study, three airflow patterns were evaluated: T₁, the front and back sides of the culture bed were air inlets; T₂, the front side was an air inlet and the backside was an air outlet; and T₃, both the front and back sides were air outlets. A culture bed with no MFS was used as a control (T₄). Lettuce growth and tipburn occurrence were evaluated and leaf boundary layer resistance (1/g_bv), sensible heat flux (S_h), and latent heat flux (L_h) of lettuce plants were estimated. The airflow pattern in T₁ improved the air velocity (V_a) by an average of 0.75 m s^-1 and a variation coefficient of 65%. The 1/g_bv decreased significantly with the increase in V_a, and the lowest value of 54.0 s m^-1 was observed in T₁. The low resistance to heat and moisture transfer enhanced the S_h and L_h of lettuce plants. The average S_h and L_h were 40% and 46% higher in T₁ compared with those in T₄. The fresh and dry weights of lettuce plants in T₁ were 1.13 and 1.06 higher than those in T₄, respectively. No tipburn occurrence was observed in lettuce plants grown under the MFS while five leaves per plant were injured with tipburn in T₄. The results indicated that improving the airflow can improve the growth of indoor cultured lettuce and alleviate the occurrence of tipburn due to the decrease in the 1/g_bv and the increase in the transpiration rate.     

Engineering Clostridium ljungdahlii as the gas-fermenting cell factory for the production of biofuels and biochemicals

Clostridium ljungdahlii is a representative autotrophic gas-fermenting acetogen capable of converting CO₂ and CO into biomass and multiple metabolites. The carbon fixation and conversion based on C. ljungdahlii have great potential for the sustainable production of bulk biochemicals and biofuels using industrial syngas and waste gases. With substantial recent advances in genetic manipulation tools, it has become possible to study and improve the metabolic capability of C. ljungdahlii in gas fermentation. The product scope of C. ljungdahlii has been expanded through the introduction of heterologous production pathways followed by the modification of native metabolic networks. In addition, progress has been made in understanding the physiological and metabolic mechanisms of this anaerobe, contributing to strain designs for expected phenotypes. In this review, we highlight the latest research progresses regarding C. ljungdahlii and discuss the next steps to comprehensively understand and engineer this bacterium for an improved bacterial gas bioconversion platform.     

Impact of systems biology on metabolic engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Industrial biotechnology is a rapidly growing field. With the increasing shift towards a bio-based economy, there is rising demand for developing efficient cell factories that can produce fuels, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, materials, nutraceuticals, and even food ingredients. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is extremely well suited for this objective. As one of the most intensely studied eukaryotic model organisms, a rich density of knowledge detailing its genetics, biochemistry, physiology, and large-scale fermentation performance can be capitalized upon to enable a substantial increase in the industrial application of this yeast. Developments in genomics and high-throughput systems biology tools are enhancing one's ability to rapidly characterize cellular behaviour, which is valuable in the field of metabolic engineering where strain characterization is often the bottleneck in strain development programmes. Here, the impact of systems biology on metabolic engineering is reviewed and perspectives on the role of systems biology in the design of cell factories are given.     

The carbonate factory continuum, facies mosaics and microfacies: an appraisal of some of the key concepts underpinning carbonate sedimentology

Our understanding of where and how carbonate sediments are produced and accumulate has changed considerably in recent years and a more complex framework is emerging. The earlier concept invoking a limited range of productivity-depth models has now evolved into an appreciation that there is a continuum of different types of productive sites over wide depth ranges, influenced by complex factors and not simply water depth or temperature. Studies of the nature of lithofacies ordering in the stratigraphic record, and most recent studies of the spatial distribution of Holocene environments, raise the issue that at the lithofacies scale the sedimentary record represents, in part, the product of complex and mobile facies mosaics. Many of these mosaic elements are not depth dependent and can change through time as a consequence of subtle environmental changes. As the rates of change typically exceed rates of accommodation space creation, individual sites are likely to have sediments of different environments superimposed and mixed (palimpsest). Recent studies showing the extent that dissolution is capable of skewing sediment compositions suggest that many ancient microfacies are unrepresentative of their original sediments, and there is a need for a more critical approach to interpreting microfacies in terms of identifying habitats and especially water depth. The carbonate factory is spatially and temporally highly variable and is not simply a uniform production line. This fact, coupled with the likely importance of selective early dissolution, may in part explain why accumulation rates estimated from ancient strata are lower than the production rates measured over short time periods.     

一种新的DNA复制和转录模型

DNA复制和转录有两种模型,一种是传统的滑动模型,复制和转录发生时参与反应的蛋白质沿DNA模板滑动.在另一种新提出的工厂模型中,固定在核结构上的蛋白质拉动模板来完成DNA的复制和转录.来自生物化学、生物物理学和细胞生物学等的实验证据表明,新的工厂模型是生物活体细胞内真实的复制和转录模式.     

Redesigning the Industrial Ecology of the Automobile

This article explores the potential of industrial ecology to inform the redesign of an existing industry: that which is concerned with the production, sale, and support of automobiles. In so doing, it brings together the concepts embedded in industrial ecology with issues of economic scale, product design or technology, process technology, and the way in which new combinations of these features can result in an alternative structure for the automotive industry that has the potential to enhance sustainability performance. In so doing, the article advances the general argument that the economic, technical, and spatial organization of production and consumption are co-determined in a manner that collectively shapes the industrial ecology of an industry. In contradistinction to the prevailing industry, the article then advances the concept of micro factory retailing as an alternative framework for the industry that would result in significantly different performance in terms of industrial ecology.     

化学品生物合成专刊序言

以酶及微生物细胞催化剂结合工程学方法将廉价、废弃原料进行高效生物转化可实现化学品的可持续生产。近年来,合成生物学、系统生物学及酶工程等技术的快速发展大大推动了化学品的可持续生物制造,既实现了多种新型化学品的生物合成,又显著提高化学品的生物合成效率。为展示化学品生物合成的最新进展并促进绿色生物制造的发展,《生物工程学报》特组织出版化学品生物合成专刊,从酶催化与生物合成机制、微生物细胞合成、一碳生物炼制以及关键核心技术等方面,介绍化学品生物合成的最新前沿、挑战以及潜在解决方案。     

Biodegradation of slop oil from a petrochemical industry and bioreclamation of slop oil contaminated soil

Slop oil, i.e. waste oil from a petrochemical complex, contains at least 240 hydrocarbon components, of which 54% are from C₅ to C₁₁ and the rest from C₁₂ to C₂₃. Of 22 isolated bacterial cultures that were able to degrade slop oil, seven could each degrade about 40% of the slop oil, and a mixture of all seven could degrade 50% in liquid medium. Bioaugmentation of soil contaminated with slop oil with the mixed bacterial culture gave up to 70% degradation of slop oil after 30 days. This compares with 40% degradation without bioaugmentation. Bioaugmentation led to a significant increase in counts of bacteria able to degrade slop oil. Wheat sown on bioaugmented soil germinated and grew better than on non-augmented soil and led to increased degradation of slop oil (up to 80%). This indicates the potential of mixed culture for bioremediation.     

Plant-associated endophytic fungi as potential bio-factories for extracellular enzymes: Progress,Challenges and Strain improvement with precision approaches

There is an intricate network of relations between endophytic fungi and their hosts that affects the production of various bioactive compounds. Plant-associated endophytic fungi contain industrially important enzymes and have the potential to fulfil their rapid demand in the international market to boost business in technology. Being safe and metabolically active, they have replaced the usage of toxic and harmful chemicals and hold a credible application in biotransformation, bioremediation and industrial processes. Despite these, there are limited reports on fungal endophytes that can directly cater to the demand and supply of industrially stable enzymes. The underlying reasons include low endogenous production and secretion of enzymes from fungal endophytes which have raised concern for widely accepted applications. Hence, it is imperative to augment the biosynthetic and secretory potential of fungal endophytes. Modern state-of-the-art biotechnological technologies aiming at strain improvement using cell factory engineering as well as precise gene editing like Clustered Regularly Interspaced Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and its Associated proteins (Cas) systems which can provide a boost in fungal endophyte enzyme production. Additionally, it is vital to characterize optimum conditions to grow one strain with multiple enzymes (OSME). The present review encompasses various plants-derived endophytic fungal enzymes and their applications in various sectors. Furthermore, we postulate the feasibility of new precision approaches with an aim for strain improvement and enhanced enzyme production.