Production of honey is the main determinant of profitability in the beekeeping sector. However, high production does not always imply higher profits. A major determinant of the profitability of an ...apiary is the ability to sell the acquired product. The aim of the study was to present the most important factors influencing consumer honey purchasing behavior. The results showed that honey can simultaneously satisfy a multitude of needs - nutritional, taste, prophylactic, and medicinal. Consumer decisions to buy honey are influenced by economic factors, indicating the financial situation of households. The decision is often habitual and dictated by knowledge of the value of honey. Psychological and social determinants are the main motives when choosing among the varieties of honey. Studies have shown that the average annual per capita consumption of honey was 1.32 kg. However, honey consumption rates differed strongly, ranging from 0.066 to 0.4 kg per person per month. More than 60% of respondents indicated the high or very high price of honey. Buying honey directly from the beekeeper was widespread among respondents (63.9%). Some respondents (7.2%) stated that they do not consume honey at all, but price cuts and the opportunity to taste test honey at the point of sale would be an incentive for them.
The potential contribution of inflammation to the development of neuropsychiatric diseases has recently received substantial attention. In the brain, the main immune cells are the microglia. As they ...are the main source of inflammatory factors, it is plausible that the regulation of their activation may be a potential therapeutic target. Fractalkine (CX3CL1) and its receptor CX3CR1 play a crucial role in the control of the biological activity of the microglia. In the present study, using microglial cultures we investigated whether fractalkine is able to reverse changes in microglia caused by a prenatal stress procedure. Our study found that the microglia do not express fractalkine. Prenatal stress decreases the expression of the fractalkine receptor, which in turn is enhanced by the administration of exogenous fractalkine. Moreover, treatment with fractalkine diminishes the prenatal stress-induced overproduction of proinflammatory factors such as IL-1β, IL-18, IL-6, TNF-α, CCL2, or NO in the microglial cells derived from prenatally stressed newborns. In conclusion, the present results revealed that the pathological activation of microglia in prenatally stressed newborns may be attenuated by fractalkine administration. Therefore, understanding of the role of the CX3CL1-CX3CR1 system may help to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the neuron-microglia interaction and its role in pathological conditions in the brain.
Nature Communications 7: Article number: 12672 (2016); Published: 31 August 2016; Updated: 5 October 2016 In the originally published version of the Article, an incorrect reference number was cited. ...The final sentence of the first paragraph of the Introduction section should read: ‘The likely reasons are technical difficulties in generating atomic size electron vortex beams, together with fine control of their resulting orbital angular momentum in the case of electron vortex beams, and a low EMCD signal fraction in the case of astigmatic beams21.
Research surveys were conducted from August through December 2011 and March through July 2012, in the regions of Lower Silesia, Opole, Silesia, and Wielkopolska, Poland. Respondents were chosen ...randomly and a sample of 540 respondents were surveyed. The first aim of this study was to investigate the quality and aesthetic factors expected of honey and its packaging in order to establish their influence on decisions related to the purchase of honey. The second aim was to determine the importance of the aesthetic factors of honey and its packaging in the process of influencing consumer behavior related to the purchase of honey. As many as 78% of respondents said that the honey from a beekeeper was better than that offered in the stores. A large number of respondents, 88.3%, choose honey produced domestically. However, our study showed that for 43.4% of the respondents, packaging and visual features did not affect the purchase of the product. Only for 23% of respondents, the origin of the honey and quality which was guaranteed with certificates were the most important factors taken into account when deciding on the place or form of a honey purchase. The varieties of honey most often indicated by the respondents were: multifloral honey 46.9%, linden honey 42.5%, rapeseed honey 16.2%, and acacia honey 12.8%. The selection of honey varieties was primarily determined by psychological factors, social factors, and only later by convenience of consumption or financial situation.
Bee pollen and bee bread from stationary apiaries in the southwest Polish Legnica-Glogow copper district (LGOM) were analyzed for Cr, Pb, Cd and As by ICP-AES. Their concentrations in both products ...were As > Cr > Pb > Cd. Concentrations in bee pollen were higher than in bee bread. Average Cr, Pb, As and Cd concentrations in bee products were 0.138, 0.093, 0.325, and 0.019 mg kg
, respectively. Chromium was the most problematic element in bee pollen because its concentration limit was exceeded in more than 50% of the samples. Differences in Cd level between bee pollen and bread were significant (p ≤ 0.05)
We studied femtosecond spin dynamics in NixPd1−x magnetic thin films by optically pumping the system with infrared (1.55 eV) laser pulses and subsequently recording the reflectivity of extreme ...ultraviolet (XUV) pulses synchronized with the pump pulse train. XUV light in the energy range from 20 to 72 eV was produced by laser high-harmonic generation. The reflectivity of XUV radiation at characteristic resonant energies allowed separate detection of the spin dynamics in the elemental subsystems at the M2,3 absorption edges of Ni (68.0 and 66.2 eV) and N2,3 edges of Pd (55.7 and 50.9 eV). The measurements were performed in transversal magneto-optical Kerr effect geometry. In static measurements, we observed a magnetic signature of the Pd subsystem due to an induced magnetization. Calculated magneto-optical asymmetries based on density functional theory show close agreement with the measured results. Femtosecond spin dynamics measured at the Ni absorption edges indicates that increasing the Pd concentration, which causes a decrease in the Curie temperature TC, results in a drop of the demagnetization time τM, contrary to the τM∼1/TC scaling expected for single-species materials. This observation is ascribed to the increase of the Pd-mediated spin-orbit coupling in the alloy.
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