To Integrate of Not to Integrate?

Turkish architecture over the last 150 years has been plagued by its preoccupation with its integration with the West. Should it be embracing or reflecting Western cultural, technical and professional standards? Uğur Tanyeli provides the background to this pessimistic context and describes how a new generation of architects over the last 10 years have transcended this predicament by producing work that turns away from this obsession with identity. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

现代建筑的装饰手法

本文从建筑装饰艺术的发展历史过程来探究现代建筑装饰元素的表现手法。运用生活中的建筑实例,着重强调装饰表现手法在现代各建筑设计中的非凡表现。     

Microbial safety status of Serro artisanal cheese produced in Brazil

Considering the growing consumption of artisanal foods worldwide, we aimed to evaluate the microbial safety of Serro artisanal cheese (SAC), produced in Minas Gerais State, Brazil. This cheese is produced with raw milk using 1 of 2 natural starter cultures: “pingo” and “rala.” A total of 53 SAC samples (pingo = 8; rala = 45) were obtained from different farmers and subjected to conventional and molecular assays to detect and enumerate Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella spp., coagulase-positive staphylococci (CPS), diarrheagenic Escherichia coli, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and Brucella abortus. The SAC samples were also subjected to an ELISA to detect classical staphylococcal enterotoxins (CSE: SEA, SEB, SEC, SED, SEE) and to PCR assays to detect staphylococcal enterotoxin-related genes (sea, seb, sec, sed, see). Coagulase-positive staphylococci isolates were obtained and tested by the same assays to detect their potential in CSE production and presence of CSE-related genes. None of the SAC samples showed any of the screened food-borne pathogens and zoonotic agents, and none showed the presence of CSE by phenotypic and genotypic approaches. Despite the absence of microbial hazards, mean counts of CPS in SAC samples were 5.2 log cfu/g (pingo starter) and 4.6 log cfu/g (rala starter), indicating poor hygiene practices during production. None of the tested CPS isolates (n = 116) produced CSE or presented CSE-related genes. Despite the relative microbial safety, hygienic conditions during SAC production must be improved to meet official guidelines established in Brazil.     

Diverse food in urban gardens in the promotion of food and nutrition security in Brazil: a review

Food and nutrition security can be supported by an urban garden. The present study comprises a critical reflection on the difficulty of producing food in urban gardens in Brazil and shows the potential of food production and the obstacles to its expansion. In addition, issues related to the agroecological management of gardens are addressed and suggestions are made to improve the proposed public policies. Urban gardens are multifunctional and have social, economic and environmental impacts. They are strategically important for supporting low-income families and urban development. Through urban gardens, diverse foods and quality foods can be produced for self-consumption. This review highlights the importance of generating detailed information on urban gardens in Brazil to support policies aimed at this sector. Long-term and multidisciplinary studies are needed to evaluate the relationship between food production in urban gardens and household food and nutrition security. This approach revealed a lack of information on the amount of food produced by Brazilians in their gardens and consumed by the household. In addition, there is little information on the management of production. There is a gap relating to the impact of food produced in urban gardens and the prevalence of food and nutrition security. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry     

Linking energy efficiency and innovation practices: Empirical evidence from the foundry sector

The Europe 2020 strategy currently promotes energy efficiency and innovation through disconnected targets focusing on either energy or R&D. Similar policies indicate that in practice, these two concepts are usually perceived as mutually exclusive. Furthermore, evidence in the literature regarding the relationship between R&D and energy efficiency is still highly limited. This exploratory study aims to address this gap by investigating the link between innovation practices and energy efficiency through a multiple case study of 30 foundries in Northern Italy. We analysed the firms' innovativeness, measured by internal R&D and Open Innovation practices (inbound and outbound), and energy efficiency, measured by specific energy consumption, level of adoption of energy-efficient technologies and barriers to energy efficiency. The results seem to show that those foundries complementing internal R&D with inbound practices have a higher level of energy efficiency, a higher level of adoption of available technologies, and a lower perception of barriers to efficiency improvements. This finding suggests that diversifying innovation practices could lead to better performance with respect to all three indicators of energy efficiency analysed. This study contributes to understanding how more innovative firms can be more energy efficient, providing interesting highlights for managers and policymakers.     

Viewpoint: Information systems research strategy

This article^1,2 has two aligned aims: (i) to espouse the value of a strategic research orientation for the Information Systems Discipline; and (ii) to facilitate such a strategic orientation by recognising the value of programmatic research and promoting the publication of such work. It commences from the viewpoint that Information Systems (IS) research benefits from being strategic at every level, from individual researcher, to research program, to research discipline and beyond. It particularly advocates for more coordinated programs of research emphasising real-world impact, while recognising that vibrant, individual-driven and small-team research within broad areas of promise, is expected to continue forming the core of the IS research ecosystem. Thus, the overarching aim is the amplification of strategic thinking in IS research – the further leveraging of an orientation natural to the JSIS community, with emphasis on research programs as a main strategic lever, and further considering how JSIS can be instrumental in this aim.     

Tropane alkaloid contamination of agricultural commodities and food products in relation to consumer health: Learnings from the 2019 Uganda food aid outbreak

Tropane alkaloids (TAs) are secondary plant metabolites derived mainly from Solanaceae plant families, with the most virulent invasive species being Datura stramonium. Datura stramonium commonly grows in cereal fields and produce TAs (e.g., hyoscyamine and scopolamine) which may accidentally contaminate cereals (and cereal-based foods) at occasionally high levels. Dietary exposure to TAs can be toxic and depending on the dose ingested can cause outcomes ranging from anticholinergic effects to acute poisoning and death. In 2019, 315 adults became ill and another five adults died in Uganda following consumption of a “Super Cereal” (a fortified blended food) that was later confirmed to be contaminated by TAs—a scenario which provoked this holistic review on TAs in foodstuffs. Thus, this article provides information on the history, development, occurrences, exposures, and human legislative and health benchmarks for TAs. It describes control strategies for reducing TA contamination of agricultural commodities and resultant health implications following consumption of TA contaminated foodstuffs. Adequate application of food safety control measures (including maximum limits) and good practices, from the start of cereal cultivation through to the final stages of manufacturing of food products can aid in the reduction of seeing toxic plants including D. stramonium in cereal fields.     

Implementing lean practices in manufacturing SMEs: testing ‘critical success factors’ using Necessary Condition Analysis

Lean practices are known to increase operational performance. Previous research has identified critical success factors for implementing lean practices. This research aims to examine the extent to which success factors are critical for various degrees of lean practice implementation. Using multiple-respondent self-assessments from 33 Dutch manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we conducted a Necessary Condition Analysis. Our findings indicated that the criticality of success factors is progression dependent. In the initial stages of the lean journey, SMEs could improve their lean practices in a bottom-up manner through local factors such as a learning focus, improvement training and support congruence. When lean practices are more advanced, some company-wide factors must be present: top management support, a shared improvement vision and a supplier link. Our findings question the universality of success factors such as strategic involvement and indicate the need for a more dynamic model of lean implementation.     

The moderating role of just‐in‐time on sociotechnical practices' effect over quality and workers' health

Sociotechnical (ST) theory emphasizes the notion that the design and performance of new systems can be improved, and can only work satisfactorily within an organization if the social and the technical aspects are brought together and treated as interdependent aspects of a work system. The implementation of lean manufacturing (LM) principles and practices has become popular, despite increasing demand on the current and emerging workforce to achieve higher levels of quality and flexibility with lower costs. Exploratory studies that investigate how LM practices influence the effect of ST practices on performance are still scarce, and a holistic view of such a relationship is needed. In this context, this study aims at verifying the moderating effect of just‐in‐time (JIT) practices on the relationship between ST practices and the performance of quality and workers' health. We carried out a survey with 144 different companies from Southern Brazil that are undergoing a lean implementation. Results indicate that ST practices have a positive significant relationship with such performance, and the concurrent adoption of JIT does not undermine quality and workers' health.     

An empirical study examining the perceptions and behaviours of security-conscious users of mobile authentication

The purpose of this study is to better understand, from an explorative qualitative perspective, the motivations and practices of highly security-conscious users of mobile authentication, and their underlying mental models of those behaviours. Mobile authentication studies have largely overlooked the mindset of these users in the upper bound of security experience, who have considered their behaviour in terms of detailed knowledge of mobile authentication risk. Twenty IT professionals who self-identified as security-conscious mobile device users, many with decades of intensive security-specific experience, were interviewed for this study regarding their opinions and experiences with mobile device authentication and security. These users described usability and situational impairment issues, as well as a deep concern for their identity and data security arising from highly contextual combinations of distrust towards underlying technologies and situational risk. Derived implications for development of security methods adapted to these informed perspectives are discussed and will be the basis for follow-on research comparing these findings with everyday users.