A framework for food supply chain digitalization: lessons from Thailand

Abstract

The promise of digitalization is enormous and nowhere is it more critical than in its potential to transform food supply chain. Consumers have become more educated and are demanding real-time updated information on foods they consumed through digital media. They are also increasingly demanding to know if the foods they consume are environmentally and socially sustainable or not. As a result, food product traceability, safety, and sustainability issues have become crucial concerns to food retailers, distributors, processors, and farmers. Digitalization allows food supply chains to be highly connected, efficient, and responsive to customer needs and regulation requirements. However, digitalizing a traditional food supply chain is challenging and resource demanding. This is more so for developing countries where moving food from farms to consumers can take months as it travels through an array of middlemen. Unfortunately, little is available in the existing literature on food supply chain digitalization. So far, current researchers mainly explore the benefits of digitalization. Using cases in three companies, this paper explores the practices, challenges, and opportunities faced by Thailand food manufacturers in digitalizing their food supply chains. A framework for food supply chain digitalization is proposed and its implications for research and practices are discussed.     

Combining Food Frequency and Survey Data to Quantify Long-Term Dietary Exposure: A Methyl Mercury Case Study

Twenty-four-hour recall data from the Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals (CSFII) are frequently used to estimate dietary exposure for risk assessment. Food frequency questionnaires are traditional instruments of epidemiological research; however, their application in dietary exposure and risk assessment has been limited. This article presents a probabilistic method of bridging the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) food frequency and the CSFII data to estimate longitudinal (usual) intake, using a case study of seafood mercury exposures for two population subgroups (females 16 to 49 years and children 1 to 5 years). Two hundred forty-nine CSFII food codes were mapped into 28 NHANES fish/shellfish categories. FDA and state/local seafood mercury data were used. A uniform distribution with minimum and maximum blood-diet ratios of 0.66 to 1.07 was assumed. A probabilistic assessment was conducted to estimate distributions of individual 30-day average daily fish/shellfish intakes, methyl mercury exposure, and blood levels. The upper percentile estimates of fish and shellfish intakes based on the 30-day daily averages were lower than those based on two- and three-day daily averages. These results support previous findings that distributions of "usual" intakes based on a small number of consumption days provide overestimates in the upper percentiles. About 10% of the females (16 to 49 years) and children (1 to 5 years) may be exposed to mercury levels above the EPA's RfD. The predicted 75th and 90th percentile blood mercury levels for the females in the 16-to-49-year group were similar to those reported by NHANES. The predicted 90th percentile blood mercury levels for children in the 1-to-5-year subgroup was similar to NHANES and the 75th percentile estimates were slightly above the NHANES.     

DO GENERAL TREATMENT GUIDELINES FOR ASIAN AMERICAN FAMILIES HAVE APPLICATIONS TO SPECIFIC ETHNIC GROUPS? THE CASE OF CULTURALLY‐COMPETENT THERAPY WITH KOREAN AMERICANS

To serve Korean American families effectively, marriage and family therapists need to develop a level of cultural competence. This content analysis of the relevant treatment literature was conducted to discover the most common expert recommendations for family therapy with Asian Americans and to examine their application to Korean Americans. Eleven specific guidelines were generated: Assess support systems, assess immigration history establish professional credibility, provide role induction, facilitate "saving face," accept somatic complaints, be present/problem focused, be directive, respect family structure, be nonconfrontational, and provide positive reframes. Empirical support (clinical and nonclinical research) and conceptual support for each guideline are discussed, and conclusions are reached regarding culturally competent therapy with Korean American families.     

A Social Network Contagion Theory of Risk Perception

Risk perceptions have, to a great extent, been studied exclusively as individual cognitive mechanisms in which individuals collect, process, and form perceptions as atomized units unconnected to a social system. These individual-level theories do not, however, help explain how perception of risk may vary between communities or within a single community. One alternative approach is based on a network theory of contagion. This approach, emerging largely from organizational and community social network studies, suggests that it is the relational aspects of individuals and the resulting networks and self-organizing systems that influence individual perceptions and build "groups or communities of like-minded" individuals. These social units, it is argued, behave as attitude, knowledge, or behavioral structures. The study reported in this article tests one aspect of this theoretical perspective. The central hypothesis proposes the existence of risk perception networks--relational groupings of individuals who share, and perhaps create, similar risk perceptions. To test this idea, data were collected from individuals involved in a community environmental conflict over a hazardous waste site cleanup. The statistical analysis used a matrix of relational social linkages to compare with a matrix of individual risk perceptions The analysis confirmed the hypothesis suggesting that social linkages in communities may play an important role in focusing risk perceptions.     

Best practice in couple relationship education

Relationship education is widely available to couples and is intended to reduce the prevalence of relationship distress, divorce, and the associated personal and social costs. To realize the potential benefits of couple relationship education, it needs to be evidence-based, offered in ways that attract couples at high-risk for relationship problems, and focused on factors that put couples at high-risk for future relationship problems.     

Heavy episodic drinking and college entrance

The college environment appears to encourage heavy drinking. Consequently, correlates of student drinking were assessed at college entrance. First-semester freshmen (N = 520, 54 percent women) completed self-report measures of social affiliation and self/peer drinking for high school and college. Analyses indicated that: 1) increased drinking at college entrance mirrored perceived increases by peers, 2) perceptions of peer drinking were robustly overestimated with women displaying the larger overestimation bias; and 3) social affiliation was associated with men's drinking and moderated its relation to perceived peer drinking at college entrance. These results advance understanding of the manner in which heavy drinking patterns emerge as men and women enter college, and campus programs that consider these factors may better promote health and reduce the harms associated with heavy drinking among college students.     

The Four S Model in action for de-escalation. An innovative state hospital-university collaborative endeavor

In this article, the Four S Model is presented as a working clinical framework for generating structured nursing interventions and treatment plans. The de-escalation process, formalized by the De-escalation/Alternative to Restraint Flowsheet, is one way in which the model is being operationalized to reduce seclusion and restraints. As shown by the flowsheet, the model allows for integration of mental health and mental illness. It spans the scope of nursing practice at all levels, from para-professional to advanced practice nurse, by integrating the mental health concepts of communication, leadership, clinical judgement, critical thinking, and caring within its framework. Most important, the flexibility to individualize treatment that is built into the model allows for generalization to all psychiatric presentations.     

Ethnic Stratification and Inter-Generational Differences in Japan: A Comparative Study of Korean and Japanese Status Attainment

Abstract: There are plenty of stereotypical discourses concerning the Korean minority in Japan that are widely accepted, not because of their plausibility, but because of the lack of basic empirical data. In order to fill this intellectual vacuum, I conducted a social stratification and mobility survey focusing on resident Korean men in 1995, comparable with the Japanese sample. The purpose of this article is exploratory rather than aimed at hypothesis testing, given the extreme paucity of the earlier empirical data for the ana‐lysis of Korean minority status attainment. The results show that:  

• 1 For the Korean minority in Japan, class resources translate into educational attainment to a much lower extent than for the Japanese.
• 2 Korean status attainment patterns deviate from those of their Japanese counterparts. For the Japanese, the crucial status attainment path is secured through educational attainment, which is not the case among Koreans.
• 3 Despite being denied access to such mainstream status attainment paths, major status indicators for Koreans are not significantly different than those of Japanese, and regarding this equality of outcomes, one of the possible explanations is that Korean ethnic disadvantages in the status attainment process may have been overcome by mobilizing informal bilateral ethnic networks.