Electric vehicles (EVs) have the potential to dramatically reduce vehicle emissions contributing to climate change without significantly reducing convenience or mobility. Despite their potential, EV market share remains low, necessitating research to identify factors that could encourage more widespread adoption. For instance, concern about climate change is associated with intent to adopt an EV, but little is known about mechanisms through which this concern may translate into action. This study builds on previous work investigating the roles of symbolic and instrumental attributes in low-emission vehicle adoption, focusing exclusively on EVs to better understand perceptions associated with their unique technical capabilities. Prior work has examined symbolism rather generally (e.g., in terms of status). We examine specific aspects of self-identity that EVs may reflect, representing the extent to which consumers perceive EVs as symbols that they are environmentalists and/or social innovators. In addition, extending prior work, we quantify the relative influence of these separate aspects of symbolism on EV adoption intentions alongside instrumental, psychological, and demographic factors. We find differing impacts of these two symbols on EV adoption intentions. Environmentalist symbolism is consistently the strongest predictor of adoption, across three dependent variables. Innovator symbolism predicts willingness to lease/buy an EV, trailing only environmentalist symbolism in effect size, and outperforming instrumental attributes as well as psychological and demographic factors. Additionally, we examine a potential mechanism through which concern about climate change may translate into EV adoption intentions: we find that seeing EVs as environmentalist and social innovator symbols partially mediates the relationship between concern about climate change and EV adoption intentions. These results have implications for EV marketing and policy, and suggest that emphasizing the potential for EVs to reinforce specific selfidentities may be a more promising strategy to increase adoption rates than emphasizing instrumental attributes such as fuel efficiency. Additionally, efforts are being made to integrate EVs into the power grid using "Vehicle to Grid" 49 technology, whereby EV batteries are used as distributed storage. In light of this emerging technology, a 50 large EV fleet could offer additional benefits to the power sector including power grid regulation, 51 spinning reserve, peak load shaving, and load leveling (Tan et al., 2016). In some situations, it may even be possible for EVs to obviate the need for additional electricity generation, for instance, by discharging unused battery energy back onto the grid during peak demand periods (Jochem et al., 2015). Despite these advantages and various government subsidies, EVs accounted for only 0.7% of U.S. market share in 2015 (IEA, 2016). Although the availability of financial incentives is positively correlated with EV adoption rates, price signals represent only one ...
Glycine betaine is a powerful osmoprotectant molecule present in the inner medulla of the kidney and excreted into urine. It may be responsible for the ability of Escherichia coli to grow in hypertonic urine. Also, strains of E. coli that cause urinary tract infections may be more salt-tolerant than strains from other sites. To explore these questions, 301 isolates from blood, urine, or stool and 12 representative enteric strains were examined. Tolerance varied from 0.1 to 0.7 M NaCl (median, 0.5) in minimal medium. There were no significant differences in salt tolerance by site of isolation. A salt-sensitive enteric strain that responded poorly to glycine betaine and mutant strains lacking the ability to synthesize or transport glycine betaine did not grow well in hypertonic urine. Accumulation of glycine betaine appears to be a mechanism by which E. coli can adapt to external osmotic forces and grow in hypertonic urine.
During a study of the nutritional requirements of clinical isolates of Escherichia coli, we found that 21 (7.0%) of 301 strains required nicotinamide to grow in minimal medium. The nicotinamide-requiring strains were present in 16 (15.8%) of 101 cultures of urine from young women with acute cystitis, in 5 (5.0%) of 100 stool specimens from healthy adults, and in none of 100 blood samples from adult patients with bacteremia. Most of the strains belonged to serogroup O18:K1:H7, were hemolytic, possessed type 1 fimbriae, and exhibited similar patterns of antibiotic susceptibility. Two of the urinary isolates expressed S fimbriae, and all 16 urinary isolates contained the sfaS homologue gene on their chromosomes. One of the stool isolates contained the sfaS gene. The urinary isolates closely resembled a large clone of E. coli that is reportedly associated with neonatal meningitis and sepsis. It may be possible to detect this and related clones by their requirement for nicotinamide and to screen strains for S fimbriae by relatively inexpensive hemagglutination methods, including the use of avian P1 antigens to detect mannose-resistant, non-P-fimbriated E. coli; the agglutination of bovine erythrocytes; and the use of bovine mucin to detect sialyl galactosides in S fimbriae.
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