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This research study aimed to provide the South African beer industry and their advertising representative with insights into 18-28-year-olds’ perceptions of the communicated messaged in beer advertisements. This included the use of social and cultural references to attract their attention and the suggestions made by the advertisements about the consumption of beer in certain contexts. This research study aimed to determine the selected sample’s (NMMU students) perceptions of four South African Breweries beer brands, namely Castle Lager, Castle Lite, Carling Black Label and Hansa Pilsener, in terms of their use of references to social and cultural identity of males and females in South Africa within their television advertisements. The survey questionnaire helped determine what the selected sample’s perceptions were of each advertisement, and whether they fully understood the desired communicated message. It also helped to understand whether each advertisement captured their attention. A semiotic analysis of each advertisement was conducted to deconstruct the advertisements and to determine if they do contain elements of social and cultural identity in an attempt to sell products to their target audiences, or to affect the perceptions of the brand and drinking beer in general. This was achieved by examining the signs and imagery in each advertisement, looking specifically at the representamen, interpretant and object using Pierce’s model of a sign. / Hierdie navorsingstudie is daarop gemik om die Suid-Afrikaanse bierbedryf en sy adverteerders ‘n beter begrip te gee van verbruikers tussen die ouderdomme van 18-28, se waarnemings van die boodskappe in bieradvertensies. Dit sluit in die gebruik van sosiale en kulturele verwysings, wat veronderstel is om die verbruikers se aandag te trek, asook die suggesties wat deur die advertensies gemaak word met betrekking tot die verbruik van bier in ‘n bepaalde konteks. Die studie moes ook die gekose monster (“selected sample”), nl. die NMMU-student se persepsies bepaal van vier handelsname van die South African Breweries, naamlik Castle Lager, Castle Lite, Carling Black Label en Hansa Pilsener, en in watter mate daar in bieradvertensies oor die televisie verwys word na die sosiale en kulturele identiteit van Suid-Afrikaanse mans en vroue. Die meningspeiling het die groep se waarnemings van elke advertensie, asook of die boodskap wat gekommunikeer is ten volle verstaan word, ondersoek. Die vraelys kon ook vasstel of die advertensies hulle aandag getrek het. ‘n Semiotiese ontleding van elke advertensie is gedoen, om die advertensies te dekodeer en sodoende vas te stel of die adverteerders elemente van sosiale en kulturele identiteit gebruik het om hul produkte aan die teikenmarkte te verkoop, of om die idees rondom die handelsnaam en bier oor die algemeen te beïnvloed. Aan die hand van Peirce se semiotiese model is die tekens en beelde in elke advertensie bestudeer.

Amongst the important social problems today in both rural and urban areas, is the condition of inebriety. Although considerable research has been conducted on the condition of alcoholism, little has been undertaken on the condition of inebriety. It is an observable fact that, while members of some ethnic groups who drink substantially and frequently become inebriated, members of other ethnic groups who also partake of alcoholic beverages in substantial quantities do not experience inebriety. This suggests that the culture of the ethnic group determines the group's drinking patterns to a large measure, and that drinking patterns may be such that they lead participants to the condition of inebriety. In this thesis, I have attempted to examine drinking patterns of three ethnic groups in relation to several aspects of their cultural background. I devised and tested five hypotheses which are relevant to attitudes towards drinking, reasons for drinking, settings and times of the day in which drinking occurs. I have attempted also to examine Indian and Italian drinking patterns to determine to what extent each group matches or differs from Anglo-Saxon drinking patterns. The study was made on a comparative basis, and field work was conducted amongst three ethnic groups in the Greater Vancouver area during the summer, fall and winter, 1967-1968. The three groups are the Coast Salish Indians of the Mission Reserve, Immigrant Italians and Anglo-Saxons of East Vancouver. Data on the problem briefly outlined above, were sought through interviews with thirty representatives of each group, as well as by observations of members of the ethnic groups in their social drinking establishments. Two key informants in each ethnic group, as well as several pertinent documentary sources, were also consulted. The available data collected in the study suggested that the proposed hypotheses were valid. There appears to be a close relationship between the cultural background of an ethnic group and its drinking patterns. However, it needs to be stated that there were many inadequacies and limitations in the reference literature used, basic premises and hypotheses proposed, and research techniques employed. Data also suggested that there was a high degree of similarity between Anglo-Saxon and Indian drinking patterns and a high degree of difference between Anglo-Saxon and Italian drinking patterns. Additional and enlightening information which the data suggested was that many of the cultural aspects of the Indian group, particularly, are in a marked stage of transition. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

Il existe une forte demande de l'industrie pour des technologies permettant de réduire la teneur en alcool des vins. Bien que des levures à faible rendement alcool aient été développées par ingénierie génétique, les approches non-OGM sont aujourd'hui largement privilégiées. Nous avons mis en œuvre et comparé différentes stratégies d'évolution adaptative, à partir d'une souche œnologique commerciale, afin de réorienter le flux carboné vers la formation de glycérol aux dépens de l'éthanol. Après 200 générations en conditions de stress salin, nous avons obtenu des souches évoluées présentant une augmentation de la production de glycérol de 50 à 70 %, capables de diminuer de 0,45 à 0,80 % (v/v) la teneur en alcool de vins naturels ou synthétiques. Cette réorientation s'accompagne d'une accumulation de succinate et de 2,3-butanediol et d'une réduction de la vitesse fermentaire. Les mutants ont une survie accrue en conditions de stress salin et carence en glucose. Afin d'identifier les mécanismes sous-jacents, nous avons réalisé des analyses du transcriptome, du métabolome (exo- et endo-) et du génome des souches évoluées. Nous avons montré que le phénotype des mutants n'est pas dû à une dérégulation ou à des mutations des gènes de la voie de synthèse du glycérol mais à de larges modifications du métabolisme carboné, énergétique et redox. Le génome des souches évoluées présente des pertes d'hétérozygotie qui pourraient contribuer au phénotype observé. L'étude génétique d'une souche évoluée montre une origine multigénique des traits métaboliques. Une analyse de cartographie de QTL en utilisant une approche « bulk sequencing » a été initiée pour identifier les mutations impliquées dans le caractère fort glycérol/faible éthanol. Ces travaux ont ainsi permis de développer et caractériser des souches œnologiques faibles productrices d'alcool et de fournir un cadre pour l'identification des bases moléculaires impliquées.Mots-clefs : S. cerevisiae, fermentation œnologique, évolution adaptative, éthanol, glycérol, transcriptome, métabolome, génome. / There is a strong demand from the industry for technologies to reduce the alcohol content of wine. Although low-alcohol yield yeasts have been developed by genetic engineering, GMO-free approaches are now widely preferred. We have implemented and compared different strategies for adaptive evolution to redirect the carbon flux towards glycerol formation at the expense of ethanol. After 200 generations salt stress conditions, we obtained evolved strains with glycerol production increased by 50 to 70%, able to decrease from 0.45 to 0.80% (v/v) the alcohol content of natural or synthetic wines. This shift is accompanied by an accumulation of succinate and 2,3-butanediol and a reduced fermentation rate. Mutants also exhibit a better survival under salt stress and glucose restriction conditions. To identify the underlying mechanisms, we analysed the transcriptome, metabolome (endo- and exo-) and genome of the evolved strains. We showed that the evolved phenotype is not due to deregulation or mutations of genes of involved in the glycerol synthesis pathway but to major changes in carbon, energy and redox metabolism. The genome of the evolved strains revealed loss of heterozygosity which could contribute to the observed phenotype. The genetic study of an evolved strain shows that the metabolic traits are under multigenic control. A QTL mapping analysis using a "bulk sequencing" approach was initiated to identify mutations involved in the high glycerol/low ethanol trait. This work has enabled the development and characterization of low alcohol wine yeast strains and has provided a framework for the identification of the underlying molecular bases.Key-words: S. cerevisiae, wine fermentation, adaptative evolution, ethanol, glycerol, transcriptome, metabolome, genome.

Thesis focuses on describing the consumer behavior on the alcoholic beverages market in the Czech Republic. In addition to quantitative analysis, which uses the MML - TGI data from Median Ltd., thesis also includes qualitative research with further analysis of selected segments. Based on the findings from analysis, recommendation for creating a new alcoholic beverage is made according to lifestyle of the consumer.

This diploma thesis allows getting complex summary about important aspects of tax theory with special focus on excise taxes. The thesis is an analysis of excise tax on alcoholic beverages and tobacco products in the Czech Republic in the years 2000-2015. The analysis includes an assessment of the impact of rates increase of specific excise taxes on the state budget, the consumption of selected products and the number of detected tax evasions. The thesis demonstrated a positive correlation between the increase in excise taxes and revenues from alcoholic beverages and tobacco products. Increasing rates but also leads to a decrease in consumption of these products and has an impact on the number of detected cases of tax evasions in the area of excise taxes.

Alcohol use among adolescents has been the subject of considerable research. A burgeoning literature exists identifying correlates and factors in teenage drinking. However, little is known about the adolescent abstaining from alcohol. The target of this study was this cohort of abstaining adolescents. The reasons for not drinking and the pressures to drink perceived among a sample of middle adolescent (grade 9) non-drinkers was investigated. The study was a survey administered in three parts. First, an alcohol-use survey was administered to all participating grade 9 students in two school districts. A second questionnaire was administered to 72 subjects reporting non-use of alcohol on the initial survey. Thirty of these subjects were then interviewed. Negative attitudes toward alcohol and drinking, a concern about alcohol's effects on health, and a dislike for the taste of alcoholic beverages were among the strongest reasons for not drinking given by the sample. The subjects' own attitudes about alcohol appear to be more important factors in their decisions to abstain than the direct influence of peers, parents or others. As in previous studies, religiosity was a strongly reported factor in the abstinence of a number (25%) of the subjects. It appears that at least for this sample of non-drinking adolescents, the perceived pressure to drink from peers, adults, the media or society generally is very limited. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Tax-setting policy belongs to the main duties of politicians from time immemorial. Since those times, people are questioning whether politicians, while setting taxes, are pursuing mainly interests of publi or their own. In this thesis, I am studying this question in the industry of alcoholic beverages, regulation of it's consumption and production. I am using two statistical models, simple model of partial equilibria and AIDS model (Almost Ideal Demand System), to estimate own price elasticity of demand for beer, wine and spirits in selected post-soviet countries: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Russian Federation. Linear model with mixed effects is estimated to uncover the strength and direction of dependency of alcohol policy on own price elasticity of demand for alcoholic beverages in the above mentioned countries. Results show, that politicians of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Lithuania and Russian Federation set the alcohol policy in accordance with maximization of tax revenue hypothesis, while Latvians seems to be rather vote maximizers. I have expected the politicians in Baltic states to behave similar and also least populistically from studied countries. But my expectations were not fulfilled.

Atualmente, as cepas de S. cerevisiae utilizadas na produção industrial de álcool combustível no Brasil são leveduras diplóides que metabolizam a sacarose através da sua hidrolise extracelular pela invertase periplasmática, seguida pelo transporte para o interior da célula das moléculas de glicose e frutose formadas, e posterior metabolização pela glicólise. Neste trabalho, utilizando técnicas de engenharia genética e posteriores cruzamentos, foram desenvolvidas cepas diplóides de S. cerevisiae capazes de consumir este açúcar por meio da sua captação direta pelo transportador codificado pelo gene AGT1, e hidrólise intracelular pela invertase citoplasmática codificada por uma versão modificada do gene SUC2. Estas modificações permitiram alcançar um rendimento 10% maior na produção de etanol, além de aumentar a velocidade de consumo da sacarose e diminuir a quantidade de açúcares residuais ao final do processo. Estes resultados abrem novos horizontes para tornar a produção de etanol no Brasil mais eficiente. / Currently, the S. cerevisiae strains used in industrial production of fuel alcohol in Brazil are diploid yeasts that of metabolize sucrose through its extracellular hydrolysis by the periplasmic invertase, followed by the transport of the formed glucose and fructose into the cells, and further metabolism through glycolysis. In this study, utilizing genetic engineering techniques and further crosses, diploid strains of S. cerevisiae were developed that are able to consume this sugar through its direct uptake by the transporter encoded by the AGT1 gene, and intracellular hydrolysis by the cytoplasmic invertase encoded by a modified version of the SUC2 gene. These modifications allowed achieving a 10% higher yield in the production of ethanol, besides increasing the sucrose consumption rate and decreasing the amount of residual sugars at the end of the process. These results open new horizons to turn ethanol production in Brazil more efficient.

Durante o crescimento da levedura Saccharomyces cerevisiae em meios contendo sacarose, a enzima invertase hidrolisa a sacarose no ambiente extracelular em glicose e frutose, as quais são posteriormente captadas pelas células por difusão facilitada. Num trabalho prévio, a localização da enzima invertase foi modificada nesta levedura, eliminando-se a forma extracelular e superexpressando-se a forma intracelular da enzima (Stambuk et al., 2009). Como resultado, a captação de sacarose por esta linhagem modificada (iSUC2) é realizada pelo co-transporte ativo com íons H+, implicando no gasto de 1 mol de ATP para cada mol de H+ extrudado pelas células para manutenção do pH intracelular. Como forma de compensar este gasto energético, espera-se que a linhagem iSUC2 desvie uma maior parte do fluxo de carbono para a geração de energia e, consequentemente, para a formação de etanol, em relação a uma linhagem selvagem. No presente trabalho, uma avaliação fisiológica quantitativa de uma linhagem com esta modificação genética foi realizada tanto em quimiostatos limitados por sacarose, como em cultivos descontínuos com sacarose como única fonte de carbono. Os dados obtidos em quimiostatos anaeróbios demonstram que na linhagem iSUC2 a enzima invertase ficou retida no ambiente intracelular e apresentou atividade absoluta total cerca de duas vezes maior que na linhagem-referência (SUC2). Além disto, verificou-se um aumento de 4% no fator de conversão de sacarose a etanol (Y ETH/S), em relação à linhagem SUC2. No entanto, como foi observado que cerca de 8 % da sacarose não foi consumida pelas células da linhagem iSUC2 durante o estado-estacionário dos quimiostatos anaeróbios, decidiu-se melhorar a capacidade do transporte ativo deste dissacarídeo nesta linhagem através de uma estratégia de engenharia evolutiva caracterizada pelo cultivo destas células em quimiostatos longos limitados por sacarose, em anaerobiose. Obteve-se assim, após cerca de 60 gerações, uma linhagem mutante (iSUC2 evoluída) com atividade de transporte de sacarose 20 vezes superior à linhagem iSUC2, sendo capaz de consumir toda a sacarose do meio de cultivo. Esta linhagem apresentou um aumento de 11% no YETH/S e uma diminuição de 27% no fator de conversão de sacarose a células (YX/S), quando comparada à linhagem-referência. A análise do transcriptoma revelou o aumento da expressão de vários genes codificadores de transportadores de hexoses, bem como genes relacionados ao metabolismo de maltose, incluindo o gene do transportador de alta-afinidade para alfa-glicosídeos AGT1, quando a linhagem iSUC2 evoluída foi comparada à linhagem iSUC2. Detectou-se que a evolução em quimiostato resultou na duplicação do gene AGT1, sem que houvesse mutação neste gene. Através da superexpressão do gene AGT1 na linhagem iSUC2, conseguiu-se gerar uma linhagem que apresentou YETH/S muito próximo ao da linhagem iSUC2 evoluída. No entanto, outros parâmetros fisiológicos, foram diferentes nestas duas linhagens, indicando que a duplicação do gene AGT1 não foi a única mutação que ocorreu durante o processo de evolução em quimiostato. Este trabalho ilustra o potencial da combinação entre engenharia metabólica e engenharia evolutiva para a obtenção de linhagens de levedura melhoradas, para aplicação na produção industrial de etanol combustível a partir de meios contendo sacarose. / When growing on sucrose-containing substrates, Saccharomyces cerevisiae secretes invertase that hydrolyses sucrose into glucose and fructose, which are subsequently assimilated by facilitated diffusion. In a previous work, the cellular location of invertase in yeast was modified, by eliminating the extracellular form of the enzyme and over-expressing the intracellular one (Stambuk et al., 2009). As a result, sucrose uptake by this modified strain (iSUC2) occurs by an active H+-sucrose symport system, in which 1 ATP needs to be used by the cells to extrude the proton co-transported. In order to compensate for this, it is expected that these cells will deviate a higher proportion of the carbon flow towards energy generation, and consequently to ethanol formation, in comparison with the wild-type phenotype (SUC2). In the present work, a quantitative physiological evaluation of the iSUC2 strain was performed in both batch and chemostat cultures. Cells from the iSUC2 strain harvested from steady-state anaerobic sucrose-limited chemostats retained all invertase intracellularly and showed a 2-fold higher total invertase activity, when compared to the SUC2 strain grown under identical conditions. Besides this, the ethanol yield on sucrose in the former cells was 4% higher than in the latter case. However, due to the high levels of residual sucrose during these cultivations with the iSUC2 strain, we attempted to improve the transport capacity in the iSUC2 strain by evolutionary engineering. After 60 generations of cultivation in an anaerobic sucrose-limited chemostat, an evolved strain was selected, which presented a 20-fold increase in the sucrose transport capacity, when compared with the parental strain (iSUC2), leading to almost no residual sucrose. During growth of this evolved strain in anaerobic sucrose-limited chemostats, the ethanol yield on sucrose was 11% higher and the biomass yield on sucrose was 27% lower, when compared with the SUC2 strain. Transcriptome analysis revealed an increase in the expression level of several hexose transporters, as well as many MAL-related genes, including the gene for the high-affinity permease AGT1. Indeed, it was verified that this gene was duplicated during the evolution experiment, but no point mutation was detected. By over-expressing the AGT1 gene in the iSUC2 strain, it was possible to attain a similar ethanol yield on sucrose, when compared to the evolved iSUC2 strain. However, several other physiological parameters were different in both strains, indicating that the AGT1 gene duplication was not the only mutation that occurred during evolution in the chemostat. To conclude, this work illustrates that the combination of metabolic and evolutionary engineering is a powerful strategy to obtain improved sucrose-fermenting yeast strains.