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PurposeThe customer as an active and engaged value co-creator raises new challenges for theory and practice, especially in the hospitality industry. However, the connection between engagement and co-creation is little studied in the hotel/tourism literature. This paper proposes a connection between customer engagement (CE) and value co-creation frameworks to ascertain and depict the internal actors' activities and factors that foster or hinder guests' co-creation and destruction of value.Design/methodology/approachThe researchers used qualitative methods (35 in-depth interviews, document analysis and four observation sessions) in seven regions of Ghana to explore the customer's perspective. Data were analyzed with NVivo11 within a thematic analysis framework.FindingsThe findings suggest that positive and negative engagement fosters or hinders guests' interactions, which lead to value co-creation or destruction. The research also discovered that negative interactions occasioned by any factor or actor trigger value destruction at multiple stages of the experience journey.Practical implicationsIndustry players can use the framework developed to assess their businesses, explore and reflect on the proposed value they aim to generate, and thus be more aware of how they can better facilitate value co-creation with their consumers and avoid value destruction.Originality/valueThis research proposes a novel connection between customer interactions, engagement and value co-creation to ascertain and depict the internal actors' activities and factors that foster or hinder customers' experience in the hotel/tourism industry.

\"Adoption has long been enmeshed in the politics of abortion. But as award-winning journalist Kathryn Joyce makes clear in The Child Catchers, adoption has lately become entangled in the conservative Christian agenda. To tens of millions of evangelicals, adoption has become a new front in the culture wars: a test of \"pro-life\" bonafides, a way to reinvent compassionate conservatism on the global stage, and a means to fulfill the \"Great Commission\" mandate that Christians evangelize the nations. Influential leaders fervently promote a new \"orphan theology,\" urging followers to adopt en masse, with little thought for the families these \"orphans\" may actually have. Christian adoption activists have added moral weight to a multi-billion dollar adoption industry intent on increasing the \"supply\" of adoptable children, both at home and overseas. The Child Catchers is a shocking expose; of what the adoption industry has become and how it got there, told through deep investigative reporting and the heartbreaking stories of individuals who found that their own, and their children's, well-being was ultimately irrelevant in a market driven by profit and now, pulpit command.\"-- Provided by publisher.

Selective breeding has been utilized to study the genetic basis of exercise behavior, but research suggests that epigenetic mechanisms, such as DNA methylation, also contribute to this behavior. In a previous study, we demonstrated that the brains of mice from a genetically selected high runner (HR) line have sex‐specific changes in DNA methylation patterns in genes known to be genomically imprinted compared to those from a non‐selected control (C) line. Through cross‐fostering, we also found that maternal upbringing can modify the DNA methylation patterns of additional genes. Here, we identify an additional set of genes in which DNA methylation patterns and gene expression may be altered by selection for increased wheel‐running activity and maternal upbringing. We performed bisulfite sequencing and gene expression assays of 14 genes in the brain and found alterations in DNA methylation and gene expression for Bdnf, Pde4d and Grin2b. Decreases in Bdnf methylation correlated with significant increases in Bdnf gene expression in the hippocampus of HR compared to C mice. Cross‐fostering also influenced the DNA methylation patterns for Pde4d in the cortex and Grin2b in the hippocampus, with associated changes in gene expression. We also found that the DNA methylation patterns for Atrx and Oxtr in the cortex and Atrx and Bdnf in the hippocampus were further modified by sex. Together with our previous study, these results suggest that DNA methylation and the resulting change in gene expression may interact with early‐life influences to shape adult exercise behavior. By analyzing the brains of mice genetically selected for elevated physical activity, we identify genes in which DNA methylation patterns and gene expression are modified as a result of genetic selection history and maternal upbringing. Our results suggest that DNA methylation and associated changes in gene expression may interact with early‐life influences to shape adult exercise behavior.

\"Examination of the post-WWII international phenomenon of governments legally taking indigenous children away from their primary families and placing them with adoptive parents in the U.S., Canada, and Australia\"-- Provided by publisher.

1. Long-lived migratory animals must balance the cost of current reproduction with their own condition ahead of a challenging migration and future reproduction. In these species, carry-over effects, which occur when events in one season affect the outcome of the subsequent season, may be particularly exacerbated. However, how carry-over effects influence future breeding outcomes and whether (and how) they also affect behaviour during migration and wintering is unclear. 2. Here we investigate carry-over effects induced by a controlled, bidirectional manipulation of the duration of reproductive effort on the migratory, wintering and subsequent breeding behaviour of a long-lived migratory seabird, the Manx shearwater Puffinus puffinus. By cross-fostering chicks of different age between nests, we successfully prolonged or shortened by ~25% the chick-rearing period of 42 breeding pairs. We tracked the adults with geolocators over the subsequent year and combined migration route data with at-sea activity budgets obtained from high-resolution saltwater-immersion data. Migratory behaviour was also recorded during non-experimental years (the year before and/or two years after manipulation) for a subset of birds, allowing comparison between experimental and non-experimental years within treatment groups. 3. All birds cared for chicks until normal fledging age, resulting in birds with a longer breeding period delaying their departure on migration; however, birds that finished breeding earlier did not start migrating earlier. Increased reproductive effort resulted in less time spent at the wintering grounds, a reduction in time spent resting daily and a delayed start of breeding with lighter eggs and chicks and lower breeding success the following breeding season. Conversely, reduced reproductive effort resulted in more time resting and less time foraging during the winter, but a similar breeding phenology and success compared with control birds the following year, suggesting that 'positive' carry-over effects may also occur but perhaps have a less long-lasting impact than those incurred from increased reproductive effort. 4. Our results shed light on how carry-over effects can develop and modify an adult animal's behaviour year-round and reveal how a complex interaction between current and future reproductive fitness, individual condition and external constraints can influence life-history decisions.

Corticosterone plays a central role in maintaining homeostasis, promoting energy acquisition, and regulating the stress response in birds. Exposure to elevated levels of corticosterone during development can profoundly alter offspring behaviour and physiology, but the effects of elevated maternal corticosterone on offspring development remain poorly understood. We tested two competing hypotheses concerning the effect of maternally derived corticosterone on growth and development of free‐living house wrens: (i) elevated maternal corticosterone causes damaging effects on nestling phenotype and fitness (collateral damage hypothesis) and (ii) increased maternal corticosterone enhances offspring fitness by preparing nestlings for the environment experienced by their mother (environmental/maternal‐matching hypothesis). We used a non‐invasive means to increase maternal corticosterone by providing females with corticosterone‐injected mealworms prior to and during egg production in the absence of any overt pre‐natal maternal stress. To disentangle pre‐ and post‐natal effects of this elevation in maternal corticosterone, we cross‐fostered young in two experiments: (i) nestlings of control and experimental females were reared by unmanipulated, natural females in a uniform maternal environment; (ii) a split‐brood design that enabled us to assess the interaction between the mother’s corticosterone treatment and that of the nestlings. There were significant pre‐natal effects of increased maternal corticosterone on nestling growth and survival. Offspring of females experiencing experimentally increased corticosterone were heavier and larger than offspring of control females. There also was a significant interaction between maternal corticosterone treatment and the corticosterone treatment to which young were exposed within the egg in their effect on nestling survival while in the nest; experimental young exhibited greater survival than control young, but only when reared by control mothers. There was also a significant effect of maternal corticosterone treatment on nestling stress reactivity and, in both experiments, on the eventual recruitment of offspring as breeding adults in the local population. These patterns are broadly consistent with the environmental/maternal‐matching hypothesis, and highlight the importance of disentangling pre‐ and post‐natal effects of manipulations of maternal hormone levels on offspring phenotype. A plain language summary is available for this article. Plain Language Summary

\"Pioneering adoption activist Jean Paton (1908-2002) fought effectively for 50 years to reform American adoption. Paton gave adult adoptees a voice and provided them with a healthy self-image; facilitated thousands of meetings between adult adoptees and their families of origin; fought to open sealed adoption records; and indefatigably explained the adoption experience to a wider public. Paton's ceaseless activity created the preconditions for the explosive emergence of the adoption reform movement in the 1970s. She was also instrumental in the formation of two of the movement's most vital organizations, Concerned United Birthparents and the American Adoption Congress. Using previously unexamined sources, historian E. Wayne Carp offers the first-ever biography of Jean Paton. Beginning in 1951, Paton, a twice-adopted, middle-aged ex-social worker, dedicated her life to overcoming American society's prejudices against adult adoptees and women who give birth out of wedlock. Her unflagging efforts over the next five decades helped reverse social workers' harmful policy and practice concerning adoption and sealed adoption records and change lawmakers' enactment of laws prejudicial to adult adoptees and birth mothers, struggles that continue to this day\"-- Provided by publisher.

Efforts to develop a global understanding of the functioning of the Earth as a system began in the mid-1980s. This effort necessitated linking knowledge from both the physical and biological realms. A motivation for this development was the growing impact of humans on the Earth system and need to provide solutions, but the study of the social drivers and their consequences for the changes that were occurring was not incorporated into the Earth System Science movement, despite early attempts to do so. The impediments to integration were many, but they are gradually being overcome, which can be seen in many trends for assessments, such as the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as well as both basic and applied science programs. In this development, particular people and events have shaped the trajectories that have occurred. The lessons learned should be considered in such emerging research programs as Future Earth , the new global program for sustainability research. The transitioning process to this new program will take time as scientists adjust to new colleagues with different ideologies, methods, and tools and a new way of doing science.