Mediamusic (E-Journal)
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Untangling drivers for supplier environmental and social responsibility:An investigation in Philips Lighting's Chinese supply chain
No full textThis study unpacks the environmental and social dimensions of supplier responsibility and links each dimension to distinct drivers. Using stakeholder theory and the relational view, we distinguish between two main drivers: stakeholder pressures (i.e., from regulatory agencies, buying firms, and nongovernmental organizations) and relational mechanisms offered by multinational companies (MNCs) (i.e., lean trainings and relational capital). We used a multi-method research design to study how these drivers uniquely influence supplier responsibility in an emerging-country context. An in-depth case study with Philips Lighting and 10 of its Chinese suppliers reveals causal inferences that link stakeholder and relational drivers with each responsibility dimension (environmental vs. social). Audit and survey data from Philips Lighting's 134 Chinese suppliers, complemented with four archival databases, bolster these inferences. Overall, the results show that supplier environmental responsibility can be fostered through both stakeholder pressures and relational drivers; whereas, supplier social responsibility is much harder to address. The integrated methods offer a fuller, more comprehensive understanding of the specifics of supplier responsibility in China and also provide recommendations for MNCs that seek to improve it.</p
Is the twig bent as the tree is inclined? Children and parents interacting with school-distributed literacy assignments
No full textIn this study, we analyze in-depth interviews conducted with 26 Dutch third-graders as well as interviews with one of each child's parents. The children attended one of six schools, each with a relatively large population of families with a low socioeconomic status, where home-based literacy assignments aimed at increasing children's enjoyment of reading were distributed for a duration of 3 years. The aim of this study is to gain knowledge of distinctive interaction characteristics of child-parent dyads regarding at-home literacy, to learn how these characteristics can help educational professionals and researchers answer to the needs of children and parents when designing and distributing at-home reading assignments. Based on the attitudes towards reading and the skillset of child and parent(s), we distinguished three reader-profiles: (1) Autonomously motivated readers, (2) Incompatible readers, and (3) Generational non-readers. The practical implications of our research are that, to be appealing, at-home reading assignments should be differentiated, nonrepetitive, and concrete, complete, and structured. Prerequisite implications are that both children and parents value regular positive feedback on their at-home literacy activities and that, in approaching parents, it appears to be advisable to take them for what they are: parents, not substitute teachers.</p
Patients With COVID-19 Have Elevated Levels of Circulating Extracellular Vesicle Tissue Factor Activity That Is Associated With Severity and Mortality
No full textOBJECTIVE: Patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have a high rate of thrombosis. We hypothesized that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 leads to induction of TF (tissue factor) expression and increased levels of circulating TF-positive extracellular vesicles (EV) that may drive thrombosis. Approach and Results: We measured levels of plasma EV TF activity in 100 patients with COVID-19 with moderate and severe disease and 28 healthy controls. Levels of EV TF activity were significantly higher in patients with COVID-19 compared with controls. In addition, levels of EV TF activity were associated with disease severity and mortality. Finally, levels of EV TF activity correlated with several plasma markers, including D-dimer, which has been shown to be associated with thrombosis in patients with COVID-19.CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection induces the release of TF-positive EVs into the circulation that are likely to contribute to thrombosis in patients with COVID-19. EV TF activity was also associated with severity and mortality.</p
Clinical application of near infrared fluorescence imaging in solid cancers:Enhancing surgical accuracy by lighting up tumors
No full textThe current thesis investigates the use of novel optical imaging agents for the enhanced detection of solid cancer types. To date, it is challenging to differentiate between tumor tissue and adjacent healthy tissue, which is of the utmost importance during diagnosis and treatment phases of cancer patients. It is essential to precisely visualize which lesions are cancer, and subsequently determine the border of these lesions during surgery. Fluorescence imaging, where a fluorescent imaging agent lights up tumor cells, can assist in this clinical challenge. In the current thesis, fluorescence imaging has been performed during endoscopy procedures of the esophagus and colon, as well as during surgery procedures of a variety solid tumors. Here, it was found that fluorescence imaging can reliably assist in the detection of tumor tissue, and can help the clinician during the procedure in clinical decision-making. It was shown that fluorescence imaging was able to visualize tumor-positive resection margins and could detect additional tumor lesions, whereas this was missed using standard of care procedures. Based on the results described in this thesis, larger studies have been commenced to further investigate, and eventually implement, fluorescence imaging in the treatment of cancer patients
The Abell 3391/95 galaxy cluster system:A 15 Mpc intergalactic medium emission filament, a warm gas bridge, infalling matter clumps, and (re-) accelerated plasma discovered by combining SRG/eROSITA data with ASKAP/EMU and DECam data
No full textContext. Inferences about dark matter, dark energy, and the missing baryons all depend on the accuracy of our model of large-scale structure evolution. In particular, with cosmological simulations in our model of the Universe, we trace the growth of structure, and visualize the build-up of bigger structures from smaller ones and of gaseous filaments connecting galaxy clusters. Aims. Here we aim to reveal the complexity of the large-scale structure assembly process in great detail and on scales from tens of kiloparsecs up to more than 10 Mpc with new sensitive large-scale observations from the latest generation of instruments. We also aim to compare our findings with expectations from our cosmological model. Methods. We used dedicated SRG/eROSITA performance verification (PV) X-ray, ASKAP/EMU Early Science radio, and DECam optical observations of a ~15 deg2 region around the nearby interacting galaxy cluster system A3391/95 to study the warm-hot gas in cluster outskirts and filaments, the surrounding large-scale structure and its formation process, the morphological complexity in the inner parts of the clusters, and the (re-)acceleration of plasma. We also used complementary Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect data from the Planck survey and custom-made Galactic total (neutral plus molecular) hydrogen column density maps based on the HI4PI and IRAS surveys. We relate the observations to expectations from cosmological hydrodynamic simulations from the Magneticum suite. Results. We trace the irregular morphology of warm and hot gas of the main clusters from their centers out to well beyond their characteristic radii, r200. Between the two main cluster systems, we observe an emission bridge on large scale and with good spatial resolution. This bridge includes a known galaxy group but this can only partially explain the emission. Most gas in the bridge appears hot, but thanks to eROSITA’s unique soft response and large field of view, we discover some tantalizing hints for warm, truly primordial filamentary gas connecting the clusters. Several matter clumps physically surrounding the system are detected. For the “Northern Clump,” we provide evidence that it is falling towards A3391 from the X-ray hot gas morphology and radio lobe structure of its central AGN. Moreover, the shapes of these X-ray and radio structures appear to be formed by gas well beyond the virial radius, r100, of A3391, thereby providing an indirect way of probing the gas in this elusive environment. Many of the extended sources in the field detected by eROSITA are also known clusters or new clusters in the background, including a known SZ cluster at redshift z = 1. We find roughly an order of magnitude more cluster candidates than the SPT and ACT surveys together in the same area. We discover an emission filament north of the virial radius of A3391 connecting to the Northern Clump. Furthermore, the absorption-corrected eROSITA surface brightness map shows that this emission filament extends south of A3395 and beyond an extended X-ray-emitting object (the “Little Southern Clump”) towards another galaxy cluster, all at the same redshift. The total projected length of this continuous warm-hot emission filament is 15 Mpc, running almost 4 degrees across the entire eROSITA PV observation field. The Northern and Southern Filament are each detected at >4σ. The Planck SZ map additionally appears to support the presence of both new filaments. Furthermore, the DECam galaxy density map shows galaxy overdensities in the same regions. Overall, the new datasets provide impressive confirmation of the theoretically expected structure formation processes on the individual system level, including the surrounding warm-hot intergalactic medium distribution; the similarities of features found in a similar system in the Magneticum simulation are striking. Our spatially resolved findings show that baryons indeed reside in large-scale warm-hot gas filaments with a clumpy structure
Editorial introduction for the Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews special issue "Social stress: Psychological and psychosomatic implications"
No full textAmphipathic Side Chain of a Conjugated Polymer Optimizes Dopant Location toward Efficient N-Type Organic Thermoelectrics
No full textThere is no molecular strategy for selectively increasing the Seebeck coefficient without reducing the electrical conductivity for organic thermoelectrics. Here, it is reported that the use of amphipathic side chains in an n-type donor–acceptor copolymer can selectively increase the Seebeck coefficient and thus increase the power factor by a factor of ≈5. The amphipathic side chain contains an alkyl chain segment as a spacer between the polymer backbone and an ethylene glycol type chain segment. The use of this alkyl spacer does not only reduce the energetic disorder in the conjugated polymer film but can also properly control the dopant sites away from the backbone, which minimizes the adverse influence of counterions. As confirmed by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations with the host–dopant distance as the only variable, a reduced Coulombic interaction resulting from a larger host–dopant distance contributes to a higher Seebeck coefficient for a given electrical conductivity. Finally, an optimized power factor of 18 µW m –1 K –2 is achieved in the doped polymer film. This work provides a facile molecular strategy for selectively improving the Seebeck coefficient and opens up a new route for optimizing the dopant location toward realizing better n-type polymeric thermoelectrics. </p
Individual atrasentan exposure is associated with long-term kidney and heart failure outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease
No full textAtrasentan, an endothelin receptor antagonist, showed clinically significant albuminuria reduction with minimal signs of fluid retention in phase 2 trials. We evaluated whether plasma exposure was associated with long-term outcomes for kidney protection and heart failure in the phase 3 SONAR trial (n=3668) in type 2 diabetics with chronic kidney disease. A population pharmacokinetic model was used to estimate plasma exposure of atrasentan 0.75 mg/day. Parametric time-to-event models were used to quantify the association between plasma exposure and long-term outcomes. Mean atrasentan plasma exposure was 41.4 ng.h/mL (2.5th to 97.5th P: 14.2 to 139.9). Compared to placebo, a mean atrasentan exposure translated in a hazard ratio of 0.76 (95% CI: 0.28-0.85) for kidney events and 1.13 (95% CI: 1.03-2.20) for heart failure events. At the mean atrasentan exposure the kidney protective effect was larger than the increase in heart failure supporting the atrasentan 0.75 mg/day dose in this population.</p
Euclid:Forecasts for -cut Point Statistics
No full textModelling uncertainties at small scales, i.e. high k in the power spectrum P (k), due to baryonic feedback, nonlinear structure growth and the fact that galaxies are biased tracers poses a significant obstacle to fully leverage the constraining power of the Euclid wide-field survey. k-cut cosmic shear has recently been proposed as a method to optimally remove sensitivity to these scales while preserving usable information. In this paper we generalise the k-cut cosmic shear formalism to 3 × 2 point statistics and estimate the loss of information for different k-cuts in a 3 × 2 point analysis of the Euclid data. Extending the Fisher matrix analysis of Euclid Collaboration: Blanchard et al. (2019), we assess the degradation in constraining power for different k-cuts. We work in the idealised case and assume the galaxy bias is linear, the covariance is Gaussian, while neglecting uncertainties due to photo-z errors and baryonic feedback. We find that taking a k-cut at 2.6 h Mpc−1 yields a dark energy Figure of Merit (FOM) of 1018. This is comparable to taking a weak lensing cut at ℓ = 5000 and a galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing cut at ℓ = 3000 in a traditional 3 × 2 point analysis. We also find that the fraction of the observed galaxies used in the photometric clustering part of the analysis is one of the main drivers of the FOM. Removing 50% (90%) of the clustering galaxies decreases the FOM by 19% (62%). Given that the FOM depends so heavily on the fraction of galaxies used in the clustering analysis, extensive efforts should be made to handle the real-world systematics present when extending the analysis beyond the luminous red galaxy (LRG) sample.</p
GINA 2020: Potential impacts, opportunities and challenges for primary care
No full textIn 2019, it was reported that changes to asthma management reported in the Global Initiative for Asthma "…might be considered the most fundamental changes in asthma management in 30 years." These changes refer to the recommendation that the treatment of asthma in adolescents and adults would no longer include short acting ß2 agonist (SABA) only, but that people with asthma should receive either symptom-driven inhaled corticosteroids (ICS)-containing treatment (mild asthma) or daily ICS-containing treatment. The fundamental reason for this shift was driven by concerns about the risks and consequences associated with SABA only treatment, the need to improve the day-to-day management of asthma symptoms to prevent exacerbations and emergent evidence. These recommendations have subsequently been reinforced and characterized in GINA 2020 and it is reasonable to say that they are significant: not only in terms of an asthma management framework, but also as a management approach in practice. This opinion article specifically focuses on opportunities and challenges associated with the implementation of GINA 2020 in primary care practice which need to be recognised and addressed if the shift in asthma treatment paradigm is to be successfully implemented into day-to-day practice