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When and why does proactive personality inhibit corner-cutting behaviors: A moderated mediation model of customer orientation and productivity climate
No full textThis study extends prior research by examining when and why proactive employees are less likely to engage in corner-cutting behaviors. We proposed that proactive personality is negatively related to corner-cutting behaviors via customer orientation, and productivity climate further enhances this negative effect. In Study 1, data collected using a two-wave panel survey from 191 working adults with customer-facing roles from the United Kingdom and the United States supported the hypotheses. Results were replicated in Study 2, using a multi-wave field survey of 209 frontline service employees from restaurants in China. The findings imply that to mitigate the occurrence of corner-cutting behaviors, organizations can screen job applicants based on their traits (i.e., proactive personality) and promote service employees' customer orientation
Perioperative population management for primary hip arthroplasty reduces hospital and postacute care utilization while maintaining or improving care quality
No full textStudy objective: Physician-led multidisciplinary care coordination decreases hospital-associated care needs. We aimed to determine whether such care coordination can show benefits through the posthospital discharge period for elective hip surgery. Design: Time Series of prospectively recorded and historical data. Setting: Academic tertiary care medical center and health system. Patients: 449 patients undergoing elective primary hip surgery. Interventions: For the intervention group we redesigned care with a comprehensive 14–16 week multidisciplinary standardized clinical pathway, the Ochsner hip arthroplasty perioperative surgical home (PSH). Essential pathway components were preoperative medical risk assessment, frailty scoring, home assessment, education and expectation setting. Collaborative team-based care, rigorous application of perioperative milestones, and proactive postoperative care coordination were key elements. Measurements: The intervention group was compared to historical controls with regard to demographics, risk factors, quality metrics, resource utilization and discharge disposition, the primary outcomes were hospital length of stay and postacute facility utilization. Main results: Compared to historical controls, the intervention group had similar risk factors and the same or better quality outcomes. It had less combined skilled nursing facility (SNF) and inpatient rehabilitation facility (IRF) utilization compared to controls (16.5% vs. 27.5%). More intervention patients were discharged with home self-care compared to historical controls (10.7% vs 5.3%). During the intervention period combined SNF/IRF utilization decreased substantially from 19.8% early on, to 13.2% during a later phase. Intervention patients had fewer hospital days compared to historical controls (1.86 vs 3.34 days, respectively; P < 0.0001). Conclusions: A perioperative population management oriented care model redesign was effective in decreasing hospital days and postacute facility-based care utilization, while quality metrics were maintained or improved
Timing and characterization of multiple fluid flow events in the Beibuwan Basin, northern South China Sea: implications for hydrocarbon maturation
No full textThe history of thermal and fluid flow events is of crucial importance to understand the mechanism of hydrocarbon maturation. The northern South China Sea (SCS) contains abundant hydrocarbon resources with high heat flow anomalies, but the mechanisms responsible for modification of thermal regimes are poorly understood. Here we conducted the first high-precision Rb-Sr isochron dating and geochemical analyses of authigenic illites separated from the Palaeogene sandstones in the Beibuwan Basin, northern SCS. Eight high-precision Rb-Sr isochron ages reveal three major thermal and fluid flow events in the Beibuwan Basin, northern SCS. The 34.5 ± 0.9 Ma and 23.6 ± 0.8 Ma events occurred in the western area are probably related to the Eocene-Oligocene transition characterised by a significant regional unconformity resulted from intensive uplift of Hainan Uplift and Oligocene-Miocene transition marked by a post-rift unconformity, respectively. By contrast, the 31.2 ± 0.6 Ma event affecting the eastern area appears to be closely associated with the igneous intrusion dated by zircon U/Pb to 32.3 ± 0.7 Ma. REE and stable isotope characteristics indicate that the illites from the western area formed within a meteoric-hydrothermal system, whilst those from the eastern area were likely precipitated from fluids heated by the large-scale igneous intrusion at higher water/rock ratios. Moreover, our data in conjunction with palaeo-temperature reconstructions show that the fluid flow events had profound effects on the rapid organic maturation in the northern SCS
OH visualization of ethylene combustion modes in the exhaust of a fundamental, supersonic combustor
No full textThis work examined combustion modes in a fundamental, axisymmetric, supersonic combustor at flight equivalent Mach numbers ranging from 7.5 to 9.0. Ethylene was injected at a variety of mass flow rates to examine both scram-mode, jet wake stabilized and dual-mode combustion. At higher flight Mach number conditions, the fuelling rate required to transition from scram-mode to dual-mode combustion increased. Distributions of the OH radical were observed using planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) in a cross-sectional plane immediately downstream of the combustor exit, and analyzed according to their variation in the radial and circumferential dimensions. It was observed that radial centroids of the ring-like OH PLIF signal for the scram-mode cases approached the centerline linearly with increasing equivalence ratio, but the dual-mode cases appeared to randomly fluctuate in the observed exhaust cross-section. The distributions of scram- and dual-mode cases were clustered in specific regions on plots of circumferential variation as a function of radial centroid, with a jet wake stabilized case appearing between the two clusters. These clusters may be used to help identify scram- and dual-mode combustion in future experiments
Trisulfide linked cholesteryl PEG conjugate attenuates intracellular ROS and collagen-1 production in a breast cancer co-culture model
No full textThe progression of cancer has been closely-linked with augmentation of cellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and ROS-associated changes in the tumour microenvironment (TME), including alterations to the extracellular matrix and associated low drug uptake. Herein we report the application of a co-culture model to simulate the ROS based cell–cell interactions in the TME using fibroblasts and breast cancer cells, and describe how novel reactive polymers can be used to modulate those interactions. Under the co-culture conditions, both cell types exhibited modifications in behaviour, including significant overproduction of ROS in the cancer cells, and elevation of the collagen-1 secretion and stained actin filament intensity in the fibroblasts. To examine the potential of using reactive antioxidant polymers to intercept ROS communication and thereby manipulate the TME, we employed H2S-releasing macromolecular conjugates which have been previously demonstrated to mitigate ROS production in HEK cells. The specific conjugate used, mPEG-SSS-cholesteryl (T), significantly reduced ROS levels in co-cultured cancer cells by approximately 50%. This reduction was significantly greater than that observed with the other positive antioxidant controls. Exposure to\ua0T\ua0was also found to downregulate levels of collagen-1 in the co-cultured fibroblasts, while exhibiting less impact on cells in mono-culture. This would suggest a possible downstream effect of ROS-mitigation by\ua0T\ua0on stromal-tumour cell signalling. Since fibroblast-derived collagens modulate crucial steps in tumorigenesis, this ROS-associated effect could potentially be harnessed to slow cancer progression. The model may also be beneficial for interrogating the impact of antioxidants on naturally enhanced ROS levels, rather than relying on the application of exogenous oxidants to simulate elevated ROS levels
Effects of insulin on IGF-1 receptors in equine lamellar tissue in vitro
No full textAlthough it is understood that equine endocrinopathic laminitis can be triggered by high concentrations of insulin, it is unclear whether this represents a direct action on lamellar tissue via insulin receptors (InsR), an interaction with IGF-1 receptors (IGF-1R), or some other, indirect action. This uncertainty is because of the reported scarcity of InsR in lamellar tissue and the low affinity of insulin for equine IGF-1R. In the present study, the effects of insulin and IGF-1 (as a positive control) were examined using lamellar explants isolated from the hooves of healthy horses and incubated in cell culture medium for between 2 min and 48 h. In this system, a low physiological concentration of IGF-1 (10 nM; 1.31 ng/mL) caused a marked increase in the appearance of phosphorylated IGF-1R after 5 min (P < 0.05), and this effect was blocked by a human anti-IGF-1R monoclonal antibody (mAb). However, a high concentration of insulin (10 nM; 1,430 μIU/mL) appeared to cause dephosphorylation of the IGF-1R after 5 min (P < 0.01), 15 min, and 30 min (P < 0.001). Using H-thymidine as a marker, it was also demonstrated that insulin and IGF-1–stimulated cell proliferation in lamellar explants over the same concentration range as each other (1–100 nM), implying that each peptide acts via its own receptor (P < 0.001). Conversely, the effect of both peptides could be blocked using a selective anti-IGF-1R mAb (P < 0.001), implying that insulin acts via IGF1-R (either directly or indirectly). Notwithstanding this conundrum, the results demonstrate that insulin acts directly on lamellar tissue and suggest that a therapeutic anti-IGF-1R mAb could be useful in treating or preventing endocrinopathic laminitis
Managing supply and demand of ecosystem services in dryland catchments
No full textThe abilities of global ecosystems to produce services are declining; while the demands for these services are rapidly increasing. However, there is limited understanding of mismatches between supply and demand of ecosystem services (ESs), which has serious implications for both human wellbeing and environmental sustainability, particularly in drylands. This paper provides three perspectives: (1) an understanding of ESs in dryland catchments from a systemic process perspective; (2) an understanding of ESs in dryland catchments from a spatial management perspective; and (3) an understanding of mismatches between ecosystem service supply (ESS) and ecosystem service demand (ESD) from a long timeframe perspective. We then propose a driver-based framework for managing the mismatches between ESS and ESD. It is expected that applying these perspectives and the framework in an integrated way can assist in addressing ES mismatches to achieve ecological security and sustainable development of the socio-economy in drylands
The impact of primary sedimentation on the use of iron-rich drinking water sludge on the urban wastewater system
No full textThe impact of primary sedimentation on the multiple use of iron in an urban wastewater system was investigated. Our previous work showed that in-sewer iron-rich drinking water sludge (DWS) dosing exhibited multiple benefits in the downstream processes. However, the system studied did not include a primary settler. We hypothesised that primary sedimentation could significantly change the characteristics of the wastewater flowing to the bioreactor, particularly its particulate components. This could in turn influence the availability of iron for phosphate removal from wastewater and/or sulfide removal in the anaerobic sludge digester. Long-term (~4 months) experiments were carried out on two laboratory-scale wastewater systems, each comprising sewers reactors, a primary sedimentation tank, a wastewater treatment reactor, and an anaerobic sludge digester. It was found the majority (85%) of the Fe contained in the sewer effluent was present in the primary sludge with the remaining (15%) staying in the primary effluent. This significantly affected the flow-on effect of Fe on the phosphate removal during wastewater treatment, removing only 1.2\ua0±\ua00.1\ua0mgP\ua0L−1, as compared to 3.5\ua0±\ua00.1\ua0mgP\ua0L−1\ua0achieved previously in the absence of a primary settler. However, the P to Fe removal ratio was 0.32\ua0mgP/mgFe, similar to the ratio observed previously without primary sedimentation (0.36\ua0mgP/mgFe). The dissolved sulfide removal in the anaerobic digester was 2.7\ua0±\ua00.5\ua0mgS\ua0L−1, substantially lower than 7.2\ua0±\ua00.3\ua0mgS\ua0L−1\ua0previously attained without primary sedimentation. This suggests that Fe in the primary sludge was not completely available for dissolved sulfide removal in the digester. However, the dewaterability of the anaerobically digested sludge improved with a relative increase of 25.0\ua0±\ua00.9%, compared to the 21.7\ua0±\ua00.6%, previously observed without primary sedimentation. The results demonstrated that primary sedimentation reduced the effectiveness to deliver the benefits of the in-sewer DWS dosing strategy, but the results are still favourable
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