bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Patterns of socio-cognitive stratification and perinatal risk in the child brain
Authors: Alnæs Dag , Kaufmann Tobias , Marquand Andre F. , Smith Stephen M. , Westlye Lars T.
Published: November 2019

The expanding behavioral repertoire of the developing brain during childhood and adolescence is shaped by complex brain-environment interactions and flavored by unique life experiences. The transition into young adulthood offer opportunities for adaptation and growth, but also increased susceptibility to environmental perturbations, such as the characteristics of social relationships, family environment, quality of schools and activities, financial security, urbanization and pollution, drugs, cultural practices, and values, that all act in concert with our genetic architecture and biology. Our multivariate brain-behavior mapping in 7,577 children aged 9-11 years across 585 brain imaging phenotypes, and 617 cognitive, behavioral, psychosocial and socioeconomic measures revealed three population modes of brain co-variation, which were robust as assessed by cross-validation and permutation testing, taking into account siblings and twins, identified using genetic data. The first mode revealed traces of perinatal complications, including pre-term and twin-birth, eclampsia and toxemia, shorter period of breast feeding and lower cognitive scores, with higher cortical thickness and lower cortical areas and volumes. The second mode reflected a pattern of socio-cognitive stratification, linking lower cognitive ability and socioeconomic status to lower cortical thickness, area and volumes. The third mote captured a pattern related to urbanicity, with particulate matter pollution (PM25) inversely related to home value, walkability and population density, associated with diffusion properties of white matter tracts. These results underscore the importance of a multidimensional and interdisciplinary understanding, integrating social, psychological and biological sciences, to map the constituents of healthy development and to identify factors that may precede maladjustment and mental illness.
Computational Model Predicts Paracrine and Intracellular Drivers of Fibroblast Phenotype After Myocardial Infarction
Authors: Zeigler Angela C. , Nelson Anders R. , Chandrabhatla Anirudha S. , Brazhkina Olga , Holmes Jeffrey W. , Saucerman Jeffrey J.
Published: November 2019

The fibroblast is a key mediator of wound healing in the heart and other organs, yet how it integrates multiple time-dependent paracrine signals to control extracellular matrix synthesis has been difficult to study in vivo. Here, we extended a computational model to simulate the dynamics of fibroblast signaling and fibrosis after myocardial infarction in response to time-dependent data for nine paracrine stimuli. This computational model was validated against dynamic collagen expression and collagen area fraction data from post-infarction rat hearts. The model predicted that while many features of the fibroblast phenotype at inflammatory or maturation phases of healing could be recapitulated by single static paracrine stimuli (interleukin-1 and angiotensin-II, respectively), mimicking of the proliferative phase required paired stimuli (e.g. TGFβ and angiotensin-II). Virtual overexpression screens with static cytokine pairs and after myocardial infarction predicted phase-specific regulators of collagen expression. Several regulators increased (Smad3) or decreased (Smad7, protein kinase G) collagen expression specifically in the proliferative phase. NADPH oxidase overexpression sustained collagen expression from proliferative to maturation phases, driven by TGFβ and endothelin positive feedback loops. Interleukin-1 overexpression suppressed collagen via NFκB and BAMBI (BMP and activin membrane-bound inhibitor) incoherent feedforward loops, but it then later sustained collagen expression due to the TGFβ positive feedback loop. These model-based predictions reveal network mechanisms by which the dynamics of paracrine stimuli and interacting signaling pathways drive the progression of fibroblast phenotypes and fibrosis after myocardial infarction.
Prediction of breast cancer proteins using molecular descriptors and artificial neural networks: a focus on cancer immunotherapy proteins, metastasis driver proteins, and RNA-binding proteins
Authors: López-Cortés Andrés , Cabrera-Andrade Alejandro , Vázquez-Naya José M. , Pazos Alejandro , Gonzáles-Díaz Humberto , Paz-y-Miño César , Guerrero Santiago , Pérez-Castillo Yunierkis , Tejera Eduardo , Munteanu Cristian R.
Published: November 2019

Background

Breast cancer (BC) is a heterogeneous disease characterized by an intricate interplay between different biological aspects such as ethnicity, genomic alterations, gene expression deregulation, hormone disruption, signaling pathway alterations and environmental determinants. Due to the complexity of BC, the prediction of proteins involved in this disease is a trending topic in drug design.

Methods

This work is proposing accurate prediction classifier for BC proteins using six sets of protein sequence descriptors and 13 machine learning methods. After using a univariate feature selection for the mix of five descriptor families, the best classifier was obtained using multilayer perceptron method (artificial neural network) and 300 features.

Results

The performance of the model is demonstrated by the area under the receiver operating characteristics (AUROC) of 0.980 ± 0.0037 and accuracy of 0.936 ± 0.0056 (3-fold cross-validation). Regarding the prediction of 4504 cancer-associated proteins using this model, the best ranked cancer immunotherapy proteins related to BC were RPS27, SUPT4H1, CLPSL2, POLR2K, RPL38, AKT3, CDK3, RPS20, RASL11A and UBTD1; the best ranked metastasis driver proteins related to BC were S100A9, DDA1, TXN, PRNP, RPS27, S100A14, S100A7, MAPK1, AGR3 and NDUFA13; and the best ranked RNA-binding proteins related to BC were S100A9, TXN, RPS27L, RPS27, RPS27A, RPL38, MRPL54, PPAN, RPS20 and CSRP1.

Conclusions

This powerful model predicts several BC-related proteins which should be deeply studied to find new biomarkers and better therapeutic targets. The script and the results are available as a free repository athttps://github.com/muntisa/neural-networks-for-breast-cancer-proteins.
SUMOylation targets shugoshin to stabilize sister kinetochore biorientation
Authors: Su Xue Bessie , Wang Menglu , Schaffner Claudia , Clift Dean , Nerusheva Olga O. , Tammasalu Triin , Wallek Andreas , Wu Yehui , Kelly David A. , Jeyaprakash A. Arockia , Storchova Zuzana , Hay Ronald , Marston Adèle L.
Published: November 2019

The accurate segregation of chromosomes during mitosis relies on the attachment of sister chromatids to microtubules from opposite poles, called biorientation. Sister chromatid cohesion resists microtubule forces, generating tension which provides the signal that biorientation has occurred. How tension silences the surveillance pathways that prevent cell cycle progression and correct erroneous kinetochore-microtubule remains unclear. Here we identify SUMOylation as a mechanism that promotes anaphase onset upon biorientation. SUMO ligases modify the tension-sensing pericentromere-localized chromatin protein, shugoshin, to stabilize bioriented sister kinetochore-microtubule attachments. In the absence of SUMOylation, Aurora B kinase removal from kinetochores is delayed. Shugoshin SUMOylation prevents its binding to protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) and release of this interaction is important for stabilizing sister kinetochore biorientation. We propose that SUMOylation modulates the kinase-phosphatase balance within pericentromeres to inactivate the error correction machinery, thereby allowing anaphase entry in response to biorientation.
Graph Convolutional Networks for Epigenetic State Prediction Using Both Sequence and 3D Genome Data
Authors: Lanchantin Jack , Qi Yanjun
Published: November 2019

Predictive models of DNA epigenetic state such as transcription factor binding are essential for understanding regulatory processes and developing gene therapies. It is known that the 3D genome, or spatial structure of DNA, is highly influential in the epigenetic state. Deep neural networks have achieved state of the art performance on epigenetic state prediction by using short windows of DNA sequences independently. These methods, however, ignore the long-range dependencies when predicting the epigenetic states because modeling the 3D genome is challenging. In this work, we introduce ChromeGCN, a graph convolutional network for epigenetic state prediction by fusing both local sequence and long-range 3D genome information. By incorporating the 3D genome, we relax the i.i.d. assumption of local windows for a better representation of DNA. ChromeGCN explicitly incorporates known long-range interactions into the modeling, allowing us to identify and interpret those important long-range dependencies in influencing epigenetic states. We show experimentally that by fusing sequential and 3D genome data using ChromeGCN, we get a significant improvement over the state-of-the-art deep learning methods as indicated by three metrics. Importantly, we show that ChromeGCN is particularly useful for identifying epigenetic effects in those DNA windows that have a high degree of interactions with other DNA windows.
Disrupting pathogenic interactions between α-synuclein, c-Abl, and redox stress
Authors: Ghosh Soumitra , Won Seok Joon , Fong Rebecca , Butler Nicholas J. M. , Moss Arianna , Wong Candance , Pan June , Sanchez Jennifer , Wu Long , Wang Jiejie , Manfredsson Fredric P. , Swanson Raymond A.
Published: November 2019

Objective

Redox stress, c-Abl activation, and α-synuclein aggregates each independently contribute to neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease. Interactions between these factors may underlie convergent and feed-forward mechanisms of disease progression.

Methods

α-synuclein aggregate formation was induced in neuronal cultures and mouse substantia nigra by exposure to pre-formed human α-synuclein fibrils or by AAV-mediated over-expression of α-synuclein. Aggregate formation, c-Abl activation, redox stress, and neurodegeneration were evaluated by immunohistochemistry and Western blots, and mouse motor function was evaluated using the rota-rod and pole tests. To suppress redox stress, cultures and mice were treated with N-acetyl cysteine, a thiol repletion agent that supports neuronal glutathione metabolism.

Results

In primary neuron cultures, the formation of α-synuclein aggregates led to redox stress and c-Abl activation. Redox stress alone, in the absence of α-synuclein aggregates, was also sufficient to induced c-Abl activation. N-acetyl cysteine suppressed redox stress, and likewise suppressed both c-Abl activation and α-synuclein aggregation. A similar pattern was observed in the two mouse models of Parkinson’s disease. In both models, α-synuclein aggregates in the substantia nigra were accompanied by redox stress, c-Abl activation, dopaminergic neurodegeneration and motor impairment, all of which were attenuated in mice treated with oral N-acetyl cysteine.

Interpretation

These results indicate that α-synuclein aggregates induce c-Abl activation by a redox stress mechanism. c-Abl in turn promotes α-synuclein aggregation, and this potentially feed-forward process can be blocked by N-acetyl cysteine. The findings thus add mechanistic support for N-acetyl cysteine as a therapeutic for Parkinson’s disease.
Transit-amplifying cells coordinate changes in intestinal epithelial cell-type composition
Authors: Sanman Laura E. , Chen Ina W. , Bieber Jake M. , Steri Veronica , Hann Byron , Wu Lani F. , Altschuler Steven J.
Published: November 2019

Renewing tissues have the remarkable ability to continually produce both proliferative progenitor and specialized differentiated cell-types. How are complex milieus of microenvironmental signals interpreted to coordinate tissue cell-type composition? Here, we develop a high-throughput approach that combines organoid technology and quantitative imaging to address this question in the context of the intestinal epithelium. Using this approach, we comprehensively survey enteroid responses to individual and paired perturbations to eight epithelial signaling pathways. We uncover culture conditions that enrich for specific cell-types, including Lgr5+ stem and enteroendocrine cells. We analyze interactions between perturbations and dissect mechanisms underlying an unexpected mutual antagonism between EGFR and IL-4 signals. Finally, we show that, across diverse perturbations, modulating proliferation of transit-amplifying cells also consistently changes the composition of differentiated secretory and absorptive cell-types. This property is conserved in vivo and can arise from differential amplification of secretory and absorptive progenitor cells. Taken together, the observations highlight an underappreciated role for transit-amplifying cells in which proliferation of these short-lived progenitors provides a lineage-based mechanism for tuning differentiated cell-type composition.
The flexible N-terminus of BchL protects its [4Fe-4S] cluster in oxygenic environments and autoinhibits activity
Authors: Corless Elliot , Saad Imran Syed Muhammad , Watkins Maxwell B. , Origanti Sofia , Bacik John-Paul , Kitelinger Robert , Soffe Mark , Danyal Karamatullah , Seefeldt Lance C. , Bennett Brian , Ando Nozomi , Antony Edwin
Published: November 2019

The dark-operative protochlorophyllide oxidoreductase (DPOR) enzyme contains two [4Fe-4S]- containing component proteins (BchL and BchNB) that assemble in an ATP-dependent fashion to coordinate electron transfer and reduction of protochlorophyllide to chlorophyllide. Photosynthesis generates an oxygenic environment that is non-optimal for [Fe-S] clusters and we here present an elegant evolutionarily conserved mechanism in BchL to protect its [4Fe-4S] cluster. We present a crystal structure of BchL in the nucleotide-free form with an ordered N-terminus that shields the [4Fe-4S] cluster at the docking interface between BchL and BchNB. Amino acid substitutions that perturb the shielding of the [4Fe-4S] cluster produce an unstable, but hyper-active enzyme complex, suggesting a role for the N-terminus in both auto-inhibition and enzyme stability. Upon ATP binding, a patch of amino acids, Asp-Phe-Asp (‘DFD patch’), situated at the mouth of the BchL ATP-binding pocket promotes inter-subunit cross stabilization of the two subunits and relieves the auto-inhibition by the N-terminus. A linked BchL dimer with one defective ATP-binding site does not support substrate reduction, illustrating that nucleotide binding to both subunits is a prerequisite for the inter-subunit cross stabilization. We propose that ATP-binding produces a conformational compaction of the BchL homodimer leading to a release of the flexible N-terminus from blocking the [4Fe-4S] cluster and promotes complex formation with BchNB to drive electron transfer. The auto-inhibitive feature and release mechanism appear unique to DPOR and is not found in the structurally similar nitrogenase.
Mesmerize: a dynamically adaptable user-friendly analysis platform for 2D & 3D calcium imaging data
Authors: Kolar Kushal , Dondorp Daniel , Zwiggelaar Jordi Cornelis , Høyer Jørgen , Chatzigeorgiou Marios
Published: November 2019

Calcium imaging is an increasingly valuable technique for understanding neural circuits, neuroethology, and cellular mechanisms. The analysis of calcium imaging data presents challenges in image processing, data organization, analysis, and accessibility. Tools have been created to address these problems independently, however a comprehensive user-friendly package does not exist. Here we present “Mesmerize”, an efficient, expandable and user-friendly analysis platform, which uses a Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reproducible (FAIR) system to encapsulate the entire analysis process, from raw data to interactive visualizations for publication. Mesmerize provides a user-friendly graphical interface to state-of-the-art analysis methods for signal extraction & downstream analysis. We demonstrate the broad scientific scope of Mesmerize’s applications by analyzing neuronal datasets from mouse and a volumetric zebrafish dataset. We also applied contemporary time-series analysis techniques to analyze a novel dataset comprising neuronal, epidermal, and migratory mesenchymal cells of the protochordate Ciona intestinalis.
Detection of somatic structural variants from short-read next-generation sequencing data
Authors: Gong Tingting , Hayes Vanessa M , Chan Eva KF
Published: November 2019

Somatic structural variants (SVs) play a significant role in cancer development and evolution, but are notoriously more difficult to detect than small variants from short-read next-generation sequencing (NGS) data. This is due to a combination of challenges attributed to the purity of tumour samples, tumour heterogeneity, limitations of short-read information from NGS, and sequence alignment ambiguities. In spite of active development of SV detection tools (callers) over the past few years, each method has inherent advantages and limitations. In this review, we highlight some of the important factors affecting somatic SV detection and compared the performance of eight commonly used SV callers. In particular, we focus on the extent of change in sensitivity and precision for detecting different SV types and size ranges from samples with differing variant allele frequencies and sequencing depths of coverage. We highlight the reasons for why some SV callers perform well in some settings but not others, allowing our evaluation findings to be extended beyond the eight SV callers examined in this paper. As the importance of large structural variants become increasingly recognised in cancer genomics, this paper provides a timely review on some of the most impactful factors influencing somatic SV detection and guidance on selecting an appropriate SV caller.
Phylogenetic reconstruction based on synteny block and gene adjacencies
Authors: Drillon Guénola , Champeimont Raphaël , Oteri Francesco , Fischer Gilles , Carbone Alessandra
Published: November 2019

Gene order can be used as an informative character to reconstruct phylogenetic relationships-between species independently from the local information present in gene/protein sequences.

PhyChro is a reconstruction method based on chromosomal rearrangements, applicable to a wide range of eukaryotic genomes with different gene contents and levels of synteny conservation. For each synteny breakpoint issued from pairwise genome comparisons, the algorithm defines two disjoint sets of genomes, named partial splits, respectively supporting the two block adjacencies defining the breakpoint. Considering all partial splits issued from all pairwise comparisons, a distance between two genomes is computed from the number of partial splits separating them. Tree reconstruction is achieved through a bottom-up approach by iteratively grouping sister genomes minimizing genome distances. PhyChro estimates branch lengths based on the number of synteny breakpoints and provides confidence scores for the branches.

PhyChro performance isevaluatedon two datasets of 13 vertebrates and 21 yeast genomes by using up to 130 000 and 179 000 breakpoints respectively, a scale of genomic markers that has been out of reach until now. PhyChro reconstructs very accurate tree topologies even at known problematic branching positions. Its robustness has been benchmarked for different synteny block reconstruction methods. On simulated data PhyChro reconstructs phylogenies perfectly in almost all cases, and shows the highest accuracy compared to other existing tools. PhyChro is very fast, reconstructing the vertebrate and yeast phylogenies in less than 15 min.

Availability

PhyChro will be freely available under the BSD license after publication

Contact

alessandra.carbone@lip6.fr
Evolutionary branching of function-valued traits under constraints
Authors: Ito Hiroshi C.
Published: November 2019

Some evolutionary traits are described by scalars and vectors, while others are described by continuous functions on spaces (e.g., shapes of organisms, resource allocation strategies between growth and reproduction along time, and effort allocation strategies for continuous resource distributions along resource property axes). The latter are called function-valued traits. This study develops conditions for candidate evolutionary branching points, referred to as CBP conditions, for function-valued traits under simple equality constraints, in the framework of adaptive dynamics theory (i.e., asexual reproduction and rare mutation are assumed). CBP conditions are composed of conditions for evolutionary singularity, strong convergence stability, and evolutionary instability. The CBP conditions for function-valued traits are derived by transforming the CBP conditions for vector traits into those for infinite-dimensional vector traits.
China’shukousystem and city economic growth: from the aspect of rural–urban migration
Authors: Zhang Kunling , Chen Chunlai , Ding Jian , Zhang Zhinan
Published: November 2019

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the economic impacts of China’shukousystem and propose the possible direction for future reform.

Design/methodology/approach

The study develops a framework to incorporate thehukousystem into the economic growth model. Using prefecture city-level panel data covering 241 cities over the period 2004–2016 and applying the fixed effects and instrumental variable regression techniques, the authors investigated empirically the impacts of thehukousystem on city economic growth.

Findings

The study provides three main findings. First, the city sector conditionally benefits from labour mobility deregulation that allows migrants to work in cities. Second, thehukousystem has different impacts on economic growth among cities with different sizes and administrative levels. Third, to offset the costs of providing exclusive public services to the migrants, the big or high-administrative-level cities can use their high-valuedhukouto attract the high-skilled migrants, but the small- or low-administrative-level cities do not have this advantage.

Practical implications

This study suggests that the key for furtherhukousystem reform is how to deal with thehukou–welfare binding relationship.

Originality/value

The authors developed a theoretical framework and conducted an empirical analysis on the direct relationship between thehukousystem and economic growth to reveal the mechanism of how does thehukousystem influence the city economic growth and answer the question of why is thehukousystem reform so hard in China. The framework also sheds some lights on explaining the success and failure of thehukousystem reforms in the past 40 years.
The Buyout at Tru-Foods For You
Authors: Ronnie Linda
Published: November 2019

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes are as follows: to appreciate the people challenges imbedded in an acquisition; to assess and analyse the impact of an acquisition process; to propose appropriate strategies for managing an acquisition; to explore the advantages and disadvantages of mergers and acquisitions; to describe the main reasons for the failure of M&As.

Case overview/synopsis

Often mergers and acquisitions fail because of the inability to either manage or consider organisational and people management issues. It has also been acknowledged that during a process of extreme change or transition, such as a merger and acquisition (M&A), employees view the past as a time of safety and security with the future appearing as uncertain and confused. This teaching case study highlights these challenges and the change processes imbedded in an acquisition. The acquiring firm is Marshall Foods, a well-established branded continental distribution company with a strong emphasis on nutritional whole food products based in South Africa, and the target firm is Tru-Foods For You, a small Cape Town online company that sold natural and organic foods. The case study explores the challenges faced by the Tru-Foods For You owner and staff as a result of the acquisition process. The case describes the background to the acquisition, the processes during this phase and the resultant outcomes.

Complexity academic level

Business students who are studying at postgraduate or MBA level and executive short courses in strategy and change management.

Supplementary materials

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

Subject code

CSS 11: Strategy.
The Pransky interview: Brian Carlisle, pioneer, robotics entrepreneur, President and Co-Founder of Precise Automation
Authors: Pransky Joanne
Published: November 2019

Purpose

The following paper is a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned entrepreneur regarding his pioneering efforts in the industrial robot industry and the commercialization and challenges of bringing robotic inventions to market. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

The interviewee is Brian Carlisle, President and Co-founder of Precise Automation, a robot manufacturer that specializes in collaborative robots. Carlisle discusses the highlights of his 40-year career that led to groundbreaking innovations in small parts assembly and handling robots, along with some of the challenges. He also shares his thoughts on the future of the industry.

Findings

Brian Carlisle received his BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. After Stanford, Carlisle and colleague Dr Bruce Shimano worked for Vicarm, a three-person company started by robotics pioneer Victor Scheinman. Vicarm was sold to Unimation and Carlisle became Unimation’s Director of R&D where he and his team developed the PUMA™ series of electric robots and grew sales from $0 to $40m in five years. In 1983, Carlisle and Shimano co-founded Adept Technology and as its CEO for 20 years, Carlisle grew Adept to over $100m in robot sales. In 2004, Carlisle co-founded with Shimano, Precise Automation, and is the President and CEO.

Originality/value

Brian Carlisle is a pioneer of the small parts assembly and handling robot. He was one of the key members of the team that developed the PUMA™ robot for Unimation. The PUMA™ robot was the watershed product that launched the assembly robot business in the USA and Europe. At Adept, he led the design of the first Direct Drive SCARA Robot and under his helm, Precise Automation introduced the first commercially available collaborative robots. Carlisle was President of the Robotic Industries Association for three years, is the recipient of the Joseph Engelberger Award for Leadership in Robotics, and an elected IEEE Fellow. He has served on the Board of the National Coalition for Advanced Manufacturing, the Boards of the National Center for Manufacturing Science, the Automation Forum of NEMA and is a founding member of the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative. He holds multiple patents for robot designs.
Evaluating complex transformation
Authors: Best Allan , Ong Narelle , Cooper Penny , Davison Carolyn , Coatta Katherine , Berland Alex , Herbert Carol , Mitton Craig , Millar John , Reichert Stephen , Cano Allison
Published: November 2019

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present a detailed case study of the evaluation strategies of a complex, multi-faceted response to a public health emergency: drug-related overdose deaths. It sets out the challenges of evaluating such a complex response and how they were overcome. It provides a pragmatic example of the rationale and issues faced to address the what, the why and particularly the how of the evaluation.

Design/methodology/approach

The case study overviews British Columbia’s Provincial Response to the Overdose Public Health Emergency, and the aims and scope of its evaluation. It then outlines the conceptual approach taken to the evaluation, setting out key methodological challenges in evaluating large-scale, multi-level, multisectoral change.

Findings

The evaluation is developmental and summative, utilization focused and system informed. Defining the scope of the evaluation required a strong level of engagement with government leads, grantees and other evaluation stakeholders. Mixed method evaluation will be used to capture the complex pattern of relationships that have informed the overdose response. Working alongside people with drug use experience to both plan and inform the evaluation is critical to its success.

Originality/value

This case study builds on a growing literature on evaluating large-scale and complex service transformation, providing a practical example of this.
Making sense of external partnerships
Authors: Sahlin Susanne
Published: November 2019

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine principals’ sense-making of a school–university collaboration taking an institutional perspective on organizational change. The study’s context involves three schools in a collaboration focusing on leadership and school improvement with one university.

Design/methodology/approach

The study draws on findings from a qualitative case study that examined principals’ sense-making of this type of school–university collaboration. Data were collected over three years and consisted of semistructured interviews, meeting notes, field observations, field notes and document analysis. A qualitative content analysis was performed using the Atlas.ti 6.2 software tool.

Findings

The findings showed that mattering sense-making for the principals in this collaboration is related to the cultivation of collective participation and responsibility, the development of trust and improvement culture among actors, and the sense of moving towards research-based and collaborative learning-oriented practices in their schools.

Research limitations/implications

This study encountered several limitations that need to be addressed and recognized. First, the small number of cases in this multiple case study, as well as the specific social context, limits the possibilities for the generalization of the findings. Second, the study was not independently selected and the findings and analyses were linked to national and local contexts, which can be seen as a limitation and a strength. Nevertheless, this study provides in-depth information about the principals’ experiences and constructions of meaning as they helped lead a school–university collaboration in their schools. Finally, although the sample was small and not representative, the findings provided useful insights into and examples of how principals understand and interpret a school–university partnership in their schools’ improvement processes.

Originality/value

The findings provide an elaborated illustration of how intentional efforts to collaborate and develop the schools in a school–university partnership may affect the regulative, normative and cultural–cognitive aspects in schools.
Presenting the model in improving maintenance and excellence in organizational culture and reliability in Iran tile and ceramic industries
Authors: Pezeshkian Alireza , Hamidi Naser
Published: November 2019

Purpose

In order to increase productivity and create added value in ceramic and tile industries of Iran, the role of physical assets including machinery, equipment and utilities is very important in these industries, and management of those take an important role. Organizational culture and its role in physical asset management implementation are very important in the Iran ceramic and tile industries. In these industries, there is a secret force called culture, which must be changed if the organization wants to grow up and improve physical assets management. The purpose of this paper is to identify organizational cultural, technical and reliability variables and structure of these variables in form of a combined structural model.

Design/methodology/approach

In order to present a structural combination model, a development model type, the mixed research method is used, and expert’s comments are also used. This model was implemented at Apadana Ceram Company, and its results, in comparison with previous models on physical assets, have shown that consideration of four culture elements can be of great help to reach an optimal point in maintenance and excellence.

Findings

In this paper, analysis of previous research studies, project documents and expert’s opinions in ceramic and tile industries have been used. In the presented model, special attention has been paid to organizational culture and its four elements including values, patterns, rituals and procedures and cultural infrastructure in order to achieve excellence and reach an optimal point in maintenance. Also, governing structure between organizational culture and technical and reliability variables was nominated, which could help companies in physical asset management. Furthermore, eight components of change management were expressed, which are important in order to implement this model.

Originality/value

This model with special consideration of four culture elements can be of great help to industries to reach an optimal point in maintenance and excellence.
Assessing the information waste in maintenance management processes
Authors: Marttonen-Arola Salla , Baglee David
Published: November 2019

Purpose

Due to recent technological developments, many maintenance managers become overwhelmed by the vast amount of data available to support their decision making. The purpose of this paper is to discuss identifying and eliminating waste in information management processes through a value stream mapping (VSM)-based method.

Design/methodology/approach

A theoretical framework is constructed based upon a review of the previous academic literature. The application of the framework is demonstrated with an empirical case example of a maintenance information management process within a food manufacturing company.

Findings

The paper highlights existing examples of applying VSM in information management; however, the knowledge is fragmented and has not been extensively applied in a maintenance context. The case example shows that the suggested process offers a feasible method of mapping and evaluating the inherent waste in information management processes.

Originality/value

The paper summarizes the existing body of knowledge on lean information management in maintenance, and presents a theoretical framework on how VSM can be applied in the context. An empirical example is provided to show the method applied to a real industry case. The results will illustrate how the framework can support companies in identifying the waste and development potential in their maintenance information management.
The role of IT in innovation at the individual and group level – a literature review
Authors: Mamonov Stanislav , Peterson Richard
Published: November 2019

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review and integrate cross-disciplinary research on the role of information technology (IT) on innovation published in the past 10 years.

Design/methodology/approach

The study follows the recommendations for systematic integrative literature review. The authors focus on the manuscripts published in the period between 2009 and 2018 in the top 8 Information Systems journals. Further, the authors specifically focus on the studies conducted at the individual and/or group level of analysis.

Findings

First, the authors find that there has been relatively little research published focusing on the role of IT in innovation at the individual and/or group level of analysis. Among the published studies the authors find equivocal insights on the role of IT in innovation. While IT can support innovation, it can also cause technostress and become an impeding element by institutionalizing established organizational practices.

Originality/value

Despite the importance of the topic, there has been little research on the role of IT in supporting innovation published in the small-and medium-size enterprise development journals. Through cross-disciplinary integration, the authors’ provide a foundation for future research on the topic.
The impact of firms’ social ties with customers on dual-channel supply chains
Authors: Wei Wei , Mei Shue , Yang Jiameng , Liu Zhiyong John
Published: November 2019

Purpose

More and more firms are utilizing social media as a distribution channel to sell products. By establishing business accounts on social media firms provide information service to strengthen their relationship with customers and boost sales. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pricing, information service provision and channel strategies of firms who sell products through social media.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors use a game theoretical model to study a dual-channel supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and one retailer. Two scenarios are considered – under one scenario the manufacturer and under the other the retailer, respectively, solely provides information service. Both firms’ pricing decisions and profits are compared.

Findings

The authors find that in the dual-channel model with either the manufacturer or the retailer providing information service to enhance the demand: a firm that has stronger social ties with customers is willing to provide more information services; when the manufacturer provides information service, it charges a direct price higher than the wholesale price, and whether the direct-channel price exceeds the retail price depends on the strength of the manufacturer’s social ties with customers; when the retailer provides information service, the direct price is equal to the wholesale price, both lower than the retail price; and a firm always prefers itself rather than the other firm to provide information service. However, the whole supply chain is better off if the manufacturer rather than the retailer provides information service.

Research limitations/implications

Besides the relationship between firms and customers, the peer relationship among customers also impacts the supply chain performance, which might be studied in the future.

Originality/value

The study is novel in theoretically exploring the influence of firms’ social relationship with customers on firms’ pricing and channel strategies.
Modeling of electrical characteristics of photovoltaic solar arrays with protection against current overloads based on PolySwitch elements
Authors: Tonkoshkur A.S. , Ivanchenko A.V.
Published: November 2019

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to minimize and prevent current overloads (including the elimination of abnormal and fire hazardous situations) in photovoltaic solar arrays by using low-cost functional electronic elements, in particular, the new PolySwitch PPTC fuses.

Design/methodology/approach

The modeling method has been used to investigate the circuit solution of the use of PolySwitch type fuses to prevent and minimize current overloads in photovoltaic solar arrays.

Findings

It is shown that the limitation of the short-circuit current with parallel connection of photovoltaic components (photovoltaic cells or their modules) can be implemented when the following conditions are met: the resistance of the fuse in the conducting state is much lesser than the parallel connection of the series resistances of the photovoltaic components; and the tripping current of the fuse must be greater than the maximum current of the separate photovoltaic components and lesser than the current of a parallel connection of several photovoltaic components.

Originality/value

The influence of the magnitude of the resistance in the conducting state and the response current of the fuses to the current–voltage and volt–watt characteristics of parallel connections of the photovoltaic components (photovoltaic cells or their modules) is analyzed. The modeling results are confirmed by experimental data on the transformation research of light current–voltage and volt–watt characteristics of parallel connections of industrial photovoltaic modules using resettable fuses of the PolySwitch type.
The effect of winding patterns on the mechanical behavior of filament-wound cylinder shells
Authors: Guo Zhangxin , Li Zhonggui , Cui Junjie , Li Yongcun , Luan Yunbo
Published: November 2019

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present a finite element analysis (FEA) of filament-wound composites, as well as application of these materials.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, a new finite element method of filament-wound composite is presented. The stress and strain fields in the composite cylinders are analyzed using the ABAQUS software packages for considering the filament undulation and crossover. The paper presented results of buckling load of composite cylinders with different types of filament-winding patterns.

Findings

The result of the example shows that the stress distributions are uniform along the cylinder length and around the circumference when the analytical approach is based on the conventional FEA. The stress distributions are not uniform along the cylinder length and around the circumference for considering the filament undulation and crossover. The stress units are arranged in a regular geometric pattern around circumference and along the axis of rotation. The analysis of the effect of filament-winding mosaic patterns on the mechanical characteristics of composite cylindrical is presented in the paper.

Originality/value

The stress and strain fields in the composite cylinders were analyzed for considering the filament undulation and crossover. The buckling load of composite cylinders with different types of filament-winding patterns was presented in this paper.
Research performance of Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi
Authors: Mukundan Ramina , Narayanan Nikesh
Published: November 2019

Purpose

Khalifa University of Science and Technology (KU) is one of the prominent Universities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), of the Government of Abu Dhabi. The new Khalifa University was re-constituted in the year 2017 by merging three higher education institutions in Abu Dhabi, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research and the Petroleum Institute. The objectives of these institutions and their research areas were entirely disparate in the pre-merger era and hence the evaluation of the research performance of its pre-merged entities in the past is vital for Khalifa University to plan for the future course of actions. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

This study analyzes and visualizes scholarly publications of Khalifa University of Science and Technology (KU) using SCOPUS data. There are various qualitative and quantitative methods to measure research performance. This study adopted citation analysis, one of the widely recognized quantitative metrics to measure the citation impact of scholarly publications.

Findings

Khalifa University leads in productivity compared to other UAE universities but the citation impact of its publications is less in comparison to United Arab Emirates University and New York University, Abu Dhabi in terms of citations per publication. The majority of KU publications are not highly cited. The majority of the KU publications (80 percent) received fewer citations and few papers (20 percent of the KU publications) attracted 80 percent of the total citations received for KU publications. Analysis results indicate that publishing in top-ranked journals would improve the chance of getting more citations. On average, eight percentage difference is seen in the h-index of KU authors when removing self-citations.

Research limitations/implications

The study considered only publications that are indexed in SCOPUS. It covered a limited set of sources as per the SCOPUS editorial policy. Most of the covered sources are journals and conference proceedings. Books’ data coverage in Citation Index is comparatively low, which may affect results regarding social sciences and humanities publications because book publication is more prominent in these subject areas. Khalifa University is a science and technology university, and the majority of its academic departments fall in science and technology domains. Even though there are few arts and humanities departments in the University, it will not affect the overall findings of the results of the analysis.

Originality/value

This study is original research conducted to study the impact of research publications of Khalifa University using Scopus data.
Discretionary HR practices and employee well-being
Authors: Luu Tuan Trong
Published: November 2019

Purpose

The more HRM systems invest in employees’ work life and career growth beyond legal requirements, the happier employees are. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of discretionary HR practices in promoting employee well-being as well as mechanisms underlying this effect.

Design/methodology/approach

The participants for the study came from retail shops of a large information technology company in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The data set collected from these participants was analyzed through multilevel structural equation modeling and bootstrapping methods.

Findings

The results of this study provided empirical support for the relationships between discretionary HR practices and the psychological, physical and social dimensions of employee well-being. Job crafting was found to serve as a mediator for these relationships. Abusive supervision played a role in attenuating the effects of discretionary HR practices on the dimensions of employee well-being as well as job crafting.

Originality/value

This inquiry extends the research stream on the HRM-employee well-being relationship by examining the predictive role of discretionary HR practices.
An empirical test of conceptual arguments to retire the three-component model of work commitment
Authors: Somers Mark , Birnbaum Dee , Casal Jose
Published: November 2019

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess conceptually based arguments that the three-component model (TCM) is not a model of commitment but rather of employee turnover, and that the mindsets that comprise the TCM do not form a unified construct.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey design was used that was comprised of 223 staff nurses located in a large, urban hospital in the USA. Data were analyzed using dominance analysis, a variant of multiple linear regression that provides more accurate estimates of the strength of relationships between predictor and criterion variables when multicolinearity among predictors is present.

Findings

Results from OLS regression and dominance analysis provided no support for concerns about the viability of the TCM. First, there was no evidence that the continuance and normative mindsets were associated only with employee turnover, and there was strong support that this was not the case. Second, our overall patterns of results indicated that the mindsets that comprise the TCM operated as a unified construct that is consistent with the theory and research underpinning the TCM.

Practical implications

This study indicates that work commitment is multidimensional and must be managed accordingly so that it is important to be mindful of the development and implications of different constellations of work commitment.

Originality/value

Conceptually grounded criticisms of the TCM have not been tested empirically leading to uncertainty about the nature of work commitment. This study adds an empirical perspective that is augmented by an advanced application of multiple regression analysis.