bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Determinants of employee engagement in public sector organisations: case of Zimbabwe
Authors: Chiwawa Nyashadzashe
Published: August 2022

Purpose

The purpose of the study was to explore the contribution and determinants of employee engagement (EE) in the public sector.

Design/methodology/approach

A cross-sectional survey was used based on a deductive research approach. Data were collected and analysed quantitatively. The quantitative data were collected using a questionnaire from a sample of 248 civil servants.

Findings

Research findings indicate that prioritising the development of engaged workers reap substantial rewards for organisations in terms of productivity, efficiency and effectiveness. Findings further show that employees who are involved at work have been shown to perform better than their colleagues. The research accordingly recommends organisations to invest in ensuring EE as this has direct link to outcomes related to performance, which ultimately leads to optimisation of organisational resources and competitive advantage.

Originality/value

The study provides a critical analysis of the factors that determine EE in the public sector. EE, as a driver of public sector organisational effectiveness, is an area of research that has received little attention in the African milieu. This research provides a detailed understanding of EE as a tool for improving public sector performance and, as a result, lowering the performance gap and waste. EE is a product of the structural characteristics of the organisation as well as the parameters within which psychological presence of an employee is activated. EE, therefore, engenders employee support to pursue organisational goals in a coordinated system of collaboration.
Students leading students: a qualitative study exploring a student-led model for engagement with the sustainable development goals
Authors: Lee Bernice , Liu Katherine , Warnock Tyler Samuel , Kim Minji Olivia , Skett Sarah
Published: August 2022

Purpose

Higher education institutions (HEI) play a critical role in developing student leaders equipped with the skills and knowledge needed to mobilize societal changes that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for. To broaden this understanding, this study aimed to engage with student leaders of a grassroots, student-led initiative at the University of Calgary, the Sustainable Development Goals Alliance (SDGA), to better understand the experience of students who took on leadership roles in organizing SDG engagement activities.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative thematic analysis was used to understand the experiences of 12 student leaders involved in SDG programming. Semi-structured interviews asked participants to reflect on their key learnings, skills development and overall student’s experiences of leaders involved in SDG programming. Thematic analysis was applied to determine emerging themes.

Findings

Analyses showed that taking a leadership role in the SDGA empowered students to deepen their engagement with the SDGs and overcome barriers such as lack of knowledge and feelings of powerlessness. Secondary findings showed that community-building, flexibility and a sense of ownership were key strengths of the program and contributed toward student leaders’ feelings of hopefulness, self-confidence and inspiration.

Originality/value

This work offers a window into the experiences of student leaders who have worked to advance SDG engagement within their institution. Our findings suggest that student-led initiatives represent untapped potential for HEIs to prioritize and support to help deliver on their SDG implementation and engagement efforts. As HEIs offer a vital space for innovation, policy and capacity building towards implementation of the SDGs, this work demonstrates how student leadership can yield grassroots influence on HEI commitments and responses to the needs of students.
Tourism and income inequality
Authors: Subramaniam Yogeeswari , Masron Tajul Ariffin , Loganathan Nanthakumar
Published: August 2022

Purpose

Tourism has grown to be one of the world's largest and fastest-growing economic industries. Tourism development is viewed as a tool to improve income distribution as it allows people at the bottom of the pyramid to get involved in the industry. This study aims to examine the impact of tourism on income inequality in the top income equality countries.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper employs fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares techniques to investigate the dynamic impact of tourism on income inequality in the world's most income equality countries, from 2001 to 2016.

Findings

The result shows that tourism is one of the major drivers of income equality. Thus, tourism can be used to reduce a country's income disparity.

Practical implications

As a result, policymakers should support the tourism industry to reduce income disparity and enhance income distribution.

Originality/value

Given the conflicting findings in the literature, this study reexamines this link and attempts to backwardly assess if the top equal-income countries in the world are heavily dependent on tourism.
Cultural roadblocks? Acceptance of blockchain-based hotel booking among individualistic and collectivistic travelers
Authors: Strebinger Andreas , Treiblmaier Horst
Published: August 2022

Purpose

Blockchain technology is predicted to revolutionize the tourism and hospitality industry through peer-to-peer hotel bookings with little or no involvement of intermediaries. Outstanding features of this technology are its distributed form of storing data, its collaborative way of identifying the “true state” of a system and the immutability of data. These features may lead to a perceived loss of controllability among travelers. Based on the Agentic Theory of Human Behavior, the purpose of this study is to propose that this assumed loss of control matters more to travelers with an individualistic rather than a collectivistic predisposition.

Design/methodology/approach

In two studies (n = 475 and n = 196) using verbal scenarios, this study manipulates the perceived controllability of a blockchain-enabled hotel booking app by varying the number of additional services linked to the app. This study tests for the interaction of controllability with individual-level measures of individualistic versus collectivistic (I-C) predisposition.

Findings

Collectivistic travelers are more willing than individualistic travelers to use blockchain technology for their hotel bookings. This effect can be mitigated by offering additional services that give individualistic travelers an enhanced sense of “being in control”.

Practical implications

Blockchain-enabled applications facilitating direct hotel bookings without any additional intermediary services are more readily accepted by travelers with a collectivistic mindset. Blockchain applications addressing individualistic travelers require added services that establish a sense of controllability.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to investigate the interaction of I-C predisposition with perceived controllability in tourism and hospitality. Furthermore, it is the first in the technology-acceptance literature to test this interaction using individual-level measures of I-C predisposition and an experimental manipulation of perceived controllability.
The contingent roles of market turbulence and organizational innovativeness on the relationships among interfirm trust, formal contracts, interfirm knowledge sharing and firm performance
Authors: Sun Jing , Tekleab Amanuel , Cheung Millissa , Wu Wei-Ping
Published: August 2022

Purpose

Prior research on interfirm collaborations has demonstrated that trust and contract are two central governance mechanisms that influence a firm’s knowledge sharing decision and the subsequent effect on performance. However, we know little about how effective these mechanisms are in different market conditions and levels of organizational innovativeness. This study aims to advance the literature on interfirm knowledge sharing by exploring these contingencies and by providing an alternative explanation of the contradictory effects of knowledge sharing on firm performance.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors collected 156 firms’ relationships with their suppliers in two batches from 300 firms in the 2017 list of Statistics in the Zhejiang province in China. The authors used unstructured interviews and formal questionnaires to collect data from these firms.

Findings

Market turbulence served as a boundary condition for the effect of interfirm trust and formal contracts on knowledge sharing. Both interfirm trust and formal contracts, as governance mechanisms, are effective in raising interfirm knowledge sharing only when the firms operate in high turbulent markets. On the contrary, knowledge sharing negatively affected firm performance when firms exhibit low organizational innovativeness. Moreover, a three-way interaction among market turbulence, organizational innovativeness and knowledge sharing revealed that when market turbulence and organizational innovativeness were both low, interfirm knowledge sharing was detrimental to firm performance.

Practical implications

Based on the results, this study recommends managers consider external (market turbulence) and internal (organizational innovativeness) when firms decide to share knowledge and benefit from such activities.

Originality/value

This study extends prior research on the determinant of knowledge sharing and clarifies the inconsistent findings of knowledge sharing on firm performance. Thus, strategic organizational leaders need to pay attention to when they need to share information with suppliers to best benefit from those collaborations.
Dynamic pricing for the successive-generation products in the presence of strategic customers and limited trade-in duration
Authors: Yuan Xigang , Ma Zujun , Zhang Xiaoqing
Published: August 2022

Purpose

This paper investigates the dynamic pricing strategy of a firm for the successive-generation products under the conditions of the limited trade-in duration and strategic customers. Further, it explores the effect of a limited trade-in duration on the choice of the myopic and strategic customers, besides the optimal dynamic pricing and trade-in strategy of the firm.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the choice behavior of the myopic and strategic customers, the authors have developed a two-period game-theoretic analytical model to decide the optimal retail prices of the successive-generation products and the optimal trade-in rebate when the firm adopts a dynamic pricing strategy and then investigate three extensions of the basic model to discuss the change in the results owing to the relaxation of certain conditions.

Findings

The authors find from the results that, in terms of profit maximization, it is better to extend the limited trade-in duration, and hence, the firm should implement a dynamic pricing strategy. However, in the situation of using a static pricing strategy, the firm should extend the limited trade-in duration only if the incremental value of the new generation products is below a certain threshold. Moreover, the firm should use a dual rollover strategy instead of a single rollover one. If all customers in the market are myopic, then the firm should also extend the limited trade-in duration.

Research limitations/implications

This study mainly discusses the impact of limited trade-in duration on the firm's dynamic pricing strategy when facing strategic customers, which provides several directions for future research. First, if the government offers subsidies to consumers, how will strategic consumers make purchase decisions? How would the enterprise make its pricing decision? Second, when asymmetric information exists between consumers and firms, how will it affect consumers' choice behavior and firms' pricing decisions? All these issues are worth exploring in the future.

Practical implications

These results offer certain managerial insights for the firm in the decision making on pricing within the trade-in program.

Originality/value

This is the first work to study the dynamic pricing strategy of the firm for the successive-generation products under the conditions of the limited trade-in duration and strategic customers. Further, this work discusses the changes in results owing to the relaxation of certain conditions.
Investigation of environmental potentials on supply chain of textile and yarn industry using smart and sustainable life cycle assessment
Authors: Jain Toshit , Jain Jinesh Kumar , Agrawal Rajeev , Johri Shubha
Published: August 2022

Purpose

Environmental impact and changes are becoming essential in textile and yarn industries, where reliable measurement of parameters related to processing harmful substances needs to be examined. Such findings can be cumulated using smart assessment like life cycle analysis. The ecological impact category, supply chain, and climate-changing factors were considered for the necessary assessment.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper applies the Life Cycle Assessment technique in the textile and yarn industry to estimate critical environmental potentials. The critical input for the fabric and yarn industry was put in the GaBi software model to estimate various environmental potentials.

Findings

Global warming potential, electricity, and raw cotton consumption in the fabric and yarn industry were critical concerns where attention should be focused on minimizing environmental potentials from cradle to gate assessment.

Research limitations/implications

This qualitative study is made via the industry case-wise inputs and outputs, which can vary with demographic conditions. Some machine and human constraints have not been implemented in modelling life cycle model for smart simulation. Smart simulation helps in linking different parameters and simulates their combined effects on the product life cycle.

Practical implications

This modelling approach will help access pollution constituents in different supply chain production processes and optimize them simultaneously.

Originality/value

The raw data used in this analysis are collected from an Indian small scale textile industry. In the textile fabrication industry, earlier assessments were carried out in cotton generation, impact of PET, cradle to grave assessment of textile products and garment processing only. In this research the smart model is drawn to consider each input parameter of yarn and textile fabric to determine the criticality of each input in this assessment. This article mainly talks about life cycle and circular supply assessment applied to first time for both cotton to yarn processing and yarn to fabric industry for necessary estimation of environment potentials.
Exploring dimensions of the customer experience at budget hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic: a netnography approach
Authors: Girija Smitha , Sharma Devika Rani , Kaushal Vaishali
Published: August 2022

Purpose

In 2020, the world encountered travel restrictions because of pandemic, and the hospitality sector across the globe was one of the most affected industries. The purpose of this study is to further explore real-time experiences of guests who stayed in budget hotels and how pandemic has changed the expectations of its customer segment.

Design/methodology/approach

The current study uses netnography to examine customer experience of guests who stayed at budget hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic. A thematic analysis was conducted using NVivo 12 plus on 1,391 customer reviews collected from various travel portals.

Findings

The results suggested personalization and hygiene were the most significant themes that influence customer experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors’ analysis revealed that the use of self-service technologies like contactless services during check-in, checkouts and use of Quick Response codes in restaurants and other services would help reduce the perceived risk of guests and enhance the overall customer experience.

Originality/value

The branded budget hotel sector has pumped in lot of money envisaging growth just before the COVID crises emerged. Therefore, the fast recovery is of paramount importance for the sector. Additionally, majority of the pandemic-related studies in hospitality sector have focused on luxury hotels and failed to address the real-time experiences of customers with respect to budget hotels of a developing country. The outcome of this study will be relevant for the budget hotels and policymakers because they face the crucial task of reviving and sustaining enterprises and the industry at large.
Researchers’ hate-love relationship to performance measurement systems in academia – a Foucauldian perspective
Authors: Seger Karin , Englund Hans , Härström Malin
Published: August 2022

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe and theorize the type of hate-love relationship to performance measurement systems (PMSs) that individual researchers tend to develop in academia. To this end, the paper draws upon Foucault’s writings on neoliberalism to analyse PMSs as neoliberal technologies holding certain qualities that can be expected to elicit such ambivalent views.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is based on a qualitative interview study of researchers from three Swedish universities, who were asked to reflect upon questions related to three overall themes, namely, what it means to be a researcher in contemporary academia, the existence and use of PMSs at their universities and if/how such PMSs affected them and their work as researchers.

Findings

The empirical findings show that the hate-love relationship can be understood in terms of how PMSs are involved in three central moments of governmentality, where each such moment of governmentality tends to elicit feelings of ambivalence among researchers due to how PMSs rely on: a restricted centrifugal mechanism, normalization rather than normation and a view of individual academics as entrepreneurs of themselves.

Originality/value

Existing literature has provided several important insights into how the introduction and use of PMSs in academia tend to result in both negative and positive experiences and reactions. The current paper adds to this literature through theorizing how and why PMSs may be expected to elicit such ambivalent experiences and reactions among individual researchers.
Burnout in learning organizations: the roles of organizational respect, job satisfaction and job insecurity
Authors: Chan Sow Hup Joanne , Chan Kuan-Thye , Chan Yiuwah Evan
Published: August 2022

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to explain when and how organizational respect is related to job burnout syndromes. Using the stimulus–organism–response framework, the authors found that organizational respect is negatively related to burnout via job satisfaction, with job insecurity moderating the relationship. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, the authors proposed and found that job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion sequentially mediate the relationship between organizational respect and depersonalization, and this relationship is also moderated by job insecurity.

Design/methodology/approach

Data analysis was conducted using responses obtained from 280 anonymous employees in the postproduction film industry. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, AMOS and PROCESS macro was used for data analysis.

Findings

The research findings show job satisfaction mediates the effects of organizational respect for all three burnout syndromes. Organizational respect predicts depersonalization not only indirectly through job satisfaction but also through emotional exhaustion. Job insecurity moderates the relationship between job satisfaction and depersonalization and between emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Organizational respect reduces depersonalization through job satisfaction, but this effect depends on how secure the employees feel about their jobs.

Research limitations/implications

Samples from one industry but from countries under different management cultures may not show the true scale of burnout levels for the industry. Cross-sectional data from one industry may limit the generalizability to other industries. The finding on the reverse effects of organizational respect on depersonalization for satisfied employees could be further investigated.

Practical implications

The findings provide insights for learning organizations on the importance of cultivating a respectful atmosphere and reducing job insecurity to mitigate aspects of burnout.

Originality/value

The authors clarified the moderating role of job insecurity and the mediating role of job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion in the organizational respect–depersonalization relationship.
Five cases of new‐onset pemphigus following vaccinations against coronavirus disease 2019
Authors: Corrá Alberto , Barei Francesca , Genovese Giovanni , Zussino Martina , Spigariolo Cristina B. , Mariotti Elena B. , Quintarelli Lavinia , Verdelli Alice , Caproni Marzia , Marzano Angelo V.
Published: August 2022

Pemphigus is a group of blistering disorders characterized by the formation of intraepithelial blisters in skin and mucous membranes induced by the binding of circulating autoantibodies to intercellular adhesion molecules. The pathogenesis is complex and not fully understood; however, genetic predisposition and various triggers are widely accepted as key factors in pemphigus development. A few cases of new‐onset pemphigus following coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) vaccination have already been published. The present paper reports a total of two cases of pemphigus foliaceous and three cases of pemphigus vulgaris that occurred following vaccinations against COVID‐19, with anamnestic, clinical, and diagnostic data collection suggesting assumptions over a possible causal correlation.
Bumble bee colony health and performance vary widely across the urban ecosystem
Authors: Theodorou Panagiotis , Kühn Olga , Baltz Lucie M. , Wild Christopher , Rasti Sirus Leonard , Bucksch Carolina Ruiz , Strohm Erhard , Paxton Robert J. , Kurze Christoph
Published: August 2022

Urbanization is a global phenomenon that can affect fitness and could challenge the persistence of most species, including wild bee pollinators. Yet, how and which environmental features affect bee health and fitness within the urban ecosystem remain unclear.

Here, we placed experimental Bombus terrestris colonies in sites spanning from the edge into a city's core to investigate bumble bee parasitism, foraging behaviour, energetic stress, colony growth and reproductive output. In each site, ambient temperature was recorded, the availability of floral resources was evaluated and landscape heterogeneity was characterized using land‐cover maps.

We found that Bombus terrestris parasitism levels increased across the season in line with colony growth but were negatively related to the proportion of impervious surfaces surrounding a site. Bombus terrestris foraging trip duration decreased with increasing ecotones (edge density) but, conversely, increased in sites with honey bee hives present. Energetic stress was evaluated as lowered trehalose titre in the haemolymph of returning foragers; stress increased with the proportion of impervious surfaces. Furthermore, our analyses identified ambient temperature to be a strong predictor of Bombus terrestris colony performance in that high ambient temperature reduced colony growth and indirectly the production of sexual offspring (gynes).

Our results highlight the importance of ecotones as well as minimizing the intensity of urbanization and urban honey bee beekeeping for bumble bee colony health and foraging behaviour. They also point to the importance of microclimate (i.e. temperature) for bumble bee colony performance and suggest that increasing temperatures could have a negative impact in slowing colony weight gain, and indirectly in reducing colony reproduction.
Multiple global changes drive grassland productivity and stability: A meta‐analysis
Authors: Su Jishuai , Zhao Yujin , Xu Fengwei , Bai Yongfei
Published: August 2022

Temporal stability of primary productivity is the key to stable provisioning of ecosystem services to human beings. Yet, the effects of various global changes on grassland stability remain ambiguous.

Here, we conducted a comprehensive meta‐analysis based on 1070 multi‐year paired observations from 173 studies, to examine the impacts of various global changes on productivity, community stability and plant diversity of grasslands on a global scale. The global change drivers include nitrogen (N) addition, phosphorus (P) addition, N and P addition, precipitation increase, precipitation decrease, elevated CO2 and warming.

Global change drivers generally had stronger impacts on grassland productivity than on temporal stability, except for precipitation changes. Community temporal stability was reduced by N addition, N and P addition and precipitation decrease, but was increased by precipitation increase and remained unchanged under P addition, elevated CO2 and warming. In addition, species richness decreased under N addition, N and P addition and precipitation decrease. At the plant functional group level, N and P addition reduced grasses' stability and precipitation increase enhanced forbs' stability.

Nutrient additions decreased community stability via increasing the inter‐annual variation more than the mean of primary productivity, while precipitation changes mainly affected community temporal stability via changing mean productivity. The negative impacts of global change drivers (i.e. N and P addition, warming) on community temporal stability increased with the degree of species loss but decreased with increasing stability of grasses. Moreover, the negative impacts of nutrient addition and precipitation decrease on community stability was lessened while the positive effect of precipitation increase on community stability was enhanced in grasslands with higher historical precipitation variability, greater soil fertility and longer experimental duration.

Synthesis. Our findings demonstrate that N‐based nutrient additions and drought destabilise grassland productivity, while precipitation increase enhances community stability. Impacts of global changes on community productivity and stability are mediated by species richness, plant functional group, site‐specific environmental conditions (i.e. climate, soil) and experimental duration, which deserve more attention in grassland management practices under future global change scenarios.
Niche differentiation along multiple functional‐trait dimensions contributes to high local diversity of Euphorbiaceae in a tropical tree assemblage
Authors: Wang Xue‐Zhao , Sun Shan‐Wen , Sedio Brian E. , Glomglieng Suphanee , Cao Min , Cao Kun‐Fang , Yang Jian‐Hong , Zhang Jiao‐Lin , Yang Jie
Published: August 2022

Understanding the mechanisms that drive community assembly in species‐rich tropical forest remains a fundamental challenge in ecology. Here, we integrated multivariate functional trait dimensions, phylogeny and metabolomics to test fundamental predictions concerning the role of differentiation with respect to abiotic and biotic niche axes in the maintenance of high local diversity of woody plants in the Euphorbiaceae.

We measured 40 functional traits related to resource acquisition, photosynthetic capacity, hydraulic efficiency and secondary‐metabolite profiles generated using untargeted metabolomics in all 26 Euphorbiaceae species in a 20‐ha forest dynamics plot in tropical southwestern China. We examined the correlation structure of 40 traits using a trait networking approach. We coupled these traits with variation in soil nutrients, light environment, soil water content and herbivore pressure within the plot to assess niche differentiation in space. We compared phylogenetic signal among multivariate trait dimensions and secondary metabolites to assess niche differentiation in evolutionary time.

Network analysis revealed that a small number of traits with high network centrality reflected variation in ecological strategy among the Euphorbiaceae. Using these high‐centrality traits, we observed significant functional turnover along environmental gradients defined by light, soil moisture, soil nutrients and leaf herbivory, respectively. Most resource utilization traits showed significant phylogenetic signal, whereas almost all defensive traits lacked phylogenetic signal, including species similarity with respect to plant secondary metabolites.

Synthesis. Our results suggest that resource‐utilization traits and the habitat associations play a significant role in the niche segregation of co‐occurring woody plants in the Euphorbiaceae. Secondary metabolites, however, may enhance diversity at a finer spatial scale by allowing closely related species with similar functional traits to partition biotic niche space within shared habitats in tropical rainforest.
The two‐component response regulatorOrrAconfers dehydration tolerance by regulatingavaKaexpression in the cyanobacteriumAnabaenasp. strainPCC7120
Authors: Kimura Satoshi , Sato Miho , Fan Xingyan , Ohmori Masayuki , Ehira Shigeki
Published: August 2022

The cyanobacteriumAnabaenasp. strain PCC 7120 exhibits dehydration tolerance. The regulation of gene expression in response to dehydration is crucial for the acquisition of dehydration tolerance, but the molecular mechanisms underlying dehydration responses remain unknown. In this study, the functions of the response regulator OrrA in the regulation of salt and dehydration responses were investigated. Disruption oforrAabolished or diminished the induction of hundreds of genes in response to salt stress and dehydration. Thus, OrrA is a principal regulator of both stress responses. In particular, OrrA plays a crucial role in dehydration tolerance because anorrAdisruptant completely lost the ability to regrow after dehydration. Moreover, in the OrrA regulon,avaKaencoding a protein of unknown function was revealed to be indispensable for dehydration tolerance. OrrA and AvaK are conserved among the terrestrial cyanobacteria, suggesting their conserved functions in dehydration tolerance in cyanobacteria.
Measuring health disparities using a continuous social risk factor
Authors: Herrin Jeph , Barthel Andrea , Goutos Demetri , Du Chengan , Zhou Sheng , Peltz Alon , Poyer James , Lin Zhenqiu , Bernheim Susannah
Published: August 2022

Objective

To propose and evaluate a novel approach for measuring hospital‐level disparities according to the effect of a continuous, polysocial risk factor on those outcomes.

Study Setting

Our cohort consisted of Medicare Fee‐for‐Service (FFS) patients 65 years and older admitted to acute care hospitals for one of six common conditions or procedures. Medicare administrative claims data for six hospital readmission measures including hospitalizations from July 2015 to June 2018 were used.

Study Design

We adapted existing methodologies that were developed to report hospital‐level disparities using dichotomous social risk factors (SRFs). The existing methods report disparities within and across hospitals; we developed and tested modified approaches for both methods using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Socioeconomic Status Index. We applied the adapted methodologies to six 30‐day hospital readmission measures included in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program measures. We compared the within‐ and across‐hospital results for each to those obtained from using the original methods and dichotomizing the AHRQ SES Index into “low” and “high” scores.

Data Collection

We used Medicare FFS administrative claims data linked to U.S. Census data.

Principal Findings

For all six readmission measures we find that, when compared with the existing methods, the methods for continuous SRFs provide disparity results for more facilities though across a narrower range of values. Measures of disparity based on this approach are moderately to highly correlated with those based on a dichotomous version of the same risk factor, while reflecting a fuller spectrum of risk. This approach represents an opportunity for detection of provider‐level results that more closely align with underlying social risk.

Conclusion

We have demonstrated the feasibility and utility of estimating hospital disparities of care using a continuous, polysocial risk factor. This approach expands the potential for reporting hospital‐level disparities while better accounting for the multifactorial nature of social risk on hospital outcomes.
Assessing the use of environmental DNA (eDNA) as a tool in the detection of human DNA in water
Authors: Antony Dass Marie , Sherman Craig D. H. , Nai Yi Heng , Ellis Morgan R. , van Oorschot Roland A. H. , Durdle Annalisa
Published: August 2022

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is a highly sensitive and cost‐effective tool that is increasingly being applied to studies of biodiversity and species detection. This non‐invasive method relies on the collection of environmental samples that contain genetic material being shed into surrounding environment by the target organism/s. While forensic science has a long history of using molecular tools for collecting DNA from the environment, the detection of human DNA from environmental water samples has been limited. This study investigated the detection and degradation rates of human eDNA in water samples under controlled laboratory conditions. Using a human‐specific qPCR assay targeting the ND1 region of human mitochondrial DNA, eDNA degradation over time in water spiked with human blood was assessed. Recovery of nuclear DNA was investigated by determining if routine DNA short tandem repeat (STR) profiles of the blood source could be generated. Results demonstrated that human eDNA remains detectable for up to 11 days under laboratory conditions in environmental water and up to 35 days in distilled water. Partial STR profiles could be recovered from environmental water only up to 24 h, while, in distilled water, partial profiles continued to be recovered up to 840 h. These findings demonstrate that sampling human eDNA from aquatic samples can provide reliable human DNA detection within relatively short time windows, assisting law enforcement agencies by providing information about the potential time an individual may have been present in an area or assisting in the detection and location of a body or remains in aquatic environments.
Using Experiments to Design and Evaluate the CAP: Insights from an Expert Panel
Authors: Curzi Daniele , Chabé‐Ferret Sylvain , Di Falco Salvatore , Kuhfuss Laure , Lefebvre Marianne , Matthews Alan
Published: August 2022

Over the last twenty years the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has considerably evolved, by introducing new objectives and instruments to address the increasing number of challenges ahead. These changes call for the use of innovative tools to analyse agricultural policy design and evaluation. During the last European Association of Agricultural Economics conference, a panel of experts presented their points of view on how experiments can enhance the CAP evaluation toolkit. In this article we summarise the main insights emerging during this session. We present a review of the different existing experimental approaches followed by some examples of their application in the study of the CAP and a discussion of the potential hurdles to the use of experimental results to design actual policies. From the different contributions it emerges that experimental approaches may represent effective tools to improve the design and evaluation of the CAP. However, a potential hurdle to their wider use is that experimental results often fail to be confirmed when applied to large‐scale policy interventions. In this article we discuss some potential solutions to the main problems affecting the scalability of experimental results, and we provide some insights on how experiments can help to improve the CAP further.
Targeted therapy combined with immunotherapy in patients with breast infiltrating ductal carcinoma with axillary lymph node metastasis of metaplastic SCC
Authors: Bai Rilan , Jia Lin , Gao Yangyang , Sun Xu , Chen Naifei , Lv Zheng , Cui Jiuwei
Published: August 2022

At present, the clinicopathological features, optimal treatment patterns, and prognosis of breast metaplastic squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) are not fully understood and are still controversial. Here, we report a 56‐year‐old female patient with breast infiltrating ductal carcinoma with axillary lymph node metastasis of metaplastic SCC admitted to our hospital. Their homology was clarified by comparing the gene mutation results of the two lesions, that is, the axillary lymph node lesion was a metastasis of breast metaplastic SCC. We treated the patient with Poly ADP‐ribose Polymerase (PARP) inhibitors in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and found that she could achieve clinical benefit from the combination regimen. We reported a successful diagnosis and treatment of this rare refractory disease and reviewed the literature on the characteristics, pathogenesis, and advances in the diagnosis and treatment of breast metaplastic SCC.
Immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment in extraskeletal myxoid chondrosarcoma: A case of pleural metastases
Authors: Ogata Ryosuke , Soda Hiroshi , Senju Hiroaki , Fujioka Masaki , Shimada Midori , Yamashita Koki , Irifune Satoshi , Tagawa Ryuta , Dotsu Yosuke , Iwasaki Keisuke , Taniguchi Hirokazu , Takemoto Shinnosuke , Fukuda Yuichi , Mukae Hiroshi
Published: August 2022

Extraskeletal myxoid chondrosarcoma (EMCS) is an undifferentiated mesenchymal malignancy; however, its immune microenvironment remains to be elucidated. The case of a 34‐year‐old woman who developed EMCS metastasizing to the pleura is presented here. The pleural EMCS showed hypervascularity, absent PD‐L1 expression, and a lack of tumor mutational burden and pathogenic variants. Immunohistological examination of the pleural lesions showed predominant M2 macrophages and sparse CD8+ T cells. EMCS and the tumor stroma were positive for transforming growth factor‐β1 (TGF‐β1) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). In contrast, a small number of the stromal vessels were positive for hypoxia inducible factor‐1α (HIF‐1α). TGF‐β1 and VEGF in the tumor stroma and low antigenicity of the tumor cells may help explain how EMCS induced the immunosuppressive microenvironment. These findings may encourage investigators to explore novel combined immunotherapy for EMCS, such as TGF‐β1 and VEGF inhibitors, and specific therapy for enhancing tumor antigens.
The evolution of strength, elasticity and rupture behaviour of birch tar made with ‘double‐pot’ techniques during tar cooking
Authors: Schmidt Patrick , Koch Tabea J. , Berthold Christoph , Lauxmann Frieder , Nickel Klaus G.
Published: August 2022

Birch tar was the first adhesive produced by humans. Its study has consequences for our understanding of human evolution and the development of specialised craftsmanship. One of the better‐documented birch tar making methods is the ‘double‐pot’ technique, where two containers are used, one containing bark, the other collecting the tar. Birch tar made with double‐pots has low viscosity and bad adhesive properties. To obtain a usable adhesive, it must be reduced in volume by cooking. We investigate the evolution of tar’s mechanical properties during cooking. We use lap‐shear tests to investigate strength, stiffness and failure behaviour. We found that tar must be cooked for 90 min to acquire adhesive properties. When cooked for longer, strength and stiffness increase over a 30 min lasting time span. Cooking for even longer, beyond this 30 min window, produced a substance that could no longer be used as an adhesive. The implications are that tar cooking requires a high level of skill because specific signs indicating the desired properties must be recognised during the process. Tar cooking constitutes a supplementary investment in time and resources and appears to be associated with a certain degree of risk.
Environmental pharmacology—Dosing the environment: IUPHAR review 36
Authors: Connolly Christopher N. , Alexander Stephen P. H. , Davies Jamie A. , Spedding Michael
Published: August 2022

Pesticide action is predominantly measured as a toxicological outcome, with pharmacological impact of sublethal doses on bystander species left largely undocumented. Likewise, chronic exposure, which often results in responses different from acute administration, has also been understudied. In this article, we propose the application of standard pharmacological principles, already used to establish safe clinical dosing regimens in humans, to the ‘dosing of the environment’. These principles include relating the steady state dose of an agent to its beneficial effects (e.g. pest control), while minimising harmful impacts (e.g. off‐target bioactivity in beneficial insects). We propose the term ‘environmental therapeutic window’, analogous to that used in mammalian pharmacology, to guide risk assessment. To make pharmacological terms practically useful to environmental protection, quantitative data on pesticide action need to be made available in a freely accessible database, which should include toxicological and pharmacological impacts on both target and off‐target species.
Chronological improvement in precision oncology implementation in Japan
Authors: Sunami Kuniko , Naito Yoichi , Komine Keigo , Amano Toraji , Ennishi Daisuke , Imai Mitsuho , Kage Hidenori , Kanai Masashi , Kenmotsu Hirotsugu , Koyama Takafumi , Maeda Takahiro , Morita Sachi , Sakai Daisuke , Kohsaka Shinji , Tsuchihara Katsuya , Saigusa Yusuke , Yoshino Takayuki
Published: August 2022

In Japan, comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) tests for refractory cancer patients have been approved since June 2019, under the requirement that all cases undergoing CGP tests are annotated by the molecular tumor board (MTB) at each government‐designated hospital. To investigate improvement in precision oncology, we evaluated and compared the proportion of cases receiving matched treatments according to CGP results and those recommended to receive genetic counseling at all core hospitals between the first period (11 hospitals, June 2019 to January 2020) and second period (12 hospitals, February 2020 to January 2021). A total of 754 and 2294 cases underwent CGP tests at core hospitals in the first and second periods, respectively; 28 (3.7%) and 176 (7.7%) patients received matched treatments (p < 0.001). Additionally, 25 (3.3%) and 237 (10.3%) cases were recommended to receive genetic counseling in the first and second periods, respectively (p < 0.001). The proportion was associated with the type of CGP test: tumor‐only (N = 2391) vs. tumor‐normal paired (N = 657) analysis (10.0% vs. 3.5%). These results suggest that recommendations regarding available clinical trials in networked MTBs might contribute to increasing the numbers of matched treatments, and that tumor‐normal paired rather than tumor‐only tests can increase the efficiency of patient referrals for genetic counseling.
Japanese nationwide observational multicenter study of tumor BRCA1/2 variant testing in advanced ovarian cancer
Authors: Oda Katsutoshi , Aoki Daisuke , Tsuda Hitoshi , Nishihara Hiroshi , Aoyama Hisanori , Inomata Hyoe , Shimada Muneaki , Enomoto Takayuki
Published: August 2022

The association between germline BRCA1 and BRCA2 pathogenic variants (mutations: gBRCAm) and ovarian cancer risk is well established. Germline testing alone cannot detect somatic BRCA1/2 pathogenic variants (sBRCAm), which is calculated based on the proportion of tumor BRCAm (tBRCAm) from tumor samples and gBRCAm. Homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) results mainly from genetic/epigenetic alterations in homologous recombination repair‐related genes and can be evaluated by genomic instability status. In Japan, the prevalence of tBRCAm, sBRCAm, and HRD remains unclear. This multicenter, cross‐sectional, observational study, CHaRacterIzing the croSs‐secTional approach to invEstigate the prevaLence of tissue BRCA1/2 mutations in newLy diagnosEd advanced ovarian cancer patients (CHRISTELLE), evaluated the prevalence of tBRCAm, sBRCAm, and HRD in tumor specimens from newly diagnosed patients with ovarian cancer who underwent gBRCA testing. Of the 205 patients analyzed, 26.8% had a tBRCAm, including tBRCA1m (17.6%) and tBRCA2m (9.3%). The overall prevalence of tBRCAm, gBRCAm, sBRCAm, and HRD‐positive status was 26.8%, 21.5%, 6.3%, and 60.0%, respectively. The calculated sBRCAm/tBRCAm ratio was 23.6% (13/55), and the prevalence of gBRCA variant of uncertain significance was 3.9%. These results suggest gBRCA testing alone cannot clearly identify the best course of treatment, highlighting the importance of sBRCA testing in Japan. The present results also suggest that testing for tBRCA and HRD should be encouraged in advanced ovarian cancer patients to drive precision medicine.
Efficacy of MitoHeal® supplementation on adult skin quality and patient satisfaction: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, pilot study
Authors: Hooper Stephanie , Hausenblas Heather A. , Winters Carena
Published: August 2022

Aim

Polyphenols, the most abundant natural biochemicals found in fruits, vegetables seeds, red wine, cocoa, coffee and spices, may have cosmetic and health effects.

Methods

This was a 1-month randomized, placebo-controlled study, approved by the institutional review board. In total, 40 adults (mean age 44.65 years) were randomized to one of three groups: MitoHeal® 500 mg/day, MitoHeal® 1000 mg/day or placebo drink. Measurements were expert rating of professional photos of skin quality and patient self-reported skin satisfaction at Days 0 and 30.

Results

The photographs and self-report assessments revealed that, compared with placebo, MitoHeal supplementation resulted in improvements in skin quality and patient satisfaction from Day 0 to Day 30, with a dose–response relationship often evidenced (P < 0.05). No adverse events were reported.

Conclusion

Pilot data revealed that MitoHeal supplementation might be effective for improving skin quality and patient satisfaction. Larger sample sizes and trial durations are needed to determine the effects of MitoHeal supplementation on beauty and overall health.
Evolving utility of apremilast in dermatological disorders for off-label indications
Authors: Mehta Hitaishi , Sharma Apoorva , Dogra Sunil
Published: August 2022

Apremilast, a small molecule that acts by inhibition of the phosphodiesterase-4 enzyme, has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the management of psoriatic arthritis, plaque psoriasis and Behçet disease. The drug has drawn much interest from practising dermatologists in view of its exceptional safety profile and prescription convenience, as evident by the recent surge of literature describing its off-label indications. This review was carried out with the aim of summarizing the literature on off-label use of apremilast in dermatology, in order to guide clinicians regarding currently available evidence. The PubMed database was searched using ‘apremilast’ as a keyword in the title. Abstracts were individually screened to determine whether there was a description of an off-label use of apremilast in dermatology within the article. Randomized controlled trial data were available for vitiligo, alopecia areata, hidradenitis suppurativa and atopic dermatitis. Case series and case reports describing apremilast were also reviewed. Owing to its broad spectrum of immunomodulatory activity, apremilast may be useful in several chronic inflammatory skin diseases recalcitrant to conventional therapies, either alone or in combination with other drugs. Further studies are needed to establish its role in various dermatological indications.