bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Priority effects are weakened by a short, but not long, history of sympatric evolution
Authors: Zee Peter C. , Fukami Tadashi
Published: January 2018

Priority effects, or the effects of species arrival history on local species abundances, have been documented in a range of taxa. However, factors determining the extent to which priority effects affect community assembly remain unclear. Using laboratory populations of the bacteriumPseudomonas fluorescens, we examined whether shared evolutionary history affected the strength of priority effects. We hypothesized that sympatric evolution of populations belonging to the same guild would lead to niche differentiation, resulting in phenotypic complementarity that weakens priority effects. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that priority effects tended to be weaker in sympatrically evolved pairs of immigrating populations than in allopatrically evolved pairs. Furthermore, priority effects were weaker under higher phenotypic complementarity. However, these patterns were observed only in populations with a relatively short history of sympatric evolution, and disappeared when populations had evolved together for a long time. Together, our results suggest that the evolutionary history of organismal traits may dictate the strength of priority effects and, consequently, the extent of historical contingency in the assembly of ecological communities.
Evolutionary conserved neural signature of early life stress affects animal social competence
Authors: Nyman Cecilia , Fischer Stefan , Aubin-Horth Nadia , Taborsky Barbara
Published: January 2018

In vertebrates, the early social environment can persistently influence behaviour and social competence later in life. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying variation in animal social competence are largely unknown. In rats, high-quality maternal care causes an upregulation of hippocampal glucocorticoid receptors (
gr
) and reduces offspring stress responsiveness. This identifies
gr
regulation as a candidate mechanism for maintaining variation in animal social competence. We tested this hypothesis in a highly social cichlid fish,
Neolamprologus pulcher
, reared with or without caring parents. We find that the molecular pathway translating early social experience into later-life alterations of the stress axis is homologous across vertebrates: fish reared with parents expressed the glucocorticoid receptor
gr1
more in the telencephalon. Furthermore, expression levels of the transcription factor
egr-1
(early growth response 1) were associated with
gr1
expression in the telencephalon and hypothalamus. When blocking glucocorticoid receptors (GR) with an antagonist, mifepristone (RU486), parent-reared individuals showed more socially appropriate, submissive behaviour when intruding on a larger conspecific's territory. Remarkably, mifepristone-treated fish were less attacked by territory owners and had a higher likelihood of territory takeover. Our results indicate that early social-environment effects on stress axis programming are mediated by an evolutionary conserved molecular pathway, which is causally involved in environmentally induced variation of animal social competence.
Reinterpretation of a previously described Jehol bird clarifies early trophic evolution in the Ornithuromorpha
Authors: Zheng Xiaoting , O'Connor Jingmai K. , Wang Xiaoli , Wang Yan , Zhou Zhonghe
Published: January 2018

STM35-3 from the Yixian Formation is the only Early Cretaceous ornithuromorph preserving direct evidence of granivory. The crop contains numerous seeds and the preservation of gastroliths presumably within the ventriculus indicates this diet was paired with the presence of a gastric mill as in living granivorous birds. STM35-3 was originally referred to
Hongshanornis longicresta
, member of a diverse clade of small, basal ornithuromorphs with elongate hindlimbs known as the Hongshanornithidae. Hindlimb proportions suggest that hongshanornithids were wading birds, an ecological inference somewhat in conflict with direct evidence suggesting
Hongshanornis
fed on seeds. However, close inspection of STM35-3 reveals that the specimen represents a new species not closely related to hongshanornithids, distinguished by large forelimbs that exceed the length of the hindlimbs, robust and narrow coracoids, and a delicate edentulous rostrum. By contrast, all hongshanornithids have hindlimbs that far exceed the length of the forelimbs, coracoids with wide sternal margins, and small teeth throughout the upper and lower jaws. Reinterpretation of this new taxon,
Eogranivora edentulata
gen. et sp. nov, helps to clarify trophic driven patterns of tooth loss within the Ornithuromorpha. Apparent loss of the hallux may represent the first such occurrence in a Mesozoic bird and suggests a highly terrestrial lifestyle.
School is out on noisy reefs: the effect of boat noise on predator learning and survival of juvenile coral reef fishes
Authors: Ferrari Maud C. O. , McCormick Mark I. , Meekan Mark G. , Simpson Stephen D. , Nedelec Sophie L. , Chivers Douglas P.
Published: January 2018

Noise produced by anthropogenic activities is increasing in many marine ecosystems. We investigated the effect of playback of boat noise on fish cognition. We focused on noise from small motorboats, since its occurrence can dominate soundscapes in coastal communities, the number of noise-producing vessels is increasing rapidly and their proximity to marine life has the potential to cause deleterious effects. Cognition—or the ability of individuals to learn and remember information—is crucial, given that most species rely on learning to achieve fitness-promoting tasks, such as finding food, choosing mates and recognizing predators. The caveat with cognition is its latent effect: the individual that fails to learn an important piece of information will live normally until the moment where it needs the information to make a fitness-related decision. Such latent effects can easily be overlooked by traditional risk assessment methods. Here, we conducted three experiments to assess the effect of boat noise playbacks on the ability of fish to learn to recognize predation threats, using a common, conserved learning paradigm. We found that fish that were trained to recognize a novel predator while being exposed to ‘reef + boat noise’ playbacks failed to subsequently respond to the predator, while their ‘reef noise’ counterparts responded appropriately. We repeated the training, giving the fish three opportunities to learn three common reef predators, and released the fish in the wild. Those trained in the presence of ‘reef + boat noise’ playbacks survived 40% less than the ‘reef noise’ controls over our 72 h monitoring period, a performance equal to that of predator-naive fish. Our last experiment indicated that these results were likely due to failed learning, as opposed to stress effects from the sound exposure. Neither playbacks nor real boat noise affected survival in the absence of predator training. Our results indicate that boat noise has the potential to cause latent effects on learning long after the stressor has gone.
Alien leaf beetles of European Russia: native ranges, invasion history, biology and vectors of dispersal
Authors: Bieńkowski Andrzej O. , Orlova-Bienkowskaja Marina J.
Published: January 2018

Invasions of leaf beetles are of great ecological and economic significance, but poorly studied. The rate of these invasions in Europe is dramatically increasing. Some established species spread quickly occupying almost the whole continent within several decades. We present the first inventory of alien leaf beetles of European Russia. For each species the map of distribution is provided and the history of invasion in the world is discussed. Two species native to Mediterranean Region:Chrysolina americana(pest ofRosmarinusandLavandula)andLeptomona erythrocephalafeeding onLotus corniculatusare recorded in European Russia for the first time. A polyphagous pest of floricultureLuperomorpha xanthoderanative to China and Korea and pest of soybeansMedythia nigrobilineatanative to East Asia were recorded in 2016. A pest of tobaccoEpitrix hirtipennisnative to North America was recorded in 2013. A pest of cornDiabrotica virgiferawas intercepted at the border of Russia in 2011, but is not established. Three alien species were recorded in the 20th century:Zygogramma suturalisintroduced from North America for control ofAmbrosia, Phyllotreta reitterinative to Afghanistan and Tajikistan and feeding onLepidium latifolium, and the Colorado potato beetleLeptinotarsa decemlineata. The Black Sea region is more prone to leaf beetle invasions than other regions of European Russia. Leaf beetles usually occur only on alien or cultivated plants. Some species feed on native plants in native communities. So it is difficult to distinguish species established before the 20th century from native ones.
Sleep problems are associated with hypersensitivity to touch in children with autism
Authors: Orna Tzischinsky , Gal Meiri , Liora Manelis , Asif Bar-Sinai , Hagit Fluser , Analya Michaelovski , Orit Zivan , Michal Ilan , Michal Faroy , Idan Menashe , Ilan Dinstein
Published: January 2018

Background

Sensory abnormalities and sleep disturbances are highly prevalent in children with autism, but the potential relationship between these two domains has rarely been explored. Understanding such relationships is important for identifying children with autism who exhibit more homogeneous symptoms.

Methods

Here we examined this relationship using the Caregiver Sensory Profile and the children’s sleep habit questionnaires, which were completed by parents of 69 children with autism and 62 frequency age-matched controls.

Results

In line with previous studies, children with autism exhibited more severe sensory abnormalities and sleep disturbances than age-matched controls. The sleep disturbance scores were strongly associated with touch and oral sensitivities in the autism group and with touch and vestibular sensitivities in the control group. Hyper sensitivity towards touch, in particular, exhibited the strongest relationship with sleep disturbances in the autism group and single-handedly explained 24% of the variance in sleep disturbance scores. In contrast, sensitivity in other sensory domains such as vision and audition was not associated with sleep quality in either group.

Conclusions

While it is often assumed that sensitivities in all sensory domains are similarly associated with sleep problems, our results suggest that hyper sensitivity towards touch exhibits the strongest relationship to sleep disturbances when examining children autism. We speculate that hyper sensitivity towards touch interferes with sleep onset and maintenance in a considerable number of children with autism who exhibit severe sleep disturbances. Studies that examine the effects of tactile sensory therapies/aids on sleep quality and behavioral improvement in these children are, therefore, highly warranted.
LiMMBo: a simple, scalable approach for linear mixed models in high-dimensional genetic association studies
Authors: Meyer Hannah Verena , Paolo Casale Francesco , Stegle Oliver , Birney Ewan
Published: January 2018

Genome-wide association studies have helped to shed light on the genetic architecture of complex traits and diseases. Deep phenotyping of population cohorts is increasingly applied, where multi-to high-dimensional phenotypes are recorded in the individuals. Whilst these rich datasets provide important opportunities to analyse complex trait structures and pleiotropic effects at a genome-wide scale, existing statistical methods for joint genetic analyses are hampered by computational limitations posed by high-dimensional phenotypes. Consequently, such multivariate analyses are currently limited to a moderate number of traits. Here, we introduce a method that combines linear mixed models with bootstrapping (LiMMBo) to enable computationally efficient joint genetic analysis of high-dimensional phenotypes. Our method builds on linear mixed models, thereby providing robust control for population structure and other confounding factors, and the model scales to larger datasets with up to hundreds of phenotypes. We first validate LiMMBo using simulations, demonstrating consistent covariance estimates at greatly reduced computational cost compared to existing methods. We also find LiMMBo yields consistent power advantages compared to univariate modelling strategies, where the advantages of multivariate mapping increases substantially with the phenotype dimensionality. Finally, we applied LiMMBo to 41 yeast growth traits to map their genetic determinants, finding previously known and novel pleiotropic relationships in this high-dimensional phenotype space. LiMMBo is accessible as open source software (https://github.com/HannahVMeyer/limmbo).

Author summary

In multi-trait genetic association studies one is interested in detecting genetic variants that are associated with one or multiple traits. Genetic variants that influence two or more traits are referred to as pleiotropic. Multivariate linear mixed models have been successfully applied to detect pleiotropic effects, by jointly modelling association signals across traits. However, these models are currently limited to a moderate number of phenotypes as the number of model parameters grows steeply with the number of phenotypes, raising a computational burden. We developed LiMMBo, a new approach for the joint analysis of high-dimensional phenotypes. Our method reduces the number of effective model parameters by introducing an intermediate subsampling step. We validate this strategy using simulations, where we apply LiMMBo for the genetic analysis of hundreds of phenotypes, detecting pleiotropic effects for a wide range of simulated genetic architectures. Finally, to illustrate LiMMBo in practice, we apply the model to a study of growth traits in yeast, where we identify pleiotropic effects for traits with formerly known genetic effects as well as revealing previously unconnected traits.
FRMD8 promotes inflammatory and growth factor signalling by stabilising the iRhom/ADAM17 sheddase complex
Authors: Künzel Ulrike , Grieve Adam G. , Meng Yao , Cowley Sally A. , Freeman Matthew
Published: January 2018

Many intercellular signals are synthesised as transmembrane precursors that are released by proteolytic cleavage (‘shedding’) from the cell surface. ADAM17, a membrane-tethered metalloprotease, is the primary shedding enzyme responsible for the release of the inflammatory cytokine TNFα and several EGF receptor ligands. ADAM17 exists in complex with the rhomboid-like iRhom proteins, which act as cofactors that regulate ADAM17 substrate shedding. Here we report that the poorly characterised FERM domain-containing protein FRMD8 is a new component of iRhom2/ADAM17 sheddase complex. FRMD8 binds to the cytoplasmic N-terminus of iRhoms, and is necessary to stabilise the iRhoms and ADAM17 beyond the Golgi. In the absence of FRMD8, iRhom2 and ADAM17 are degraded via the endolysosomal pathway, resulting in the reduction of ADAM17-mediated shedding. We have confirmed the pathophysiological significance of FRMD8 in iPSC-derived human macrophages and mouse tissues, thus demonstrating its role in the regulated release of multiple cytokine and growth factor signals.
Subjective confidence reveals the hierarchical nature of learning under uncertainty
Authors: Heilbron Micha , Meyniel Florent
Published: January 2018

Hierarchical processing is pervasive in the brain, but its computational significance for learning in real-world conditions, with uncertainty and changes, is disputed. We show that previously proposed qualitative signatures which relied on reports of learned quantities or choices in simple experiments are insufficient to categorically distinguish hierarchical from non-hierarchical models of learning under uncertainty. Instead, we present a novel test which leverages a more complex task, whose hierarchical structure allows generalization between different statistics tracked in parallel. We use reports of confidence to quantitatively and qualitatively arbitrate between the two accounts of learning. Our results indicate that human subjects can track multiple, interdependent levels of uncertainty, and provide clear evidence for hierarchical processing, thereby challenging some influential neurocomputational accounts of learning.
Infection by a Giant Virus Induces Widespread Physiological Reprogramming inAureococcus Anophagefferens– A Harmful Bloom Algae
Authors: Moniruzzaman Mohammad , Gann Eric R. , Wilhelm Steven W.
Published: January 2018

While viruses with distinct phylogenetic origins and different nucleic acid types can infect and lyse eukaryotic phytoplankton, “giant” dsDNA viruses have been found to be associated with important ecological processes, including the collapse of algal blooms. However, the molecular aspects of giant virus – host interactions remain largely unknown. AaV, a giant virus in the Mimiviridae clade, is known to play a critical role in regulating the fate of brown tide blooms caused by the pelagophyteAureococcus anophagefferens.To understand the physiological response ofA. anophagefferensCCMP1984 upon AaV infection, we studied the transcriptomic landscape of this host-virus pair over an entire infection cycle using a RNA-sequencing approach. A massive transcriptional reprogramming of the host was evident as early as 5 min post-infection, with modulation of specific processes likely related to both host defense mechanism(s) and viral takeover of the cell. InfectedAureococcusshowed a relative suppression of host-cell transcripts associated with photosynthesis, cytoskeleton formation, fatty acid and carbohydrate biosynthesis. In contrast, host cell processes related to protein synthesis, polyamine biosynthesis, cellular respiration, transcription and RNA processing were overrepresented compared to the healthy cultures at different stages of the infection cycle. A large number of redox active host-selenoproteins were overexpressed, which suggested that viral replication and assembly progresses in a highly oxidative environment. The majority (99.2%) of annotated AaV genes were expressed at some point during the infection cycle and demonstrated a clear temporal-expression pattern and an increasing relative expression for the majority of the genes through the time course. We detected a putative early promoter motif for AaV, which was highly similar to the early promoter elements of two other Mimiviridae members, indicating some degree of evolutionary conservation of gene regulation within this clade. This large-scale transcriptome study provides the insight into theAureococcus ‘virocell’, and establishes a foundation to test hypotheses regarding metabolic and regulatory processes critical for AaV and other Mimiviridae members.
What is an archaeon and are the Archaea really unique?
Authors: Harish Ajith
Published: January 2018

The recognition of the group Archaea as a major branch of the Tree of Life (ToL) prompted a new view of the evolution of biodiversity. The genomic representation of archaeal biodiversity has since significantly increased. In addition, advances in phylogenetic modeling of multi-locus datasets have resolved many recalcitrant branches of the ToL. Despite the technical advances and an expanded taxonomic representation, two important aspects of the origins and evolution of the Archaea remain controversial, even as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the monumental discovery. These issues concern (i) the uniqueness (monophyly) of the Archaea, and (ii) the evolutionary relationships of the Archaea to the Bacteria and the Eukarya; both of these are relevant to the deep structure of the ToL. Here, to explore the causes for this persistent ambiguity, I examine multiple datasets that support contradicting conclusions. Results indicate that the uncertainty is primarily due to a scarcity of information in standard datasets — the core genes datasets — to reliably resolve the conflicts. These conflicts can be resolved efficiently by comparing patterns of variation in the distribution of functional genomic signatures, which are less diffused unlike patterns of primary sequence variation. Relatively lower heterogeneity in distribution patterns minimizes uncertainties, which supports statistically robust phylogenetic inferences, especially of the earliest divergences of life. This case study further highlights the limits of primary sequence data in resolving difficult phylogenetic problems and casts doubt on evolutionary inferences drawn solely from the analyses of a small set of core genes.
The role of equilibrium cost in the evolution of honest signalling: waste or optimal investment?
Authors: Számadó Szabolcs , Penn Dustin J.
Published: January 2018

The relationship between signal cost and honesty is a controversial and unresolved issue. The handicap principle assumes that signals must be costly at equilibrium to be honest, and the greater the cost, the more reliable the signal. However, theoretical models and simulations question the necessity of equilibrium cost for the evolution of honest signalling. Honest signals can evolve without costs, and they can evolve through differential benefits with no need for differential costs. Here we investigate the role of equilibrium signal cost in the evolution of honest signals in both differential benefit and differential cost models using an agent-based simulation. We found that there is an optimal investment paid by honest individual that allows for the highest level of honesty when there is correlation between signal cost paid by low and high-quality individuals. This holds for both differential benefit and differential cost models as long there is a correlation between signal cost paid by low and high quality individuals. However, increasing equilibrium signal cost poses an obstacle and hinders the evolution of honest signalling when there is no correlation between the cost paid by low and high-quality individuals. Last but not least, we found that the potential cost of cheating is a much better predictor of honesty than the equilibrium cost paid by honest signallers.
AMPKi overcomes the paradoxical activation of CRAF driven by RAF inhibitors through blocking the 14-3-3 binding to its carboxyl-terminus
Authors: Yuan Jimin , Ng Wan Hwa , Yap Jiajun , Chia Brandon , Huang Xuchao , Wang Mei , Hu Jiancheng
Published: January 2018

The paradoxical activation of RAF kinase is the predominant challenge in cancer therapies with RAF inhibitors. The inhibitor-bound RAF molecules are able to transactivate their wild-type binding partners. 14-3-3 that binds to the carboxyl-terminus of RAF kinase has been suggested to regulate the dimer-dependent activation of RAF kinase under physiological conditions, though the molecular basis is not clear. In this study, we investigated the role of 14-3-3 in the paradoxical effect of RAF inhibitors. Firstly, we found that the 14-3-3 binding to the carboxyl-terminus of CRAF was essential for its transactivation. Further, we demonstrated that this binding enhanced the dimer affinity of CRAF. Since 14-3-3 binds to the phosphorylated motif, we next investigated and identified AMPK and CRAF itself as two putative kinases that phosphorylate redundantly the 14-3-3 binding motif of CRAF. Among RAF isoforms, CRAF plays a dominant role in the paradoxical effect of RAF inhibitors, and we thus determined whether the combinatory inhibition of AMPK and CRAF would block this effect. Indeed, our data showed that AMPKi not only blocked the RAF inhibitor-driven paradoxical activation of RAF signaling and cellular overgrowth in Ras-mutated cancer cells but also reduced the drug-resistant clones derived from BRAF(V600E)-mutated cancer cells. Finally, we showed that the 14-3-3 binding to the carboxyl-terminus of CRAF was dispensable for its catalytic function in vivo. Together, our study unraveled how 14-3-3 regulates the dimerization-driven RAF activation and identified AMPKi as a potential method to relieve the drug resistance and side effect of RAF inhibitors in cancer therapy.
Limb bone scaling in hopping macropods and quadrupedal artiodactyls
Authors: Doube Michael , Felder Alessandro A , Chua Melissa Y , Lodhia Kalyani , Kłosowski Michał M , Hutchinson John R , Shefelbine Sandra J
Published: January 2018

Bone adaptation is modulated by the timing, direction, rate, and magnitude of mechanical loads. To investigate whether frequent slow, or infrequent fast, gaits could dominate bone adaptation to load, we compared scaling of the limb bones from two mammalian herbivore clades that use radically different high-speed gaits, bipedal hopping (suborder Macropodiformes; kangaroos and kin) and quadrupedal galloping (order Artiodactyla; goats, deer and kin). Forelimb and hindlimb bones were collected from 20 artiodactyl and 15 macropod species (body massM1.05 – 1536 kg) and scanned in computed tomography or X- ray microtomography. Second moment of area (Imax) and bone length (l) were measured. Scaling relations (y=axb) were calculated forlvsMfor each bone and forImaxvsMandImaxvslfor every 5% of length.ImaxvsMscaling relationships were broadly similar between clades despite the macropod forelimb being nearly unloaded, and the hindlimb highly loaded, during bipedal hopping.ImaxvslandlvsMscaling were related to locomotor and behavioural specialisations. Low-intensity loads may be sufficient to maintain bone mass across a wide range of species. Occasional high-intensity gaits might not break through the load sensitivity saturation engendered by frequent low-intensity gaits.
Deconvolution and phylogeny inference of structural variations in tumor genomic samples
Authors: Eaton Jesse , Wang Jingyi , Schwartz Russell
Published: January 2018

Phylogenetic reconstruction of tumor evolution has emerged as a crucial tool for making sense of the complexity of emerging cancer genomic data sets. Despite the growing use of phylogenetics in cancer studies, though, the field has only slowly adapted to many ways that tumor evolution differs from classic species evolution. One crucial question in that regard is how to handle inference of structural variations (SVs), which are a major mechanism of evolution in cancers but have been largely neglected in tumor phylogenetics to date, in part due to the challenges of reliably detecting and typing SVs and interpreting them phylogenetically. We present a novel method for reconstructing evolutionary trajectories of SVs from bulk whole-genome sequence data via joint deconvolution and phylogenetics, to infer clonal subpopulations and reconstruct their ancestry. We establish a novel likelihood model for joint deconvolution and phylogenetic inference on bulk SV data and formulate an associated optimization algorithm. We demonstrate the approach to be efficient and accurate for realistic scenarios of SV mutation on simulated data. Application to breast cancer genomic data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) shows it to be practical and effective at reconstructing features of SV-driven evolution in single tumors. All code can be found at https://github.com/jaebird123/tusv
Kynurenic acid accumulation underlies learning and memory impairment associated with aging
Authors: Vohra Mihir , Lemieux George A. , Lin Lin , Ashrafi Kaveh
Published: January 2018

A general feature of animal aging is decline in learning and memory. Here we show that in Caenorhabditis elegans, a significant portion of this decline is due to accumulation of kynurenic acid (KYNA), an endogenous antagonist of neural N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs). We show that activation of a specific pair of interneurons either through genetic means or by depletion of KYNA significantly improves learning capacity in aged animals even when the intervention is applied in aging animals. KYNA depletion also improves memory. We show that insulin signaling is one factor in KYNA accumulation.
2-Benzyl-6-nitro-2H-indazole
Authors: Mohamed Abdelahi Mohamed Mokhtar , El Bakri Youness , Benchidmi Mohammed , Essassi El Mokhtar , Mague Joel T.
Published: January 2018

In the title compound, C14H11N3O2, the indazole portion is planar to within 0.022 (2) Å and subtends a dihedral angle of 65.87 (7)° with the pendant benzene ring. In the crystal, oblique stacks of molecules extending along the a-axis direction are generated by π–π stacking interactions between the five- and six-membered rings [centroid–centroid separation = 3.6743 (19) Å] and the stacks are cross-linked by C—H...O hydrogen bonds.
Transforming an organization into a learning organization: Liberty Shoes Ltd, Karnal Unit
Authors: Sahoo D.P.
Published: January 2018

Subject area

Liberty Shoes Ltd, had been experiencing falling sales and decreased production as a result of frequent strikes by workers. By 2010, total sales had fallen to INR 300 crores (from INR 500 crores in 2005). In the Annual Board meeting in 2010, Mr Shammi Bansal, the Executive Director expressed his concerns and told the board members that “they must learn to survive or be extinct”. The case study discusses how The Executive Director turned the company around and how the organization became a “learning organization”.

Study level/applicability

MBA and Executive MBA programs.

Case overview

In 2004, Liberty Shoes Ltd, had a sales turnover of INR 500 crores. In the year 2006, this dropped to INR 300 crores as a result of regular staff strikes and low morale. However, by 2013, the company had registered sales of INR 800 crores and a growth rate of around 30 per cent on a year-to-year basis. With continued focused initiatives in the organization from 2010 the management aimed to reach a sales turnover of INR 1,000 crores by March, 2014. The contributing factors to this turnaround were the leadership roles which encouraged a learning organization culture with an emphasis placed on the importance of “communication”, “employee development” and “employee empowerment”.

Expected learning outcomes

Understand the role of a business leader in building a learning organization. Understand the factors contributing to the building of a culture of a learning organization. Understand the critical aspects and benefits to the organization from becoming a learning organization.

Supplementary materials

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

Subject code

CSS: 6 Human resource management.
Expanding the boundaries of brand communities: the case of Fairtrade Towns
Authors: Samuel Anthony , Peattie Ken , Doherty Bob
Published: January 2018

Purpose

This paper aims to further the authors’ understanding of brand communities, and their role in brand co-creation, through empirical and theoretical contributions derived from researching the marketing dynamics operating within a successful but atypical form of brand community, Fairtrade Towns (FTT).

Design/methodology/approach

The paper reflects a pragmatic application of Grounded Theory, which captured qualitative data from key “insiders”, with a particular emphasis on FTT steering group members and their role as “prosumers”. Data were gathered via ethnographic involvement within one town and semi-structured interviews with participants in others.

Findings

FTTs, as brand communities, demonstrate elements of co-creation that go beyond the dominant theories and models within the marketing literature. They operate in, and relate to, real places rather than the online environments that dominate the literature on this subject. Unusually, the interactions between brand marketers and consumers are not the primary source of co-creation in FTTs. Instead, factors usually identified as merely secondary providers of additional brand knowledge become key initiators and sources of co-creation and active “citizen marketer” engagement.

Originality/value

This study demonstrates how brand co-creation can operate in physical geographical communities in ways that are formal without being managed by conventional brand managers. It conceptualises FTTs as a nested and “glocalised” brand and demonstrates how steering group members facilitate the process of co-creation as prosumers. It empirically demonstrates how FTTs have evolved to become unusually complex brand communities in terms of the variety of stakeholders and the multiplicity of brands involved, and the governance of the localised brand co-creation process.
The impact of social influence on the perceived helpfulness of online consumer reviews
Authors: Risselada Hans , de Vries Lisette , Verstappen Mariska
Published: January 2018

Purpose

This study aims to study to what extent the helpfulness votes others attach to a review affect a consumer’s perceived helpfulness of that review. In addition, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether this social influence moderates the relationships among several content presentation factors and perceived helpfulness.

Design/methodology/approach

A choice-based conjoint experiment was carried out in which 201 respondents evaluated different reviews and chose the review they perceive as most helpful.

Findings

Consumers perceive reviews as more (less) helpful in the presence of clearly valenced positive (negative) helpfulness votes. In addition, helpfulness votes of others diminish the positive impact of structure and the negative impact of spelling errors.

Research limitations/implications

The experimental setup may limit the external validity of the study.

Practical implications

Providing a helpfulness button gives firms an instrument to offer content that consumers perceive as more useful and to exert some influence on the effects of content presentation factors on the review’s helpfulness.

Social implications

Consumers tend to follow other consumers’ opinions without forming their own opinion. Firms could misuse this tendency by hiring people to vote on reviews that are not necessarily helpful for consumers, but are helpful for the firm.

Originality/value

This study is the first to assess the extent to which social influence affects consumers’ evaluation of reviews. Given that consumers use helpfulness votes to distinguish reviews, it is important to understand to what extent these votes reflect the actual helpfulness of the information in the review and to what extent they reflect previous helpfulness votes.
Fifty years of the European Journal of Marketing: a bibliometric analysis
Authors: Martínez-López Francisco J. , Merigó José M. , Valenzuela-Fernández Leslier , Nicolás Carolina
Published: January 2018

Purpose

The European Journal of Marketing was created in 1967. In 2017, the journal celebrates its 50th anniversary. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to present a bibliometric overview of the leading trends of the journal during this period.

Design/methodology/approach

This work uses the Scopus database to analyse the most productive authors, institutions and countries, as well as the most cited papers and the citing articles. The investigation uses bibliometric indicators to represent the bibliographic data, including the total number of publications and citations between 1967 and 2017. Additionally, the article also develops a graphical visualization of the bibliographic material by using the visualization of similarities viewer software to map journals, keywords and institutions with bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis.

Findings

British authors and institutions are the most productive in the journal, although Australians’ are growing significantly the number of papers published. Continental European institutions are also increasing the number of publications, but they are still far from reaching the British contribution so far. In the mid-term, however, these zone’s authors and institutions, especially those from big European countries like France, Germany, Italy and Spain, should reach a closer performance to British ones; more as less long, historic, but more recent periods of analysis are considered.

Practical implications

This article is useful for any reader of this journal to understand questions such as papers’ European Journal of Marketing-related scientific productivity in terms of, for instance, contributors/authors, institutions and countries, or the main sources used to back them.

Originality/value

This is the first comprehensive article offering a general overview of the leading trends and researchers of the journal over its history.
Stressful sustainability: a hermeneutic analysis
Authors: Valor Carmen , Antonetti Paolo , Carrero Isabel
Published: January 2018

Purpose

Research on sustainable consumption (SC) has shown how, faced with barriers that prevent them from embracing a sustainable lifestyle, consumers experience classic symptoms of distress. Although distress emerges as a constitutive dimension of sustainable lifestyles, research has not yet provided a comprehensive account of how consumers cope with it. This paper aims to provide such an account.

Design/methodology/approach

In-depth interviews were conducted with 25 people who defined themselves as sustainable consumers. A hermeneutic approach was adopted for the analysis.

Findings

The analysis shows that consumers enact two different coping strategies: adjustment or episodic coping and structural coping or deradicalization. Both sets encompass reappraisals and meaning-making strategies to maintain motivation while simultaneously appeasing tensions. They also comprise the strategic enactment of emotions to energize the self and/or to appease distress. Coping influences how SC is appraised and lived, as these practices are dynamically changed to navigate structural constraints.

Practical implications

SC campaigns have traditionally focused on cognitive empowerment. However, the evidence suggests that emotional empowerment could be a more effective way to promote the practice.

Originality/value

This paper provides the first in-depth examination of the strategies adopted to cope with distress. The analysis shows that consumers reconfigure how SC is appraised and implemented, while emphasizing the crucial role of emotion work in the coping repertoire. Although SC is stressful due to structural and social constraints, consumers are able to remain committed to it to varying degrees.
Assessing the role of emotions in B2B decision making: an exploratory study
Authors: Pandey Santosh Kumar , Mookerjee Amit
Published: January 2018

Purpose

Emotions in business-to-business (B2B) interactions are relatively unexplored when compared with business-to customer (B2C) industry wherein sufficient evidence implicating the role of emotions in decision-making is available. This study aims to explore the role of emotions in B2B decision-making, and a customer experience model is suggested for the B2B industry.

Design/methodology/approach

The qualitative research methodology using structured and semi-structured interviews along with a repertory grid technique was followed during the study. Purposive sampling was done to identify respondents who were involved in the vendor choice process either as a buyer or a seller in their respective organizations.

Findings

Exploratory research conducted during this study supports the presence of five dimensions of customer experience – sensory, emotional, relational, behavioural and intellectual – in a B2B context. The study further indicates that the experiential value for B2B decision-making is derived from functional, symbolic, emotional and cost values which are assessed by the buyer during their interaction with the product or the service ecosystem and has an impact on the purchase intentions of an industrial buyer.

Originality/value

This paper identifies the role of specific customer experience dimensions in a B2B environment and proposes the role and mechanism of emotional factors affecting the decision-making process in B2B exchange.
Online sentiment analysis in marketing research: a review
Authors: Rambocas Meena , Pacheco Barney G.
Published: January 2018

Purpose

The explosion of internet-generated content, coupled with methodologies such as sentiment analysis, present exciting opportunities for marketers to generate market intelligence on consumer attitudes and brand opinions. The purpose of this paper is to review the marketing literature on online sentiment analysis and examines the application of sentiment analysis from three main perspectives: the unit of analysis, sampling design and methods used in sentiment detection and statistical analysis.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper reviews the prior literature on the application of online sentiment analysis published in marketing journals over the period 2008-2016.

Findings

The findings highlight the uniqueness of online sentiment analysis in action-oriented marketing research and examine the technical, practical and ethical challenges faced by researchers.

Practical implications

The paper discusses the application of sentiment analysis in marketing research and offers recommendations to address the challenges researchers confront in using this technique.

Originality/value

This study provides academics and practitioners with a comprehensive review of the application of online sentiment analysis within the marketing discipline. The paper focuses attention on the limitations surrounding the utilization of this technique and provides suggestions for mitigating these challenges.
Strategic mapping: relationships that count
Authors: Castellano Nicola Giuseppe , Del Gobbo Roberto
Published: January 2018

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study how the design of a strategy map can be supported by measures expressing the customers’ perceptions about strategic factors and their related determinants. In particular, managers are provided with a fact-based test useful to revise prior knowledge and beliefs.

Design/methodology/approach

A case study is used to describe the adoption of the partial least squares path modelling (PLS-PM) approach to structural equation modelling in order to compare competing strategy maps and select the one that best fits customer perceptions. A focus group was organised to design the strategy maps, which were tested through a survey of 600 randomly selected resellers.

Findings

The empirical-based validation of a causal map by using PLS-PM may effectively stimulate a revision of managers’ collective perceptions about a phenomenon characterised by implicit knowledge, as in the case of customer needs.

Research limitations/implications

The case-study company operates in a business-to-business environment, and thus only the needs of direct customers have been included in the analysis. Final users’ needs should also be considered, even if different solutions are required for data collection.

Practical implications

The proposed approach provides a set of indicators which allow managers to identify strategic priorities, thus facilitating decision making and strategic planning.

Originality/value

In the strategic management literature, few attempts have been made to operationalise the complex and multidimensional latent constructs of a strategy map combining managers’ implicit knowledge and empirical validation in a “holistic” manner. The adoption of PLS-PM is relatively new in testing the accuracy of causal maps.
Differential evolution with subpopulations for high‐dimensional seismic inversion
Authors: Pan Zhibin , Liang Hao , Gao Zhaoqi , Gao Jinghuai
Published: January 2018

Seismic inversion has drawn the attention of researchers due to its capability of building an accurate earth model. Such a model will need to be discretised finely, and the dimensions of the inversion problem will be very high. In this paper, we propose an efficient differential evolution algorithm and apply it to high‐dimensional seismic inversion. Our method takes into account the differences among individuals, which are disregarded in conventional differential evolution methods, resulting to a better balance between exploration and exploitation. We divide the entire population into three subpopulations and propose a novel mutation strategy with two phases. Furthermore, we optimise the crossover operator by applying the components having the best objective function values into the crossover operator. We embed this strategy into a cooperative coevolutionary differential evolution and propose a new differential evolution algorithm referred to as a differential evolution with subpopulations. Then, we apply our scheme to both synthetic and field data; the results of high‐dimensional seismic inversion have shown that the proposed differential evolution with subpopulations achieves faster convergence and a higher‐quality solution for seismic inversion.
Does Treatment Quality Matter?
Authors: Baglivio Michael T. , Wolff Kevin T. , Jackowski Katherine , Chapman Gabrielle , Greenwald Mark A. , Gomez Katherine
Published: January 2018

Research Summary

The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has implemented a process to evaluate the treatment quality of interventions provided statewide in all long‐term residential programs. In the current study, we examine the predictive validity of this treatment quality component in the prediction of recidivism of youth (N = 2,397) who completed juvenile justice residential programs from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014. We use hierarchical linear modeling to assess the effects of treatment quality (as youth are nested within programs), controlling for demographic and criminal history factors. The results indicate that higher average treatment quality scores of interventions received within a residential program decreased the likelihood of subsequent arrest, conviction, and reincarceration, whereas the highest treatment quality score of any specific intervention provided within the program decreased the odds of reincarceration only.

Policy Implications

In this study, we confirm the importance of fidelity and implementation quality in the provision of crime prevention treatment interventions to serious, deep‐end juvenile offenders. Additionally, our results shed light on the ability of a juvenile justice agency to measure treatment quality in a substantively meaningful way with the use of limited additional resources. The services provided to keep communities safe, prevent future offending, and rehabilitate juvenile offenders must be held accountable for producing such outcomes, and one method of measuring such compliance is to evaluate the quality of the interventions with respect to staff training, fidelity adherence, evaluation, and corrective action processes.
Ablation of PPARγ in subcutaneous fat exacerbates age‐associated obesity and metabolic decline
Authors: Xu Lingyan , Ma Xinran , Verma Narendra Kumar , Wang Dongmei , Gavrilova Oksana , Proia Richard L. , Finkel Toren , Mueller Elisabetta
Published: January 2018

It is well established that aging is associated with metabolic dysfunction such as increased adiposity and impaired energy dissipation; however, the transcriptional mechanisms regulating energy balance during late life stages have not yet been fully elucidated. Here, we show that ablation of the nuclear receptor PPARγ specifically in inguinal fat tissue in aging mice is associated with increased fat tissue expansion and insulin resistance. These metabolic effects are accompanied by decreased thermogenesis, reduced levels of brown fat genes, and browning of subcutaneous adipose tissue. Comparative studies of the effects of PPARγ downregulation in young and mid‐aged mice demonstrate a preferential regulation of brown fat gene programs in inguinal fat in an age‐dependent manner. In conclusion, our study uncovers an essential role for PPARγ in maintaining energy expenditure during the aging process and suggests the possibility of targeting PPARγ to counteract age‐associated metabolic dysfunction.