bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Zdrave životne navike i kvaliteta života onkoloških bolesnika
Authors: Ledinski Fičko Sanja , Konjevoda Vesna , Kovačević Irena , Kurtović Biljana , Hošnjak Ana Marija , Smrekar Martina
Published: March 2019

Background: Multiple health behavior change interventions, especially promoting the improvements in diet and exercise behaviors, have been used to ameliorate the adverse effects of cancer and its treatment. It is a well known fact that healthy lifestyle has a significant impact on cancer cases. The group of people which are at a high risk of cancer are
smokers, people with low fruit and vegetable intake, people with a drinking problem and with low physical activity. In 43% of the cases the
incidence of cancer can be prevented by conducting adequate measures.

Aim: The aim of this study is an overview of health promotion behaviors such as non-smoking, non-alcohol abuse, physical activity, diet and body
weight and their impact on quality of life among cancer patients and cancer survivors.

Methods: Literature overview was made systematically. Studies that have been included in the final analysis, were analyzed through 4 steps. After reviewing the abstract, 6 full text articles were
examined in more detail for eligibility and were included in the final data analysis.

Results: All six articles have shown that patients with healthy lifestyle and those who are conducting health promotion behaviors have greater score on the quality of life questionnaire. Physical activity has an impact on symptoms of treatment and disease.

Conclusion: This study supports the need for future research on public health view on conducting healthy lifestyle during therapy and in the remission of disease. Health promotion behaviors have great impact on quality of life among cancer patients and cancer survivors.
The Goals of Philosophy of Religion: A Reply to Ireneusz Zieminski
Authors: Lougheed Kirk
Published: March 2019

In a recent article, Ireneusz Zieminski (2018) argues that the main goals of philosophy of religion are to (i) define religion; (ii) assess the truth value of religion and; (iii) assess the rationality of a religious way of life. Zieminski shows that each of these goals are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Hence, philosophy of religion leads to scepticism. He concludes that the conceptual tools philosophers of religion employ are best suited to study specific religious traditions, rather than religion more broadly construed. But it’s unclear whether the goals Zieminski attributes to philosophy of religion are accurate or even necessary for successful inquiry. I argue that an essentialist definition of religion isn’t necessary for philosophy of religion and that philosophers of religion already use the conceptual analysis in the way Zieminski suggests that they should. Finally, the epistemic standard Zieminski has in view is often obscure. And when it is clear, it is unrealistically high. Contemporary philosophers of religion rarely, if ever, claim to be offering certainty, or even evidence as strong as that found in the empirical sciences.
El fin de la Botánica
Authors: Crisci Jorge Víctor , Apodaca María José , Katinas Liliana
Published: March 2019

A pesar de que las plantas representan la base para la supervivencia de la vida sobre la Tierra, la Botánica del siglo XXI está pasando por una crisis. El número de estudiantes de Botánica, de cursos de Botánica, de colecciones de plantas, de departamentos de Botánica en las universidades y de botánicos participando de reuniones y convenciones ha ido declinando en los últimos años. En un intento por comprender este problema, se analizan los siguientes temas: el reduccionismo científico, el estado de las colecciones de historia natural, la lógica del mercado aplicada a la ciencia, y el lenguaje como constructor de la realidad. Estos temas se enmarcan dentro de una perspectiva latinoamericana. La ambigüedad del título de esta contribución: ¿cese o propósito?, debería inclinarse hacia el propósito, basándose en el reconocimiento del problema, en la historia de la botánica latinoamericana y en la grandiosa biodiversidad de América Latina.
Impact of long-term therapy with acetylsalicylic acid on immature platelet count: a single-centre cohort study
Authors: Verdoia Monica , Nardin Matteo , Negro Federica , Rolla Roberta , Carriero Alessandro , De Luca Giuseppe
Published: March 2019

Acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) represents one of the most widely used pharmacological treatments for the prevention of atherothrombotic events. However, its use in low-risk patients is still debated, due to the complex balance between benefits and bleeding complications, therefore requiring new tools for the assessment of cardiovascular risk. Immature platelet count (IPC) has been suggested as a marker of platelet reactivity and turnover, thus potentially reflecting the progression of the chronic atherothrombotic vascular damage, which could be prevented by ASA. However, no study has evaluated, so far, the impact of long-term therapy with ASA on the IPC among patients undergoing coronary angiography, which was the aim of the present study. We included patients from a single centre. Significant coronary artery disease (CAD) was defined as at least one-vessel stenosis more than 50%. Immature platelet fraction (IPF) levels were measured by routine blood cells count (a Sysmex XE-2100) in patients naive or chronically treated with ASA at admission. Among 1475 patients, 464 (31.5%) were ASA-naive. Patients on long-term antiplatelet therapy were more often men (P < 0.001), with a higher prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors and CAD. The mean levels of IPC did not differ between ASA-naive and treated patents (8 ± 5.3 vs. 7.8 ± 4.9, P = 0.48). Similar results were obtained when considering IPC distribution across tertiles, as ASA therapy did not result as an independent predictor of IPC levels above the third tertile (≥8.6 × 106/ml) [adjusted odds ratio (95% confidence interval) = 0.96 (0.63–1.48), P = 0.87]. Results were confirmed in major higher risk subgroups of patients. The present study shows that among high-risk patients undergoing coronary angiography, the long-term therapy with ASA does not affect the levels of IPC.
Impact of β-thalassemia trait carrier state on inflammatory status in patients with newly diagnosed hypertension
Authors: Triantafyllou Athanasios I. , Farmakis Dimitrios T. , Lampropoulos Konstantinos M. , Karkalousos Petros L. , Triantafyllou Epameinondas A. , Papingiotis Georgios , Megalou Aikaterini , Karpanou Eva A.
Published: March 2019

Background

B-thalassemia carrier state or thalassemia minor confers cardiovascular protection through favorable lipidemic and blood pressure profile. However, its impact on inflammatory status—a common denominator of the above conditions—has not been addressed.

Methods

We investigated a wide range of inflammatory markers [white blood cell (WBC) count, homocysteine, C-reactive protein (CRP), serum amyloid A (SAA), fibrinogen, plasminogen, fibronectin, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1), and uric acid] in a large cohort of 15 805 newly diagnosed hypertensive patients (8299 men, 7506 women); 626 of them (4.0%) had thalassemia minor.

Results

The levels of WBC, homocysteine, CRP, SAA, fibrinogen, and PAI-1 were significantly lower in thalassemia minor patients, but not of plasminogen, fibronectin, and uric acid. In multivariate linear regression analyses, the lower values of WBC (<0.001), CRP (<0.001), homocysteine (<0.001), fibrinogen (<0.001), and PAI-1 (0.008), but not of SAA, were independently associated with thalassemia minor. The interaction between thalassemia minor and body mass index had a significant impact only on WBC and CRP (P for the interaction 0.010 and 0.005, respectively), whereas the interaction between thalassemia minor and sex had a significant impact only on fibrinogen (P for the interaction 0.007).

Conclusion

Thalassemia minor is followed by a favorable inflammatory profile that may contribute to the overall better cardiovascular health of the carriers.
Results of oral prednisolone administration or ventriculoperitoneal shunt placement in dogs with congenital hydrocephalus: 40 cases (2005–2016)
Authors: Gillespie Sabrina , Gilbert Zoe , De Decker Steven
Published: March 2019

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate signalment, clinical findings, and outcomes of dogs with congenital hydrocephalus treated medically with orally administered prednisolone or surgically by ventriculoperitoneal shunt placement.

DESIGN

Retrospective case series.

ANIMALS

40 client-owned dogs.

PROCEDURES

Medical records from 2005 to 2016 were searched to identify dogs with congenital hydrocephalus confirmed by MRI examination. Patients were categorized by treatment (medical vs surgical). Signalment, clinical signs, neurologic examination findings, results of diagnostic tests, duration of hospitalization, complications potentially related to treatment, and follow-up information were recorded. Outcome was categorized on the basis of clinical (neurologic) signs as improved, stabilized, or deteriorated. Variables of interest were compared between groups by Fisher exact or Mann-Whitney U tests.

RESULTS

28 and 12 dogs had surgical and medical treatment, respectively; 3 medically treated dogs subsequently underwent ventriculoperitoneal shunt placement. No significant differences were noted in clinical or imaging findings between surgically and medically treated dogs. Median follow-up time was 9 months and 15.5 months for medically and surgically treated dogs, respectively. Of 12 medically treated dogs, 6 improved and 6 deteriorated. Of 26 surgically treated dogs with data available, 14 (54%) improved, 1 (4%) stabilized, and 11 (42%) deteriorated; 4 (15%) had known postoperative complications.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE

Approximately half of the dogs treated with prednisolone in this population had neurologic improvement at last follow-up; results of surgical treatment were comparable to those in previous studies. Further research is needed to assess factors associated with acceptable outcomes for dogs with congenital hydrocephalus.
The Balkan tradition in contemporary jazz. Anatoly Vapirov
Authors: Vasiliu Alex
Published: March 2019

The folkloric character of the beginnings of jazz has been established by all researchers of American classical music. The African-Americans brought as slaves onto the territory of North America, the European émigrés tied to their own folkloric repertoire, the songs in the musical revues on Broadway turned national successes – can be considered the first three waves to have fundamentally influenced the history of jazz music. Preserving the classical and modern manner of improvisation and arrangement has not been a solution for authentic jazz musicians, permanently preoccupied with renewing their mode of expression. As it happened in the academic genres, the effect of experiments was mostly to draw the public away, as its capacity of understanding and empathizing with the new musical “products” (especially those in the “free” stylistic area) were discouraging. The areas which also had something original to say in the field of jazz remained the traditional, archaic cultures in Eastern Europe, Asia, the Orient. Compared to folkloric works from very distant areas, the musical culture of the Balkans bears the advantage of diversity, the ease of reception of melodies, rhythms and instrumental sonority. One of the most important architects of ethno-jazz is Anatoly Vapirov. A classically-trained musician, an author of concerts, stage music and soundtracks, a consummate connoisseur of the classical mode of improvisation as a saxophone and clarinet player, Anatoly Vapirov has dedicated decades of his life to researching the archaic musical culture of the Balkans, which he translated into the dual academic-jazz language, in the hypostases of predetermined scored works and of improvised works – either as a soloist, in combos or big bands. This study focuses on highlighting the language techniques, emphasizing the aesthetic-artistic qualities of the music signed Anatoly Vapirov.
Factors affecting household access to water supply in residential areas in parts of Lagos metropolis, Nigeria
Authors: Akoteyon Isaiah Sewanu
Published: March 2019

Access to water is vital for sustainable human socio-economic development. The study examined factors affecting households’ access to water supply in three residential areas in parts of Lagos metropolis, Nigeria. A random sampling technique was employed to administer questionnaires to 200 households. The study area was delineated into residential types using the grid method. The result shows the dominance of improved water sources in the high/medium-income residential areas. Households in the medium-income area recorded the highest access in terms of distance to, and safety of water supply. The factor analysis explains 77.41% of the variance with three components, namely: water access, demographic and economic attributes. The results of the analysis of variance reveal three significant variables, namely: main water source, income and cost, which is significant at p<0.01. The regression equation model obtained is given as Y = 2.059 + 0.307MWS + 0.286INM + 0.164CST. The study concluded that main water source, income and cost are the factors affecting access to water supply in the study area. The study recommends investment in water infrastructure, giving a higher priority to low-income residential areas for improved healthy living and sustainable socio-economic development.
Stakeholders in the local service centre: who should be involved in the planning process? Insights from Poland, Czech Republic and Denmark
Authors: Damurski Łukasz , Pluta Jacek , Maier Karel , Andersen Hans Thor
Published: March 2019

Local service centres play a vital role in shaping the quality of life in urban neighbourhoods. They offer access to essential everyday services (shops, education, healthcare, personal services) and to public spaces. If they are properly planned and managed, they can bring particular added values to a local community, such as social integration and territorial identification. The history of urban planning has produced several patterns of local service centres (ancient agora, mediaeval market square, neighbourhood unit, modern agora) but today a question arises: how can a local service centre be successfully planned and organised in post-modern political practice? How can its potential be realised and the ever-changing needs, expectations and preferences of local communities be met? Who should be involved in those processes? To answer those questions in this paper we refer to citizen participation and public communication concepts, where selecting the appropriate stakeholders emerges as a necessary starting point for effective urban governance. We present the results of in-depth interviews with local actors (local authorities, municipality officials, town planners, non-governmental organisations, local leaders) in Poland (Wrocław, Siechnice, Ostrów Wielkopolski, Warszawa and Zabierzów), Czech Republic (Prague) and Denmark (Copenhagen). Depending on the specific local context, various stakeholders are perceived as essential to the decision-making process. The power relations and problems encountered in implementing public policy in particular locations have been summarised in three sections: relationships between stakeholders, leadership, and good practices. The paper concludes with a list of typical actors who should be involved in planning, building and managing a local service centre in an urbanised neigh-bourhood.
Same Old (Macro-) Securitization? A Comparison of Political Reactions to Major Terrorist Attacks in the United States and France
Authors: Dück Elena , Lucke Robin
Published: March 2019

After the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris, the French government reacted swiftly by declaring a state of emergency. This state of emergency remained in place for over two years before it was ended in November 2017, only after being replaced by the new anti-terror legislation. The attacks as well as the government’s reactions evoked parallels to 9/11 and its aftermath. This is a puzzling observation when taking into consideration that the Bush administration’s reactions have been criticized harshly and that the US ‘War on Terror’ (WoT) was initially considered a serious failure in France. We can assume that this adaption of the discourse and practices stems from a successful establishment of the WoT macro-securitization. By using Securitization Theory, we outline the development of this macro-securitization by comparing its current manifestation in France against the backdrop of its origins in the US after 9/11. We analysed securitizing moves in the discourses, as well as domestic and international emergency measure policies. We find extensive similarities with view of both; yet there are differing degrees of securitizing terrorism and the institutionalisation of the WoT in the two states. This suggests that the WoT narrative is still dominant internationally to frame the risk of terrorism as an existential threat, thus enabling repressive actions and the obstruction of a meaningful debate about the underlying problems causing terrorism in the first place.
Traditional Village System – Case Study from the Krempna Commune (Poland)
Authors: Kozak Ihor , Balaniuk Ivan , Szelenko Diana , Balaniuk Sergiy , Kozak Hanna
Published: March 2019

The study was conducted within the actual area of Krempna commune in Jaslo county Podkarpackie voivodeship in Poland. Historical data and maps were analysed using the ArcGIS 10.3 program. The changes in the number of villages, householders and human population were presented. Religious composition for the year 1785 and ethnic composition for the year 1939 were evaluated. Only in the case of Ukrainian population, the Moran’s test has shown dispersed distribution (Index Moran’s for Ukrainians = −0.478664; Z = −1.684100; P = 0.092162). The total number of householders increased from 915 in the year 1785 to 1,409 householders in the year 1939 and decreased to 349 in the year 1965 and 333 in the year 2018. The traditional village system (TVS) of Krempna commune was depopulated after World War II. As a result, the agricultural abandonment and forest succession developed. Class area (CA) of settlements decreased from 1174.02 ha in the year 1939 to 248.13 ha in the year 1965 and 240.2 ha in the year 2018, and CA of forests increased from 7,268.20 ha in the year 1939 to 15,465.20 ha in the year 1965 and 15,841.3 ha in the year 2018. Villages that had begun the core of TVS together with tserkvas and chapels in the centre of village, roadside crosses and traditional private farms were lost. The scale and results of such changes are interesting for future research, mainly in terms of change in TVS infrastructure and culture.
Exomorphogenesis of Cosmogenic Ring Structures of Kazakhstan
Authors: Veselova Larysa , Kasymkhanova Khaini-Kamal , Kozhakhmetova Umut , Bekseitova Roza , Shmarova Irina , Turapova Rahat , Baydauletova Gulban
Published: March 2019

The use of materials for remote sensing of the Earth made it possible to identify a new type of crustal structures and features of their expression in relief. These are ring structures that complicate the structure of the studied structures of a linear type. As a result of the study of the morphology, geological and tectonic structure of ring structures, it was established that they represent formations of various origins: pluton-volcanic, cosmogenic, and anthropogenic. Cosmogenic structures of different ages and differ in various degrees of transformation.

The relief of the identified cosmogenic structures within the limits of the Turan Plains, the Kazakh small hills and mountains of South-Eastern Kazakhstan is transformed by exogenous processes. The defining indicator features of cosmogenic structures include geomorphological, geological, structural tectonic, and also landscape. The degree of change in the initial cosmogenic relief depends on the time of formation, paleogeographic and modern physiographic conditions of the territories. Under the arid conditions of Kazakhstan’s epyhercynian platform, the main factor in the preservation of the “primary” morphology of meteorite craters is the lithologic stratigraphic complexes of the ring shaft. For the studied cosmogenic structures, in particular, the meteorite craters of Saryarka, a distinct geodynamic zoning of the development of exomorphogenesis processes is characteristic. The main exogenous processes include gravity-slope, surface washout, ravine and river erosion, processes of complex denudation and accumulation. The factors and processes of creating a modern crater relief morphology are established.

These studies of cosmogenic ring structures of Kazakhstan have not only theoretical significance, revealing the role of cosmogenic processes of the formation of the Earth as a planet, but also have immediate practical importance. Meteorite craters are indicators of mineral deposits.
Preparation of α-damascone
Authors: Hu Junyi , Guo Aiqiang , Xu Yingqian , Pan Changsheng , Wei Xingfu , Wang Longlong , Xiao Guoyong
Published: March 2019

α-Damascone is widely used in perfumes. However, the manufacture of α-damascone remains challenging owing to the limitations of current production processes. Herein, α-damascone was successfully synthesized from α-ionone using a new route involving only four steps, namely oximization, epoxidation, dehydration, and reduction. The total yield was 54.9% with a final chemical purity of 97% (by GC). Only water, cyclohexane, and ethanol were used in the reactions except in the purification step, and all solvents could be recycled. The structures of the intermediates and target compound were identified by 1H NMR and 13C NMR analyses and MS experiments. This route is a simple and successful method for the industrial preparation of α-damascone.
Application of Normalized Compression Distance and Lempel-Ziv Jaccard Distance in Micro-electrode Signal Stream Classification for the Surgical Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease
Authors: Ząbkiewicz Kamil
Published: March 2019

Parkinson’s Disease can be treated with the use of microelectrode recording and stimulation. This paper presents a data stream classifier that analyses raw data from micro-electrodes and decides whether the measurements were taken from the subthalamic nucleus (STN) or not. The novelty of the proposed approach is based on the fact that distances based on raw data are used. Two distances are investigated in this paper, i.e. Normalized Compression Distance (NCD) and Lempel-Ziv Jaccard Distance (LZJD). No new features needed to be extracted due to the fact that in the case of high-dimensional data the process is extremely time-consuming. The k-nearest neighbour (k-NN) was chosen as the classifier due to its simplicity, which is essential in data stream classification. Results obtained from classifiers based on k-NN: k-NN, k-NN were compared with Probabilistic Approximate Window (k-NN with PAW); k-NN with Probabilistic Approximate Window and Adaptive Windowing (k-NN with PAW and ADWIN); and Self Adjusting Memory k-NN (SAM k-NN), which use the proposed distances, with the performance of the same classifiers but using standard Euclidean distance. Prequential accuracy was chosen as the performance measure. The results of the experiments performed with the described approach are in most cases better, i.e. the performance measures for kNN classifiers that use NCD and LZJD distances are better by up to 8.5 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively. Moreover, the proposed approach performs better when compared with other stream classification algorithms, i.e. Hoeffding Tree, Naive Bayes, and Leveraging Bagging. In the discussed case, an improvement of classification rate of up to 17.9 per cent when using Lempel-Ziv Jaccard Distance instead of the Euclidean was noted.
Online Interactivity – A Shift towards E-textbook-based Medical Education
Authors: Dutkiewicz Aldona , Kołodziejczak Barbara , Leszczyński Piotr , Mokwa-Tarnowska Iwona , Topol Paweł , Kupczyk Barbara , Siatkowski Idzi
Published: March 2019

Textbooks have played the leading role in academic education for centuries and their form has evolved, adapting to the needs of students, teachers and technological possibilities. Advances in technology have caused educators to look for new sources of knowledge development, which students could use inside and outside the classroom. Today’s sophisticated learning tools range from virtual environments to interactive multimedia resources, which can be called e-textbooks. Different types of new educational materials that go beyond printed books are now used to support the academic curriculum, with the most interesting ones exemplified in this article to show their value in medical and life sciences education. Certain interesting attempts by Polish publishers at applying technology to support both self-paced and tutor-paced student learning in the medical profession and related areas are presented. The data was collected through a review of literature, discussions with e-learning specialists and medical students, as well as an analysis of examples of good practices. The article also discusses the results of a countrywide survey on the use of e-textbooks to enhance medical education. The research investigates the targeted academic staff’s attitudes towards the use of e-textbooks, the limitations of their implementation, and the character of e-resources currently used by Polish higher education medical institutions.
Automatic Generation of Regular Expressions for Extracting Attribute Values of Medical Products
Authors: Łukaszuk Tomasz , Ferenc Mariusz
Published: March 2019

Resources of professional companies operating on the medical services market contain data from a huge number of transactional documents. This allows them to collect and process, among other actions, information about medical products. Organized data is obviously more valuable. In this paper, the possibility of supporting the process of organizing information is considered, with the goal to extract values of attributes of medical products from brief descriptions in transactional documents. This helps to build a structured product specification and makes it possible to make comparisons between products. For this purpose, an approach based on regular expressions and their generation with the use of the genetic algorithm is proposed. The results presented in the paper show a great potential of the presented method.
Coreference Resolution for Anaphoric Pronouns in Texts on Medical Products
Authors: Krawczuk Jerzy , Ferenc Mariusz
Published: March 2019

Coreference resolution is the task of finding all expressions that refer to the same entity in a text. It is one of the higher level NLP (Natural Language Processing) tasks. It allows, for example, to extract more information about medical products from larger texts. A product such as ‘ambidextrous gloves’ may appear in a text in many different forms. For example, they could be referred to by the pronoun ‘they’, such as in this sentence. The algorithm presented in this paper finds pronouns and for each of them (except the pleonastic ‘it’) it creates a coreference candidate with entities that appeared earlier in the same sentence or in the previous sentence. Each candidate (pair of mentions) is described by 48 binary features which represent their grammatical and location properties. In the training set, each pair is marked as a coreference or not, based on which a decision tree classifier is trained. A classifier with a high precision of 0.94 and a decent recall of 0.61 were obtained on the training set, still with a good precision out of a sample of 0.64.
Circulation Pathways of Trematodes of Freshwater Gastropod Mollusks in Forest Biocenoses of the Ukrainian Polissia
Authors: Zhytova E. P. , Romanchuk L. D. , Guralska S. V. , Andreieva O. Yu. , Shvets M. V.
Published: March 2019

This is the first review of life cycles of trematodes with parthenitae and larvae in freshwater gastropods from forest biocoenoses of Ukrainian Polissia. Altogether 26 trematode species from 14 families were found circulating in 13 ways in molluscs from reservoirs connected with forest ecosystems of the region. Three-host life cycle is typical of 18 trematode species, two-host life cycle has found in 7 species, and four-host cycles has found in one species. Alaria alata Goeze, 1782, has three-host (Shults, 1972) and four-host cycles. Opisthioglyphe ranae (Froehlich, 1791) can change three-host life cycle to two-host cycle replacing the second intermediate host (Niewiadomska et al., 2006) with the definitive host. Species with primary two-host life cycle belong to Notocotylidae Lühe, 1909, Paramphistomidae Fischoeder, 1901 and Fasciolidae Railliet, 1758 families. Trematodes with three-host cycle have variable second intermediate hosts, including invertebrates and aquatic or amphibious vertebrates. Definitive hosts of trematodes are always vertebrates from different taxonomic groups. The greatest diversity of life cycles is typical for trematodes of birds. Trematodes in the forest biocoenoses of Ukrainian Polissia infect birds in six ways, mammals in three, amphibians in four, and reptiles in one way. The following species have epizootic significance: Liorchis scotiae (Willmott, 1950); Parafasciolopsis fasciolaemorpha Ejsmont, 1932; Notocotylus seineti Fuhrmann, 1919; Catatropis verrucosa (Frölich, 1789) Odhner, 1905; Cotylurus cornutus (Rudolphi, 1808); Echinostoma revolutum (Fröhlich, 1802) Dietz, 1909; Echinoparyphium aconiatum Dietz, 1909; Echinoparyphium recurvatum (Linstow, 1873); Hypoderaeum conoideum (Bloch, 1782) Dietz, 1909; Paracoenogonimus ovatus Kasturada, 1914; Alaria alata Goeze, 1782.
Chinese Firms’ Outward FDI Entry Mode Choice: The Role of Ownership and Network
Authors: Tao Bai , Zhanming Jin , Qi Xiaoguang
Published: March 2019

What determines the Chinese firms’ outward FDI (foreign direct investment) entry mode choice, and do they behave differently from the firms from developed countries? To answer this question, this exploratory study firstly summarizes the attributes of the FDI entry modes, including greenfield investment, acquisition, and joint venture. Further based on the different attributes of these three modes, we analyze how Chinese firms choose the entry mode from the role the ownership and network perspectives, which are the important characteristics of Chinese firms.
Influences on Frequency of Preparation of Financial Statements Among SMEs
Authors: Van Auken Howard
Published: March 2019

This paper examines factors that impact the frequency of financial statement preparation among a sample of 312 SMEs.  Specifically, the study examines the relationship between how often financial statements are prepared and (1) whether the financial statements are used to make decisions and (2) owners’ confidence in the reliability of their financial statements.  Financial statements provide important information that should be used to help guide decisions. The findings showed that the frequency of financial statement preparation was directly associated with whether the financial statements were used to make decisions and inversely associated with owners’ confidence in the reliability of their financial statements.  Additionally, the results showed that the frequency of financial statement preparation was directly associated with gender and size of community in which the firm was located.  The results should be useful for owners of SMEs and providers of services to SMEs to better understand which factors affect how often financial statements are prepared and to provide business development assistance.
Intellectual structure of the entrepreneurship field: a tale based on three core journals
Authors: Teixeira Aurora A.C. , Ferreira Elsa
Published: March 2019

Underlying the scientific structure of a field is the network of informal communication linkages established among the most influential scholars within the area. These groups of mutually interacting and prolific scientists who exchange knowledge through communication channels are named “invisible colleges”. In this study, we perform a two-stage analysis to identify invisible colleges in the field of entrepreneurship using three core journals: Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ETP); Journal of Business Venturing (JBV), and Small Business Economics (SBE). Using bibliometrics, a in depth analysis was conducted on the most influential authors, their professional affiliation and educational training, in order to map the informal links between the most-cited authors. Based on over 90 thousand citations from these 3 journals two invisible colleges emerged: ETP and JBV have similar intellectual groundings, targeting especially corporate and entrepreneurship venturing, while SBE gives emphasis to more economics-oriented research, namely innovation, growth and policy, and industrial dynamics.
From Knowledge-Driven Creation to Society-Driven Innovation: Some Glimpses on Organizational Ambidexterity, Open Innovation and Value Creation
Authors: Pinto Ferreira João José , Mention Anne-Laure , Torkkeli Marko
Published: March 2019

Innovation lies at the heart of value creation, growth and competitiveness, and receives accrued attention in times of economic turbulence and slowdown. Organizations currently face increasingly dynamic environments and challenging conditions, which leave them exposed to higher levels of complexity and uncertainty. Thus, the ability of organizations to reinvent themselves and to reposition their offerings is critical for their survival. Permanently nurturing this ability to innovate is an essential role for managers and innovation leaders. In this issue we embrace different facets of this ability, and consider it at multiple levels: individual, organizational and inter-organizational.  The two Letters featured in this Issue also reflect this multiplicity of levels needed to comprehend, and support the innovation process. In the first Letter of this Issue, Molina contends that value creation from science can be achieved through the astute combination of “knowledge driven creation” and “society driven innovation”.  He further argues of the need for scientific research to address key challenges facing humanity, and to unleash its transformative power on society. This message echoes with the philosophy of this Journal, as connecting academic research with pragmatic reality is embedded in its DNA.
A Quantitative Model for Decomposing & Assessing the Value for the Customer
Authors: Nicola Susana , Ferreira Eduarda Pinto , Ferreira João José Pinto
Published: March 2019

The research presented in this paper proposes a novel quantitative model for decomposing and assessing the Value for the Customer. The proposed approach builds on the different dimensions of the Value Network analysis proposed by Verna Allee having as background the concept of Value for the Customer proposed by Woodall. In this context, the Value for the Customer is modelled as a relationship established between the exchanged deliverables and a combination of tangible and intangible assets projected into their endogenous or exogenous dimensions. The Value Network Analysis of the deliverables exchange enables an in-depth understanding of this frontier and the implicit modelling of co-creation scenarios. The proposed Conceptual Model for Decomposing Value for the Customer combines several concepts: from the marketing area we have the concept of Value for the Customer; from the area of intellectual capital the concept of Value Network Analysis; from the collaborative networks area we have the perspective of the enterprise life cycle and the endogenous and exogenous perspectives; at last, the proposed model is supported by a mathematical formal description that stems from the area of Multi-Criteria Decision Making. The whole concept is illustrated in the context of a case study of an enterprise in the footwear industry (Pontechem). The merits of this approach seem evident from the contact with Pontechem as it provides a structured approach for the enterprises to assess the adequacy of their value proposition to the client/customer needs and how these relate to their endogenous and/or exogenous tangible or intangible assets. The proposed model, as a tool, may therefore be a useful instrument in supporting the commercialisation of new products and/or services.
The learning cube
Authors: Barro Senén
Published: March 2019

This article reflects on the concept of “Entrepreneurial University” and, in particular, on the need for university education, and in general all educational stages, to focus on students' executive intelligence, and not exclusively on cognitive and pragmatic intelligence. We present the learning cube, a conceptual model that reflects the different capacities associated to greater or lesser intensification in the training of these three types of intelligence.
Advancing an Innovation Orientation in Organizations: Insights from North American Business Leaders
Authors: Dobni Christopher B , Klassen Mark
Published: March 2019

The word innovation is widely referred to in business circles as the next level of competitive advantage. However, for many organizations today, it lacks tangibility as managers struggle with developing an innovation orientation that provides sustainable value creation. Using a mixed methods research approach, the aim and contribution of this paper is to report the qualitative findings of Fortune 1000 (F1000) organizations concerning their efforts to implement innovation agendas. Over 1100 business leaders were surveyed, which proves to be one of the largest surveys of innovation to date amongst the F1000. This article sets out to answer three basic questions as it concerns the implementation of an innovation agenda in organizations. These questions include: What does innovation mean to organizations? What has been the biggest challenges to introducing and sustaining an innovation orientation? And what has worked well in supporting an innovation orientation? What we have discovered is that leaders’ thoughts on innovation are anchored on the need for changing the status quo and trying something new. They are also particularly aware of the correlation between innovation and performance. The change theme is further echoed as the predominant barrier to change. That is, breaking the inertia of the status quo is seen as one of the top barriers to innovation. Further, our findings identified six common challenges to introducing, executing and sustaining innovation. These barriers revolve around resistance to change, organizational process, leadership, funding and resources, the external environment, and customer adoption. Finally, there are a cluster of activities that have worked well to support successful implementation of an innovation orientation in organizations. Important activities such as leadership for innovation, knowledge management, organizational structures and processes, and aligned performance management were identified by leaders as noteworthy to successful innovation.
Open Innovation & The emergence of a new field: Empowering Future Generations
Authors: Mention Anne-Laure , Torkkeli Marko
Published: March 2019

Open Innovation has been attracting an increasing interest from academics and practitioners alike over the last decade.  Companies are increasingly prone to engage in Open Innovation journeys, yet they face a myriad of challenges, including the fact that their workforce is not endowed with skills that are required to smoothly implement Open Innovation. Interestingly, despite the growing interest of all communities, education in the field is clearly lagging behind, as the analysis of existing innovation curricula reflects. While universities should empower young generations with tomorrow’s required skillsets, they apparently disregard an essential component and neglect to adopt a foresight approach on their core business. In this Academic Letter, we argue that this may relate to the fact that Open Innovation is not yet recognized as a discipline per se and we discuss six forces that may help elevate it to this stage. Overall, we also aim to demonstrate that the journey to establish Open Innovation as a field of education is only beginning.
Open Innovation Implementation in the Service Industry: Exploring Practices, Sub-practices and Contextual
Authors: Virlee Justine , Hammedi Wafa , Parida Vinit
Published: March 2019

This paper addresses a major gap in reported research on open innovation (OI) literature: How do service firms adopt open innovation? This research focuses on data from eighteen service SMEs in Belgium from high-tech and knowledge-intensive service industries. Based on analysis, we find new insights regarding open innovation practices (i.e., inbound and outbound) and sub-practices (i.e., acquiring, sourcing, selling and revealing) for service firms. More specifically, the study showed that service SMEs are more inclined to use inbound practices due to reasons associated with firm size, industry, and knowledge intensity in the market, whereas the decision about which sub-practice to adopt seems to be strongly influenced by the type of actor, the firm’s vulnerability and internal managerial skills, and the existence of complementarities. Thus, we contribute to OI literature as well as capability literature through providing initial insights regarding the adoption of OI by service firms.
The Innovative Performance of R&D Outsourcing
Authors: Bzhalava Levan
Published: March 2019

Firms increasingly outsource their R&D activities to external actors, but little is known about how this R&D strategy relates to the value of their research output (in terms of invention quantity as well as quality). To study this issue, I analyse a pooled cross-sectional dataset of German manufacturing firms. The results obtained from the data analysis suggest that R&D outsourcing as well as the interaction between this strategy and internal R&D are significantly and positively associated with invention quantity but not with invention quality. Furthermore, the estimation results show that manufacturing rather than service companies are more likely to explore both internal and external R&D strategies to generate inventions. Besides that, the data analysis indicates that R&D outsourcing is more important innovative input for firms operating in science-based industries than in scale-intensive and specialized-supplier sectors.
Big Data: Innovation and Competitive Advantage in an Information Media Analytics Company
Authors: E. Prescott Michael
Published: March 2019

The advent of technology has allowed for the capture of large volumes of data from a variety of sources.  This has led to an ever-increasing number of firms collecting large amounts of data with the belief that this will give the firm an advantage over its competitors.  However, the question is, does big data by itself really lead to firm advantage?  And if not, how can firms gain an advantage from big data?  This paper investigates the role that big data plays in innovation and firm advantage.  Using the Resource-Based View and Dynamic Capabilities framework, this paper looks at how a firm can gain an advantage from big data.  Through the analysis of a case-study concerning a global information/media analytics company, this paper provides an example of how to build a capability in Digital Data Generation that can lead to improved product or service innovation, and possibly help a firm gain an advantage over its competitors.
Universities’ Performance in Knowledge Transfer: An Analysis of the Ibero-American Region Over the Golden Decade
Authors: Barro Senén , Fernández Sara
Published: March 2019

Universities play a crucial role in the systems of innovation by transferring the results of R&D activities to society and industry. This contribution is even more important in the Ibero-American countries given that the other critical ‘player’ (i.e., the industry) exercises a less active role in the development of innovation compared to the OECD countries. The aim of this paper is to analyze the knowledge transfer activities of the Ibero-American Higher Education Systems over the period 2000-2010. Using that database by Barro (2015), this study provides an accurate diagnosis of the Ibero-American universities’ performance in knowledge transfer, suggesting a number of practical implications for university decision-makers.
Diffusion Dynamics of Sustainable Innovation - Insights on Diffusion Patterns Based on the Analysis of 100 Sustainable Product and Service Innovations
Authors: Fichter Klaus , Clausen Jens
Published: March 2019

There is a growing consensus about the urgent necessity to green the economy and to decouple economic growth from environmental pressure. Against this background, the article explores three questions: (1) What are key factors influencing diffusion dynamics of sustainable product and service innovations? (2) To what extent do diffusion processes of sustainable product and service innovations differ from each other, and can different groups of diffusion processes be identified? (3) Which factors, actors, and institutional settings are characteristic of different groups of diffusion processes? While diffusion research on sustainable innovation so far has been limited to case studies with just one or a small number of cases or has been focused on individual sectors, the empirical data presented here cover a large number of cases from a broad variety of product fields. This allows for generalizations as well as relevant insights and conclusions for sustainability, environmental and innovation policies. The empirical investigation of 100 sustainable product and service innovations revealed that diffusion processes of sustainable innovations differ substantially: The cluster analysis showed that five groups of sustainable innovations can be differentiated which differ significantly in terms of the factors influencing the diffusion process. The empirical results thus both support the assumption that different types of diffusion paths do in fact exist and also permit characterization of the various types of diffusion paths. The evolutionary concept of diffusion paths develops significant explanatory power on the basis of which faster or slower cases of diffusion and the success or failure of sustainable innovations can be better understood.
A Multi-Perspective Performance Approach for Complex Manufacturing Environments
Authors: Almeida António , Azevedo Américo
Published: March 2019

Complexity in manufacturing systems appears under a variety of aspects, namely product, processes and operations and systems. Considering that the manufacturing environment is rapidly and constantly changing, with higher levels of customization and complexity, there is higher demand for flexibility and adaptability from companies. In this context, it seems essential to explore new approaches that can support decision-makers to take better decisions concerning the action plans that they need to launch to achieve the expected strategic and operational performance and alignment goals. Companies should become able to analyse their performance drivers, understand their meaning and the feedback loops that affect them. Therefore, decision makers can look into the future, and act even before these causes affect the transformation systems efficiency and effectiveness. This paper presents an approach oriented to multi-performance measurement in complex manufacturing environments. With this approach it is expected to overcome the gap between the operational and strategic layers of a manufacturing system, in order to reduce time when measuring performance and reacting to unexpected behaviours, as well as reduce errors when taking decisions. Moreover, it is expected to decrease the time necessary to calculate an indicator or to introduce a new one into performance management process, reducing the operational costs.