bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Entrepreneurial marketing and born global internationalisation in China
Authors: Andersson Svante , Evers Natasha , Gliga Gabriela 
Published: February 2018

PurposeThis study aims to explore the entrepreneurial marketing (EM) behaviour of Swedish born globals entering the Chinese market through their international networks. Drawing from the network theory of small firm internationalisation, this study is positioned in the domain of EM, and thus captures the relevance of EM behaviour to explain how born globals internationalise through their networks.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative case study approach of two Swedish born global companies active in the Chinese market is used. The network theory helps analyse the data in the three phases of firm internationalisation processes.FindingsThe study shows the importance of networks for the enactment of EM for born globals. The study traces the evolution of network development in the market entry process of born globals and highlights the importance of aligning network leverage with contextual factors for market performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe generalisation of the findings is limited due to the exploratory nature of the study and the size of the research sample.Practical implicationsManagement of different types of networks is essential in the entry process and further growth of born globals in the Chinese market. In addition, born globals operating in psychically distant and complex institutionally contexts can especially gain support from intermediary networks.Originality/valueThis study extends knowledge of international entrepreneurship by demonstrating that born global managers can enact EM behaviour by leveraging networks to gain rapid entry into the Chinese market. It further highlights the role of firms’ networks in the EM activities in their internationalisation. The conceptual underpinnings of EM and network theory provide greater understanding of how born globals enter and grow their psychically distant markets.
Soil microbial processes and resource limitation in karst and non‐karst forests
Authors: Chen Hao , Li Dejun , Xiao Kongcao , Wang Kelin 
Published: February 2018

Abstract

Soil micro‐organisms play a key role in soil biogeochemical cycles, but their growth and activities are often limited by resource availability. Understanding soil processes that are driven by micro‐organisms and resource limitation of microbes will help to elucidate controls on soil fertility and improve the ability to predict the responses of an ecosystem to global changes. As a widespread ecosystem type, karst ecosystem develops from limestone or dolomite with unique soil; however, karst ecosystems remain poorly understood regarding their soil microbial processes and microbial resource limitation.

Here, ecoenzymatic stoichiometry was used as an indicator of microbial resource limitation, and to model major microbial processes (i.e. decomposition of soil organic carbon and microbial respiration) in a karst and a non‐karst forest.

Results showed that the modelled decomposition and respiration rates were significantly higher in the karst forest than in the non‐karst forest. In addition, results of ecoenzymatic stoichiometry showed that the karst forest was more carbon‐limited than the non‐karst forest. In contrast, the karst forest was likely saturated with nitrogen, but the non‐karst forest was limited by nitrogen. Both the karst and non‐karst forests were limited by phosphorus, but phosphorus deficiency was more evident in the non‐karst forest than in the karst forest.

These findings highlight the specific profiles of karst ecosystems, and they suggest that the responses of karst ecosystems to global changes should be very different compared to other ecosystems.

A plain language summary is available for this article.
When to monitor and when to act: Value of information theory for multiple management units and limited budgets
Authors: Bennett Joseph R. , Maxwell Sean L. , Martin Amanda E. , Chadès Iadine , Fahrig Lenore , Gilbert Benjamin 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThe question of when to monitor and when to act is fundamental to applied ecology and notoriously difficult to answer. Value of information (VOI) theory holds great promise to help answer this question for many management problems. However,VOItheory in applied ecology has only been demonstrated in single‐decision problems and has lacked explicit links between monitoring and management costs.Here, we present an extension ofVOItheory for solving multi‐unit decisions of whether to monitor before managing, while explicitly accounting for monitoring costs. Our formulation helps to choose the optimal monitoring/management strategy among groups of management units (e.g. species, habitat patches) and can be used to examine the benefits of partial and repeat monitoring.To demonstrate our approach, we use case‐simulated studies of single‐species protection that must choose among potential habitat areas, and classification and management of multiple species threatened with extinction. We provide spreadsheets and code to illustrate the calculations and facilitate application. Our case studies demonstrate the utility of predicting the number of units with a given outcome for problems with probabilities of discrete states and the efficiency of having a flexible approach to manage according to monitoring outcomes.Synthesis and applications. The decision to act or gather more information can have serious consequences for management. No decision, including the decision to monitor, is risk‐free. Our multi‐unit expansion of Value of Information theory can reduce the risk in monitoring/acting decisions for many applied ecology problems. While our approach cannot account for the potential value of discovering previously unknown threats or ecological processes via monitoring programmes, it can provide quantitative guidance on whether to monitor before acting, and which monitoring/management actions are most likely to meet management objectives.
Disturbance intensity is a stronger driver of biomass recovery than remaining tree‐community attributes in a managed Amazonian forest
Authors: de Avila Angela L. , van der Sande Masha T. , Dormann Carsten F. , Peña‐Claros Marielos , Poorter Lourens , Mazzei Lucas , Ruschel Ademir R. , Silva José N. M. , de Carvalho João O. P. , Bauhus Jürgen 
Published: February 2018

Abstract

Forest recovery following management interventions is important to maintain ecosystem functioning and the provision of ecosystem services. It remains, however, largely unclear how above‐ground biomass (AGB) recovery of species‐rich tropical forests is affected by disturbance intensity and post‐disturbance (remaining) tree‐community attributes, following logging and thinning interventions.

We investigated whether annual AGB increment (∆AGB) decreases with management‐related disturbance intensity (disturbance hypothesis), and increases with the diversity (niche‐complementarity hypothesis) and the community‐weighted mean (CWM) of acquisitive traits of dominant species (biomass‐ratio hypothesis) in the remaining tree community.

We analysed data from a long‐term forest‐management experiment in the Brazilian Amazon over two recovery periods: post‐logging (1983–1989) and post‐thinning (1995–2012). We computed the ∆AGB of surviving trees, recruit trees and of the total tree community. Disturbance intensity was quantified as basal area reduction and basal area remaining. Remaining diversity (taxonomic, functional and structural) and CWM of five functional traits linked to biomass productivity (specific leaf area, leaf nitrogen and phosphorous concentration, leaf toughness and wood density) were calculated for the post‐intervention inventories. Predictors were related to response variables using multiple linear regressions and structural equation modelling.

We found support for the disturbance hypothesis in both recovery periods. AGB increment of survivors and of the total tree community increased with basal area remaining, indicating the importance of remaining growing stock for biomass recovery. Conversely, AGB increment of recruit trees increased with basal area reduction because changes in forest structure increased resource availability for young trees. We did not find consistent support for the niche‐complementarity and biomass‐ratio hypotheses, possibly because of a high redundancy in these extremely species‐rich forests.

Synthesis and applications. The intensity of disturbance through management, expressed as basal area reduction and basal area remaining, was consistently more important for explaining forest biomass recovery following harvesting and thinning than remaining diversity or trait composition. This points to the importance of controlling logging and thinning intensity in forests of the eastern Amazon. Given the high intervention intensities applied in this experiment, it is likely that low to moderate harvesting intensities permitted by the current legislation for the Brazilian Amazon (30 m³/ha) will not impair biomass recovery in these forests.
Conduct of Conduits: Engineering, Desire and Government through the Enclosure and Exposure of Urban Water
Authors: Usher Mark 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article scrutinizes the relationship between governmental reform and infrastructural change in Singapore. Focusing on the role of engineers, it is argued that neoliberal decentralization has occurred through the physical reconfiguration of drainage. Neoliberalization is conceived as a localized technical response to a public health crisis resulting from infrastructural enclosure, which is orchestrated on and through the material‐ecological environment. A closed drainage system consisting of trapezoidal canals and concrete culverts had produced an ideal breeding environment for dengue‐carrying mosquitoes, undermining the state's centralized approach to water governance. This article reorients Michel Foucault's analytics of government around engineering and the ‘milieu’ to consider how drainage infrastructure was consequently opened up to an emerging civil society to relieve pressure on the state and allow greater public participation in the surveillance and management of canals, pipes and culverts. Alongside landscape architects, engineers would increasingly turn to naturalized waterways and open catchment policy to encourage citizens to form an affective bond with water and to inculcate principles of individual ownership and responsibility through physical contact. The article contends that with the proliferation of integrated resource management systems, governmental power is increasingly exercised through the liveliness as well as the fetishization of urban infrastructure.
Engineering Cities: Mediating Materialities, Infrastructural Imaginaries and Shifting Regimes of Urban Expertise
Authors: Björkman Lisa , Harris Andrew 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis symposium opens up new critical insights and analytical perspectives into the relationships between power, politics, materiality and urban engineering. In so doing it demonstrates the central role of engineers in the production and negotiation of everyday life in the city. In contrast to the technocratic exercise engineering often professes to be, the contributors to this symposium argue that the assembling and choreography of cities through the myriad techniques, routines, standards and visions of engineers is inextricably bound up with broader socio‐cultural, material and political urban dynamics and processes. This necessitates investigating the multiple and competing social imaginations, forms of knowledge and regimes of expertise associated with urban engineering. The symposium's five articles, straddling disciplinary backgrounds in geography, anthropology, engineering and history, focus analytical and empirical attention on the figure of the engineer and on the work of engineering in the cities of Paris, Mumbai, Singapore and London. Engineering, we suggest, is a diagnostic for probing the shifting forms of mediation that animate and inhabit contemporary dynamics of urban change. The symposium thus opens up a new avenue for cross‐disciplinary and transregional research for urban studies while also suggesting innovative ways of conceptualizing urban transformation and contestation.
Perioperative outcomes of pancreaticoduodenectomy: Superior mesenteric artery first approach in Rajavithi Hospital, Thailand
Authors: Inthasotti Wipawee , Teepongkaruna Sa‐ard , Chaibut Kittipong , Singhirunusorn Jumpol , Duriyaprapan Pornchanan , Jantarateptewan Natcha , Subwongcharoen Somboon 
Published: February 2018

AimSuperior mesenteric artery (SMA) first approach has been widely accepted as an effective surgical technique for en‐bloc resection in periampullary cancer. There are currently multiple different artery first approach (AFA) techniques. The aim of the present study was to assess the perioperative outcome by comparing two surgical techniques at a single institute.Patients and MethodsThis was retrospective study comparing consecutive patients who had undergone pancreatoduodenectomy (PD) with mesenteric and left posterior AFA between July 2012 and March 2017 at Rajavithi Hospital, Thailand.ResultsIn total, 103 patients were included. Both groups were comparable regarding demographics, tumour characteristics and perioperative outcomes. The mean operative time was 420 min in the SMA PD group and 360 min in the left posterior artery (LPA) PD group. The mean operative blood loss in the SMA PD group and LPA PD group was 750 and 700 cc, respectively. Overall, complications occurred in 45.6 per cent of patients. Eighty‐seven patients (84.5 per cent) had negative resection margins, and the median number of lymph nodes harvested was 11 nodes in the MSA PD group and 16 nodes in the LPA group.ConclusionThe AFA to PD has comparable perioperative outcomes with standard PD without increasing morbidity and mortality.
Prevalence of celiac disease in adult Chinese patients with diarrhea‐predominant irritable bowel syndrome: A prospective, controlled, cohort study
Authors: Kou Guan Jun , Guo Jing , Zuo Xiu Li , Li Chang Qing , Liu Chao , Ji Rui , Liu Han , Wang Xiao , Li Yan Qing 
Published: February 2018

ObjectiveCeliac disease is a chronic inflammatory enteropathy with a symptom spectrum similar to that of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). It is a common but largely undiagnosed condition in the Western countries. However, it is extremely rare among Chinese individuals, and few studies have investigated its prevalence in China. The aim was to determine the prevalence of celiac disease in patients with IBS who were diagnosed using the Rome III criteria in a single center of northern China.MethodsThis was a single‐center, prospective, controlled cohort study performed in Qilu Hospital involving 246 patients with IBS and 246 healthy controls. Blood samples were drawn to assess serum tissue transglutaminase immunoglobulin A (tTg‐IgA). Patients with a positive or equivocal tTg‐IgA (≥15 U/mL) were subjected to probe‐based confocal laser endomicroscopy (pCLE) and duodenal biopsy to confirm celiac disease.ResultsAltogether 12 (4.9%) patients with IBS and two (0.8%) healthy controls were positive or equivocal for serum tTg‐IgA. Of these, five patients with IBS underwent pCLE and a targeted biopsy; all were histopathologically found to have celiac disease, although one was eventually diagnosed with lymphoma. After implementation of a gluten‐free diet, seven patients serologically positive for IBS showed clinical improvement, thus our study illustrated a minimum prevalence of 2.85% of celiac disease among patients with IBS in our center.ConclusionsCeliac disease is not rare in Chinese individuals, particularly among those with IBS. Therefore, it should receive higher attention in clinical practice in China.
mobsim: An r package for the simulation and measurement of biodiversity across spatial scales
Authors: May Felix , Gerstner Katharina , McGlinn Daniel J. , Xiao Xiao , Chase Jonathan M. 
Published: February 2018

Abstract

Estimating biodiversity and its change in space and time poses serious methodological challenges. First, there has been a long debate on how to quantify biodiversity, and second, measurements of biodiversity and its change are scale‐dependent. Therefore, comparisons of biodiversity metrics between communities are ideally carried out across scales. Simulations can be used to study the behaviour of biodiversity metrics across scales, but most approaches are system specific, plagued by large parameter spaces, and therefore cumbersome to use and interpret. However, realistic spatial biodiversity patterns can be generated without reference to ecological processes, which suggests a simple simulation framework as important tool for ecologists.

Here, we present the r package mobsim that allows users to simulate the abundances and the distributions of individuals of different species in a spatially explicit landscape. Users can define key properties of communities, including the total number of individuals, the species‐abundance distribution (SAD) and the degree of intraspecific spatial aggregation. Furthermore, the package provides functions that derive biodiversity measures, such as rarefaction curves and species–area relationships (SAR), from simulated communities or from observed data, as well as functions that simulate different sampling designs.

We show several example applications of the package. First, we illustrate how species rarefaction and accumulation curves can be used to disentangle changes in the fundamental components that underlie biodiversity: (i) total abundance, (ii) species‐abundance distribution and (iii) species aggregation. Second, we demonstrate how mobsim can be applied to assess the performance of species‐richness estimators. The latter indicates how spatial aggregation challenges classical non‐spatial species‐richness estimators.

mobsim allows the simulation and analysis of a large range of biodiversity scenarios and sampling designs in a comprehensive way by directly manipulating key community properties. The simplicity and control provided by the package also makes it a useful didactic tool. The combination of controlled simulations and their analysis will facilitate a more rigorous interpretation of real‐world data that exhibit sampling effects and scale dependence.
Multivariate analysis of cytokine profiles in pregnancy complications
Authors: Azizieh Fawaz , Dingle Kamaludin , Raghupathy Raj , Johnson Kjell , VanderPlas Jacob , Ansari Ali 
Published: February 2018

ProblemThe immunoregulation to tolerate the semiallogeneic fetus during pregnancy includes a harmonious dynamic balance between anti‐ and pro‐inflammatory cytokines. Several earlier studies reported significantly different levels and/or ratios of several cytokines in complicated pregnancy as compared to normal pregnancy. However, as cytokines operate in networks with potentially complex interactions, it is also interesting to compare groups with multi‐cytokine data sets, with multivariate analysis. Such analysis will further examine how great the differences are, and which cytokines are more different than others.MethodsVarious multivariate statistical tools, such as Cramer test, classification and regression trees, partial least squares regression figures, 2‐dimensional Kolmogorov‐Smirmov test, principal component analysis and gap statistic, were used to compare cytokine data of normal vs anomalous groups of different pregnancy complications.ResultsMultivariate analysis assisted in examining if the groups were different, how strongly they differed, in what ways they differed and further reported evidence for subgroups in 1 group (pregnancy‐induced hypertension), possibly indicating multiple causes for the complication.ConclusionThis work contributes to a better understanding of cytokines interaction and may have important implications on targeting cytokine balance modulation or design of future medications or interventions that best direct management or prevention from an immunological approach.
Predictors of persistent prescription opioid analgesic use among people without cancer in Australia
Authors: Lalic Samanta , Gisev Natasa , Bell J. Simon , Korhonen Maarit Jaana , Ilomäki Jenni 
Published: February 2018

AimsTo identify patterns of opioid analgesic use and determine predictors of persistent opioid use among people without cancer.MethodsA population‐based cohort study of Australians initiating prescription opioids from July 2013 to December 2015 was conducted using data from a random 10% sample of people who accessed medicines through Australia's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. A 12‐month retrospective period was used to define opioid initiation, exclude people with cancer and determine comorbidities. Persistent use over 12 months since initiation was identified through group‐based trajectory modelling. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for predictors of opioid persistence were estimated using logistic regression.ResultsThe cohort consisted of 431 963 people without cancer who initiated opioids. A total of 11 323 (2.6%) persistent opioid users were identified. Predictors of persistence included initiation with transdermal formulations (OR 4.2, 95% CI 3.9–4.5), or initiation with total oral morphine equivalents (OME) ≥ 750 mg (3.7, 3.3–4.1), having depression (1.6, 1.5–1.7) or psychotic illness (2.0, 1.9–2.2). Previous dispensing of paracetamol (2.0, 1.9–2.1), pregabalin (2.0, 1.8–2.1) and benzodiazepines (1.53, 1.4–1.6) predicted persistence. Compared to people aged 18–44 years, those ≥75 years were 2.5 (2.3–2.6) times more likely to be persistent users.ConclusionsPatient‐specific characteristics (older age, prior history of mental health comorbidities and use of non‐opioid analgesics) and prescriber choice of initial opioid (transdermal formulation and higher total OMEs) were found to strongly predict persistent use. This information may help prescribers target monitoring and early intervention efforts in order to prevent harms associated with the long‐term use of opioids.
Assessing normal values for the FACE‐Q rhinoplasty module: An observational study
Authors: Radulesco T. , Mancini J. , Penicaud M. , Dessi P. , Michel J. 
Published: February 2018

ObjectivesThe goal of this study was to determine normal values for the FACE‐Q rhinoplasty module.DesignA prospective monocentric observational cohort study.SettingWe tested FACE‐Q Satisfaction with Nose and Satisfaction with Nostrils in two groups of patients, seeking or not a rhinoplasty.ParticipantsOne hundred and four patients were included in the study, fifty‐two in each group.Main outcome measurementsPrimary outcome was to identify possible cutting scores to establish normal values for each of the FQRM questionnaires.ResultsRegarding the Satisfaction with Nose scale, there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups (P < .001). Area under the ROC curve was 0.964 (95% CI = 0.931‐0.997). Forty‐seven points was the value presenting the best Youden index (sensitivity = 96.2%, specificity = 86.5%). Regarding the Satisfaction with Nostrils scale, there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups (P < .001). Area under the ROC curve was 0.820 (95% CI = 0.741‐0.899). Sixty‐four points was the value presenting the best Youden index (sensitivity = 94.2%, specificity = 53.8%).ConclusionThis is the first study to generate normative data for the FACE‐Q rhinoplasty module. The findings presented here have important implications for future clinical care and research. The definition of a normal score can help practitioners to better analyse their patients and to support a therapeutic indication.