Nurturing Creativity and Innovation in African Enterprises: A Case Study on Kenya

Innovation and creativity are the backbone of entrepreneurship. Domestic and international competition, changing government regulations and rapidly shifting market conditions demand constant creative innovation for corporations to survive. Despite an increase in the number of innovations from African enterprises and research institutions in the current digital age, there is a lack of investment in innovation and creativity to ensure the sustainability of the continent\u27s enterprises. This chapter seeks to address the problem of how to support innovation and creativity in African enterprises by combining two theories of diffusion of innovation and product life cycle through examples from Kenya. Existing research on innovation and creativity tends to focus on the diffusion of technologies on the continent but fails to question the role of the mindset of entrepreneurs, the role of the individual, and the current trajectory of innovation in Africa as it pertains to the industrial revolutions elsewhere in the world. This chapter focuses on local expressions of innovation or the relationships that exist between their different components. Consequently, it aims to provide an overview of how innovation and creativity can be locally supported as a strategy for building durable and profitable enterprises in Africa

What drives women out of Entrepreneurship? The joint role of culture and access to finance

This paper seeks to explore the barriers women entrepreneurs encounter in developing countries. Extending beyond qualitative assessment, the paper explores the magnitude of cultural practices and other factor that impact on the development of female entrepreneurship. The paper reviews existing literature on women entrepreneurship, focusing on the major impediments that curtail women entrepreneurship in developingcountries. The paper reports on empirical evidence drawn from the review of literature on women entrepreneurship. A total of 13 published articles were reviewed forming the basis of the paper. Evidence from the reviewed articles reveal that cultural practices in developing countries play a major role in driving women out of entrepreneurship and by extension curtailing on their development. Women in developing countries are disadvantaged by their lower levels of financial literacy and awareness. Access barriersto financial resources are significant. Women entrepreneurs are still to overcome key challenges like access to training in trade issues, operations management and marketing, as well as access to good mentors and mentorship programs. Based on the reviewed literature, practical implication for policy makers include; the pressing need to develop a legal framework to protect female entrepreneurship, capacity buildingprograms for potential entrepreneurs, holistic training for potential womenentrepreneurs and most importantly, a creation and provision of credit facility dedicated to women entrepreneurs.Key words: Women, Drives, Entrepreneurship, Culture and Financ

Recalling visual serial order for verbal sequences.

We report three experiments in which participants performed written serial recall of visually presented verbal sequences with items varying in visual similarity. In Experiments 1 and 2 native speakers of Japanese recalled visually presented Japanese Kanji characters. In Experiment 3, native speakers of English recalled visually presented words. In all experiments, items varied in visual similarity and were controlled for phonological similarity. For Kanji and for English, performance on lists comprising visually similar items was overall poorer than for lists of visually distinct items across all serial positions. For mixed lists in which visually similar and visually distinct items alternated through the list, a clear "zig-zag" pattern appeared with better recall of the visually distinct items than for visually similar items. This is the first time that this zig-zag pattern has been shown for manipulations of visual similarity in serial-ordered recall. These data provide new evidence that retaining a sequence of visual codes relies on similar principles to those that govern the retention of a sequence of phonological codes. We further illustrate this by demonstrating that the data patterns can be readily simulated by at least one computational model of serial-ordered recall, the Primacy model (Page and Norris, Psychological Review, 105(4), 761-81, 1998). Together with previous evidence from neuropsychological studies and experimental studies with healthy adults, these results are interpreted as consistent with two domain-specific, limited-capacity, temporary memory systems for phonological material and for visual material, respectively, each of which uses similar processes that have evolved to be optimal for retention of serial order

Chronic Pancreas Allograft Rejection Followed by Successful HLA-Incompatible Islet Alloautotransplantation:A Novel Strategy?

The purpose of pancreas or islet transplantation is to restore glycemic control in order to mitigate diabetes-related complications and prevent severe hypoglycemia. Complications from chronic pancreas allograft rejection may lead to transplantectomy, even when the endocrine function remains preserved. We present first evidence of a successful HLA incompatible islet re-transplantation with islets isolated from a rejecting pancreas allograft after simultaneous kidney pancreas transplantation. The pancreas allograft was removed because of progressively painful pancreatic panniculitis from clinically uncontrolled chronic rejection. The endocrine function was preserved. Induction treatment for this “islet alloautotransplantation” consisted of plasmapheresis, IVIg and alemtuzumab. At 1 year, the patient retained islet graft function with good glycemic control and absence of severe hypoglycemia, despite persistent low-grade HLA donor-specific antibodies. His panniculitis had resolved completely. In our point of view, islet alloautotransplantation derived from a chronically rejecting pancreas allograft is a potential option to salvage (partial) islet function, despite preformed donor-specific antibodies, in order to maintain stable glycemic control. Thereby it protects against severe hypoglycemia, and it potentially mitigates kidney graft dysfunction and other diabetes-related complications in patients with continued need for immunosuppression and who are otherwise difficult to retransplant.</p

Chronic Pancreas Allograft Rejection Followed by Successful HLA-Incompatible Islet Alloautotransplantation:A Novel Strategy?

The purpose of pancreas or islet transplantation is to restore glycemic control in order to mitigate diabetes-related complications and prevent severe hypoglycemia. Complications from chronic pancreas allograft rejection may lead to transplantectomy, even when the endocrine function remains preserved. We present first evidence of a successful HLA incompatible islet re-transplantation with islets isolated from a rejecting pancreas allograft after simultaneous kidney pancreas transplantation. The pancreas allograft was removed because of progressively painful pancreatic panniculitis from clinically uncontrolled chronic rejection. The endocrine function was preserved. Induction treatment for this “islet alloautotransplantation” consisted of plasmapheresis, IVIg and alemtuzumab. At 1 year, the patient retained islet graft function with good glycemic control and absence of severe hypoglycemia, despite persistent low-grade HLA donor-specific antibodies. His panniculitis had resolved completely. In our point of view, islet alloautotransplantation derived from a chronically rejecting pancreas allograft is a potential option to salvage (partial) islet function, despite preformed donor-specific antibodies, in order to maintain stable glycemic control. Thereby it protects against severe hypoglycemia, and it potentially mitigates kidney graft dysfunction and other diabetes-related complications in patients with continued need for immunosuppression and who are otherwise difficult to retransplant.</p

Effects of Sensorimotor Rhythm Modulation on the Human Flexor Carpi Radialis H-Reflex

People can learn over training sessions to increase or decrease sensorimotor rhythms (SMRs) in the electroencephalogram (EEG). Activity-dependent brain plasticity is thought to guide spinal plasticity during motor skill learning; thus, SMR training may affect spinal reflexes and thereby influence motor control. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the effects of learned mu (8–13 Hz) SMR modulation on the flexor carpi radialis (FCR) H-reflex in 6 subjects with no known neurological conditions and 2 subjects with chronic incomplete spinal cord injury (SCI). All subjects had learned and practiced over more than 10 &lt; 30-min training sessions to increase (SMR-up trials) and decrease (SMR-down trials) mu-rhythm amplitude over the hand/arm area of left sensorimotor cortex with ≥80% accuracy. Right FCR H-reflexes were elicited at random times during SMR-up and SMR-down trials, and in between trials. SMR modulation affected H-reflex size. In all the neurologically normal subjects, the H-reflex was significantly larger [116% ± 6 (mean ± SE)] during SMR-up trials than between trials, and significantly smaller (92% ± 1) during SMR-down trials than between trials (p &lt; 0.05 for both, paired t-test). One subject with SCI showed similar H-reflex size dependence (high for SMR-up trials, low for SMR-down trials): the other subject with SCI showed no dependence. These results support the hypothesis that SMR modulation has predictable effects on spinal reflex excitability in people who are neurologically normal; they also suggest that it might be used to enhance therapies that seek to improve functional recovery in some individuals with SCI or other CNS disorders

Genome-wide association meta-analyses and fine-mapping elucidate pathways influencing albuminuria

Abstract: Increased levels of the urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR) are associated with higher risk of kidney disease progression and cardiovascular events, but underlying mechanisms are incompletely understood. Here, we conduct trans-ethnic (n = 564,257) and European-ancestry specific meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies of UACR, including ancestry- and diabetes-specific analyses, and identify 68 UACR-associated loci. Genetic correlation analyses and risk score associations in an independent electronic medical records database (n = 192,868) reveal connections with proteinuria, hyperlipidemia, gout, and hypertension. Fine-mapping and trans-Omics analyses with gene expression in 47 tissues and plasma protein levels implicate genes potentially operating through differential expression in kidney (including TGFB1, MUC1, PRKCI, and OAF), and allow coupling of UACR associations to altered plasma OAF concentrations. Knockdown of OAF and PRKCI orthologs in Drosophila nephrocytes reduces albumin endocytosis. Silencing fly PRKCI further impairs slit diaphragm formation. These results generate a priority list of genes and pathways for translational research to reduce albuminuria

Target genes, variants, tissues and transcriptional pathways influencing human serum urate levels.

Elevated serum urate levels cause gout and correlate with cardiometabolic diseases via poorly understood mechanisms. We performed a trans-ancestry genome-wide association study of serum urate in 457,690 individuals, identifying 183 loci (147 previously unknown) that improve the prediction of gout in an independent cohort of 334,880 individuals. Serum urate showed significant genetic correlations with many cardiometabolic traits, with genetic causality analyses supporting a substantial role for pleiotropy. Enrichment analysis, fine-mapping of urate-associated loci and colocalization with gene expression in 47 tissues implicated the kidney and liver as the main target organs and prioritized potentially causal genes and variants, including the transcriptional master regulators in the liver and kidney, HNF1A and HNF4A. Experimental validation showed that HNF4A transactivated the promoter of ABCG2, encoding a major urate transporter, in kidney cells, and that HNF4A p.Thr139Ile is a functional variant. Transcriptional coregulation within and across organs may be a general mechanism underlying the observed pleiotropy between urate and cardiometabolic traits.The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Project was supported by the Common Fund of the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health, and by NCI, NHGRI, NHLBI, NIDA, NIMH, and NINDS. Variant annotation was supported by software resources provided via the Caché Campus program of the InterSystems GmbH to Alexander Teumer

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead