Unveiling entrepreneurial action: A meta-synthesis on effectuation and bricolage

Although bricolage and effectuation are the most cited theoretical approaches in the field of entrepreneurship, their research remain inconclusive with regard to their respective antecedents. In this study, we used meta-synthesis as a way to push the boundaries of both approaches and to reconcile the rich and fragmented evidence provided by case studies. This study extends the current theory by demonstrating which contextual antecedents and individual attributes were manifested in practice and explaining how they relate to actions of bricolage and effectuation, broadening our understanding of the issues of how and why they prevail, erstwhile called for in the literature.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Ferulated Poly(vinyl alcohol) based hydrogels

New graft copolymers were prepared by reaction of poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) with mono-imidazolide or bis-imidazolide derivatives of ferulic acid (FA) with the formation of ester bonds. The obtained graft copolymers, thanks to the crosslinking capability of FA, formed in water strong gels as verified by rheological analyses. The resulting hydrogels were characterized to evaluate their applicability as wound dressing. In this perspective, their capability to absorb and retain a large amount of fluid without dissolving was verified by swelling kinetics and Moisture Vapour Transmission Rate measurements. Their stability towards mechanical solicitations was assessed by quantifying elasticity, compliance, stress-relaxation, and adhesivity properties. The analyses pointed out that hydrogel PVA-FA2-3 obtained by feruloylation of PVA with bis-imidazole derivative of ferulic acid using an acylation agent/polymer molar ratio 0.03/1 resulted the best candidate for the foreseen application

Non-homologous end-joining pathway associated with occurrence of myocardial infarction: gene set analysis of genome-wide association study data

<p>Purpose: DNA repair deficiencies have been postulated to play a role in the development and progression of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The hypothesis is that DNA damage accumulating with age may induce cell death, which promotes formation of unstable plaques. Defects in DNA repair mechanisms may therefore increase the risk of CVD events. We examined whether the joints effect of common genetic variants in 5 DNA repair pathways may influence the risk of CVD events.</p> <p>Methods: The PLINK set-based test was used to examine the association to myocardial infarction (MI) of the DNA repair pathway in GWAS data of 866 subjects of the GENetic DEterminants of Restenosis (GENDER) study and 5,244 subjects of the PROspective Study of Pravastatin in the Elderly at Risk (PROSPER) study. We included the main DNA repair pathways (base excision repair, nucleotide excision repair, mismatch repair, homologous recombination and non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ)) in the analysis.</p> <p>Results: The NHEJ pathway was associated with the occurrence of MI in both GENDER (P = 0.0083) and PROSPER (P = 0.014). This association was mainly driven by genetic variation in the MRE11A gene (PGENDER = 0.0001 and PPROSPER = 0.002). The homologous recombination pathway was associated with MI in GENDER only (P = 0.011), for the other pathways no associations were observed.</p> <p>Conclusion: This is the first study analyzing the joint effect of common genetic variation in DNA repair pathways and the risk of CVD events, demonstrating an association between the NHEJ pathway and MI in 2 different cohorts.</p&gt

Тест-система для диагностики цитомегаловирусной инфекции с гибридизационно-флуоресцентной детекцией продуктов амплификации в режиме "реального времени"

ЦИТОМЕГАЛОВИРУСНЫЕ ИНФЕКЦИИ /ДИАГНТЕСТ-СИСТЕМЫДИАГНОСТИЧЕСКИЕ МЕТОДЫ И ПРОЦЕДУРЫ /ИСПHERPESVIRIDAE ИНФЕКЦИИ /ДИАГННУКЛЕИНОВОЙ КИСЛОТЫ АМПЛИФИКАЦИИ МЕТОДЫПОЛИМЕРАЗНАЯ ЦЕПНАЯ РЕАКЦИЯ /ИСПГЕНЕТИЧЕСКИЕ МЕТОДЫ /ИСПДНК-ВИРУСНЫЕ ИНФЕКЦИИ /ДИАГ

Extraction of specific parameters for skin tumour classification

In this paper, a methodological approach to the classification of tumour skin lesions in dermoscopy images is presented. Melanomas are the most malignant skin tumours. They grow in melanocytes, the cells responsible for pigmentation. This type of cancer is increasing rapidly; its related mortality rate is increasing more modestly, and inversely proportional to the thickness of the tumour. The mortality rate can be decreased by earlier detection of suspicious lesions and better prevention. Using skin tumour features such as colour, symmetry and border regularity, an attempt is made to determine if the skin tumour is a melanoma or a benign tumour. In this work, we are interested in extracting specific attributes which can be used for computer-aided diagnosis of melanoma, especially among general practitioners. In the first step, we eliminate surrounding hair in order to eliminate the residual noise. In the second step, an automatic segmentation is applied to the image of the skin tumour. This method reduces a colour image into an intensity image and approximately segments the image by intensity thresholding. Then, it refines the segmentation using the image edges, which are used to localize the boundary in that area of the skin. This step is essential to characterize the shape of the lesion and also to locate the tumour for analysis. Then, a sequences of transformations is applied to the image to measure a set of attributes (A: asymmetry, B: border, C: colour and D: diameter) which contain sufficient information to differentiate a melanoma from benign lesions. Finally, the various signs of specific lesion (ABCD) are provided to an artificial neural network to differentiate between malignant tumours and benign lesions

Search for lepton-flavour-violating decays of Higgs-like bosons.

A search is presented for a Higgs-like boson with mass in the range 45 to 195 GeV/c2 decaying into a muon and a tau lepton. The dataset consists of proton-proton interactions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV , collected by the LHCb experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2 fb-1 . The tau leptons are reconstructed in both leptonic and hadronic decay channels. An upper limit on the production cross-section multiplied by the branching fraction at 95% confidence level is set and ranges from 22 pb for a boson mass of 45 GeV/c2 to 4 pb for a mass of 195 GeV/c2

Stress Recovery during Exposure to Nature Sound and Environmental Noise

Research suggests that visual impressions of natural compared with urban environments facilitate recovery after psychological stress. To test whether auditory stimulation has similar effects, 40 subjects were exposed to sounds from nature or noisy environments after a stressful mental arithmetic task. Skin conductance level (SCL) was used to index sympathetic activation, and high frequency heart rate variability (HF HRV) was used to index parasympathetic activation. Although HF HRV showed no effects, SCL recovery tended to be faster during natural sound than noisy environments. These results suggest that nature sounds facilitate recovery from sympathetic activation after a psychological stressor

The Impact of Task Load on the Integration of Explicit Contextual Priors and Visual Information during Anticipation

© 2020 The Authors. There is limited knowledge about the impact of task load on experts’ integration of contextual priors and visual information during dynamic and rapidly evolving anticipation tasks. We examined how experts integrate contextual priors––specifically, prior information regarding an opponent's action tendencies––with visual information such as movement kinematics, during a soccer‐specific anticipation task. Furthermore, we combined psychophysiological measures and retrospective self‐reports to gain insight into the cognitive load associated with this integration. Players were required to predict the action of an oncoming opponent, with and without the explicit provision of contextual priors, under two different task loads. In addition to anticipation performance, we compared continuous electroencephalography (EEG) and self‐reports of cognitive load across conditions. Our data provide tentative evidence that increased task load may impair performance by disrupting the integration of contextual priors and visual information. EEG data suggest that cognitive load may increase when contextual priors are explicitly provided, whereas self‐report data suggested a decrease in cognitive load. The findings provide insight into the processing demands associated with integration of contextual priors and visual information during dynamic anticipation tasks, and have implications for the utility of priors under cognitively demanding conditions. Furthermore, our findings add to the existing literature, suggesting that continuous EEG may be a more valid measure than retrospective self‐reports for in‐task assessment of cognitive load