Supplementation of Male Pheromone on Rock Substrates Attracts Female Rock Lizards to the Territories of Males: A Field Experiment

Background: Many animals produce elaborated sexual signals to attract mates, among them are common chemical sexual signals (pheromones) with an attracting function. Lizards produce chemical secretions for scent marking that may have a role in sexual selection. In the laboratory, female rock lizards (Iberolacerta cyreni) prefer the scent of males with more ergosterol in their femoral secretions. However, it is not known whether the scent-marks of male rock lizards may actually attract females to male territories in the field. Methodology/Principal Findings: In the field, we added ergosterol to rocks inside the territories of male lizards, and found that this manipulation resulted in increased relative densities of females in these territories. Furthermore, a higher number of females were observed associated to males in manipulated plots, which probably increased mating opportunities for males in these areas. Conclusions/Significance: These and previous laboratory results suggest that female rock lizards may select to settle in home ranges based on the characteristics of scent-marks from conspecific males. Therefore, male rock lizards might attract more females and obtain more matings by increasing the proportion of ergosterol when scent-marking their territories. However, previous studies suggest that the allocation of ergosterol to secretions may be costly and only high quality male

Proactive environmental strategy in a supply chain context: The mediating role of investments

Abstract: There is a growing body of knowledge on the link between environmental management and supply chain management, but there is contradicting evidence on the impact of a proactive environmental strategy on environmental performance. Therefore, this paper investigates the impact of proactive environmental strategy on environmental performance as mediated by environmental investments. We also consider the antecedents of the adoption of proactive environmental strategy. We develop and test hypotheses, using data collected from 96 Turkish manufacturers through an online questionnaire. The model was tested using Partial Least Squares (PLS), a structural equation modelling method. The results show that a proactive environmental strategy leads to higher environmental investments; both internally and externally in collaboration with suppliers. Our findings support our hypothesis that environmental investments acts as a mediating variable between proactive environmental strategy and environmental performance. The results also show that customer pressure and, particularly, organizational commitment positively impact the extent to which firms adopt a proactive environmental strategy

Clear Cell "Sugar" Tumor of the Lung: A Well-Enhanced Mass with an Early Washout Pattern on Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced Computed Tomography

Clear cell tumor of the lung is a rare and very unusual benign pulmonary tumor. As clear cell tumor of the lung contains abundant cytoplasmic glycogen, this tumor is called "sugar tumor". We report a case of sugar tumor in a 64-yr-old man presenting as a round pulmonary nodule. On dynamic computed tomography (CT) scans, the solitary pulmonary nodule showed early wash-in enhancement with an early washout pattern like a lung malignancy. The patient underwent wedge resection for the tumor. Pathologic examination, including immunohistochemical studies, revealed that the nodule was a benign clear cell tumor, so-called "sugar tumor". Because only a small number of cases have been reported previously, clinical aspects, radiological characteristics on dynamic contrast-enhanced CT, and differential diagnosis of the tumor are not well established. Herein we present a clear cell tumor of the lung and discuss the clinical, radiological, and pathological features of the tumor

Linking Employee Stakeholders to Environmental Performance: The Role of Proactive Environmental Strategies and Shared Vision

Drawing on the natural-resource-based view (NRBV), we propose that employee stakeholder integration is linked to environmental performance through firms’ proactive environmental strategies, and that this link is contingent on shared vision. We tested our model with a cross-country and multi-industry sample. In support of our theory, results revealed that firms’ proactive environmental strategies translated employee stakeholder integration into environmental performance. This relationship was pronounced for high levels of shared vision. Our findings demonstrate that shared vision represents a key condition for advancing the corporate greening agenda through proactive environmental strategies. We discuss implications for the CSR and the environmental management literatures, with a particular focus on the NRBV and stakeholder integration debates

Rtt107 Phosphorylation Promotes Localisation to DNA Double-Stranded Breaks (DSBs) and Recombinational Repair between Sister Chromatids

Efficient repair of DNA double-stranded breaks (DSB) requires a coordinated response at the site of lesion. Nucleolytic resection commits repair towards homologous recombination, which preferentially occurs between sister chromatids. DSB resection promotes recruitment of the Mec1 checkpoint kinase to the break. Rtt107 is a target of Mec1 and serves as a scaffold during repair. Rtt107 plays an important role during rescue of damaged replication forks, however whether Rtt107 contributes to the repair of DSBs is unknown. Here we show that Rtt107 is recruited to DSBs induced by the HO endonuclease. Rtt107 phosphorylation by Mec1 and its interaction with the Smc5–Smc6 complex are both required for Rtt107 loading to breaks, while Rtt107 regulators Slx4 and Rtt101 are not. We demonstrate that Rtt107 has an effect on the efficiency of sister chromatid recombination (SCR) and propose that its recruitment to DSBs, together with the Smc5–Smc6 complex is important for repair through the SCR pathway

Managing Carbon Aspirations: The Influence of Corporate Climate Change Targets on Environmental Performance

Addressing climate change is among the most challenging ethical issues facing contemporary business and society. Unsustainable business activities are causing significant distributional and procedural injustices in areas such as public health and vulnerability to extreme weather events, primarily because of a distinction between primary emitters and those already experiencing the impacts of climate change. Business, as a significant contributor to climate change and beneficiary of externalizing environmental costs, has an obligation to address its environmental impacts. In this paper, we explore the role of firms’ climate change targets in shaping their emissions trends in the context of a large multi-country sample of companies. We contrast two intentions for setting emissions reductions targets: symbolic attempts to manage external stakeholder perceptions via “greenwashing” and substantive commitments to reducing environmental impacts. We argue that the attributes of firms’ climate change targets (their extent, form, and time horizon) are diagnostic of firms’ underlying intentions. Consistent with our hypotheses, while we find no overall effect of setting climate change targets on emissions, we show that targets characterized by a commitment to more ambitious emissions reductions, a longer target time frame, and absolute reductions in emissions are associated with significant reductions in firms’ emissions. Our evidence suggests the need for vigilance among policy-makers and environmental campaigners regarding the underlying intentions that accompany environmental management practices and shows that these can to some extent be diagnosed analytically

Location determinants of green technological entry: evidence from European regions

In this paper, we explore the spatial distribution and the location determinants of new green technology-based firms across European regions. Integrating insights from evolutionary economic geography and the literature on knowledge spillovers, we study the importance of new knowledge creation and the conditioning role played by regional technological relatedness in fostering combinatorial opportunities underlying the process of green technological entry. The analysis is based on a dataset covering over 900 NUTS3 regions for 15 European countries obtained merging economic data from ESPON-Eurostat and patent information from the PATSTAT-CRIOS database for the period 1996–2006. Our results show that the geographical distribution of green technological entry across European regions is not evenly distributed, offering evidence of spatial path dependence. In line with this, we find evidence of a significant role played by the characteristics of the regional innovation system. New green innovators are more likely to develop in regions defined by higher levels of technological activity underlying knowledge spillovers and more dynamism in technological entry. Moreover, our findings point to an inverted-U relationship between regional technological relatedness and green technological entry. Regions whose innovation activity is defined by cognitive proximity to environmental technologies support interactive learning and knowledge spillovers underlying entrepreneurship in this specific area. However, too much relatedness may cause technological lock-ins and reduce the set of combinatorial opportunities