Management Recommendations for Working with Journalism and New Media Unions

Unions organization is increasingly of interest in the media today, particularly in the case of union organization efforts in New York state. In light of this trend, the ways informal organizations such as union membership impact formal organizations and businesses overall are explored through the lens of micro, macro, and macro levels of organizational behavior. In particular, the role of journalists as employees is considered in the context of large, established media organizations and in start-up new media organizations. A comparison of these two sectors provides context in developing managerial recommendations for leaders to consider when working with unionized labor or when confronted with a union organization effort at their workplace. The main thesis of this paper is that unions members in white collar businesses act as informal groups within organizations and union membership leads to: 1) more effective, efficient employees, 2) greater workplace satisfaction, and 3) consequently, potentially more effective organizations in terms of efficiencies

Usulan Strategi Untuk Meningkatkan Daya Saing Produk Mebel Rotan Single Chair Dengan Analisis Rantai Nilai (Studi Kasus : Klaster Mebel Rotan Kab. Cirebon)

Rattan furniture industry become one of the leading sector in Indonesia where the biggest rattan processing center palced in Cirebon,West Java. However, there are some constraints in rattan furniture industry in Cirebon which include the increasing of competition among global manufacturers and the government policy that allowed rattan export lead to profits in the competing countries.Therefore, we need a strategy to enhance the competitiveness of rattan products in world markets. This strategy can be obtained by analyzing the value chain. The purposes of this study are to analyze the value chain of rattan furniture products and get the appropriate competitive strategy to be implemented by each actor within value chain. The method is carried out financial analysis, SWOT analysis, Diamond Competitiveness analysis, and analysis of Critical Success Factor (CSF). Object of research are companies which are members of the Association of Indonesian Furniture (ASMINDO) Cirebon that produced single chair rattan. From the results of data processing and analysis, the strategies that can be applied in suppliers are to establish a subsidiary in the available raw materials and merged with the company. The strategies that can be applied in the company are applying its labor costs per unit of product produced, the allocation of funds for promotion, buyers prioritize subscriptions, sharing information and innovation with the buyer, has a high flexibility in terms of quality and price, collaborate with associations and government in exhibitions, and merged with another company or with suppliers. While strategies that can be applied in buyer in this case wholeseller are to lower the price of the product, maximize promotion and maintaining good relationships with companies that already truste

Rebranding Ekalokasari Plaza “Pattern of Communication in Rebrandring Process Ekalokasari Plaza"

Perkembangan pusat perbelanjaan yang semakin meningkat di Kota Bogormendorong Ekalokasari Plaza (sekarang menjadi LIPPO Plaza Bogor) untukmelakukan Perubahan agar dapat bersaing dengan berbagai pusat perbelanjaanmodern lainnya, khususnya yang berada di Kota Bogor.Ekalokasari Plaza yang sekarang sudah berubah menjadi LIPPO Plaza Bogormerupakan salah satu pusat perbelanjaan tertua di Kota Bogor, bahkan lebih tuadibandingkan Botani Square yang menjadi pesaing utama pusat perbelanjaan moderndi Kota Bogor. Berdasarkan sebuah situs blog yang bernama “Hello Bogor” terdapatinformasi tiga besar pusat perbelanjaan modern terbesar di Kota Bogor pada tahun2012, yaitu Botani Square, Ekalokasari Plaza (LIPPO Plaza Bogor), dan CibinongCity Mall

The Regulation of Household Debt Levels in the EU and Three of its Member States: Evaluating the Legal Preconditions for Effectiveness

High levels of household debt were at the heart of the financial crisis. They have created vulnerabilities for individual households and for the financial system as a whole. In response to the crisis, the European Union reformed the Capital Requirements Regulation and Directive, and added new possibilities to increase risk-weights for household loans. It also adopted the Mortgage Credit Directive, which obliges lenders to assess a consumer’s creditworthiness before providing credit. Many member stat

eTOX ALLIES:an automated pipeLine for linear interaction energy-based simulations

Abstract Background Computational methods to predict binding affinities of small ligands toward relevant biological (off-)targets are helpful in prioritizing the screening and synthesis of new drug candidates, thereby speeding up the drug discovery process. However, use of ligand-based approaches can lead to erroneous predictions when structural and dynamic features of the target substantially affect ligand binding. Free energy methods for affinity computation can include steric and electrostatic protein–ligand interactions, solvent effects, and thermal fluctuations, but often they are computationally demanding and require a high level of supervision. As a result their application is typically limited to the screening of small sets of compounds by experts in molecular modeling. Results We have developed eTOX ALLIES, an open source framework that allows the automated prediction of ligand-binding free energies requiring the ligand structure as only input. eTOX ALLIES is based on the linear interaction energy approach, an efficient end-point free energy method derived from Free Energy Perturbation theory. Upon submission of a ligand or dataset of compounds, the tool performs the multiple steps required for binding free-energy prediction (docking, ligand topology creation, molecular dynamics simulations, data analysis), making use of external open source software where necessary. Moreover, functionalities are also available to enable and assist the creation and calibration of new models. In addition, a web graphical user interface has been developed to allow use of free-energy based models to users that are not an expert in molecular modeling. Conclusions Because of the user-friendliness, efficiency and free-software licensing, eTOX ALLIES represents a novel extension of the toolbox for computational chemists, pharmaceutical scientists and toxicologists, who are interested in fast affinity predictions of small molecules toward biological (off-)targets for which protein flexibility, solvent and binding site interactions directly affect the strength of ligand-protein binding

Increasing Clinical Virulence in Two Decades of the Italian HIV Epidemic

The recent origin and great evolutionary potential of HIV imply that the virulence of the virus might still be changing, which could greatly affect the future of the pandemic. However, previous studies of time trends of HIV virulence have yielded conflicting results. Here we used an established methodology to assess time trends in the severity (virulence) of untreated HIV infections in a large Italian cohort. We characterized clinical virulence by the decline slope of the CD4 count (n = 1423 patients) and the viral setpoint (n = 785 patients) in untreated patients with sufficient data points. We used linear regression models to detect correlations between the date of diagnosis (ranging 1984–2006) and the virulence markers, controlling for gender, exposure category, age, and CD4 count at entry. The decline slope of the CD4 count and the viral setpoint displayed highly significant correlation with the date of diagnosis pointing in the direction of increasing virulence. A detailed analysis of riskgroups revealed that the epidemics of intravenous drug users started with an apparently less virulent virus, but experienced the strongest trend towards steeper CD4 decline among the major exposure categories. While our study did not allow us to exclude the effect of potential time trends in host factors, our findings are consistent with the hypothesis of increasing HIV virulence. Importantly, the use of an established methodology allowed for a comparison with earlier results, which confirmed that genuine differences exist in the time trends of HIV virulence between different epidemics. We thus conclude that there is not a single global trend of HIV virulence, and results obtained in one epidemic cannot be extrapolated to others. Comparison of discordant patterns between riskgroups and epidemics hints at a converging trend, which might indicate that an optimal level of virulence might exist for the virus

Fitness Ranking of Individual Mutants Drives Patterns of Epistatic Interactions in HIV-1

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Analysis of infectious virus clones from two HIV-1 superinfection cases suggests that the primary strains have lower fitness

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Two HIV-1 positive patients, L and P, participating in the Amsterdam Cohort studies acquired an HIV-1 superinfection within half a year from their primary HIV-1 infection (Jurriaans <it>et al</it>., <it>JAIDS </it>2008, <b>47:</b>69-73). The aim of this study was to compare the replicative fitness of the primary and superinfecting HIV-1 strains of both patients. The use of isolate-specific primer sets indicated that the primary and secondary strains co-exist in plasma at all time points after the moment of superinfection.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Biological HIV-1 clones were derived from peripheral blood CD4 + T cells at different time point, and identified as the primary or secondary virus through sequence analysis. Replication competition assays were performed with selected virus pairs in PHA/IL-2 activated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC's) and analyzed with the Heteroduplex Tracking Assay (HTA) and isolate-specific PCR amplification. In both cases, we found a replicative advantage of the secondary HIV-1 strain over the primary virus. Full-length HIV-1 genomes were sequenced to find possible explanations for the difference in replication capacity. Mutations that could negatively affect viral replication were identified in the primary infecting strains. In patient L, the primary strain has two insertions in the LTR promoter, combined with a mutation in the <it>tat </it>gene that has been associated with decreased replication capacity. The primary HIV-1 strain isolated from patient P has two mutations in the LTR that have been associated with a reduced replication rate. In a luciferase assay, only the LTR from the primary virus of patient P had lower transcriptional activity compared with the superinfecting virus.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These preliminary findings suggest the interesting scenario that superinfection occurs preferentially in patients infected with a relatively attenuated HIV-1 isolate.</p