Competitive Aggressiveness of Contractors: A Study of Indonesia

AbstractHigh level of competition are consideredto be a major challenge for contractors. As such, ‘winning the competition’ is an important goal for contractors in running their businesses. Contractors need to be aggressive in competition to respond to their competitors’ actions and gain competitive advantage against their business rivals for survival and growth. This study aims to clarify the issue of competitive aggressiveness of contractors by identifyingits key factors. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 19 top managers of contracting companies in Indonesia, in order to explore the concept of contractors’ competitive aggressiveness. The qualitative data collected during the interviews were analysed using an inductive thematic analysis method. The analysis resulted in identifying five key factors of contractors’competitive aggressiveness: 1) acting as a problem solver for clients; 2) being different compared to competitors; 3) building and maintaining clients’ confidence in the company's trustworthiness and reliability; 4) maintaining good relationships with clients; and 5) positioning on markets that are concerned about quality. Based on these findings, contractors will be able to establish an appropriate strategy to allow them to be aggressive in competition

Relationship between 1,25‑dihydroxy Vitamin D levels and homeostatic model assessment insulin resistance values in obese subjects

Aim: In this study, our aim is to evaluate the insulin resistance and quality of life in obese subjects and nonobese subjects and to find out the Vitamin D (VD) status and correlations between obesity and control groups and also according to their quality of life scores.Materials and Method: The study was carried out between May and October 2013 which is the period of VD synthesis in Turkey. The participants of this study were volunteering individuals – obese and nonobese individuals defined according to the body mass index (BMI) – that did not receive any VD support in the last 1‑year and did not have any known chronic diseases. 1,25‑OH VD status and homeostatic model assessment insulin resistance (HOMA‑IR) values were evaluated.Results: The study population consisted of 39 individuals with normal weight (23 women, 16 men) and 66 individuals categorized as obese (51 women, 15 men). The difference in HOMA‑IR and VD values between the group of obese individuals and the group of nonobese individuals was significant (P < 0.001 vs. P <0.001). The median value of HOMA‑IR was higher in the obese group than in the nonobese group (P < 0.001) while the median value of VD was higher in the nonobese group than in the obese group (P < 0.001). The results regarding the relationship of BMI with HOMA‑IR and VD show that there was a positive correlation between HOMA‑IR and BMI (rs = 0.507; P < 0.001) and there was a negative correlation between HOMA‑IR and VD (rs = −0.316; P = 0.0001).Conclusion: Given serious diseases associated with low serum VD levels such as diabetes and cardiovascular disorders as well as low side effect incidence and low cost of VD treatment, it would be a reasonable approach to identify routine serum 25(OH) D and/or 1,25‑OH VD levels of obese patients and administer a treatment to patients with low levels of VD.Key words: 1,25‑OH Vitamin D, insulin resistance, obesit

BIOLOGIC DRUG PREFERENCES OF TURKISH RHEUMATOLOGISTS IN SPONDILOARTROPATHY PATIENTS WITH ADVANCED CHRONIC RENAL DISEASE

[Abstract Not Available

THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE FIRST PREFERRED BIOLOGICAL DMARD AND THE DRUG SURVIVAL IN GERIATRIC AND YOUNGER ADULT POPULATION WITH RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS AND PSORIATIC ARTHRITIS: TREASURE REAL-LIFE DATA

EULAR European Congress of Rheumatology (EULAR) -- JUN 01-04, 2022 -- Copenhagen, DENMARK[Abstract Not Available]European Alliance Assoc Rheumato

Hep-2–Adherent Escherichia coli Strains Associated with Acute Infantile Diarrhea, São Paulo, Brazil

In this paired case-control study of infants with diarrhea in São Paulo, we examined the association between HEp-2–adherent Escherichia coli strains and diarrhea. We tested isolates from stool specimens of infants with diarrhea and matched controls in an HEp-2 cell adherence assay; we then hybridized isolates with DNA probes and identified enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC), enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC), and diffusely adherent E. coli (DAEC). From 100 patient-control pairs, we isolated 78 HEp-2–adherent strains; of these, 61 strains were single pathogens identified in stools of infants with diarrhea. While typical EPEC was significantly associated with diarrhea (p<0.001), EAEC was more frequently associated with diarrhea in clinical cases (20%) compared with healthy controls (3%) (p<0.001). Atypical EPEC, showing a localized adherence-like pattern, was also more common in patients than controls (p>0.1). DAEC was isolated with equal frequency from patients and controls (p>0.1)

The Generalized PT-Symmetric Sinh-Gordon Potential Solvable within Quantum Hamilton-Jacobi Formalism

The generalized Sinh-Gordon potential is solved within quantum Hamiltonian Jacobi approach in the framework of PT symmetry. The quasi exact solutions of energy eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the generalized Sinh-Gordon potential are found for n=0,1 states.Comment: 10 pages appear to in IJT

Impact of Chromatin Structures on DNA Processing for Genomic Analyses

Chromatin has an impact on recombination, repair, replication, and evolution of DNA. Here we report that chromatin structure also affects laboratory DNA manipulation in ways that distort the results of chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) experiments. We initially discovered this effect at the Saccharomyces cerevisiae HMR locus, where we found that silenced chromatin was refractory to shearing, relative to euchromatin. Using input samples from ChIP-Seq studies, we detected a similar bias throughout the heterochromatic portions of the yeast genome. We also observed significant chromatin-related effects at telomeres, protein binding sites, and genes, reflected in the variation of input-Seq coverage. Experimental tests of candidate regions showed that chromatin influenced shearing at some loci, and that chromatin could also lead to enriched or depleted DNA levels in prepared samples, independently of shearing effects. Our results suggested that assays relying on immunoprecipitation of chromatin will be biased by intrinsic differences between regions packaged into different chromatin structures - biases which have been largely ignored to date. These results established the pervasiveness of this bias genome-wide, and suggested that this bias can be used to detect differences in chromatin structures across the genome

Serum paraoxonase and arylesterase activities in patients with lung cancer in a Turkish population

BACKGROUND: Lung cancer (LC) is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Oxidative DNA damage may contribute to the cancer risk. The antioxidant paraoxonase (PON1) is an endogenous free radical scavenger in the human body. The aim of this study was to determine serum PON1 and arylesterase (ARE) activities in patients with newly diagnosed LC. METHODS: This case control study involved a total of 39 patients with newly diagnosed LC (untreated) and same number of age- and sex-matched healthy individuals. Serum PON1 and ARE activities in addition to lipid parameters were measured in both groups. RESULTS: Serum PON1 and ARE activities were found to be lower in patients with LC compared to the controls (p = 0.001 and p = 0.018, respectively). The ratio of PON1/high density lipoprotein (HDL) was significantly lower in the LC group compared to the control one (p = 0.009). There were positive correlations between the serum levels of HDL and PON1 in both the control (r = 0.415, p = 0.009) and the LC groups (r = 0.496, p = 0.001), respectively. PON1 enzyme activity was calculated as three different phenotypes in both groups. In regard to lipid parameters, total cholesterol levels were significantly lower (p = 0.014) in the LC group whereas the other lipid parameters such as HDL, LDL, and triglyceride levels were not significantly different among groups. CONCLUSION: Serum PON1 activity is significantly low in the LC group compared with the healthy controls. Metastasis status and cigarette smoking do not affect serum PON1 activity in the LC patients