Creativity under task conflict: The role of proactively increasing job resources

The present daily diary study among employees from various occupational sectors used conflict and creativity theories to hypothesize that task conflict has an inverted U-shaped relationship with employee creativity (i.e., creativity is higher at moderate than low or high levels of conflict). In addition, we argue that this curvilinear effect is likely to occur when employees proactively increase their job resources. A total of 92 employees filled out a diary survey at the end of five consecutive days. Results of multilevel analyses revealed that, as predicted, task conflict had an inverted U-shaped link with creativity when employees increased their structural job resources. However, when employees increased their social job resources, the link was linear and positive. Our findings also showed that increasing job resources related positively to employee creativity – this effect was found for both increasing structural and social job resources. We discuss the theoretical contributions of these findings and conclude that moderate task conflict has the potential to benefit organizations

Prediction of response to pemetrexed in non-small-cell lung cancer with immunohistochemical phenotyping based on gene expression profiles

Figure S1. Scatter plots of gene expression levels of selected molecular markers and TS gene expression. Dot plots showing correlations between relative mRNA expression of TS and mRNA expression of TOP2A, MCM2, EZH2, CPA3, TPX2. Abbreviations: IHC, immunohistochemical; EZH2, Enhancer of zeste homolog; TOP2A, Topoisomerase II; TPX2, Microtubule Nucleation Factor; CPA3, Carboxypeptidase A3; MCM2, Minichromosome Maintenance Complex Component 2. (EPS 180 kb

Prediction of response to pemetrexed in non-small-cell lung cancer with immunohistochemical phenotyping based on gene expression profiles

Background: Palliative pemetrexed-based chemotherapy remains a standard of care treatment for the majority of patients with advanced non-squamous non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Currently, no predictive markers for pemetrexed treatment are available. Methods: Resected tumour samples from pemetrexed-naïve NSCLC patients were collected. Gene expression profiling with respect to predicted sensitivity to pemetrexed classified predicted responders (60%) and nonresponders (40%) based on differentially expressed genes encoding for pemetrexed target enzymes. Genes showing a strong correlation with these target genes were selected for measurement of corresponding protein expressions by immunohistochemical (IHC) staining. A semi-quantitative IHC scoring method was applied to construct a prediction model for response to pemetrexed. A retrospective cohort of patients with advanced NSCLC treated with first-line pemetrexed-based chemotherapy was used for external validation. Results: From ninety-one patients resected tumour samples were collected. The majority of patients had early or locally advanced NSCLC (96.3%). Gene expression profiling revealed five markers, which mRNA levels strongly correlated to pemetrexed target genes mRNA levels: TPX2, CPA3, EZH2, MCM2 and TOP2A. Of 63 (69%) patients IHC staining scores of these markers were obtained, which significantly differed between predicted non-responders and responders (P < 0.05). The optimized prediction model included EZH2 (OR = 0.56, 95% CI 0.35–0.90) and TPX2 (OR = 0.55, 95% CI 0.30–1.01). The model had a sensitivity of 86.8%, specificity of 63.6% and showed a good ability to distinct between responders and non-responders (C-index 0.86). In the external study population (N = 23) the majority of patients had metastatic NSCLC (95.7%). Partial response (PR) was established in 26.1%. The sensitivity decreased drastically to 33.3%, with a specificity of 82.4% and a C-index of 0.73. Conclusions: Using external validation this prediction model with IHC staining of target enzyme correlated markers showed a good discrimination, but lacked sensitivity. The role of IHC markers as response predictors for pemetrexed in clinical practice remains questionable

Treatment-associated polymorphisms in protease are significantly associated with higher viral load and lower CD4 count in newly diagnosed drug-naive HIV-1 infected patients

Peer reviewe

Parallel and Distributed Systems Section

by any means without prior written permission of the publisher

Long-term follow-up of mesothelioma patients treated with dendritic cell therapy in three phase i/ii trials

Background: Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is a fatal neoplasm with, if un-treated, poor survival of approximately nine months from diagnosis. Until recently, phase II–III immunotherapy trials did not show any significant benefit. The lack of immunotherapy efficacy can be explained by the fact that mesothelioma is a tumor with an “immune desert” phenotype, meaning a non-inflamed tumor characterized by low T-cell infiltration. By administration of DCs, which were ex-vivo cultured, exposed to (tumor-associated) antigens, and subsequently activated, this “immune desert” phenotype might be turned into an “inflamed” phenotype. Three phase I/II studies have been performed and published using activated DCs, which support this concept. We here report on the long-term survival of patients treated with DCs in three phase I/II studies. Methods: Survival data of the phase I/II trials using DC therapy in MPM patients were obtained and subsequently analyzed. In the first two trials, DCs were loaded with autologous tumor lysate. In the third trial, DCs were loaded with allogeneic mesothelioma tumor cell line lysate. Results: In the three studies combined, 29 patients with MPM were treated with DC vaccination between 2006 and 2015. At data cut-off, the median OS was 27 months (95% CI: 21–47 months). OS at 2 years was 55.2% (95% CI: 39.7–76.6%), and OS at 5 years was 20.7% (95% CI: 10.1–42.2%). Conclusions: The long-term survival of DC therapy in MPM in these three trials is promising, which is the basis for the randomized phase II/III DENIM study. This DENIM study is currently enrolling, and the results of which have to be awaited for definite conclusions

The MAC framework: Redefining MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks

Most current WSN MAC protocol implementations have multiple tasks to perform—deciding on correct timing, sending of packets, sending of acknowledgements, etc. However, as much of this is common to all MAC protocols, there is duplication of functionality, which leads to larger MAC protocol code size and therefore increasing numbers of bugs. Additionally, extensions to the basic functionality must be separately implemented in each MAC protocol. In this paper, we look at a different way to design a MAC protocol, focusing on the providing of interfaces which can be used to implement the common functionality separately. This leaves the core of the MAC protocol, determining only when to send, which is substantially different for each protocol. We also look at some examples of MAC extensions that this approach enables. We demonstrate a working implementation of these principles as an implementation of B-MAC for TinyOS, and compare it with the standard TinyOS B-MAC implementation. We show a 35% smaller code size, with the same overall functionality but increased extensibility, and while maintaining similar performance. We also present results and experiences from using the same framework to implement T-MAC, LMAC, and Crankshaft. All are demonstrated with data from real-world experience using our 24 node testbed.Software TechnologyElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc