El retorno social de la inversi?n: ?se puede medir el impacto de la difusi?n de un proyecto de responsabilidad social empresarial?

In this document, which is the result of a research project, the influence of attitudinal change and its internal diffusion among the users of a Social Responsibility Project is appraised against the achievement of the purposes of that project. The case study method was used. The target audience consisted of entrepreneurs who participated in a capability development program in a social responsibility project in the telecommunications sector. The results show that 1) the creation of behavioral change, and more specifically, its rapid diffusion among users of the project, have a positive effect in the accomplishment of its objectives, 2) this effect may be estimated by means of Social Return on Investment (sroi), and 3) companies that favor Social Responsibility projects can improve their performance if they bring about behavioral change among their users or beneficiariesEn este documento, que es el resultado de un trabajo de investigaci?n, se examina la influencia que tienen el cambio actitudinal y su difusi?n interna entre los usuarios de un proyecto de responsabilidad social (RS), sobre el logro de los prop?sitos de ese proyecto. Se emple? el m?todo de estudio de caso. El p?blico objetivo son emprendedores part?cipes de un programa de desarrollo de capacidades en un proyecto de responsabilidad social del sector de telecomunicaciones. Los resultados muestran 1) que la generaci?n de un cambio conductual y, m?s espec?ficamente, su r?pida difusi?n entre los usuarios del proyecto tienen un efecto positivo en el logro de los objetivos del mismo, 2) que ese efecto se puede estimar mediante el Retorno Social de la Inversi?n (Social Return On Investment, SROI) y 3) que las empresas que privilegian proyectos de RS pueden mejorar el desempe?o de los mismos si logran promover un cambio conductual entre sus usuarios o beneficiarios

L’édification des chaînes péricratoniques, contraintes structurales et cinématiques appliquées aux reconstructions de l'Asie du SE sur SIG

Le SE asiatique est un chantier qui permet d’étudier la formation des chaînes de montagnes situées au dessus des zones de subduction à différents stades de leur évolution. Dans ces régions, la cinématique des plaques est extrêmement rapide, souvent de l’ordre de 10 cm/an, et la convergence engendre l’ouverture, elle aussi rapide, de bassins marginaux qui fragmentent sous forme de lanières les masses continentales. Les fragments ainsi séparés comportent donc un substratum généralement constitué de matériel correspondant à des ophiolites de supra subduction (arc, avant-arc, arrière- arc) ainsi que des reliques de croûte continentale. Ce type de mécanisme aboutit à la formation de plaques étirées qui peuvent être soit de nature océanique comme pour la plaque Philippine [Karig, 1975] formée de bassins arrière-arcs ouverts à l’Eocène (Bassin ouest-philippin), puis à l’Oligo-Miocène (bassin de Parece Vela/Shikoku), et au Pliocène (bassin des Mariannes) [Le Pichon et al., 1975] ; bassin de Damar [Hinschberger, 2001]), soit de nature continentale comme dans le cas des marges Australienne et Eurasiatique [Rangin et Pubellier, 1990 ; Rangin et al., 1990] (fig. 1). Dans ce dernier cas, la configuration résultante est celle d’une marge étirée à la façon d’un éventail depuis le Paléocène jusqu’au Miocène moyen. Ce mécanisme génère des bassins diachrones ouverts vers l’est, avec un propagateur vers le sud-ouest comme cela est visible dans l’ouest de la mer de Chine [Huchon et al., 1998], et est déduit pour la mer des Célèbes et son prolongement dans le détroit de Makassar [Moss and Chambers, 1999]. Cet étirement prenait lui-même la suite de l’écroulement gravitaire de la chaîne Yenshanienne depuis le Crétacé supérieur, qui marquait la fin d’un processus similaire d’accrétion de blocs gondwaniens au cours du Mésozoïque [Metcalfe, 1996 ; Sewell et al., 2000]. L’ensemble du bloc de la Sonde, avec ses bassins marginaux est soumis à un raccourcissement depuis le début du Miocène [Rangin et al., 1990], les bassins marginaux rentrant en subduction, et certains blocs basculés de la marge passive étant en cours d’accostage contre la marge continentale. De même que l’ouverture des bassins s’était effectuée de manière diachrone, le serrage des bassins s’effectue lui aussi de façon diachrone. Les mécanismes actifs de convergence par subduction et les blocages sont maintenant bien connus, la précision des récepteurs GPS, et surtout la répétition des mesures depuis près de dix ans permettant de bien contraindre les déplacements instantanés. Nous avons utilisé principalement les vecteurs GPS du programme GEODYSSEA [Michel et al., 2001]. Parallèlement, les études de tomographie sismique imagent des anomalies positives de vitesse dans le manteau pouvant indiquer des lithosphères subductées. C’est le cas de la proto mer de Chine Sud, parallèle à l’actuelle mer de Chine du Sud et probablement de géométrie similaire, maintenant disparue par subduction [Rangin et al., 1999b ; Prouteau et al., 2001]. Dans cet article, les mouvements déduits du GPS ont été utilisés comme base cinématique jusqu’à l’âge de la dernière déformation marquante, pour chaque bloc des ceintures déformées. L’évolution des marges a été revue de manière globale sur l’ensemble de l’Asie du SE, de façon à présenter des coupes structurales synthétiques,avant et après raccourcissement (fig. 3 à 10). Ces coupes montrent que l’arrivée des blocs continentaux dans les zones de subduction entraîne un blocage, puis le plus souvent un saut de subduction qui intègre le bloc à la marge en créant une déformation de la plaque supérieure [Dominguez et al., 1998 ; Pubellier et al., 1999 ; Von Huene et al., 1995 ; Ranero et al., 2000]. Une base de données sur l’Asie du Sud-est est utilisée dans les reconstructions, mais seulement une partie est représentée sur les planches 1 à 6 (topographie-bathymétrie, principales failles). La base complète comprend aussi bien les failles actives et anciennes, que la topographie des chaînes de montagnes, la morphologie des fonds sous-marins, la gravimétrie à l’air libre, les vecteurs de déplacement GPS en différents points à partir du calcul du meilleur pôle eulerien correspondant au mouvement de chaque bloc, les épaisseurs des sédiments dans les bassins, ou encore la localisation des profils sismiques utilisés. L’utilisation d’un système d’information géographique permet de restituer les déplacements des plaques ou des micro-blocs crustaux, soit à l’aide des vitesses angulaires, soit de façon interactive. Cette démarche permet de choisir entre plusieurs hypothèses géologiques en gardant une cohérence d’ensemble. Les paléo- distances géodésiques entre les blocs peuvent être mesurées, et les chaînes de montagnes comme Taïwan ou la Chaîne centrale de Nouvelle Guinée ont été étirées pour retrouver l’espace qu’elles occupaient vraisemblablement avant leur formation. Dans les reconstructions, la profondeur des bassins correspond aux valeurs actuelles, et n’a pas été restaurée en fonction du temps. Enfin, nous n’avons pas étendu les reconstructions à l’Himalaya et au Tibet, les mouvements verticaux étant trop importants. Les reconstructions effectuées à 2, 4, 6, 10, 15 et 20 Ma (planches 1 à 6) montrent que les parties continentales des plaques Sunda et Australie ; (SU/AU) s’éloignent l’une de l’autre, alors que la plaque philippine continue de “brosser” la plaque de la Sonde [Rangin et al., 1990], en transportant vers l’ouest des fragments formés au nord de la plaque australienne. Il s’agit donc d’un article qui présente une généralisation de processus géodynamiques de fonctionnement des marges actives, et dont le but est de donner une image cohérente de l’accrétion de blocs aux bordures des continents, et qui a nécessité des choix dans les options souvent débattues de l’évolution au deuxième ordre de secteurs d’importance locale

Mitigation of off-target toxicity in CRISPR-Cas9 screens for essential non-coding elements.

Pooled CRISPR-Cas9 screens are a powerful method for functionally characterizing regulatory elements in the non-coding genome, but off-target effects in these experiments have not been systematically evaluated. Here, we investigate Cas9, dCas9, and CRISPRi/a off-target activity in screens for essential regulatory elements. The sgRNAs with the largest effects in genome-scale screens for essential CTCF loop anchors in K562 cells were not single guide RNAs (sgRNAs) that disrupted gene expression near the on-target CTCF anchor. Rather, these sgRNAs had high off-target activity that, while only weakly correlated with absolute off-target site number, could be predicted by the recently developed GuideScan specificity score. Screens conducted in parallel with CRISPRi/a, which do not induce double-stranded DNA breaks, revealed that a distinct set of off-targets also cause strong confounding fitness effects with these epigenome-editing tools. Promisingly, filtering of CRISPRi libraries using GuideScan specificity scores removed these confounded sgRNAs and enabled identification of essential regulatory elements

Exciton bimolecular annihilation dynamics in supramolecular nanostructures of conjugated oligomers

We present femtosecond transient absorption measurements on $\pi$-conjugated supramolecular assemblies in a high pump fluence regime. Oligo(\emph{p}-phenylenevinylene) monofunctionalized with ureido-\emph{s}-triazine (MOPV) self-assembles into chiral stacks in dodecane solution below 75$^{\circ}$C at a concentration of $4\times 10^{-4}$ M. We observe exciton bimolecular annihilation in MOPV stacks at high excitation fluence, indicated by the fluence-dependent decay of $1^1$B$_{u}$-exciton spectral signatures, and by the sub-linear fluence dependence of time- and wavelength-integrated photoluminescence (PL) intensity. These two characteristics are much less pronounced in MOPV solution where the phase equilibrium is shifted significantly away from supramolecular assembly, slightly below the transition temperature. A mesoscopic rate-equation model is applied to extract the bimolecular annihilation rate constant from the excitation fluence dependence of transient absorption and PL signals. The results demonstrate that the bimolecular annihilation rate is very high with a square-root dependence in time. The exciton annihilation results from a combination of fast exciton diffusion and resonance energy transfer. The supramolecular nanostructures studied here have electronic properties that are intermediate between molecular aggregates and polymeric semiconductors

Neogene and Pleistocene geodynamics: the paleoseismic evolution of Armorica (Western France)

The evolution of the passive Armorican margin (Western France) during the Neogene and Quaternary was analyzed using field data. The morphology of the margin attests to a late Hercynian shaping, further deformation during the Mesozoic mid-Atlantic opening, during the Alpine Orogeny, and ultimately, a Late Cenozoic uplift, mostly related to an onshore isostatic accommodation in response to erosion and limited tectonic activity. A very limited strike–slip dynamic, with very low seismicity, accommodated the Neogene–Pleistocene N170 strains around the rigid Armorican terrane. The South Armorican domain and English Channel floor include shear zones that adjusted the Alpine convergence, facilitating its transpressive slip to the west. The Permo-Triassic N150 faults were reactivated during the inversion phases that began after the Bartonian under the distal control of the Alpine convergence and the decrease in the Atlantic spreading rate after 34 Ma. The Armorican marine platforms were stable after the late Eocene and slightly subsident, experiencing pulsed episodes of transient lithospheric doming during the Neogene and Quaternary. Co-seismic activity onshore without surface rupture was recorded around ∼5.3 Ma, ∼3.7 Ma, ∼2.4–1.2 Ma, and ∼400–250 ka, in tandem with an inland exhumation driven by isostatic adjustment due to an intensification of periglacial erosion at the onset of the early interstadials or by agriculture. Low-magnitude and ubiquitous shallow seismic activities seem to be related today to an isostatic uplifted old brittle–ductile transition due to the accumulation of shearing strain

Knowledge and acceptance of COVID-19 vaccine among healthcare workers in Enugu metropolis, Enugu state, Nigeria

BackgroundCOVID-19 disease spread at an alarming rate, and was declared a pandemic within 5 months from the first reported case. As vaccines have become available, there was a global effort to attain about 75% herd immunity through vaccination. There is a need to address the issue of vaccine hesitancy to COVID-19 vaccines especially in places such as Sub-Saharan African countries which have a high rate of background vaccine hesitancy.ObjectiveTo determine the knowledge and acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines among healthcare workers (HCWs) in Enugu metropolis.MethodsA cross-sectional descriptive study of 103 HCWs in Enugu metropolis was done. Data was collected using structured online Google forms. Descriptive and inferential statistics was done using SPSS, and results were summarized into percentages and associations.ResultsAn acceptance rate of 56.2% was obtained among HCWs in Enugu metropolis. Positive predicators of acceptance include older age (p = 0.004, X2 = 13.161), marriage (p = 0.001, X2 = 13.996), and higher average level of income (p = 0.013, X2 = 10.766) as significant correlations were found. No significant association was found between educational level, religion, denomination nor occupation, and acceptance of vaccine. The major factor responsible for refusal was fear of side-effects.DiscussionThe acceptance rate of COVID-19 vaccines among HCWs is still less than optimal. This population represents the most enlightened population on health related matters, hence if acceptance rate remains merely average that in the general population is expected to be worse. There is a need to address the fear of vaccine side-effects by inculcating more open and interactive methods of information dissemination, while also addressing the misconceptions or myths surrounding COVID-19 vaccines

Effect of Oral Alendronate on Bone Mineral Density and the Incidence of Fractures in Postmenopausal Osteoporosis

BACKGROUND Postmenopausal osteoporosis is a serious health problem, and additional treatments are needed. METHODS We studied the effects of oral alendronate, an aminobisphosphonate, on bone mineral density and the incidence of fractures and height loss in 994 women with postmenopausal osteoporosis. The women were treated with placebo or alendronate (5 or 10 mg daily for three years, or 20 mg for two years followed by 5 mg for one year); all the women received 500 mg of calcium daily. Bone mineral density was measured by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. The occurrence of new vertebral fractures and the progression of vertebral deformities were determined by an analysis of digitized radiographs, and loss of height was determined by sequential height measurements. RESULTS The women receiving alendronate had significant, progressive increases in bone mineral density at all skeletal sites, whereas those receiving placebo had decreases in bone mineral density. At three years, the mean (±SE) differences in bone mineral density between the women receiving 10 mg of alendronate daily and those receiving placebo were 8.8±0.4 percent in the spine, 5.9±0.5 percent in the femoral neck, 7.8±0.6 percent in the trochanter, and 2.5±0.3 percent in the total body (P CONCLUSIONS Daily treatment with alendronate progressively increases the bone mass in the spine, hip, and total body and reduces the incidence of vertebral fractures, the progression of vertebral deformities, and height loss in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis

Reproductive Outcomes Following Ectopic Pregnancy: Register-Based Retrospective Cohort Study

Using Scottish national registry data, Sohinee Bhattacharya and colleagues investigate pregnancy outcomes following ectopic pregnancy in comparison to livebirth, miscarriage, or termination in a first pregnancy

Semantic content outweighs low-level saliency in determining children's and adults' fixation of movies

To make sense of the visual world, we need to move our eyes to focus regions of interest on the high-resolution fovea. Eye movements, therefore, give us a way to infer mechanisms of visual processing and attention allocation. Here, we examined age-related differences in visual processing by recording eye movements from 37 children (aged 6–14 years) and 10 adults while viewing three 5-min dynamic video clips taken from child-friendly movies. The data were analyzed in two complementary ways: (a) gaze based and (b) content based. First, similarity of scanpaths within and across age groups was examined using three different measures of variance (dispersion, clusters, and distance from center). Second, content-based models of fixation were compared to determine which of these provided the best account of our dynamic data. We found that the variance in eye movements decreased as a function of age, suggesting common attentional orienting. Comparison of the different models revealed that a model that relies on faces generally performed better than the other models tested, even for the youngest age group (<10 years). However, the best predictor of a given participant’s eye movements was the average of all other participants’ eye movements both within the same age group and in different age groups. These findings have implications for understanding how children attend to visual information and highlight similarities in viewing strategies across development

An Outcome-based Approach for the Creation of Fetal Growth Standards: Do Singletons and Twins Need Separate Standards?

Contemporary fetal growth standards are created by using theoretical properties (percentiles) of birth weight (for gestational age) distributions. The authors used a clinically relevant, outcome-based methodology to determine if separate fetal growth standards are required for singletons and twins. All singleton and twin livebirths between 36 and 42 weeks’ gestation in the United States (1995–2002) were included, after exclusions for missing information and other factors (n = 17,811,922). A birth weight range was identified, at each gestational age, over which serious neonatal morbidity and neonatal mortality rates were lowest. Among singleton males at 40 weeks, serious neonatal morbidity/mortality rates were lowest between 3,012 g (95% confidence interval (CI): 3,008, 3,018) and 3,978 g (95% CI: 3,976, 3,980). The low end of this optimal birth weight range for females was 37 g (95% CI: 21, 53) less. The low optimal birth weight was 152 g (95% CI: 121, 183) less for twins compared with singletons. No differences were observed in low optimal birth weight by period (1999–2002 vs. 1995–1998), but small differences were observed for maternal education, race, parity, age, and smoking status. Patterns of birth weight-specific serious neonatal morbidity/neonatal mortality support the need for plurality-specific fetal growth standards