Modern Management: Concepts and Skills -12/E.

Managers of today continue to face new opportunities and challenges. These opportunities include much publicized task like Florida’s University Studios opening a new Harry Potter attraction and Apple encouraging technology innovation beyond the iPad and the iPhone. At the same time, other companies face intense challenges, such as BP’s task of cleaning up an oil well leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps because these opportunities and challenges are so daunting, managers today arguably have the ability to earn higher financial reward than at any other time in history. This 12th edition of the Modern Management Learning Package, this text plus its ancillaries, continues the recognized and distinctive tradition in management education that has extended more than 30 years. As in previous edition, this current edition of the Modern Management Learning Package has focused on a single objective: maximizing student learning of critical management concept. All revisions reflect instructor and student feedback regarding ways to refashion the package to further enhance student learning. Starting with the text, the following section explain each major component of this revision

Hiperplasia Estromal Pseudoangiomatosa em idade pediátrica: caso clinico e revisão da literatura

Pseudoangiomatous stromal hyperplasia (PASH) is a rare benign disease, characterized by abnormal proliferation of fibroglandular stroma. It was first described in 1986. The authors present a case of a twelve year-old girl with a history of kidney transplantation due to nephrotic syndrome with rapidly progressive and painful breast asymmetry with approximately six months duration. No lymphadenopathy or other signs or symptoms were associated. Ultrasound didn’t reveal specific findings. Breast magnetic resonance (MR) showed a massive heterogeneous nodular mass with regular contours and contrast enhancement. Given the degree of breast asymmetry as well as the patient’s symptoms, surgical excision of the tumor was preferred over core biopsy. Histopathological and immunohistochemical examination showed pseudoangiomatous stromal hyperplasia. The authors describe the clinical presentation, imaging and histological features as well as therapeutic approach in these patientsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

High Grade Glioma Treatment in Elderly People: Is It Different Than in Younger Patients? Analysis of Surgical Management Guided by an Intraoperative Multimodal Approach and Its Impact on Clinical Outcome

Objective: Age is considered a negative prognostic factor for High Grade Gliomas (HGGs) and many neurosurgeons remain skeptical about the benefits of aggressive treatment. New surgical and technological improvements may allow extended safe resection, with lower level of post-operative complications. This opportunity opens the unsolved question about the most appropriate HGG treatment in elderly patients. The aim of this study is to analyze if HGG maximal safe resection guided by an intraoperative multimodal imaging protocol coupled with neuromonitoring is associated with differences in outcome in elderly patients versus younger ones. Methods: We reviewed 100 patients, 53 (53%) males and 47 (47%) females, with median (IQR) age of 64 (57; 72) years. Eight patients were diagnosed with Anaplastic Astrocytoma (AA), 92 with Glioblastoma (GBM). Surgery was aimed to achieve safe maximal resection. An intraoperative multimodal imaging protocol, including neuronavigation, neurophysiological monitoring, 5-ALA fluorescence, 11C MET-PET, navigated i-US system and i-CT, was used, and its impact on EOTR and clinical outcome in elderly patients was analyzed. We divided patients in two groups according to their age: 65 years, and surgical and clinical results (EOTR, post-operative KPS, OS and PFS) were compared. Yet, to better understand age-related differences, the same patient cohort was also divided into 70 years and all the above data reanalyzed. Results: In the first cohort division, we did not found KPS difference over time and survival analysis did not show significant difference between the two groups (p = 0.36 for OS and p = 0.49 for PFS). Same results were obtained increasing the age cut-off for age up to 70 years (p = 0.52 for OS and p = 0.92 for PFS). Conclusions: Our data demonstrate that there is not statistically significant difference in post-operative EOTR, KPS, OS, and PFS between younger and elderly patients treated with extensive tumor resection aided by a intraoperative multimodal protocol

Selective neuronal silencing using synthetic botulinum molecules alleviates chronic pain in mice

Chronic pain is a widespread debilitating condition affecting millions of people worldwide. Although several pharmacological treatments for relieving chronic pain have been developed, they require frequent chronic administration and are often associated with severe adverse events, including overdose and addiction. Persistent increased sensitization of neuronal subpopulations of the peripheral and central nervous system has been recognized as a central mechanism mediating chronic pain, suggesting that inhibition of specific neuronal subpopulations might produce antinociceptive effects. We leveraged the neurotoxic properties of the botulinum toxin to specifically silence key pain-processing neurons in the spinal cords of mice. We show that a single intrathecal injection of botulinum toxin conjugates produced long-lasting pain relief in mouse models of inflammatory and neuropathic pain without toxic side effects. Our results suggest that this strategy might be a safe and effective approach for relieving chronic pain while avoiding the adverse events associated with repeated chronic drug administration

Impact of N-tau on adult hippocampal neurogenesis, anxiety, and memory.

Different pathological tau species are involved in memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia among older people. However, little is known about how tau pathology directly affects adult hippocampal neurogenesis, a unique form of structural plasticity implicated in hippocampusdependent spatial learning and mood-related behavior. To this aim, we generated a transgenic mouse model conditionally expressing a pathological tau fragment (26e230 aa of the longest human tau isoform, or N-tau) in nestin-positive stem/progenitor cells. We found that N-tau reduced the proliferation of progenitor cells in the adult dentate gyrus, reduced cell survival and increased cell death by a caspase- 3eindependent mechanism, and recruited microglia. Although the number of terminally differentiated neurons was reduced, these showed an increased dendritic arborization and spine density. This resulted in an increase of anxiety-related behavior and an impairment of episodic-like memory, whereas less complex forms of spatial learning remained unaltered. Understanding how pathological tau species directly affect neurogenesis is important for developing potential therapeutic strategies to direct neurogenic instructive cues for hippocampal function repair

SAMARAS OF AUSTROPLENCKIA POPULNEA (CELASTRACEAE): NEW CONSTITUENTS AND EFFECT OF EXTRACTS AND FRIEDELIN ON GERMINATION OF BIDENS PILOSA (ASTERACEAE)

Objective: Evaluation of the impact of extracts and constituents from samaras of Austroplenckia populnea on percentage of seed germination (%SG), germination speed index (GSI), length of rootlets (LR), seedling length (SL), and on dry mass (DM) of Bidens pilosa L weed.Methods: The  powder  of  samaras  was  extracted  with  organic  solvents  providing  the  hexane  (SAPEH),  chloroform  (SAPEC),  ethyl  acetate  (SAPEAE) and ethanol  (SAPEE)  extracts. The terpene 1 was isolated from SAPEH by means of column and thin layer chromatography and identified through NMR spectroscopy. Each extract and 1 were subjected to growth inhibition assays evaluating the following parameters: %SG, GSI, LR, SL and DM, with five repetitions.Results: The compounds Friedelin (1), 7-hydroxy-clerodan-3-en-16,15:18,20-diolide (2), 3,5,7,4'-tetrahydroxy-6-methoxy-8-prenylflavanone (3), tetradecanamide (4), and 4-hydroxy-1,6,15-acetyloxy-8,9-benzoyloxy-agarofurane (5) were isolated from hexane extract of samaras of A. populnea and identified by spectroscopic data. The compounds 2, 3 and 5 were not previously described as being chemical constituents from Celastraceae family. In addition, the novel compounds 3 and 5 were described here for the first time. Substantial effect on the germination of B. pilosa L. (picão-preto) was observed after treatment of seeds with nonpolar extracts from Samaras of A. populnea. Friedelin inhibited the seed germination in the tested concentrations showing toxic properties against picão-preto.Conclusion: The germination inhibition of seeds was higher using nonpolar extracts than polar extract. Friedelin inhibited the seed germination in the tested concentrations showing toxic properties against B. pilosa.Â

Che-1 activates XIAP expression in response to DNA damage

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NRAGE associates with the anti-apoptotic factor Che-1 and regulates its degradation to induce cell death

Neurotrophin receptor-interacting MAGE homolog (NRAGE) has been recently identified as a cell-death inducer, involved in molecular events driving cells through apoptotic networks during neuronal development. Recently, we have focused on the functional role of Che-1, also known as apoptosis-antagonizing transcription factor (AATF), a protein involved in cell cycle control and gene transcription. Increasing evidence suggests that Che-1 is involved in apoptotic signalling in neural tissues. In cortical neurons Che-1 exhibits an anti-apoptotic activity, protecting cells from neuronal damage induced by amyloid β-peptide. Here, we report that Che-1 interacts with NRAGE and that an EGFP-NRAGE fusion protein inhibits nuclear localization of Che-1, by sequestering it within the cytoplasmic compartment. Furthermore, NRAGE overexpression downregulates endogenous Che-1 by targeting it for proteasome-dependent degradation. Finally, we propose that Che-1 is a functional antagonist of NRAGE, because its overexpression completely reverts NRAGE-induced cell-death

Robustness of pet radiomics features: Impact of co-registration with mri

Radiomics holds great promise in the field of cancer management. However, the clinical application of radiomics has been hampered by uncertainty about the robustness of the features extracted from the images. Previous studies have reported that radiomics features are sensitive to changes in voxel size resampling and interpolation, image perturbation, or slice thickness. This study aims to observe the variability of positron emission tomography (PET) radiomics features under the impact of co-registration with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using the difference percentage coefficient, and the Spearman’s correlation coefficient for three groups of images: (i) original PET, (ii) PET after co-registration with T1-weighted MRI and (iii) PET after co-registration with FLAIR MRI. Specifically, seventeen patients with brain cancers undergoing [11C]-Methionine PET were considered. Successively, PET images were co-registered with MRI sequences and 107 features were extracted for each mentioned group of images. The variability analysis revealed that shape features, first-order features and two subgroups of higher-order features possessed a good robustness, unlike the remaining groups of features, which showed large differences in the difference percentage coeffi-cient. Furthermore, using the Spearman’s correlation coefficient, approximately 40% of the selected features differed from the three mentioned groups of images. This is an important consideration for users conducting radiomics studies with image co-registration constraints to avoid errors in cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and clinical outcome prediction