Business Sustainability: An Analysis of Three Enterprises in Charlotte, North Carolina

Sustainability is defined in varying ways by businesses for reasons such as industry, stakeholder expectations, compliance, and other factors. In this case study, three companies, Domtar, Duke Energy, and Nucor, are examined on their approach to reporting and practicing environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Content analysis was used to identify themes in corporate paid, owned, and earned media. Interviews with facility managers were used to understand how management implements sustainable practices on a facility level. This case study examines in detail how these companies use different language, tools, and systems to progress sustainable development in a globalized economy. Results showed that in earned media, companies were socially and economically analyzed and not environmentally, unless responding to a crisis. In owned media, companies organized their sustainability priorities in a way they believed most represented their company. In sustainability reports, the more complicated the business portfolio, the more complicated it becomes to differentiate data sets. On all three reports, the most under-reported pillar of sustainability was environmental. All three companies have a huge ecological footprint and very general data regarding it is reported

How Do Family Background and Self-Esteem Affect an Individual’s Perception of Gender-Role Portrayal in Online Advertisements?

The purpose of this study is to further understand the relationship of family background and how it affects self-esteem and the perception of gender roles in online imagery. This study focuses on how our history serves as a lens to see gender roles. The schema theory, created by Robert Axelrod, is a model suggesting that people have a “pre-existing assumption about the way the world is organized” (Axelford, 1974). Furthering this theory is Bem\u27s (1981) Gender Schema Theory, which proposes that one\u27s sexual self-concept affects how one structures items in memory. These theories, applied to the understood roles and activities that we see our parents perform, should relate to how we see people in the media take on certain roles and activities in online advertisements. The method for collecting data is a survey broken down into questions of demographics, family history, self-esteem, and ten randomized advertisements portraying traditional, decorative, and non-traditional gender roles for both men and women. If we can begin to understand the relationship between family background and advertisement effectiveness, then advertisers can see the real cultural values and changing gender-role identities in consumers

Random, blocky and alternating ordering in supramolecular polymers of chemically bidisperse monomers

As a first step to understanding the role of molecular or chemical polydispersity in self-assembly, we put forward a coarse-grained model that describes the spontaneous formation of quasi-linear polymers in solutions containing two self-assembling species. Our theoretical framework is based on a two-component self-assembled Ising model in which the bidispersity is parameterized in terms of the strengths of the binding free energies that depend on the monomer species involved in the pairing interaction. Depending upon the relative values of the binding free energies involved, different morphologies of assemblies that include both components are formed, exhibiting paramagnetic-, ferromagnetic- or anti ferromagnetic-like order,i.e., random, blocky or alternating ordering of the two components in the assemblies. Analyzing the model for the case of ferromagnetic ordering, which is of most practical interest, we find that the transition from conditions of minimal assembly to those characterized by strong polymerization can be described by a critical concentration that depends on the concentration ratio of the two species. Interestingly, the distribution of monomers in the assemblies is different from that in the original distribution, i.e., the ratio of the concentrations of the two components put into the system. The monomers with a smaller binding free energy are more abundant in short assemblies and monomers with a larger binding affinity are more abundant in longer assemblies. Under certain conditions the two components congregate into separate supramolecular polymeric species and in that sense phase separate. We find strong deviations from the expected growth law for supramolecular polymers even for modest amounts of a second component, provided it is chemically sufficiently distinct from the main one.Comment: Submitted to Macromolecules, 6 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1111.176

Data publication with the structural biology data grid supports live analysis

Access to experimental X-ray diffraction image data is fundamental for validation and reproduction of macromolecular models and indispensable for development of structural biology processing methods. Here, we established a diffraction data publication and dissemination system, Structural Biology Data Grid (SBDG; data. sbgrid. org), to preserve primary experimental data sets that support scientific publications. Data sets are accessible to researchers through a community driven data grid, which facilitates global data access. Our analysis of a pilot collection of crystallographic data sets demonstrates that the information archived by SBDG is sufficient to reprocess data to statistics that meet or exceed the quality of the original published structures. SBDG has extended its services to the entire community and is used to develop support for other types of biomedical data sets. It is anticipated that access to the experimental data sets will enhance the paradigm shift in the community towards a much more dynamic body of continuously improving data analysis

Structure-Based Predictive Models for Allosteric Hot Spots

In allostery, a binding event at one site in a protein modulates the behavior of a distant site. Identifying residues that relay the signal between sites remains a challenge. We have developed predictive models using support-vector machines, a widely used machine-learning method. The training data set consisted of residues classified as either hotspots or non-hotspots based on experimental characterization of point mutations from a diverse set of allosteric proteins. Each residue had an associated set of calculated features. Two sets of features were used, one consisting of dynamical, structural, network, and informatic measures, and another of structural measures defined by Daily and Gray [1]. The resulting models performed well on an independent data set consisting of hotspots and non-hotspots from five allosteric proteins. For the independent data set, our top 10 models using Feature Set 1 recalled 68–81% of known hotspots, and among total hotspot predictions, 58–67% were actual hotspots. Hence, these models have precision P = 58–67% and recall R = 68–81%. The corresponding models for Feature Set 2 had P = 55–59% and R = 81–92%. We combined the features from each set that produced models with optimal predictive performance. The top 10 models using this hybrid feature set had R = 73–81% and P = 64–71%, the best overall performance of any of the sets of models. Our methods identified hotspots in structural regions of known allosteric significance. Moreover, our predicted hotspots form a network of contiguous residues in the interior of the structures, in agreement with previous work. In conclusion, we have developed models that discriminate between known allosteric hotspots and non-hotspots with high accuracy and sensitivity. Moreover, the pattern of predicted hotspots corresponds to known functional motifs implicated in allostery, and is consistent with previous work describing sparse networks of allosterically important residues

Jak3 Is Involved in Dendritic Cell Maturation and CCR7-Dependent Migration

BACKGROUND: CCR7-mediated signalling is important for dendritic cell maturation and homing to the lymph nodes. We have previously demonstrated that Jak3 participates in the signalling pathway of CCR7 in T lymphocytes. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, we used Jak3(-/-) mice to analyze the role of Jak3 in CCR7-mediated dendritic cells migration and function. First, we found no differences in the generation of DCs from Jak3(-/-) bone marrow progenitors, when compared to wild type cells. However, phenotypic analysis of the bone marrow derived DCs obtained from Jak3(-/-) mice showed reduced expression of co-stimulatory molecules compared to wild type (Jak3(+/+)). In addition, when we analyzed the migration of Jak3(-/-) and Jak3(+/+) mature DCs in response to CCL19 and CCL21 chemokines, we found that the absence of Jak3 results in impaired chemotactic responses both in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, lymphocyte proliferation and contact hypersensitivity experiments showed that DC-mediated T lymphocyte activation is reduced in the absence of Jak3. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Altogether, our data provide strong evidence that Jak3 is important for DC maturation, migration and function, through a CCR7-mediated signalling pathway