Culture and concept design : a study of international teams

This paper explores the relationship between culture and performance in concept design. Economic globalisation has meant that the management of global teams has become of strategic importance in product development. Cultural diversity is a key factor in such teams, and this work seeks to better understand the effect this can have on two key aspects of the concept design process: concept generation and concept selection. To this end, a group of 32 students from 17 countries all over the world were divided into culturally diverse teams and asked to perform a short design exercise. A version of the Gallery Method allowed two kinds of activity to be monitored – the individual development of concepts and the collective filtering and selection of them. The effect of culture on these processes was the focus of the work. Using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, the output from the sessions were reviewed according to national boundaries. The results indicate that individualism and masculinity had the most discernable effect on concept generation and concept selection respectively

Identification of Viral Determinants of Murine Norovirus Pathogenesis

Human noroviruses are responsible for the majority of cases of epidemic non-bacterial gastroenteritis. Despite their importance as human pathogens, knowledge of the viral life cycle and host pathogenesis is limited due to the lack of practical models to study. In contrast, murine norovirus: MNV) has been a critical surrogate for the study of human noroviruses as it is the only member of this genus that establishes infection in a small animal model, can be grown in cell culture, and has a reverse genetics system. Noroviruses are divided into genogroups which can contain many viral strains. These viral strains can display dramatic variation in their virulence and ability to persist, but the factors responsible for these differences are poorly defined. The focus of this work is to describe biological differences between two MNV strains, CW3 and CR6, and to use molecular genetics tools to identify the viral determinants that contribute to these differences. Here, we have cloned CW3 and CR6 into a reverse genetics system for production of virus and genetic analysis. We show virus production by this method limits the emergence of viral quasispecies. This makes the analysis of biological phenotypes less complex. We identify four phenotypes in which our cloned viruses behave differently from one another and have chosen two, lethality in STAT1-/- mice and persistent infection in wild type mice, for further study. We show that the sequence of the protruding: P) domain of the viral capsid protein determines whether MNV infection is lethal in mice lacking STAT1, a regulator of innate immunity. The P domain is also a determinant of viral growth and dissemination in these mice. Further, we have identified the N-terminal non-structural protein: NTerm) as the viral determinant of persistent infection in wild type mice. Remarkably, a single amino acid in NTerm dictates the persistence phenotype of these two viral strains. This is the first demonstration of a function for the norovirus NTerm protein during infection of a host. We believe the system and reagents we have developed will be invaluable tools for associating norovirus genes and protein domains with specific pathogenic properties

Edith Stein’s Example: Putting Empathy into Praxis

This article examines how Edith Stein’s philosophical theory of empathy informs not only her scholarly discourse, but also the decision to dedicate her life to others. It first explicates the primary tenets of her theory, situating them within the context of early phenomenology as inspired by Edmund Husserl’s writings. It then chronologically charts those personal events that best display her efforts to put into praxis its principles. From being a volunteer nurse aiding the wounded during World War I to comforting those being sent to the concentration camps during Hitler’s regime, she continually privileges an empathetic awareness to understand those factors affecting the other’s state of mind and instill a sense of dignity that betters his or her person. The interlacing of these experiences underpins her conversion from Judaism to Christianity as well as a deep-seated desire to forge a meaningful connection with others. A concerted attentiveness to another’s beliefs and needs, whether they are intellectual, emotional, or spiritual, depicts the kind of affection that she exemplified on a daily basis. Keywords: Edith Stein, Phenomenology, Empathy, Holocaust DOI: 10.7176/JPCR/50-05 Publication date: September 30th 202