Organizational Probes:Exploring Playful Interactions in Work Environment

Playfulness, with non-intrusive elements, can be considered a useful resource for enhancing social awareness and community building within work organizations. Taking inspirations from the cultural probes approach, we developed organizational probes as a set of investigation tools that could provide useful information about employees’ everyday playful experiences within their work organizations. In an academic work environment, we applied our organizational probes over a period of three weeks. Based on the collected data we developed two design concepts for playful technologies in work environments

Is the perceived impact of disciplinary procedures on medical doctors’ professional practice associated with working in an open culture and feeling supported?:A questionnaire among medical doctors in the Netherlands who have been disciplined

Introduction Disciplinary procedures can have a negative impact on the professional functioning of medical doctors. In this questionnaire study, doctors’ experience with open culture and support during a disciplinary procedure is studied to determine whether open culture and support are associated with perceived changes in the professional practice of doctors. Methods All doctors who received a warning or a reprimand from the Dutch Medical Disciplinary Board between July 2012 and August 2016 were invited to fill in a 60-item questionnaire concerning open culture, perceived support during the disciplinary procedure and the impact of the procedure on professional functioning as reported by doctors themselves. The response rate was 43% (n=294). Results A majority of doctors perceive their work environment as a safe environment in which to talk about and report incidents (71.2% agreed). Respondents felt supported by a lawyer or legal representative and colleagues (92.8% and 89.2%, respectively). The disciplinary procedure had effects on professional practice. Legal support and support from a professional confidant and a professional association were associated with fewer perceived changes to professional practice. Conclusion Our study shows that doctors who had been disciplined perceive their working environment as open. Doctors felt supported by lawyers and/or legal representatives and colleagues. Legal support was associated with less of a perceived impact on doctors’ professional practice

Informing, simulating experience, or both: A field experiment on phishing risks

Cybersecurity cannot be ensured with mere technical solutions. Hackers often use fraudulent emails to simply ask people for their password to breach into organizations. This technique, called phishing, is a major threat for many organizations. A typical prevention measure is to inform employees but is there a better way to reduce phishing risks? Experience and feedback have often been claimed to be effective in helping people make better decisions. In a large field experiment involving more than 10,000 employees of a Dutch ministry, we tested the effect of information provision, simulated experience, and their combination to reduce the risks of falling into a phishing attack. Both approaches substantially reduced the proportion of employees giving away their password. Combining both interventions did not have a larger impact

Flagellin Acting Via TLR5 is the Major Activator of Key Signaling Pathways Leading to NF-kappa B and Proinflammatory Gene Program activation in intestinal epithelial cells

BACKGROUND: Infection of intestinal epithelial cells by pathogenic Salmonella leads to activation of signaling cascades that ultimately initiate the proinflammatory gene program. The transcription factor NF-kappa B is a key regulator/activator of this gene program and is potently activated. We explored the mechanism by which Salmonella activates NF-kappa B during infection of cultured intestinal epithelial cells and found that flagellin produced by the bacteria and contained on them leads to NF-kappa B activation in all the cells; invasion of cells by the bacteria is not required to activate NF-kappa B. RESULTS: Purified flagellin activated the mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK), stress-activated protein kinase (SAPK) and I kappa B kinase (IKK) signaling pathways that lead to expression of the proinflammatory gene program in a temporal fashion nearly identical to that of infection of intestinal epithelial cells by Salmonella. Flagellin expression was required for Salmonella invasion of host cells and it activated NF-kappa B via toll-like receptor 5 (TLR5). Surprisingly, a number of cell lines found to be unresponsive to flagellin express TLR5 and expression of exogenous TLR5 in these cells induces NF-kappa B activity in response to flagellin challenge although not robustly. Conversely, overexpression of dominant-negative TLR5 alleles only partially blocks NF-kappa B activation by flagellin. These observations are consistent with the possibility of either a very stable TLR5 signaling complex, the existence of a low abundance flagellin co-receptor or required adapter, or both. CONCLUSION: These collective results provide the evidence that flagellin acts as the main determinant of Salmonella mediated NF-kappa B and proinflammatory signaling and gene activation by this flagellated pathogen. In addition, expression of the fli C gene appears to play an important role in the proper functioning of the TTSS since mutants that fail to express fli C are defective in expressing a subset of Sip proteins and fail to invade host cells. Flagellin added in trans cannot restore the ability of the fli C mutant bacteria to invade intestinal epithelial cells. Lastly, TLR5 expression in weak and non-responding cells indicates that additional factors may be required for efficient signal propagation in response to flagellin recognition

Flagellin acting via TLR5 is the major activator of key signaling pathways leading to NF-κB and proinflammatory gene program activation in intestinal epithelial cells

BACKGROUND: Infection of intestinal epithelial cells by pathogenic Salmonella leads to activation of signaling cascades that ultimately initiate the proinflammatory gene program. The transcription factor NF-κB is a key regulator/activator of this gene program and is potently activated. We explored the mechanism by which Salmonella activates NF-κB during infection of cultured intestinal epithelial cells and found that flagellin produced by the bacteria and contained on them leads to NF-κB activation in all the cells; invasion of cells by the bacteria is not required to activate NF-κB. RESULTS: Purified flagellin activated the mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK), stress-activated protein kinase (SAPK) and Ikappa B kinase (IKK) signaling pathways that lead to expression of the proinflammatory gene program in a temporal fashion nearly identical to that of infection of intestinal epithelial cells by Salmonella. Flagellin expression was required for Salmonella invasion of host cells and it activated NF-κB via toll-like receptor 5 (TLR5). Surprisingly, a number of cell lines found to be unresponsive to flagellin express TLR5 and expression of exogenous TLR5 in these cells induces NF-κB activity in response to flagellin challenge although not robustly. Conversely, overexpression of dominant-negative TLR5 alleles only partially blocks NF-κB activation by flagellin. These observations are consistent with the possibility of either a very stable TLR5 signaling complex, the existence of a low abundance flagellin co-receptor or required adapter, or both. CONCLUSION: These collective results provide the evidence that flagellin acts as the main determinant of Salmonella mediated NF-κB and proinflammatory signaling and gene activation by this flagellated pathogen. In addition, expression of the fli C gene appears to play an important role in the proper functioning of the TTSS since mutants that fail to express fli C are defective in expressing a subset of Sip proteins and fail to invade host cells. Flagellin added in trans cannot restore the ability of the fli C mutant bacteria to invade intestinal epithelial cells. Lastly, TLR5 expression in weak and non-responding cells indicates that additional factors may be required for efficient signal propagation in response to flagellin recognition

Mergers of close primordial binaries

We study the production of main sequence mergers of tidally-synchronized primordial short-period binaries. The principal ingredients of our calculation are the angular momentum loss rates inferred from the spindown of open cluster stars and the distribution of binary properties in young open clusters. We compare our results with the expected number of systems that experience mass transfer in post-main sequence phases of evolution and compute the uncertainties in the theoretical predictions. We estimate that main-sequence mergers can account for the observed number of single blue stragglers in M67. Applied to the blue straggler population, this implies that such mergers are responsible for about one quarter of the population of halo blue metal poor stars, and at least one third of the blue stragglers in open clusters for systems older than 1 Gyr. The observed trends as a function of age are consistent with a saturated angular momentum loss rate for rapidly rotating tidally synchronized systems. The predicted number of blue stragglers from main sequence mergers alone is comparable to the number observed in globular clusters, indicating that the net effect of dynamical interactions in dense stellar environments is to reduce rather than increase the blue straggler population. A population of subturnoff mergers of order 3-4% of the upper main sequence population is also predicted for stars older than 4 Gyr, which is roughly comparable to the small population of highly Li-depleted halo dwarfs. Other observational tests are discussed.Comment: number of pages depends on font, margins, columns etc (58 with given format), 14 figures, submitted to the Astrophysical Journa

Predicting urinary creatinine excretion and its usefulness to identify incomplete 24h urine collections

Studies using 24 h urine collections need to incorporate ways to validate the completeness of the urine samples. Models to predict urinary creatinine excretion (UCE) have been developed for this purpose; however, information on their usefulness to identify incomplete urine collections is limited. We aimed to develop a model for predicting UCE and to assess the performance of a creatinine index using para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) as a reference. Data were taken from the European Food Consumption Validation study comprising two non-consecutive 24 h urine collections from 600 subjects in five European countries. Data from one collection were used to build a multiple linear regression model to predict UCE, and data from the other collection were used for performance testing of a creatinine index-based strategy to identify incomplete collections. Multiple linear regression (n 458) of UCE showed a significant positive association for body weight (ß = 0·07), the interaction term sex × weight (ß = 0·09, reference women) and protein intake (ß = 0·02). A significant negative association was found for age (ß = - 0·09) and sex (ß = - 3·14, reference women). An index of observed-to-predicted creatinine resulted in a sensitivity to identify incomplete collections of 0·06 (95 % CI 0·01, 0·20) and 0·11 (95 % CI 0·03, 0·22) in men and women, respectively. Specificity was 0·97 (95 % CI 0·97, 0·98) in men and 0·98 (95 % CI 0·98, 0·99) in women. The present study shows that UCE can be predicted from weight, age and sex. However, the results revealed that a creatinine index based on these predictions is not sufficiently sensitive to exclude incomplete 24 h urine collections