Family Business Restructuring:A Review and Research Agenda

Although business restructuring occurs frequently and it is important for the prosperity of family firms across generations, research on family firms has largely evolved separately from research on business restructuring. This is a missed opportunity, since the two domains are complementary, and understanding the context, process, content, and outcome dimensions is relevant to both research streams. We address this by examining the intersection between research on business restructuring and family firms to improve our knowledge of each area and inform future research. To achieve this goal, we review and organize research across different dimensions to create an integrative framework. Building on current research, we focus on 88 studies at the intersection of family firm and business restructuring research to develop a model that identifies research needs and suggests directions for future research

Making Way in Corpus-based Intepreting Studies

The idea of editing a volume entirely focused on corpus-based interpreting studies was first discussed following the First Forlì International Workshop on Corpus-based interpreting studies: The State of the Art which was held at the Forlì Campus of the University of Bologna on May 7th and 8th 2015. This event gathered more than 100 scholars from different parts of the world with the aim of sharing their corpus-based research endeavors, ranging from studies that exploited fully machine-readable corpora to small collections of texts or transcripts for manual analysis. This volume serves a dual purpose. On the one hand, it aims at promoting the understanding of the interpretation process and product based not on anecdotal observations or small-size case-studies, but on comparatively large datasets of professional interpretations mostly stored and queried according to standard corpus linguistics methodologies. The volume showcases descriptions of and studies on major interpreting corpora available to date: the EPIC Corpus and its off-springs EPTIC (including also translations) developed at the University of Bologna, EPICG from the University of Ghent (Belgium) and the TIC Corpus from the University of Poznán (Poland); the 2249i Corpus, the DIRSI Corpus and the IMITES Corpus, again from the University of Bologna (Italy); the CorIT Corpus from the University of Trieste (Italy); the FOOTIE Corpus created at UNINT University in Rome (Italy); the NAIST Corpus from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (Japan) and the CEIPPC Corpus, which was built at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (China). On the other hand, the volume is also intended as a renewed call (after Miriam Shlesinger’s first call in 1998) to the research community to further develop the field of corpus-based interpreting studies by offering scholars more corpus-based data and methodologies to compile their own corpora according to their research designs

Building Interpreting and Intermodal Corpora: A How to for a Formidable Task

This contribution has a double aim. On the one hand, it highlights the various challenges and problems compilers of (simultaneous) interpreting and intermodal corpora are likely to face, and the solutions that were found and applied in three corpora of European Parliament plenary debates, i.e. EPIC, EPICG and EPTIC. On the other, it provides an accessible step-by-step guide for corpus developers who are working with European Parliament data, with the ultimate aim of bringing as far as possible into line the procedures used to transcribe the audio tracks, record metadata, annotate texts with part-of-speech and lemma information, perform text-to-text and text-to-audio/video alignment, and index the corpus for searching with appropriate corpus query tools. By adopting shared corpus building methods, it might be possible to leverage the substantial efforts already deployed by different research groups, and encourage others to take charge of new language pairs. This, we shall argue, might lead to a massively multilingual interpreting and intermodal corpus, through a distributed community effort

Label-free femtomolar detection of target DNA by impedimetric DNA sensor based on poly(pyrrole-nitrilotriacetic acid) film.

An ultrahigh performance impedimetric DNA sensor is presented showing detection limits in the femtomolar range. This electrochemical setup was constructed initially by electrogeneration of poly(11-pyrrol-1-yl-undecanoic acid N(alpha'),N(alpha)-bis(carboxymethyl)-L-lysine amide) (poly(pyrrole-NTA)) film. The latter was then modified by the coordination of Cu(2+) ions onto the chelating NTA centers followed by the immobilization of the ssHIV-DNA previously modified by a polyhistidine tag by affinity binding. The immobilization of the DNA probe and hybridization with the complementary target ssHIV-DNA were investigated using fluorescence microscopy and quantified with quartz crystal microbalance experiments leading to DNA probe and duplex coverage of 1.7 x 10(-11) and 7.7 x 10(-12) mol cm(-2), respectively. The duplex formation was corroborated by amperometric measurements through the duplex labeling by a glucose oxidase. In the presence of hydroquinone as redox indicator, the DNA sensor was applied to the impedimetric detection of target DNA without a labeling step. A linear quantification of the HIV DNA target was carried out in the range 10(-15) to 10(-8) mol L(-1)

Transcription-associated topoisomerase activities control DNA-breaks production by G-quadruplex ligands

G-quadruplexes (G4), non-canonical DNA structures, are involved in several essential processes. Stabilization of G4 structures by small compounds (G4 ligands) affects almost all DNA transactions, including telomere maintenance and genomic stability. Here, thanks to a powerful and unbiased genetic approach, we identify topoisomerase 2-alpha (TOP2A) as the main effector of cell cytotoxicity induced by CX5461, a G4 ligand currently undergoing phase I/II clinical trials. This approach also allowed to identify new point mutations affecting TOP2A activity without compromising cell viability. Moreover, based on cross-resistance studies and siRNA-based protein depletion we report that TOP2A plays a major role in cell cytotoxicity induced by two unrelated clastogenic G4 ligands, CX5461 and pyridostatin (PDS). We also report that cytotoxic effects induced by both compounds are associated with topoisomerase 2-mediated DNA breaks production. Finally, we show that TOP2-mediated DNA breaks production is strongly associated with RNA Pol II-dependent transcription and is countered by topoisomerase 1 (TOP1). Altogether our results indicate that clastogenic G4 ligands act as DNA structure-driven TOP2-poisons at transcribed regions bearing G-quadruplex structures

Corrosion Mechanisms of Steel and Cast Iron by Molten Aluminum

International audienceThe corrosion mechanisms by liquid aluminum of three industrial materials have been studied: unalloyed steel (UAS), and ferritic and modified pearlitic cast irons (FCI and PCI, respectively). The behavior of these materials when in contact with liquid aluminum is different. Aluminum diffuses deep into the UAS and forms intermetallic compounds with iron at the surface and in the steel matrix. At the surface, only Fe2Al5 and FeAl3 are found. In the matrix, FeAl2 also is formed in agreement with the equilibrium Fe-Al diagram. From the matrix to FeAl2, the Al content in the ferrite increases progressively until Al saturation is reached. At this step, black elongated precipitates (Al4C3 and/or graphite) appear. Graphite lamellas present in both FCI and PCI constitute an efficient barrier to the Al diffusion. The high silicon content of the FCI leads to the formation of a phase free from Al and saturated in Si. For the PCI, a thin layer rich in Al and Si, which is formed between the matrix and Fe2Al5, limits the diffusion of atoms. The effects of Cr and P added in the PCI also are discussed