A prospective, masked, randomized, controlled superiority study comparing the incidence of corneal injury following general anesthesia in dogs with two methods of corneal protection

Objective: To compare the incidence of corneal injury during general anesthesia (GA) and the immediate post-operative period in eyes protected with topical ocular lubricant alone with eyes protected with topical lubricant followed by complete eyelid closure using tape. Animals Studied: One hundred client-owned dogs (200 eyes) undergoing GA for MRI scan. Methods: Patients had ocular lubricant applied to both eyes upon induction of anesthesia. One eye was taped closed immediately after induction for the duration of anesthesia using Strappal® tape (BSN medical™; treatment group), and the other eye was not taped (control group). Eyes were randomly allocated to a treatment group. Ophthalmic examination was performed before and after anesthesia; the examiner was masked to eye treatment groups. Corneal injury was defined as corneal ulceration or corneal erosion. A McNemar's test was used to compare the incidence of corneal injury between groups. A paired-samples t-test was used to compare Schirmer-1 tear test (STT-1) readings between groups. Results: Sixteen eyes (8%) developed corneal erosion. No corneal ulceration occurred. There was no significant difference between incidence of corneal erosion between groups (p =.454). There was a significant decrease in STT-1 readings following GA in both groups (p &lt;.001), with no significant difference in STT-1 between groups (p =.687). No adverse effects of taping the eye closed were observed. Conclusion: Taping the eyes closed during GA had no additional benefit to the lubrication protocol used in this study.</p

“Triple Bottom Line” as “Sustainable Corporate Performance”: A Proposition for the Future

Based upon a review of corporate performance, corporate financial performance and corporate social performance, we propose that the concept of ―triple bottom line‖ (TBL) as ―sustainable corporate performance‖ (SCP) should consist of three measurement elements, namely: (i) financial, (ii) social and (iii) environmental. TBL as SCP is proposed to be derived from the interface between them. We also propose that the content of each of these measurement elements may vary across contexts and over time. Furthermore, TBL as SCR should be interpreted to be a relative concept that is dynamic and iterative. Continuous monitoring needs to be performed, adapting the content of the measurement elements to changes that evolve across contexts and over time in the marketplace and society. TBL as SCP may be seen as a function of time and context. Keywords: triple bottom line; sustainable corporate performance; corporate social performance; financial performanc

Managing for Stakeholders, Stakeholder Utility Functions, and Competitive Advantage

A firm that manages for stakeholders allocates more resources to satisfying the needs and demands of its legitimate stakeholders than what is necessary to simply retain their willful participation in the productive activities of the firm. Firms that exhibit this sort of behavior develop trusting relationships with stakeholders based on principles of distributional, procedural and interactional justice. Under these conditions, stakeholders are more likely to share nuanced information regarding their utility functions, which increases the ability of the firm to allocate its resources to areas that will best satisfy them (thus increasing demand for business transactions with the firm). In addition, this information can spur innovation, as well as allowing the firm to deal better with changes in the environment. Competitive advantages stemming from a managing-for-stakeholders approach are argued to be sustainable because they are associated with path dependence and causal ambiguity. These explanations provide a strong rationale for including stakeholder theory in the discussion of firm competitiveness and performance

Sustainable flood memories, lay knowledges and the development of community resilience to future flood risk

The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). © 2016 The Authors. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers). The paradigm shift to more distributed flood risk management strategies in the UK involves devolved responsibilities to the local, and the need to enhance risk ownership by communities. This poses questions about how communities build resilience to future flood risk, and how agencies support these processes. This paper explores results from interdisciplinary research on ‘sustainable flood memory’ in the context of effective flood risk management as a conceptual contribution to a global priority. The project aimed to increase understanding of how flood memories provide a platform for developing and sharing lay knowledges, creating social learning opportunities to increase communities’ adaptive capacities for resilience. The paper starts by conceptually framing resilience, community, lay knowledge and flood memory. It then explores key themes drawn from semi-structured interviews with floodplain residents affected by the UK summer 2007 floods in four different settings, which contrasted in terms of their flood histories, experiences and kinds of ‘communities’. Sustainable flood memories were found to be associated with relational ways of knowing, situated in emotions, changing materiality and community tensions. These all influenced active remembering and active forgetting. The paper reflects on varying integrations of memory, lay knowledges and resilience, and critically evaluates implications of the sustainable flood memory concept for the strategy, process and practice of developing community flood resilience. Given the concept's value and importance of ‘memory work’, the paper proposes a framework to translate the concept practically into community resilience initiatives, and to inform how risk and flood experiences are communicated within communities

The jet of the BL Lacertae object PKS 2201+044: MAD near-IR adaptive optics observations and comparison with optical, radio and X-ray data

Relativistic jets are a common feature of radio loud active galactic nuclei. Multifrequency observations are a unique tool to constrain their physics. We report on a detailed study of the properties of the jet of the nearby BL Lac object PKS 2201+044, one of the rare cases where the jet is detected from radio to X-rays. We use new adaptive optics near-IR observations of the source, obtained with the ESO multi-conjugated adaptive optics demonstrator (MAD) at the Very Large Telescope. These observations acquired in Ground-Layer Adaptive Optics mode are combined with images previously achieved by HST, VLA and Chandra to perform a morphological and photometric study of the jet. We find a noticeable similarity in the morphology of the jet at radio, near-IR and optical wavelengths. We construct the spectral shape of the main knot of jet that appears dominated by synchrotron radiation. On the basis of the jet morphology and the weak lines spectrum we suggest that PKS 2201+044 belongs to the class of radio sources intermediate between FRIs and FRIIs.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for pubblication in A&

Low-temperature plasma treatment induces DNA damage leading to necrotic cell death in primary prostate epithelial cells

Background:In recent years, the rapidly advancing field of low-temperature atmospheric pressure plasmas has shown considerable promise for future translational biomedical applications, including cancer therapy, through the generation of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species.Method:The cytopathic effect of low-temperature plasma was first verified in two commonly used prostate cell lines: BPH-1 and PC-3 cells. The study was then extended to analyse the effects in paired normal and tumour (Gleason grade 7) prostate epithelial cells cultured directly from patient tissue. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and staurosporine were used as controls throughout.Results:Low-temperature plasma (LTP) exposure resulted in high levels of DNA damage, a reduction in cell viability, and colony-forming ability. H2O2 formed in the culture medium was a likely facilitator of these effects. Necrosis and autophagy were recorded in primary cells, whereas cell lines exhibited apoptosis and necrosis.Conclusions:This study demonstrates that LTP treatment causes cytotoxic insult in primary prostate cells, leading to rapid necrotic cell death. It also highlights the need to study primary cultures in order to gain more realistic insight into patient response

The impact of corporate social responsibility disclosure on financial performance : evidence from the GCC Islamic banking sector.

This paper examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance for Islamic banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region over the period 2000–2014 by generating CSR-related data through disclosure analysis of the annual reports of the sampled banks. The findings of this study indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between CSR disclosure and the financial performance of Islamic banks in the GCC countries. The results also show a positive relationship between CSR disclosure and the future financial performance of GCC Islamic banks, potentially indicating that current CSR activities carried out by Islamic banks in the GCC could have a long-term impact on their financial performance. Furthermore, despite demonstrating a significant positive relationship between the composite measure of the CSR disclosure index and financial performance, the findings show no statistically significant relationship between the individual dimensions of the CSR disclosure index and the current financial performance measure except for ‘mission and vision’ and ‘products and services’. Similarly, the empirical results detect a positive significant association only between ‘mission and vision’ dimension and future financial performance of the examined banks