Building professional discourse in emerging markets: Language, context and the challenge of sensemaking

Using ethnographic evidence from the former Soviet republics, this article examines a relatively new and mainly unobserved in the International Business (IB) literature phenomenon of communication disengagement that manifests itself in many emerging markets. We link it to the deficiencies of the local professional business discourse rooted in language limitations reflecting lack of experience with the market economy. This hampers cognitive coherence between foreign and local business entities, adding to the liability of foreignness as certain instances of professional experience fail to find adequate linguistic expression, and complicates cross-cultural adjustments causing multi-national companies (MNCs) financial losses. We contribute to the IB literature by examining cross-border semantic sensemaking through a retrospectively constructed observational study. We argue that a relative inadequacy of the national professional idiom is likely to remain a feature of business environment in post-communist economies for some time and therefore should be factored into business strategies of MNCs. Consequently, we recommend including discursive hazards in the risk evaluation of international projects

Glioblastoma surgery imaging—reporting and data system: Standardized reporting of tumor volume, location, and resectability based on automated segmentations

Treatment decisions for patients with presumed glioblastoma are based on tumor characteristics available from a preoperative MR scan. Tumor characteristics, including volume, location, and resectability, are often estimated or manually delineated. This process is time consuming and subjective. Hence, comparison across cohorts, trials, or registries are subject to assessment bias. In this study, we propose a standardized Glioblastoma Surgery Imaging Reporting and Data System (GSI-RADS) based on an automated method of tumor segmentation that provides standard reports on tumor features that are potentially relevant for glioblastoma surgery. As clinical validation, we determine the agreement in extracted tumor features between the automated method and the current standard of manual segmentations from routine clinical MR scans before treatment. In an observational consecutive cohort of 1596 adult patients with a first time surgery of a glioblastoma from 13 institutions, we segmented gadolinium-enhanced tumor parts both by a human rater and by an automated algorithm. Tumor features were extracted from segmentations of both methods and compared to assess differences, concordance, and equivalence. The laterality, contralateral infiltration, and the laterality indices were in excellent agreement. The native and normalized tumor volumes had excellent agreement, consistency, and equivalence. Multifocality, but not the number of foci, had good agreement and equivalence. The location profiles of cortical and subcortical structures were in excellent agreement. The expected residual tumor volumes and resectability indices had excellent agreement, consistency, and equivalence. Tumor probability maps were in good agreement. In conclusion, automated segmentations are in excellent agreement with manual segmentations and practically equivalent regarding tumor features that are potentially relevant for neurosurgical purposes. Standard GSI-RADS reports can be generated by open access software

Glioblastoma Surgery Imaging-Reporting and Data System: Validation and Performance of the Automated Segmentation Task

For patients with presumed glioblastoma, essential tumor characteristics are determined from preoperative MR images to optimize the treatment strategy. This procedure is time-consuming and subjective, if performed by crude eyeballing or manually. The standardized GSI-RADS aims to provide neurosurgeons with automatic tumor segmentations to extract tumor features rapidly and objectively. In this study, we improved automatic tumor segmentation and compared the agreement with manual raters, describe the technical details of the different components of GSI-RADS, and determined their speed. Two recent neural network architectures were considered for the segmentation task: nnU-Net and AGU-Net. Two preprocessing schemes were introduced to investigate the tradeoff between performance and processing speed. A summarized description of the tumor feature extraction and standardized reporting process is included. The trained architectures for automatic segmentation and the code for computing the standardized report are distributed as open-source and as open-access software. Validation studies were performed on a dataset of 1594 gadolinium-enhanced T1-weighted MRI volumes from 13 hospitals and 293 T1-weighted MRI volumes from the BraTS challenge. The glioblastoma tumor core segmentation reached a Dice score slightly below 90%, a patientwise F1-score close to 99%, and a 95th percentile Hausdorff distance slightly below 4.0 mm on average with either architecture and the heavy preprocessing scheme. A patient MRI volume can be segmented in less than one minute, and a standardized report can be generated in up to five minutes. The proposed GSI-RADS software showed robust performance on a large collection of MRI volumes from various hospitals and generated results within a reasonable runtime

Predictors of outcome after 6 and 12 months following anthroposophic therapy for adult outpatients with chronic disease: a secondary analysis from a prospective observational study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Anthroposophic medicine is a physician-provided complementary therapy system involving counselling, artistic and physical therapies, and special medications. The purpose of this analysis was to identify predictors of symptom improvement in patients receiving anthroposophic treatment for chronic diseases.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>913 adult outpatients from Germany participated in a prospective cohort study. Patients were starting anthroposophic treatment for mental (30.4% of patients, n = 278/913), musculoskeletal (20.2%), neurological (7.6%), genitourinary (7.4%) or respiratory disorders (7.2%) or other chronic indications. Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis was performed with the improvement of Symptom Score (patients' assessment, 0: not present, 10: worst possible) after 6 and 12 months as dependent variables. 61 independent variables pertaining to socio-demographics, life style, disease status, co-morbidity, health status (SF-36), depression, and therapy factors were analysed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Compared to baseline, Symptom Score improved by average 2.53 points (95% confidence interval 2.39-2.68, p < 0.001) after six months and by 2.49 points (2.32-2.65, p < 0.001) after 12 months. The strongest predictor for improvement after six months was baseline Symptom Score, which alone accounted for 25% of the variance (total model 32%). Improvement after six months was also positively predicted by better physical function, better general health, shorter disease duration, higher education level, a diagnosis of respiratory disorders, and by a higher therapy goal documented by the physician at baseline; and negatively predicted by the number of physiotherapy sessions in the pre-study year and by a diagnosis of genitourinary disorders. Seven of these nine variables (not the two diagnoses) also predicted improvement after 12 months. When repeating the 0-6 month analysis on two random subsamples of the original sample, three variables (baseline Symptom Score, physical function, general health) remained significant predictors in both analyses, and three further variables (education level, respiratory disorders, therapy goal) were significant in one analysis.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In adult outpatients receiving anthroposophic treatment for chronic diseases, symptom improvement after 6 and 12 months was predicted by baseline symptoms, health status, disease duration, education, and therapy goal. Other variables were not associated with the outcome. This secondary predictor analysis of data from a pre-post study does not allow for causal conclusions; the results are hypothesis generating and need verification in subsequent studies.</p

Kinetochore fiber formation in animal somatic cells : dueling mechanisms come to a draw

Author Posting. © The Author, 2005. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Chromosoma 114 (2005): 310-318, doi:10.1007/s00412-005-0028-2.The attachment to and movement of a chromosome on the mitotic spindle is mediated by the formation of a bundle of microtubules (MTs) that tethers the kinetochore on the chromosome to a spindle pole. The origin of these “kinetochore fibers” (K-fibers) has been investigated for over 125 years. As noted in 1944 by Schrader, there are only three possible ways to form a K-fiber: either it a) grows from the pole until it contacts the kinetochore; b) grows directly from the kinetochore; or c) it forms as a result of an interaction between the pole and the chromosome. Since Schrader’s time it has been firmly established that K-fibers in centrosome-containing animal somatic cells form as kinetochores capture MTs growing from the spindle pole (route a). It is now similarly clear that in cells lacking centrosomes, including plants and many animal oocytes, K-fibers “self-assemble” from MTs generated by the chromosomes (route b). Can animal somatic cells form K-fibers in the absence of centrosomes by the “self-assembly” pathway? In 2000 the answer to this question was shown to be a resounding “yes”. With this result, the next question became whether the presence of a centrosome normally suppresses K-fiber self-assembly, or if this route works concurrently with centrosome-mediated K-fiber formation. This question, too, has recently been answered: observations on untreated live animal cells expressing GFP-tagged tubulin clearly show that kinetochores can nucleate the formation of their associated MTs in the presence of functional centrosomes. The concurrent operation of these two “dueling” routes for forming K-fibers in animals helps explain why the attachment of kinetochores and the maturation of K-fibers occur as quickly as it does on all chromosomes within a cell.The work is sponsored by NIH grant GMS 40198

Mantle Pb paradoxes : the sulfide solution

Author Posting. © Springer, 2006. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology 152 (2006): 295-308, doi:10.1007/s00410-006-0108-1.There is growing evidence that the budget of Pb in mantle peridotites is largely contained in sulfide, and that Pb partitions strongly into sulfide relative to silicate melt. In addition, there is evidence to suggest that diffusion rates of Pb in sulfide (solid or melt) are very fast. Given the possibility that sulfide melt ‘wets’ sub-solidus mantle silicates, and has very low viscosity, the implications for Pb behavior during mantle melting are profound. There is only sparse experimental data relating to Pb partitioning between sulfide and silicate, and no data on Pb diffusion rates in sulfides. A full understanding of Pb behavior in sulfide may hold the key to several long-standing and important Pb paradoxes and enigmas. The classical Pb isotope paradox arises from the fact that all known mantle reservoirs lie to the right of the Geochron, with no consensus as to the identity of the “balancing” reservoir. We propose that long-term segregation of sulfide (containing Pb) to the core may resolve this paradox. Another Pb paradox arises from the fact that the Ce/Pb ratio of both OIB and MORB is greater than bulk earth, and constant at a value of 25. The constancy of this “canonical ratio” implies similar partition coefficients for Ce and Pb during magmatic processes (Hofmann et al. 1986), whereas most experimental studies show that Pb is more incompatible in silicates than Ce. Retention of Pb in residual mantle sulfide during melting has the potential to bring the bulk partitioning of Ce into equality with Pb if the sulfide melt/silicate melt partition coefficient for Pb has a value of ~ 14. Modeling shows that the Ce/Pb (or Nd/Pb) of such melts will still accurately reflect that of the source, thus enforcing the paradox that OIB and MORB mantles have markedly higher Ce/Pb (and Nd/Pb) than the bulk silicate earth. This implies large deficiencies of Pb in the mantle sources for these basalts. Sulfide may play other important roles during magmagenesis: 1). advective/diffusive sulfide networks may form potent metasomatic agents (in both introducing and obliterating Pb isotopic heterogeneities in the mantle); 2). silicate melt networks may easily exchange Pb with ambient mantle sulfides (by diffusion or assimilation), thus ‘sampling’ Pb in isotopically heterogeneous mantle domains differently from the silicate-controlled isotope tracer systems (Sr, Nd, Hf), with an apparent ‘de-coupling’ of these systems.Our intemperance should not be blamed on the support we gratefully acknowledge from NSF: EAR- 0125917 to SRH and OCE-0118198 to GAG

Conformation-regulated mechanosensory control via titin domains in cardiac muscle

The giant filamentous protein titin is ideally positioned in the muscle sarcomere to sense mechanical stimuli and transform them into biochemical signals, such as those triggering cardiac hypertrophy. In this review, we ponder the evidence for signaling hotspots along the titin filament involved in mechanosensory control mechanisms. On the way, we distinguish between stress and strain as triggers of mechanical signaling events at the cardiac sarcomere. Whereas the Z-disk and M-band regions of titin may be prominently involved in sensing mechanical stress, signaling hotspots within the elastic I-band titin segment may respond primarily to mechanical strain. Common to both stress and strain sensor elements is their regulation by conformational changes in protein domains

Notch and Presenilin Regulate Cellular Expansion and Cytokine Secretion but Cannot Instruct Th1/Th2 Fate Acquisition

Recent reports suggested that Delta1, 4 and Jagged1, 2 possessed the ability to instruct CD4+ T cell into selection of Th1 or Th2 fates, respectively, although the underlying mechanism endowing the cleaved Notch receptor with memory of ligand involved in its activation remains elusive. To examine this, we prepared artificial antigen-presenting cells expressing either DLL1 or Jag1. Although both ligands were efficient in inducing Notch2 cleavage and activation in CD4+ T or reporter cells, the presence of Lunatic Fringe in CD4+ T cells inhibited Jag1 activation of Notch1 receptor. Neither ligand could induce Th1 or Th2 fate choice independently of cytokines or redirect cytokine-driven Th1 or Th2 development. Instead, we find that Notch ligands only augment cytokine production during T cell differentiation in the presence of polarizing IL-12 and IL-4. Moreover, the differentiation choices of naïve CD4+ T cells lacking γ-secretase, RBP-J, or both in response to polarizing cytokines revealed that neither presenilin proteins nor RBP-J were required for cytokine-induced Th1/Th2 fate selection. However, presenilins facilitate cellular proliferation and cytokine secretion in an RBP-J (and thus, Notch) independent manner. The controversies surrounding the role of Notch and presenilins in Th1/Th2 polarization may reflect their role as genetic modifiers of T-helper cells differentiation

Notch and Presenilin Regulate Cellular Expansion and Cytokine Secretion but Cannot Instruct Th1/Th2 Fate Acquisition

Recent reports suggested that Delta1, 4 and Jagged1, 2 possessed the ability to instruct CD4+ T cell into selection of Th1 or Th2 fates, respectively, although the underlying mechanism endowing the cleaved Notch receptor with memory of ligand involved in its activation remains elusive. To examine this, we prepared artificial antigen-presenting cells expressing either DLL1 or Jag1. Although both ligands were efficient in inducing Notch2 cleavage and activation in CD4+ T or reporter cells, the presence of Lunatic Fringe in CD4+ T cells inhibited Jag1 activation of Notch1 receptor. Neither ligand could induce Th1 or Th2 fate choice independently of cytokines or redirect cytokine-driven Th1 or Th2 development. Instead, we find that Notch ligands only augment cytokine production during T cell differentiation in the presence of polarizing IL-12 and IL-4. Moreover, the differentiation choices of naïve CD4+ T cells lacking γ-secretase, RBP-J, or both in response to polarizing cytokines revealed that neither presenilin proteins nor RBP-J were required for cytokine-induced Th1/Th2 fate selection. However, presenilins facilitate cellular proliferation and cytokine secretion in an RBP-J (and thus, Notch) independent manner. The controversies surrounding the role of Notch and presenilins in Th1/Th2 polarization may reflect their role as genetic modifiers of T-helper cells differentiation

Selective Influences of Precision and Power Grips on Speech Categorization

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