14 research outputs found
Entrepreneurship during the Covid-19 Pandemic: A global study of entrepreneurs' challenges, resilience, and well-being
Summary: Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs including the self-employed) account for 90% of businesses globally and provide 70% of employment worldwide. These businesses, typically entrepreneur led, are threatened by the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning that millions of jobs are at risk. This report presents insights from a global study conducted during the pandemic in 2020. We surveyed over 5,000 entrepreneurs in 23 countries that represent 3/4 of the worldâs economic output. Most entrepreneurs faced significant challenges threatening the survival of their businesses. We also see resilience in how entrepreneurs navigated the crisis through being agile, adaptive, and exploring new opportunities, utilizing government support, giving back to society, and even harbouring growth ambitions beyond the pandemic. Entrepreneursâ mental well-being dropped by 12% in the pandemic presenting another threat to their businesses. We chart stressors and well-being resources including social support and self-care strategies that entrepreneurs engaged to stay productive. We close the report (1) by reflecting on five trends for the post-Covid economy and formulate actionable policy recommendations of how entrepreneurs and SMEs can be supported in light of these trends (digitalisation; âlocalâ focus, inclusive business models, developing personal and business resilience), and (2) offer five practical steps for entrepreneurs to protect their well-being
From design to operations: a process management life-cycle performance measurement system for Public-Private Partnerships
YesPublicâPrivate Partnerships (PPPs) have become a critical vehicle for delivering infrastructure worldwide. Yet, the use of such a procurement strategy has received considerable criticism, as they have been prone to experiencing time/cost overruns and during their operation poorly managed. A key issue contributing to the poor performance of PPPs is the paucity of an effective and comprehensive performance measurement system. There has been a tendency for the performance of PPPs to be measured based on their ex-post criteria of time, cost and quality. Such criteria do not accommodate the complexities and lifecycle of an asset. In addressing this problem, the methodology of sequential triangulation is used to develop and examine the effectiveness of a âProcess Management Life Cycle Performance Measurement Systemâ. The research provides public authorities and private-sector entities embarking on PPPs with a robust mechanism to effectively measure, control and manage their projectsâ life cycle performances, ensuring the assets are âfuture proofedâ
Act or wait-and-see? Adversity, agility, and entrepreneur wellbeing across countries during the Covid-19 pandemic
How can entrepreneurs protect their wellbeing during a crisis? Does engaging agility (namely, opportunity agility and planning agility) in response to adversity help entrepreneurs safeguard their wellbeing? Activated by adversity, agility may function as a specific resilience mechanism enabling positive adaption to crisis. We studied 3,162 entrepreneurs from 20 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and found that more severe national lockdowns enhanced firm-level adversity for entrepreneurs and diminished their wellbeing. Moreover, entrepreneurs who combined opportunity agility with planning agility experienced higher wellbeing but planning agility alone lowered wellbeing. Entrepreneur agility offers a new agentic perspective to research on entrepreneur wellbeing
High prevalence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa carriage in residents of French and German long-term care facilities
Objectives: To determine prevalence, incidence, and factors associated with Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) intestinal carriage in residents of long-term care facilities (LTCFs) and to understand the population structure of this pathogen in LTCFs from two European countries. Methods: We assessed the prevalence of PA intestinal carriage and the incidence of acquisition by collecting fecal samples from 403 residents of 20 LTCFs. We collected 289 environmental samples from sinks and drinking water. Factors associated with carriage and acquisition of intestinal PA were identified. All PA isolates had their antibiotic phenotypic resistance profile determined and their genome sequenced, from which we assessed the population structure of the collection and identified resistance determinants. Results: We found a high proportion of residents with PA intestinal carriage (51.6%) over the entire study period. Over the follow-up period, 28.6% of the residents acquired intestinal PA. Older age (Odds ratio [OR] = 1.29, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.09-1.52; p = 0.002), urinary incontinence (OR = 2.56, 95% CI: 1.37-4.88; p = 0.003), and male gender (OR = 2.55), 95% CI: 1.05-6.18; p = 0.039) were associated with higher probability of carriage. Wheelchair usage (OR = 4.56, 95% CI: 1.38-15.05; p = 0.013) and a body mass index >25 (OR = 3.71, 95% CI: 1.17-11.82; p = 0.026) were associated with higher risk of PA acquisition. Population structure of our isolates was mainly non-clonal with 112 different STs among the 241 isolates. Most represented STs were high risk clones ST253 (n=26), ST17 (n=11), ST244 (n=11), ST309 (n=10), and ST395 (n=10). Most PA isolates (86.3%) were susceptible to antibiotics, with no acquired genes conferring resistance to antipseudomonal agents. Conclusions: We found an unexpected high prevalence of PA intestinal carriage in LTCF residents mainly associated with individual-level factors. Our study revealed a polyclonal PA population structure suggesting that individual acquisition is more frequent than resident-to-resident transmission
Virtual Screening of PRK1 Inhibitors: Ensemble Docking, Rescoring Using Binding Free Energy Calculation and QSAR Model Development
Protein kinase C Related Kinase 1
(PRK1) has been shown to be involved
in the regulation of androgen receptor signaling and has been identified
as a novel potential drug target for prostate cancer therapy. Since
there is no PRK1 crystal structure available to date, multiple PRK1
homology models were generated in order to address the protein flexibility.
An in-house library of compounds tested on PRK1 was docked into the
ATP binding site of the generated models. In most cases a correct
pose of the inhibitors could be identified by ensemble docking, while
there is still a challenge of finding a reasonable scoring function
that is able to rank compounds according to their biological activity.
We estimated the binding free energy for our data set of structurally
diverse PRK1 inhibitors using the MM-PBÂ(GB)ÂSA and QM/MM-GBSA methods.
The obtained results demonstrate that a correlation between calculated
binding free energies and experimental IC<sub>50</sub> values was
found to be usually higher than using docking scores. Furthermore,
the developed approach was tested on a set of diverse PRK1 inhibitors
taken from literature, which resulted in a significant correlation.
The developed method is computationally inexpensive and can be applied
as a postdocking filter in virtual screening as well as for optimization
of PRK1 inhibitors in order to prioritize compounds for further biological
characterization
Household acquisition and transmission of extended-spectrum ÎČ-lactamase (ESBL) -producing Enterobacteriaceae after hospital discharge of ESBL-positive index patients
International audienceThis study aimed to determine rates and risk factors of extended-spectrum ÎČ-lactamase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (ESBL-PE) acquisition and transmission within households after hospital discharge of an ESBL-PE-positive index patient