The role of law and ethics in developing business management as a profession

Currently, business management is far from being recognised as a profession. This paper suggests that a professional spirit should be developed which could function as a filter of commercial reasoning. Broadly, management will not be organised within the framework of a well-established profession unless formal knowledge, licensing, professional autonomy and professional codes of conduct are developed sufficiently. In developing business management as a profession, law may play a key role. Where the idea is that business management should be more professsionalised, managers must show that they are willing to adopt ethical values, while arriving at business decisions. The paper argues that ethics cannot survive without legal regulation, which, in turn, will not be supported by law unless lawyers can find alternative solutions to the large mechanisms of the official society, secured by the monopolised coercion of the nation state. From a micro perspective of law and business ethics, communities can be developed with their own conventions, rules and standards that are generated and sanctioned within the boundaries of the communities themselves

On the effect of separated oxygen and carbon dioxide injections on the stabilisation of diluted oxyfuel flames

International audienceOxyfuel combustion with exhaust gas recycle coupled with CO 2 capture and storage (CCS) is a promising way to meet low CO 2 emission standards in industrial facilities with limited economical impact. In such systems, the flame stability is very sensitive to the dilution by injection of exhaust gases, particularly in configurations where they are not premixed with the oxygen, making the design of the burners more complex but offering a larger operation flexibility and a better control of flame heat transfer. In order to study the strategies of injection of the oxygen and exhaust gases, this paper presents an experimental study of the aerodynamic mechanisms influencing the stabilization of CO 2-diluted oxy-fuel flames, for four different configurations of 23 kW quadri-coaxial burners with separated injections for oxygen and carbon dioxide. The four burners have same axisymmetric geometry consisting in injections of methane in the center surrounded successively by a first oxygen (O 2i) inner annular jet, the CO 2 co-flow and a second oxygen (O 2e) outer annular jet. Dimensions of burners are chosen to keep constant CH 4 and O 2i injections and to be able to change independently CO 2 and O 2e velocities for constant thermal power, total equivalence ratio, oxygen repartition and dilution ratio. The interaction between combustion and the aerodynamic features is investigated by CH* chemiluminescence imaging and Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). Mean tomographic images of the flame structure are obtained by Abel's inversion of averaged chemiluminescence images. PIV measurements are performed for two fields of view in order to obtain the global aerodynamic features of the turbulent oxyfuel flames and a more precise characterization in the vicinity of the burner exit. For the latter, the spatial resolution of the measurements is optimized by the development of a specific multi-step PIV processing. Low flow-velocity and high flow-velocity configurations are tested at maximum CO 2 dilution allowed by the burners. Different structures of flames are obtained with a long continuous annular shape or with local extinction for some operating conditions. The intensity of the mixing processes and the resulting stability of the flame depend largely on the shear constraints between CO 2 and O 2e jets. A better stabilization is found for low CO 2 velocity, which favors its mixing with outer oxygen annular jet prior to direct dilution of the flame. An increase of O 2e velocity further improves centrifugal entrainment of CO 2 and then reduces the radial stratification around the flame. These results obtained in a reference configuration are useful guides for the design of flexible and efficient oxy-fuel industrial burners for CCS units

POV: Obama's ban on juvenile solitary confinement

Point of view article in BU Toda

Attempting to distinguish between endogenous and contaminating cytokeratins in a corneal proteomic study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The observation of cytokeratins (CK's) in mass spectrometry based studies raises the question of whether the identified CK is a true endogenous protein from the sample or simply represents a contaminant. This issue is especially important in proteomic studies of the corneal epithelium where several CK's have previously been reported to mark the stages of differentiation from corneal epithelial stem cell to the differentiated cell.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Here we describe a method to distinguish very likely endogenous from uncertain endogenous CK's in a mass spectrometry based proteomic study. In this study the CK identifications from 102 human corneal samples were compared with the number of human CK identifications found in 102 murine thymic lymphoma samples.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>It was anticipated that the CK's that were identified with a frequency of <5%, <it>i.e. </it>in less than one spot for every 20 spots analysed, are very likely to be endogenous and thereby represent a 'biologically significant' identification. CK's observed with a frequency >5% are uncertain endogenous since they may represent true endogenous CK's but the probability of contamination is high and therefore needs careful consideration. This was confirmed by comparison with a study of mouse samples where all identified human CK's are contaminants.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>CK's 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 23 are very likely to be endogenous proteins if identified in a corneal study, whilst CK's 1, 2e, 5, 6A, 9, 10, 14 and 16 may be endogenous although some are likely to be contaminants in a proteomic study. Further immunohistochemical analysis and a search of the current literature largely supported the distinction.</p

Study of the bivariate survival data using frailty models based on Lévy processes

Frailty models allow us to take into account the non-observable inhomogeneity of individual hazard functions. Although models with time-independent frailty have been intensively studied over the last decades and a wide range of applications in survival analysis have been found, the studies based on the models with time-dependent frailty are relatively rare. In this paper, we formulate and prove two propositions related to the identifiability of the bivariate survival models with frailty given by a nonnegative bivariate Lévy process. We discuss parametric and semiparametric procedures for estimating unknown parameters and baseline hazard functions. Numerical experiments with simulated and real data illustrate these procedures. The statements of the propositions can be easily extended to the multivariate case

Applying refinement to the use of mice and rats in rheumatoid arthritis research

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a painful, chronic disorder and there is currently an unmet need for effective therapies that will benefit a wide range of patients. The research and development process for therapies and treatments currently involves in vivo studies, which have the potential to cause discomfort, pain or distress. This Working Group report focuses on identifying causes of suffering within commonly used mouse and rat ‘models’ of RA, describing practical refinements to help reduce suffering and improve welfare without compromising the scientific objectives. The report also discusses other, relevant topics including identifying and minimising sources of variation within in vivo RA studies, the potential to provide pain relief including analgesia, welfare assessment, humane endpoints, reporting standards and the potential to replace animals in RA research

The multiple facets of the Hsp90 machine

International audienceThe Ninth International Conference on the Hsp90 Chaperone Machine concluded in October 2018, in Leysin, Switzerland. The program highlighted findings in various areas, including integrated insight into molecular mechanism of Hsp90, cochaperones, and clients’ structure and function.Heat shock protein-90 (Hsp90) is a molecular chaperone critical for the folding, stability, and activity of client proteins 1. Hsp90 and its orthologs, including bacterial HtpG, mitochondrial TRAP1 and endoplasmic reticulum Grp94, exist as dimers, hydrolyze ATP, and cycle between distinct conformational states. Hsp90 preferentially binds proteins in near native states facilitating their remodeling for protein interactions and signaling. At the 9th International Conference on the Hsp90 Chaperone Machine approximately one-third of the attendees shared their data on Hsp90 structure and function through short talks (Figure 1). Here, we distill and summarize their finding