B2B Sales Force Productivity: Applications of Revenue Management Strategies to Sales Management

Firms should be able to apply the time-based philosophy of revenue management to their sales forces. To do so requires a revision in the way most sales divisions traditionally have viewed salesperson time. Hence, a different type of proposed measure, revenue per available salesperson hour, is proposed to better integrate the value of the salesperson\u27s time as a factor in sales potential and revenue calculation. This article seeks to (1) foster a positive perception of revenue management as a viable sales approach, (2) establish a framework for such a strategy, and (3) set a useful road map for facilitating execution

Exploring African lion (Panthera leo) behavioural phenotypes: individual differences and correlations between sociality, boldness and behaviour

Increasing our understanding of personality, at an individual and group level, is crucial to the pre-release assessment of social species within ex situ reintroduction programs. We conducted the first exploration into the personality of a captive-origin pride of African lions (Panthera leo), assessing behavioural variations and consistencies in daily activity, social and hunting behaviour, and boldness. Data were collected via direct observations, while a species-specific protocol for testing boldness, using playbacks, was developed. Differences in sex, age and session time for the activity budget were evaluated using Pearson correlations and repeated-measures ANOVA, while social interactions were analysed using social network analysis. Spearman’s correlations were conducted to assess for associations between boldness scores, activity and sociality. The two boldness tests provided a range of scores per lion, indicating that the test was effective. Correlations and variations in individual behaviour indicated that adults and sub-adults have specific roles within pride behaviour. Correlations between boldness and activity and social behaviours provided information on the role of individuals, allowing investigation into the behaviour of a dominant and a social keystone. Our study indicates that evaluating various aspects of behaviour in conjunction with boldness has the potential to assist the pre-release assessment of a pride within an ex situ reintroduction program.The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10164-016-0473-

Standing breaks in lectures improve university students’ self-perceived physical, mental and cognitive condition

While adolescents and adults should limit high levels of sedentary behavior, university students spend large amounts of time on sedentary activities. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of this prolonged sitting on students’ self-perceived physical, mental, and cognitive condition and to answer the question of whether simple standing breaks in lectures can help students improve these conditions and for example feel more concentrated, motivated, or less tense in class. A five-minute standing break was introduced using a designed presentation slide for one semester in five different 90-min lectures. In addition, an active break as well as an open break with no trigger were implemented in two further lectures to explicitly investigate the effects of a standing break. Before, during, and after the semester, the students were surveyed about their physical, mental, and cognitive condition (836 respondents at start, 634 during semester, and 528 at the end). To evaluate the practicality and acceptance of the standing break, lecturers were interviewed about their experience. At all survey time points, the standing break was highly accepted by the university students. About three quarters of the students felt a relaxation of the muscles in the neck and shoulder as well as in the back and the legs. More than three quarters perceived an increase in concentration, receptiveness and retentiveness, motivation, and well-being. Results of the statistical analysis indicate that a standing break as well as an active break are more effective than an open break to improve the self-perceived physical and psychological well-being of the university students. The increase in cognitive skills is reported by all groups, including the group who were offered open breaks. Hence, standing breaks in university lectures receive a high level of acceptance and practicability and have the potential to increase students’ physical, mental, and cognitive condition and contribute to students’ physical activity and health. While field research provides opportunities such as the testing of measures in the natural environment and producing real-life results relevant to the students and lecturers, it also imposes limitations as lecture settings differed, not all disturbances could be controlled, and the participation in the study might have led to social-desirability bias. For a sustainable development of a standing-friendly teaching and learning culture at universities, further interventions as well as the consideration of the topic in all processes and decisions within the universities are necessary. Since this study has taken place, student-life has changed drastically with COVID-19 measures. While this current paper is based on research conducted in 2019 and has only tested live lectures on campus, the tools tested could also be used for online lectures

Description of mitochondrial oxygen tension and its variability in healthy volunteers

Objectives Describing mitochondrial oxygenation (mitoPO2) and its within- and between-subject variability over time after 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) plaster application in healthy volunteers. Design Prospective cohort study. Setting Measurements were performed in Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands. Participants Healthy volunteers enrolled from July to September 2020. Interventions Two ALA plasters were placed parasternal left and right, with a 3-hour time interval, to examine the influence of the calendar time on the value of mitoPO2. We measured mitoPO2 at 4, 5, 7, 10, 28, and 31 hours after ALA plaster 1 application, and at 4, 5, 7, 25, and 28 hours after ALA plaster 2 application. Primary and secondary outcome measures At each time point, five mitoPO2 measurements were performed. Within-subject variability was defined as the standard deviation (SD) of the mean of five measurements per timepoint of a study participant. The between-subject variability was the SD of the mean mitoPO2 value of the study population per timepoint. Results In 16 completed inclusions, median mitoPO2 values and within-subject variability were relatively similar over time at all time points for both plasters. An increase in overall between-subject variability was seen after 25 hours ALA plaster time (19.6 mm Hg vs 23.9 mm Hg after respectively 10 and 25 hours ALA plaster time). Conclusions The mitoPO2 values and within-subject variability remained relatively stable over time in healthy volunteers. An increase in between-subject variability was seen after 25 hours ALA plaster time warranting replacement of the ALA plaster one day after its application. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov with trial number NCT04626661.</p

Description of mitochondrial oxygen tension and its variability in healthy volunteers

Objectives Describing mitochondrial oxygenation (mitoPO2) and its within- and between-subject variability over time after 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) plaster application in healthy volunteers. Design Prospective cohort study. Setting Measurements were performed in Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands. Participants Healthy volunteers enrolled from July to September 2020. Interventions Two ALA plasters were placed parasternal left and right, with a 3-hour time interval, to examine the influence of the calendar time on the value of mitoPO2. We measured mitoPO2 at 4, 5, 7, 10, 28, and 31 hours after ALA plaster 1 application, and at 4, 5, 7, 25, and 28 hours after ALA plaster 2 application. Primary and secondary outcome measures At each time point, five mitoPO2 measurements were performed. Within-subject variability was defined as the standard deviation (SD) of the mean of five measurements per timepoint of a study participant. The between-subject variability was the SD of the mean mitoPO2 value of the study population per timepoint. Results In 16 completed inclusions, median mitoPO2 values and within-subject variability were relatively similar over time at all time points for both plasters. An increase in overall between-subject variability was seen after 25 hours ALA plaster time (19.6 mm Hg vs 23.9 mm Hg after respectively 10 and 25 hours ALA plaster time). Conclusions The mitoPO2 values and within-subject variability remained relatively stable over time in healthy volunteers. An increase in between-subject variability was seen after 25 hours ALA plaster time warranting replacement of the ALA plaster one day after its application. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov with trial number NCT04626661.</p

MedalCare-XL: 16,900 healthy and pathological synthetic 12 lead ECGs from electrophysiological simulations

Mechanistic cardiac electrophysiology models allow for personalized simulations of the electrical activity in the heart and the ensuing electrocardiogram (ECG) on the body surface. As such, synthetic signals possess known ground truth labels of the underlying disease and can be employed for validation of machine learning ECG analysis tools in addition to clinical signals. Recently, synthetic ECGs were used to enrich sparse clinical data or even replace them completely during training leading to improved performance on real-world clinical test data. We thus generated a novel synthetic database comprising a total of 16,900 12 lead ECGs based on electrophysiological simulations equally distributed into healthy control and 7 pathology classes. The pathological case of myocardial infraction had 6 sub-classes. A comparison of extracted features between the virtual cohort and a publicly available clinical ECG database demonstrated that the synthetic signals represent clinical ECGs for healthy and pathological subpopulations with high fidelity. The ECG database is split into training, validation, and test folds for development and objective assessment of novel machine learning algorithms

The influence of the dietary exposome on oxidative stress in pregnancy complications

Pregnancy complications including fetal growth restriction, preeclampsia, and preterm birth, as well as gestational diabetes, affect one in every four to five pregnancies. Accumulating evidence indicates that increased production of reactive oxygen species accompanies these complications. Given that reactive oxygen species are cell stress-inducing agents, they may have a causal role in disease pathophysiology, although the exact mechanisms by which they contribute to pregnancy complications are not completely understood. Since many environmental and lifestyle factors and exposures are known to modulate reactive oxygen species production, the exposome of pregnant women could contribute to increased generation of reactive oxygen species. The objective of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the endogenous and exogenous exposome factors that regulate reactive species in healthy and complicated pregnancies. We also provide a description of dietary interventions aimed at the reduction of reactive species in order to attenuate adverse pregnancy outcome. Dietary interventions in general hold minimal risk in pregnancy and could therefore be considered a promising therapeutic approach

The Association Between C24:0/C16:0 Ceramide Ratio and Cardiorespiratory Fitness is Robust to Effect Modifications by Age and Sex

Ceramides and cardiorespiratory (CR) fitness are both related to cardiovascular diseases. The associations of three blood plasma ceramides (C16:0, C22:0, and C24:0) with CR fitness in the population‐based Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP‐START‐1; n = 1,102; mean age 50.3 years, 51.5% women) are investigated. In addition, subgroup analysis according to age (</≥54 years) and sex (female/male) is performed. Ceramides are quantified by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS). CR fitness is assessed by a cardiopulmonary exercise test. Sex and age independent associations are found for higher levels of C24:0 and C24:0/C16:0 ratio with higher maximal oxygen consumption (VO2peak) kg−1 and oxygen consumption at the anaerobic threshold (VO2@AT1) as well as for the relation of C24:0/C16:0 with maximum workload (Wattmax kg−1). In contrast, age/sex subgroup specific inverse associations with Wattmax kg−1 are found in women <54 years for C22:0, while a positive association in men ≥54 years. Higher levels of C24:0 are associated with higher Wattmax kg−1, except for women <54 years, where no significant association can be found. The findings suggest that the use of single ceramides as cardiovascular biomarkers may be inferior, compared to ceramide ratio C24:0/C16:0. Therefore C24:0/C16:0 ratio may be a more suitable and robust cardiovascular biomarker and should be preferred over single ceramides

SARS-CoV-2 infection in immunosuppression evolves sub-lineages which independently accumulate neutralization escape mutations

One mechanism of variant formation may be evolution during long-term infection in immunosuppressed people. To understand the viral phenotypes evolved during such infection, we tested SARS-CoV-2 viruses evolved from an ancestral B.1 lineage infection lasting over 190 days post-diagnosis in an advanced HIV disease immunosuppressed individual. Sequence and phylogenetic analysis showed two evolving sub-lineages, with the second sub-lineage replacing the first sub-lineage in a seeming evolutionary sweep. Each sub-lineage independently evolved escape from neutralizing antibodies. The most evolved virus for the first sub-lineage (isolated day 34) and the second sub-lineage (isolated day 190) showed similar escape from ancestral SARS-CoV-2 and Delta-variant infection elicited neutralizing immunity despite having no spike mutations in common relative to the B.1 lineage. The day 190 isolate also evolved higher cell-cell fusion and faster viral replication and caused more cell death relative to virus isolated soon after diagnosis, though cell death was similar to day 34 first sub-lineage virus. These data show that SARS-CoV-2 strains in prolonged infection in a single individual can follow independent evolutionary trajectories which lead to neutralization escape and other changes in viral properties

The reliability of replications: a study in computational reproductions

This study investigates researcher variability in computational reproduction, an activity for which it is least expected. Eighty-five independent teams attempted numerical replication of results from an original study of policy preferences and immigration. Reproduction teams were randomly grouped into a ‘transparent group’ receiving original study and code or ‘opaque group’ receiving only a method and results description and no code. The transparent group mostly verified original results (95.7% same sign and p-value cutoff), while the opaque group had less success (89.3%). Second-decimal place exact numerical reproductions were less common (76.9 and 48.1%). Qualitative investigation of the workflows revealed many causes of error, including mistakes and procedural variations. When curating mistakes, we still find that only the transparent group was reliably successful. Our findings imply a need for transparency, but also more. Institutional checks and less subjective difficulty for researchers ‘doing reproduction’ would help, implying a need for better training. We also urge increased awareness of complexity in the research process and in ‘push button’ replications