What makes a social practice? Being, knowing, doing and leading

Despite several decades of work on social practice, many open intriguing questions remain about their existence and functions within an organizational context. In this article, we discuss the “inherent logics” of social practice—being, knowing, and doing—to depict the meaning and mainspring of its conservation within an organizational context. We argue that the understanding of social practice in organization and management studies has predominantly focused on the internal workings of social practice, and we propose that a contextualization of the inherent logics of social practice may be a next step in advancing theory and empirical research. We propose a contested coexistence of social practices in organizations and thereby argue that the conservation of social practice protrudes another element belonging to its inherent logics, i.e., leading. We suggest that leadership in distributed and adaptive organizations responds to innovation and competitive challenges with wisdom, care, and fluidity

Usual energy and macronutrient intakes in 2-9-year-old European children

OBJECTIVE: Valid estimates of population intakes are essential for monitoring trends as well as for nutritional interventions, but such data are rare in young children. In particular, the problem of misreporting in dietary data is usually not accounted for. Therefore, this study aims to provide accurate estimates of intake distributions in European children. DESIGN: Cross-sectional setting-based multi-centre study. SUBJECTS: A total of 9560 children aged 2-9 years from eight European countries with at least one 24-h dietary recall (24-HDR). METHODS: The 24-HDRs were classified in three reporting groups based on age- and sex-specific Goldberg cutoffs (underreports, plausible reports, overreports). Only plausible reports were considered in the final analysis (N=8611 children). The National Cancer Institute (NCI)-Method was applied to estimate population distributions of usual intakes correcting for the variance inflation in short-term dietary data. RESULTS: The prevalence of underreporting (9.5%) was higher compared with overreporting (3.4%). Exclusion of misreports resulted in a shift of the energy and absolute macronutrient intake distributions to the right, and further led to the exclusion of extreme values, that is, mean values and lower percentiles increased, whereas upper percentiles decreased. The distributions of relative macronutrient intakes (% energy intake from fat/carbohydrates/proteins) remained almost unchanged when excluding misreports. Application of the NCI-Method resulted in markedly narrower intake distributions compared with estimates based on single 24-HDRs. Mean percentages of usual energy intake from fat, carbohydrates and proteins were 32.2, 52.1 and 15.7%, respectively, suggesting the majority of European children are complying with common macronutrient intake recommendations. In contrast, total water intake (mean: 1216.7 ml per day) lay below the recommended value for >90% of the children. CONCLUSION: This study provides recent estimates of intake distributions of European children correcting for misreporting as well as for the daily variation in dietary data. These data may help to assess the adequacy of young children's diets in Europe

Pasta consumption and connected dietary habits: Associations with glucose control, adiposity measures, and cardiovascular risk factors in people with type 2 diabetes—TOSCA.IT study

Background: Pasta is a refined carbohydrate with a low glycemic index. Whether pasta shares the metabolic advantages of other low glycemic index foods has not really been investigated. The aim of this study is to document, in people with type-2 diabetes, the consumption of pasta, the connected dietary habits, and the association with glucose control, measures of adiposity, and major cardiovascular risk factors. Methods: We studied 2562 participants. The dietary habits were assessed with the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) questionnaire. Sex-specific quartiles of pasta consumption were created in order to explore the study aims. Results: A higher pasta consumption was associated with a lower intake of proteins, total and saturated fat, cholesterol, added sugar, and fiber. Glucose control, body mass index, prevalence of obesity, and visceral obesity were not significantly different across the quartiles of pasta intake. No relation was found with LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, but there was an inverse relation with HDL-cholesterol. Systolic blood pressure increased with pasta consumption; but this relation was not confirmed after correction for confounders. Conclusions: In people with type-2 diabetes, the consumption of pasta, within the limits recommended for total carbohydrates intake, is not associated with worsening of glucose control, measures of adiposity, and major cardiovascular risk factors

On the Lense-Thirring test with the Mars Global Surveyor in the gravitational field of Mars

I discuss some aspects of the recent test of frame-dragging performed by me by exploiting the Root-Mean-Square (RMS) orbit overlap differences of the out-of-plane component N of the orbit of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft in the gravitational field of Mars. A linear fit of the full time series of the entire MGS data (4 February 1999-14 January 2005) yields a normalized slope 1.03 +/- 0.41 (with 95% confidence bounds). Other linear fits to different data sets confirm the agreement with general relativity. The huge systematic effects induced by the mismodeling in the martian gravitational field claimed by some authors are absent in the MGS out-of-plane record. The non-gravitational forces affect at the same level of the gravitomagnetic one the in-plane orbital components of MGS, not the out-of-plane one. Moreover, they experience high-frequency variations which does not matter in the present case in which secular effects are relevant.Comment: LaTex2e, 8 pages, no figures, no tables, 17 references. It refers to K. Krogh, Class. Quantum Grav., 24, 5709-5715, 2007 based on astro-ph/0701653. Final version to appear in CEJP (Central European Journal of Physics

The Secret to Successful User Communities: An Analysis of Computer Associates’ User Groups

This paper provides the first large scale study that examines the impact of both individual- and group-specific factors on the benefits users obtain from their user communities. By empirically analysing 924 survey responses from individuals in 161 Computer Associates' user groups, this paper aims to identify the determinants of successful user communities. To measure success, the amount of time individual members save through having access to their user networks is used. As firms can significantly profit from successful user communities, this study proposes four key implications of the empirical results for the management of user communities

Social Interactions vs Revisions, What is important for Promotion in Wikipedia?

In epistemic community, people are said to be selected on their knowledge contribution to the project (articles, codes, etc.) However, the socialization process is an important factor for inclusion, sustainability as a contributor, and promotion. Finally, what does matter to be promoted? being a good contributor? being a good animator? knowing the boss? We explore this question looking at the process of election for administrator in the English Wikipedia community. We modeled the candidates according to their revisions and/or social attributes. These attributes are used to construct a predictive model of promotion success, based on the candidates's past behavior, computed thanks to a random forest algorithm. Our model combining knowledge contribution variables and social networking variables successfully explain 78% of the results which is better than the former models. It also helps to refine the criterion for election. If the number of knowledge contributions is the most important element, social interactions come close second to explain the election. But being connected with the future peers (the admins) can make the difference between success and failure, making this epistemic community a very social community too

Nonperturbative dynamics for abstract (p,q) string networks

We describe abstract (p,q) string networks which are the string networks of Sen without the information about their embedding in a background spacetime. The non-perturbative dynamical formulation invented for spin networks, in terms of causal evolution of dual triangulations, is applied to them. The formal transition amplitudes are sums over discrete causal histories that evolve (p,q) string networks. The dynamics depend on two free SL(2,Z) invariant functions which describe the amplitudes for the local evolution moves.Comment: Latex, 12 pages, epsfig, 7 figures, minor change

Synthesis, biological evaluation, and structure-activity relationships of potent noncovalent and nonpeptidic cruzain Inhibitors as anti-trypanosoma cruzi agents

The development of cruzain inhibitors has been driven by the urgent need to develop novel and more effective drugs for the treatment of Chagas' disease. Herein, we report the lead optimization of a class of noncovalent cruzain inhibitors, starting from an inhibitor previously cocrystallized with the enzyme (K-i = 0.8 mu M). With the goal of achieving a better understanding of the structure-activity relationships, we have synthesized and evaluated a series of over 40 analogues, leading to the development of a very promising competitive inhibitor (8r, IC50 = 200 nM, K-i = 82 nM). Investigation of the in vitro trypanocidal activity and preliminary cytotoxicity revealed the potential of the most potent cruzain inhibitors in guiding further medicinal chemistry efforts to develop drug candidates for Chagas' disease57623802392CONSELHO NACIONAL DE DESENVOLVIMENTO CIENTÍFICO E TECNOLÓGICO - CNPQFUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO - FAPESPsem informação2013/07600-3; 2012/02230-0; 2010/16778-

Epigenome-wide association study reveals decreased average methylation levels years before breast cancer diagnosis

Interest in the potential of DNA methylation in peripheral blood as a biomarker of cancer risk is increasing. We aimed to assess whether epigenome-wide DNA methylation measured in peripheral blood samples obtained before onset of the disease is associated with increased risk of breast cancer. We report on three independent prospective nested case-control studies from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC-Italy; n = 162 matched case-control pairs), the Norwegian Women and Cancer study (NOWAC; n = 168 matched pairs), and the Breakthrough Generations Study (BGS; n = 548 matched pairs). We used the Illumina 450k array to measure methylation in the EPIC and NOWAC cohorts. Whole-genome bisulphite sequencing (WGBS) was performed on the BGS cohort using pooled DNA samples, combined to reach 50× coverage across ~16 million CpG sites in the genome including 450k array CpG sites. Mean β values over all probes were calculated as a measurement for epigenome-wide methylation

New decoding algorithms for Hidden Markov Models using distance measures on labellings

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Existing hidden Markov model decoding algorithms do not focus on approximately identifying the sequence feature boundaries.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We give a set of algorithms to compute the conditional probability of all labellings "near" a reference labelling <it>λ </it>for a sequence <it>y </it>for a variety of definitions of "near". In addition, we give optimization algorithms to find the best labelling for a sequence in the robust sense of having all of its feature boundaries nearly correct. Natural problems in this domain are <it>NP</it>-hard to optimize. For membrane proteins, our algorithms find the approximate topology of such proteins with comparable success to existing programs, while being substantially more accurate in estimating the positions of transmembrane helix boundaries.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>More robust HMM decoding may allow for better analysis of sequence features, in reasonable runtimes.</p