The Effect of Service on Research Performance: A Study on Italian Academics in Management

Academics all over the world are feeling the increasing pressure to attain satisfactory research performance. Since research is not the only activity required of academics, though, the debate on how it may be coupled with other knowledge transfer activities like teaching, patenting, and dissemination has been captivating scholars interested in higher education. Literature is surprisingly silent about the interplay between research performance and other roles and tasks that faculty are expected to carry out, namely academic citizenship, intended as the service that they provide to their institution, to the scientific community, and to the larger society. Through a negative binomial regression conducted on 692 Italian academics in management, this paper investigates both the direct and moderating effect exerted by academic citizenship on the relationship between research performance in two subsequent evaluation exercises, thus advancing our knowledge of the relationship between research and service. Findings show that institutional service acts as a pure moderator, discipline-based service is a quasi-moderator, while public service exerts only a direct negative effect on research performance. In light of the emergent interplay between research and service, the necessity to boost reflection on academic citizenship is discussed and suggestions for its acknowledgement and advancement are formulated

Functional imaging of P-glycoprotein in the blood-brain barrier with PET: State of the art

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is the main barrier between blood and brain. Its purpose is to maintain homeostasis in and protection of the central nervous system. Therefore, under normal physiological conditions, the BBB is impermeable for endotoxins, but also for exotoxins like drugs. In the endothelial cells of the BBB, different active influx, but also active drug efflux transporters are presents. An example of drug efflux pumps is P-glycoprotein (P-gp) drug efflux pumps, which are encoded by MDR1 genes in humans. A different P-gp expression in the blood-brain barrier can play a role in the aetiology of several brain disorders. For this reason, there is a need to develop an assay for the quantification P-gp functionality in the BBB. We discuss, the relationship of P-gp and brain pathology and the involvement of age in loss of P-gp function. Furthermore, drugs treatment of brain diseases like Alzheimers's disease and Parkinson's disease are often not effective. Therefore, we discuss the relationship between P-gp and drug availability. In this chapter, an overview is given in the use of positron emission tomography as a tool for measuring P-gp function in the area of neurology, neurophysiology and pharmacology