Polychronicity in top management teams: The impact on strategic decision processes and performance of new technology ventures

This study focuses on polychronicity as a cultural dimension of top management teams (TMTs). TMT polychronicity is the extent to which team members mutually prefer and tend to engage in multiple tasks simultaneously or intermittently instead of one at a time and believe that this is the best way of doing things. We explore the impact of TMT polychronicity on strategic decision speed and comprehensiveness and, subsequently, its effect on new venture financial performance. Contrary to popular time-management principles advocating task prioritization and focused sequential execution, we found that TMT polychronicity has a positive effect on firm performance in the context of dynamic unanalyzable environments. This effect is partially mediated by strategic decision speed and comprehensiveness. Our study contributes to research on strategic leadership by focusing on a novel value-based characteristic of the TMT (polychronicity) and by untangling the decision-making processes that relate TMT characteristics and firm performance. It also contributes to the attention-based view of the firm by positioning polychronicity as a new type of attention structure

Novel Approaches To Fight Streptococcus pneumoniae

Streptococcus pneumoniae affects millions of people worldwide. It is responsible for a wide spectrum of serious illnesses such as pneumonia, meningitis and bacteraemia. The highest rate of pneumococcal disease (and the highest mortality) occurs in young children, as well as in the elderly and the immunocompromised patients. Identification of S. pneumoniae in diagnostic procedures may significantly improve thanks to the descripion of new PCR-derived techniques. Vaccination based on the polysaccharidic capsule, together with benzylpenicillin-derived drugs, constitute the current choices to tackle pneumococcal diseases. However, the wide serotype diversity of S. pneumoniae and the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains is fostering the development of new methods to fight this microorganism. In this sense, patents documenting the use of novel antibiotics of the fluoroquinolone or tetracycline families have recently been described. Moreover, surface-associated proteins are receiving an increasingly special attention, as they are synthesized by most pneumococcal strains and play an important role in virulence. New patented protein-based vaccines take into consideration these polypeptides. In this article we present the main relevant characteristics of this pathogen and review the most recent methods that have been patented for the prevention, diagnostic and treatment of the pneumococcal diseases

Thermal melting of density waves on the square lattice

We present the theory of the effect of thermal fluctuations on commensurate "p x p" density wave ordering on the square lattice (p >= 3, integer). For the case in which this order is lost by a second order transition, we argue that the adjacent state is generically an incommensurate striped state, with commensurate p-periodic long range order along one direction, and incommensurate quasi-long-range order along the orthogonal direction. We also present the routes by which the fully disordered high temperature state can be reached. For p=4, and at special commensurate densities, the "4 x 4" commensurate state can melt directly into the disordered state via a self-dual critical point with non-universal exponents.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

Extensive unfolding of the C-LytA choline-binding module by submicellar concentrations of sodium dodecyl sulphate

We have investigated the stability of the choline-binding module C-LytA against sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS)-induced unfolding at pH 7.0 and 20 C. A major intermediate with an unfolded N-terminal region accumulates at around 0.75 mM SDS, whereas 2.0 mM SDS was sufficient for a complete unfolding. This might be the first report of a protein being extensively unfolded by submicellar concentrations of SDS, occurring through formation of detergent clusters on the protein surface. All transitions were reversible upon SDS complexation with b-cyclodextrin, allowing the calculation of thermodynamic parameters. A model for the unfolding of C-LytA by SDS is presented and compared to a previous denaturation scheme by guanidine hydrochloride