From Ideas to Practice, Pilots to Strategy: Practical Solutions and Actionable Insights on How to Do Impact Investing

This report is the second publication in the World Economic Forum's Mainstreaming Impact Investing Initiative. The report takes a deeper look at why and how asset owners began to include impact investing in their portfolios and continue to do so today, and how they overcame operational and cultural constraints affecting capital flow. Given that impact investing expertise is spread among dozens if not hundreds of practitioners and academics, the report is a curation of some -- but certainly not all -- of those leading voices. The 15 articles are meant to provide investors, intermediaries and policy-makers with actionable insights on how to incorporate impact investing into their work.The report's goals are to show how mainstream investors and intermediaries have overcome the challenges in the impact investment sector, and to democratize the insights and expertise for anyone and everyone interested in the field. Divided into four main sections, the report contains lessons learned from practitioner's experience, and showcases best practices, organizational structures and innovative instruments that asset owners, asset managers, financial institutions and impact investors have successfully implemented

User sentiments towards intelligent personal assistants

This paper reports the findings of an ongoing study of user adoption of Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs, i.e. Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant, etc.) and focuses on user sentiments towards IPAs. The data on factors that attribute to user attitudes regarding IPAs were collected via interviews and focus groups. The findings suggest that users mainly like IPAs for convenience and the hands-free interface; and dislike IPAs for the poor technical quality (such as speech recognition and responses), usability issues, and lack of trans-parent data management practices

User sentiments towards intelligent personal assistants

This paper reports the findings of an ongoing study of user adoption of Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs, i.e. Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant, etc.) and focuses on user sentiments towards IPAs. The data on factors that attribute to user attitudes regarding IPAs were collected via interviews and focus groups. The findings suggest that users mainly like IPAs for convenience and the hands-free interface; and dislike IPAs for the poor technical quality (such as speech recognition and responses), usability issues, and lack of trans-parent data management practices

Down-regulation of inducible nitric-oxide synthase (NOS-2) during parasite-induced gut inflammation: a path to identify a selective NOS-2 inhibitor. Mol Pharmacol 59: 939–947

ABSTRACT Nitric oxide (NO) possesses potent anti-inflammatory properties; however, an over-production of NO will promote inflammation and induce cell and tissue dysfunction. Thus, the ability to precisely regulate NO production could prove beneficial in controlling damage. In this study, advantage was taken of the well characterized inflammatory response caused by an intestinal parasite, Trichinella spiralis, to study the relationship between intestinal inflammation and the regulation of nitric oxide synthase-type 2 (NOS-2) expression. Our study revealed that a specific gut inflammatory reaction results in inhibition of NOS-2 expression. Characteristics of this inhibition are: 1) local jejunal inflammation induced by T. spiralis systemically inhibits NOS-2 gene transcription, protein expression, and enzyme activity; 2) the inhibition blunts endotoxin-stimulated NOS-2 expression; 3) the inhibition does not extend to the expression of other isoforms of NOS, to paxillin, a housekeeper protein, or to cyclooxygenase-2, another protein induced by proinflammatory cytokines; 4) the inhibition is unlikely related to the formation of specific anti-parasite antibodies; and 5) the inhibition may involve substances other than stress-induced corticosteroids. Elucidation of such potent endogenous NOS-2 down-regulatory mechanisms could lead to the development of new strategies for the therapy of inflammatory conditions characterized by the overproduction of NO. Over the past two decades, nitric oxide signaling has been one of the most rapidly growing areas in biomedicine. Nitric oxide (NO) mediates regulatory events that play key roles in cellular function The role of NO in inflammation represents an intensely studied yet controversial subject in physiology and pathology. During inflammation and sepsis, there is an increased production of various mediators including proinflammatory cytokines, eicosanoids, and endotoxin that directly or indirectly induce the activity and/or expression of NOSs, especially NOS-2. The NO that is produced, often working through NO-stimulated increases in cyclic GMP, influences a wide variety of physiological and pathophysiological processe

Generalised estimating equations studying associations between change in serotype-specific antibody titers in response to challenge and pneumococcal vaccine history and pre-challenge antibody titers.

<p>Generalised estimating equations studying associations between change in serotype-specific antibody titers in response to challenge and pneumococcal vaccine history and pre-challenge antibody titers.</p

Pneumococcal serotype-specific IgG antibody titers before and after challenge.

<p>Serum antibody titers were assessed in 3-5-year-old children who had received PCV7 and PPV23 as infants (white bars; n = 100 /n = 86), who had received only PPV23 as infants (grey bars; n = 32 /n = 28), or who had not received pneumococcal vaccines (striped bars; n = 121 pre-challenge/ n = 98 post-challenge) (A) before and (B) after challenge with a low dose of PPV23. Data are presented as geometric mean titers and 95% confidence intervals. Serotype-specific geometric mean titers before or after challenge were compared between each group using Mann-Whitney U test. * p < 0.05.</p

Proportion of 3-5-year-old children with pneumococcal serotype IgG antibody titers ≥ 0.35 μg/ml and ≥ 1 μg/ml before challenge.

<p>Proportion of 3-5-year-old children with pneumococcal serotype IgG antibody titers ≥ 0.35 μg/ml and ≥ 1 μg/ml before challenge.</p