Getting better at Knowledge Management: Integrating individual skills and organisational capability.

This paper arises from a work in progress academia/industry collaborative research project to develop a Knowledge Management (KM) maturity model as a component (critical capability) of the IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF). KM is understood as an organisational capability i.e. the effective mobilising of the resources of people, processes and technology to support the achievement of an organisation’s objectives. The research questions addressed are as follows: what are the challenges for organizations in developing an effective KM capability?; what are the respective roles of individual skills and organisational capability in developing a KM capability?; how can individual skills and organizational KM capability be integrated to help organisations get better at doing KM? The key finding is that an important challenge for KM in terms of developing capability is the potential for processes and technology to both enable and block how well people manage knowledge. The role of learning is important and the link between individual learnings and organisational capability is key, but challenging to manage. Initial data indicates that combining a skills-based approach with an organisational capability approach might be a helpful practice for organisations and some suggestions are provided on how to synthesise this challenging field into tools and guidelines that practitioners can use

Serum Anti-Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Antibodies in Greek Patients with Behcet's Disease

We tested 59 Greek patients with Behcet's Disease (BD) for serum anti-Saccharomyces cerevisiae antibodies. No increase of these antibodies was detected in the cases compared to 55 healthy unrelated blood donors from the same population. This finding is in contrast with the correlation between Saccharomyces cerevisiae antibodies and BD as reported in other populations. It seems that environmental factors may contribute to disease expression in different populations, producing different effects according to the individual's genetic predisposition. Saccharomyces cerevisiae antibodies do not seem to be of any significance in the Greek population

Haploinsufficiency of the E3 Ubiquitin Ligase C-Terminus of Heat Shock Cognate 70 Interacting Protein (CHIP) Produces Specific Behavioral Impairments

The multifunctional E3 ubiquitin ligase CHIP is an essential interacting partner of HSP70, which together promote the proteasomal degradation of client proteins. Acute CHIP overexpression provides neuroprotection against neurotoxic mitochondrial stress, glucocorticoids, and accumulation of toxic amyloid fragments, as well as genetic mutations in other E3 ligases, which have been shown to result in familial Parkinson's disease. These studies have created a great deal of interest in understanding CHIP activity, expression and modulation. While CHIP knockout mice have the potential to provide essential insights into the molecular control of cell fate and survival, the animals have been difficult to characterize in vivo due to severe phenotypic and behavioral dysfunction, which have thus far been poorly characterized. Therefore, in the present study we conducted a battery of neurobehavioral and physiological assays of adult CHIP heterozygotic (HET) mutant mice to provide a better understanding of the functional consequence of CHIP deficiency. We found that CHIP HET mice had normal body and brain weight, body temperature, muscle tone and breathing patterns, but do have a significant elevation in baseline heart rate. Meanwhile basic behavioral screens of sensory, motor, emotional and cognitive functions were normative. We observed no alterations in performance in the elevated plus maze, light-dark preference and tail suspension assays, or two simple cognitive tasks: novel object recognition and spontaneous alternation in a Y maze. Significant deficits were found, however, when CHIP HET mice performed wire hang, inverted screen, wire maneuver, and open field tasks. Taken together, our data indicate a clear subset of behaviors that are altered at baseline in CHIP deficient animals, which will further guide whole animal studies of the effects of CHIP dysregulation on cardiac function, brain circuitry and function, and responsiveness to environmental and cellular stress

The Use of Suppressive Agents for the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis

This paper addresses the issue of slow-acting anti-rheumatic drugs as well as complementary therapies