Sustainability and consumer responses: The effect of bad industry reputation and fit

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and EconomicsThis work project investigates how consumers’ responses to sustainability activities of organisations are influenced by the bad reputation of the industry they are operating in. Specifically, it tested how consumers’ attributions about the motives behind companies’ engagement are affected and whether the fit of the cause with companies’ core business influences this attributional processing. Surveying 299 participants, the study provides support that a high fit program provokes values-driven attributions, which likewise im-prove consumers’ trust, corporate reputation and image, rendering companies’ sustaina-bility investments effective, even in bad reputation industries. Furthermore, theoretical and practical implications together with future research suggestions are provided

Clinical sequencing: is WGS the better WES?

Current clinical next-generation sequencing is done by using gene panels and exome analysis, both of which involve selective capturing of target regions. However, capturing has limitations in sufficiently covering coding exons, especially GC-rich regions. We compared whole exome sequencing (WES) with the most recent PCR-free whole genome sequencing (WGS), showing that only the latter is able to provide hitherto unprecedented complete coverage of the coding region of the genome. Thus, from a clinical/technical point of view, WGS is the better WES so that capturing is no longer necessary for the most comprehensive genomic testing of Mendelian disorders

Concept for Individual and Lifetime-Adaptive Modeling of the Dynamic Behavior of Machine Tools

The increasing demand for personalized products and the lack of skilled workers, intensified by demographic change, are major challenges for the manufacturing industry in Europe. An important framework for addressing these issues is a digital twin that represents the dynamic behavior of machine tools to support the remaining skilled workers and optimize processes in virtual space. Existing methods for modeling the dynamic behavior of machine tools rely on the use of expert knowledge and require a significant amount of manual effort. In this paper, a concept is proposed for individualized and lifetime-adaptive modeling of the dynamic behavior of machine tools with the focus on the machine’s tool center point. Therefore, existing and proven algorithms are combined and applied to this use case. Additionally, it eliminates the need for detailed information about the machine’s kinematic structure and utilizes automated data collection, which reduces the dependence on expert knowledge. In preliminary tests, the algorithm for the initial model setup shows a fit of 99.88% on simulation data. The introduced re-fit approach for online parameter actualization is promising, as in preliminary tests, an accuracy of 95.23% could be reached

Reassessment of candidate gene studies for idiopathic restless legs syndrome in a large genome-wide association study dataset of European ancestry

Study Objectives Several candidate gene studies have been published for idiopathic restless legs syndrome (RLS) in populations of European ancestry, but the reported associations have not been confirmed in independent samples. Our aim was to reassess these findings in a large case-control dataset in order to evaluate their validity. Methods We screened PubMed for RLS candidate gene studies. We used the genome-wide association study (GWAS) dataset of the International EU-RLS-GENE Consortium as our replication sample, which provided genome-wide single-variant association data based on at most 17 220 individuals of European ancestry. We performed additional gene-based tests using the software MAGMA and assessed the power of our study using the genpwr R package. Results We identified 14 studies conducted in European samples which assessed 45 variants in 27 genes of which 5 variants had been reported as significantly associated. None of these individual variants were replicated in our GWAS-based reassessment (nominal p > 0.05) and gene-based tests for the respective five genes ADH1B, GABRR3, HMOX1, MAOA, and VDR, were also nonsignificant (nominal p > 0.05). Our replication dataset was well powered to detect the reported effects, even when adjusting for effect size overestimation due to winner's curse. Power estimates were close to 100% for all variants. Conclusion In summary, none of the significant single-variant associations from candidate gene studies were confirmed in our GWAS dataset. Therefore, these associations were likely false positive. Our observations emphasize the need for large sample sizes and stringent significance thresholds in future association studies for RLS

Cities in late medieval Europe: the promise and curse of modernity

This article examines how modern historiography has developed quite differentiated views on the way medieval cities have given expression to renewal and to creativity. 'National' traditions have played a highly influential role in modifying the general views articulated in the major syntheses produced by scholars such as Max Weber and Henri Pirenne at the beginning of the twentieth century. An almost jubilant way of looking at the city as the hotbed of modernity gave room, in the decades after the Great War, to pessimism and a negative view on urbanity, before a more nuanced and positive view has been re-established after World War II and in the course of recent paradigmatic changes