Innovation Management and Barriers – Creating Space for Innovation and Organizational Change

The major purpose of this paper is to determine the opportunities and challenges relating to successful innovation management in SMEs in German and Slovakia. The objective and the subjective stances to research comprise three interlinking philosophies: epistemology, ontology and axiology. For this study the major design elements are the explanatory and the exploratory approaches and a case study is the selected research strategy. In order to answer the research problem, numerical and textual data is gathered. The empirical research studies revealed significant cultural influence on innovation management and related organisational change associated with it. It also highlighted substantial differences between success and failure factors in SMEs and large companies and there were implications that formal innovation management was less important from SMEs than for large companies. This research identified key innovation management success factors for SMEs and made three new findings, which add to the current knowledge: innovation circles were an effective innovation management approach to generating and developing ideas and getting innovation to market quickly; government agencies that encourage firms to collaborate effectively enhance the level and success of innovation; SMEs and large companies have distinctly different rankings of barriers to innovation and small and micro firms are more effective in original product innovation and speed to market than medium sized companies

Secondary Socialization of Homeschoolers during the Covid-19 Pandemic

The presented article deals with the description of the socialization of basic school pupils, i.e. pupils in younger and middle school age, who fulfill the compulsory school attendance in the form of individual education (homeschooling) in the context of the legislation of the Czech Republic. In the context of fulfilling the article aim, we formulated three research questions, which were evaluated using quantitative research in the form of a questionnaire survey. The research confirmed that parents of homeschoolers significantly support their children in participating in organized leisure activities and are actively involved in mediating their child's contact with other children. In the comparison of the examined groups there were no significant differences in how the children perceive their friends, what their favorite activities are or how much time they spend with them. The difference was more noticeable in the parental approach in education, when setting some rules. This article can outline areas that can be further explored in more detail and compared in context. Doi: 10.28991/esj-2021-SPER-12 Full Text: PD

Hydrogen bond network topology in liquid water and methanol: a graph theory approach

Networks are increasingly recognized as important building blocks of various systems in nature and society. Water is known to possess an extended hydrogen bond network, in which the individual bonds are broken in the sub-picosecond range and still the network structure remains intact. We investigated and compared the topological properties of liquid water and methanol at various temperatures using concepts derived within the framework of graph and network theory (neighbour number and cycle size distribution, the distribution of local cyclic and local bonding coefficients, Laplacian spectra of the network, inverse participation ratio distribution of the eigenvalues and average localization distribution of a node) and compared them to small world and Erdős–Rényi random networks. Various characteristic properties (e.g. the local cyclic and bonding coefficients) of the network in liquid water could be reproduced by small world and/or Erdős–Rényi networks, but the ring size distribution of water is unique and none of the studied graph models could describe it. Using the inverse participation ratio of the Laplacian eigenvectors we characterized the network inhomogeneities found in water and showed that similar phenomena can be observed in Erdős–Rényi and small world graphs. We demonstrated that the topological properties of the hydrogen bond network found in liquid water systematically change with the temperature and that increasing temperature leads to a broader ring size distribution. We applied the studied topological indices to the network of water molecules with four hydrogen bonds, and showed that at low temperature (250 K) these molecules form a percolated or nearly-percolated network, while at ambient or high temperatures only small clusters of four-hydrogen bonded water molecules exist

Correction to: EGFR/Ras-induced CCL20 production modulates the tumour microenvironment

The article ‘EGFR/Ras-induced CCL20 production modulates the tumour microenvironment’, written by Andreas Hippe, Stephan Alexander Braun, Péter Oláh, Peter Arne Gerber, Anne Schorr, Stephan Seeliger, Stephanie Holtz, Katharina Jannasch, Andor Pivarcsi, Bettina Buhren, Holger Schrumpf, Andreas Kislat, Erich Bünemann, Martin Steinhoff, Jens Fischer, Sérgio A. Lira, Petra Boukamp, Peter Hevezi, Nikolas Hendrik Stoecklein, Thomas Hoffmann, Frauke Alves, Jonathan Sleeman, Thomas Bauer, Jörg Klufa, Nicole Amberg, Maria Sibilia, Albert Zlotnik, Anja Müller- Homey and Bernhard Homey, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on 30 June 2020 without open access. With the author(s)’ decision to opt for Open Choice the copyright of the article changed on 16 September 2021 to © The Author(s) 2021 and the article is forthwith distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL

Abstracts from the 8th International Conference on cGMP Generators, Effectors and Therapeutic Implications

This work was supported by a restricted research grant of Bayer AG

Lean and Agile Project Management and the Challenges for Its Implementation in SMEs in Czech Republic

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possibilities, challenges and benefits of implementing Lean & agile project management in manufacturing SMEs. Lean & agile project management methods were originally developed for the software development industry, where they have revolutionized the way projects are managed. In the last decade, practitioners outside software development industry have started to realize the potential and benefits of implementing the agile approach. However, there are still only a few researches devoted to agile hardware development, and even fewer on the possibilities of its implementation in SMEs. By conducting a case study in the only manufacturing SMEs that has successfully implemented Scrum, analysing internal company's documents and interviewing several employees and top managers from different sectors, who participated in the projects where Scrum was implemented, the lessons this organization has learned and that could be beneficial for both researchers and practitioners, are reported. The findings from this research show that although some adaptions of the Scrum framework were required, the applicability of the Scrum in this manufacturing SME was possible and beneficial

Triamcinolone regulated apopto-phagocytic gene expression patterns in the clearance of dying retinal pigment epithelial cells. A key role of Mertk in the enhanced phagocytosis

AbstractBackground The apopto-phagocytic gene expression patterns during clearance of dying cells in the retina and the effect of triamcinolone (TC) upon these processes have relevance to development of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Methods ARPE-19 cells and primary human retinal pigment epithelium (hRPE) were induced to undergo cell death by anoikis and the clearance of these cells by living hRPE/ARPE- 19 or human monocyte-derived macrophages (HMDMs) in the presence or absence of TC was quantified by flow cytometry. TaqMan low-density gene expression array determining known markers of phagocytosis and loss-of-function studies on selected apopto-phagocytic genes was carried out in HMDM engulfing anoikic cells. Results The glucocorticoid TC had a profound phagocytosis-enhancing effect on HMDM engulfing anoikic ARPE-19 or hRPE cells, causing a selective upregulation of the Mer tyrosine kinase (MERTK) receptor, while decreasing the expression of the AXL receptor tyrosine kinase and thrombospondin-1 (THSB-1). The key role of the MERTK could be demonstrated in HMDM engulfing dying cells using gene silencing as well as blocking antibodies. Similar pathways were found upregulated in living ARPE-19 engulfing anoikic ARPE-19 cells. Gas6 treatment enhanced phagocytosis in TC-treated HMDMs. Conclusions Specific agonists of the Mertk receptor may have a potential role as phagocytosis enhancers in the retina and serve as future targets for AMD therapy. General significance The use of Gas6 as enhancer of retinal phagocytosis via the MerTK receptor, alone or in combination with other specific ligands of the tyrosine kinase receptors' family may have a potential role in AMD therapy