Project Managers’ Emotional Intelligence – A Ticket to Success

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to introduce recent research on correlation between project managers’ emotional intelligence and their professional success. The implications of this research are important to both project managers who wish to improve their performance and success rate and organizations in their human resource policy. Theoreti- cal considerations discussed potential impact of emotional intelligence on project managers’ success through review on concept and dimensions of emotional intelligence, findings of numbered empirical studies and leadership theories. Complementing these theoretical considerations with research study showed significant correlation between project managers’ emotional intelligence and professional success. Research was conducted on representative sample consi- sted of 75 project managers from top 10 Serbian companies. Data collection instrument was questionnaire consisted of self-descriptive emotional intelligence test and data on respondent's position in organizational hierarchy and edu- cational level. The empirical research reveals that there is a very high positive correlation between emotional intelli- gence and professional success and these findings should have a number of implications for project managers’ pra- ctice. Firstly, project managers should be aware of the concept, their level and way of improving different dimensions of emotional intelligence. Further, the human resource management departments of project oriented organizations should consider concept of emotional intelligence when recruiting staff to the position of project managers but also when deciding on human resources development programs. In order to help good project managers to become excel- lent there is a need for further investigations on methods for development of emotional intelligence competencies

Tumor necrosis factor-alpha as differential diagnostic marker for patients with fever of unknown origin

© 2019, University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Science. All rights reserved. Febrile conditions of unidentified origin are still unknown in modern medicine despite the development of diagnostic procedures. There are various agents of long-term temperature encompassing numerous infectious or non-infectious diseases. The aim of this study was to determine if there was a statistically significant difference in the values of proinfl ammatory cytokines (IL-1, TNFa, IL-6) in patients who meet the criteria for febrile conditions of unidentified origin, between the group of infectious, malignant, rheumatic, “other” diseases and undiagnosed patients. The study was conducted in the Immunology laboratory of the Center for Molecular Medicine and Stem Cells Research of the Faculty of Medical Sciences in Kragujevac. Blood samples were taken from patients tested at the Clinic for Infectious Diseases, of the Clinical Center of Kragujevac, in the period from 2014 to 2016. The study included 70 patients. The measured values of the level of TNFa showed significantly higher values in a group of malignant diseases than in the group of infectious diseases, while the values of IL-1 and IL-6 did not show statistical significance. TNFa can improve diagnosing in case of patients with an unknown febrile condition, which can shorten the length of the hospital stay and reduce the volume of performance of diagnostic procedures

Influence of dialysis modality on the treatment of anemia in patients with end-stage kidney disease

© 2020, University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Science. All rights reserved. Anemia is a common complication among the patients with end-stage kidney disease. Management of anemia is influenced by several factors: iron deficiency, subtherapeutic dosage of erythropoietin, microinflammation, vitamin D de-ficiency, increased iPTH levels and inadequate hemodialysis. The aim of the study was to examine impact of dialysis mo-dality on blood hemoglobin level as well as status of iron, status of vitamin D, hemodialysis adequacy and erythropoietin dose. The study included 120 patients which were divided into two groups: the group of patients treated with hemodiafiltra-tion and the group of patients treated with standard hemo-dialysis. For statistical analysis Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Student’s t-test and Mann-Whitney U-test were used. Blood hemoglobin level and parameters of hemodialysis adequacy (Kt/V index, spKt/V index, URR index), hemato-crit ad protein catabolic rate (nPCR) were statisticaly significant lower in patients treated with regular hemodialysis compared to patients treated with regular hemodiafiltra-tion. Serum ferritin level, C-reactive protein level and av-erage monthly dose of intravenous iron were higher in the patients treated with regular hemodialysis compared to patients treated with hemodiafiltration. Patients treated with hemodiafiltration have lower grade of microinflammation, better iron status and better control of anemia compared to the patients treated with regular hemodialysis. Dialysis modality is an important factor that influences management of anemia in the patients with end-stage kidney disease

Stem Cell-Based Dental Tissue Engineering

The development of biological and biomaterial sciences profiled tissue engineering as a new and powerful tool for biological replacement of organs. The combination of stem cells and suitable scaffolds is widely used in experiments today, in order to achieve partial or whole organ regeneration. This review focuses on the use of tissue engineering strategies in tooth regeneration, using stem cells and stem cells/scaffold constructs. Although whole tooth regeneration is still not possible, there are promising results. However, to achieve this goal, it is important to understand and further explore the mechanisms underlying tooth development. Only then will we be able to mimic the natural processes with the use of stem cells and tissue engineering techniques

Influence of secondary hyperparathyroidism in management of anemia in patients on regular hemodialysis

© 2020 Inst. Sci. inf., Univ. Defence in Belgrade. All rights reserved. Background/Aim. Anemia is a common complication in hemodialysis patients. Treatment of anemia is affected by iron deficiency, insufficient dose of erythropoietin, microinflammation, vitamin D deficiency, increased intact parathyroid hormone concentration and inadequate hemodialysis. The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency and its impact on hemoglobin con-centration, iron status, microinflammation, malnutrition, dialysis adequacy and erythropoietin dose in patients on regular hemodialysis. Methods. The study involved 120 patients divided into three groups: severely deficient of vitamin D: 25- hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] 20 ng/mL. For statistical analysis Kolmogorov- Smirnov test, the single-factor parametric analysis of variance - ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis test were used. Results. The prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in patients on regular hemodialysis was 75.83%, while the prevalence of severe vitamin D deficiency was 24.7%. Patients with severe vitamin D deficiency had lower blood concentration of hemoglobin, hematocrit, serum concentration of total proteins and albumin, and dialysis indices were also lower compared to the other two groups of patients. The level of C-reactive protein was significantly higher in the group of patients with severe vitamin D deficiency than in the two rest groups. Conclusion. Hemodialysis patients with severe vitamin D deficiency have lower hemoglobin, lower dialysis adequacy, significant microinflammation, malnutrition, bone meta-bolism disorders and need higher dose of erythropoietin than patients whose vitamin D was higher than 10 ng/mL. Vitamin D is important risk factor for development of anemia in hemodialysis patients and important factor that can affect treatment of anemia in these patients

Neuromorphic vibrotactile stimulation of fingertips for encoding object stiffness in telepresence sensory substitution and augmentation applications

We present a tactile telepresence system for real-time transmission of information about object stiffness to the human fingertips. Experimental tests were performed across two laboratories (Italy and Ireland). In the Italian laboratory, a mechatronic sensing platform indented different rubber samples. Information about rubber stiffness was converted into on-off events using a neuronal spiking model and sent to a vibrotactile glove in the Irish laboratory. Participants discriminated the variation of the stiffness of stimuli according to a two-alternative forced choice protocol. Stiffness discrimination was based on the variation of the temporal pattern of spikes generated during the indentation of the rubber samples. The results suggest that vibrotactile stimulation can effectively simulate surface stiffness when using neuronal spiking models to trigger vibrations in the haptic interface. Specifically, fractional variations of stiffness down to 0.67 were significantly discriminated with the developed neuromorphic haptic interface. This is a performance comparable, though slightly worse, to the threshold obtained in a benchmark experiment evaluating the same set of stimuli naturally with the own hand. Our paper presents a bioinspired method for delivering sensory feedback about object properties to human skin based on contingency-mimetic neuronal models, and can be useful for the design of high performance haptic devices

Effects of Metallicity on the Instability Mass Ratio of Low Mass Contact Binary Systems

The orbital stability of contact binary systems has been receiving considerable attention recently. Theoretical studies indicate that merger is likely to occur at very low mass ratios, but the actual mass ratio at which merger may take place is likely to be variable and dependent on the mass of the primary. We consider the effects of metal content on the orbital stability of contact binary systems by modelling the gyration radius of a rotating and tidally distorted primary component at various values of metallicity in the range -1.25 to +0.5. We determine the instability mass ratio range for contact binary systems with a low mass primary in the range 0.6M(sun) to 1.4M(sun) at various metallicity levels and show that systems with low metallicity have an instability mass ratio lower than those with higher metal content and therefore are likely to be more stable. We illustrate the effect through light curve analysis of two otherwise very similar contact binary systems, except for different metallicity. While both would be considered unstable if metallicity was not taken into consideration, only one remains in that category after appropriate adjustments based on metallicity have been made.Comment: 9 pages, 7 Figures and 5 Tables Accepted Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS

Cardiopoietic cell therapy for advanced ischemic heart failure: results at 39 weeks of the prospective, randomized, double blind, sham-controlled CHART-1 clinical trial

Cardiopoietic cells, produced through cardiogenic conditioning of patients' mesenchymal stem cells, have shown preliminary efficacy. The Congestive Heart Failure Cardiopoietic Regenerative Therapy (CHART-1) trial aimed to validate cardiopoiesis-based biotherapy in a larger heart failure cohort