cGMP-Dependent Protein Kinase I Is Crucial for Angiogenesis and Postnatal Vasculogenesis

Background Endothelium-derived nitric oxide plays an important role for the bone marrow microenvironment. Since several important effects of nitric oxide are mediated by cGMP-dependent pathways, we investigated the role of the cGMP downstream effector cGMP-dependent protein kinase I (cGKI) on postnatal neovascularization. Methodology/Principal Findings In a disc neovascularization model, cGKI -/- mice showed an impaired neovascularization as compared to their wild-type (WT) littermates. Infusion of WT, but not cGKI -/- bone marrow progenitors rescued the impaired ingrowth of new vessels in cGKI-deficient mice. Bone marrow progenitors from cGKI -/- mice showed reduced proliferation and survival rates. In addition, we used cGKI alpha leucine zipper mutant (LZM) mice as model for cGKI deficiency. LZM mice harbor a mutation in the cGKI alpha leucine zipper that prevents interaction with downstream signaling molecules. Consistently, LZM mice exhibited reduced numbers of vasculogenic progenitors and impaired neovascularization following hindlimb ischemia compared to WT mice. Conclusions/Significance Our findings demonstrate that the cGMP-cGKI pathway is critical for postnatal neovascularization and establish a new role for cGKI in vasculogenesis, which is mediated by bone marrow-derived progenitors

Advancing ISD Education Research with Bioecological Systems Theory

The 27th International Conference on Information Systems Development (ISD2018), Lund, Sweden, 22-24 2018The Information Systems (IS) community designs and delivers IS curricula in higher education and faces pedagogical challenges in teaching some complex and technical material. Many of us are involved in the design, implementation, evaluation, adoption, and use of IS to support education and training in academia and in industry. Yet IS research on education is often based on technologically deterministic assumptions about the impact of technology on education outcomes and involves narrowly focused studies on the use and impact of technology in education. In this paper, we introduce IS to Bioecological Theory (BET), whose insights have had a transformative effect in the field of developmental psychology but not well known in IS. We use BET to map existing literature on IS and Higher Education and also outline how this theory can be used in IS to inform the design of technological artifacts to support students’ learning processes

The effect of synergy enhancement on information technology portfolio selection

This paper investigates how firms can use synergy to optimize their information technology portfolios. We begin by developing a framework for the portfolio selection by identifying three types of information technology synergy. Next, we use this framework to examine the impact of different types of synergy on the portfolio selection. Analytical models are developed to illustrate the roles of different types of the synergy, and analytical and computational methods are used to investigate the impact of the synergy. The analysis in this paper provides conditions in which synergy enhancement results in a more efficient or a less efficient portfolio. Our study establishes that firms with higher risk thresholds are more likely to obtain more efficient information technology portfolios by enhancing synergy, whereas firms with lower risk thresholds are less likely to benefit from enhancing synergy.open

Exploring systemic problems in IS adoption using critical systems heuristics

Most of the traditional technology acceptance models revolve around information systems (IS)/information technology (IT) adoption at individual user level. Organizations are complex social systems in which stakeholders interact and play different roles in IS/IT adoption and use. This study provides an organizational perspective through multiple stakeholder viewpoints to explore ‘systemic problems’ in IS adoption. This paper contributes to IS literature by applying boundary critique mechanism of Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) through an interpretive study of a web portal implementation project in a West Australian University. This perspective considers systemic problems as a ‘system of conflicts’ comprising key factors and organization-wide stakeholder interactions. Moreover, it adds to CSH theory as to how systemic problems are identified by using boundary judgments and evaluated using a hermeneutic approach