249 research outputs found
Ever Expanding Responsibilities: Upstream and Downstream Corporate Social Responsibility
The debate on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been on the public and academic agenda for several decades. In general, CSR issues can be divided into production-related issues (along the supply chain - or how things are made) and consumption-related issues (towards the consumer and society at large - or how things are used). Following the terminology of Phillips and Caldweli, Z upstream CSR refers to the CSR debate along the supply chain, and downstream CSR refers to corporate responsibility towards consumers and society at large. The chapter examines current CSR issues, and proposes a social connection model to understand the most recent CSR demands up and down the corporate value chain. In the sweatshop debat
Ever Expanding Responsibilities: Upstream and Downstream Corporate Social Responsibility
The debate on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been on the public and academic agenda for several decades. In general, CSR issues can be divided into production-related issues (along the supply chain - or how things are made) and consumption-related issues (towards the consumer and society at large - or how things are used). Following the terminology of Phillips and Caldwell, upstream CSR refers to the CSR debate along the supply chain, and downstream CSR refers to corporate responsibility towards consumers and society at large. The chapter examines current CSR issues, and proposes a social connection model to understand the most recent CSR demands up and down the corporate value chain
Anticipating, Preventing, and Surviving Secondary Boycotts
Even the best stakeholder-managed firms can suffer when they become the targets of a secondary boycott, as recent headlines attest. A secondary boycott is a group’s refusal to engage a target firm with which the group has no direct dispute in an attempt to sway public opinion, draw attention to an issue, or influence the actions of a disputant. This article provides a new perspective and tools for both scholars and managers concerned with this phenomenon. Building on a stakeholder theory foundation, we examine possible actions managers can take to avoid being surprised by a secondary boycott, propose conditions that raise the probability of becoming the target of a secondary boycott, and develop four alternative approaches for managing stakeholder relationships in a world of secondary boycotts, consistent with the underlying stakeholder culture of the firm
Terminal Investment: Individual Reproduction of Ant Queens Increases with Age
The pattern of age-specific fecundity is a key component of the life history of organisms and shapes their ecology and evolution. In numerous animals, including humans, reproductive performance decreases with age. Here, we demonstrate that some social insect queens exhibit the opposite pattern. Egg laying rates of Cardiocondyla obscurior ant queens increased with age until death, even when the number of workers caring for them was kept constant. Cardiocondyla, and probably also other ants, therefore resemble the few select organisms with similar age-specific reproductive investment, such as corals, sturgeons, or box turtles (e.g., [1]), but they differ in being more short-lived and lacking individual, though not social, indeterminate growth. Furthermore, in contrast to most other organisms, in which average life span declines with increasing reproductive effort, queens with high egg laying rates survived as long as less fecund queens
Divergent evolutionary trajectories of bryophytes and tracheophytes from a complex common ancestor of land plants
The origin of plants and their colonization of land fundamentally transformed the terrestrial environment. Here we elucidate the basis of this formative episode in Earth history through patterns of lineage, gene and genome evolution. We use new fossil calibrations, a relative clade age calibration (informed by horizontal gene transfer) and new phylogenomic methods for mapping gene family origins. Distinct rooting strategies resolve tracheophytes (vascular plants) and bryophytes (non-vascular plants) as monophyletic sister groups that diverged during the Cambrian, 515–494 million years ago. The embryophyte stem is characterized by a burst of gene innovation, while bryophytes subsequently experienced an equally dramatic episode of reductive genome evolution in which they lost genes associated with the elaboration of vasculature and the stomatal complex. Overall, our analyses reveal that extant tracheophytes and bryophytes are both highly derived from a more complex ancestral land plant. Understanding the origin of land plants requires tracing character evolution across a diversity of modern lineages
Wingless and intermorphic males in the ant Cardiocondyla venustula
The ant genus Cardiocondyla is characterized by a pronounced male diphenism with
wingless fighter males and winged disperser males. Winged males have been lost convergently in at
least two species-rich clades. Here, we describe the morphological variability of males of C. venustula
from uThukela valley, South Africa. Winged males appear to be absent from this species. However, in
addition to wingless (“ergatoid”) males with widely fused thoracic sutures and without ocelli,
“intermorphic” males exist that combine the typical morphology of wingless males with
characteristics of winged males, e.g., more pronounced thoracic sutures, rudimentary ocelli, and
vestigial wings. Similar “intermorphic” males have previously been described from one of several
genetically distinct lineages of the Southeast Asian “C. kagutsuchi” complex (Yamauchi et al., 2005).
To determine whether male morphology is associated with distinct clades also in C. venustula, we
sequenced a 631 bp fragment of mitochondrial DNA of workers from 13 colonies. We found six
haplotypes with a sequence variation of up to 5.7%. Intermorphic and wingless males did not appear
to be associated with a particular of these lineages and within colonies showed the same sequence.
Interestingly, two colonies contained workers with different haplotypes, suggesting the occasional
migration of queens and / or workers between colonies.Financial support came from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (He 1623/32 and He 1623/34).http://www.springerlink.com/content/101198/?p=d05a2cfd29ea4cf1b64b48ed3302b001&pi=906hb2013ab201
Detection Rate and Clinical Relevance of Ink Tattooing during Balloon-Assisted Enteroscopy
Background and Aims. Balloon-assisted enteroscopy (BAE) is a well-established tool in the diagnosis and therapy of small bowel diseases. Ink tattooing of the small bowel is used to mark pathologic lesions or the depth of small bowel insertion. The purpose of this study was to determine the safety, the detection rate, and the clinical relevance of ink tattooing during BAE. Methods. We performed a retrospective analysis of all 81 patients who received an ink tattooing during BAE between 2010 and 2015. Results. In all patients, ink tattooing was performed with no complications. 26 patients received a capsule endoscopy after BAE. The tattoo could be detected via capsule endoscopy in 19 of these 26 patients. The tattoo of the previous BAE could be detected via opposite BAE in 2 of 11 patients. In 9 patients, ink tattooing influenced the choice of approach for reenteroscopy. In 7 patients, the tattoo was used for intraoperative localization and in 3 patients for intraoperative localization as well as for reenteroscopy. The intraoperative detection rate of the tattoo was 100%. Conclusion. Ink tattooing of the small intestine is a safe endoscopic procedure to mark the depth of scope insertion or a pathologic lesion during balloon-assisted enteroscopy
Mating with Stressed Males Increases the Fitness of Ant Queens
BACKGROUND: According to sexual conflict theory, males can increase their own fitness by transferring substances during copulation that increase the short-term fecundity of their mating partners at the cost of the future life expectancy and re-mating capability of the latter. In contrast, sexual cooperation is expected in social insects. Mating indeed positively affects life span and fecundity of young queens of the male-polymorphic ant Cardiocondyla obscurior, even though males neither provide nuptial gifts nor any other care but leave their mates immediately after copulation and die shortly thereafter. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, we show that mating with winged disperser males has a significantly stronger impact on life span and reproductive success of young queens of C. obscurior than mating with wingless fighter males. CONCLUSIONS: Winged males are reared mostly under stressful environmental conditions, which force young queens to disperse and found their own societies independently. In contrast, queens that mate with wingless males under favourable conditions usually start reproducing in the safety of the established maternal nest. Our study suggests that males of C. obscurior have evolved mechanisms to posthumously assist young queens during colony founding under adverse ecological conditions
Correlation studies of open and closed states fluctuations in an ion channel: Analysis of ion current through a large conductance locust potassium channel
Ion current fluctuations occurring within open and closed states of large
conductance locust potassium channel (BK channel) were investigated for the
existence of correlation. Both time series, extracted from the ion current
signal, were studied by the autocorrelation function (AFA) and the detrended
fluctuation analysis (DFA) methods. The persistent character of the short- and
middle-range correlations of time series is shown by the slow decay of the
autocorrelation function. The DFA exponent is significantly larger
than 0.5. The existence of strongly-persistent long-range correlations was
detected only for closed-states fluctuations, with . The
long-range correlation of the BK channel action is therefore determined by the
character of closed states. The main outcome of this study is that the memory
effect is present not only between successive conducting states of the channel
but also independently within the open and closed states themselves. As the ion
current fluctuations give information about the dynamics of the channel
protein, our results point to the correlated character of the protein movement
regardless whether the channel is in its open or closed state.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures; to be published in Phys. Rev.
- …