Greening hotels: does motivating hotel employees promote in-role green performance? The role of culture

In the new global economy, environmentally friendly policies have become a central issue for firms. The increasing attention given to the benefits of those policies has prompted research on the development of environmental management systems that encourage employees to engage in environmental activities. However, there is limited evidence concerning the relationship between employee motivation and employees’ in-role green performance, in addition to the potential impact of culture and organizational citizenship behavior for the environment. Through a quantitative study of 301 managerial and non-managerial employees working in three- to five-star hotels, this study makes a major contribution by demonstrating that practices aimed at motivating hotel employees (e.g. green reward and performance management) are significantly linked with employees’ in-role green performance and organizational citizenship behavior for the environment. The findings also indicate that the influence of green rewards on employees’ in-role green performance and organizational citizenship behaviors for the environment is stronger when hotels are managed by Western corporations. Conversely, the study showed that the effect of green performance management on these two dependent variables is not moderated by culture. This article supports efforts to widen national cultural perspectives in the development and application of green human resource management

The Study of Propylene Glycol Effect as Wetting Agent Content for Offset Printing Technique

Although the printing offset technique offered the best printout quality among other printing techniques, however, there is a drawback of the offset technique which needs great skill to handle the process, i.e the presence of trace water molecules on the image area of the plate. The water’s existence in the image area leads to the poor covering of ink which makes the blurry printout than it must be. Therefore, we used various concentrations of propylene glycol such as 0%, 0.05%, and 0.1% as wetting agents to prevent the trace water sticks to the image area of the plate. We used the HVS paper 80 g/m2 as printing material and the machine of Oliver Sakurai 472 ED to study the role of propylene glycol. Propylene glycol has been considered based on stronger interaction with water molecules than the interaction of the image area - propylene glycol. By investigating the visual quality, density, and dot gain of the printout, we concluded that the wetting agent content of PG 0.05% (v/v) increased the visual brightness, and density of the printout, compared to the water only as the wetting solution

Outcome and Prognostic Indicators of Patients with Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplants Admitted to the Intensive Care Unit

The prognosis of patients with hematopoietic stem cell transplants (HSCTs) who require admission to the intensive care unit (ICU) has been regarded as extremely poor. We sought to re-evaluate recent outcomes and predictive factors in a retrospective cohort study. Among the 605 adult patients that received an HSCT between 2001 and 2006, 154 required admission to the ICU. Of these, 47% were discharged from the ICU, 36% were discharged from the hospital, and 19% survived 6 months. Allogeneic transplant, mechanical ventilation, vasopressor-use, and neutropenia were each associated with increased mortality, and the mortality of patients with all four characteristics was 100%. Hemodialysis was also associated with increased mortality in a Kaplan-Meier analysis but did not appear important in a multivariate tree analysis. A final Cox model confirmed that allogeneic transplant, mechanical ventilation, and vasopressor-use were each independent risk factors for mortality in the 6 months following ICU admission

A Conceptual Design and Numerical Analysis for a Small-Scale and Low-Cost Plastic Recycling Machine

A new conceptual design for a small-scale and low-cost plastic recycling machine is generated by combining melting part and compression process. Starting with one of the outstanding requirements is in terms of an affordable-priced machine that can perform two processes with high accuracy and capacity, some issues related to balancing among quality, capacity and cost of machine occurred during a discussion. After implementing various designing methods such as Quality Function Deployment, Reverse Engineering, Morphological Matrix and Pugh Method, an idea of final concept about using an electric oven and hydraulic system to melt down and compress plastic tile which has a dimension of 300x300x9 mm was created. The design of concept is divided into two parts which are mechanical and electrical systems. In a mechanical section, the technical drawing and simulation are made to see how machine performs under operation. Besides, we examined the forces that applied in the moulds to evaluate the strength of the system. In heating and electricity section, we chose electrical components, designed oven parameters and conducted the heating simulation on the mould. In addition, the heating and cooling time was calculated based on the principles of thermodynamics and heat transfer. Furthermore, the manufacturing plan is created to estimate the essential resources producing a certain number of heat-forming machines. In general, the machine needs to be prototyped for controlling its main function and finding practical issues. After that, some improvements could be made to enhance efficiency and increase capacity by designing an optimal mould to more heat absorb and reduce post process, calculate and design more efficient oven, create faster lock mechanism and other improvements for an automatizing machine

HierarchyNet : learning to summarize source code with heterogeneous representations

Code representation is important to machine learning models in the code-related applications. Existing code summarization approaches primarily leverage Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs) and sequential information from source code to generate code summaries while often overlooking the critical consideration of the interplay of dependencies among code elements and code hierarchy. However, effective summarization necessitates a holistic analysis of code snippets from three distinct aspects: lexical, syntactic, and semantic information. In this paper, we propose a novel code summarization approach utilizing Heterogeneous Code Representations (HCRs) and our specially designed HierarchyNet. HCRs adeptly capture essential code features at lexical, syntactic, and semantic levels within a hierarchical structure. HierarchyNet processes each layer of the HCR separately, employing a Heterogeneous Graph Transformer, a Tree-based CNN, and a Transformer Encoder. In addition, HierarchyNet demonstrates superior performance compared to fine-tuned pre-trained models, including CodeT5, and CodeBERT, as well as large language models that employ zero/few-shot settings, such as CodeLlama, StarCoder, and CodeGen. Implementation details can be found at https://github.com/FSoft-AI4Code/HierarchyNet

Model binding experiments with cucurbit[7]uril and p-sulfonatocalix[4]arene support use of explicit solvation term in governing equation for binding equilibria

The thermodynamics of model host–guest-binding reactions is examined in depth using isothermal titration calorimetry. In conflict with classical thermodynamics, the results indicate that the equilibrium-binding quotient, K, is not a constant for all pairings. This outcome is predicted by an equation for binding equilibria that includes an explicit term for the change in solvation free energy that accompanies the formation of a binary complex. Application of this framework to the experimentally observed concentration dependence of K allows one to obtain the energetic contribution of the solvent, a linked equilibrium denoted here as ΔGH2O. The estimated values of ΔGH2O are large and unfavourable for the binding of selected guest molecules to two hosts, cucurbit[7]uril and p-sulfonatocalix[4]arene. Intriguingly, the estimated values of ΔGH2O are near zero for the binding of two hydrophobic guest molecules to β-cyclodextrin, leading to a thought-provoking discussion on the driving force behind the hydrophobic effect

Kinetics of the hydrogen abstraction ·C2H5 + alkane → C2H6 + alkyl reaction class: an application of the reaction class transition state theory

This paper presents an application of the reaction class transition state theory (RC-TST) to predict thermal rate constants for hydrogen abstraction reactions at alkane by the C2H5 radical on-the-fly. The linear energy relationship (LER), developed for acyclic alkanes, was also proven to hold for cyclic alkanes. We have derived all RCTST parameters from rate constants of 19 representative reactions, coupling with LER and the barrier height grouping (BHG) approach. Both the RC-TST/LER, where only reaction energy is needed, and the RC-TST/BHG, where no other information is needed, can predict rate constants for any reaction in this reaction class with satisfactory accuracy for combustion modeling. Our analysis indicates that less than 50% systematic errors on the average exist in the predicted rate constants using either the RC-TST/LER or RC-TST/BHG method, while in comparison with explicit rate calculations, the differences are within a factor of 2 on the average. The results also show that the RC-TST method is not sensitive to the choice of density functional theory used

IL1B and DEFB1 Polymorphisms Increase Susceptibility to Invasive Mold Infection After Solid-Organ Transplantation

Background. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in immune genes have been associated with susceptibility to invasive mold infection (IMI) among hematopoietic stem cell but not solid-organ transplant (SOT) recipients. Methods. Twenty-four SNPs from systematically selected genes were genotyped among 1101 SOT recipients (715 kidney transplant recipients, 190 liver transplant recipients, 102 lung transplant recipients, 79 heart transplant recipients, and 15 recipients of other transplants) from the Swiss Transplant Cohort Study. Association between SNPs and the end point were assessed by log-rank test and Cox regression models. Cytokine production upon Aspergillus stimulation was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from healthy volunteers and correlated with relevant genotypes. Results. Mold colonization (n = 45) and proven/probable IMI (n = 26) were associated with polymorphisms in the genes encoding interleukin 1β (IL1B; rs16944; recessive mode, P = .001 for colonization and P = .00005 for IMI, by the log-rank test), interleukin 1 receptor antagonist (IL1RN; rs419598; P = .01 and P = .02, respectively), and β-defensin 1 (DEFB1; rs1800972; P = .001 and P = .0002, respectively). The associations with IL1B and DEFB1 remained significant in a multivariate regression model (P = .002 for IL1B rs16944; P = .01 for DEFB1 rs1800972). The presence of 2 copies of the rare allele of rs16944 or rs419598 was associated with reduced Aspergillus-induced interleukin 1β and tumor necrosis factor α secretion by PBMCs. Conclusions. Functional polymorphisms in IL1B and DEFB1 influence susceptibility to mold infection in SOT recipients. This observation may contribute to individual risk stratificatio

Pichia pastoris versus Saccharomyces cerevisiae:a case study on the recombinant production of human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor

BACKGROUND: Recombinant human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (rhGM-CSF) is a glycoprotein that has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of neutropenia and leukemia in combination with chemotherapies. Recombinant hGM-CSF is produced industrially using the baker's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, by large-scale fermentation. The methylotrophic yeast, Pichia pastoris, has emerged as an alternative host cell system due to its shorter and less immunogenic glycosylation pattern together with higher cell density growth and higher secreted protein yield than S. cerevisiae. In this study, we compared the pipeline from gene to recombinant protein in these two yeasts. RESULTS: Codon optimization in silico for both yeast species showed no difference in frequent codon usage. However, rhGM-CSF expressed from S. cerevisiae BY4742 showed a significant discrepancy in molecular weight from those of P. pastoris X33. Analysis showed purified rhGM-CSF species with molecular weights ranging from 30 to more than 60 kDa. Fed-batch fermentation over 72 h showed that rhGM-CSF was more highly secreted from P. pastoris than S. cerevisiae (285 and 64 mg total secreted protein/L, respectively). Ion exchange chromatography gave higher purity and recovery than hydrophobic interaction chromatography. Purified rhGM-CSF from P. pastoris was 327 times more potent than rhGM-CSF from S. cerevisiae in terms of proliferative stimulating capacity on the hGM-CSF-dependent cell line, TF-1. CONCLUSION: Our data support a view that the methylotrophic yeast P. pastoris is an effective recombinant host for heterologous rhGM-CSF production