Crisis of Dairy Farming in Ruhuna-an Overview

Crisis of Dairy Farming in Ruhuna-an Overvie

Conceptualizing the relationship between Spiritual and Entrepreneurial Orientation in developing sustainable enterprises

Entrepreneurship is considered a critical element that promotes the development of an economy and the society of a country. At the organizational level, the Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) of decision-makers is recognized as a key driver in the entrepreneurship literature that propels firms to act ‘autonomously’, ‘innovate’, ‘take risks’, and be ‘proactive’ relative to marketplace opportunities. However, the current EO literature is evolving and has not explored its impact on developing sustainable operations. This paper intends to bridge this gap by introducing a concept of Spiritual Orientation (SO) playing the role of a mediator to explain the association between EO and sustainable operations. We argue that spirituality fortifies entrepreneurs’ commitment to developing sustainable business entities, by empowering firms to be adaptable and creating a pro-social business model with a sense of interconnection with the community and natural ecosystem. Thus, it is important to understand the spiritual development of entrepreneurs, because it leads entrepreneurs to exhibit fairness, kindness, and improved awareness of other people’s needs and thereby be sensitive to the alterations in the natural ecosystem. This paper argues that Spiritual Orientation leads entrepreneurs to exercise greater ‘autonomy’ as a result of seeing the interconnectedness of their actions. A spiritually oriented entrepreneur would place emphasis on the ethics, principles, virtues, values, and be sensitive to emotions, which will lead to taking proactive actions. As such, spirituality elucidates how business visionaries continue despite challenging situations by expanding their ideas of future-oriented sensemaking. This paper theorizes how a spiritually driven EO will lead to sustainable business ventures that focus on people, profit, and the planet. We assert that entrepreneurs must develop the spiritual maturity to create the right balance of EO dimensions, thus leading to creating sustainable organizations. Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurial Orientation; Spirituality; Spiritual Orientation; Sustainability; Triple Bottom lin

Spiritual Growth and Social Entrepreneurship: Understanding the integration of spirituality and social entrepreneurial process

The business world today is moving from capitalism to social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurs view a social mission as an explicit and central one than following the path of individual wealth creation. Seizing opportunities and utilizing resources are the key factors that influencing entrepreneurial process. Entrepreneur’s belief system is shaped or process of interpretation that makes entrepreneurs pursue solutions to social problems. Transcends from wealth creators to social warriors may be explained by focusing on their spiritual orientation (Ganzin, Islam, & Suddaby, 2020). The objective of the study is to explore the connection of spirituality development to social entrepreneurial process of social entrepreneurs. The paper offers a new theoretical conceptualization in relation to understanding how spiritual growth influences social entrepreneurs. Thus, the paper tries to build up the relationship between spiritual growth and social entrepreneurial process. As such, our paper strengthen the existing social entrepreneurship theory by introducing the spirituality dimension to the cognitive process and highlights the trigger points related to social entrepreneurial behavior that transcendence individual wealth creation. Furthermore, the linkage between the attributes of social entrepreneurial process and spiritual development phases is an eye opening to both spiritual and entrepreneurial studies. Keywords: Social entrepreneurship, Spiritual growth, Entrepreneurial proces

Service-Learning, Spiritual Orientation, and Social Entrepreneurship: A Case Study of the Vikings Club of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura

The primary purpose of this study was to understand the effects of a student’s service-learning experience gained by working on social entrepreneurship projects or engaging in corporate social responsibility activities on a student’s change towards social and community development and to understand their spiritual orientation. This study investigated 20 transformational stories of the students of Viking Club attached to the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, which is a student-led club initiated from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura that supports social entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka. Using a qualitative research approach, in-depth interviews were conducted along with one of the author’s personal experiences- autoethnography, to understand and capture the authentic experiences of transformative change of the participants. The results of the study indicated that active engagement in the social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility activities of the Viking Club increased the empathetic behaviour and created a more empathic mindset, socially responsible, happy, and sustainable. The students were motivated to work interconnected and appeared to exert more effort in sharing love with others which reflects the development in the spiritual orientation and how it has linked with social entrepreneurial to reach the steering vision of the Club. As the Club provides opportunities in social entrepreneurship and CSR to use their newly acquired skills and knowledge in real-life situations with the active participation in the social entrepreneurship and CSR projects, they can effectively solve social problems in Sri Lanka through social entrepreneurship and the transformations will inspire ethical decision-making at both individual and organisational levels. Keywords: Service-Learning, Spiritual Orientation, Social Entrepreneurship, Student Club

Biocompatibility of chitosan carriers with application in drug delivery

Chitosan is one of the most used polysaccharides in the design of drug delivery strategies for administration of either biomacromolecules or low molecular weight drugs. For these purposes, it is frequently used as matrix forming material in both nano and micron-sized particles. In addition to its interesting physicochemical and biopharmaceutical properties, which include high mucoadhesion and a great capacity to produce drug delivery systems, ensuring the biocompatibility of the drug delivery vehicles is a highly relevant issue. Nevertheless, this subject is not addressed as frequently as desired and even though the application of chitosan carriers has been widely explored, the demonstration of systems biocompatibility is still in its infancy. In this review, addressing the biocompatibility of chitosan carriers with application in drug delivery is discussed and the methods used in vitro and in vivo, exploring the effect of different variables, are described. We further provide a discussion on the pros and cons of used methodologies, as well as on the difficulties arising from the absence of standardization of procedures

Metformin attenuates the effect of Staphylococcus aureus on airway tight junctions by increasing PKCζ-mediated phosphorylation of occludin.

Airway epithelial tight junction (TJ) proteins form a resistive barrier to the external environment, however, during respiratory bacterial infection TJs become disrupted compromising barrier function. This promotes glucose flux/accumulation into the lumen which acts as a nutrient source for bacterial growth. Metformin used for the treatment of diabetes increases transepithelial resistance (TEER) and partially prevents the effect of bacteria but the mechanisms of action are unclear. We investigated the effect of metformin and Staphylococcus aureus on TJ proteins, zonula occludins (ZO)-1 and occludin in human airway epithelial cells (H441). We also explored the role of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and PKCζ in metformin-induced effects. Pretreatment with metformin prevented the S. aureus-induced changes in ZO-1 and occludin. Metformin also promoted increased abundance of full length over smaller cleaved occludin proteins. The nonspecific PKC inhibitor staurosporine reduced TEER but did not prevent the effect of metformin indicating that the pathway may involve atypical PKC isoforms. Investigation of TJ reassembly after calcium depletion showed that metformin increased TEER more rapidly and promoted the abundance and localization of occludin at the TJ. These effects were inhibited by the AMPK inhibitor, compound C and the PKCζ pseudosubstrate inhibitor (PSI). Metformin increased phosphorylation of occludin and acetyl-coA-carboxylase but only the former was prevented by PSI. This study demonstrates that metformin improves TJ barrier function by promoting the abundance and assembly of full length occludin at the TJ and that this process involves phosphorylation of the protein via an AMPK-PKCζ pathway

Dissecting the regulation of bile-induced biofilm formation in Staphylococcus aureus

Aspiration of bile into the cystic fibrosis (CF) lung has emerged as a prognostic factor for reduced microbial lung biodiversity and the establishment of often fatal, chronic pathogen infections. Staphylococcus aureus is one of the earliest pathogens detected in the lungs of children with CF, and once established as a chronic infection, strategies for its eradication become limited. Several lung pathogens are stimulated to produce biofilms in vitro in the presence of bile. In this study, we further investigated the effects of bile on S. aureus biofilm formation. Most clinical S. aureus strains and the laboratory strain RN4220 were stimulated to form biofilms with sub-inhibitory concentrations of bovine bile. Additionally, we observed bile-induced sensitivity to aminoglycosides, which we exploited in a bursa aurealis transposon screen to isolate mutants reduced in aminoglycoside sensitivity and augmented in bile-induced biofilm formation. We identified five mutants that exhibited hypersensitivity to bile with respect to bile-induced biofilm formation, three of which carried transposon insertions within gene clusters involved in wall teichoic acid (WTA) biosynthesis or transport. Strain TM4 carried an insertion between the divergently oriented tagH and tagG genes, which encode the putative WTA membrane translocation apparatus. Ectopic expression of tagG in TM4 restored a wild-type bile-induced biofilm response, suggesting that reduced translocation of WTA in TM4 induced sensitivity to bile and enhanced the bile-induced biofilm formation response. We propose that WTA may be important for protecting S. aureus against exposure to bile and that bile-induced biofilm formation may be an evolved response to protect cells from bile-induced cell lysis

Human Gut Symbiont Roseburia hominis Promotes and Regulates Innate Immunity

Objective: Roseburia hominis is a flagellated gut anaerobic bacterium belonging to the Lachnospiraceae family within the Firmicutes phylum. A significant decrease of R. hominis colonization in the gut of ulcerative colitis patients has recently been demonstrated. In this work, we have investigated the mechanisms of R. hominis-host cross-talk using both murine and in vitro models. Design: The complete genome sequence of R. hominis A2-183 was determined. C3H/HeN germ-free mice were mono-colonized with R. hominis, and the host-microbe interaction was studied using histology, transcriptome analyses and FACS. Further investigations were performed in vitro and using the TLR5KO and DSS-colitis murine models. Results: In the bacterium, R. hominis, host gut colonization up-regulated genes involved in conjugation/mobilization, metabolism, motility and chemotaxis. In the host cells, bacterial colonization up-regulated genes related to antimicrobial peptides, gut barrier function, TLR signaling, and T cell biology. CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ T cell numbers increased in the lamina propria of both mono-associated and conventional mice treated with R. hominis. Treatment with the R. hominis bacterium provided protection against DSS-induced colitis. The role of flagellin in host-bacterium interaction was also investigated. Conclusions: Mono-association of mice with R. hominis bacteria results in specific bi-directional gene expression patterns. A set of genes thought to be important for host colonization are induced in R. hominis, whilst the host cells respond by strengthening gut barrier function and enhancing Treg population expansion, possibly via TLR5-flagellin signaling. Our data reveal the immuno-modulatory properties of R. hominis that could be useful for the control and treatment of gut inflammation

Human oral isolate Lactobacillus fermentum AGR1487 induces a proinflammatory response in germ-free rat colons

Lactobacilli are thought to be beneficial for human health, with lactobacilli-associated infections being confined to immune-compromised individuals. However, Lactobacillus fermentum AGR1487 negatively affects barrier integrity in vitro so we hypothesized that it caused a pro-inflammatory response in the host. We compared germ-free rats inoculated with AGR1487 to those inoculated with another L. fermentum strain, AGR1485, which does not affect in vitro barrier integrity. We showed that rats inoculated with AGR1487 had more inflammatory cells in their colon, higher levels of inflammatory biomarkers, and increased colonic gene expression of pro-inflammatory pathways. In addition, our in vitro studies showed that AGR1487 had a greater capacity to activate TLR signaling and induce pro-inflammatory cytokines in immune cells. This study indicates the potential of strains of the same species to differentially elicit inflammatory responses in the host and highlights the importance of strain characterization in probiotic approaches to treat inflammatory disorders