Integrating Corporate Sustainability and Organizational Strategy Within the Undergraduate Business Curriculum

Corporate sustainability (CS) requires organizations to shift focus from short-term financial goals to further consider the long-term social, environmental, and economic implications of their operations. Despite a lack of regulations in the United States requiring companies to disclose social and environmental measures, more than 80% of U.S. corporations voluntarily release corporate responsibility reports. The increased focus of CS in practice has impacted many business curricula to adapt CS-related courses (such as business ethics); however, we present results that indicate that such means may have limited influence on students’ views concerning the legitimacy of social and environmental issues in regard to corporate decision making. More consideration is needed to determine how CS-related topics can be effectively integrated within business curriculums. We propose incorporating CS within the Organizational Strategy capstone course and assess its effectiveness via survey analysis. Suggestions for course design are provided

An Integrated Transcriptomic and Meta-Analysis of Hepatoma Cells Reveals Factors That Influence Susceptibility to HCV Infection

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a global problem. To better understand HCV infection researchers employ in vitro HCV cell-culture (HCVcc) systems that use Huh-7 derived hepatoma cells that are particularly permissive to HCV infection. A variety of hyper-permissive cells have been subcloned for this purpose. In addition, subclones of Huh-7 which have evolved resistance to HCV are available. However, the mechanisms of susceptibility or resistance to infection among these cells have not been fully determined. In order to elucidate mechanisms by which hepatoma cells are susceptible or resistant to HCV infection we performed genome-wide expression analyses of six Huh-7 derived cell cultures that have different levels of permissiveness to infection. A great number of genes, representing a wide spectrum of functions are differentially expressed between cells. To focus our investigation, we identify host proteins from HCV replicase complexes, perform gene expression analysis of three HCV infected cells and conduct a detailed analysis of differentially expressed host factors by integrating a variety of data sources. Our results demonstrate that changes relating to susceptibility to HCV infection in hepatoma cells are linked to the innate immune response, secreted signal peptides and host factors that have a role in virus entry and replication. This work identifies both known and novel host factors that may influence HCV infection. Our findings build upon current knowledge of the complex interplay between HCV and the host cell, which could aid development of new antiviral strategies

Discutindo a educação ambiental no cotidiano escolar: desenvolvimento de projetos na escola formação inicial e continuada de professores

A presente pesquisa buscou discutir como a Educação Ambiental (EA) vem sendo trabalhada, no Ensino Fundamental e como os docentes desta escola compreendem e vem inserindo a EA no cotidiano escolar., em uma escola estadual do município de Tangará da Serra/MT, Brasil. Para tanto, realizou-se entrevistas com os professores que fazem parte de um projeto interdisciplinar de EA na escola pesquisada. Verificou-se que o projeto da escola não vem conseguindo alcançar os objetivos propostos por: desconhecimento do mesmo, pelos professores; formação deficiente dos professores, não entendimento da EA como processo de ensino-aprendizagem, falta de recursos didáticos, planejamento inadequado das atividades. A partir dessa constatação, procurou-se debater a impossibilidade de tratar do tema fora do trabalho interdisciplinar, bem como, e principalmente, a importância de um estudo mais aprofundado de EA, vinculando teoria e prática, tanto na formação docente, como em projetos escolares, a fim de fugir do tradicional vínculo “EA e ecologia, lixo e horta”.Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Stochastic gradient estimation using a single design point

We propose and analyze a black-box gradient estimation method that can estimate gradients with respect to multiple input parameters using data obtained from a single design point. We identify conditions under which the proposed estimator is unbiased and converges in mean squared error. The proposed method is applicable to problems where the input parameter can be estimated. We compare the proposed method to finite differences and simultaneous perturbation. Relative to these methods, the proposed method is advantageous in that it yields a gradient estimate with no additional computational effort when batching methods or multiple replications are used to obtain a point estimator for the performance measure of interest. Another advantage of the proposed method is that it requires users to specify batch size, rather than input-parameter perturbations, which can be changed and adjusted after the experiment has been completed. Finite differences and simultaneous perturbation require users to specify input-parameter perturbations, which cannot be changed once the data have been collected. The proposed method outperforms existing methods in most cases when implemented on an M/M/C queuing model with random assignment of customers to individual queues. In general, however, the preferred method is problem specific. Numerical results illustrate that the performance of the proposed method is dependent on the batch size. The proposed gradient estimation method is especially efficient when the input parameters are uncorrelated because there is no loss of degrees of freedom for estimating gradients with respect to additional uncorrelated parameters