Enhancing organisational competitiveness via social media - a strategy as practice perspective

The affordances, popularity and pervasive use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have made these platforms attractive to organisations for enhancing their competitiveness and creating business value. Despite this apparent significance of social media for businesses, they are struggling with the development of a social media strategy as well as understanding the implications of social media on practice within their organisations. This paper explores how social media has become a tool for competitiveness and its influence on organisational strategy and practice. Using the 'strategy as practice' lens and guided by the interpretivist philosophy, this paper uses the empirical case of a telecom organisation in Tanzania. The findings show that social media is influencing competitiveness through imitation and product development. Also, the findings indicate how social media affects the practices within an organisation, consequently making the social media strategy an emergent phenomenon

Assessing the Effects of Climate on Host-Parasite Interactions: A Comparative Study of European Birds and Their Parasites

[Background] Climate change potentially has important effects on distribution, abundance, transmission and virulence of parasites in wild populations of animals. [Methodology/Principal Finding] Here we analyzed paired information on 89 parasite populations for 24 species of bird hosts some years ago and again in 2010 with an average interval of 10 years. The parasite taxa included protozoa, feather parasites, diptera, ticks, mites and fleas. We investigated whether change in abundance and prevalence of parasites was related to change in body condition, reproduction and population size of hosts. We conducted analyses based on the entire dataset, but also on a restricted dataset with intervals between study years being 5–15 years. Parasite abundance increased over time when restricting the analyses to datasets with an interval of 5–15 years, with no significant effect of changes in temperature at the time of breeding among study sites. Changes in host body condition and clutch size were related to change in temperature between first and second study year. In addition, changes in clutch size, brood size and body condition of hosts were correlated with change in abundance of parasites. Finally, changes in population size of hosts were not significantly related to changes in abundance of parasites or their prevalence. [Conclusions/Significance] Climate change is associated with a general increase in parasite abundance. Variation in laying date depended on locality and was associated with latitude while body condition of hosts was associated with a change in temperature. Because clutch size, brood size and body condition were associated with change in parasitism, these results suggest that parasites, perhaps mediated through the indirect effects of temperature, may affect fecundity and condition of their hosts. The conclusions were particularly in accordance with predictions when the restricted dataset with intervals of 5–15 years was used, suggesting that short intervals may bias findings.The Academy of Finland is acknowledged for a grant to TE (project 8119367) and EK (project 250709). PLP was supported by a research grant (TE_291/2010) offered by the Romanian Ministry of Education and Science. T. Szép received funding from OTKA K69068 and JT from OTKA 75618. JMP was supported by a JAE grant from Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. SM-JM, FdL-AM, JF, JJS and FV were respectively supported by projects CGL2009-09439, CGL2012-36665, CGL2009- 11445, CGL2010-19233-C03-01 and CGL2008-00562 by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and FEDER and project EVITAR by the Spanish Ministry of Health. FV was also supported by the European Regional Development Fund. MACT was funded by a predoctoral FPU grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education (AP20043713). PM was supported by grant from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (project 2P04F07030), and the Foundation for Polish Science

Acercamiento a las concepciones sobre la escritura y el aprendizaje: patrones de creencias de los universitarios y la calidad de su redacción académica Exploring conceptions about writing and learning: undergraduates´ patterns of beliefs and the quality o

Resumen Introducción. En este estudio, se identifican las concepciones de escritura y de aprendizaje de un grupo de estudiantes universitarios matriculados en los estudios de Ciencias de la Educación. Se analiza la relación entre ambas concepciones, y se define un conjunto de patrones de creencias acerca del aprendizaje y la escritura. Finalmente, se discute la relación entre los patrones de creencias identificados con la calidad de un texto escrito durante una situación de examen. Método, Participan 52 estudiantes de una Universidad pública española, de ellos la mayoría son mujeres (68%) con una edad media de 21.39 años. Los estudiantes respondieron un cuestionario sobre sus concepciones de escritura y otro sobre las concepciones de aprendizaje. Además, redactan un texto informativo acerca del desarrollo de la identidad durante la adolescencia. Resultados. Los resultados apoyan la existencia de dos dimensiones con respecto a la concepción de escritura (cognitiva y motivacional) y de tres factores relacionados con la concepción de aprendizaje (directa, interpretativa y profunda). Discusión o Conclusión: Las relaciones entre ellas no son del todo consistentes. Sin embargo, las creencias profundas y motivacionalmente positivas se relacionan con mejores resultados en la calidad del texto; mientras que las creencias reproductivas y motivacionalmente negativas se relacionan con peores resultados en cuanto a la calidad del texto. Palabras Clave: concepción de escritura, concepción de aprendizaje, universitarios, escritura académica. Acercamiento a las concepciones sobre la escritura y el aprendizaje: patrones de creencias de los universitarios y la calidad de su redacción académica Recibid

Využití mikropočítačů při operativním řízení výrobní činnosti k. p. Sm průmysl masný

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Association between adherence to the healthy food pyramid and breast milk fatty acids in the first month of lactation

In lactating women, breast milk (BM) fatty acids may come from the diet or stored adipose tissue. Our objective was to evaluate the influence of the adherence to the healthy food pyramid (HFP), the dietary pattern in the Mediterranean region, and the maternal body composition on the BM fatty acids pattern. Fifty breastfeeding women answered a socioeconomic survey and the adherence to the HFP questionnaire (AP-Q). In addition, they provided a BM sample at 7 ± 1, 14 ± 1, and 28 ± 1 days postpartum. The body’s composition was analyzed at days 7 and 28 by bioimpedance. The BM fatty acids were analyzed by gas chromatography–mass spectroscopy. We found a negative association between the consumption of olive oil and the BM palmitic acid levels (β = −3.19 ± 1.40; p = 0.030), and the intake of cereals and legumes was positively associated with the BM saturated fatty acids (β = 11.48 ± 3.87; p = 0.005). The intake of proteins and vegetables was positively associated with the omega-3 fatty acids and negatively with the omega-6:omega-3 ratio in BM. A negative association between the maternal age (β = −0.43 ± 0.11; p = 0.001) and the α-linolenic acid (ALA) levels was observed, being overall AP-Q positively associated with the ALA levels (β = 0.39 ± 0.15; p = 0.016). Physical activity reduced both the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in BM. Diet had a larger influence than the maternal body’s composition on BM fatty acids during the first month of lactation, demonstrating a better adherence to the HFP and positively impacting on the omega-3 content in BM, a fact that is modulated by one’s maternal age.This research was funded for Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnologia (FECYT, Spain) by its crowdfunding project PRECIPITA (https://www.precipita.es/proyectos/Composicion-de-la-leche-materna-prematuridad-y-parametros-maternos, accessed on 25 September 2019).Peer reviewe

PHIDIAS: ultra-low-power holistic design for smart bio-signals computing platforms

Emerging and future HealthCare policies are fueling up an application-driven shift toward long-Term monitoring of biosignals by means of embedded ultra-low power Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs). In order to break out, these applications needed the emergence of new technologies to allow the development of extremely power-efficient bio-sensing nodes. The PHIDIAS project aims at unlocking the development of ultra-low power bio-sensing WBSNs by tackling multiple and interlocking technological breakthroughs: (i) the development of new signal processing models and methods based on the recently proposed Compressive Sampling paradigm, which allows the design of energy-minimal computational architectures and analog front-ends, (ii) the efficient hardware implementation of components, both analog and digital, building upon an innovative ultra-low-power signal processing front-end, (iii) the evaluation of the global power reduction using a system wide integration of hardware and software components focused on compressed-sensingbased bio-signals analysis. PHIDIAS brought together a mixed consortium of academic and industrial research partners representing pan-European excellence in different fields impacting the energy-Aware optimization of WBSNs, including experts in signal processing and digital/analog IC design. In this way, PHIDIAS pioneered a unique holistic approach, ensuring that key breakthroughs worked out in a cooperative way toward the global objective of the project