SANTANDER ACQUIRES ABBEY: THE JACK PROJECT

The case ‘Santander Acquires Abbey: The Jack Project’ examines the managerial decisionmaking process in 2004 prior to the acquisition of Abbey. The primary argument highlights how the strategic management of information systems is a ‘core competence’ within the Santander’s growth strategy based on mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Students are asked to put themselves in the position of José María Fuster (CIO Grupo Santander). Their first task is to assess the information technology (IT) strategies of Santander and Abbey, and understand their value and roles. The second task is to explore the differences between ‘customer-centric’ and ‘product centric’ IT platforms and their alignment with business and growth strategies. As a final task, students are asked to assess how this merger could be performed by leveraging the IT capacity that Grupo Santander had developed for the acquisition – despite the doubts expressed about its feasibility by financial analysts. The case was written for general management programs, as well as MBA and executive MBA degree courses in information systems strategy

Orchestrating Network Behavior for Innovation

This thesis is about innovation and power. Human nature has always been expressed by our capacity to innovate and adapt to almost any environment (Bowlby, 1962; Giddens, 1991). In the 20th century, the primary function of business organisations was to invent, produce and commercialise their products and services in different markets. As a matter of fact, business organisations in the last century proved to be the best way of disseminating innovation (Schön, 1971). Currently in the 21st century, there is a call to better understand how new ideas, technology and sources of knowledge are managed, based on the premise that novelty can unfold anywhere and that innovation cannot be considered a linear process consisting of a chain of activities

Optimized adaptive control on dual buoyancy system for application in underwater gliders

Peer Reviewe

CFD analysis and hydrodynamic improvement on hybrid buoyancy driven underwater glider for extended range capabilities

Peer Reviewe

Low-cost AUV based on Arduino Open Source Microcontroller Board for oceanographic research applications in a collaborative long term deployment missions and suitable for combining with an USV as autonomous automatic recharging platform

“©2012 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.The challenge of extending the autonomy in AUV deployments is one of the most important issues in oceanographic research today. The possibility of maintaining a team of AUV under deployment in a defined area of interest for a long period could provide an additional source of information [8]. All this data in combination with the measures provided by buoys and sea gliders used for slow motion and long range operations will be very valuable. A group of low cost AUV's in alternative automatic switching system navigation-charging operation, could allow a kind of continuous surveying operation. This work is the continuation of the ideas that some of the authors previously presented in the AUV 2010 conference at MBARI [8]. At this conference was proposed the great interest for researching oceanic processes on two areas near Cartagena, Spain: cape Tiñoso and the Mar Menor a shallow coastal lagoon. Both areas require a different research structure configuration because of their opposite characteristics. The Mar Menor is a shallow salty lagoon 20 miles long with 7 m of maximum depth and particular features. This lagoon seems to present a sort of oceanic behavior and can be compared with the major oceans but a minor scale. The second area considered is cape Tiñoso, a very deep area in the Mediterranean Sea where the presence of a self-break provides an interesting potential for the research of the effect of upwelling currents.This work has been partly supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education under projects number TIN2011-28435-C03-01 and CTM2011-29691-C02-01.Busquets, J.; Busquets Mataix, JV.; Tudela, D.; Pérez, F.; Busquets-Carbonell, J.; Barberá, Á.; Rodríguez, C.... (2012). Low-cost AUV based on Arduino Open Source Microcontroller Board for oceanographic research applications in a collaborative long term deployment missions and suitable for combining with an USV as autonomous automatic recharging platform. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/AUV.2012.6380720

Dual responsive gelatin-based nanoparticles for enhanced 5-fluorouracil efficiency

The very slow progress in the therapeutic efficacy of the treatment of severe diseases has suggested the use of a growing need for a multidisciplinary approach to the delivery of therapeutics to targets tissues. There has been increasing effort in the design of stimuli-responsive nanomaterials that they will be developed into effective drug delivery vehicles. Most commonly, effective drug delivery is associated with nanomaterial-facilitated accumulation and/or cellular internalization. Recent studies in our lab have demonstrated that gelatin-based NPs can be considered suitable pH responsive devices for the effective intracellular delivery of drugs. Concerning cancer treatment, ligands recognizing tumour-associated antigens expressed on the surface of the tumour cells have been employed. Some of the target structures suitable for tumour targeting belong to integrins which mediate cell adhesion to extracellular matrix and other cells. Interestingly, gelatin chains contain motifs such as RGD sequences that can be recognised by integrins. In this work the inclusion of the anticancer drug 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) on these gelatin-based NPs has been projected. These NPs may provide an opportunity to increase the therapeutic effect using a dual approach by: i) targeting the therapeutic drug to the tumour cells by the action of the naturally occurring RGD-motif on gelatin and ii) minimizing the non-productive trafficking from endosomes to lysosomes by releasing the cargo using the charge reversal approach after cellular internalization. In vitro cytotoxicity experiments of NPs on tumoral and non-tumoral cell lines have reported selectivity indexes higher than 30 demonstrating a great selectivity on the mode of action as a function of the cell line and the imposed compositions. Keywords: 5-fluorouracil; Gelatin; In vitro cytotoxicity; Loading efficiency; Nanoparticles; Selectivity. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Patients attended by palliative care teams: are they always comparable populations?

Patients attended by palliative care teams: are they always comparable populations? To answer this question we have compared the basic epidemiological characteristics of patients attended by home palliative care teams (HPCT) in two autonomous regions of Spain. We carried out a coordinated analytical, observational and prospective study in two Spanish autonomous regions: Aragon and Catalonia. Data were kept during each home care visit according to patients' needs. Inclusion criteria were: advanced cancer, over 18 years old and first contact with a HPCT. The recruitment period was 6 months. Variables included were: Survival time (days), age, sex, primary disease and extension, place of residence. Functional and cognitive state, and co-morbidity. 10 signs/symptoms: asthenia, anorexia, cachexia, dysphagia, xerostomy, dyspnoea, oedemas, level of consciousness, presence of delirium, presence of pressure ulcers and some treatment data. Others variables considered were: responsible team, origin, destination when discharge, date and place of death, number of visits made and duration of monitoring. We developed a comparison between groups by Chisquared test or the non-parametric Mann–Whitney U test and a survival analysis by Kaplan-Meier curves and the logrank test to determine differences between factors. The SPSS version 15.0 software package was used. 698 patients were included, 56.2% from Aragon and 43.8% from Catalonia. 60.3% were males, without differences between the regions. Characteristics relative to age, sex, place of residence and extension of oncological diseases were similar for both groups. We found significant differences between the two populations relative to survival time, co-morbidity, functional state, presence and intensity of a number of symptoms and the treatments, patient monitoring and the their destination after discharge. We can conclude that palliative care teams cover different profiles of patients with regard to their co-morbidity, functional, cognitive and symptomatic states. It must be pointed that the organization of palliative care services and their experience appears to condition the profile of patients they attend. There is a need of consensus on the basic descriptors for palliative care patients in order to ensure that results will be comparable

Effect of Cancer-Related Cachexia and Associated Changes in Nutritional Status, Inflammatory Status, and Muscle Mass on Immunotherapy Efficacy and Survival in Patients with Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI)-based immunotherapy has significantly improved the survival of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC); however, a significant percentage of patients do not benefit from this approach, and predictive biomarkers are needed. Increasing evidence demonstrates that cachexia, a complex syndrome driven by cancer-related chronic inflammation often encountered in patients with NSCLC, may impair the immune response and ICI efficacy. Herein, we carried out a prospective study aimed at evaluating the prognostic and predictive role of cachexia with the related changes in nutritional, metabolic, and inflammatory parameters (assessed by the multidimensional miniCASCO tool) on the survival and clinical response (i.e., disease control rate) to ICI-based immunotherapy in patients with advanced NSCLC. We included 74 consecutive patients. Upon multivariate regression analysis, we found a negative association between IL-6 levels (odds ratio (OR) = 0.9036; 95%CI = 0.8408–0.9711; p = 0.0025) and the miniCASCO score (OR = 0.9768; 95%CI = 0.9102–0.9999; p = 0.0310) with the clinical response. As for survival outcomes, multivariate COX regression analysis found that IL-6 levels and miniCASCO-based cachexia severity significantly affected PFS (hazard ratio (HR) = 1.0388; 95%CI = 1.0230–1.0548; p < 0.001 and HR = 1.2587; 95%CI = 1.0850–1.4602; p = 0.0024, respectively) and OS (HR = 1.0404; 95%CI = 1.0221–1.0589; p < 0.0001 and HR = 2.3834; 95%CI = 1.1504–4.9378; p = 0.0194, respectively). A comparison of the survival curves by Kaplan–Meier analysis showed a significantly lower OS in patients with cachexia versus those without cachexia (p = 0.0323), as well as higher miniCASCO-based cachexia severity (p = 0.0428), an mGPS of 2 versus those with a lower mGPS (p = 0.0074), and higher IL-6 levels (>6 ng/mL) versus those with lower IL-6 levels (≤6 ng/mL) (p = 0.0120). In conclusion, our study supports the evidence that cachexia, with its related changes in inflammatory, body composition, and nutritional parameters, is a key prognostic and predictive factor for ICIs. Further larger studies are needed to confirm these findings and to explore the potential benefit of counteracting cachexia to improve immunotherapy efficacy

Improving the properties of Cu2O/ZnO heterojunction for photovoltaic application by graphene oxide

[EN] A p-Cu2O/n-ZnO heterojunction grown on fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate is reported by a combined low-cost approach employing tape-casting of ZnO layer and subsequent electrochemical deposition of Cu2O layer. Graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets were employed as nanofiller for the ZnO matrix. Moreover, a ZnO buffer layer was inserted at the interface between the Cu2O and ZnO layers. The morphological, structural and photoelectrical characteristics of these heterojunction layers were investigated by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy and photoelectrical current-voltage measurements. The results confirmed that the morphology and structure of ZnO layer were affected by the incorporation of GO nanosheets while the presence of buffer layer influenced the growth of Cu2O layer. This work shows the addition of GO and the use of ZnO buffer layer represent a viable approach towards improving the photoelectrical properties of the Cu2O/ZnO heterojunction cell.Financial support from Escuela Politecnica Nacional, Ecuador (project number PIMI 15-09) and Secretaria de Education Superior, Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovation (SENESCYT) and Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation, Romania CNCS - UEFISCDI (project number PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2016-1544) is gratefully acknowledged.Rosas-Laverde, NM.; Pruna, AI.; Busquets Mataix, DJ.; Marí, B.; Cembrero Cil, J.; Salas Vicente, F.; Orozco-Messana, J. (2018). Improving the properties of Cu2O/ZnO heterojunction for photovoltaic application by graphene oxide. Ceramics International. 44(18):23045-23051. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ceramint.2018.09.107S2304523051441