China - winning the pandemic... for now: the People's Republic is exuding strength, but can they keep it up?

Is it not ironic that the Coronavirus pandemic, which arguably began in a Wuhan ani­mal market in late 2019, has accelerated China's rise? Indeed, early interim assess­ments show that Beijing's draconian, sometimes inhumane, disease control measures have proven highly successful. China's containment of Covid-19 domestically has enabled a return to normality and laid the foundation for a strong economic up­swing. Party and state leaders are using these achievements for political advancement at home and abroad. China's effective crisis management - epidemiological, economic, and politi­cal - reveal that the country is winning this crisis in the end of 2020. Nonetheless, the sustainability of these economic and political successes is debatable. (author's abstract

Performance Management of Corporate Venturing Activities in Manufacturing Companies: An Exploratory Study

Recent trends in manufacturing industries such as digitalization and sustainability have underlined the need for companies to significantly change their products and processes. This emphasizes the need for the capability to make use of radical innovations (radical innovation). However, many incumbent companies struggle to reliably create radical innovation since their research and development (R&D) is usually optimized to exploit competencies via incremental innovations. Thus, their innovation processes and setups fit the predictable and structurable needs of incremental innovation. In contrast, radical innovation are less predictable and, thus, require more agile and reactive processes. To benefit from startup-like structures, manufacturing companies started to increasingly use corporate venturing (CV) activities in the early 2010s. However, the performance of established forms of CV differs drastically. Also, there are still no definite findings on how to set up and use a performance management system to reliably increase CV performance. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the insights of practitioners on which problems and challenges occur in the innovation process of CV units and how they could be solved using performance management systems. To achieve this, the research includes an interview study with 17 different companies of the manufacturing sector in German-speaking countries which run a CV unit

Comprehension of action sequences : The case of paper, scissors, rock

Bach, P., Knoblich, G., Friederici, A. D., & Prinz, W. (2001). Comprehension of action sequences: The case of paper, scissors, rock. In K. Stenning & J. D. Moore (Ed.), Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (S. 39-44). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Publisher PD

China - Pandemiegewinner für den Moment: die Volksrepublik strotzt vor Kraft, doch es fehlt an Nachhaltigkeit

Ist es eine Ironie des Schicksals, dass die Corona-Pandemie, die Ende 2019 auf dem Tiermarkt von Wuhan wohl ihren Anfang nahm, Chinas Aufstieg nun einen mächtigen Schub verleiht? Als erste Zwischenbilanz ist jedenfalls festzuhalten, dass sich Pekings drakonische, teils inhumane Maßnahmen der Seuchenbekämpfung als äußerst erfolg­reich erwiesen haben. Die Eindämmung von Covid-19 in der Volksrepublik ermöglichte eine Rückkehr zur Normalität und legte den Grundstein für einen kräftigen Wirt­schaftsaufschwung. Die Führung von Partei und Staat nutzt diese Errungenschaften politisch im In- und Ausland. Chinas effektive Krisenbewältigung - epidemiologisch, ökonomisch, politisch - weist das Land am Jahresende 2020 als Krisengewinner aus. Doch ist fraglich, wie nachhaltig die wirtschaftlichen und politischen Erfolge sind. (Autorenreferat

Action comprehension: deriving spatial and functional relations.

A perceived action can be understood only when information about the action carried out and the objects used are taken into account. It was investigated how spatial and functional information contributes to establishing these relations. Participants observed static frames showing a hand wielding an instrument and a potential target object of the action. The 2 elements could either match or mismatch, spatially or functionally. Participants were required to judge only 1 of the 2 relations while ignoring the other. Both irrelevant spatial and functional mismatches affected judgments of the relevant relation. Moreover, the functional relation provided a context for the judgment of the spatial relation but not vice versa. The results are discussed in respect to recent accounts of action understanding

Training researchers with the MOVING platform

The MOVING platform enables its users to improve their information literacy by training how to exploit data and text mining methods in their daily research tasks. In this paper, we show how it can support researchers in various tasks, and we introduce its main features, such as text and video retrieval and processing, advanced visualizations, and the technologies to assist the learning process

Early transcriptional events in the udder and teat after intra-mammary Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus challenge

Intra-mammary bacterial infections can result in harmful clinical mastitis or subclinical mastitis with persistent infections. Research during the last decades closely examined the pathophysiology of inflamed udders. Initial events after pathogen perception but before the onset of mastitis have not been examined invivo. The objective of this study was to develop a mastitis model in cows by monitoring initial transcriptional pathogen-specific host response before clinical signs occur. We applied a short-term infection model to analyse transcripts encoding chemokines, cytokines and antimicrobial molecules in the teat cistern (TC) and lobulo-alveolar parenchyma (LP) up to 3h after challenge with E. and Staphylococcus aureus. Both pathogens elicited an immune reaction by 1h after challenge. Escherichia coli induced all analysed factors (CCL20, CXCL8, TNF, IL6, IL12B, IL10, LAP, S100A9);however, S. aureus failed to induce IL12B, IL10, LAP and S100A9 expression. The E. coli-induced up-regulation was 25-105 times greater than that after S. aureus challenge. Almost all the responses were restricted to the TC. The short-term mastitis model demonstrates that a divergent pathogen-specific response is generated during the first h. It confirms that the first transcripts are generated in the TC prior to a response in the LP

Studies on the influence of ochratoxin A administration on Salmonella typhimurium infection in pigs

The aim of the study was to assess whether immunomodulating effects produced by ochratoxin A (OTA) may influence the course of an experimental infection of pigs with Salmonella Typhimurium 27 Nat (STM 27 Nair). 8-week old pigs were administered 50 g OTA per kg body weight per day via feed. Either 7 or 14 days after beginning of OTA application, these pigs and untreated controls were challenged orally with STM 27 Nair. Different systemic immune parameters in blood and OT A concentration in serum and organs were examined. The number of STM 27 Nair was detected in faecal samples of the pigs. Despite high concentrations of OTA in sera and organs, systemic immune parameters were not modified compared with controls. Significant changes in these parameters were induced only by the Salmonella infection. Pigs pretreated with OTA excreted STM 27 Nair in slightly higher (not significant) concentrations than untreated controls. As the immunomodul ating effects produced by OT A after oral administration seem to be considerably lower than the effects induced by a challenge with Salmonella Typhimurium in a high dose, experiments using reduced doses for infection should give further information on the effect on Salmonella shedding

Photochemical oxidation of dimethylsulphide to dimethylsulphoxide in estuarine and coastal waters

Dimethylsulphide (DMS) photo-oxidation and dimethylsulphoxide (DMSO) photoproduction were estimated in 26 laboratory irradiations of coastal samples from NE England (Tyne estuary) and W Scotland (Loch Linnhe and River Nant at Taynuilt). Pseudo-first order rate constants of DMS photo-oxidation (0.038 h−1 to 0.345 h−1) and DMSO photo-production (0.017 h−1 to 0.283 h−1) varied by one order of magnitude and were lowest in the coastal North Sea. Estuarine samples (salinity S 30) to be most reactive with respect to DMS photo-oxidation. Estimates of water column averaged DMS photo-oxidation rate constants, obtained by scaling to mean daily irradiance (July, NE England) and mid-UV underwater irradiance, were 0.012 d−1, 0.019 d−1, and 0.017 d−1 for upper estuary (S 30), at the lower end of previous observations. Comparing our water column averaged DMS photo-oxidation rate constants with estimated DMS losses via air-sea gas exchange and previously reported biological consumption implies that DMS photochemical removal is of only minor importance in our study area

Evidence-based guideline of the German Nutrition Society: fat intake and prevention of selected nutrition-related diseases

As nutrition-related chronic diseases have become more and more frequent, the importance of dietary prevention has also increased. Dietary fat plays a major role in human nutrition, and modification of fat and/or fatty acid intake could have a preventive potential. The aim of the guideline of the German Nutrition Society (DGE) was to systematically evaluate the evidence for the prevention of the widespread diseases obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, dyslipoproteinaemia, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, and cancer through the intake of fat or fatty acids. The main results can be summarized as follows: it was concluded with convincing evidence that a reduced intake of total and saturated fat as well as a larger intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) at the expense of saturated fatty acids (SFA) reduces the concentration of total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol in plasma. Furthermore, there is convincing evidence that a high intake of trans fatty acids increases risk of dyslipoproteinaemia and that a high intake of long-chain polyunsaturated n-3 fatty acids reduces the triglyceride concentration in plasma. A high fat intake increases the risk of obesity with probable evidence when total energy intake is not controlled for (ad libitum diet). When energy intake is controlled for, there is probable evidence for no association between fat intake and risk of obesity. A larger intake of PUFA at the expense of SFA reduces risk of CHD with probable evidence. Furthermore, there is probable evidence that a high intake of long-chain polyunsaturated n-3 fatty acids reduces risk of hypertension and CHD. With probable evidence, a high trans fatty acid intake increases risk of CHD. The practical consequences for current dietary recommendations are described at the end of this article