In today’s connected world, customer engagement behaviors are very important. Many companies launch initiatives to stimulate customer engagement. However, despite evidence that customer engagement ...behavior also matters to shareholders, academic research on the firm value consequences of customer engagement campaigns is limited. This study is the first to investigate the value-related consequences of firm-initiated customer engagement behaviors, using shareholder evaluations of the public announcements of such initiatives. We find that companies’ customer engagement initiatives, on average, decrease market value, which is likely because the shareholders are sensitive to the risk of these initiatives backfiring. Nevertheless, initiatives that stimulate word-of-mouth are viewed less negatively than initiatives that solicit customer feedback, as are initiatives that are supported by social media. Companies that operate in a competitive environment or do not advertise much can create value by stimulating customer engagement, while companies with a strong corporate reputation are likely to not benefit from it.
Summary
Over the last decades, there was increasing evidence for the presence of innate immune memory in living organisms. In this review, we compare the innate immune memory of various organisms ...with a focus on phylogenetics. We discuss the acquisition and molecular basis of immune memory and we describe the innate immune memory paradigm and its role in host defense during evolution. The molecular characterization of innate immunological memory in diverse organisms and host‐parasite systems reconciles mechanisms with phenomena and paves the way to molecular comprehension of innate immune memory. We also revise the traditional classification of innate and adaptive immunity in jawed vertebrates. We emphasize that innate immune responses have the capacity to be “primed” or “trained”, thereby exerting a yet unknown type of immunological memory upon re‐infection.
An empirical orthogonal function–based technique called Data Interpolating Empirical Orthogonal Functions (DINEOF) is used in a multivariate approach to reconstruct missing data. Sea surface ...temperature (SST), chlorophyll a concentration, and QuikSCAT winds are used to assess the benefit of a multivariate reconstruction. In particular, the combination of SST plus chlorophyll, SST plus lagged SST plus chlorophyll, and SST plus lagged winds have been studied. To assess the quality of the reconstructions, the reconstructed SST and winds have been compared to in situ data. The combination of SST plus chlorophyll, as well as SST plus lagged SST plus chlorophyll, significantly improves the results obtained by the reconstruction of SST alone. All the experiments correctly represent the SST, and an upwelling/downwelling event in the West Florida Shelf reproduced by the reconstructed data is studied.
Glaucoma is a progressive optic neuropathy that is the second leading cause of preventable blindness worldwide, after cataract formation. A rise in the intraocular pressure (IOP) is considered to be ...a major risk factor for glaucoma and is associated with an abnormal increase of resistance to aqueous humour outflow from the anterior chamber. Glaucoma drainage devices have been developed to provide an alternative pathway through which aqueous humour can effectively exit the anterior chamber, thereby reducing IOP. These devices include the traditional aqueous shunts with tube-plate design, as well as more recent implants, such as the trabeculectomy-modifying EX-PRESS
implant and the new minimally invasive glaucoma surgery (MIGS) devices. In this review, we will describe each implant in detail, focusing on their efficacy in reducing IOP and safety profile. Additionally, a critical and evidence-based comparison between these implants will be provided. Finally, we will propose potential developments that may help to improve the performance of current devices.
Screening for cancer in patients with unprovoked venous thromboembolism (VTE) often is considered, but clinicians need precise data on cancer prevalence, risk factors, and the effect of different ...types of screening strategies.
To estimate the prevalence of occult cancer in patients with unprovoked VTE, including in subgroups of different ages or those that have had different types of screening.
MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials up to 19 January 2016.
Prospective studies evaluating cancer screening strategies in adults with unprovoked VTE that began enrolling patients after 1 January 2000 and had at least 12 months of follow-up.
2 investigators independently reviewed abstracts and full-text articles and independently assessed risk of bias.
10 eligible studies were identified. Individual data were obtained for all 2316 patients. Mean age was 60 years; 58% of patients received extensive screening. The 12-month period prevalence of cancer after VTE diagnosis was 5.2% (95% CI, 4.1% to 6.5%). The point prevalence of cancer was higher in patients who had extensive screening than in those who had more limited screening initially (odds ratio OR, 2.0 CI, 1.2 to 3.4) but not at 12 months (OR, 1.4 CI, 0.89 to 2.1). Cancer prevalence increased linearly with age and was 7-fold higher in patients aged 50 years or older than in younger patients (OR, 7.1 CI, 3.1 to 16).
Variation in patient characteristics and extensive screening strategies; unavailability of long-term mortality data.
Occult cancer is detected in 1 in 20 patients within a year of receiving a diagnosis of unprovoked VTE. Older age is associated with a higher cancer prevalence. Although an extensive screening strategy initially may detect more cancer cases than limited screening, whether this translates into improved patient outcomes remains unclear.
None. (PROSPERO: CRD42016033371).
► The covariance function in DIVA is influenced by the physical boundaries (coastline, bottom) and by dynamics (current, diffusion). ► The analysis performed using DIVA and OI in an infinite domain ...are equivalent. ► The real data covariance can be accessed using two concurrent executions of DIVA. ► The error fields provided by OI and DIVA are similar.
The Data Interpolating Variational Analysis (DIVA) is a method designed to interpolate irregularly-spaced, noisy data onto any desired location, in most cases on regular grids. It is the combination of a particular methodology, based on the minimisation of a cost function, and a numerically efficient method, based on a finite-element solver. The cost function penalises the misfit between the observations and the reconstructed field, as well as the regularity or smoothness of the field. The method bears similarities to the smoothing splines, where the second derivatives of the field are also penalised.
The intrinsic advantages of the method are its natural way to take into account topographic and dynamic constraints (coasts, advection, etc.) and its capacity to handle large data sets, frequently encountered in oceanography. The method provides gridded fields in two dimensions, usually in horizontal layers. Three-dimension fields are obtained by stacking horizontal layers.
In the present work, we summarize the background of the method and describe the possible methods to compute the error field associated to the analysis. In particular, we present new developments leading to a more consistent error estimation, by determining numerically the real covariance function in DIVA, which is never formulated explicitly, contrarily to Optimal Interpolation. The real covariance function is obtained by two concurrent executions of DIVA, the first providing the covariance for the second. With this improvement, the error field is now perfectly consistent with the inherent background covariance in all cases.
A two-dimension application using salinity measurements in the Mediterranean Sea is presented. Applied on these measurements, Optimal Interpolation and DIVA provided very similar gridded fields (correlation: 98.6%, RMS of the difference: 0.02). The method using the real covariance produces an error field similar to the one of OI, except in the coastal areas.
Nonhost resistance (NHR) is the most prevalent form of plant immunity. In Arabidopsis, NHR requires membrane‐localized ATP‐binding cassette (ABC) transporter PENETRATION (PEN) 3. Upon perception of ...pathogen‐associated molecular patterns, PEN3 becomes phosphorylated, suggestive of PEN3 regulation by post‐translational modification. Here, we investigated the PEN3 protein interaction network. We probed the Arabidopsis protein microarray AtPMA‐5000 with the N‐terminal cytoplasmic domain of PEN3. Several of the proteins identified to interact with PEN3 in vitro represent cellular Ca²⁺ sensors, including calmodulin (CaM) 3, CaM7 and several CaM‐like proteins, pointing to the importance of Ca²⁺ sensing to PEN3‐mediated NHR. We demonstrated co‐localization of PEN3 and CaM7, and we confirmed PEN3–CaM interaction in vitro and in vivo by PEN3 pull‐down with CaM Sepharose, CaM overlay assay and bimolecular fluorescence complementation. We also show that just like in pen3, NHR to the nonadapted fungal pathogens Phakopsora pachyrhizi and Blumeria graminis f.sp. hordei is compromised in the Arabidopsis cam7 and pen3 cam7 mutants. Our study discloses CaM7 as a PEN3‐interacting protein crucial to Arabidopsis NHR and emphasizes the importance of Ca²⁺ sensing to plant immunity.
The Black Sea northwestern shelf (NWS) is a shallow eutrophic area in which the seasonal stratification of the water column isolates the bottom waters from the atmosphere. This prevents ventilation ...from counterbalancing the large consumption of oxygen due to respiration in the bottom waters and in the sediments, and sets the stage for the development of seasonal hypoxia. A three-dimensional (3-D) coupled physical–biogeochemical model is used to investigate the dynamics of bottom hypoxia in the Black Sea NWS, first at seasonal and then at interannual scales (1981–2009), and to differentiate its driving factors (climatic versus eutrophication). Model skills are evaluated by a quantitative comparison of the model results to 14 123 in situ oxygen measurements available in the NOAA World Ocean and the Black Sea Commission databases, using different error metrics. This validation exercise shows that the model is able to represent the seasonal and interannual variability of the oxygen concentration and of the occurrence of hypoxia, as well as the spatial distribution of oxygen-depleted waters. During the period 1981–2009, each year exhibits seasonal bottom hypoxia at the end of summer. This phenomenon essentially covers the northern part of the NWS – which receives large inputs of nutrients from the Danube, Dniester and Dnieper rivers – and extends, during the years of severe hypoxia, towards the Romanian bay of Constanta. An index H which merges the aspects of the spatial and temporal extension of the hypoxic event is proposed to quantify, for each year, the intensity of hypoxia as an environmental stressor. In order to explain the interannual variability of H and to disentangle its drivers, we analyze the long time series of model results by means of a stepwise multiple linear regression. This statistical model gives a general relationship that links the intensity of hypoxia to eutrophication and climate-related variables. A total of 82% of the interannual variability of H is explained by the combination of four predictors: the annual riverine nitrate load (N), the sea surface temperature in the month preceding stratification (Ts), the amount of semi-labile organic matter accumulated in the sediments (C) and the sea surface temperature during late summer (Tf). Partial regression indicates that the climatic impact on hypoxia is almost as important as that of eutrophication. Accumulation of organic matter in the sediments introduces an important inertia in the recovery process after eutrophication, with a typical timescale of 9.3 yr. Seasonal fluctuations and the heterogeneous spatial distribution complicate the monitoring of bottom hypoxia, leading to contradictory conclusions when the interpretation is done from different sets of data. In particular, it appears that the recovery reported in the literature after 1995 was overestimated due to the use of observations concentrated in areas and months not typically affected by hypoxia. This stresses the urgent need for a dedicated monitoring effort in the Black Sea NWS focused on the areas and months concerned by recurrent hypoxic events.
Practice guidelines for the endocrine evaluation and treatment of pituitary incidentalomas are presented, including indications for surgery.
Objective:
The aim was to formulate practice guidelines ...for endocrine evaluation and treatment of pituitary incidentalomas.
Consensus Process:
Consensus was guided by systematic reviews of evidence and discussions through a series of conference calls and e-mails and one in-person meeting.
Conclusions:
We recommend that patients with a pituitary incidentaloma undergo a complete history and physical examination, laboratory evaluations screening for hormone hypersecretion and for hypopituitarism, and a visual field examination if the lesion abuts the optic nerves or chiasm. We recommend that patients with incidentalomas not meeting criteria for surgical removal be followed with clinical assessments, neuroimaging (magnetic resonance imaging at 6 months for macroincidentalomas, 1 yr for a microincidentaloma, and thereafter progressively less frequently if unchanged in size), visual field examinations for incidentalomas that abut or compress the optic nerve and chiasm (6 months and yearly), and endocrine testing for macroincidentalomas (6 months and yearly) after the initial evaluations. We recommend that patients with a pituitary incidentaloma be referred for surgery if they have a visual field deficit; signs of compression by the tumor leading to other visual abnormalities, such as ophthalmoplegia, or neurological compromise due to compression by the lesion; a lesion abutting the optic nerves or chiasm; pituitary apoplexy with visual disturbance; or if the incidentaloma is a hypersecreting tumor other than a prolactinoma.
Reconstructions of Mediterranean ocean temperature fields back to 1950 show a proxy relationship between heat content changes in the North Atlantic and the Western Mediterranean Deep Water (WMDW) ...formed in the Gulf of Lions in winter, because of consistent air‐sea heat fluxes over these areas, strongly correlated to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).
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