PurposeThe purpose of this empirical study is to develop an understanding of how human resource (HR) managers employed by organizations with an explicit sustainability agenda view employees as ...stakeholders, and to explore how such views are operationalized in HR policies and practices.Design/methodology/approachAn interpretive approach using data from 35 semi-structured interviews was adopted for this study. Data were transcribed and analyzed using the Gioia methodology.FindingsComparison of approaches to sustainable human resource management (HRM) revealed three distinctive conceptualizations of employees with respect to the sustainability agenda – employees as a driving force for sustainability, employees as consumers of HR practices and employees as members of a community. Strong levels of integration between the HRM and sustainability agendas were only evidenced in those organizations where an attempt had been made to address all three roles simultaneously. Findings suggest that engagement with a sustainability agenda widens the remit of the HRM function, underscoring the importance of employees' roles as consumers of HR practices and as members of wider communities.Practical implicationsBy addressing the integration of HRM with a sustainability agenda, this article helps practitioners recognize diversity among employees' roles and the varying associated needs. Examples of policy and practice initiatives that effectively address these needs are provided.Originality/valueHRM has been widely criticized for overemphasizing shareholder value, thereby lacking in attention to the needs of other stakeholders, including employees. Findings from this study suggest the holistic approach advocated by a sustainability agenda can effectively quell these concerns.
Human nervous system development is an intricate and protracted process that requires precise spatiotemporal transcriptional regulation. We generated tissue-level and single-cell transcriptomic data ...from up to 16 brain regions covering prenatal and postnatal rhesus macaque development. Integrative analysis with complementary human data revealed that global intraspecies (ontogenetic) and interspecies (phylogenetic) regional transcriptomic differences exhibit concerted cup-shaped patterns, with a late fetal-to-infancy (perinatal) convergence. Prenatal neocortical transcriptomic patterns revealed transient topographic gradients, whereas postnatal patterns largely reflected functional hierarchy. Genes exhibiting heterotopic and heterochronic divergence included those transiently enriched in the prenatal prefrontal cortex or linked to autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia. Our findings shed light on transcriptomic programs underlying the evolution of human brain development and the pathogenesis of neuropsychiatric disorders.
Most organisms show substantial changes in size or morphology after they become independent of their parents and have to find their own food. Furthermore, the rate at which these changes occur ...generally depends on the amount of food they ingest. In this book, André de Roos and Lennart Persson advance a synthetic and individual-based theory of the effects of this plastic ontogenetic development on the dynamics of populations and communities.
De Roos and Persson show how the effects of ontogenetic development on ecological dynamics critically depend on the efficiency with which differently sized individuals convert food into new biomass. Differences in this efficiency--or ontogenetic asymmetry--lead to bottlenecks in and thus population regulation by either maturation or reproduction. De Roos and Persson investigate the community consequences of these bottlenecks for trophic configurations that vary in the number and type of interacting species and in the degree of ontogenetic niche shifts exhibited by their individuals. They also demonstrate how insights into the effects of maturation and reproduction limitation on community equilibrium carry over to the dynamics of size-structured populations and give rise to different types of cohort-driven cycles.
Featuring numerous examples and tests of modeling predictions, this book provides a pioneering and extensive theoretical and empirical treatment of the ecology of ontogenetic growth and development in organisms, emphasizing the importance of an individual-based perspective for understanding population and community dynamics.
The use of ionic liquids (ILs) for biomass processing has attracted considerable attention recently as it provides distinct features for pre‐treated biomass and fractionated materials in comparison ...to conventional processes. Process intensification through integration of dissolution, fractionation, hydrolysis and/or conversion in one pot should be accomplished to maximise economic and technological feasibility. The possibility of using alternative ILs capable not only of dissolving and deconstructing selectively biomass but also of catalysing reactions simultaneously are a potential solution of this problem. In this Review a critical overview of the state of the art and perspectives of the hydrolysis and conversion of cellulose and lignocellulosic biomass using acidic ILs using no additional catalyst are provided. The efficiency of the process is mainly considered with regard to the hydrolysis and conversion yields obtained and the selectivity of each reaction. The process conditions can be easily tuned to obtain sugars and/or platform chemicals, such as furans and organic acids. On the other hand, product recovery from the IL and its purity are the main challenges for the acceptance of this technology as a feasible alternative to conventional processes.
Biomass with acidic ionic liquids: The unique ability of acidic ionic liquids (ILs) to catalyse lignocellulosic biomass without additional catalyst within the biorefinery approach has attracted considerable attention recently. The selective production of monosaccharides, furans and organic acids from biomass can be performed in a one‐pot process under specific conditions. The acidic properties of ILs play a crucial role in biomass processing. The product and IL recovery are the main challenges of this new technology.
Brain development and function depend on the precise regulation of gene expression. However, our understanding of the complexity and dynamics of the transcriptome of the human brain is incomplete. ...Here we report the generation and analysis of exon-level transcriptome and associated genotyping data, representing males and females of different ethnicities, from multiple brain regions and neocortical areas of developing and adult post-mortem human brains. We found that 86 per cent of the genes analysed were expressed, and that 90 per cent of these were differentially regulated at the whole-transcript or exon level across brain regions and/or time. The majority of these spatio-temporal differences were detected before birth, with subsequent increases in the similarity among regional transcriptomes. The transcriptome is organized into distinct co-expression networks, and shows sex-biased gene expression and exon usage. We also profiled trajectories of genes associated with neurobiological categories and diseases, and identified associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms and gene expression. This study provides a comprehensive data set on the human brain transcriptome and insights into the transcriptional foundations of human neurodevelopment.
The brains of humans and other mammals are highly vulnerable to interruptions in blood flow and decreases in oxygen levels. Here we describe the restoration and maintenance of microcirculation and ...molecular and cellular functions of the intact pig brain under ex vivo normothermic conditions up to four hours post-mortem. We have developed an extracorporeal pulsatile-perfusion system and a haemoglobin-based, acellular, non-coagulative, echogenic, and cytoprotective perfusate that promotes recovery from anoxia, reduces reperfusion injury, prevents oedema, and metabolically supports the energy requirements of the brain. With this system, we observed preservation of cytoarchitecture; attenuation of cell death; and restoration of vascular dilatory and glial inflammatory responses, spontaneous synaptic activity, and active cerebral metabolism in the absence of global electrocorticographic activity. These findings demonstrate that under appropriate conditions the isolated, intact large mammalian brain possesses an underappreciated capacity for restoration of microcirculation and molecular and cellular activity after a prolonged post-mortem interval.
In metagenomic analyses of microbiomes, one of the first steps is usually the taxonomic classification of reads by comparison to a database of previously taxonomically classified genomes. While ...different studies comparing metagenomic taxonomic classification methods have determined that different tools are 'best', there are two tools that have been used the most to-date: Kraken (
-mer-based classification against a user-constructed database) and MetaPhlAn (classification by alignment to clade-specific marker genes), the latest versions of which are Kraken2 and MetaPhlAn 3, respectively. We found large discrepancies in both the proportion of reads that were classified as well as the number of species that were identified when we used both Kraken2 and MetaPhlAn 3 to classify reads within metagenomes from human-associated or environmental datasets. We then investigated which of these tools would give classifications closest to the real composition of metagenomic samples using a range of simulated and mock samples and examined the combined impact of tool-parameter-database choice on the taxonomic classifications given. This revealed that there may not be a one-size-fits-all 'best' choice. While Kraken2 can achieve better overall performance, with higher precision, recall and F1 scores, as well as alpha- and beta-diversity measures closer to the known composition than MetaPhlAn 3, the computational resources required for this may be prohibitive for many researchers, and the default database and parameters should not be used. We therefore conclude that the best tool-parameter-database choice for a particular application depends on the scientific question of interest, which performance metric is most important for this question and the limit of available computational resources.
Protein glycosylation is an important post-translational modification associated, among others, with diseases and the efficacy of biopharmaceuticals. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization ...(MALDI) time-of-fight (TOF) mass spectrometry (MS) can be performed to study glycosylation in a high-throughput manner, but is hampered by the instability and ionization bias experienced by sialylated glycan species. Stabilization and neutralization of these sialic acids can be achieved by permethylation or by specific carboxyl group derivatization with the possibility of discrimination between α2,3- and α2,6-linked sialic acids. However, these methods typically require relatively pure glycan samples, show sensitivity to side reactions, and need harsh conditions or long reaction times. We established a rapid, robust and linkage-specific high-throughput method for sialic acid stabilization and MALDI-TOF-MS analysis, to allow direct modification of impure glycan-containing mixtures such as PNGase F-released human plasma N-glycome. Using a combination of carboxylic acid activators in ethanol achieved near-complete ethyl esterification of α2,6-linked sialic acids and lactonization of α2,3-linked variants, in short time using mild conditions. Glycans were recovered by hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography solid phase extraction and analyzed by MALDI-TOF-MS in reflectron positive mode with 2,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid as the matrix substance. Analysis of the human plasma N-glycome allowed high-throughput detection and relative quantitation of more than 100 distinct N-glycan compositions with varying sialic acid linkages.
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