The evolution of C₄ grassland ecosystems in eastern Africa has been intensely studied because of the potential influence of vegetation on mammalian evolution, including that of our own lineage, ...hominins. Although a handful of sparse vegetation records exists from middle and early Miocene terrestrial fossil sites, there is no comprehensive record of vegetation through the Neogene. Here we present a vegetation record spanning the Neogene and Quaternary Periods that documents the appearance and subsequent expansion of C₄ grasslands in eastern Africa. Carbon isotope ratios from terrestrial plant wax biomarkers deposited in marine sediments indicate constant C₃ vegetation from ∼24 Ma to 10 Ma, when C₄ grasses first appeared. From this time forward, C₄ vegetation increases monotonically to present, with a coherent signal between marine core sites located in the Somali Basin and the Red Sea. The response of mammalian herbivores to the appearance of C₄ grasses at 10 Ma is immediate, as evidenced from existing records of mammalian diets from isotopic analyses of tooth enamel. The expansion of C₄ vegetation in eastern Africa is broadly mirrored by increasing proportions of C₄-based foods in hominin diets, beginning at 3.8 Ma in Australopithecus and, slightly later, Kenyanthropus. This continues into the late Pleistocene in Paranthropus, whereas Homo maintains a flexible diet. The biomarker vegetation record suggests the increase in open, C₄ grassland ecosystems over the last 10 Ma may have operated as a selection pressure for traits and behaviors in Homo such as bipedalism, flexible diets, and complex social structure.
Lawrence of Arabia is widely considered one of the ten greatest films ever made - though more often by film-goers and film-makers than by critics. This monograph argues that popular wisdom is ...correct, and that Lean's film is a unique blend of visionary image-making, narrative power, mythopoetic charm and psychological acuteness.
The article posits the concept of economy of mutuality as an intellectual mediation space for shifts in emphasis between market and social structures within economic theory and practice. Economy of ...mutuality, it is contended, provides an alternative frame of reference to the dichotomy of market economy and social economy, for inquiry about what business is for and what values it presupposes and creates. The article centers around the objective of gaining a broadened understanding of business so as to include not just market economy, but social enterprise and social economy. In pursuit of this objective, a range of various archetypes of business enterprise are considered in light of higher ends of economic life. The highest telos of business encompassing all such archetypes, it is argued, is founded on reciprocity and integral human development. The article concludes that, compared to market economy per se, economy of mutuality provides a better conceptual framework for business in undertaking the challenges of sustainability.
ABSTRACT
Purpose
The desire to measure faculty’s teaching productivity has led many medical school departments to create academic productivity metrics and evaluation systems to track clinical and/or ...nonclinical teaching efforts. The authors investigated these metrics and their impact on teaching productivity and quality in the literature.
Methods
The authors performed a scoping review using keywords to query three publication databases. A total of 649 articles were identified. The search strategy resulted in the screening of a total of 496 articles after the removal of duplicate articles, of which 479 were excluded. A total of 17 papers met the criteria.
Results
Four of the 17 institutions exclusively measured clinical teaching productivity, and all four reported 11-20% gains in teaching or clinical productivity. Four of the six institutions that tracked only nonclinical teaching productivity shared quantitative data and experienced a variety of gains from measuring teaching productivity that centered on greater participation in teaching. The six institutions that monitored both clinical and nonclinical teaching productivity provided quantitative data. The reported effects ranged from greater learner attendance at teaching events to increases in clinical throughput and teaching hours per faculty member. Five of the 17 institutions tracked quality using qualitative measures, and none of these institutions observed a decrease in teaching quality.
Conclusions
Setting metrics and measurement of teaching seems to have had a generally positive effect on amounts of teaching; however, their impacts on the quality of teaching are less clear. The diversity of metrics reported makes it difficult to generalize the impact of these teaching metrics.
Connectors: A Catalyst for Team Creativity Autrey, Romana L.; Drasgow, Fritz; Jackson, Kevin E. ...
The Accounting review,
01/2024, Letnik:
99, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
ABSTRACT
Creativity drives profit in an idea economy, and many companies organize teams to facilitate creativity. This paper investigates the strategic deployment of individuals to boost a team’s ...creativity. More individualistic team members tend to generate highly original ideas yet are less likely to share these ideas. We theorize that adding a connector—an individual strongly predisposed to form and foster relationships—to a team will enable more idea sharing among individualistic team members, thus increasing the likelihood that the team’s creative potential will be realized. We leverage a new conceptualization of the “connector” construct to identify connectors and then use an experiment to study the impact of their presence or absence on team creative performance. Our results support these predictions and suggest that connectors improve team creativity by enabling others to share in the creative process and not because connectors themselves exhibit greater creative performance than their average peer.
Data Availability: The data reported in the paper are available from the authors.
We provide theory and experimental evidence consistent with an unintended, causal relation between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) performance and investors' estimates of fundamental value that ...can be attenuated by investors' explicit assessment of CSR performance. Consistent with "affect-as-information" theory from psychology, we find that investors who are exposed to, but do not explicitly assess, CSR performance derive higher fundamental value estimates in response to positive CSR performance, and lower fundamental value estimates in response to negative CSR performance. Explicit assessment of CSR performance, however, significantly diminishes this effect, indicating that the effect among investors who do not explicitly assess CSR performance is unintended; i.e., they unintentionally use their affective reactions to CSR performance in estimating fundamental value. Supplemental findings shed light on consequences of these fundamental value estimates: investors who do not explicitly assess CSR performance rely on their unintentionally influenced estimates of fundamental value to increase the price they are willing to pay to invest in the stock of a firm with positive CSR performance. Overall, our theory and findings contribute to the CSR and affect literatures in accounting by revealing the contingent nature of how and to what extent CSR performance influences investors' beliefs about firm value and the bids these investors are likely to make in equity markets.
Few studies have examined outcomes of catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients with heart failure (HF) with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF).
The purpose of this study was to ...compare outcomes of AF ablation in patients with HFpEF vs HF with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF).
We performed a retrospective study of 230 patients with HF who underwent AF ablation, including 97 (42.2%) with HFrEF and 133 (57.8%) with HFpEF. Outcomes included adverse events, symptoms (Mayo AF Symptom Inventory MAFSI), New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class, and freedom from recurrent atrial arrhythmia at 12 months.
Overall, 150 of 230 patients had nonparoxysmal AF (62.8% HFpEF vs 63.0% HFrEF). Patients with HFpEF had a smaller mean left atrial diameter (4.4 ± 0.8 cm vs 4.7 ± 0.7 cm; P = .013) and were less likely to be taking a beta-blocker at baseline (72.9% vs 85.6%; P = .022). Median (Q1, Q3) procedure times (233 minutes 192, 290 vs 233.5 minutes 193.0, 297.5; P = .780) and adverse events such as acute HF (3.8% vs 6.2%; P = .395) were similar between HFpEF and HFrEF patients. Freedom from recurrent atrial arrhythmia was not significantly different in HFpEF vs HFrEF patients (33.9% vs 32.6%; adjusted hazard ratio 1.47; 95% confidence interval 0.72-3.01), with similar improvements in NYHA functional class (-0.32 vs -0.19; P = .135) and MAFSI symptom severity (-0.23 vs -0.09; P = .116) after ablation.
Catheter ablation of AF seems to have similar effectiveness in patients with HF, regardless of presence of systolic dysfunction. There were no significant differences in procedural characteristics, arrhythmia-free recurrence, or functional improvements between patients with HFpEF and those with HFrEF.
Brain temperature, as an independent therapeutic target variable, has received increasingly intense clinical attention. To date, brain hypothermia represents the most potent neuroprotectant in ...laboratory studies. Although the impact of brain temperature is prevalent in a number of common human diseases including: head trauma, stroke, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, mood disorders, headaches, and neurodegenerative disorders, it is evident and well recognized that the therapeutic application of induced hypothermia is limited to a few highly selected clinical conditions such as cardiac arrest and hypoxic ischemic neonatal encephalopathy. Efforts to understand the fundamental aspects of brain temperature regulation are therefore critical for the development of safe, effective, and pragmatic clinical treatments for patients with brain injuries. Although centrally-mediated mechanisms to maintain a stable body temperature are relatively well established, very little is clinically known about brain temperature's spatial and temporal distribution, its physiological and pathological fluctuations, and the mechanism underlying brain thermal homeostasis. The human brain, a metabolically "expensive" organ with intense heat production, is sensitive to fluctuations in temperature with regards to its functional activity and energy efficiency. In this review, we discuss several critical aspects concerning the fundamental properties of brain temperature from a clinical perspective.
Using an intracanalicular dexamethasone insert or topical prednisolone following iStent and Hydrus surgery provided similar short-term control of postoperative inflammation.
The purpose of this study ...was to compare postoperative inflammation in patients who received an intracanalicular dexamethasone insert or topical prednisolone after iStent or Hydrus insertion during cataract surgery.
Patients receiving a dexamethasone insert after iStent or Hydrus insertion were included and compared with age-matched controls who received topical prednisolone. Preoperative data were recorded. Postoperative inflammatory cell and the proportion of patients with zero anterior chamber cells was recorded at month 1. Postoperative intraocular pressure (IOP) and rate of cystoid macular edema were recorded at months 1 and 3.
Forty eyes receiving topical prednisolone were compared with 35 eyes receiving a dexamethasone insert after iStent or Hydrus insertion. The mean postoperative inflammatory cell for the topical group at month 1 was 0.2±0.3, and the dexamethasone group, 0.3±0.5 ( P =0.816). Overall, 70% of patients in the topical group had zero anterior chamber cell at postoperative month 1 compared with 75.8% in the dexamethasone group ( P =0.583). The mean preoperative IOP for the topical group was 18.8±5.5 and the dexamethasone group was 17.1±4.1 ( P =0.064). Mean postoperative IOP for the topical group at months 1 and 3 was 17.6±6.4 and 15.1±3.1, respectively and the dexamethasone group, 17.5±4.8 and 15.0±3.4, respectively ( P =0.772 and 0.884). One patient developed cystoid macular edema in each group.
There was no statistically significant difference in the proportion of patients who had zero anterior chamber cell at postoperative month 1 between groups receiving intracanalicular dexamethasone insert or topical prednisolone.
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