In the last five years, the turnover rate of the operation employees in Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) has augmented and attend a critical level, particularly with the government's early ...retirement attractive approach. Bapco starts to lose highly experienced employees who have a significant impact on the performance of the company. Moreover, the new oil discovery and the modernization of the production units push Bapco to minimize the turnover rate and retain talents to stay competitive. This study examines how organizational commitment has affected the Bahrain Petroleum Company's operation employees turnover intent. The tridimensional model of (Meyer and Allen in Commitment in the workplace: theory, research, and application, Sage,
1997
) was used to evaluate organizational commitment. In addition, Abrams et al. (Personality Soc Psychol Bull 24(10): 1027–1039,
1998
) model of Turnover Intention was used to examine employee intents to leave the firm. This work reports on a quantitative study of the Bapco operations employees. 154 questionnaires were collected, and the data were analysed with SPSS version 23. The results confirm a significant impact of the three dimensions of OC on TI. These results join previous research and conclude that OC can be used to understand and reduce Bapco operation employees' TI.
Like all obligate intracellular pathogens, influenza A virus (IAV) reprograms host cell's glucose and lipid metabolism to promote its own replication. However, the impact of influenza infection on ...white adipose tissue (WAT), a key tissue in the control of systemic energy homeostasis, has not been yet characterized. Here, we show that influenza infection induces alterations in whole-body glucose metabolism that persist long after the virus has been cleared. We report depot-specific changes in the WAT of IAV-infected mice, notably characterized by the appearance of thermogenic brown-like adipocytes within the subcutaneous fat depot. Importantly, viral RNA- and viral antigen-harboring cells are detected in the WAT of infected mice. Using in vitro approaches, we find that IAV infection enhances the expression of brown-adipogenesis-related genes in preadipocytes. Overall, our findings shed light on the role that the white adipose tissue, which lies at the crossroads of nutrition, metabolism and immunity, may play in influenza infection.
Effective chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy is dependent on optimal cell culture methods conducive to the activation and expansion of T cells ex vivo, as well as infection with CAR. ...Media formulations used in CAR-T cell manufacturing have not been optimized for gene delivery, cell expansion, and overall potency. Bioactive components and derivatives that support the generation of functionally-competent T cell progeny with long-lasting persistence are largely undefined. Current media formulations rely on fetal bovine serum (FBS) or human serum (HS), which suffer from a lack of consistency or supply issues. We recognize that components of blood cellular fractions that are absent in serum may have therapeutic value. Here we investigate whether a concentrated growth factor extract, purified from human transfusion grade whole blood fractions, and marketed as PhysiologixTM xeno-free (XF) hGFC (Phx), supports CAR-T cell expansion and function. We show that Phx supports T cell proliferation in clinical and research-grade media. We also show that Phx treatment enhances lentiviral-mediated gene expression across a wide range of multiplicity of infections (MOIs). We compared the ability of anti-GD-2 CAR-T cells expanded ex vivo in medium conditioned with either Phx or HS to clear tumor burden in a human xenograft model of neuroblastoma. We show that T cells expanded in Phx have superior engraftment and potency in vivo, as well as CAR-induced cytolytic activity in vitro. Metabolomic profiling revealed several factors unique to Phx that may have relevance for CAR-T cell preclinical discovery, process development, and manufacturing. In particular, we show that carnosine, a biogenic amine modestly enriched in Phx relative to HS, enhances lentiviral gene delivery in activated T cells. By limiting extracellular acidification, carnosine enhances the metabolic fitness of T cells, shifting their metabolic profile from an acidic, stressed state toward an oxidative, energetic state. These findings are very informative regarding potential derivatives to include in medium customized for gene delivery and overall potency for T cell adoptive immunotherapies.
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Media formulations used in CAR-T cell therapies have not been optimized for gene delivery, cell expansion, and overall potency. Ghassemi et al. report that anti-GD2 CAR-T cells expanded in medium conditioned with a concentrated growth factor extract have superior engraftment and potency in a human xenograft model of neuroblastoma.
Purpose. Workplace stress is a big challenge for employees and organizations. This research explores employees’ stressors working in Bahrain’s hospitality and tourism industry during the COVID-19 ...pandemic. Study design. First, a questionnaire was distributed to 172 employees, which helped to assess employees’ stress levels. Then 18 semi-directive interviews were conducted, and the data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Following the usual content analysis method, an analysis grid was made by switching back and forth between the corpus and the definition of categories. Findings. The study’s results highlighted new occupational stressors: “the pandemic stressors” and their effects on Bahraini tourism and hospitality professionals. The COVID-19 pandemic stressors are more specific to the context of the health crisis, such as the intolerance of uncertainty, isolation and social distancing, the risk of contamination, and job security. Value of the results. The results of this paper revealed different stressors related to the job and stressors specific to the pandemic. The findings will help managers implement preventive measures to reduce the spread of infection, protect workers, and improve employees’ well-being in the context of the pandemic. The results can also help set up procedures to manage crises in the future.
Multiple robot systems have become a major study concern in the field of robotic research. Their control becomes unreliable and even infeasible if the number of robots increases. In this paper, a new ...dynamic distributed particle swarm optimization (D
2
PSO) algorithm is proposed for trajectory path planning of multiple robots in order to find collision-free optimal path for each robot in the environment. The proposed approach consists in calculating two local optima detectors, LOD
pBest
and LOD
gBest
. Particles which are unable to improve their personal best and global best for predefined number of successive iterations would be replaced with restructured ones. Stagnation and local optima problems would be avoided by adding diversity to the population, without losing the fast convergence characteristic of PSO. Experiments with multiple robots are provided and proved effectiveness of such approach compared with the distributed PSO.
Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma masquerading as liver abscess, and presenting with fever, is a very rare situation and should be considered in nonresolving liver abscess. Only few cases were reported ...in the literature. This entity is characterized by late diagnosis and poor prognosis.
Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma masquerading as liver abscess, and presenting with fever, is a very rare situation and should be considered in nonresolving liver abscess. Only few cases were reported in the literature. This entity is characterized by late diagnosis and poor prognosis.
Tuberculosis poses a real public health problem inTunisia.We report an 80-year old patient, immunocompetent, who has initial presentation of a painless ulcerative lesions of the glans penis. A ...history of pulmonary tuberculosis was not present.The physical examination revealed an indurated glans penis covered with blackish crusts and small ulcerations. A biopsy of the lesion was undertaken and histological examination was confirmed the diagnosis of tuberculosis of glans.Others investigations was performed without finding any abnormalities He responded well to anti-tubercular treatment with complete resolution of lesions in six months.
•Tuberculosis poses a real public health problem in endemic countries.•Tuberculosis of the glans penis is an uncommon presentation of tuberculosis.This is the first case to be reported in Africa.•Clinical presentation is extremely varied.•Diagnostic confirmation is based on histological study aided by culture.•Antibiotic therapy for tuberculosis is the basis of treatment.
The Multi-Robot Task Allocation (MRTA) problem has recently become a key research topic. Task allocation is the problem of mapping tasks to robots, such that the most appropriate robot is selected to ...perform the most fitting task, leading to all tasks being optimally accomplished. Expanding the number of tasks and robots may cause the collaboration among the robots to become tougher. Since this process requires high computational time, this paper describes a technique that reduces the size of the explored state space, by partitioning the tasks into clusters. In real-world problems, the absence of information regarding the number of clusters is ordinarily occurring. Hence, a dynamic clustering is auspicious for partitioning the tasks to an appropriate number of clusters. In this paper, we address the problem of MRTA by putting forward a new simple, automatic and efficient clustering algorithm of the robots’ tasks based on a dynamic distributed particle swarm optimization, namely, ACD2PSO. Our approach is made out of two stages: stage I groups the tasks into clusters using the dynamic distributed particle swarm optimization (D2PSO) algorithm and stage II allocates the robots to the clusters. The assignment of robots to the clusters is represented as multiple traveling salesman problems (MTSP). Computational experiments were carried out to prove the effectiveness of our approach in term of clustering time, cost, and the MRTA time, compared to the distributed particle swarm optimization (dPSO) and genetic algorithm (GA). Thanks to the D2PSO algorithm, stagnation and local optima issues are avoided by adding assorted variety to the population, without losing the fast convergence of PSO.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) arising from hepatic adenoma is an infrequent situation. Only a few cases were reported in the literature. We present a rare case of hepatocellular carcinoma arising ...from HA in a young woman with no medication history of oral contraceptives. Surgical resection is the only available treatment.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) arising from hepatic adenoma is an infrequent situation. Only a few cases were reported in the literature. We present a rare case of hepatocellular carcinoma arising from HA in a young woman with no medication history of oral contraceptives. Surgical resection is the only available treatment.
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