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Advanced non-viral gene delivery experiments often require co-delivery of multiple nucleic acids. Therefore, the availability of reliable and robust co-transfection methods and defined selection criteria for their use in, e.g., expression of multimeric proteins or mixed RNA/DNA delivery is of utmost importance. Here, we investigated different co- and successive transfection approaches, with particular focus on in vitro transcribed messenger RNA (IVT-mRNA). Expression levels and patterns of two fluorescent protein reporters were determined, using different IVT-mRNA doses, carriers, and cell types. Quantitative parameters determining the efficiency of co-delivery were analyzed for IVT-mRNAs premixed before nanocarrier formation (integrated co-transfection) and when simultaneously transfecting cells with separately formed nanocarriers (parallel co-transfection), which resulted in a much higher level of expression heterogeneity for the two reporters. Successive delivery of mRNA revealed a lower transfection efficiency in the second transfection round. All these differences proved to be more pronounced for low mRNA doses. Concurrent delivery of siRNA with mRNA also indicated the highest co-transfection efficiency for integrated method. However, the maximum efficacy was shown for successive delivery, due to the kinetically different peak output for the two discretely operating entities. Our findings provide guidance for selection of the co-delivery method best suited to accommodate experimental requirements, highlighting in particular the nucleic acid dose-response dependence on co-delivery on the single-cell level.
Issues The last Soviet anti-alcohol campaign of 1985 resulted in considerably reduced alcohol consumption and saved thousands of lives. But once the campaign's policies were abandoned and the Soviet alcohol monopoly broken up, a steep rise in mortality was observed in many of the newly formed successor countries, although some kept their monopolies. Almost 30 years after the campaign's end, the region faces diverse challenges in relation to alcohol.
Approach The present narrative review sheds light on recent drinking trends and alcohol policy developments in the 15 Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries, highlighting the most important setbacks, achievements and best practices. Vignettes of alcohol control policies in Belarus, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania and Uzbekistan are presented to illustrate the recent developments. <br /> Key Findings Over the past decade, drinking levels have declined in almost all FSU countries, paralleled by the introduction of various alcohol-control measures. The so-called three 'best buys' put forward by the World Health Organization to reduce alcohol-attributable burden (taxation and other measures to increase price, restrictions on alcohol availability and marketing) are relatively well implemented across the countries.
Implications In recent years, evidence-based alcohol policies have been actively implemented as a response to the enormous alcohol-attributable burden in many of the countries, although there is big variance across and within different jurisdictions.
Conclusion Strong declines in alcohol consumption were observed in the 15 FSU countries, which have introduced various alcohol control measures in recent years, resulting in a reduction of alcohol consumption in the World Health Organization European region overall.
Background: Voice-controlled intelligent personal assistants (VIPAs), such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, involve artificial intelligence-powered algorithms designed to simulate humans. Their hands-free interface and growing capabilities have a wide range of applications in health care, covering off-clinic education, health monitoring, and communication. However, conflicting factors, such as patient safety and privacy concerns, make it difficult to foresee the further development of VIPAs in health care. <br /> Objective: This study aimed to develop a plausible scenario for the further development of VIPAs in health care to support decision making regarding the procurement of VIPAs in health care organizations. Methods: We conducted a two-stage Delphi study with an internationally recruited panel consisting of voice assistant experts, medical professionals, and representatives of academia, governmental health authorities, and nonprofit health associations having expertise with voice technology. Twenty projections were formulated and evaluated by the panelists. Descriptive statistics were used to derive the desired scenario. <br /> Results: The panelists expect VIPAs to be able to provide solid medical advice based on patients' personal health information and to have human-like conversations. However, in the short term, voice assistants might neither provide frustration-free user experience nor outperform or replace humans in health care. With a high level of consensus, the experts agreed with the potential of VIPAs to support elderly people and be widely used as anamnesis, informational, self-therapy, and communication tools by patients and health care professionals. Although users' and governments' privacy concerns are not expected to decrease in the near future, the panelists believe that strict regulations capable of preventing VIPAs from providing medical help services will not be imposed. <br /> Conclusions: According to the surveyed experts, VIPAs will show notable technological development and gain more user trust in the near future, resulting in widespread application in health care. However, voice assistants are expected to solely support health care professionals in their daily operations and will not be able to outperform or replace medical staff.
Current business organizations want to be more efficient and constantly evolving to find ways to retain talent. It is well established that visionary leadership plays a vital role in organizational success and contributes to a better working environment. This study aims to determine the effect of visionary leadership on employees' perceived job satisfaction. Specifically, it investigates whether the mediators meaningfulness at work and commitment to the leader impact the relationship. I take support from job demand resource theory to explain the overarching model used in this study and broaden-and-build theory to leverage the use of mediators.
To test the hypotheses, evidence was collected in a multi-source, time-lagged design field study of 95 leader-follower dyads. The data was collected in a three-wave study, each survey appearing after one month. Data on employee perception of visionary leadership was collected in T1, data for both mediators were collected in T2, and employee perception of job satisfaction was collected in T3. The findings display that meaningfulness at work and commitment to the leader play positive intervening roles (in the form of a chain) in the indirect influence of visionary leadership on employee perceptions regarding job satisfaction.
This research offers contributions to literature and theory by first broadening the existing knowledge on the effects of visionary leadership on employees. Second, it contributes to the literature on constructs meaningfulness at work, commitment to the leader, and job satisfaction. Third, it sheds light on the mediation mechanism dealing with study variables in line with the proposed model. Fourth, it integrates two theories, job demand resource theory and broaden-and-build theory providing further evidence. Additionally, the study provides practical implications for business leaders and HR practitioners.
Overall, my study discusses the potential of visionary leadership behavior to elevate employee outcomes. The study aligns with previous research and answers several calls for further research on visionary leadership, job satisfaction, and mediation mechanism with meaningfulness at work and commitment to the leader.
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) have shaped the discussion about Industry 4.0 (I4.0) for some time. To ensure the competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises the vision for the future figures out cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) as a core component of a modern factory. Adaptability and coping with complexity are (among others) potentials of this new generation of production management. The successful transformation of this theoretical construct into practical implementation can only take place with regard to the conditions characterizing the context of a factory. The subject of this contribution is a concept that takes up the brownfield character and describes a solution for extending existing (legacy) systems with CPS capabilities.
Social networking site use and well-being - a nuanced understanding of a complex relationship
(2022)
Social Networking Sites (SNSs) are ubiquitous and attract an enormous chair of the digital population. Their functionalities allow users to connect and interact with others and weave complex social networks in which social information is continuously disseminated between users. Besides the social value SNSs are generating, they likewise attract companies and allow for new forms of marketing, thereby creating considerable economic value alike. However, as SNSs grew in popularity, so did concerns about the impact of their use on social interactions in general and the well-being of individual users in particular. While existing scientific evidence points to both risk as well as benefits of SNS use, research still lacks a profound understanding of which aspects of SNSs enable an impact on well-being and which psychological processes on the part of the users underly and explain this relationship. Therefore, this thesis is dedicated to an in-depth exploration of the relationship between SNS use and well-being and aims to answer how SNS use can impact well-being. Primarily, it focuses on the unique technological features that characterize SNSs and enable potential well- being alterations and on specific psychological processes on the part of the users, underlying and explaining the relationship. For this purpose, the thesis first introduces the concept of well- being. It continues by presenting SNSs’ unique technological features, divided into specifics of the content disseminated on SNSs and the network structure of SNSs. Further, the thesis introduces three classes of psychological processes assumed most relevant for the relationship between SNSs and well-being: other-focused, self-focused, and contrastive processes.. It is assumed that the course and quality of these common processes change in the SNS context and that a complex interplay between the unique features of SNSs and these processes determines how SNSs may ultimately affect users' well-being - both in positive and negative ways. The dissertation comprises seven research articles, each of which focusses on a particular set of SNS characteristics, their interplay with one or more of the proposed psychological processes, and ultimately the resulting effects on user well-being or its key resilience and risk factors. The seven articles investigate this relationship using different methodological approaches. Three articles are based on either systematic or narrative literature reviews, one applies an empirical cross-sectional research design, and three articles present an experimental investigation. Thematically, two articles revolve around SNS use’s effect on self-esteem. Three articles examine the specific role of the emotion of envy and its potential to establish and perpetuate a well-being-damaging social climate on SNSs. The two last articles of this thesis revolve around the established assumption that active and passive SNS use, as different modalities of SNS use, cause differential effects on users’ well-being due to the involvement of different psychological processes. The results of this thesis illustrate different ways how SNSs can affect users’ well-being. The results suggest that especially contrastive processes play a decisive role in explaining potential well-being risks for SNS users. Their interplay with certain SNS features seems to foster upward social comparisons and feelings of envy, potentially leading to a complex set of deleterious effects on users’ well-being. At the same time, the findings illuminate ways in which SNSs can benefit users and their self-esteem – especially when SNS use promotes self- focused and social-feedback-based other-focused processes. The thesis and their findings illustrate that the relationship between SNSs and well-being is complex. Therefore, a nuanced perspective, taking into consideration both the technological uniqueness of SNSs and the psychological processes they are enabling, is crucial to understand how these technologies affect their users in good and potentially harmful ways. On the one hand, the gathered insights contribute to research, providing novel insights into the complex relationship between SNS use and well-being. On the other hand, the results enable a focused and action-oriented derivation of recommendations for stakeholders such as individual users, policymakers, and platform providers. The findings of this thesis can help them to better combat SNS-related risks and ultimately ensure a healthy and sustainable environment for users - and thus also the economic values of SNSs - in the long term.
Introduction
(2020)
Does political repression work and if so, under what conditions? Many contributions to the empirical study of non-democratic rule assume it does. As a consequence, strong convictions on political repression abound, but empirical investigations into the matter remain rare. This introduction sets the agenda for the chapters to come and outlines the answers given to the three motivating questions of this volume. First, what variants of political repression are there, and how do they interact? Second, what impact does the interaction of different forms of political repression have on the problem of authoritarian control? Finally, what difference does the complementary use of violence and restrictions make for the problem of authoritarian power-sharing?
Where contemporary developments have significantly altered the implementation methods of, and relationship between, human rights law and international humanitarian law, this timely book looks at the future challenges of protecting human rights during and after armed conflicts. Leading scholars use critical case studies to shed light on new approaches used by international courts and experts to balance these two bodies of law. Divided into four thematic parts, chapters explore the protection of specific groups and actors during conflicts, including organised armed groups, armed non-state actors, and refugees, as well as using divergent methodological approaches to analyse the extra-territorial application of human rights treaties. Shifting to post-conflict, the book further examines the tools and practices involved in building lasting peace and sustainable post-conflict order while avoiding future resurrection of armed conflict. It concludes by considering whether the traditional interpretation of international law is still apt for the twenty-first century. Underlining the necessity of a more coherent application of international humanitarian law and human rights law, this incisive book will be invaluable to students and scholars from the two areas of law. Global in scope, it will also prove useful for humanitarian workers, and practitioners and policy makers involved in human rights law.
This article contributes to the debate on the incorporation of performance information in European local government budgets. At the core is the development of an analytical model for comparing efforts of performance budgeting (PB). Evidence in ten cases indicates that performance structures and the span of performance differ, that performance indicators are far from always measuring outcomes or outputs, and that future and past performance figures are often absent. Nevertheless similar learning trajectories do exist. Possible explanations for the variation involve the varying degrees of reform implementation, experience with PB and prevailing institutional arrangements.
Background
Wearables, as small portable computer systems worn on the body, can track user fitness and health data, which can be used to customize health insurance contributions individually. In particular, insured individuals with a healthy lifestyle can receive a reduction of their contributions to be paid. However, this potential is hardly used in practice.
Objective
This study aims to identify which barrier factors impede the usage of wearables for assessing individual risk scores for health insurances, despite its technological feasibility, and to rank these barriers according to their relevance.
Methods
To reach these goals, we conduct a ranking-type Delphi study with the following three stages. First, we collected possible barrier factors from a panel of 16 experts and consolidated them to a list of 11 barrier categories. Second, the panel was asked to rank them regarding their relevance. Third, to enhance the panel consensus, the ranking was revealed to the experts, who were then asked to re-rank the barriers.
Results
The results suggest that regulation is the most important barrier. Other relevant barriers are false or inaccurate measurements and application errors caused by the users. Additionally, insurers could lack the required technological competence to use the wearable data appropriately.
Conclusion
A wider use of wearables and health apps could be achieved through regulatory modifications, especially regarding privacy issues. Even after assuring stricter regulations, users’ privacy concerns could partly remain, if the data exchange between wearables manufacturers, health app providers, and health insurers does not become more transparent.
Background
Wearables, as small portable computer systems worn on the body, can track user fitness and health data, which can be used to customize health insurance contributions individually. In particular, insured individuals with a healthy lifestyle can receive a reduction of their contributions to be paid. However, this potential is hardly used in practice.
Objective
This study aims to identify which barrier factors impede the usage of wearables for assessing individual risk scores for health insurances, despite its technological feasibility, and to rank these barriers according to their relevance.
Methods
To reach these goals, we conduct a ranking-type Delphi study with the following three stages. First, we collected possible barrier factors from a panel of 16 experts and consolidated them to a list of 11 barrier categories. Second, the panel was asked to rank them regarding their relevance. Third, to enhance the panel consensus, the ranking was revealed to the experts, who were then asked to re-rank the barriers.
Results
The results suggest that regulation is the most important barrier. Other relevant barriers are false or inaccurate measurements and application errors caused by the users. Additionally, insurers could lack the required technological competence to use the wearable data appropriately.
Conclusion
A wider use of wearables and health apps could be achieved through regulatory modifications, especially regarding privacy issues. Even after assuring stricter regulations, users’ privacy concerns could partly remain, if the data exchange between wearables manufacturers, health app providers, and health insurers does not become more transparent.
The organisation of legislative chambers and the consequences of parliamentary procedures have been among the most prominent research questions in legislative studies. Even though democratic elections not only lead to the formation of a government but also result in an opposition, the literature has mostly neglected oppositions and their role in legislative chambers. This paper proposes to fill this gap by looking at the legislative organisation from the perspective of opposition players. The paper focuses on the potential influence of opposition players in the policy-making process and presents data on more than 50 legislative chambers. The paper shows considerable variance of the formal power granted to opposition players. Furthermore, the degree of institutionalisation of opposition rights is connected to electoral systems and not necessarily correlated with other institutional characteristics such as regime type or the size of legislative chambers.
Public administrations confront fundamental challenges, including globalization, digitalization, and an eroding level of trust from society. By developing joint public service delivery with other stakeholders, public administrations can respond to these challenges. This increases the importance of inter-organizational governance—a development often referred to as New Public Governance, which to date has not been realized because public administrations focus on intra-organizational practices and follow the traditional “governmental chain.”
E-government initiatives, which can lead to high levels of interconnected public services, are currently perceived as insufficient to meet this goal. They are not designed holistically and merely affect the interactions of public and non-public stakeholders. A fundamental shift toward a joint public service delivery would require scrutiny of established processes, roles, and interactions between stakeholders.
Various scientists and practitioners within the public sector assume that the use of blockchain institutional technology could fundamentally change the relationship between public and non-public stakeholders. At first glance, inter-organizational, joint public service delivery could benefit from the use of blockchain. This dissertation aims to shed light on this widespread assumption. Hence, the objective of this dissertation is to substantiate the effect of blockchain on the relationship between public administrations and non-public stakeholders.
This objective is pursued by defining three major areas of interest. First, this dissertation strives to answer the question of whether or not blockchain is suited to enable New Public Governance and to identify instances where blockchain may not be the proper solution. The second area aims to understand empirically the status quo of existing blockchain implementations in the public sector and whether they comply with the major theoretical conclusions. The third area investigates the changing role of public administrations, as the blockchain ecosystem can significantly increase the number of stakeholders.
Corresponding research is conducted to provide insights into these areas, for example, combining theoretical concepts with empirical actualities, conducting interviews with subject matter experts and key stakeholders of leading blockchain implementations, and performing a comprehensive stakeholder analysis, followed by visualization of its results.
The results of this dissertation demonstrate that blockchain can support New Public Governance in many ways while having a minor impact on certain aspects (e.g., decentralized control), which account for this public service paradigm. Furthermore, the existing projects indicate changes to relationships between public administrations and non-public stakeholders, although not necessarily the fundamental shift proposed by New Public Governance. Lastly, the results suggest that power relations are shifting, including the decreasing influence of public administrations within the blockchain ecosystem. The results raise questions about the governance models and regulations required to support mature solutions and the further diffusion of blockchain for public service delivery.
The “output-orientation” is omnipresent in teacher education. In order to evaluate teachers' and students' performances, a wide range of different quantitative questionnaires exist worldwide. One important goal of teaching evaluation is to increase the quality of teaching and learning. The author argues, that standard evaluations which are typically made at the end of the semester are problematic due to two reasons. The first one is that some of the questions are too general and don`t offer concrete ideas as to what kind of actions can be taken to make the courses better. The second problem is that the evaluation is mostly made when the course is already over. Because of this criticism, Apelojg invented the Felix-App which offers the possibility to give feedback in real-time by asking for the emotions and needs that occur during different learning situations. The idea is very simple: positive emotions and satisfied needs are helpful for the learning process. Negative emotions and unsatisfied needs have negative effects on the learning process. First descriptive results show, that “managing emotions” during classes can have positive effects on both motivation and emotions.
Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht, inwiefern extrapersonale Einflussfaktoren das Verhalten der Wissensteilung im Offboarding in der öffentlichen Verwaltung Deutschlands beeinflussen. Hier besteht eine Forschungslücke, die es insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund einer nahenden Pensionierungswelle und der daraus resultierenden Gefahr eines massiven Wissensverlusts zu schließen gilt. Zu diesem Zweck werden unterschiedliche Analyseebenen verknüpft, Einflussfaktoren aus der Literatur herausgearbeitet und in die Theorie des geplanten Verhaltens eingebunden. Anschließend werden Hypothesen formuliert, wie extrapersonale Einflussfaktoren, die sich aus der Verwaltung als organisationalen Kontext und dem Prozess des Offboarding ergeben, das Verhalten der Wissensteilung fördern oder hemmen. Die Testung der Hypothesen erfolgt durch die Erhebung und Auswertung qualitativer Interviewdaten. Daraus resultierende Erkenntnisse verdeutlichen, dass die anstehende Pensionierungswelle in der deutschen Verwaltung eine stärkere Ausrichtung des organisationalen Wissensmanagements auf den Prozess des Offboarding und dessen Gestaltung erfordert, um Wissensverluste zu reduzieren.
Die öffentliche Verwaltung wird in den nächsten Jahrzehnten große Reformen durchlaufen müssen. Ein wichtiger Einflussfaktor für das Gelingen von geplanten organisatorischen Veränderungen ist auch im Verwaltungskontext die Einstellung von Mitarbeiter*innen gegenüber diesem Wandel. Hier existieren gerade bei Mitarbeiter*innen ohne Führungsverantwortlichkeit häufig negative Einstellungen gegenüber Veränderungen. Dies wird auch mit dem hohen Stress in diesen Situationen in Verbindung gebracht. Besonders direkte Führungskräfte sind hier eine wichtige Einflussgröße auf die Einstellungen. Die folgende Bachelorarbeit beschäftigt sich dementsprechend mit diesen Einfluss und konzentriert sich dabei auf den Effekt der sozialen Unterstützung dieser Führungskräfte auf die Einstellung der Mitarbeiter*innen, da soziale Unterstützung einen nachgewiesenen mildernden Effekt auf den wahrgenommenen Stress besitzt.
Soziale Unterstützung wird nach der Social-Support-Theorie in die dort identifizierten vier Unter-arten differenziert, namentlich Appraisal, Emotional, Informational und Instrumental Support. Im Rahmen einer Literaturanalyse konnte für zwei der vier Supportarten (Emotional, Informational) ein Einfluss nachgewiesen werden. Auch für die anderen Supportarten bestehen Hinweise auf einen positiven Effekt. Dies weist darauf hin, dass direkte Führungskräfte während Reformen der öffentlichen Verwaltung als Quellen der Unterstützung fungieren und mittels dieser die Einstellung der Mitarbeiter*innen gegenüber Wandel positiv beeinflussen. Darüber hinaus können die Unterschiede der Ergebnisse nach Supportart darauf hinweisen, dass situationsspezifisch ver-schiedene Unterstützung mehr oder weniger relevant ist. Für Führungskräfte in diesem Kontext verweisen die Ergebnisse der Arbeit darauf, dass der unterstützende Kontakt mit direkt Untergebenen in Phasen des Wandels wichtig und die Anforderungen breiter als die reine Anweisung dieser Untergebenen sind.
Digital software platforms allow third parties to develop applications and thus extend their functionality. Platform owners provide platform boundary resources that allow for application development. For developers, platform integration, understood as the employment of platform resources, helps to realize application functionality effectively. Simultaneously, it requires integration effort and increases dependencies. Developers are interested to know whether integration contributes to success in hypercompetitive platform settings. While aspects of platform participation have been studied, research on a comprehensive notion of integration and related implications are missing. By proposing a platform integration model, this study supports a better understanding of integration. Concerning dynamics related to integration, effects were tested using information from over 82,000 Apple AppStore applications. Regression model analysis reveals that application success and customer satisfaction is positively influenced by platform integration. To achieve superior results, developers should address multiple aspects of integration, such as devices, data, the operating system, the marketplace as well as other applications, and provide updates. Finally, the study highlights the importance for all platform participants and their possibilities to employ integration as a strategic instrument.
Purpose:
While industrial marketers have long bundled their products and services to sell them as packages, to what extent should negotiators also rely on packaging their offers? Clearly, negotiating at a package level can tax the cognitive capacity of the involved parties at some point. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the impact of the number and type of issues that should be negotiated simultaneously to leverage the package strategy efficiently and effectively in multi-issue buyer-seller negotiations.
Design/methodology/approach:
The authors conducted and analyzed negotiation simulations with 676 students from 2 public universities.
Findings:
The authors’ results suggest that negotiating three out of six issues simultaneously is the least efficient but most effective strategy in multi-issue buyer-seller negotiations. Moreover, they found that bundling distributive and integrative issues is more efficient and effective than only bundling distributive or integrative negotiation issues in a package offer.
Originality/value:
Past research has examined the impact of negotiating a package as compared to each issue separately; however, little empirical attention has been directed toward understanding how to apply a package strategy in complex multi-issue negotiations.
This survey provides an overview of topics related to the history of economics that have been discussed within the last two years in journal articles. The survey format has been started by History of Economic Ideas last year with the survey by Giulia Bianchi (2016) and is aimed to increase the visibility of research in the history of economics. The emphasis of our survey is on the big three journals in the history of economics: the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, the Journal of the History of Economic Thought and History of Political Economy. We also included additional journals that frequently publish articles related to the history of economics. These include, in alphabetical order, the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Contributions to Political Economy, Economic Thought, the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, History of Economic Thought and Policy, the History of Economics Review, the Journal of Economic Literature, the Journal of Economic Methodology, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, OE conomia, Oxford Economic Papers and Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology.