scholarly journals Systematic dissection of a complex gut bacterial community

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice G Cheng ◽  
Andres Aranda-Diaz ◽  
Sunit Jain ◽  
Feiqiao Yu ◽  
Mikhail Iakiviak ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Dynamics ◽  
Priority Effects ◽  
Growth Media ◽  
Interspecies Interactions ◽  
Bacterial Strains ◽  
Clostridium Sporogenes ◽  
Single Strain ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Branched Chain ◽  
The Impact

Efforts to model the gut microbiome have yielded important insights into the mechanisms of interspecies interactions, the impact of priority effects on ecosystem dynamics, and the role of diet and nutrient availability in determining community composition. However, the model communities studied to date have been defined or complex but not both, limiting their utility. Here, we construct a defined community of 104 bacterial strains composed of the most common taxa from the human gut microbiota. By propagating this community in growth media missing one amino acid at a time, we show that branched-chain amino acids have an outsize impact on community structure and identify a pathway in Clostridium sporogenes for generating ATP from arginine. We constructed and propagated the complete set of single-strain dropout communities, revealing a sparse network of strain-strain interactions including a novel interaction between C. sporogenes and Lactococcus lactis driven by metabolism. This work forms a foundation for studying strain-strain and strain-nutrient interactions in highly complex defined communities, and it provides a starting point for interrogating the rules of synthetic ecology at the 100+ strain scale.

scholarly journals Use of Supplemented or Human Material to Simulate PD Behavior of Antibiotics at the Target Site In Vitro

Pharmaceutics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 773
Author(s):  
Alina Nussbaumer-Pröll ◽  
Markus Zeitlinger
Keyword(s):  
Antimicrobial Agents ◽  
Biological Fluid ◽  
In Vitro Models ◽  
Body Fluids ◽  
Growth Media ◽  
Bacterial Strains ◽  
Bacterial Killing ◽  
The Impact

In antimicrobial drug development, in vitro antibiotic susceptibility testing is conducted in standard growth media, such as Mueller–Hinton broth (MHB). These growth media provide optimal bacterial growth, but do not consider certain host factors that would be necessary to mimic the in vivo bacterial environment in the human body. The present review aimed to include relevant data published between 1986 and 2019. A database search (PubMed) was done with text keywords, such as “MIC” (minimal inhibitory concentration), “TKC” (time kill curve), “blood”, “body fluid”, “PD” (pharmacodynamic), and “in vitro”, and 53 papers were ultimately selected. Additionally, a literature search for physiologic characteristics of body fluids was conducted. This review gives an excerpt of the complexity of human compartments with their physiologic composition. Furthermore, we present an update of currently available in vitro models operated either with adapted growth media or body fluids themselves. Moreover, the feasibility of testing the activity of antimicrobials in such settings is discussed, and pro and cons for standard practice methods are given. The impact on bacterial killing varies between individual adapted microbiological media, as well as direct pharmacodynamic simulations in body fluids, between bacterial strains, antimicrobial agents, and the compositions of the adjuvants or the biological fluid itself.

Liszt at the Piano: The Impact of Iconography on mid-Nineteenth Century Musicology

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Suzanne Marie Francis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Music History ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Maximum Benefit ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Iconic Status ◽  
The Impact

By the time of his death in 1827, the image of Beethoven as we recognise him today was firmly fixed in the minds of his contemporaries, and the career of Liszt was beginning to flower into that of the virtuosic performer he would be recognised as by the end of the 1830s. By analysing the seminal artwork Liszt at the Piano of 1840 by Josef Danhauser, we can see how a seemingly unremarkable head-and-shoulders bust of Beethoven in fact holds the key to unlocking the layers of commentary on both Liszt and Beethoven beneath the surface of the image. Taking the analysis by Alessandra Comini as a starting point, this paper will look deeper into the subtle connections discernible between the protagonists of the picture. These reveal how the collective identities of the artist and his painted assembly contribute directly to Beethoven’s already iconic status within music history around 1840 and reflect the reception of Liszt at this time. Set against the background of Romanticism predominant in the social and cultural contexts of the mid 1800s, it becomes apparent that it is no longer enough to look at a picture of a composer or performer in isolation to understand its impact on the construction of an overall identity. Each image must be viewed in relation to those that preceded and came after it to gain the maximum benefit from what it can tell us.

THE EFFECT OF BACTERIAL STRAINS ON THE ENZYMATIC ACTIVITY OF SOILS IN IMPACT ZONE OF ATAMAN LAKE

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
V.V. Zinchenko ◽  
◽  
E.S Fedorenko ◽  
A.V Gorovtsov ◽  
T.M Minkina ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Enzymatic Activity ◽  
Dehydrogenase Activity ◽  
Contaminated Soil ◽  
Model Experiment ◽  
Impact Zone ◽  
Bacterial Strains ◽  
The Impact

As a result of the model experiment, an increase in the enzymatic activity of meadow chernozem of the impact zone of Ataman Lake with the introduction of a strains mixture of metal-resistant microorganisms into the soil was established. The experiment has shown that the application of bacterial strains increases the dehydrogenase activity of contaminated soil by 51.8% compared to the variant without remediation

Nachhaltigkeit im Wald – vor und hinter der Welle der Globalisierung | Sustainable Forest Management – In Front and Behind the Wave of Globalization

2000 ◽  
Vol 151 (12) ◽  
pp. 502-507
Author(s):  
Christian Küchli
Keyword(s):  
Forest Management ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Sustainable Forest Management ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Specific Situation ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Impact

Are there any common patterns in the transition processes from traditional and more or less sustainable forest management to exploitative use, which can regularly be observed both in central Europe and in the countries of the South (e.g. India or Indonesia)? Attempts were made with a time-space-model to typify those force fields, in which traditional sustainable forest management is undermined and is then transformed into a modern type of sustainable forest management. Although it is unlikely that the history of the North will become the future of the South, the glimpse into the northern past offers a useful starting point for the understanding of the current situation in the South, which in turn could stimulate the debate on development. For instance, the patterns which stand behind the conflicts on forest use in the Himalayas are very similar to the conflicts in the Alps. In the same way, the impact of socio-economic changes on the environment – key word ‹globalisation› – is often much the same. To recognize comparable patterns can be very valuable because it can act as a stimulant for the search of political, legal and technical solutions adapted to a specific situation. For the global community the realization of the way political-economic alliances work at the head of the ‹globalisationwave›can only signify to carry on trying to find a common language and understanding at the negotiation tables. On the lee side of the destructive breaker it is necessary to conserve and care for what survived. As it was the case in Switzerland these forest islands could once become the germination points for the genesis of a cultural landscape, where close-to-nature managed forests will constitute an essential element.

Law and Economics

2020 ◽  
pp. 84-102
Author(s):  
Daniel B. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Economic Analysis ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Law And Economics ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Business Associations ◽  
The Third ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Impact

This chapter analyzes how law and economics influences private law and how (new) private law is influencing law and economics. It focuses on three generation or “waves” within law and economics and how they approach private law. In the first generation, many scholars took the law as a starting point and attempted to use economic insights to explain, justify, or reform legal doctrines, institutions, and structures. In the second generation, the “law” at times became secondary, with more focus on theory and less focus on doctrines, institutions, and structures. But this generation also relied increasingly on empirical analysis. In the third generation, which includes scholars in the New Private Law (NPL), there has been a resurgence of interest in the law and legal institutions. To be sure, NPL scholars analyze the law using various approaches, with some more and some less predisposed to economic analysis. However, economic analysis will continue to be a major force on private law, including the New Private Law, for the foreseeable future. The chapter considers three foundational private law areas: property, contracts, and torts. For each area, it discusses the major ideas that economic analysis has contributed to private law, and surveys contributions of the NPL. The chapter also looks at the impact of law and economics on advanced private law areas, such as business associations, trusts and estates, and intellectual property.

Engels on women, the family, class and gender

2021 ◽  
pp. 194277862110000
Author(s):  
Sheila Margaret McGregor
Keyword(s):  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Women's Oppression ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Socialist Movement ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

This article looks at Engels’s writings to show that his ideas about the role of labour in the evolution of human beings in a dialectical relationship between human beings and nature is a crucial starting point for understanding human society and is correct in its essentials. It is important for understanding that we developed as a species on the basis of social cooperation. The way human beings produce and reproduce themselves, the method of historical materialism, provides the basis for understanding how class and women’s oppression arose and how that can explain LGBTQ oppression. Although Engels’s analysis was once widely accepted by the socialist movement, it has mainly been ignored or opposed by academic researchers and others, including geographers, and more recently by Marxist feminists. However, anthropological research from the 1960s and 1970s as well as more recent anthropological and archaeological research provide overwhelming evidence for the validity of Engels’s argument that there were egalitarian, pre-class societies without women’s oppression. However, much remains to be explained about the transition to class societies. Engels’s analysis of the impact of industrial capitalism on gender roles shows how society shapes our behaviour. Engels’s method needs to be constantly reasserted against those who would argue that we are a competitive, aggressive species who require rules to suppress our true nature, and that social development is driven by ideas, not by changes in the way we produce and reproduce ourselves.

scholarly journals On Present Value Evaluation under the Impact of Behavioural Factors Using Oriented Fuzzy Numbers

Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 468
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Piasecki ◽  
Anna Łyczkowska-Hanćkowiak
Keyword(s):  
Fuzzy Numbers ◽  
Asset Price ◽  
Financial Knowledge ◽  
Present Value ◽  
Market Knowledge ◽  
Value Evaluation ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Behavioural Factors ◽  
Objective Financial Knowledge ◽  
The Impact

In general, the present value (PV) concept is ambiguous. Therefore, behavioural factors may influence on the PV evaluation. The main aim of our paper is to propose some method of soft computing PV evaluated under the impact of behavioural factors. The starting point for our discussion is the notion of the Behavioural PV (BPV) defined as an imprecisely real-valued function of distinguished variables which can be evaluated using objective financial knowledge or subjective behavioural premises. In our paper, a BPV is supplemented with a forecast of the asset price closest to changes. Such BPV is called the oriented BPV (O-BPV). We propose to evaluate an O-BPV by oriented fuzzy numbers which are more useful for portfolio analysis than fuzzy numbers. This fact determines the significance of the research described in this article. O-BPV may be applied as input signal for systems supporting invest-making. We consider here six cases of O-BPV: overvalued asset with the prediction of a rise in its price, overvalued asset with the prediction of a fall in its price, undervalued asset with the prediction of a rise in its price, undervalued asset with the prediction of a fall in its price, fully valued asset with the prediction of a rise in its rice and fully valued asset with the prediction of a fall in its rice. All our considerations are illustrated by numerical examples. Presented examples show the way in which we transform superposition of objective market knowledge and subjective investment opinion into simple return rate.

Analysis of the journal impact factor and related bibliometric indicators in education and educational research category

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Metin Orbay ◽  
Orhan Karamustafaoğlu ◽  
Ruben Miranda
Keyword(s):  
Impact Factor ◽  
Educational Research ◽  
Journal Impact Factor ◽  
Impact Factors ◽  
Bibliometric Indicators ◽  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Consistent Assessment ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Journal Impact

This study analyzes the journal impact factor and related bibliometric indicators in Education and Educational Research (E&ER) category, highlighting the main differences among journal quartiles, using Web of Science (Social Sciences Citation Index, SSCI) as the data source. High impact journals (Q1) publish only slightly more papers than expected, which is different to other areas. The papers published in Q1 journal have greater average citations and lower uncitedness rates compared to other quartiles, although the differences among quartiles are lower than in other areas. The impact factor is only weakly negative correlated (r=-0.184) with the journal self-citation but strongly correlated with the citedness of the median journal paper (r= 0.864). Although this strong correlation exists, the impact factor is still far to be the perfect indicator for expected citations of a paper due to the high skewness of the citations distribution. This skewness was moderately correlated with the citations received by the most cited paper of the journal (r= 0.649) and the number of papers published by the journal (r= 0.484), but no important differences by journal quartiles were observed. In the period 2013–2018, the average journal impact factor in the E&ER has increased largely from 0.908 to 1.638, which is justified by the field growth but also by the increase in international collaboration and the share of papers published in open access. Despite their inherent limitations, the use of impact factors and related indicators is a starting point for introducing the use of bibliometric tools for objective and consistent assessment of researcher.

Designing a Virtual Enterprise Architecture using Structured System Dynamics

2006 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-29
Author(s):  
Nikitas A. Assimakopoulos ◽  
Anastasios N. Riggas
Keyword(s):  
System Dynamics ◽  
Enterprise Architecture ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Core Competencies ◽  
Virtual Enterprise ◽  
Business Goals ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Efficient Integration ◽  
Structured System ◽  
The Impact

The starting point for establishing a Virtual Enterprise is a set of existing enterprises which might contribute with some of their functionalities (core competencies) to the formation of the virtual entity. The most important issue, in this formation, is the rapid integration of the business processes of the participating companies. The architecture of the VE must assist companies desiring to enter into a virtual relationship by defining the functions and interfaces of critical business processes, thus allowing for a more rapid and efficient integration of the expertise which will be contributed by each partner in the virtual enterprise. While the integration of computer and communication technologies are no doubt critical issues, the successful attainment of the business goals of the virtual enterprise often depends on its ability to align the business processes and practices of partner enterprises. Focus of this paper, is the presentation of Structured System Dynamics (SSPS) multi-methodology for the design and the evaluation of a Virtual Enterprise Architecture. SSPS uses Systems Thinking and System Dynamics principles as launch pad for its approach. The Systemic Methodologies of Problem Structuring Methodology (PSM) and SAST are also integrated in this new Multi-Methodology. SSPS is a new practical and scientific tool in designing and evaluating a VE architecture providing the ability to determine the impact, reliability, success of the Architectures' models created, refine them and identify potential process improvements. A framework for the rapid and efficient integration of the business processes of the participating companies in the virtual enterprise is provided. For this multi-methodology, a real-life application is also presented for a Virtual Enterprise that constructs Wireless Payment Mechanisms.

scholarly journals Globalization Impact on Multinational Enterprises

World ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-230
Author(s):  
Justine Kyove ◽  
Katerina Streltsova ◽  
Ufuoma Odibo ◽  
Giuseppe T. Cirella
Keyword(s):  
Developing Country ◽  
Multinational Enterprises ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Developed Country ◽  
Excellent Starting Point ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Impact

The impact of globalization on multinational enterprises was examined from the years 1980 to 2020. A scoping literature review was conducted for a total of 141 articles. Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed typologies were categorized and conclusions were drawn regarding the influence and performance (i.e., positive or negative effects) of globalization. Developed countries show more saturated markets than developing countries that favor developing country multinational enterprises to rely heavily on foreign sales for revenue growth. Developed country multinationals are likely to use more advanced factors of production to create revenue, whereas developing country multinationals are more likely to use less advanced forms. A number of common trends and issues showed corporate social responsibility, emerging markets, political issues, and economic matters as key to global market production. Recommendations signal a strong need for more research that addresses contributive effects in the different economies, starting with the emerging to the developed. Limitations of data availability and inconsistency posed a challenge for this review, yet the use of operationalization, techniques, and analyses from the business literature enabled this study to be an excellent starting point for additional work in the field.

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