Organization Of Matter Research Articles

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Osteopontin in patients with metabolic syndrome and cognitive impairment

Metabolic syndrome is associated with dysmetabolic and proinflammatory pathophysiological mechanisms, which lead to cognitive impairment. Evaluation of the effect of osteopontin as a predictor of these changes with the analysis of the neuroimaging pattern of the brain is of interest.Purpose of the study: analysis of the role of osteopontin in patients with metabolic syndrome in the formation of cognitive impairment.Material and Methods: the study complies with generally accepted ethical rules and included 50 patients with type metabolic syndrome (which were divided into groups according to cognitive impairment) and 25 control groups. All underwent a general clinical examination, blood sampling for biochemical parameters, including osteopontin. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed on a Signa Creator "E" magnetic resonance tomograph, GE Healthcare, 1.5 Tesla, China: techniques were dynamic contrast and arterial spin labels, proton spectroscopy, tractography. SPSS Statistic program was used for statistical analysis.Results: osteopontin was higher in patients with overweight, hyperglycemia, hyperuricemia, dyslipidemia, and cognitive impairment, and in the neuroimaging study with microangiopathy according to perfusion MRI, impaired integration of the white matter of the brain, as well as neurometabolism in the hippocampal region by choline, creatine and phosphocreatine metabolites in the hippocampal region, as well as their NAA/Cr, NAA/Cho, Cho/Cr ratios (p≤0.05).Conclusion: patients with metabolic syndrome and cognitive disorders revealed elevated levels of osteopontin, which is also associated with impaired cerebral vascularization in general and white matter organization, as well as neurometabolism in the hippocampus..

How does organizational task matter for the reputation of public agencies?

AbstractThe study of organizational task for understanding how organizations behave and evolve has been one of the classic topics in organization theory and public administration. Reputation scholarship has appeared as a promising perspective to understand internal and external organizational dynamics. Reputation scholars, too, emphasize the critical importance of task. Despite this recognition, the literature is characterized by a lack of theorization, and large‐scale comparative analyses on how task characteristics are related to reputational dynamics. This study aims to address these concerns, relying on an extensive longitudinal dataset on the media reputation of 40 agencies in two countries to explain organizations' likelihood of attracting reputational threats (both in general and targeting specific reputational dimensions) through different task characteristics. Our main finding is that as agencies perform tasks of a more coercive and authoritative nature (regulatory tasks and, to a lesser extent, redistributive tasks), they are more likely to attract reputational threats (both in general and to all dimensions).

(Invited) Intercalation Chemistry in Ordered and Disordered Battery Materials

Innovation through structural design has been an effective mean for the realization of today’s batteries. Our ability to master the atomic scale through the identification of host structures and chemistries able to intercalate lithium ions at convenient voltages has been rewarded by the deployment of Li-ion technology and the ushering in of the portable electronics era. A massive effort is now devoted to the improvement of the selected group of materials that have reached commercialization and the development of new materials and chemistries. However, the development of the next generation of energy storage materials requires an unprecedented ability to understand and control all levels of organization of matter and its coupling with function, including disorder and defects, which have often been dismissed as deleterious to performance. However, if understood and controlled, can provide a depth of control and utility to design better materials.Progress in the characterization of disorder is providing unprecedented insights into defect structures. In particular, recent models and tools applied to X-ray scattering techniques, often in complement with electron microscopy or solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, offer an accessible window for the observation and accurate parametrization of complex microstructural features. Through different examples related to energy storage materials, several of these models will be shown. These comprise those included in X-ray Rietveld refinement programs to extract structural descriptors related to point defects, anti-sites or anti-phase domains; as well as the FAULTS program,which allows to quantitatively describe planar disorder such as stacking faults. The ability to characterize the dynamic evolution of such phenomena using operando techniques will also be discussed.

Organizational context matters: Psychosocial safety climate as a precursor to team and individual motivational functioning

Beyond its function to protect worker psychological health, psychosocial safety climate (PSC) may be construed as a context factor that affects employee work motivation. This study explores the effect of PSC on various aspects of motivational functioning at work. We expected PSC to be positively related to wellbeing-related outcomes (work engagement and organizational commitment) and that these relations would be mediated through job resources and job crafting, and that they would be evident at both the individual and team level.Multilevel mediation analysis was used with data from 963 health professionals (doctors and nurses) from 66 work units in two Chinese hospitals. At the individual level, there were significant effects of, individual resources on work engagement and organizational commitment through individual crafting; PSC through individual resources on individual crafting, and PSC through individual crafting on work engagement and organizational commitment. At the team level, team resources were related to average team work engagement and organizational commitment through team crafting; PSC was related to team crafting through team resources, and the indirect effects of PSC through team crafting on average work engagement and organizational commitment were significant.Overall, the results support the proposition that the PSC context positively predicts team- and individual-level work motivation. We conclude that PSC theory can serve as an integrative contextual framework to explain the complex interplay of factors from different sources (i.e., the team and the individual) that contribute to work motivation.

Small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering

Small-angle scattering (SAS) is a technique that is able to probe the structural organization of matter and quantify its response to changes in external conditions. X-ray and neutron scattering profiles measured from bulk materials or materials deposited at surfaces arise from nanostructural inhomogeneities of electron or nuclear density. The analysis of SAS data from coherent scattering events provides information about the length scale distributions of material components. Samples for SAS studies may be prepared in situ or under near-native conditions and the measurements performed at various temperatures, pressures, flows, shears or stresses, and in a time-resolved fashion. In this Primer, we provide an overview of SAS, summarizing the types of instrument used, approaches for data collection and calibration, available data analysis methods, structural information that can be obtained using the method, and data depositories, standards and formats. Recent applications of SAS in structural biology and the soft-matter and hard-matter sciences are also discussed.

Connectivity gradients on tractography data: Pipeline and example applications.

Gray matter connectivity can be described in terms of its topographical organization, but the differential role of white matter connections underlying that organization is often unknown. In this study, we propose a method for unveiling principles of organization of both gray and white matter based on white matter connectivity as assessed using diffusion magnetic ressonance imaging (MRI) tractography with spectral embedding gradient mapping. A key feature of the proposed approach is its capacity to project the individual connectivity gradients it reveals back onto its input data in the form of projection images, allowing one to assess the contributions of specific white matter tracts to the observed gradients. We demonstrate the ability of our proposed pipeline to identify connectivity gradients in prefrontal and occipital gray matter. Finally, leveraging the use of tractography, we demonstrate that it is possible to observe gradients within the white matter bundles themselves. Together, the proposed framework presents a generalized way to assess both the topographical organization of structural brain connectivity and the anatomical features driving it.

Do organizational subcultures matter? A case study of logistics and supply chain management

PurposeThis interdisciplinary investigation examines the topics of organizational climate and subcultures, which have received scant attention in the supply chain literature, highlighting the potential importance of these social dynamics to supply chain management phenomena.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use a single-organization revelatory case study design, qualitatively analyzing coded interviews and observations of participants.FindingsThe authors’ findings indicate that a firm's organizational climate can contribute to the formation and strengthening of a subculture and that the subculture may desire to insert their own values and norms concerning supply chain management which could run counter to those of the overall company.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors theorize about the conditions under which strong subcultures emerge and that they may exert outsized influence on the way a company approaches supply chain management activities. Accounting for such influence may unearth important social dynamics occurring within supply chain phenomena that will better help researchers understand behavior and outcomes within that phenomenon.Practical implicationsManagers should be aware of the potential for subgroups to form strong subcultures and that subcultures may influence the way supply chain activities are performed. Climate dynamics can also affect employee perceptions and behaviors, and managers should monitor these dynamics and adapt their policies and messaging accordingly.Originality/valueThis study examines a phenomenon that has previously been underexamined in the supply chain management literature–the influence of culture and climate on subcultures and their subcultures' subsequent impact on how companies perform supply chain management activities.

N-3 PUFA deficiency disrupts oligodendrocyte maturation and myelin integrity during brain development.

Westernization of dietary habits has led to a progressive reduction in dietary intake of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs). Low maternal intake of n-3 PUFAs has been linked to neurodevelopmental disorders, conditions in which myelination processes are abnormal, leading to defects in brain functional connectivity. Only little is known about the role of n-3 PUFAs in oligodendrocyte physiology and white matter development. Here, we show that lifelong n-3 PUFA deficiency disrupts oligodendrocytes maturation and myelination processes during the postnatal period in mice. This has long-term deleterious consequences on white matter organization and hippocampus-prefrontal functional connectivity in adults, associated with cognitive and emotional disorders. Promoting developmental myelination with clemastine, a first-generation histamine antagonist and enhancer of oligodendrocyte precursor cell differentiation, rescues memory deficits in n-3 PUFA deficient animals. Our findings identify a novel mechanism through which n-3 PUFA deficiency alters brain functions by disrupting oligodendrocyte maturation and brain myelination during the neurodevelopmental period.

Organization matters. Policy entrepreneurship among Street-Level Bureaucrats in public employment services. Insights from an Italian case-study

ABSTRACT In this paper we seek to overcome the knowledge gap in street-level bureaucracy (SLB) literature on labour market policies, focusing on a specific public employment service (PES). In the context of active labour market policies (ALMP), PES are seen as strategic because they have a direct effect on reducing unemployment in both the short and long run and an indirect effect on reinforcing long-term training programmes. However, recent reforms of public employment services in many European countries have generated divergent trajectories in SLBs' practices. In this heterogeneous and unclear picture, to better grasp the different mechanisms influencing policy outcomes at a micro level it seems promising to merge street-level bureaucracy with the policy entrepreneur (PE) approach focused on the way caseworkers (conceived as policy entrepreneurs) influence policy design far beyond the resources they hold. In this article we consider if there are certain organizational configurations that favour the emergence of policy entrepreneurship among street-level bureaucrats. To test this hypothesis, the paper investigates an Italian public employment service. The Italian context is particularly interesting in that it underwent a process of decentralization followed by a more recent push towards re-centralization.

Метановая травмоопасность на российских шахтах

Conditions are given concerning the development of methane-bearing coal seams in Russia, the chronology of injuries from explosions and outbreaks of methane-air mixtures at the Russian mines for a quarter of a century of developing coal seams at the nine deposits. The emergency was studied in 174 mine incidents, which occurred mainly at the mines of Kuzbass, Vorkuta coal deposit, Eastern Donbass, Chelyabinsk basin, Primorye and Sakhalin. Emergency objects - excavation areas, preparation faces and mined-out areas of the mines. The sources of ignition of methane-air mixture are drilling and blasting works in the faces, malfunctioning of electrical equipment, frictional sparking, endogenous fires, and smoking in the mines. The most injury-risk for methane are steep and steeply inclined mines. The need in the scientific substantiation of the decisions taken for prevention or reduction of the methane injury-risk at the mines is noted in the article. An important role is assigned to the choice of ways to achieve this goal considering the geological and mining conditions of the development of gas-bearing coal seams. As an example, the conditions, methods, and parameters of mining operations at the excavation areas of four mines are given, where occurred the catastrophic explosions of methane-air and methane-dust-air mixtures. The reasons are gross violations of safety rules during mining operations, incompetence of the mine engineering personnel, design, and control organizations in matters of safety during the underground work at the gas-hazardous mines with an extensive network of workings. This resulted in the death of miners and mine rescuers, the destruction of mine workings, equipment and devices, underground fires. Recommendations are given for reducing the level of methane injury-risk at the methane-rich mines.

Incentivizing Good Governance Beyond Regulatory Minimums: The Civil Nuclear Sector

The consequences from a blended cyber‐physical terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant are potentially catastrophic. Sabotage of the plant or theft and subsequent use of radiological materials can potentially lead to blackouts, deaths, and injuries and even a release of radiological materials. This threat continues to evolve in sophistication and complexity and is outpacing the ability and resources of governments to anticipate risks and to protect their critical infrastructure and the public from harm. Policymakers are working to keep up with the rapid onset of these threats to reinforce the resilience of critical infrastructure. Cyber vulnerabilities including insider threats are also evolving, with cyberattacks on nuclear facilities the tip of the iceberg as more sophisticated advanced persistent threats develop. This paper suggests governments look beyond regulations and policy directives to harness the power and energy of the market to incentivize operators to voluntarily adopt security measures beyond regulatory requirements.Good organizational governance is important and necessary to secure critical infrastructure including nuclear facilities and increasingly can be rewarded by the market. The definition of what is good organizational governance matters to investors, lenders, insurers, regulators, and the public. Is the organization going to be able to function effectively as an enterprise and provide a return to investors, pay back its loans, protect its workers and community, including the environment? In the nuclear field, the stakes can be high—with stakeholders depending on a stable baseload electric supply without safety or security incidents, especially of a radiological nature.This article documents findings from a multi‐year project to identify incentives for nuclear security beyond regulatory minimums, with a focus on nuclear power plants. We assessed the importance of standards and developed a “Good Governance Template” to support owners/managers in obtaining benefits and reducing potential liabilities. We found that market incentives are developing in areas such as insurance, credit, and other rating systems to support the development of good governance, including incentives for companies to demonstrate due care in the management of risks, especially cyber risks. Building a business case for nuclear security based on these incentives is an important step forward in securing our nuclear future, especially in terms of cyber risks.

Buurtzorg Nederland, a proposal for nurse-led home care.

Buurtzorg Nederland is a Dutch healthcare organization in which nursing teams provide home care in all the skills that affect their profession. This article raises some questions regarding more internal aspects of the organization based on 3dimensions. The first, the organizational dimension, in which the teams are structured based on 8 roles, without hierarchies and supported by the coaching system. The second, the nursing dimension, in which it is highlighted that nurses deal with all the competences that affect their profession, from basic care to more complex care, with the aim of defragmenting care. And the third, the economic dimension, in which it stands out that the sustainability of the organization is in being a system without managers, of small teams that work in small geographic areas, with a computer system that supports all organizational matters, healthcare and financial. The main characteristics of Buurtzorg Nederland are the self-management of the teams and the defragmented care that both the nurse and the patient satisfy. However, this defragmentation has been achieved in terms of patient care, with the same team attending to all basic and complex care needs at home, but at other levels of care it has not been achieved, and the patient must visit other providers, therefore, health care at other levels continues to be fragmented.

Membrane-MEDYAN: Simulating Deformable Vesicles Containing Complex Cytoskeletal Networks.

The plasma membrane defines the shape of the cell and plays an indispensable role in bridging intra- and extracellular environments. Mechanochemical interactions between plasma membrane and cytoskeleton are vital for cell biomechanics and mechanosensing. A computational model that comprehensively captures the complex, cell-scale cytoskeleton-membrane dynamics is still lacking. In this work, we introduce a triangulated membrane model that accounts for the membrane's elastic properties, as well as for membrane-filament steric interactions. The corresponding force-field was incorporated into the active biological matter simulation platform, MEDYAN ("mechanochemical dynamics of active networks"). Simulations using the new model shed light on how actin filament bundling affects generation of tubular membrane protrusions. In particular, we used membrane-MEDYAN simulations to investigate protrusion initiation and dynamics while varying geometries of filament bundles, membrane rigidities and local G-Actin concentrations. We found that the bundles' protrusion propensities sensitively depend on the synergy between bundle thickness and inclination angle at which the bundle approaches the membrane. The new model paves the way for simulations of biological systems involving intricate membrane-cytoskeleton interactions, such as those occurring at the leading edge and the cortex, eventually helping to uncover the fundamental principles underlying the active matter organization in the vicinity of the membrane.

Managing the Offshoring of Audit Work: Spanning the Boundaries Between Onshore and Offshore Auditors

SUMMARYThe offshoring of external audit work to so-called low-cost countries is prevalent among the Big 4 professional services firms. Despite this, our understanding of how this form of offshoring influences audit practitioners and the audit process is limited. This study examines how and why offshoring emerged as an organizational matter that changed the way audit work is organized in a Big 4 firm context. Our findings demonstrate how changes in the design of offshoring processes influence interactions between onshore and offshore auditors. We uncover how individual “boundary spanners” struggle to coordinate audit work across the multiple boundaries that separate onshore and offshore auditors. Furthermore, we show how the institutionalization of “boundary spanning” functions in organizational structures and processes can have the unintended consequence of widening the boundaries between onshore and offshore auditors. Finally, we offer evidence of the effect of offshoring on the learning process of onshore and offshore auditors.

Association between white matter organization and cognitive performance in athletes with a history of sport-related concussion

ABSTRACT Introduction Impairments in cognitive performance after sport-related concussion (SRC) typically resolve within weeks of the injury, whereas alterations to white matter (WM) organization have been found to persist longer into the chronic injury stage. However, longer-term associations between cognition and WM organization following SRC have not been studied. The objective of this study was to compare WM organization and cognitive performance in collegiate athletes an average of almost 4 years post-SRC to athletes with no history of SRC. Method National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III athletes (n = 71, age = 19.3 ± 1.2; 14 with self-reported SRC) completed a neurocognitive assessment and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). WM organization was assessed by extracting measures of fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), and radial diffusivity (RD) from 20 WM regions of interest (ROIs). Multivariate partial least squares analyses were used to compare athletes with and without a history of SRC and assess relationships between DTI-derived metrics of WM organization and cognitive measures. Results Cognitive performance and ROI metrics did not differ between athletes with and without prior SRC. However, among athletes with a history of SRC, better executive function, processing speed, and memory but worse choice reaction time were associated with higher FA and lower MD and RD in several WM tracts. Conclusion Athletes with a history of SRC demonstrated greater associations between cognitive performance and WM organization, but also variability in the domains showing associations. Taken together, the findings demonstrate the importance of examining brain-behavior relationships several years after SRC to better gauge how WM organization supports cognition.

Progressive brain microstructural damage in patients with multiple sclerosis but not in patients with neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder: A cross-sectional and follow-up tract-based spatial statistics study

BackgroundNeuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) may sometimes be misdiagnosed as multiple sclerosis (MS) because both disorders have similar clinical presentations and commonly show white matter damage in the brain. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is an advanced MRI technique to assess the microstructural organization of white matter and provides greater pathological specificity than conventional MRI. In the present combined cross-sectional and longitudinal study, the novel DTI technique of Track-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS) was used to investigate the difference of DTI parameter abnormalities between NMOSD and MS. MethodsA total of 42 patients with NMOSD, 51 patients with MS and 56 health controls (HC) were recruited and of these 14 patients with NMOSD and 13 patients with MS were also studied at follow-up after an average interval of approximately one year. Measurements of fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusion (MD), axial diffusivity (AD) and radial diffusivity (RD) were compared at baseline and follow-up in patients with NMOSD and MS. ResultsSignificant reduction in FA, increase in MD, AD and RD were observed in patients with MS (p < 0.05) and reduced FA was shown in NMOSD (p < 0.05) compared to HC, with all the effects, together with lesion load on T1WI and T2WI, being greater in patients with MS than in patients with NMOSD (p < 0.05). There was no significant difference in the time interval to follow-up in patients with MS (1.37 years) and NMOSD (1.25 years) (p > 0.05), during which there were significant changes in EDSS score between baseline and follow-up in NMOSD and MS patients (p < 0.05). There was a significantly reduced FA, and increased MD and RD in patients with MS (p < 0.05), but no significant changes in patients with NMOSD (p > 0.05). ConclusionsBoth MS and NMOSD have microstructure damage in white matter, while the progressive change in brain microstructural properties is observed in patients with MS but may not in patients with NMOSD in a short-term follow-up.

Navigating the COVID-19 Threat: Organizational Justice Matters More under Mortality Salience

Studies have shown that fairness is a functional quality, particularly when people are uncertain about fundamental aspects of human life, such as mortality salience (Van den Bos & Miedema, 2000). However, the role of organizational justice in mortality salience has been underexplored in field studies. COVID-19 has caused tens of thousands of deaths across the world. Does justice within an organization matter more to employees exposed to the threat of death from COVID-19? Based on social exchange theory and uncertainty management theory, we hypothesize that organizational justice and COVID-19 trigger mortality salience and jointly influence employee trust in their organizations and their work performance. We tested our hypotheses through a 16-day daily diary study using a sample of Chinese employees (N = 75, 831 total observations) and a three-wave study using a sample of American employees (N = 262). The results of the two studies showed that mortality salience consistently strengthened the effects of justice, as organizational justice was associated with higher levels of trust in the organization and work performance when the mortality salience triggered by COVID-19 was high (versus low). These findings replicate and extend other laboratory studies that apply uncertainty management theory and suggest that organizational justice matters more to employee trust and performance under the threat of COVID-19. Our research also advances social exchange theory by identifying personal uncertainty (i.e., mortality salience) as an important boundary condition through which justice can establish social exchange relationships in organizations.

Does organizational political ideology matter for firms’ international strategy?

Why do firms vary in their international strategy? Decades of research in international business and global strategy have explored this question taking mostly an economic view. This paper adds to t...

Evaluating public organization performance under extreme weather events: Does organizational adaptive capacity matter?

The study examines the impacts of extreme weather events on public organization performance. In response to the growing call for adaptive capacity development amid a worsening climate, it pays particular attention to the effects of organizational adaptive capacity. Three components of an organization's adaptive capacity are investigated: formal institutions, organizational slack and contracting out (inverse of capacity). We focus on organizations' technical efficiency as a key performance indicator. Using a sample of 108 bus transit system in the U.S. Northeast and Midwest from 2008 to 2017, the analysis applies the Battese and Coelli (1995) specification for stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) with panel data. A general model is estimated to incorporate the heterogeneity in both the level and efficiency of output. The results confirm the efficacy of organizational adaptive capacity to enhance efficiency amid extreme weather. Specifically, higher levels of organizational slack or lower levels of contracting out can boost technical efficiency under extreme weather. Formal institutions, while temporarily compromising technical efficiency, holds potential for salient efficiency gains in the long run. The conclusion ends with a discussion on the theoretical and practical implications of this study.