Thirty Years After Michael E. Porter: What Do We Know About Business Exit?

Although a business exit is an important corporate change initiative, the buyer’s side seems to be more appealing to management researchers than the seller’s because acquisitions imply growth, i.e., success. Yet from an optimistic viewpoint, business exit can effectively create value for the selling company. In this paper we attempt to bring the relevance of the seller’s side back into our consciousness by asking: What do we know about business exit? We start our exploration with Porter (1976), focusing on literature that investigates the antecedents of, barriers to, and outcomes of business exit. We also include studies from related fields such as finance and economics.1 Through this research we determine three clusters of findings: factors promoting business exit, exit barriers, and exit outcomes. Overall, it is the intention of this paper to highlight the importance of business exit for research and practice. Knowing what we know about business exits and their high financial value we should bear in mind that exit need not mean failure but a new beginning for a corporation

Laser capture microdissection in forensic research: a review

In forensic sciences, short tandem repeat (STR) analysis has become the prime tool for DNA-based identification of the donor(s) of biological stains and/or traces. Many traces, however, contain cells and, hence, DNA, from more than a single individual, giving rise to mixed genotypes and the subsequent difficulties in interpreting the results. An even more challenging situation occurs when cells of a victim are much more abundant than the cells of the perpetrator. Therefore, the forensic community seeks to improve cell-separation methods in order to generate single-donor cell populations from a mixed trace in order to facilitate DNA typing and identification. Laser capture microdissection (LCM) offers a valuable tool for precise separation of specific cells. This review summarises all possible forensic applications of LCM, gives an overview of the staining and detection options, including automated detection and retrieval of cells of interest, and reviews the DNA extraction protocols compatible with LCM of cells from forensic samples

'Social enterprise spin-outs': an institutional analysis of their emergence and potential

The recent phenomenon of public sector ‘social enterprise spin-outs’ is examined in order to critically assess their nature and innovative potential as providers of public services. The study utilises a theoretical model of institutional creation and change which incorporates key characteristics of ‘corporate spin-outs’ and ‘university spin-outs’ to facilitate the examination of their public sector counterparts, drawing on interview evidence from 30 newly-established social enterprise providers of health and care services in England. A main contribution of the paper is to provide a conceptual framework which sheds light on the strengths and potential vulnerabilities of social enterprise spin-outs as novel organisations that span the public, private and civil society sectors

Molecular genetic identification of skeletal remains from the Second World War Konfin I mass grave in Slovenia

This paper describes molecular genetic identification of one third of the skeletal remains of 88 victims of postwar (June 1945) killings found in the Konfin I mass grave in Slovenia. Living relatives were traced for 36 victims. We analyzed 84 right femurs and compared their genetic profiles to the genetic material of living relatives. We cleaned the bones, removed surface contamination, and ground the bones into powder. Prior to DNA isolation using Biorobot EZ1 (Qiagen), the powder was decalcified. The nuclear DNA of the samples was quantified using the real-time polymerase chain reaction method. We extracted 0.8 to 100 ng DNA/g of bone powder from 82 bones. Autosomal genetic profiles and Y-chromosome haplotypes were obtained from 98% of the bones, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplotypes from 95% of the bones for the HVI region and from 98% of the bones for the HVII region. Genetic profiles of the nuclear and mtDNA were determined for reference persons. For traceability in the event of contamination, we created an elimination database including genetic profiles of the nuclear and mtDNA of all persons that had been in contact with the skeletal remains. When comparing genetic profiles, we matched 28 of the 84 bones analyzed with living relatives (brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, nephews, or cousins). The statistical analyses showed a high confidence of correct identification for all 28 victims in the Konfin I mass grave (posterior probability ranged from 99.9% to more than 99.999999%)

NUPA10hd-immortalized and genetically engineered progenitors allow studying dendritic cell immune functions

Dendritic cells (DCs) are sentinels of the immune system and potent professional antigen-presenting cells with the ability to encounter antigens in the periphery, migrate to draining lymph nodes and activate naive T cells. A major challenge in studying DC biology is the poor efficacy of engineering them and generating stable genetically modified DC subsets for preclinical studies and transplantation purposes. Here, we extend studies on Hoxb8-immortalized progenitor cells, previously documented to differentiate into functional DCs, to another Hox-based strategy, namely constitutive NUP98Hoxa10HD (NUPA10hd) expression in murine hematopoietic progenitor cells. We show that both, NUPA10hd- and Hoxb8-immortalized progenitors, give rise to functional DCs in vitro, which are capable of CCR7-driven migration and T cell priming. In contrast to Hoxb8 progenitors, NUPA10hd progenitors show efficient and stable in vivo differentiation into pDCs, cDC1s and cDC2s. Finally, we demonstrate the efficacy of the NUPA10hd system in producing genetically modified DCs, allowing the monitoring of DC-T cell interactions and signaling events in migrating DCs. Collectively, NUPA10hd-immortalized progenitors represent a versatile and effective system for investigating immune functions of wild type and genetically engineered DCs.publishe