Smart Specialization of Workforce Structure in the European Union Countries – Dynamic Analysis Applying Shift-Share Analysis Method

The performed research also allowed for the identification different kinds of workforce structure characterized by smart specialization (significant share of workforce in high-tech manufacturing sector or high-tech services sector) and the assessment of generated structural and competitive effects.Przeprowadzone badania pozwoliły na identyfikację różnych rodzajów struktur pracujących cechujących się inteligentną specjalizacją (znaczący udział pracujących w sektorze przemysłu wysokiej techniki lub usług opartych na wiedzy) oraz ocenić generowane przez nie efekty strukturalne i konkurencyjne

El principe constante? Jan Lechoń and politics (after 1939)

In the article, I focuss on the theme of the political views of Jan Lechoń during his New York exile, which emerged in his literary work, letters, and Dziennik. The main elements of the political stance of the author of Srebrne i czarne were in that time: resolute anti-communism, critical assessment of the actions of the government in exile, his declared admiration for America, and a nostalgia for the interwar period (idealising Józef Piłsudski). The discussed views of the poet exerted a considerable influence on his personal life, which was proven by the politically motivated breaking off his long-time relations with Julian Tuwim. One important problem is where to locate Lechoń’s dissatisfaction with the political changes in Poland, which he stated often, within the reasons for his suicide

Book Review: Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

Book review of Give and take: Why helping others drives our success, by Adam Grant, written for the Spring 2016 Semester MGMT 641: Organizational Leadership and Project Team Management class

An iterative method for extreme optics of two-level systems

We formulate the problem of a two-level system in a linearly polarized laser field in terms of a nonlinear Riccati-type differential equation and solve the equation analytically in time intervals much shorter than half the optical period. The analytical solutions for subsequent intervals are then stuck together in an iterative procedure to cover the scale time of the laser pulse. This approach is applicable to pulses of arbitrary (nonrelativistic) strengths, shapes and durations, thus covering the whole region of light-matter couplings from weak through moderate to strong ones. The method allows quick insight into different problems from the field of light--matter interaction. Very good quality of the method is shown by recovering with it a number of subtle effects met in earlier numerically calculated photon-emission spectra from model molecular ions, double quantum wells, atoms and semiconductors. The method presented is an efficient mathematical tool to describe novel effects in the region of, e.g., extreme nonlinear optics, i.e., when two--level systems are exposed to pulses of only a few cycles in duration and strength ensuring the Rabi frequency to approach and even exceed the laser light frequence

Beyond CSR: organizational learning for global responsibility

This contribution argues that it is time to move beyond corporate social responsibility (CSR) to global responsibility. As long as the field retains its old label, the learning agenda for organizations will be too narrow to address the full range of challenges for a sustainable world. It sets too small a stage, invites too few actors to participate and restricts the types of roles they can play. Global responsibility reframes the way issues are defined and the paths along which so-lutions may be found. After building the argument for the term, the contribution draws on research about organizational learning to identify the kinds of learning that organizations must become skilled at in order to tackle global responsibility. It then illustrates learning processes in a cooperative bank and an international non-governmental association, a multinational corporation, and a multi-stakeholder platform created by the United Nations. These cases show how organizations are combining various types of learning and using physical and virtual learning spaces to generate knowledge for action. The contribution concludes by discussing how to increase the number of organizations engaging in such global responsibility and how to speed up their learning. To this end, lessons are drawn from experiences with the diffusion of voluntary and mandatory approaches to corporate social reporting over the past forty years. -- Dieser Artikel regt dazu an, den Begriff Corporate Social Responsibility (soziale Verantwortung von Unternehmen) auf globale Verantwortung zu erweitern. Der bisherige Begriff ist in mehrfacher Hinsicht zu eng gefasst, unter anderem weil er sich nur auf Unternehmen und nur auf soziale Verantwortung bezieht und damit andere Organisationstypen und Verantwortungsfelder außer Acht läßt. Das Konzept der globalen Verantwortung erweitert den Bezugsrahmen und damit die potentiellen Lösungsansätze. Die Verwirklichung von globaler Verantwortung in der Praxis wird Organisationen vor große Herausforderungen in Bezug auf Lernen stellen. Daher geht der Beitrag im nächsten Teil auf Erkenntnisse aus dem Bereich des Organisationslernens ein, die dann anhand von mehreren Fall-beispielen verdeutlicht werden. Die Beispiele stammen aus unterschiedlichen Typen von Organisationen: einer Genossenschaftsbank, einer internationalen NGO, einem multinationalen Unternehmen und einer Multi-Stakeholder-Plattform der Vereinten Nationen. Diese Beispiele zeigen auch, wie Organisationen be-stimmte Lerntypen kombinieren und sowohl physische als auch virtuelle Räume nutzen, um Wissen über Organisations- und Ländergrenzen hinweg zu generie-ren. Abschließend werden die Möglichkeiten ausgelotet, die Beteiligung von Organisationen an diese Lernprozesse quantitativ zu erheben und qualitativ zu optimieren. Erfahrungen mit der Diffusion von anderen Instrumenten, beispielsweise Sozialbilanzen, die auf freiwilliger bzw. gesetzlicher Basis beruhen, werden ausgewertet. Die Autoren weisen auf die Notwendigkeit von verbindlichen Vorgaben hin, die einen inhaltlich- und verfahrensorientierten Rahmen liefern, in dem Lernexperimente innerhalb und zwischen Organisationen möglich gemacht werden.

Structural and mechanistic diversity of secondary transporters

Recent reports on the three-dimensional structure of secondary transporters have dramatically increased our knowledge of the translocation mechanism of ions and solutes. The structures of five transporters at atomic resolution have yielded four different folds and as many different translocation mechanisms. The structure of the glutamate transporter homologue Glt(Ph) confirmed the role of pore-loop structures as essential parts of the translocation mechanism in one family of secondary transporters. Biochemical evidence for pore-loop structures in several other families suggest that they might be common in secondary transporters, adding to the structural and mechanistic diversity of secondary transporters

Optical properties and bioavailability of dissolved organic matter along a flow-path continuum from soil pore waters to the Kolyma River mainstem, East Siberia

The Kolyma River in northeast Siberia is among the six largest Arctic rivers and drains a region underlain by vast deposits of Holocene-aged peat and Pleistocene-aged loess known as yedoma, most of which is currently stored in ice-rich permafrost throughout the region. These peat and yedoma deposits are important sources of dissolved organic matter (DOM) to inland waters that in turn play a significant role in the transport and ultimate remineralization of organic carbon to CO2 and CH4 along the terrestrial flow-path continuum. The turnover and fate of terrigenous DOM during offshore transport largely depends upon the composition and amount of carbon released to inland and coastal waters. Here, we measured the ultraviolet-visible optical properties of chromophoric DOM (CDOM) from a geographically extensive collection of waters spanning soil pore waters, streams, rivers, and the Kolyma River mainstem throughout a  ∼  250 km transect of the northern Kolyma River basin. During the period of study, CDOM absorption coefficients were found to be robust proxies for the concentration of DOM, whereas additional CDOM parameters such as spectral slopes (S) were found to be useful indicators of DOM quality along the flow path. In particular, the spectral slope ratio (SR) of CDOM demonstrated statistically significant differences between all four water types and tracked changes in the concentration of bioavailable DOC, suggesting that this parameter may be suitable for clearly discriminating shifts in organic matter characteristics among water types along the full flow-path continuum across this landscape. However, despite our observations of downstream shifts in DOM composition, we found a relatively constant proportion of DOC that was bioavailable ( ∼  3–6 % of total DOC) regardless of relative water residence time along the flow path. This may be a consequence of two potential scenarios allowing for continual processing of organic material within the system, namely (a) aquatic microorganisms are acclimating to a downstream shift in DOM composition and/or (b) photodegradation is continually generating labile DOM for continued microbial processing of DOM along the flow-path continuum. Without such processes, we would otherwise expect to see a declining fraction of bioavailable DOC downstream with increasing residence time of water in the system. With ongoing and future permafrost degradation, peat and yedoma deposits throughout the northeast Siberian region will become more hydrologically active, providing greater amounts of DOM to fluvial networks and ultimately to the Arctic Ocean. The ability to rapidly and comprehensively monitor shifts in the quantity and quality of DOM across the landscape is therefore critical for understanding potential future feedbacks within the Arctic carbon cycle

Advertising Icons: Preserving the Cultural Record of Brand Ambassadors

The authors discuss the background and implementation of the Brandcenter Advertising Icons image collection, available at https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/brandcenter_icons

Loop VIII/IX of the Na+-citrate transporter CitS of Klebsiella pneumoniae folds into an amphipathic surface helix

The sodium ion-dependent citrate transporter CitS of Klebsiella pneumoniae is a member of, the 2-hydroxycarboxylate transporter (2HCT) family whose members transport divalent citrate in symport with two sodium ions. Profiles of the hydrophobic moment suggested the presence of an amphipathic helical structure in the cytoplasmic loop between transmembrane segments (TMSs) VIII and IX (the AH loop) in all members of the family. Cysteine-scanning mutagenesis was used to study the secondary structure of the AH loop. We have mutated 20 successive residues into cysteine residues, characterized each of the mutants for its transport activity, and determined the accessibility of the residues. Three of the mutants, G324C, F331C, and F332C, had very low citrate transport activity, and two others, I321C and S333C, exhibited significantly decreased activity after treatment of right-side-out membranes with membrane permeable thiol reagent N-ethylmaleimide (NEM), but not with membrane impermeable 4-acetamido-4 '-maleimidylstilbene-2,2 '-disulfonic acid (AmdiS) and [2-(trimethylammonium)ethyl]methanethiosulfonate (MTSET). No protection against NEM was observed with citrate or sodium ions. Labeling of the cysteine residues in the 20 mutants with the fluorescent probe fluorescein 5-maleimide, in membrane vesicles with an inverted orientation, resulted in a clear periodicity in the accessibility of the residues. Residues expected to be at the hydrophobic face of the putative alpha-helix were not accessible for the label, whereas those at the hydrophilic face were easily accessed and labeled. Pretreatment of whole cells and inside-out membranes expressing the mutants with the membrane impermeable reagent AmdiS confirmed the cytoplasmic localization of the AH region. It is concluded that the loop between TMSs VIII and IX folds into an amphipathic surface helix