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Management practices and manufacturing firm responses to a randomized energy audit
Increasing the efficiency of industrial energy use is widely considered important for mitigating climate change. We randomize assignment of an energy audit intervention aimed at improving energy efficiency and reducing energy expenditures of small- and medium-sized metal processing firms in Shandong Province, China, and examine impacts on energy outcomes and interactions with firms’ management practices. We find that the intervention reduced firms’ unit cost of electricity by 8% on average. Firms with more developed structured management practices showed higher rates of recommendation adoption. However, the post-intervention electricity unit cost reduction is larger in firms with less developed practices, primarily driven by a single recommendation that corrected managers’ inaccurate reporting of transformer usage at baseline, lowering their electricity costs. By closing management-associated gaps in awareness of energy expenditures, energy audit programmes may reduce a firm’s unit cost of energy but have an ambiguous impact on energy use and climate change.
Sustainable supply chain management practices and performance: The moderating effect of stakeholder pressure
Currently, sustainable supply chain management practices have become an important strategy for firms to improve performance and gain competitive advantage. However, there is a current debate over the performance outcomes of sustainable supply chain management practices. Additionally, the role of stakeholder pressure is frequently overlooked. Drawing on Natural Resources-Based View and Stakeholder Theory, this study aims to elucidate the ambiguous connection between sustainable supply management, sustainable process management, stakeholder pressure and performance, and investigate the mediation role of sustainable process management and the moderation effect of stakeholder pressure. Our analysis, based on data collected from 235 Chinese manufacturing firms, reveals significant insights. First, stakeholder pressure positively moderates the relationship between sustainable process management and performance, while negatively moderates the relationship between sustainable supply management and performance. Second, sustainable process management has a complete mediation effect on the relationship between sustainable supply management and performance. The conclusion not only explains the inconsistent relationship between sustainable supply chain management practice and performance, but also reveals clearly the relationship between sustainable supply management and sustainable process management. Besides, it also highlights the difference in performance outcomes of sustainable supply management and sustainable process management under stakeholder pressures, and has valuable guidance to the practice of sustainable supply chain management in Chinese manufacturing firms.
Plasma proteome variation and its genetic determinants in children and adolescents
Our current understanding of the determinants of plasma proteome variation during pediatric development remains incomplete. Here, we show that genetic variants, age, sex and body mass index significantly influence this variation. Using a streamlined and highly quantitative mass spectrometry-based proteomics workflow, we analyzed plasma from 2,147 children and adolescents, identifying 1,216 proteins after quality control. Notably, the levels of 70% of these were associated with at least one of the aforementioned factors, with protein levels also being predictive. Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) regulated at least one-third of the proteins; between a few percent and up to 30-fold. Together with excellent replication in an additional 1,000 children and 558 adults, this reveals substantial genetic effects on plasma protein levels, persisting from childhood into adulthood. Through Mendelian randomization and colocalization analyses, we identified 41 causal genes for 33 cardiometabolic traits, emphasizing the value of protein QTLs in drug target identification and disease understanding.
International consensus guidelines on the implementation and monitoring of vosoritide therapy in individuals with achondroplasia
Achondroplasia is the most common genetic form of short-limbed skeletal dysplasia (dwarfism). Clinical manifestations and complications can affect individuals across the lifespan, including the need for adaptations for activities of daily living, which can affect quality of life. Current international guidelines focus on symptomatic management, with little discussion regarding potential medication, as therapeutic options were limited at the time of their publication. Vosoritide is the first pharmacological, precision treatment for achondroplasia; it was approved for use in 2021, creating a need for vosoritide treatment guidelines to support clinicians. An international collaborative of leading experts and patient advocates was formed to develop this Consensus Statement. The group developed the guideline scope and topics during a hybrid meeting in November 2023; guideline statements were subsequently ratified via Delphi methodology using a predefined consensus threshold. These statements provide recommendations across the treatment pathway, from starting treatment with vosoritide through ongoing monitoring and evaluation, to stopping vosoritide and ongoing monitoring following cessation. These guidelines recommend a minimum set of requirements and a practical framework for professionals and health services worldwide regarding the use of vosoritide to treat infants, children and young people with achondroplasia. This Consensus Statement is a supplement to already established consensus guidelines for management and care of individuals with achondroplasia.
Targeting of TAMs: can we be more clever than cancer cells?
With increasing incidence and geography, cancer is one of the leading causes of death, reduced quality of life and disability worldwide. Principal progress in the development of new anticancer therapies, in improving the efficiency of immunotherapeutic tools, and in the personification of conventional therapies needs to consider cancer-specific and patient-specific programming of innate immunity. Intratumoral TAMs and their precursors, resident macrophages and monocytes, are principal regulators of tumor progression and therapy resistance. Our review summarizes the accumulated evidence for the subpopulations of TAMs and their increasing number of biomarkers, indicating their predictive value for the clinical parameters of carcinogenesis and therapy resistance, with a focus on solid cancers of non-infectious etiology. We present the state-of-the-art knowledge about the tumor-supporting functions of TAMs at all stages of tumor progression and highlight biomarkers, recently identified by single-cell and spatial analytical methods, that discriminate between tumor-promoting and tumor-inhibiting TAMs, where both subtypes express a combination of prototype M1 and M2 genes. Our review focuses on novel mechanisms involved in the crosstalk among epigenetic, signaling, transcriptional and metabolic pathways in TAMs. Particular attention has been given to the recently identified link between cancer cell metabolism and the epigenetic programming of TAMs by histone lactylation, which can be responsible for the unlimited protumoral programming of TAMs. Finally, we explain how TAMs interfere with currently used anticancer therapeutics and summarize the most advanced data from clinical trials, which we divide into four categories: inhibition of TAM survival and differentiation, inhibition of monocyte/TAM recruitment into tumors, functional reprogramming of TAMs, and genetic enhancement of macrophages.
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