In recent years, a market-oriented corporate culture increasingly has been considered a key element of superior corporate performance. Although organizational innovativeness is believed to be a potential mediator of this market orientation–corporate performance relationship, much of the evidence to date remains anecdotal or speculative. In this context, the authors present a systematic framework to test the postulated “market orientation–innovation–performance” chain. To this end, the direct causality assumption of market orientation on organizational performance is examined with Narver and Slater's (1990) market orientation framework. Moreover, the authors take a componentwise approach and examine how the three core components of market orientation (customer orientation, competitor orientation, and interfunctional coordination) affect the two core components of organizational innovativeness (technical versus administrative) en route to affecting corporate performance. Using banking industry data, the authors empirically test and substantiate innovation's mediating role in the market orientation–corporate performance relationship.

In today's marketplace, many of the newer-generation convergence products (e.g., camera phones, all-in-one personal digital assistants) offer consumers product performance that rivals dedicated versions. With the increased availability of options, consumers now face another dilemma in their purchase consideration: Which product form should they choose—converged, dedicated, or both? This study investigates the choice patterns for product forms along the technology trajectories. In a series of four studies, the authors find that at low levels of technological performance, consumers overwhelmingly select convergence products over the dedicated options, whereas the choice pattern is reversed at high levels of technological performance. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate that a preannouncement of future technology can affect consumer preferences for product forms. Finally, they address the managerial implications and suggest directions for further research.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenously expressed non-coding RNAs of 20–24 nucleotides, which post-transcriptionally regulate gene expression in plants and animals. Recently it has been recognized that miRNAs comprise one of the abundant gene families in multicellular species, and their regulatory functions in various biological processes are widely spread. There has been a surge in the research activities in this field in the past few years. From the very beginning, computational methods have been utilized as indispensable tools, and many discoveries have been obtained through combination of experimental and computational approaches. In this review, both biological and computational aspects of miRNA will be discussed. A brief history of the discovery of miRNA and discussion of microarray applications in miRNA research are also included.

The dorsoventral axis of the Drosophila embryo is induced by a ventrally restricted ligand for the receptor Toll. The Toll ligand is generated by a proteolytic processing reaction, which occurs at the end of a proteolytic cascade and requires the gastrulation defective (gd), nudel, pipe, and windbeutel genes. Here we demonstrate that the GD protein is a serine protease and that the three other genes act to restrict GD activity to the ventral side of the embryo. Our data support a model in which the GD protease catalyzes the ventral activation of the proteolytic cascade that produces the Toll ligand.

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, associated proteins (CRISPR/Cas), has been developed into a powerful, targeted genome-editing tool in a wide variety of species. Here, we report an extensive investigation of the type II CRISPR/Cas9 system for targeted gene editing in Streptomyces rimosus. S. rimosus is used in the production of the antibiotic oxytetracycline, and its genome differs greatly from other species of the genus Streptomyces in the conserved chromosome terminal and core regions, which is of major production and scientific research value. The genes zwf2 and devB were chosen as target genes, and were edited separately via single-site mutations, double-site mutations and gene fragment disruptions. The single-site mutation guided by sgRNA-1 or sgRNA-2, respectively, involved GG changing to CA, GC changing to AT, and GG changing to CC. The double-site mutations guided by sgRNA-1 and sgRNA-2 included deletions and/or point mutations. Consistently, all mutations occurred in the gRNA sequence regions. Deletion mutations were characterized by the absence of eight bases, including three bases upstream of the PAM (protospacer adjacent motif) sequence, the PAM sequence itself and two bases downstream of the PAM sequence. A mutant (zwf2-devB-) with a high yield of oxytetracycline was successfully obtained, whose oxytetracycline level was increased by 36.8 % compared to the original strain. These results confirm that CRISPR/Cas9 can successfully serve as a useful targeted genome editing system in S. rimosus.

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a student-centered model that organizes learning and studying around projects. It has gained some popularity in second language education and exercised positive influence on educational practices. This paper gives a selective review of the researches on Project-Based Learning from different aspects, including the definition of PBL, the process of PBL and other relative studies, in the hope that this may, to some extent, render help to teachers who employ PBL in varying degrees.

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