Organizations have several objectives, including competitiveness, high profit and long-term survival. However, sustainability has become a diligent act of business and non-business organizations because it moves organizations toward superior performance. Sustainability does not come itself; it requires enough resources and capabilities. Extant studies have examined the factors that influence sustainability, but have rarely touched on innovation in this perspective. The present study examines the influence of management innovation and technological innovation on organization performance with the mediating role of sustainability. To test the model, we applied structural equation modeling in the analysis of a moment structures (AMOS) on the empirical evidence collected from 304 Pakistani CEOs and top managers. The results indicate that management innovation and technological innovation significantly positively contribute to sustainability and organization performance. Sustainability plays a partial mediating role between management innovation and organization performance and also a partial mediating role between technological innovation and organization performance. We recommend CEOs and top managers to give due attention to management innovation and technological innovation to enhance sustainability and survive the long run. Implications are discussed.

Background: In view of the immense value of Brassica rapa in the fields of agriculture and molecular biology, the multinational Brassica rapa Genome Sequencing Project (BrGSP) was launched in 2003 by five countries. The developing BrGSP has valuable resources for the community, including a reference genetic map and seed BAC sequences. Although the initial B. rapa linkage map served as a reference for the BrGSP, there was ambiguity in reconciling the linkage groups with the ten chromosomes of B. rapa. Consequently, the BrGSP assigned each of the linkage groups to the project members as chromosome substitutes for sequencing.

Lipolysis-stimulated lipoprotein receptor, a component of the paracellular barrier at tricellular junctions, is necessary for proper blood–brain barrier sealing during embryogenesis.

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Retroperitoneal robot-assisted partial nephrectomy showed shorter operation time and generally equivalent perioperative results to TP RPN. RP RPN is a viable treatment option for treating posterior or lateral renal masses.

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to elucidate prognostic factors for survival and clinical outcomes of rological soft tissue sarcomas (STSs).Materials and MethodsThis was a retrospective review of the medical records of 48 patients with urological STS treated from January 1982 to July 2009. Demographic and pathological characteristics were compared. Patients' demographics, clinico-pathological parameters, overall survival, and the factors expected to predict survival, such as sex, age at diagnosis, primary organ, surgical resection, metastasis, and mass size, were analyzed. We evaluated differences in survival on the basis of histological subtype by Kaplan-Meier analysis and multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression.ResultsThe study included 34 males (70.8%) and 14 females (29.1%). The mean age at diagnosis was 47.1 years (range, 3 to 80). The most common site was the retroperitoneum (n=16), followed by the kidney (n=12), prostate (n=10), bladder (n=7), ureter (n=1), and paratesticular region (n=1). Nineteen patients (39.5%) had other organ metastases at diagnosis. The most common subtypes of sarcoma were leiomyosarcoma (50%), rhabdomyosarcoma (18.7%), and liposarcoma (8%). The remaining 11 cases had other histological subtypes (22.9%). Mean tumor size was 9.5 cm (range, 2.2 to 24). Thirty-three patients (68.7%) underwent surgical resection. The overall survival rate at 5 years was 51.4%. In the univariate and multivariate analysis, surgical resection, primary tumor site, and metastasis at diagnosis remained significant predictors of prognosis. Patients with retroperitoneal sarcoma had a higher overall survival rate by 5 years compared with patients with other organ sarcoma.ConclusionsThe overall survival rate at 5 years was 51.4%. Surgical resection, primary tumor site, and metastasis at diagnosis remained significant predictors of prognosis.

An in vitro screening system for anti-cancer drugs cannot exactly reflect the efficacy of drugs in vivo, without mimicking the tumour microenvironment (TME), which comprises cancer cells interacting with blood vessels and fibroblasts. Additionally, the tumour size should be controlled to obtain reliable and quantitative drug responses. Herein, we report a bioprinting method for recapitulating the TME with a controllable spheroid size. The TME was constructed by printing a blood vessel layer consisting of fibroblasts and endothelial cells in gelatine, alginate, and fibrinogen, followed by seeding multicellular tumour spheroids (MCTSs) of glioblastoma cells (U87 MG) onto the blood vessel layer. Under MCTSs, sprouts of blood vessels were generated and surrounding MCTSs thereby increasing the spheroid size. The combined treatment involving the anti-cancer drug temozolomide (TMZ) and the angiogenic inhibitor sunitinib was more effective than TMZ alone for MCTSs surrounded by blood vessels, which indicates the feasibility of the TME for in vitro testing of drug efficacy. These results suggest that the bioprinted vascularized tumour is highly useful for understanding tumour biology, as well as for in vitro drug testing.

BackgroundThe Brassica species, related to Arabidopsis thaliana, include an important group of crops and represent an excellent system for studying the evolutionary consequences of polyploidy. Previous studies have led to a proposed structure for an ancestral karyotype and models for the evolution of the B. rapa genome by triplication and segmental rearrangement, but these have not been validated at the sequence level.ResultsWe developed computational tools to analyse the public collection of B. rapa BAC end sequence, in order to identify candidates for representing collinearity discontinuities between the genomes of B. rapa and A. thaliana. For each putative discontinuity, one of the BACs was sequenced and analysed for collinearity with the genome of A. thaliana. Additional BAC clones were identified and sequenced as part of ongoing efforts to sequence four chromosomes of B. rapa. Strikingly few of the 19 inter-chromosomal rearrangements corresponded to the set of collinearity discontinuities anticipated on the basis of previous studies. Our analyses revealed numerous instances of newly detected collinearity blocks. For B. rapa linkage group A8, we were able to develop a model for the derivation of the chromosome from the ancestral karyotype. We were also able to identify a rearrangement event in the ancestor of B. rapa that was not shared with the ancestor of A. thaliana, and is represented in triplicate in the B. rapa genome. In addition to inter-chromosomal rearrangements, we identified and analysed 32 BACs containing the end points of segmental inversion events.ConclusionOur results show that previous studies of segmental collinearity between the A. thaliana, Brassica and ancestral karyotype genomes, although very useful, represent over-simplifications of their true relationships. The presence of numerous cryptic collinear genome segments and the frequent occurrence of segmental inversions mean that inference of the positions of genes in B. rapa based on the locations of orthologues in A. thaliana can be misleading. Our results will be of relevance to a wide range of plants that have polyploid genomes, many of which are being considered according to a paradigm of comprising conserved synteny blocks with respect to sequenced, related genomes.