Effects of a Randomized Intervention to Improve Workplace Social Capital in Community Health Centers in China

Objective

To examine whether workplace social capital improved after implementing a workplace social capital intervention in community health centers in China.

Methods

This study was conducted in 20 community health centers of similar size in Jinan of China during 2012–2013. Using the stratified site randomization, 10 centers were randomized into the intervention group; one center was excluded due to leadership change in final analyses. The baseline survey including 447 staff (response rate: 93.1%) was conducted in 2012, and followed by a six-month workplace social capital intervention, including team building courses for directors of community health centers, voluntarily public services, group psychological consultation, and outdoor training. The follow-up survey in July 2013 was responded to by 390 staff members (response rate: 86.9%). Workplace social capital was assessed with the translated and culturally adapted scale, divided into vertical and horizontal dimensions. The facility-level intervention effects were based on all baseline (n = 427) and follow-up (n = 377) respondents, except for Weibei respondents. We conducted a bivariate Difference-in-Difference analysis to estimate the facility-level intervention effects.

Results

No statistically significant intervention effects were observed at the center level; the intervention increased the facility-level workplace social capital, and its horizontal and vertical dimensions by 1.0 (p = 0.24), 0.4 (p = 0.46) and 0.8 (p = 0.16), respectively.

Conclusions

The comprehensive intervention seemed to slightly improve workplace social capital in community health centers of urban China at the center level. High attrition rate limits any causal interpretation of the results. Further studies are warranted to test these findings.     

Anti-Heparanase Aptamers as Potential Diagnostic and Therapeutic Agents for Oral Cancer

Heparanase is an endoglycosidase enzyme present in activated leucocytes, mast cells, placental tissue, neutrophils and macrophages, and is involved in tumour metastasis and tissue invasion. It presents a potential target for cancer therapies and various molecules have been developed in an attempt to inhibit the enzymatic action of heparanase. In an attempt to develop a novel therapeutic with an associated diagnostic assay, we have previously described high affinity aptamers selected against heparanase. In this work, we demonstrated that these anti-heparanase aptamers are capable of inhibiting tissue invasion of tumour cells associated with oral cancer and verified that such inhibition is due to inhibition of the enzyme and not due to other potentially cytotoxic effects of the aptamers. Furthermore, we have identified a short 30 bases aptamer as a potential candidate for further studies, as this showed a higher ability to inhibit tissue invasion than its longer counterpart, as well as a reduced potential for complex formation with other non-specific serum proteins. Finally, the aptamer was found to be stable and therefore suitable for use in human models, as it showed no degradation in the presence of human serum, making it a potential candidate for both diagnostic and therapeutic use.     

Vertical and Horizontal Trust at Work as Predictors of Retirement Intentions: The Finnish Public Sector Study

This prospective cohort study aimed to examine the associations of trust towards the supervisor (vertical trust) and trust towards co-workers (horizontal trust) with retirement intentions. The participants were 14 840 women and men working in the municipal sector in 2000–12 (Finnish Public Sector Study). Trust (vertical trust towards the supervisor and horizontal trust towards co-workers) and retirement intentions were assessed in repeated surveys. Multivariable multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted to assess the association between baseline trust and retirement intentions at 3.7 years of follow-up. Demographic characteristics, health, psychological distress, health risk behaviors, personality factors, and psychosocial factors were included as covariates. Of the participants, 67.0% trusted their supervisor and 54.9% trusted their co-workers. Employees who trusted their supervisor (odds ratio (OR) 0.60, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.53–0.67) and employees who trusted their co-workers (odds ratio 0.62, 95% confidence interval 0.55–0.70) at baseline were less likely to have strong retirement intentions at follow-up compared to those who did not trust. These associations largely persisted after adjusting for all covariates and taking into account baseline retirement intentions. In conclusion, trust in the supervisor and co-workers predicted retirement intentions. These observational findings suggest that increasing trust in the workplace may contribute to lengthening working careers and preventing early retirement.     

Disruption or aposematism? Significance of dorsal zigzag pattern of European vipers

European vipers (genus Vipera) are venomous and often have a distinctive dorsal zigzag pattern. The zigzag pattern of vipers has been suggested to be an example of disruptive colouration which reduces the detectability of a snake. However, recent studies suggest that the patterns have an aposematic function, although those experiments did not exclude the possibility of disruptive colouration. We used plasticine replicas of snakes to examine whether the zigzag pattern of European vipers provides protection from avian predator attacks via disruptive or aposematic function, or if the zigzag pattern might simultaneously serve both antipredatory functions. Experiments were conducted in the Coto Doñana National Park southern Spain. In the experiment, predation pressure caused by birds was compared between zigzag pattern (patterns were painted with and without disruptive effect i.e. breaking body outline or not), classical disruptive colouration (non-randomly placed patterns that breaks body outline) and control markings (replicas with length wise stripes and models without painted pattern) on natural and controlled backgrounds. We found that zigzag patterned snake replicas suffered less predation than striped ones regardless of the background, providing further evidence that the zigzag pattern of European vipers functions as a warning signal against predators. However, we did not find evidence that the zigzag pattern involves a disruptive effect.     

Compid: a new software tool to integrate and compare MS/MS based protein identification results from Mascot and Paragon

Tandem mass spectrometry-based proteomics experiments produce large amounts of raw data, and different database search engines are needed to reliably identify all the proteins from this data. Here, we present Compid, an easy-to-use software tool that can be used to integrate and compare protein identification results from two search engines, Mascot and Paragon. Additionally, Compid enables extraction of information from large Mascot result files that cannot be opened via the Web interface and calculation of general statistical information about peptide and protein identifications in a data set. To demonstrate the usefulness of this tool, we used Compid to compare Mascot and Paragon database search results for mitochondrial proteome sample of human keratinocytes. The reports generated by Compid can be exported and opened as Excel documents or as text files using configurable delimiters, allowing the analysis and further processing of Compid output with a multitude of programs. Compid is freely available and can be downloaded from http://users.utu.fi/lanatr/compid. It is released under an open source license (GPL), enabling modification of the source code. Its modular architecture allows for creation of supplementary software components e.g. to enable support for additional input formats and report categories.     

Length of activity season drives geographic variation in body size of a widely distributed lizard

Understanding the factors that drive geographic variation in life history is an important challenge in evolutionary ecology. Here, we analyze what predicts geographic variation in life‐history traits of the common lizard, Zootoca vivipara, which has the globally largest distribution range of all terrestrial reptile species. Variation in body size was predicted by differences in the length of activity season, while we found no effects of environmental temperature per se. Females experiencing relatively short activity season mature at a larger size and remain larger on average than females in populations with relatively long activity seasons. Interpopulation variation in fecundity was largely explained by mean body size of females and reproductive mode, with viviparous populations having larger clutch size than oviparous populations. Finally, body size‐fecundity relationship differs between viviparous and oviparous populations, with relatively lower reproductive investment for a given body size in oviparous populations. While the phylogenetic signal was weak overall, the patterns of variation showed spatial effects, perhaps reflecting genetic divergence or geographic variation in additional biotic and abiotic factors. Our findings emphasize that time constraints imposed by the environment rather than ambient temperature play a major role in shaping life histories in the common lizard. This might be attributed to the fact that lizards can attain their preferred body temperature via behavioral thermoregulation across different thermal environments. Length of activity season, defining the maximum time available for lizards to maintain optimal performance, is thus the main environmental factor constraining growth rate and annual rates of mortality. Our results suggest that this factor may partly explain variation in the extent to which different taxa follow ecogeographic rules.     

Pattern of xylem phenology in conifers of cold ecosystems at the Northern Hemisphere

The interaction between xylem phenology and climate assesses forest growth and productivity and carbon storage across biomes under changing environmental conditions. We tested the hypothesis that patterns of wood formation are maintained unaltered despite the temperature changes across cold ecosystems. Wood microcores were collected weekly or biweekly throughout the growing season for periods varying between 1 and 13 years during 1998–2014 and cut in transverse sections for assessing the onset and ending of the phases of xylem differentiation. The data set represented 1321 trees belonging to 10 conifer species from 39 sites in the Northern Hemisphere and covering an interval of mean annual temperature exceeding 14 K. The phenological events and mean annual temperature of the sites were related linearly, with spring and autumnal events being separated by constant intervals across the range of temperature analysed. At increasing temperature, first enlarging, wall‐thickening and mature tracheids appeared earlier, and last enlarging and wall‐thickening tracheids occurred later. Overall, the period of wood formation lengthened linearly with the mean annual temperature, from 83.7 days at ?2 °C to 178.1 days at 12 °C, at a rate of 6.5 days °C^?1. April–May temperatures produced the best models predicting the dates of wood formation. Our findings demonstrated the uniformity of the process of wood formation and the importance of the environmental conditions occurring at the time of growth resumption. Under warming scenarios, the period of wood formation might lengthen synchronously in the cold biomes of the Northern Hemisphere.