ABSTRACT
The COVID19 pandemic has disclosed the compelling necessity for businesses to develop and maintain a high resilience to survive the constantly changing environment they operate in and the rising number of crises they face. Our study sheds light on the resilience of owner-managed family businesses, with a special focus on different levels within and beyond the organization, by analyzing digitalization efforts as one form of strategic response to a crisis. More precisely, building on an extensive explorative multiple case study, we explore how and why ownermanaged family businesses differ regarding their resilience and the implications this has for their crisis management. We contribute both to the literature on resilience and to research on family business strategies by showing differences in crisis response related to different levels of family business resilience and the special role of the owner-manager. © 2022: Matti Schulze, Jana Bövers.
ABSTRACT
Regional embeddedness plays an important role for universities. We show that for transnational subsidiaries of universities, or offshore campuses, which are necessarily transregionally embedded through their relations to their home university campus and its networks, the level of regional embeddedness is also of critical importance. We define four dimensions of regional and transregional embeddedness: partnerships, government funding, faculty and staff, and student recruitment. Based on qualitative interviews conducted before and at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and a global survey of offshore campus managers during the pandemic, we show how campuses with strong regional embeddedness seem to have been more resilient in the face of the COVID-19 crisis than those campuses which are less strongly regionally embedded. Nonetheless, regional embeddedness of institutions is no panacea and its risks and trade-offs with transregional embeddedness should be carefully weighed by higher education managers. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
ABSTRACT
Regional embeddedness plays an important role for universities. We show that for transnational subsidiaries of universities, or offshore campuses, which are necessarily transregionally embedded through their relations to their home university campus and its networks, the level of regional embeddedness is also of critical importance. We define four dimensions of regional and transregional embeddedness: partnerships, government funding, faculty and staff, and student recruitment. Based on qualitative interviews conducted before and at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and a global survey of offshore campus managers during the pandemic, we show how campuses with strong regional embeddedness seem to have been more resilient in the face of the COVID-19 crisis than those campuses which are less strongly regionally embedded. Nonetheless, regional embeddedness of institutions is no panacea and its risks and trade-offs with transregional embeddedness should be carefully weighed by higher education managers.
ABSTRACT
The adsorption of viruses from aqueous solution is frequently performed to detect viruses. Charged filtration materials capture viruses via electrostatic interactions, but lack the specificity of biological virus-binding substances like heparin. Herein, we present three methods to immobilize heparin-mimicking, virus-binding polymers to a filter material. Two mussel-inspired approaches are used, based on dopamine or mussel-inspired dendritic polyglycerol, and post-functionalized with a block-copolymer consisting of linear polyglycerol sulfate and amino groups as anchor (lPGS-b-NH2). As third method, a polymer coating based on lPGS with benzophenone anchor groups is tested (lPGS-b-BPh). All three methods yield dense and stable coatings. A positively charged dye serves as a tool to quantitatively analyze the sulfate content on coated fleece. Especially lPGS-b-BPh is shown to be a dense polymer brush coating with about 0.1 polymer chains per nm2. Proteins adsorb to the lPGS coated materials depending on their charge, as shown for lysozyme and human serum albumin. Finally, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) can be removed from solution upon incubation with coated fleece materials by about 90% and 45%, respectively. In summary, the presented techniques may be a useful tool to collect viruses from aqueous environments. © 2022 The Authors. Journal of Applied Polymer Science published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.
ABSTRACT
Aviation is undergoing a transformation, fueled by the Corona pandemic, and methods to evaluate new technologies for more economical and environment-friendly flight in a timelier manner and to enable new aircraft to be designed (almost) exclusively using computers are sought after. The DLR project Victoria brings together disciplinary methods and tools of different fidelity for collaborative multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) of long-range passenger aircraft configurations, necessitating the use of high-performance computing. Three different approaches are being followed to master complex interactions of disciplines and software aspects: an integrated aero-structural wing optimization based on high-fidelity methods, a multi-fidelity gradient-based approach capable of efficiently dealing with many design parameters and many load cases, and a many-discipline highly-parallel approach, which is a novel approach towards computationally demanding and collaboration intensive MDO. The XRF-1, an Airbus provided research aircraft configuration representing a typical long-range wide-body aircraft, is used as a common test case to demonstrate the different MDO strategies. Parametric disciplinary models are used in terms of overall aircraft design synthesis, loads analysis, flutter, structural analysis and optimization, engine design, and aircraft performance. The different MDO strategies are shown to be effective in dealing with complex, real-world MDO problems in a highly collaborative, cross-institutional design environment, involving many disciplinary groups and experts and a mix of commercial and in-house design and analysis software. © 2021 32nd Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, ICAS 2021. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
In this article we investigate the situations experienced by seafarers during the pandemic in the port city of Puerto Madryn. We worked on the conflict led by the United Maritime Workers Union (SOMU), during the months of June and July 2020, which paralyzed the fishing activity in Madryn for weeks, affecting other port cities in Argentina. We analyze the demands raised by the union and the workers, the position of the business chambers and the role assumed by the State. This process was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, in the strictest quarantine phase. We propose to know: the forms assumed by the demands and struggles of the sailors, the particularities imposed by the context of pandemic and quarantine, and the negotiation or imposition processes that were generated. We work with journalistic sources in Chubut and key informants who carry out their tasks as sailors.
ABSTRACT
As the need for more personalized medicine increases, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers are finding that new laser wavelengths and integrated multiwavelength laser light engines are enabling high-dimensional analyzers with improved performance.