Comments from JABA Readers

The aim of this article is to contribute to a better understanding of the dynamic of business ecosystems (BE) and, more particularly, to identify mechanisms that contribute to their decline. We conduct an historical study of the pinball ecosystem, which experienced steady growth over 60 years and then nearly disappeared. First, it is shown that the pinball case is particularly suitable for the analysis of BE. The major BE characteristics can be identified: a value proposition created by an alignment of partners, the central role played by the platform, the presence of three types of members, and interactions among actors that are based on coopetition. Then, the analysis reveals two factors that explain the decline: keystones' inability to change their business models and their substantial dependence on dominators. The historical perspective also allows us to distinguish certain specific periods in BE decline.

A 24-year female sustained a snake bite on the lateral side of the left ankle, followed by localized pain and blurring of vision in right eye. Her best corrected visual acuity was 20/20 in the both eyes. Relative afferent pupillary defect was noted in right eye. Fundus examination of right eye showed clear media, normal optic disc and retinal whitening with sparing of small area on macula, temporal to disc with small cilioretinal artery, suggestive of central retinal artery occlusion (CRAO) with presence of cilioretinal artery sparing. Ophthalmic manifestations following a snake bite are uncommon and can arise through diverse mechanism such as hematotoxicity from the snake bite, resulting in CRAO. Although CRAO following snake bite has been reported, we present a very rare case of snake bite induced transient CRAO with presence of spared cilioretinal artery.

The extent of renal interstitial fibrosis is one of the most important prognostic factors in kidney biopsies and is a key component of almost every form of progressive renal failure [1]. Similarly, fibrosis is also a morphological correlate of progressive organ failure in liver, lung and heart. In all organs, fibrosis is the result of a process called fibrogenesis in which myofibroblasts (the name is due to the de novo expression of α-smooth muscle actin in these cells whose expression is normally restricted to vascular smooth muscle cells) are the key effector cells [2]. Myofibroblasts are formed via an intermediate form entitled the ‘protomyofibroblast’ characterized by the acquisition of contractile stress fibres [3]. In the kidney, myofibroblasts are derived mainly from activation of resident interstitial fibroblasts, albeit differentiation processes of periadventitial cells, mesenchymal stem cells or tubular epithelial cells may play a role as well [4]. Thus, myofibroblasts may have several precursors, and similar mechanisms of myofibroblast formation have been described in the liver [5] and lung [6]. However, it should be appreciated that not all matrix-synthesizing cells are myofibroblasts and vice versa that not all myofibroblasts contribute to interstitial matrix deposition pointing to a certain degree of heterogeneity of these cells [3].

The great escape - how inorganic phosphate is released from actin filaments.

Related Article from The Great Escape: Microbiotal LPS Takes a Toll on the Liver

The great ESCAPE - a clinical pharmacologist's journey in stroke research.

miR-137 Modulates a Tumor Suppressor Network-Inducing Senescence in Pancreatic Cancer Cells.

Mutation is one way in which RNA viruses evade the destructive actions of CD8+ cytotoxic lymphocytes. New research shows that they employ the same method to escape attack by CD4+ T cells. (pages 795–800)

Decision letter for "A Great Escape: resource availability and density‐dependence shape population dynamics along trailing range edges"

Fire is a leading cause of unintentional injury and, although young children are at particularly increased risk, there are very few evidence-based resources available to teach them fire safety knowledge and behaviors. Using a pre-post randomized design, the current study evaluated the effectiveness of a computer game (The Great Escape) for teaching fire safety information to young children (3.5-6 years). Using behavioral enactment procedures, children's knowledge and behaviors related to fire safety were compared to a control group of children before and after receiving the intervention. The results indicated significant improvements in knowledge and fire safety behaviors in the intervention group but not the control. Using computer games can be an effective way to promote young children's understanding of safety and how to react in different hazardous situations.

Escape-capture bigeminy is a bigeminal rhythm in which each escape beat is followed by a captured beat. This dysrhythmia is very rare, because its manifestation requires the sinus interval to be longer than the escape interval. This is possible only with severe sinus nodal disease, where the intrinsic sinus rate is extremely low, or with a sinus rhythm associated with an accelerated junctional rhythm. The authors review the case of a 75-year-old man who presented with occasional dizziness and near-syncopal episodes. He was diagnosed with escape-capture bigeminy and subsequently underwent pacemaker placement.

The very severe cyclonic storm (VSCS) “Phailin (2013)” was the strongest cyclone that hit the eastern coast of the India Odisha state since the supercyclone of 1999. But the same story of casualties was not repeated as that of 1999 where approximately 10 000 fatalities were reported. In the case of Phailin, a record 1 million people were evacuated across 18 000 villages in both the Odisha and Andhra Pradesh states to coastal shelters following the improved operational forecast guidance that benefited from highly skillful and accurate numerical model guidance for the movement, intensity, rainfall, and storm surge. Thus, the property damage and death toll were minimized through the proactive involvement of three-tier disaster management agencies at central, state, and district levels.

Alan Barnard's Language in Prehistory attempts to find an accommodation between linguistic and evolutionary theory and apply insights from archeology and anthropology to the origins and purposes of language. Rudolph Botha's Language Evolution: The Windows Approach is a critique of employing evidence from other fields. Botha also critiques conclusions drawn from pidgins and creoles, homesign, motherese, grammaticalization, language acquisition, protolanguage, and comparative animal behavior. This review attempts in turn to bring into question the appropriateness of applying the framework of generative linguistics, and its style of argumentation, to prehistory.

We compute the quasi-normal frequencies of scalars in asymptotically-flat microstate geometries that have the same charge as a D1-D5-P black hole, but whose long BTZ-like throat ends in a smooth cap. In general the wave equation is not separable, but we find a class of geometries in which the non-separable term is negligible and we can compute the quasi-normal frequencies using WKB methods. We argue that our results are a universal property of all microstate geometries with deeply-capped BTZ throats. These throats generate large redshifts, which lead to exceptionally-low-energy states with extremely long decay times, set by the central charge of the dual CFT to the power of twice the dimension of the operator dual to the mode. While these decay times are extremely long, we also argue that the energy decay is bounded, at large t, by (log(t))−2 and is comparable with the behavior of ultracompact stars, as one should expect for microstate geometries.

French energy policy: The great escape