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Homozygous typing cells (HTC) for two new HLA-D determinants, EI and RE, defined by family studies, are described. The HLA-D typing experimtens among more than 300 unrelated individuals showed phenotype frequencies of 0.045 for EI and 0.09 8 for RE. Since the tested population was also typed for its HLA-A and -B alleles, linkage disequilibrium parameters could be calculated: HLA-D type El was statistically significantly associated with HLA-B13 and Bw17, I-ILA-D type RE with HLA-Bw40. These data support the working hypothesis that both El and RE are new alleles of the HLA-D series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports findings from a nationally representative sample of working adults to quantify how a culture trust improves business performance. Analysis of the national sample showed that organizational trust and alignment with the company's purpose are associated with higher employee incomes, longer job tenure, greater job satisfaction, less chronic stress, improved satisfaction with life, and higher productivity. Employees working the highest quartile of organizational trust had average incomes 10.3% higher those working in the middle quartile of trust ( p = 0.000) indicating that trust increases productivity. In order to demonstrate the causal effect of trust on business performance, we created an intervention to increase organizational trust in a division facing high job turnover at a large online retailer. The intervention increased organizational trust by 6% and this improved job retention by 1%. These studies show that management practices that increase organizational trust have salubrious effects on business performance., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Johannsen and Zak.)

Employees have been given increasing autonomy to work from home, from virtual offices, and during travel. Understanding why autonomy affects work behaviors has relied to date on self-reported data in which employees may consciously or unconsciously misattribute their own causal actions. We designed a neuroscience experiment to investigate the mechanisms through which greater autonomy affects individual and team performance and if this had an effect on mood. Participants ( N = 100) were shown a three-min video that described the productivity impact of greater autonomy at work (treatment) or the productivity benefits of work-flow management software. Electrodermal responses were captured to measure physiologic effort and were related to the video stimuli, productivity, and mood. The treatment group had a 5.2% ( p = 0.047) greater average productivity and 31% ( p = 0.000) higher positive affect after the video than the control group average. Productivity was directly related to the physiologic effort put into the task for both the treatment and control groups, but the video prime did not increase effort compared to the control. The impact of physiologic effort on productivity continued to hold when controlling for participants' intrinsic motivation. We also found that individual productivity was associated with an increase in positive affect, while group productivity increased positive affect only for those in the treatment group. Our findings indicate that increased perceived autonomy can significantly improve individual and group productivity and that this can have a salubrious impact on mood, but the neurologic mechanism through which this occurs remains to be identified., (Copyright © 2020 Johannsen and Zak.)

The authors describe a multiinstitutional collaborative project to address a gap in global health training by creating a free online platform to share a curriculum for performing procedures in resource-limited settings. This curriculum called PEARLS (Procedural Education for Adaptation to Resource-Limited Settings) consists of peer-reviewed instructional and demonstration videos describing modifications for performing common pediatric procedures in resource-limited settings. Adaptations range from the creation of a low-cost spacer for inhaled medications to a suction chamber for continued evacuation of a chest tube. By describing the collaborative process, we provide a model for educators in other fields to collate and disseminate procedural modifications adapted for their own specialty and location, ideally expanding this crowd-sourced curriculum to reach a wide audience of trainees and providers in global health.

Experiments were carried out to assess the survival of recombinant plasmid DNA during large-scale production of recombinant human erythropoietin (rhuEPO) in a fermentation pilot plant. The analyses revealed DNA-degrading activities in the fermentation broth and in the waste-water, leading to rapid destruction of plasmid DNA added to medium or waste-water. The capability of the plasmid-DNA-spiked samples to transform competent bacteria was drastically reduced. The DNA-degrading activity in the waste-waters could be blocked by addition of EDTA or by boiling, indicating the presence of DNA-degrading enzymes (DNases). No plasmid-specific DNA sequences were detected in waste-water samples by in-vitro amplification with Taq-polymerase. Genomic DNA preparations of cell debris collected from waste-water samples only contained degraded plasmid DNA. Furthermore, it was shown that intact plasmid DNA could be degraded to fragments of less than 1000 bp by incubation at 121 degrees C for 20 min, leading to a decrease in the plasmid-specific transforming capacity by a factor of 10(3) per minute. Thus, DNA from the rhuEPO production pilot plant was efficiently inactivated at three different levels: (i) in the fermentation medium (DNase), (ii) in the waste-water container (DNase), and (iii) by heat inactivation for 20 min at 120 degrees C. These results indicate that the probability of delivery of recombinant DNA into the environment is extremely low in such biotechnological production processes.