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Natural wood colors occur within a wide range from almost white (e.g., white poplar), various yellowish, reddish, and brownish hues to almost black (e.g., ebony). The intrinsic color of wood is basically defined by its chemical composition. However, other factors such as specific anatomical formations or physical properties further affect the optical impression. Starting with the chemical composition of wood and anatomical basics, wood color and its modifications are discussed in this chapter. The classic method of coloring or re-coloring wood-based material surfaces is the application of a coating containing appropriate dyes or pigments. Different concepts for wood coating and coloration are presented. Another method used dyes for coloration of the wood structure. As alternative techniques, physical methods, for example, drying, steaming, ammoniation, bleaching, enzyme treatment, as well as treatment with electromagnetic irradiation (e.g., UV), are explained in this chapter.
The use of gamification in workplace learning to encourage employee motivation and engagement
(2019)
When we think about playing a game, be it a card game, board game, sport, or video game, we generally associate the act of playing with a positive experience like having fun, enjoying the interaction with others, or feeling a greater motivation to reach a certain goal. By contrast, workplace learning is often perceived as being dull. Employees are likely at some point in their career to find themselves stuck in a rigidly defined seminar for a long period of time or in front of their computer navigating through a mandatory e-learning course on a dry topic such as standards of business conduct of safety policies.
In recent years, organizations have tried to leverage the motivating quality of games for more serious learning contexts. Gamification entails transferring those elements and principles from games to nongaming context that improve user experience and engagement. In this chapter, we will specifically focus on the context of workplace learning.
The reduced research and development (R&D) efficiency, strong competition from generics, increased cost pressure from payers, and an increased biological complexity of new target indications have resulted in a rethinking and a change from a traditional and more closed R&D model in the pharmaceutical industry toward the new paradigm of open innovation. In the past years, pharmaceutical companies have broadened their external networks toward research collaborations with academic institutes, technology providers, or codevelopment partners. To fulfill the demand to reduce timelines and costs, research-based pharmaceutical companies started to outsource R&D activities. In addition, internal R&D processes were adjusted to the more open R&D model and new processes such as alliance management were established. The corporate frontier of pharmaceutical companies became permeable and more open. As a result, the focus of pharmaceutical R&D expanded from a purely internal toward a mixed internal and external model. Today, the U.S. pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly may have established the most open model toward external innovation, as it has integrated its innovation processes with its business model. Other companies are following this more open R&D model with newer concepts such as new frontier sciences, drug discovery alliances, private public partnerships, innovation incubators, virtual R&D, crowdsourcing, open source innovation, and innovation camps.
Clinical development is historically the phase in which a potential new medicine is being tested in phase 2 and phase 3 patient trials to demonstrate the new molecules' efficacy and safety to support the regulatory approval of drugs by health authorities. This relatively focused approach has been considerably expanded by a number of forces from within the pharmaceutical industry and equally important by changes in the healthcare systems. The need to identify the optimal patient population, showstoppers leading to discontinuation of clinical programs, the silent but constant removal of surrogate endpoints for registration, and the increased demand for real-life data which are used to demonstrate the patients' benefit and which have an ever-increasing role for pricing and reimbursement negotiations are today an integral part of this phase.
This chapter will review both the nuts and bolts of clinical development but also recent developments in this area which shape the environment and how the different players have reacted and what options might need to be explored in the future.
The efficiency of pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) reflected by increasing costs of R&D, long timelines, and low probabilities of technical and regulatory success decreased continuously in the past years. Today, the costs for discovering and developing a new drug are enormously high with more than USD 2 billion per new molecular entity (NME), while the average overall success of a research project to provide an NME is in the single-digit percentage rate, and the total timelines of R&D easily exceeds 10 years questioning the return on investment (ROI) of pharmaceutical R&D. As a consequence and also caused by numerous patent expirations of blockbuster drugs that increased the pressure to return to an acceptable ROI, the pharmaceutical industry addressed this challenge and the related causes and identified several actions that need to be taken to increase the output/input ratio of R&D. This book chapter will review the pipeline sizes and the R&D investments of multinational pharmaceutical companies, will describe new processes that have been implemented to increase the reach and to reduce costs of pharmaceutical R&D, and it will illustrate new innovation models that were developed to increase the R&D efficiency.
There is no denying that organizations, whether domestic or global, whether educational, governmental, or business, are undergoing rapid transformation. However, what is causing it? Prompted by the need to remain relevant and competitive, organizations constantly try to reinvent themselves. Those that do not, according to the laws of economics, will simply serve no purpose and will eventually cease to exist. Regardless of sector or industry, an organization's success pivots around its human talent. Hence, it is crucial to manage it and cultivate certain traits, knowledge, and skills. In today's global economy, organizations are more interconnected than ever before and thus the challenges they face require that employees possess not only expert knowledge, problem-solving, cross-cultural, and cross-functional teaming skills, but also good communications skills and agile thinking.
Many researchers have explored the phenomenon of intercultural communication since Edward T. Hall first brought it to light in the late 1950s. Although the literature is quite extensive, the ongoing sociopolitical struggles are evidence that even in the twenty-first century, society has limited intercultural as well as intracultural communication competence. This limited understanding continues to bring about discord in every facet of life, including work.
The modern workforce is expected to possess certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are inherently different from those expected from previous generations. Due to globalization, intercultural competence and highly effective communication skills are at the top of the list - a working knowledge of English as the lingua franca of today's business world can be considered as a first step.
Different sensor types using chemical and biochemical principles are described. The former are mainly gas sensors, the latter are applied especially to liquids. Those label-free direct detection methods are compared with applications where assays take advantage of labeled receptors.
Furthermore, selected applications in the area of gas sensors are discussed, and sensors for process control, point-of-care diagnostics, environmental analytics, and food analytics are reviewed. In addition, multiplexing approaches used in microplates and microarrays are described.
On account of the huge number of sensor types and the wide range of possible applications, only the most important ones are selected here.
It is known that the costs related with drug research and development (R&D) and the timelines to develop a new drug increased over the past years. In parallel, the success rates of drug projects along the pharmaceutical R&D phases are still very low, and the outcome of all R&D efforts is stagnating. In consequence, the R&D efficiency defined as the financial investment per drug has been steadily decreasing. As innovation is the major growth driver of the pharmaceutical industry, reliable data on R&D efficiency and new concepts to overcome these challenges are of great interest for R&D managers and the sustainability of the pharmaceutical industry as a whole. This book chapter reviews publications on R&D performance indicators of the past years, such as the success rates and timelines per phase. Additionally, it illustrates the factors influencing the success rates, timelines, and costs of pharmaceutical R&D most and, thus, the denominators of the R&D efficiency.