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PurposeUnderpinned by paradox theory, this study aims to investigate how and when intragroup cooperation and competition combine to drive individual creativity. It further examines how group goal orientation influences individuals’ creative processes by underscoring its effect on individuals' tendency to adopt a paradox lens.Design/methodology/approachA time-lagged survey was conducted with 85 leaders and 420 employees in Chinese high-tech companies that were actively engaged in innovative activities.FindingsThe results reveal that pure cooperation or pure competition exerts no significant influence on creativity, yet simultaneous high levels of cooperation and competition give rise to strong levels of creativity. This combined effect of cooperation and competition on employees' creativity could be explained by their changes in cognitive flexibility. Moreover, employees' flexible responses to high levels of cooperation and competition could be promoted when groups enact learning goals rather than performance goals.Originality/valueThis study provides a theoretical perspective on how cooperation and competition can be contingent upon each other. It also highlights the role of group learning goals when members strive to be creative in groups with high levels of competition and cooperation.

Aim: Older adult patients with nonmetastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) have poor outcomes relative to younger patients. The authors’ group established a nomogram to predict the overall survival of older adults with NPC and inform patient management. Methods: Cases with NPC (n = 782) were enrolled in this study; clinical data in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database from 2010 to 2015 served as the training cohort (n = 657), and patients from Jiangxi Cancer Hospital (n = 125) served as the external validation cohort. Results: Training and external validation cohort C-index, receiver operator characteristics curves and calibration curves showed that our nomogram has great predictive ability. Conclusions: Compared with tumor-node-metastasis staging, this nomogram can help clinicians better predict the prognosis of older adults with nonmetastatic NPC.

Early detection and identification of malignant thyroid nodules, a vital precursory to the treatment, is a difficult task even for experienced clinicians. Many Computer-Aided Diagnose (CAD) systems have been developed to assist clinicians in performing this task on ultrasonic images. Learning-based CAD systems for thyroid nodules generally accommodate both nodule detection/ segmentation and fine-grained classification for its malignancy, and prior researches often treat aforementioned tasks in separate stages, leading to additional computational costs. In this paper, we utilize an online class activation mapping (CAM) mechanism to guide the network to learn discriminative features for identifying thyroid nodules in ultrasound images, called CAM attention network. It takes nodule masks as localization cues for direct spatial attention of the classification module, thereby avoiding isolated training for classification. Meanwhile, we propose a deformable convolution module to add offsets to the regular grid sampling locations in the standard convolution, guiding the network to capture more discriminative features of nodule areas. Furthermore, we use a generative adversarial network (GAN)to ensure reliable deformations of nodules from the deformable convolution module. Our proposed CAM attention network has already achieved the 2nd place in the classification task of TN-SCUI 2020, a MICCAI 2020 Challenge with the largest set of thyroid nodule ultrasound images according to our knowledge. The further inclusion of our proposed GAN-guided deformable module allows for capturing more fine-grained features between benign and malignant nodules, and further improves the classification accuracy to a new state-of-the-art level.

Purpose This study aims to explore how employees respond to tensions in groups and whether experiencing tensions could spur on their creativity (including radical and incremental creativity). Through integrating the literature on tension and regulatory focus theory, this study develops a model depicting the process from experiencing tensions to creativity via regulatory foci. This study further investigates the moderating effect of employees’ hierarchical level on these processes. Design/methodology/approach A two-wave survey was conducted with a sample of 375 employees in China. MPLUS was used to examine the moderated mediation model. Findings The results show that experiencing tensions can simultaneously activate employees’ prevention focus and promotion focus, both of which in turn influence radical and incremental creativity. Specifically, prevention focus mediates the negative relationship between experiencing tensions and the two aforementioned types of creativity, and promotion focus mediates the positive relationship between experiencing tensions and radical creativity. Employees’ hierarchical level significantly buffers the link between experiencing tensions and prevention focus. Practical implications Organizations should optimize their work design to simplify the role demand of employees in the early stages of their careers. Top-tier employees should be encouraged and empowered to think and act with a paradoxical approach, which can drive them to generate more creative outcomes. Besides, when aiming to discover radical ideas, managers should emphatically cultivate employees’ promotion focus. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature on tension through revealing and testing the dual paths resulted by employees’ experiencing tensions. It also advances current research by contrasting the effects of experiencing tensions on different types of creativity.

It is well accepted that ultrasound-induced microbubble (USMB) cavitation is a promising method for drug delivery. Ultrasound-targeted destruction of cytotoxic drug-loaded lipid microbubbles (LMs) is used to promote the treatment of cancer. This study aimed to investigate the antitumor effects from combination of docetaxel-loaded cationic lipid microbubbles (DLLM+) and ultrasound (US)-triggered microbubble destruction (UTMD) on gastric cancer (GC). Here, the functional dose of DOC was identified as 1×10− 9 mol/L. We found that DLLM combined with UTMD group showed greater growth inhibition of the cultured human gastric cancer cells (HGCCs) when compared with other five groups by arresting the G2 / M phase in cell cycle. However, DLLM+ combined with UTMD showed a higher inhibition rate of tumor growth than DLLM combined with UTMD and that of the RC / CMV-p16 combined with UTMD in vitro and in vivo experiments. DLLM+ combined with UTMD significantly suppressed proliferation and promoted the apoptosis of HGCCs with more cells arrested in the G2 / M phase. In addition, DLLM+ combined with UTMD suppressed the proliferation and induced the apoptosis by arresting cells in the G2 / M phase, which leading to a great inhibition of GC progression. Thus, our results indicated that the combination of DLLM+ and UTMD might represent a novel and promising approach to chemotherapy for GC.

We consider the problem of abnormality localization for clinical applications. While deep learning has driven much recent progress in medical imaging, many clinical challenges are not fully addressed, limiting its broader usage. While recent methods report high diagnostic accuracies, physicians have concerns trusting these algorithm results for diagnostic decision-making purposes because of a general lack of algorithm decision reasoning and interpretability. One potential way to address this problem is to further train these models to localize abnormalities in addition to just classifying them. However, doing this accurately will require a large amount of disease localization annotations by clinical experts, a task that is prohibitively expensive to accomplish for most applications. In this work, we take a step towards addressing these issues by means of a new attention-driven weakly supervised algorithm comprising a hierarchical attention mining framework that unifies activation- and gradient-based visual attention in a holistic manner. Our key algorithmic innovations include the design of explicit ordinal attention constraints, enabling principled model training in a weakly-supervised fashion, while also facilitating the generation of visual-attention-driven model explanations by means of localization cues. On two large-scale chest X-ray datasets (NIH ChestX-ray14 and CheXpert), we demonstrate significant localization performance improvements over the current state of the art while also achieving competitive classification performance. Our code is available on https://github.com/oyxhust/HAM.

Background. Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is a cancer with abnormal metabolism. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of metabolism-related genes on the prognosis of ccRCC patients. Methods. The data of ccRCC patients were downloaded from the TCGA and the GEO databases and clustered using the nonnegative matrix factorization method. The limma software package was used to analyze differences in gene expression. A random forest model was used to screen for important genes. A novel Riskscore model was established using multivariate regression. The model was evaluated based on the metabolic pathway, immune infiltration, immune checkpoint, and clinical characteristics. Results. According to metabolism-related genes, kidney clear cell carcinoma (KIRC) datasets downloaded from TCGA were clustered into two groups and showed significant differences in prognosis and immune infiltration. There were 667 differentially expressed genes between the two clusters, of which 408 were screened by univariate analysis. Finally, 12 differentially expressed genes (MDK, SLC1A1, SGCB, C4orf3, MALAT1, PILRB, IGHG1, FZD1, IFITM1, MUC20, KRT80, and SALL1) were filtered out using the random forest model. The model of Riskscore was obtained by multiplying the expression levels of these 12 genes with the corresponding coefficients of the multivariate regression. We found that the Riskscore correlated with the expression of these 12 genes; the high Riskscore matched the low survival rate verified in the verification set. The analysis found that the Riskscore model was associated with most of the metabolic processes, immune infiltration of cells such as plasma cells, immune checkpoints such as PD-1, and clinical characteristics such as M stage. Conclusion. We established a new Riskscore model for the prognosis of ccRCC based on metabolism. The genes in the model provided several novel targets for the study of ccRCC.

PurposeUnderpinned by the ability–motivation–opportunity framework, this paper aims to establish a framework of employee creativity antecedents in the hospitality and tourism industries and meta-analytically examine the magnitude of effect sizes as well as the moderating effects of cultural factors.Design/methodology/approachA meta-analysis using data from 82 independent studies was conducted to explore the hypothesized relationships and verify how they were contingent on uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation.FindingsThe results supported the majority of hypotheses about the relationships between antecedents and creativity. Furthermore, they showed that the effects of intrinsic motivation, positive affect and climate for innovation on creativity in the hospitality and tourism industries were significantly larger than those reported in previous meta-analyses. It also showed that uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation could buffer or strengthen some associations.Practical implicationsThis study generates some essential managerial suggestions for organizations in need of innovation. Managers can learn from the results so as to effectively promote the ability, motivation and opportunity for creativity and merge cultural elements with innovation strategy when they operate globally.Originality/valueThis study provides a theory-based explanation for how employee creativity can be activated. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is a first attempt to meta-analytically test the underlying determinants of employee creativity in the hospitality and tourism industries. Additionally, the search for boundary conditions of the proposed relationships is likely to reconcile existing conflicts and inspire future studies.

This study investigated the effects of family supportive supervisor behavior (FSSB) on employee voice behavior. Drawing on social exchange theory and the compensatory perspective, we proposed and examined the idea that FSSB can enhance leader–member exchange (LMX) between supervisors and their subordinates, ultimately facilitating employee voice behavior. Analysis of 6-month time-lagged data from a sample of 295 supervisor-subordinate relationships revealed an indirect positive relationship between FSSB and employee voice behavior through enhanced LMX. This effect was more pronounced when the family role of the employee’s spouse was less salient. The implications of these findings for research and practice regarding FSSB and voice are discussed.

PurposeDrawing on the extended self-theory, this study explores the dynamic process through which reactive helping could influence proactive helping through self-investment and investigate the moderating role of task difficulty in affecting this process.Design/methodology/approachThis study, with a sample of 582 diary surveys from 66 employees, used experience sampling techniques to analyze the proposed hypotheses.FindingsThe results revealed that self-investment could mediate the positive relationship between reactive helping and proactive helping. Additionally, task difficulty acts as an essential role in facilitating the process raised by reactive helping. Further examination revealed that the moderated mediation effect in this model was also significant.Practical implicationsManagers should encourage help-seeking and positive responses to requests, especially in groups with difficult tasks, which could build helpers’ extended self at work and increase their proactive helping behaviors at the following episode.Originality/valueAs verifying the dynamic trajectory of reactive helping, this study enriches our understanding of whether and how helping behaviors are likely to grow over time. Besides, it complements current pieces of literature by exploring the potential positive implication of reactive helping with a helper-centric perspective.

PurposeDrawing on the work-home resources (W-HR) model, this study examines the ripple effects of proactive helping behavior at work on helpers' family relationship quality at home via positive affect and work-family interpersonal capitalization, and tests the moderating role of independent self-construal in the resource spillover process.Design/methodology/approachUsing an experience sampling methodology, data was collected (N = 382) from multiple sources in five consecutive working days. Multilevel path modeling was used to examine the hypotheses.FindingsThe results indicated that proactive helping other at work can generate affective resources for helpers, which in turn triggers them to share daily work experiences and feelings with their spouses at home, and strengthens their family relationship quality. Moreover, the effects of helping others on family relationship quality were more pronounced for helpers with relatively high independent self-construal.Originality/valueThe findings explore the enrichment effects and unintended family-related distal outcomes of helping behaviors for helpers, and contributes to the W-HR model by uncovering an affective-behavioral ripple mechanism linking work and family. Finally, our results identify the boundary condition, that proactive helping behaviors are more rewarding for helpers with higher independent self-construal.

PurposeThis study examined the dynamical and positive effects of leader consultation on employee proactivity from a motivational perspective.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data were collected twice a day from 107 employees in a week by using an experience sampling method.FindingsOn a daily basis, leader consultation had a positive effect on employees’ state work engagement, which in turn promoted employees’ proactivity. Moreover, authoritarian leadership weakened the positive relationship between leader consultation and employees’ state work engagement.Originality/valueThe findings provided a new perspective regarding the potential dynamic motivational effect of leader consultation on employees and generated interesting implications for paradoxical leadership theory.

This study investigates the firm size-innovation puzzle through distinguishing radical from incremental innovation, and examining the country-level context (i.e., university–industry collaboration in R&D and competition intensity) that the firm size-innovation relationship is contingent on. The meta-analysis including 162 studies with 112,639 firms reveals that firm size can simultaneously benefit for radical and incremental innovations, while the measurement of firm size using the non-personnel indices can result in significant difference between the firm size-radical innovation and firm size-incremental innovation. Additionally, it is found that the positive relationship between firm size and radical innovation increases when university–industry collaboration in R&D and competition intensity is stronger. This study quantitatively summarises the relationship between firm size and radical/incremental innovation and updates the correlations reported in established literatures. Drawing on awareness-motivation-capability perspective, it takes an essential and frontier step in testing the country-level context that can influence the effect of firm size on innovation.

Neolamarckia cadamba (Roxb.) Bosser is a fast-growing deciduous tree species and belongs to the Neolamarckia genus of the Rubiaceae family. This species has great economic and medical values in addition to being an important timber species for multiple industrial purposes. However, few studies have examined the genetic diversity and population structure in the natural distribution of this species in China. Here, we applied both the haploid nrDNA ITS (619 bp for aligned sequences) and mtDNA (2 polymorphic loci) markers to investigate 10 natural populations (239 individuals in total) that covered most of the distribution of the species in China. The results showed that the nucleotide diversity was π = 0.1185 ± 0.0242 for the nrDNA ITS markers and π = 0.00038 ± 0.00052 for the mtDNA markers. The haplotype diversity for the mtDNA markers was h = 0.1952 ± 0.2532. The population genetic differentiation was small (Fstn = 0.0294) for the nrDNA ITS markers but large (Fstm = 0.6765) for the mtDNA markers. There were no significant effects of isolation by distance (IBD), by elevation, and by two climatic factors (annual average precipitation and tem perature). A geographic structure among populations (Nst

Although existing studies have performed sufficient retrospective analyses of servant leadership in hospitality research, until recently, few studies have quantitatively integrated the findings of ...