Linking transformational leadership and organizational trust: has organizational commitment a mediating effect on it?

[EN] The main goal of this study is to analyze how organizational commitment has a mediating effect on the relation between transformational leadership and organizational trust. Therefore we developed an organization analysis based on a survey that was used to collect primary data from a sample of 58 employees. We obtained a 71% response rate and these data were analyzed using quantitative methodological techniques and linear regression. The research was conducted at the Serralves Foundation (Porto, Portugal) to empirically test the proposed research model and its hypotheses. The empirical results confirm that transformational leadership positively enhances organizational trust. However, transformational leadership and organizational trust are not significantly influenced by organizational commitment, thus not having a mediating effect on this relationship. Such results assume particular relevance because they become a basis for comparative studies in similar organizations. This study brings some theoretical contributions to the literature by analyzing the mediating effect of organizational commitment on the relation between transformational leadership and organizational trust in cultural organizations and has also some practical management implications, as it draws attention to the importance of a set of practices, job satisfaction oriented, which can effectively lead to organizational commitment intervention in the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational trust.

Island life in the Cretaceous - faunal composition, biogeography, evolution, and extinction of land-living vertebrates on the Late Cretaceous European archipelago

The Late Cretaceous was a time of tremendous global change, as the final stages of the Age of Dinosaurs were shaped by climate and sea level fluctuations and witness to marked paleogeographic and faunal changes, before the end-Cretaceous bolide impact. The terrestrial fossil record of Late Cretaceous Europe is becoming increasingly better understood, based largely on intensive fieldwork over the past two decades, promising new insights into latest Cretaceous faunal evolution. We review the terrestrial Late Cretaceous record from Europe and discuss its importance for understanding the paleogeography, ecology, evolution, and extinction of land-dwelling vertebrates. We review the major Late Cretaceous faunas from Austria, Hungary, France, Spain, Portugal, and Romania, as well as more fragmentary records from elsewhere in Europe. We discuss the paleogeographic background and history of assembly of these faunas, and argue that they are comprised of an endemic 'core' supplemented with various immigration waves. These faunas lived on an island archipelago, and we describe how this insular setting led to ecological peculiarities such as low diversity, a preponderance of primitive taxa, and marked changes in morphology (particularly body size dwarfing). We conclude by discussing the importance of the European record in understanding the end-Cretaceous extinction and show that there is no clear evidence that dinosaurs or other groups were undergoing long-term declines in Europe prior to the bolide impact.

A Marketing Plan for the Exeter City Supporters' Trust

[EN] This project is a marketing plan for the Exeter City Supporters' Trust. It has operated for several years without an adequate marketing strategy and this has lead to poor communication and distribution strategies being followed, which have hindered its progress. The following marketing plan analyses the external and internal factors which affect the Trust. It also proposes objectives, strategies and action plans to address the aforementioned deficiencies, building upon the entity's strengths and the opportunities in the environment.

Novel Papillomaviruses in Free-Ranging Iberian Bats: No Virus-Host Co-evolution, No Strict Host Specificity, and Hints for Recombination

Papillomaviruses (PVs) are widespread pathogens. However, the extent of PV infections in bats remains largely unknown. This work represents the first comprehensive study of PVs in Iberian bats. We identified four novel PVs in the mucosa of free-ranging Eptesicus serotinus (EserPV1, EserPV2, and EserPV3) and Rhinolophus ferrumequinum (RferPV1) individuals and analyzed their phylogenetic relationships within the viral family. We further assessed their prevalence in different populations of E. serotinus and its close relative E. isabellinus. Although it is frequent to read that PVs co-evolve with their host, that PVs are highly species-specific, and that PVs do not usually recombine, our results suggest otherwise. First, strict virus-host co-evolution is rejected by the existence of five, distantly related bat PV lineages and by the lack of congruence between bats and bat PVs phylogenies. Second, the ability of EserPV2 and EserPV3 to infect two different bat species (E. serotinus and E. isabellinus) argues against strict host specificity. Finally, the description of a second noncoding region in the RferPV1 genome reinforces the view of an increased susceptibility to recombination in the E2-L2 genomic region. These findings prompt the question of whether the prevailing paradigms regarding PVs evolution should be reconsidered.