This systematic literature review aims at understanding the influence of the university's environment and support system (ESS) in shaping the social entrepreneurial intention (SEI) of post-secondary education students. Social entrepreneurs play an important role in the economic and social developments of the communities in which they operate, thus many post-secondary institutions are starting to encourage more students to engage in social entrepreneurial behaviour. Consequently, there is a need for systematic approaches to evaluate the impact of various motivational factors related to the university's entrepreneurial ecosystem that could affect the SEI of students. Based on a systematic literature review and narrative synthesis of the antecedents of the SEI of post-secondary education students, the authors proposed a customized SEI model that modifies and extend the one proposed by Hockerts (Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 2017) and Mair and Noboa (Social entrepreneurship, 2006). This study fills a gap in the literature by providing a methodology grounded in theory that can help universities to design their educational and other interventions aimed at encouraging more students to consider social entrepreneurship as a viable career choice after graduation.

PurposeThe study aims to test the applicability of a variant of the model proposed by Hockerts (2017) for assessing the social entrepreneurial intention (SEI) of male and female students. It extends the model by incorporating the university's environment and support system (ESS) as an additional more distal construct. The university's ESS, coupled with the experience with social, cultural and environmental issues can affect SEI by influencing the more proximal precursors of empathy towards others, perceived self-efficacy, perceived community support and social, cultural and environmental responsibility.Design/methodology/approachA structured non-disguised questionnaire was administered to students at a Canadian university. A sample of 485 usable responses was analysed by means of second-order structural equation modelling.FindingsThe results provide confirmation that the proposed model is a multi-group invariant and appropriate for analysing the SEI of male and female students. They also show that the university's ESS helps predict SEI indirectly through the complete mediation of the more proximal antecedents.Research limitations/implicationsThe questionnaire is limited to universities with social innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives.Practical implicationsOutcomes of the study can help universities assess the efficacy of their social innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives for instilling a social entrepreneurial mind-set in students. Consequently, universities will be better equipped to raise the perceptions of venture feasibility and desirability, thus increasing students' perceptions of opportunity.Originality/valueThe study advances the social entrepreneurial knowledge of the university's effect on the precursors of SEI.

We describe a computational framework for the comprehensive assessment of contractile responses of enzymatically dissociated adult cardiac myocytes. The proposed methodology comprises the following stages: digital video recording of the contracting cell, edge preserving total variation-based image smoothing, segmentation of the smoothed images, contour extraction from the segmented images, shape representation by Fourier descriptors, and contractility assessment. The different stages are variants of mathematically sound and computationally robust algorithms very well established in the image processing community. The physiologic application of the methodology is evaluated by assessing overall contraction in enzymatically dissociated adult rat cardiocytes. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in characterizing the true, two-dimensional, “shortening” in the contraction process of adult cardiocytes. We compare the performance of the proposed method to that of a popular edge detection system in the literature. The proposed method not only provides a more comprehensive assessment of the myocyte contraction process but also can potentially eliminate historical concerns and sources of errors caused by myocyte rotation or translation during contraction. Furthermore, the versatility of the image processing techniques makes the method suitable for determining myocyte shortening in cells that usually bend or move during contraction. The proposed method can be utilized to evaluate changes in contractile behavior resulting from drug intervention, disease modeling, transgeneity, or other common applications to mammalian cardiocytes.

Many researchers have studied gender differences in the entrepreneurial intention of students by analyzing the influence of several intrinsic and extrinsic factors on the antecedents of entrepreneurial intention. Fewer researchers have analyzed the influence of the university’s environment and support system on the precursors of the entrepreneurial intention of students in general and of female students in particular. This study aims to fill that gap by analyzing the influence of the university’s environment and support system on the precursors of entrepreneurial intention of female students at a university in Atlantic Canada. Findings of this study confirm that two precursors of entrepreneurial intention—i.e., attitude toward behavior and perceived behavioral control—mediate the effects of the university’s environment and support system on the entrepreneurial intention of female students. They also confirm that the university’s environment and support system comprises three distinct but interrelated dimensions, namely entrepreneurship training, start-up support, and entrepreneurial milieu. Results of this study also suggest that the university’s environment and support system has a positive relation with the perceived behavioral control of female students. However, findings of this study also suggest that the university’s environment and support system has a positive but negligible influence on the attitude toward the behavior of the same students. The outcomes of this study will help the university assess the efficacy of its innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives in promoting entrepreneurial activities. By understanding its entrepreneurial efficacy, the institution will be better equipped to raise the perceptions of venture feasibility and desirability, thus increasing students’ perceptions of opportunity.

Objective The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of rosiglitazone (Avandia®) on gene expression in neonatal rat ventricular myocytes. Materials & methods Myocytes were exposed to rosiglitazone ex vivo. The two factors examined in the experiment were drug exposure (rosiglitazone and dimethyl sulfoxide vs dimethyl sulfoxide), and length of exposure to drug (1/2 h, 1 h, 2 h, 4 h, 6 h, 8 h, 12 h, 18 h, 24 h, 36 h and 48 h). Results Transcripts that were consistently expressed in response to the drug were identified. Cardiovascular system development, extracellular matrix and immune response are represented prominently among the significantly modified gene ontology terms. Conclusion Hmgcs2, Angptl4, Cpt1a, Cyp1b1, Ech1 and Nqo1 mRNAs were strongly upregulated in cells exposed to rosiglitazone. Enrichment of transcripts involved in cardiac muscle cell differentiation and the extracellular matrix provides a panel of biomarkers for further analysis in the context of adverse cardiac outcomes in humans.