Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigating the Quality of University Education: A Focus on Supply Chain Management

While the quality of higher education has received attention from researchers globally, its focus has been mainly on universities in ‘developed country’ contexts. There has been limited research on the quality of higher education in African universities, and even less that has focused on the discipline of supply chain management. In this paper, the quality of supply chain education of five universities in Kenya is investigated using a SERVPERF model. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire administered to 781 students enrolled for a supply chain management qualification. The data were analysed through confirmatory factor analysis and one-way analysis of variance. The findings are fourfold: (1) the service quality of supply chain education is at medium level in terms of the SERVPERF metrics; (2) four dimensions were identified by students as the most important aspects of service quality: course-centeredness, academic and support staff helpfulness, service excellence and learning facilities; (3) a four-factor SERVPERF model of supply chain service quality is developed and (4) service quality was significantly different across the selected universities. Although the service quality was rated at a medium level overall, the variability in quality across universities should alert educators and management to the need for a coordinated effort to improve particular aspects of students’ learning experiences. The study contributes to the body of knowledge by establishing that SERVPERF is a four-factor model in the higher education sector. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.19. 8.23
Gender Disparities in Authorships and Citations in Transplantation Research

Background. Over the past decades, there has been a rapid change in the gender ratio of medical doctors, whereas gender differences in academia remain apparent. In transplantation research, a field already understaffed with female doctors and researchers, there is little published data on the development in proportion, citations, and funding of female researchers over the past years. Methods. To evaluate the academic impact of female doctors in transplantation research, we conducted a bibliometric analysis (01 January 1999 to 31 December 2018) of high-impact scientific publications, subsequent citations, and funding in this field. Web of Science data was used in combination with software R-Package “Gender,” to predict gender by first names. Results. For this study, 15 498 (36.2% female; 63.8% male) first and 13 345 (30.2% female; 69.8% male) last author gender matches were identified. An increase in the percentage of female first and last authors is seen in the period 1999–2018, with clear differences between countries (55.1% female authors in The Netherlands versus 13.1% in Japan, for example). When stratifying publications based on the number of citations, a decline was seen in the percentage of female authors, from 34.6%–30.7% in the first group (≤10 citations) to 20.8%–23.2% in the fifth group (>200 citations), for first (P < 0.001) and last (P = 0.014) authors, respectively. From all first author name-gender matches, 6574 (41.6% female; 58.4% male, P < 0.001) publications reported external funding, with 823 (35.5% female; 64.5% male, P = 0.701) reported funding by pharmaceutical companies and 1266 (36.6% female; 63.4% male, P < 0.001) reporting funding by the National Institutes of Health. Conclusions. This is the first analysis of gender bias in scientific publications, subsequent citations, and funding in transplantation research. We show ongoing differences between male and female authors in citation rates and rewarded funding in this field. This requires an active approach to increase female representation in research reporting and funding rewarding.
CONSTRUCTION STAKEHOLDERS’ PERSPECTIVE ON EXTERNAL RELATED RISK FACTORS INFLUENCING CONSTRUCTION PROJECT PERFORMANCE

Abstract The construction industry is extremely complex, with dynamic project environments creating an atmosphere of high uncertainty and risk. For that reason, risks in construction project have become an inevitable feature and the industry is susceptible to numerous business, socio-political and technical risks that negatively influence project delivery. This study therefore investigated the causes of risks in construction project delivery and the effect on project and organisational performance so that efficient control measures can be designed to minimise its occurrence. A quantitative research design was adopted, and the sample comprised of randomly selected contracting firms and construction professionals in the Western Cape Province. The data was statistically analysed using descriptive and inferential analyses. The salient findings revealed that socio-political-related risk factors are the major causes of risks during construction project delivery, these factors include labour strikes and disputes due to union issues, excessive influence by government on court proceedings regarding construction project disputes, and constraints on the availability and employment of expatriate staff. In addition, the study revealed the impact of construction risks on projects and organisational performance, and it was found that cost overrun was ranked the most significant on project performance and disputes between parties to the contract was ranked the most significant on organisational performance. It is also worth mentioning that the opinions of construction professionals do not vary significantly with regard to the detrimental effect of risks on project performance. Key words: Construction project, cost overrun, project performance, risk management socio-political risk.
Do Relationships Matter? Investigating the Link Between Supervisor and Subordinate Dedication and Cynicism via the Quality of Leader–Member Exchange

Drawing on leader–member exchange and conservation of resources theories, we investigate the role of the quality of leader–member exchange in the relationships between supervisors’ and subordinates’ cynicism and dedication. Survey responses were collected from 104 supervisors and 971 subordinates nested within 104 work-units in five organizations in Finland. A multilevel structural equation model and cross-level mediation were utilized to test the hypotheses. The results show that the quality of leader–member exchange mediates the association between supervisor cynicism and subordinate cynicism and dedication. However, supervisor dedication does not appear to have an influence on leader–member exchange or subordinate cynicism and dedication. The findings related to the influence of supervisor cynicism on the cynicism and dedication of subordinates point toward the value of management interventions that directly address supervisor psychological well-being. Practical interventions might include training for supervisors and employees to enhance relationship-building skills, team-building activities, and leadership development. This empirical study is novel in its focus on how a supervisor’s cynicism and dedication may affect their relationships at work and how this, in turn, may have an effect on their subordinates.
Critical factors driving aphanomyces damping‐off and root disease in clover revealed and explained using linear and generalized linear models and boosted regression trees

M. P. You, K. Rensing, M. Renton and M. J. Barbetti* UWA School of Agriculture and Environment and the UWA Institute of Agriculture, Faculty of Science, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009; and Faculty of Science, School of Biological Sciences, School of Agriculture and Environment, and the UWA Institute of Agriculture, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia
Memoirs: The Genus Stomatophora, Drzewecki

1. The genus Stomatophora is closely related to other Monocystid parasites of earthworms, but differs from them in the possession at the anterior end of the body of a sucker like epimeritic organ with a central niucron. This epinierite of Stomatophora is capable of undergoing alterations in form during the life of the parasite, and it is not abandoned inside a cell of the host as it is in Cephalina. This difference in behaviour is undoubtedly associated with tho fact that the growing trophozoite is not fixed to a single epithelial cell, but lies surrounded by the cells in a cavity which contains abundant nutrient material which it can absorb. 2. Two species of the genus have been described before and a third is now added. In Stomatophora simplex sp. nov. the sucker is not surrounded by a crown of petals. 3. A revision of the classification of Eugregarinae is suggested.
Ungual phalanges analysis in Pleistocene ground sloths (Xenarthra, Folivora)

Abstract Ungual phalanges (the most distal bone within a limb) and claws (the overlying corneous sheath) from the third digit of the forefoot of selected Pleistocene ground sloths (Lestodon armatus, Glossotherium robustum, Scelidotherium leptocephalum and Megatherium americanum) are analysed, as well as those of some living xenarthrans for actualistic comparison, aiming at testing hypotheses of substrate usage and locomotor behaviour. The third digits were chosen for this study because of its size and nearly perfect bilateral symmetry, which increases the possibilities of revealing functional differences between taxa. The analyses performed were of inner and external curvature, the strength indicator and the mechanical advantage. The mechanical advantage indicates that the four ground sloths’ species were well adapted for strenuous activities, such as digging, in which force rather than velocity is optimised. Their strength indicator shows expected values for their body size, while in Mylodon darwinii the value obtained was lower than expected. In the two curvature analyses L. armatus, G. robustum and M. americanum fall within the group of armadillos that dig, whereas S. leptocephalum does not, this might be due to a difference in the movements performed while performing an activity such as digging or similar to it.
Hypoxia-Responsive Root Hydraulic Conductivity Influences Soybean Cultivar-Specific Waterlogging Tolerance

Excess soil moisture induces hypoxic conditions and causes waterlogging injury in soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr. ]. This study investigated the mechanism underlying the development of waterlogging injury. Nine Japanese soybean cultivars with varying degrees of waterlogging tolerance were grown in a hydroponic system for 14 days under hypoxic conditions. Shoot and root biomasses and root hydraulic conductivity were measured at an early vegetative stage for plants under control and hypoxic conditions. Root morphological traits and intramembrane aquaporin proteins were also analyzed. The tolerance of each cultivar to field waterlogging was based on biomass changes induced by the hypoxia treatment. Root hydraulic conductivity responses to hypoxia were associated with changes in total dry weight, leaf dry weight, and leaf area. The effects of hypoxic conditions on root hydraulic conductivity were also represented by the changes in root morphology, such as total root length, thick-root length, and number of root tips. Additionally, a 32.3 kDa aquaporin-like protein seemed to regulate root hydraulic conductivity. Our results from a hydroponic culture suggest that the soybean cultivar-specific responses to hypoxic conditions in the rhizosphere reflect fluctuations in hydraulic conductivity related to root morphological or qualitative changes.
Conflicting Incentives: Government Financial Aid, Vocational-to-University Track Change and Graduates’ Wages in Chile

4School of Engineering, Catholic university of Chile. rparedes@ing.puc. cl Although literature on education economic returns is not uncommon, research focusing in vocational students is quite scarce. This paper addresses labor market outcomes of vocational high schools’ students and their trajectories in the two possible paths in the Chilean higher education system: college education or vocational higher education. Using OLS regressions, we find that vocational high school education is associated with higher relative wages compared with students from regular or academic high schools. Moreover, when students follow tertiary education, higher relative wages are expected both for students from vocational and general high schools, specially for the latter. Using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) on two different discontinuity rules in the allocation of financial aid, we found that vocational high school students that continue in vocational higher education have neutral to positive wage impact of pursuing higher education. However, these students face a negative wage impact when they are induced to follow college higher education.
Topics in Phylogenetic Species Tree Inference under the Coalescent Model

Phylogenetic tree inference is a fundamental tool to estimate the ancestor-descendant relationships for di↵erent species. Currently, it is of great interest to explore the evolutionary relationships for a set of species for which DNA data have been collected and thus accurate and e cient methods are required to estimate phylogenetic trees. However, because the evolutionary relationships can be analyzed at two distinct levels (gene trees and species trees), and it is not necessary for the gene trees and species trees to agree with one another, phylogenetic inference has become increasingly complicated. Incomplete lineage sorting (ILS) is considered to be one of the major factors that cause disagreement between species trees and gene trees. The coalescent process is a widely-accepted model for ILS, and numerous genealogy-based phylogenetic inference methods have been established based on the coalescent model. In this thesis, coalescent-based methods for phylogenetic tree inference are studied. In Chapter 2, the expected amount of incongruence between gene trees under the same species tree is considered. More specifically, the extent of gene tree incongruence arising from incomplete lineage sorting, as modeled by the coalescent process, is computed. The results in Chapter 2 highlight the fact that substantial discordance among gene trees may occur, even when the number of species is very small. In Chapter 3, a coalescent model for three species that allows gene flow between both pairs of sister populations is proposed, and the resulting gene tree history distribution ii is derived. The results suggest conditions under which the species tree and associated parameters, such as the ancestral e↵ective population sizes and the rates of gene flow, are not identifiable from the gene tree topology distribution when gene flow is present, but indicate that the coalescent history distribution may identify the species tree and associated parameters. In Chapter 4, a rooting method based on the site pattern probabilities under the coalescent model is developed. The proposed technique provides a method to root every four-taxon species tree within a larger species tree of more than four taxa. The inferred roots for the four-taxon subtrees are then used together to estimate the root for the larger species tree. This rooting method is a computationally feasible method, and is the first method proposed to root a species tree that explicitly incorporates the coalescent process.
Deaf and Hard of Hearing Early Intervention: Perceptions of Family-Centered Practice

This cross-sectional quantitative study investigated parents’ perceptions of the quality of family-centered practice in an early intervention service for young children who are deaf or hard of hearing through the use of the Measures of Processes of Care (MPOC-56). The results indicated that the majority of families accessing the service were satisfied with the family-centered practices they were receiving. Consistent with previous studies in different disability settings, families were least satisfied with the provision of general information regarding the child’s disability, identifying further access to unbiased information and resources is needed. This highlighted a tension in the role of organizations operating within individualized funding models in regard to who is responsible for the dissemination of reliable and evidence-based general information. As the MPOC-56 has not been used in deaf or hard of hearing populations previously, this study found it was an appropriate measure for caregiver perceptions of family-centered practice within this population.
Changes in Extreme Precipitation Accumulations during the Warm Season over Continental China

Precipitation accumulations, integrated over rainfall events, are investigated using hourly data across continental China during the warm season (May–October) from 1980 to 2015. Physically, the probability of precipitation accumulations drops slowly with event size up to an approximately exponential cutoff scale sL where probability drops much faster. Hence sL can be used as an indicator of high accumulation percentiles (i.e., extreme precipitation accumulations). Overall, the climatology of sL over continental China is about 54 mm. In terms of cutoff changes, the current warming stage (1980–2015) is divided into two periods, 1980–97 and 1998–2015. We find that the cutoff in 1998–2015 increases about 5.6% compared with that of 1980–97, with an average station increase of 4.7%. Regionally, sL increases are observed over East China (10.9% ± 1.5%), Northwest China (9.7% ± 2.5%), South China (9.4% ± 1.4%), southern Southwest China (5.6% ± 1.2%), and Central China (5.3% ± 1.0%), with decreases over North China (−10.3% ± 1.3%), Northeast China (−4.9% ± 1.5%), and northern Southwest China (−3.9% ± 1.8%). The conditional risk ratios for five subregions with increased cutoff sL are all greater than 1.0, indicating an increased risk of large precipitation accumulations in the most recent period. For high precipitation accumulations larger than the 99th percentile of accumulation s99, the risk of extreme precipitation over these regions can increase above 20% except for South China. These increases of extreme accumulations can be largely explained by the extended duration of extreme accumulation events, especially for “extremely extreme” precipitation greater than s99.
Conductance quantization in atomic-sized gold contacts using a low-cost mechanically controllable break junction setup

The mechanically controllable break junction (MCBJ) experimental setup is one of the main techniques employed in the study of electronic transport properties at the atomic and molecular scales. This work presents the construction of an inexpensive and simple but robust setup that shows the emergence of conductance quantization as a macroscopic gold wire is pulled to atomic dimensions. The homemade device is based on the MCBJ principle and allows repeatedly forming and breaking the metallic contact to perform a statistical analysis of the data extracting the most frequent electron transport structure. The histogram built from conductance measurements, at room temperature in air, show that the quality of the MCBJ equipment developed here is comparable to that of more sophisticated devices used in research laboratories. It is able to resolve up to three conductance peaks associated with gold nanowires reported in the literature. Such an experiment is suggested to be implemented as a powerful pedagogical tool in modern undergraduate physics labs.
Effect of Process Conditions on Particle Size and Shape in Continuous Antisolvent Crystallisation of Lovastatin

Lovastatin crystals often exhibit an undesirable needle-like morphology. Several studies have shown how a needle-like morphology can be modified in antisolvent crystallisation with the use of additives, but there is much less experimental work demonstrating crystal shape modification without the use of additives. In this study, a series of unseeded continuous antisolvent crystallisation experiments were conducted with the process conditions of supersaturation, total flow rate, and ultrasound level being varied to determine their effects on crystal size and shape. This experimental work involved identifying acetone/water as the most suitable solvent/antisolvent system, assessing lovastatin nucleation behaviour by means of induction time measurements, and then designing and implementing the continuous antisolvent crystallisation experiments. It was found that in order to produce the smallest and least needle-like particles, the maximum total flow rate and supersaturation had to be combined with the application of ultrasound. These results should aid development of pharmaceutical manufacturing processes where the ability to control particle size and shape would allow for optimisation of crystal isolation and more efficient downstream processing.
Exploration Of Effective Anti-Urolithiatic Property Of Carissa Carandas L. Leaves Against Ethylene Glycol Induced Kidney Stones In Male Rats

Urolithiasis is a common disease that has been recognized and documented in medical literature even by the Greek and Roman physicians. Carissa carandas Linn. , is ensconce all over India mostly in the semi-arid territory. Karonda trees are extensively cultured in the domicile gardens, farmer’s fields, and orchards as hedge-row plants. The aim of the research was to evaluate the antiurolithiatic property of Carissa carandas Linn. leaf extract in rats. Urolithiasis in male Wistar albino rats was experimentally induced by administration of 0.75% (v/v) ethylene glycol in drinking water ad libitum for 28 days. Also the animals were treated with three doses of EELCC (ethanolic extract of leaves of Carissa Carandas Linn.) i.e., 100, 200, 400 mg/kg and Cystone 750 mg/kg b.w. , p.o. , respectively once daily from 15 to 28 day. On the 29 day, the body-weight difference was measured and animals was housed in individual metabolic cages, urine (pooled) collected for 24 h. Blood was collected on the same day and centrifuged. Parameters like urinary volume and pH, urinary analysis (Calcium, Oxalate, Creatinine, Uric acid, Blood urea nitrogen, and Urea) and serum analysis (Calcium, Oxalate, Creatinine, Uric acid, Blood urea nitrogen, and Urea) were performed to access the antiurolithiatic activity. The urine was subjected to microscopical study to observe the CaOx crystals. Thereafter the animals were sacrificed, kidneys excised followed by weighing the difference and estimation of homogenate parameters (Calcium, Oxalate, MDA, GSH, Catalase and SOD). Histopathological study of the kidneys were done by light microscopy, whereas the EELCC treated rats (400 mg/kg) showed no presence of CaOx crystal deposits and apparently retained normal morphology, tubular epithelial cells and glomeruli as in normal control group when compared with Cystone (750 mg/kg). Urolithiasis caused significant (P< 0.01) changes in all parameters in lithiatic control group rats as compared to normal control group rats. , treatment with EELCC at three doses i.e. 100, 200 and 400 mg/kg and Cystone 750 mg/kg showed comparatively a significant (P< 0.01) restoration of all altered parameters. Based on results it can be concluded that the EELCC at dose of 400 mg/kg exhibited significant (P< 0.01) anti-urolithiatic activity on experimentally induced urolithiasis.
Whale Optimization Algorithm for Numerical Constrained Optimization

Balina optimizasyon algoritmasi (BOA) son zamanlarda gelistirilen nature-inspired tabanli meta-sezgisel bir optimizasyon algoritmasidir. Algoritma kambur balinalarin avlanirken kullandiklari kabarcik avlanma stratejilerinden esinlenerek 2016 yilinda gelistirilmistir. Gelistirilen her algoritmanin performansini ortaya cikarmak icin, optimizasyon test problemleri uzerinde test edilmesi gerekmektedir. Biz bu calismamizda, BOA sinirlamasiz optimizasyona adapte ederek, literaturde sikca kullanilan 13 sinirlamali test problemleri uzerinde test edilmistir. Elde edilen deneysel test sonuclari ayrintili olarak sunulmustur. Ayrica BOA’ nin deneysel test sonuclari, literaturden alinan diger meta-sezgisel optimizasyon algoritmalarinin sonuclari ile kiyaslanmis ve algoritmanin basarimi gosterilmistir.