Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Project Management Competencies of Educational Technology Professionals in Higher Education: A Qualitative Analysis of the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

The purpose of this research is to explore the competencies of project managers in the field of educational technology in the higher education context. A conceptual framework is presented based on the current definition of the field of educational technology; knowledge, skill, and ability (KSA) statements; and the sixth edition of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). Using this conceptual framework, an interview protocol with 11 open-ended questions was developed by the research team to gather relevant information from experienced educational technology project managers. We then interviewed N=13 educational technology project managers from institutions of higher education across the United States and analyzed these data using the Constant Comparative Method. Three dominant themes emerged during data analysis: “knowledge,” “skills,” and “abilities. ” These themes are described in detail along with the properties and categories from our data, and a discussion of our findings is provided. Recommendations are made for both researchers and professionals.
The Provision of Long-Term Credit and Firm Growth in Developing Countries

This study evaluates the impact of the provision of long-term credit (LTC) on the growth of small and young firms in developing countries. The growth of firms is evaluated on the basis of employment growth and total sales. Credit provisions have also been collected from the shortand LTC extended to the private sector. This study uses data on firm levels from more than 19000 firms in 52 countries between 2006–2016. In order to avoid the endogeneity issues that usually occur in such studies, this study has implemented a cross-country model to evaluate the significance of total bank credit, both longand short-term, on the growth of sales and employment. The econometric results indicate that the availability of short-term credit (STC) is more beneficial for the growth of the firms, i.e. STC was found to have a significant impact on employment growth and sales in small and young firms. Although positive, LTC seemed to have no significance in the growth of the small and young firms. This study suggests that the prime reason behind these results is the availability of long-term loans for small and young firms.
State-specific individualized functional networks form a predictive signature of brain state

There is extensive evidence that human brain functional organization is dynamic, varying within a subject as the brain switches between tasks demands. This functional organization also varies across subjects, even when they are all engaged in similar tasks. Currently, we lack a comprehensive model that unifies the two dimensions of variation (brain state and subject). Using fMRI data obtained across multiple task-evoked and rest conditions (which we operationally define as brain states) and across multiple subjects, we develop a state-and subject-specific functional network parcellation (the assignment of nodes to networks). Our parcellation approach provides a measure of how node-to-network assignment (NNA) changes across states and across subjects. We demonstrate that the brain’s functional networks are not spatially fixed, but reconfigure with brain state. This reconfiguration is robust and reliable to such an extent that it can be used to predict brain state with accuracies up to 97%.
Evolutionary analyses reveal independent origins of gene repertoires and structural motifs associated to fast inactivation in calcium-selective TRPV channels

Important for calcium homeostasis, TRPV5 and TRPV6 are calcium-selective channels belonging to the transient receptor potential (TRP) gene family. In this study, we investigated the evolutionary history of these channels to add an evolutionary context to the already available physiological information. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that paralogs found in mammals, sauropsids, amphibians, and chondrichthyans, are the product of independent duplication events in the ancestor of each group. Within amniotes, we identified a traceable signature of three amino acids located at the amino-terminal intracellular region (HLH domain). The signature correlates well with both the duplication events and the phenotype of fast inactivation observed in mammalian TRPV6 channels. Electrophysiological recordings and mutagenesis suggest that calcium-induced fast inactivation represents an evolutionary innovation that emerged independently after gene duplication.
Diversity of Gastrotricha on Spitsbergen (Svalbard Archipelago, Arctic) with a Description of Seven New Species

Abstract. Gastrotrich biodiversity in the Arctic region is virtually unknown. Here we present, for the first time, a Gastrotricha investigation from both freshwater and marine habitats in the Hornsund fjord area (Spitsbergen, Arctic). Our research was conducted on the transect at various distances from the foreland of the Hans glacier (Spitsbergen, Arctic). The collected material contained representatives of 15 species belonging to 6 genera, 3 families and 2 orders. From all of the recorded taxa, 6 freshwater and 1 marine species proved to be new species and are described in this paper as Chaetonotus (Chaetonotus) bombardus sp. nov., C. (C.) subtilis sp. nov., C. (Hystricochaetonotus) borealis sp. nov., C. (H.) hornsundi sp. nov., C. (H.) persimilis sp. nov., Lepidodermella polaris sp. nov. and Turbanella pilosum sp. nov. Moreover, 3 other species described from Isfjorden area, another Spitsbergen locality, namely C. (C.) gelidus, C. (C.) jaceki and C. (C.) svalbardi, were found during our research, which may suggest a high specificity of Arctic Gastrotricha fauna. In this work we provide both morphological and morphometric data and we present the phylogenetic position of the newly described and newly found species based on nuclear 18S rRNA, 28S rRNA and mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I sequence data.
Neuroanatomical correlates of food addiction and obesity in the general population

The food addiction model suggests neurobiological similarities between substance-related and addictive disorders and obesity. While structural brain differences have been consistently reported in these conditions, little is known about the neuroanatomical correlates of food addiction. We therefore assessed whether food addiction, assessed with the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS), related to obesity, personality and brain structure in a large population-based sample (n=625; 20-59 years old, 45% women). A higher YFAS symptom score correlated with obesity and disinhibited eating. In a whole-brain analysis, YFAS symptom score was not associated with cortical thickness nor subcortical gray matter volumes. Higher body mass index (BMI) correlated with reduced thickness of (pre)frontal, temporal and occipital cortex. Bayes factor analysis suggested that BMI and - to a smaller extent - YFAS symptom score contributed independently to right lateral orbitofrontal cortex thickness. Our study shows that food addiction is not associated with neuroanatomical differences in a large population-based sample, and does not account for the major part of obesity-associated gray matter alterations. Yet, food addiction might explain additional variance in orbitofrontal cortex, a hub area of the reward network. Longitudinal studies implementing both anatomical and functional MRI could further disentangle the neural mechanisms of addictive eating behaviors.
Phacidiaceae endophytes of Picea rubens in Eastern Canada

More than 100 fungal endophyte strains belonging to the family Phacidiaceae were isolated from surface-sterilized Picea rubens Sarg. needles collected from the Acadian Forest Region in New Brunswick, Canada. The strains were characterized morphologically by their asexual states, and phylogenetic analyses were conducted using the nuclear internal transcribed spacer rDNA (ITS) marker and the second largest subunit of ribosomal polymerase II (RPB2). Morphological and phylogenetic data revealed seven species: Darkera cf. parca; Strasseria geniculata; two novel Phacidium species: Phacidium dicosmoanum and Phacidium faciforme; and three novel monotypic genera described to accommodate distinct species: Calvophomopsis rubenticola, Cornibusella ungulata, and Gloeopycnis protuberans. Further analyses of Darkera spp. were performed with ITS and partial translation elongation factor 1-α (TEF1α), and the results suggest that D. parca is a species complex. Phacidiaceae includes hundreds of known species that are unrepresented by sequence data; therefore, ITS sequences were generated from herbarium material including type specimens of Darkera parca, Phacidium lunatum, and specimens of Allantophomopsiella, Allantophomopsis, Bulgaria, Phacidium, and Pseudophacidium species. The description of novel species combined with morphological observations and reference sequences will facilitate the identification of conifer endophytes, both from specimens or cultures and in environmental sequence data, and improve our understanding of this large and mostly neglected family.
Effects of Replacing Soybean Meal with Crassocephalum crepidioides leaf Meal on Growth, Nutrient Utilisation and Whole Body Composition of Labeo rohita Fingerlings

Over the past three decades, global aquaculture production expanded at an average annual rate of more than 8%, from 5.2 million tons in 1981 to 62.7 million tons in 2011. Aquaculture's contribution to total food fish supply grew from 9% in 1980 to 48% in 2011 (FAO, 2013). Hence, a projected model of aquaculture production possible to increase from 28.6 million tons in 1997 up to 53.6 million tons by 2020 where developing countries would be responsible for 79% of world food fish production, with 77% of International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 7 Number 09 (2018) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas. com
Multi-Year High-Voltage Power System Planning Considering Active Power Curtailment

Integrating active power curtailment (APC) of renewable energy sources (RES) in power system planning reduces necessary investments in the power system infrastructure. In current target grid planning methods, APC is considered by fixed curtailment factors without considering the provided flexibility to its full extent. Time-series-based planning methods allow the integration of the time dependency of RES and loads in power system planning, leading to substantial cost savings compared to the worst-case method. In this paper, we present a multi-year planning strategy for high-voltage power system planning, considering APC as an alternative investment option to conventional planning measures. A decomposed approach is chosen to consider APC and conventional measures in a long-term planning horizon of several years. The optimal investment path is obtained with the discounted cash flow method. A case study is conducted for the SimBench high-voltage urban benchmark system. Results show that the time-series-based method allows for reducing investments by up to 84% in comparison to the worst-case method. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis shows the variation in total expenditures with changing cost assumptions.
Protein Disulfide Isomerases Control the Secretion of Wnt proteins

Appropriate Wnt morphogen secretion is required to control animal development and homeostasis. Although correct Wnt globular structure is essential for secretion, proteins that directly mediate Wnt folding and maturation are incompletely characterized. Here, we report that protein disulfide isomerase-1 (PDI-1), a protein folding catalyst and chaperone, controls secretion of the Caenorhabditis elegans Wnt ortholog EGL-20. We find that PDI-1 function is required to correctly form an anteroposterior EGL-20/Wnt gradient during embryonic development. Further, PDI-1 performs this role in EGL-20/Wnt-producing epidermal cells to cell-non-autonomously control EGL-20/Wnt-dependent neuronal migration. Using pharmacological inhibition, we further show that PDI function is required in human cells for Wnt3a secretion, revealing a conserved role for disulfide isomerases. Together, these results demonstrate a critical role for PDIs within Wnt-producing cells to control long-range developmental events that are dependent on Wnt secretion.
Investigation into the Effective Factors Involved in Personal Brand Equity of University Professors

Purpose : Nowadays personal branding is considered a very important issue for specialists like the university professors, as one of the important classes of experts in the society, and the success criteria of personal branding activities is their perceived brand equity by the students. The purpose of present study is to investigate the effective factors involved in personal brand equity of university professors. Methodology : This is an applied study in terms of purpose and it is a survey-analytical study in terms of method. The statistical population consists of the students at Azad University Central Tehran Branch in Iran, Faculty of Management and the data were collected from 275 students using probability convenience sampling method. Structural equation modeling and SMART PLC has been used to test the hypotheses. Findings : The results show that competence of professors, the students' awareness of them and the instruction perceived quality by the students affect the professor brand equity through affecting the extent of attachment between the students and professors and the effect on the communicative variables such as commitment, trust and loyalty. Conclusion : Today being good in what we are doing as an expert doesn’t pay off enough and we can’t expect others to know our competencies and respect that while we are not communicating that thing properly through personal branding. Findings show that university professors must take a good care of their awareness, competencies and perceived instructional qualities which all let them have higher brand equity through communicative variables and benefit a lot from that.
Effect of Media, Temperature and Light Wavelength on the Growth of Curvularia lunata Causing Curvularia Leaf Spot of Maize

Maize (Zea mays L.) is a valuable resourceful cereal crop which contributes to food security in most of the developing countries. In India, maize is emerging as third most important crop after rice and wheat. It is cultivated throughout the year in different parts of the country for diverse purposes as well as grain, fodder, green cobs, sweet corn, baby corn, pop corn and industrial purposes etc. (Barupal and Sharma 2015). Maize is the basic raw material required for manufacturing starch and has 6065 per cent starch content, hence cannot be easily substituted by other commodities. India is the largest producer of Maize in the world, with 22.57 lakh MT during the year 2015-16 (APEDA, 2016). Maize cultivation is affected by insects, diseases, weeds and some abiotic factors. In context of biotic factors huge amount of loss is encountered in several economically important crop plants by the plant parasitic fungi (Sarma, 2006). Curvularia leaf spot caused by Curvularia lunata is one of the most important diseases emerging since last few years. This disease damages most as compared to other leaf spots or leaf blight of corn with clear visible symptoms exhibiting small chlorotic spots that expand into a round or oval-shaped lesion surrounded by a wide translucent straw yellow coloured halo (Rao and William, 1978). Several lesions when coalesce together leads to the formation of leaf necrosis. Curvularia species being plant parasites are mostly found in subtropical and tropical areas of the world (Smiley et al., International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 7 Number 09 (2018) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas. com
The development of individual differences in cooperative behaviour: maternal glucocorticoid hormones alter helping behaviour of offspring in wild meerkats

The phenotype of parents can have long-lasting effects on the development of offspring as well as on their behaviour, physiology, and morphology as adults. In some cases, these changes may increase offspring fitness but, in others, they can elevate parental fitness at a cost to the fitness of their offspring. We show that in Kalahari meerkats (Suricata suricatta), the circulating glucocorticoid (GC) hormones of pregnant females affect the growth and cooperative behaviour of their offspring. We performed a 3-year experiment in wild meerkats to test the hypothesis that GC-mediated maternal effects reduce the potential for offspring to reproduce directly and therefore cause them to exhibit more cooperative behaviour. Daughters (but not sons) born to mothers treated with cortisol during pregnancy grew more slowly early in life and exhibited significantly more of two types of cooperative behaviour (pup rearing and feeding) once they were adults compared to offspring from control mothers. They also had lower measures of GCs as they aged, which could explain the observed increases in cooperative behaviour. Because early life growth is a crucial determinant of fitness in female meerkats, our results indicate that GC-mediated maternal effects may reduce the fitness of offspring, but may elevate parental fitness as a consequence of increasing the cooperative behaviour of their daughters.
Importance of thermophilous habitats for protection of wild bees (Apiformes)

Research on wild bees (Apiformes) was conducted in the Lower Oder Valley (NW Poland) at Natura 2000 sites near the border between Poland and Germany. The analysis involved 3 landscape types with xerothermic and sandy grasslands, differing in the proportion of woody vegetation. In total, we collected there 4158 specimens of Apiformes, representing 180 species. We have proved that mid-forest grasslands with a high proportion of thermophilous broad-leaved forests and xerothermic shrub communities are equally attractive to wild bees as open habitats (sandy grasslands, xerothermic grasslands/heaths). We observed varied responses of wild bee species with specific functional characteristics to increasing proportion of woody vegetation. The grasslands surrounded by forests were characterized by the highest number of cleptoparasitic species. In contrast, solitary and social bee species preferred forest-steppe habitats. However, in open habitats, solitary bees were the most abundant. Moreover, open habitats were distinguished by the highest number and abundance of rare species. Active protection of thermophilous grasslands is crucial for biodiversity conservation, also with respect to the natural resources of Apiformes. Preservation of biodiversity in threatened xerothermic and sandy grasslands should be one of the key objectives of nature conservation in European countries. Currently, more and more actions are undertaken to improve their condition and to restore those particularly valuable and threatened habitat types.
Cross-Media Semantic Matching based on Sparse Representation

: With the rapid growth of multi - modal data, cross - media retrieval has aroused many research interests. In this paper, the cross - media retrieval includes two tasks: query image retrieves relevant text and query text retrieves relevant images. With the development of sparse representation, two independent sparse representation classifiers are used to map the heterogeneous features of images and texts into their common semantic space before implementing similarity comparison. The proposed method makes full use of semantic information, and it i s effective in the retrieving task. T he performance of this method was evaluated on Wiki dataset, NUS - WIDE dataset, Wiki dataset with CNN features and Pascal dataset with CNN features. The experimental results validate its effectiveness compared with several state - of -the- art algorithms on the Mean Average Precision and other performance indexes.
Detection of some virulence genes by PCR in Escherichia coli isolates from some local food in Erbil City

The present study was aimed to isolate and characterize Escherichia coli pathogenic types from raw red meat, poultry and ready to eat food sources. Enrichment, selective plating, biochemical tests as well as vietik kit system have been applied for isolation and identification of pathogenic E. coli from collected samples. Out of 200 food samples, 180 (90%) were contaminated with E. coli, the highest contaminated foods were red meat 74 (92.5%), while the poultry 55 (92%), and 51 (85%) of ready to eat foods. The prevalence of E. coli O157:H7 found in red meat is 20% and 18% in poultry while 14% of the ready to eat food samples were contaminated with this bacterium. The isolates were screened for some virulence genes using PCR assays; from the total (128) isolates, 98 (76.5%) possessed uidA gene as detected in 40 (74%) red meat, 30(81%) and 28(75.5%) in poultry and ready to eat food respectively, while 37 (28.9%) of the isolates possessed lt gene as follows; 10(18.5), 15 (40.5) and 12(32.4) in red meat, poultry and ready to eat food, respectively. The results showed the detection flicH7 gene specific for E. coli O157:H7 were 7 (38.8%), 5 (35.7%) and 4(26.6%) of the total 47 isolates were possessed the flicH7 gene found in red meat, poultry and ready to eat food respectively. Our results showed that E. coli isolates presence in high percentage in raw red meat, poultry and ready to eat foods (kebab, shawerma and hamburger) and virulence genes; udiA, lt and flicH7 genes detected by PCR in the isolates and may be a source of potentially pathogenic E. coli for humans.
Selecting for stable and productive families of Eucalyptus urophylla across a country-wide range of climates in Brazil

To identify stable and productive Eucalyptus urophylla S.T. Blake families across diverse climate zones in Brazil, we evaluated growth and survival of 322 open-pollinated families derived from 13 genetically improved seed sources in 10 trials across the country. Survival and growth data were analyzed using linear mixed models and REML/BLUP. Survival ranged from 51% to 92%, and the mean annual increment varied from 19 to 46 m3·ha−1·year−1. Although planted in suitable climatic zones, some trials had low survival and (or) productivity. Conversely, the highest productivity was recorded in a zone considered to be of low suitability. These results show the importance of assessing the climatic requirements of eucalypts beyond those determined from analyses of their natural distribution, especially when testing already improved seed sources. A number of productive and stable families were identified based on analysis of the interaction between genotype and environment, and from these, 144 individuals were selected and had their genetic diversity estimated using 19 microsatellite DNA markers. The genetic diversity of these selected trees was equivalent to that observed in previous studies of natural populations of E. urophylla, indicating that breeding programs of E. urophylla in Brazil still retain high levels of diversity for sustainable genetic gains.