Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ENTREPRENEURIAL SELF-EFFICACY AND ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIONS AMONG GRADUATES : THE MEDIATING ROLE OF MINDFULNESS AND OPPORTUNITY IDENTIFICATION FOR FACILITATING REDUCTION

Reducing unemployment challenges is possible with graduates becoming entrepreneurs. However, the challenge persists as a result of difficulties in transmitting entrepreneurial efficaciousness from training programmes to successful entrepreneurial actions. A dearth of studies exists with regard to how certain key entrepreneurial skills as habit and ways of the mind as well as opportunity identification influence entrepreneurial ship. This study investigated the possible mediating role of mindfulness and opportunity identification in the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial actions among graduates. Using the ex-post facto design, four hundred (400) hundred corps graduates in the National Youth Service Corp deployed to serve in Oyo state were selected for the study. Four standardized and valid scale were used for data collection. Two research hypotheses were tested in the study Data was analyzed, using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Path analysis. The result indicated that there were significant relationships among all four variables investigated. While mindfulness was an effective mediator in the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial action, the effect of opportunity identification was unexpectedly not significant. This study therefore suggest the inclusion and promotion of mindfulness and opportunity identification skills in entrepreneurial development programmes and course targeting graduates from tertiary institutions.
OPTN translocates to an ATG9A-positive compartment to regulate innate immune signalling and cytokine secretion

Optineurin (OPTN) is a multifunctional protein involved in autophagy, secretion as well as NF-κB and IRF3 signalling and mutations are associated with several human diseases including primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Paget’s disease of bone (PDB) and Crohn’s disease (CD). Here we show that, in response to viral RNA, OPTN translocates to foci in the perinuclear region, where it negatively regulates NF-κB and IRF3 signalling pathways and downstream pro-inflammatory cytokine secretion. These OPTN foci consist of a tight cluster of small membrane vesicles, which are positive for marker proteins of the trans-Golgi network/recycling compartment – most notably ATG9A. Disease mutations linked to POAG cause aberrant formation of this compartment in the absence of stimuli, which correlates with the ability of OPTN to inhibit signalling. Using proximity labelling proteomics (BioID), we identify the linear ubiquitin assembly complex (LUBAC), CYLD and TBK1 as part of the OPTN interactome and show that these proteins, along with NEMO, are recruited to this OPTN-positive perinuclear compartment. Together, we propose OPTN might be responsible for dampening the NF-κB and IRF3 signalling responses through the sequestration of LUBAC and other positive regulators of these pathways in this dsRNA-induced compartment leading to altered pro-inflammatory cytokine secretion. Summary Disease associated OPTN mutations impact on the formation of the perinuclear compartment and result in hypo- or hyper-activation of the immune response, which could drive the development of human diseases such as POAG, ALS and also Paget’s disease of bone.
The Strange Case of the Ankhpakhered Mummy: Results of AMS 14C Dating

The ancient Egyptian mummy discovered in the wooden coffin of Ankhpakhered, priest of the god Min, has been studied at CEDAD (Centre for Dating and Diagnostics) at the University of Salento, Italy. The CT scan, performed by the multidisciplinary team of the Mummy Project of Milan, highlighted unusual features of the mummy, suggesting a reuse of the sarcophagus. Furthermore, specimens were taken via endoscopy for accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analyses, which have been carried out at CEDAD.
Engineering Red Blood Cell Progenitors to Achieve Greater Proliferative Potential

Increased proliferative potential of mouse bone marrow derived erythroid progenitor cells was achieved by ectopic over-expression of the transcription factor c-Myc. This was enabled by stable gene transfer of a novel all-in-one lentivirus transfer vector allowing for tight doxycycline (dox) inducible gene expression. These cells maintained a surface marker expression profile, and responsiveness to both stem cell factor (SCF) and erythropoietin (EPO) similar to colonyforming unit-erythroid (CFU-E) cells for more than 6 weeks. Upon removal of ectopic c-Myc expression, the cells lost the c-kit, and CD71 surface markers, expressed Ter119, hemoglobinized, reduced in size, and enucleated. Although further work is needed to ensure the method to create these cells is reproducible, achieved results are evidence that support a novel method to produce large quantities of enucleated red blood cells (RBCs). This method may provide a platform to produce universal donor-type RBCs for traditional blood transfusions and novel cellular therapeutics.
Comparative and correlational analysis of the performance from 2016 crossfit games high-level athletes

Background: CrossFit is a functional training modality created by Greg Glassman in 1995 in the United States. Such modality is characterized by the execution of complex and high intensity movements with the purpose of preparing the participant for the unpredictable. It is observed the exponential increase in CrossFit practice across the world, with this increase there are a consolidation of this modality with as a very peculiar sport modality, since as tasks to be performed in the competitions are made public just before the events happen. Few studies have focused on the determinants of competitive success in CrossFit, both morphologically and performance. Objective: This present study dedicated to investigate, in the existing literature and in the results of the 2016 championship, variables that can be predicted the performance of these athletes. Methods: The performance of 4
Do Karst Rivers “deserve” their own biotic index? A ten years study on macrozoobenthos in Croatia

In this study we present the results of a ten year survey of the aquatic macroinvertebrate fauna along the four karst rivers: Jadro, Žrnovnica, Grab and Ruda, all of them situated in the Middle Dalmatia region of Croatia, in an attempt to construct the Iliric Biotic Index, which will be more applicable for the water quality analysis than the most frequently applied biotic index in Croatia, the Italian Modification of Extended Biotic Index. The rivers geologically belong to the Dinaric karst, unique geological phenomena in Europe. Benthic macroinvertebrates were collected along each river at 15 sites by standard methods of sampling along with several physicochemical parameters, including: temperature, dissolved oxygen, carbon dioxide, alkalinity, hardness and pH. Univariate and multivariate techniques revealed differences in the macroinvertebrate community structure as well as in physicochemical parameters between the Karst rivers and continental rivers. Based on those differences, the Iliric Biotic Index was proposed as the standard of karst river water quality in Croatia in accordance with the EU Water Framework Directive. Differences between the Iliric Biotic Index and the most commonly used biotic indices in the European Community and the USA (The Biological Monitoring Working Party (B.M.W.P.) scores, i.e. Extended Biotic Index, Indice Biotique, Family Biotic Index) suggest that karst rivers need a new biotic index.
Preferential helping to relatives: A potential mechanism responsible for lower yield of crop variety mixtures?

Variety mixtures, the cultivation of different genotypes within a field, have been proposed as a way to increase within‐crop diversity, allowing the development of more sustainable agricultural systems with reduced environmental costs. Although mixtures have often been shown to over‐yield the average of component varieties in pure stands, decreased yields in mixtures have also been documented. Kin selection may explain such pattern, whenever plants direct helping behaviors preferentially toward relatives and thus experience stronger competition when grown with less related neighbors, lowering seed production of mixtures. Using varieties of durum wheat originating from traditional Moroccan agrosystems, we designed a greenhouse experiment to address whether plants reduced competition for light by limiting stem elongation when growing with kin and whether such phenotypic response resulted in higher yield of kin groups. Seeds were sown in groups of siblings and nonkin, each group containing a focal plant surrounded by four neighbors. At the group level, mean plant height and yield did not depend upon relatedness among competing plants. At the individual level, plant height was not affected by genetic relatedness to neighbors, after accounting for direct genetic effects that might induce among‐genotype differences in the ability to capture resources that do not depend on relatedness. Moreover, in contrast to our predictions, shorter plants had lower inclusive fitness. Phenotypic plasticity in height was very limited in response to neighbor genotypes. This suggests that human selection in crops may have attenuated shade‐avoidance responses to competition for light. Future research on preferential helping to relatives in crops might thus target social traits that drive competition for other resources than light. Overall, our study illustrates the relevance of tackling agricultural issues from an evolutionary standpoint and calls for extending such approaches to a larger set of crop species.
Cloud-based Recommendation Systems: Applications and Solutions

Recommender systems have become extremely common in recent years, and are applied in a variety of applications. They help businesses increase their sales and customer satisfaction. More and more computing applications including recommender systems, are being deployed as cloud computing services. This papers presents some of the most common recommendation applications and solutions which follow SaaS, PaaS or other cloud computing service models. They are provided both from academia and business domain and use recent data mining, machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques. The tendency of these kind of applications is towards SaaS service model which seems the most appropriate especially for businesses.
A palaeomagnetic study of the volcanic rocks of El-Mane mountain, south of Damascus – Syria

Datos paleomagneticos previamente reportados de esta region son complementados con estudios de desmagnetizacion termica de 46 nuevos sitios (14 unidades de flujo). Los sitios, de fuerte consistencia interna y entre ellos, se muestran arreglados estratigraficamente y combinados con datos paleomagneticos y radiometricos previos, con el fin de establecer una cronologia magnetoestratigrafica preliminar. Los resultados se correlacionan cercanamente con los crones 5DR a 6An.1r de la Escala del Tiempo de Polaridad Global. El vulcanismo parece haber ocurrido espasmodicamente a lo largo de un periodo de 3 millones de anos, probablemente relacionado con el desarrollo de nuevos sistemas de fracturas mas bien que con una inyeccion quasi-intermitente de magma en camaras locales. Se confirma que el campo geomagnetico no correspondia cercanamente con el de un dipolo axial egocentrico en esta region para este tiempo, sino que fue posiblemente influenciado por una persistente componente no dipolar. Esto afecto las inclinaciones observadas durante ambos periodos Normal e Inverso; sin embargo, las declinaciones estuvieron mas afectadas durante el tiempo de la polaridad Normal que durante el tiempo de la polaridad Inversa. Sobre esta base, es urgente una gran precaucion en las interpretaciones de rotaciones tectonicas durante este tiempo en la region del Medio Oriente.
The Role of Eddies for the Deep Water Formation in the Labrador Sea

The Labrador Sea is one of a few sites of the world ocean where open ocean deep convection occurs. Previous ocean general circulation models of the North Atlantic tend to show large deficits in simulating observed characteristics of deep water formation in the Labrador Sea. It is shown that three key processes lead to significant improvements: 1) an adequate representation of the freshwater exchange with the Nordic Seas; 2) an efficient representation of eddy fluxes between the boundary currents and the interior of the Labrador Sea; 3) low (numerical) diapycnal mixing. Based on these results, a refined eddy resolving model of the North Atlantic is developed and analyzed with respect to the important aspects of the deep water formation and its variability in the Labrador Sea. The dominant eddy kinetic energy signal is associated with the generation of well stratified ”Cape Desolation Eddies” which are not a direct result of the deep water formation process. These eddies are able to suppress deep convection in the interior of the Labrador Sea. A second type of rather unstratified ”rim current eddies” are formed during the deep convection process. Both types contribute to the restratification after convection and are important for this process to occur on observed timescales. Beside the well known correlation between surface heat flux changes and Labrador Sea Water formation, the model suggests two novel mechanisms of convection variability related to wind stress: 1) in case of enhanced wind stress the eddy kinetic energy at Cape Desolation increases. The resulting higher generation of well stratified Cape Desolation eddies leads to significantly lower Labrador Sea Water formation; 2) wind stresses parallel to the coast west of Greenland causes Ekman transports of relatively fresh and cold water off the coast towards the interior. This buoyant water at the surface stratifies the water column on the Greenland side of the Labrador Sea and suppresses deep convection.
Thinking Differently about Infants and Toddlers: Exploring the Reflections of Future Australian Early Childhood Teachers in Australia.

In Australian early childhood teacher education programs, there appears to be a greater focus on the age group of kindergarten children compared to that of infants and toddlers (Garvis, Lemon, Pendergast and Yim, 2013). As a consequence, pre-service teachers may have little opportunity to interact and learn about this important age range. This paper reports on the incorporation of videos of young child and educator interaction into early childhood teacher education programs at one Australian university. The cohort of pre-service teachers (18) were asked to think in a structured way about the videos with the help of a reflective template, which challenged them to apply higher order thinking with regard to the scenarios presented. As a culminating point of the template, the pre-service teachers were asked to create a reflective practice question to improve their professional practice. In this study, the reflective questions were analysed using content and pronoun analysis. Findings suggest that the pre-service teachers were focused on the continuity of learning of young children, personal skill development and social emotional development. To a lesser degree reflections explored working with families. The pronoun of ‘we’ also appeared as the most likely response on personal reflective questions. This suggests the future teachers had already positioned themselves within the group of early childhood teachers, indicating a strongly developed professional identity.
Unraveling algae and cyanobacteria biodiversity in bromeliad phytotelmata in different vegetation formations in Bahia State, Northeastern Brazil

Knowledge of algal and cyanobacterial diversity of phytotelmata remains poorly-known, especially for bromeliads from different vegetation formations. We investigated the microalgae communities of four species of tank bromeliads from different vegetation formations in Bahia State, Northeast Brazil, highlighting the composition, richness and diversity of taxa. Sampling of water stored in bromeliads was carried out quarterly between 2014 and 2016, and abiotic variables and morphometric attributes of bromeliads were measured. A total of 89 taxa of algae and cyanobacteria were recorded for the four bromeliad species studied. The microalgae communities of the phytotelmata varied among vegetation formations, with one tank bromeliad, Alcantarea nahoumii, with more complex architecture (higher number of leaves and thus more cavities), being distinguished by its high species richness (73 taxa). The bromeliads exhibited little similarity in species composition, with only one species (Phacus polytrophos) occurring in all four species. Throughout the entire sampling period, classes with higher species richness, especially due to A. nahoumii, were Zygnematophyceae, Cyanophyceae and Chlorophyceae, which accounted for about 80 % of all species inventoried. Our results contribute to the knowledge of microalga communities of bromeliad phytotelmata in Brazil with regard to species richness and composition, as well as significant environmental characteristics.
Tolerance to salinity and dehydration in the Sahara Desert blue-eyed turtle, Mauremys leprosa saharica (Testudines: Geoemydidae) from a brackish pond in the Lower Draa basin, southern Morocco

ABSTRACT The marginal populations of the Sahara blue-eyed pond turtle, Mauremys leprosa saharica, in the southern-most species distribution range in the pre-Saharan areas of north-west Africa, are faced with extreme environmental conditions of arid climate and anthropogenic and climate change mediated water and land salinisation. In the current study, we investigated a small and isolated population of M. l. saharica at Sidi El Mehdaoui oasis in the Lower Draa River, southern Morocco, in order to assess its osmo- and iono-regulatory abilities and tolerance to salinity and dehydration. Upon capture, turtles were weighed and measured for shell dimensions and blood and voided urine were taken. Tests of exposure to different levels of water salinity (0%, 35%, and 50% seawater) and maintenance out of water (estivation simulation) were carried out. Osmolalities and Na+, Cl−, K+, and urea concentrations were determined in plasma and voided urine, and glycaemia was measured in blood, before and after tests. Turtles were able to survive in brackish waters with a salinity as high as 24% seawater (8.4 ppt). Their voided urine was hypotonic to plasma, which indicated that they could use their bladder water reserves for osmo- and iono-regulation until the iso-osmocity level beyond which osmotic and ionic anhomeostasy can occur. Experimental tests showed that the osmo- and iono-regulatory capacities of these turtles are relatively limited, and not enough effective to allow them to survive for long-term periods in brackish/saline waters or out of water, because of dehydration indicated by progressive weight loss to a critical threshold. The increased drought, water salinisation and habitat fragmentation related to anthropogenic activities and climate change, represent great threats that can create habitats exceeding the species’ threshold for a long-term persistence of the vulnerable small marginal populations of the Saharan pond turtle. So, conservation measures of these populations and their habitats are urgently needed.
Characterization of dielectric electroactive polymer transducers

Throughout this paper, a small-signal model of the Dielectric Electro Active Polymer (DEAP) transducer is analyzed. The DEAP transducer have been proposed as an alternative to the electrodynamic transducer in sound reproduction systems. In order to understand how the DEAP transducer works, and provide guidelines for design optimization, accurate characterization of the transducer must be established. A small signal model of the DEAP transducer is derived and its validity is investigated using impedance measurements. Impedance measurements are shown for a push-pull DEAP based loudspeaker, and the dependency of the biasing voltage is explained. A measuring setup is proposed, which allows the impedance to be measured, while the DEAP transducer is connected to its biasing source.
Title Mixing Time of Critical Ising Model on Trees is Polynomial in the Height Permalink

In the heat-bath Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on the lattice, physicists believe that the spectral gap of the continuous-time chain exhibits the following behavior. For some critical inverse-temperature βc, the inverse-gap is O(1) for β < βc, polynomial in the surface area for β = βc and exponential in it for β > βc. This has been proved for Z2 except at criticality. So far, the only underlying geometry where the critical behavior has been confirmed is the complete graph. Recently, the dynamics for the Ising model on a regular tree, also known as the Bethe lattice, has been intensively studied. The facts that the inverse-gap is bounded for β < βc and exponential for β > βc were established, where βc is the critical spin-glass parameter, and the tree-height h plays the role of the surface area. In this work, we complete the picture for the inverse-gap of the Ising model on the b-ary tree, by showing that it is indeed polynomial in h at criticality. The degree of our polynomial bound does not depend on b, and furthermore, this result holds under any boundary condition. We also obtain analogous bounds for the mixing-time of the chain. In addition, we study the near critical behavior, and show that for β > βc, the inverse-gap and mixing-time are both exp[ ((β − βc)h)].
Fluctuations in age structure and their variable influence on population growth

Temporal fluctuations in growth rates can arise from both variation in age‐specific vital rates and temporal fluctuations in age structure (i.e. the relative abundance of individuals in each age‐class). However, empirical assessments of temporal fluctuations in age structure and their effects on population growth rate are relatively rare. Most research has focused on understanding the contribution of changing vital rates to population growth rates and these analyses routinely assume that: (a) populations have stable age distributions, (b) environmental influences on vital rates and age structure are stationary (i.e. the mean and/or variance of these processes does not change over time), and (c) dynamics are independent of density. Here we quantified fluctuations in age structure and assessed whether they were stationary for four populations of free‐ranging vertebrates: moose (observed for 48 years), elk (15 years), tawny owls (15 years) and grey wolves (17 years). We also assessed the extent that fluctuations in age structure were useful for predicting annual population growth rates using models which account for density dependence. Fluctuations in age structure were of a similar magnitude to fluctuations in abundance. For three populations (moose, elk, owls), the mean and the skew of the age distribution fluctuated without stabilizing over the observed time periods. More precisely, the sample variance (interannual variance) of age structure indices increased with the length of the study period, which suggests that fluctuations in age structure were non‐stationary for these populations – at least over the 15‐ to 48‐year periods analysed. Fluctuations in age structure were associated with population growth rate for two populations. In particular, population growth varied from positive to negative for moose and from near zero to negative for elk as the average age of adults increased over its observed range. Non‐stationarity in age structure may represent an important mechanism by which abundance becomes non‐stationary – and therefore difficult to forecast – over time‐scales of concern to wildlife managers. Overall, our results emphasize the need for vertebrate populations to be modelled using approaches that consider transient dynamics and density dependence and that do not rely on the assumption that environmental processes are stationary. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.