bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Challenging the Astral™mass analyzer - up to 5300 proteins per single-cell at unseen quantitative accuracy to study cellular heterogeneity
Authors: Bubis Julia A. , Arrey Tabiwang N. , Damoc Eugen , Delanghe Bernard , Slovakova Jana , Sommer Theresa M. , Kagawa Harunobu , Pichler Peter , Rivron Nicolas , Mechtler Karl , Matzinger Manuel
Published: February 2024

A detailed proteome map is crucial for understanding molecular pathways and protein functions. Despite significant advancements in sample preparation, instrumentation, and data analysis, single-cell proteomics is currently limited by proteomic depth and quantitative performance. We combine a zero dead-end volume chromatographic column running at high throughput with the Thermo Scientific™ Orbitrap™ Astral™ mass spectrometer running in DIA mode. We demonstrate unprecedented depth of proteome coverage as well as accuracy and precision for quantification of ultra-low input amounts. Using a tailored library, we identify up to 7400 protein groups from as little as 250 pg HeLa at a throughput of 50 samples per day (SPD). We benchmark multiple data analysis strategies, estimate their influence on FDR and show that FDR on protein level can easily be maintained at 1 %. Using a two-proteome mix, we check for optimal parameters of quantification and show that fold change differences of 2 can still be successfully determined at single-cell level inputs. Eventually, we apply our workflow to A549 cells yielding a proteome coverage of up to 5300 protein groups from a single cell, which allows the observation of heterogeneity in a cellular population and studying dependencies between cell size and cell-cycle phase. Additionally, our work-flow enables us to distinguish betweenin vitroanalogs of two human blastocyst lineages: naïve human pluripotent stem cells (epiblast) and trophectoderm (TE)-like cells. Gene Ontology analysis of enriched proteins in TE-like cells harmoniously aligns with transcriptomic data, indicating that single-cell proteomics possesses the capability to identify biologically relevant differences between these two lineages within the blastocyst.
Reduction in neurons immunoreactive for parvalbumin, calretinin and calbindin in the anteroventral thalamic nuclei of individuals with Down syndrome
Authors: Perry James C. , Vann Seralynne D.
Published: February 2024

The anterior thalamic nuclei are important for cognition, and memory in particular. However, little is known about how the anterior thalamic nuclei are affected in many neurological disorders partly due to difficulties in selective segmentation inin vivoscans, due to their size and location. Post-mortem studies, therefore, remain a valuable source of information about the status of the anterior thalamic nuclei. We used post-mortem tissue to assess the status of the anteroventral thalamic nucleus in Down syndrome using samples from males and females ranging from 22-65 years in age and comparing to tissue from age matched controls. As expected, there was increased beta-amyloid plaque expression in the Down syndrome group. While there was a significant increase in neuronal density in the Down syndrome group, the values showed more variation consistent with a heterogeneous population. The surface area of the anteroventral thalamic nucleus was smaller in the Down syndrome group suggesting the increased neuronal density was due to greater neuronal packing but likely fewer overall neurons. There was a marked reduction in the proportion of neurons immunoreactive for the calcium-binding proteins calbindin, calretinin, and parvalbumin in individuals with Down syndrome across all ages. These findings highlight the vulnerability of calcium-binding proteins in the anteroventral nucleus in Down syndrome, which could both be driven by, and exacerbate, Alzheimer-related pathology in this region.
Syntactic Sugars: Crafting a Regular Expression Framework for Glycan Structures
Authors: Bennett Alexander R. , Bojar Daniel
Published: February 2024

Structural analysis of glycans pose significant challenges in glycobiology due to their complex sequences. Research questions such as analyzing the sequence content of the α1-6 branch inN- glycans, are biologically meaningful yet can be hard to automate. Here, we introduce a regular expression system, designed for glycans, feature-complete, and closely aligned with regular expression formatting. We use this to annotate glycan motifs of arbitrary complexity, perform differential expression analysis on designated sequence stretches, or elucidate branch-specific binding specificities of lectins in an automated manner. We are confident that glycan regular expressions will empower computational analyses of these sequences.

Availability and implementation

Our regular expression framework for glycans is implemented in Python and is incorporated into the open-source glycowork package (version 1.1+). Code and documentation are available athttps://github.com/BojarLab/glycowork/blob/master/glycowork/motif/regex.py.

Contact

daniel.bojar@gu.se
A genetic locus in the gut microbeBacteroides thetaiotaomicronencodes activities consistent with mucin-O-glycoprotein processing and plays a critical role inN-acetylgalactosamine metabolism
Authors: Ndeh Didier A. , Nakjang Sirintra , Kwiatkowski Kurt J. , Koropatkin Nicole M. , Hirt Robert P. , Bolam David N.
Published: February 2024

It is increasingly appreciated that members of the gut microbiota are key modulators of human health and the status of major diseases including cancer, diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease. Central to their survival is the ability to metabolise complex dietary and host-derived glycans including intestinal mucins. The latter are critical components of the gut epithelium glycocalyx and mucus barriers, essential for microbiota-gut homeostasis and protection from infections by pathogens. The prominent and model human gut microbeBacteroides thetaiotaomicron (B. theta)is a versatile and highly efficient complex glycan degrader thanks to the expansion of gene clusters termed polysaccharide utilisation loci (PULs) in its genome. While the mechanisms for several singular dietary glycan-induced PULs have been elucidated, studies on the 16-18 mucin-induced PULs inB. thetasignificantly lag behind. A combination of the scale and complexity ofB. thetatranscriptomic response to mucins and complex glycan configurations of mucins represent major hurdles for the functional characterisation of the mucin induced PULs. As a result, there is very limited knowledge on how mucin metabolism is coordinated inB. thetaand what specific PULs, genes and metabolites are critical for mucin-B. theta,and more generally mucin-microbiota interactions and their importance in microbiota-gut homeostasis. Here we show that a mucin inducible PUL BT4240-50, (i) encodes activities consistent with a machinery that couples the processing of mucin-O glycan glycoproteins with the metabolism ofN-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc), an abundant mucin O-glycan sugar; (ii) is important for competitive growth on mucinsin-vitro; (iii) encodes a key kinase enzyme (BT4240) that is critical for GalNAc metabolism and (iv) has related PULs encoded by a range of prominentBacteroidesspecies in the human gut. Furthermore, BT4240 kinase was also critical for glycosaminoglycan metabolism, thus extending the PULs function beyond mucins. Our work advances our understanding of the vital metabolic processes that govern mucosal glycoprotein metabolism and by implication, a key aspect of host-microbiota interactions at mucosal surfaces and highlight GalNAc as a key metabolite targeted for competitive growth.
Center-symmetric Landau gauge: Further signatures of confinement
Authors: van Egmond Duifje Maria , Reinosa Urko
Published: February 2024

In a recent article [D. M. van Egmond and U. Reinosa, ], we have identified new signatures for the Yang-Mills deconfinement transition, based on the finite-temperature or gluon propagator as computed in the center-symmetric Landau gauge. Here, we generalize these considerations into a systematic study of the center symmetry identities obeyed by the correlation functions in this gauge. Any violation of these constraints signals the breaking of center symmetry and can thus serve as a probe for the deconfinement transition.

Published by the American Physical Society
2024
High-flux source system for matter-wave interferometry exploiting tunable interactions
Authors: Herbst A. , Estrampes T. , Albers H. , Vollenkemper V. , Stolzenberg K. , Bode S. , Charron E. , Rasel E. M. , Gaaloul N. , Schlippert D.
Published: February 2024

Atom interferometers allow determining inertial effects to high accuracy. Quantum-projection noise as well as systematic effects impose demands on large atomic flux as well as ultralow expansion rates. Here we report on a high-flux source of ultracold atoms with free expansion rates near the Heisenberg limit directly upon release from the trap. Our results are achieved in a time-averaged optical dipole trap and enabled through dynamic tuning of the atomic scattering length across two orders of magnitude interaction strength via magnetic Feshbach resonances. We demonstrate Bose-Einstein condensates with more than 6×104 particles after evaporative cooling for 170 ms and their subsequent release with a minimal expansion energy of 4.5 nK in one direction. Based on our results we estimate the performance of an atom interferometer and compare our source system to a high performance chip trap, as readily available for ultraprecise measurements in microgravity environments.

Published by the American Physical Society
2024
Type-I antiferromagnetic Weyl semimetal
InMnTi2
Authors: Grassano Davide , Binci Luca , Marzari Nicola
Published: February 2024

Topological materials have been a main focus of studies in the past decade due to their protected properties that can be exploited for the fabrication of new devices. Among them, Weyl semimetals are a class of topological semimetals with nontrivial linear band crossings close to the Fermi level. The existence of such crossings requires the breaking of either time-reversal (T) or inversion (I) symmetry and is responsible for the exotic physical properties. In this work we identify the full-Heusler compound InMnTi2, as a promising, easy to synthesize, T- and I-breaking Weyl semimetal. To correctly capture the nature of the magnetic state, we employed a novel DFT+U computational setup where all the Hubbard parameters are evaluated from first principles; thus preserving a genuinely predictive character of the theory. We demonstrate that this material exhibits several features that are comparatively more intriguing with respect to other known Weyl semimetals: the distance between two neighboring nodes is large enough to observe a wide range of linear dispersions in the bands, and only one kind of such node's pairs is present in the Brillouin zone. We also show the presence of Fermi arcs stable across a wide range of chemical potentials. Finally, the lack of contributions from trivial points to the low-energy properties makes the materials a promising candidate for practical devices.

Published by the American Physical Society
2024
Open-source electrochemical cell for in situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy in transmission and fluorescence modes
Authors: Lopez-Astacio Hiram , Vargas-Perez Brenda Lee , Del Valle-Perez Angelica , Pollock Christopher J. , Cunci Lisandro
Published: February 2024

X-ray spectroscopy is a valuable technique for the study of many materials systems. Characterizing reactions in situ and operando can reveal complex reaction kinetics, which is crucial to understanding active site composition and reaction mechanisms. In this project, the design, fabrication and testing of an open-source and easy-to-fabricate electrochemical cell for in situ electrochemistry compatible with X-ray absorption spectroscopy in both transmission and fluorescence modes are accomplished via windows with large opening angles on both the upstream and downstream sides of the cell. Using a hobbyist computer numerical control machine and free 3D CAD software, anyone can make a reliable electrochemical cell using this design. Onion-like carbon nanoparticles, with a 1:3 iron-to-cobalt ratio, were drop-coated onto carbon paper for testing in situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Cyclic voltammetry of the carbon paper showed the expected behavior, with no increased ohmic drop, even in sandwiched cells. Chronoamperometry was used to apply 0.4 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode, with and without 15 min of oxygen purging to ensure that the electrochemical cell does not provide any artefacts due to gas purging. The XANES and EXAFS spectra showed no differences with and without oxygen, as expected at 0.4 V, without any artefacts due to gas purging. The development of this open-source electrochemical cell design allows for improved collection of in situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy data and enables researchers to perform both transmission and fluorescence simultaneously. It additionally addresses key practical considerations including gas purging, reduced ionic resistance and leak prevention.
Research on the heterogeneity of executives’ nonsalary incentives on corporate green technology innovation
Authors: Xu Ning , Zhang Di , Li Yutong , Bai Yingjie
Published: February 2024

Purpose

Green technology innovation is the organic combination of green development and innovation driven. It is also a powerful guarantee for shaping sustainable competitive advantages of manufacturing enterprises. To explore what kind of executive incentive contracts can truly stimulate green technology innovation, this study aims to distinguish the equity incentive and reputation incentive, upon their contractual elements characteristics and green governance effects, and then put forward suggestions for green technology innovation accordingly.

Design/methodology/approach

This study establishes an evaluation model and uses empirical methods to test. Concretely, using data from A-share listed manufacturing companies for the period from 2007 to 2020, this study compares and analyzes the impact of equity and reputation incentive on green technology innovation and explores the relationship between internal green business behavior and external green in depth.

Findings

This study finds that reputation incentives focus on long-term and non-utilitarian orientation, which can promote green technology innovation in enterprises. While equity incentives, linked to performance indicators, have a inhibitory effect on green technology innovation. Internal and external institutional factors such as energy conservation measures, the “three wastes” management system, and environmental recognition play the regulatory role in the relationship between incentive contracts and green technology innovation.

Originality/value

Those findings validate and expand the efficient contracting hypothesis and the rent extraction hypothesis from the perspective of green technology innovation and provide useful implications for the design of green governance systems in manufacturing enterprises.
“Respect existence or expect … resilience?” epistemic reflexivity towards liberated disaster studies
Authors: Fuentealba Ricardo
Published: February 2024

Purpose

This paper proposes a way of reflexing on how we think within critical disaster studies. It focuses on the biases and unthought dimensions of two concepts – resilience and development – and reflects on the relationship between theory and practice in critical disaster studies.

Design/methodology/approach

Premised on the idea of epistemic reflexivity developed by Pierre Bourdieu, and drawing on previous research, this theoretical article analyses two conceptual biases and shortcomings of disaster studies: how resilience builds on certain agency; and how development assumes certain political imagination.

Findings

The article argues that critical disaster scholars must reflect on their own intellectual practice, including the origin of concepts and what they do. This is exemplified by a description of how the idea of resistance is intimately connected to that of resilience, and by showing that we must go beyond the capitalist realism that typically underlies development and risk creation. The theoretical advancement of our field can provide ways of thinking about the premises of many of our concepts.

Originality/value

The paper offers an invitation for disaster researchers to engage with critical thought and meta-theoretical reflexions. To think profoundly about our concepts is a necessary first step to developing critical scholarship. Epistemic reflexivity in critical disaster studies therefore provides an interesting avenue by which to liberate the field from overly technocratic approaches and develop its own criticality.
Global research mapping in records and archives management: an investigation
Authors: Moid Abdul , Raza M. Masoom , Javed Mohammad , Jahan Keshwar
Published: February 2024

Purpose

Records are current documents containing crucial personal, legal, financial and medical information, while archives house non-current documents with the same details. This study specifically aims to measure existing research in records and archives management with various scientific indicators.

Design/methodology/approach

Data extraction was conducted using the Web of Science, resulting in a data set of 2003 records for further analysis. Biblioshiny and VOSviewer have been used for mapping and visualization of the extracted data.

Findings

Managing and organizing this essential information is equally vital to maintaining records and archives. The findings encompass various aspects such as publications and citations, influential authors, source impact factors, relevant articles, affiliations, co-authorship trends across the top 10 countries and regions, references, publication year spectroscopy, keyword co-occurrence and historiography. The study concludes that medical records management prominently dominates the selected research area.

Originality/value

The study reflects the advancements in management systems and continues to emerge as research on the management of records and archives has gained significance.
Embracing a rubber rice bowl: women’s transition from paid work to self-employed entrepreneurship in coastal China
Authors: Song Jing
Published: February 2024

Purpose

This study aims to examine why women transition from wage work to self-employed entrepreneurship, the seemingly insecure and unruly economic sector compared with the stable iron rice bowl and the fancy spring rice jobs.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on in-depth interviews in Zhejiang, the entrepreneurial hotbed in coastal China, this study examines the experiences of self-employed female entrepreneurs who used to work in the iron rice bowl and the spring rice jobs and explores their nonconventional career transition and its gendered implications.

Findings

This study finds that these women quit their previous jobs to escape from gendered suppression in wage work where their femininity was stereotyped, devalued or disciplined. By working for themselves, these women embrace a rubber rice bowl that allows them to improvise different forms of femininity that are better rewarded and recognized.

Originality/value

The study contributes to studies on gender and work by framing femininity as a fluid rather than a fixed set of qualities and fills the research gap by illustrating women’s agency in reacting to gender expectations in certain workplaces. The study develops a new concept of rubber rice bowl to describe how entrepreneurship, a seemingly women-unfriendly sphere, attracts women by allowing them to comply with, resist, or improvise normative gender expectations.
A critical review of personal protective equipments in relation to pandemics
Authors: Sunny Georgy , Lalkrishna S. , James Jerin , Suprasannan Sreejith
Published: February 2024

Purpose

Personal Protective Equipment plays an inevitable part in the current scenario of pandemics in the world. A novel coronavirus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus-2 (SARS-Cov 2), began as an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019, and quickly spread worldwide. It quickly escalated into an international public health crisis. This opened up the high demand for the innovation and research of new materials in the Personal Protective Equipment industry.

Design/methodology/approach

PubMed, Embase and Google Scholar were searched for relevant literature regarding personal protective equipment and the information was organized in a systematic way.

Findings

There are no adequate number of studies taken up in the field of use of textiles in medical applications especially with PPEs.

Research limitations/implications

This structured review will generate a sense of the significance of using PPE for controlling pandemics and also awaken need for additional research and innovations in this area.

Practical implications

The authorities of the management should take timely intervention in choosing the right material for their PPE in their hospitals. Hence health care professionals teams have an inevitable role in preventing the adverse environmental impact due to the inadvertent disposal of PPEs.

Social implications

There is a lack of systematic way of disposing contaminated single-use face masks in a safe, environmentally acceptable manner. The dumping of single-use PPE in domestic garbage has had an adverse effect on the environment. Mismanaged plastic waste endangers the health of ecosystems by polluting marine and terrestrial environments, posing a significant risk of ingestion or injury to animals and contaminating habitats.

Originality/value

This review article provides an in-depth review of the use of different materials in PPE and challenges regarding its long-term use and implications on the environment.
LCPCWSC: a Web service classification approach based on label confusion and priori correction
Authors: Xue Lin , Zhang Feng
Published: February 2024

Purpose

With the increasing number of Web services, correct and efficient classification of Web services is crucial to improve the efficiency of service discovery. However, existing Web service classification approaches ignore the class overlap in Web services, resulting in poor accuracy of classification in practice. This paper aims to provide an approach to address this issue.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper proposes a label confusion and priori correction-based Web service classification approach. First, functional semantic representations of Web services descriptions are obtained based on BERT. Then, the ability of the model is enhanced to recognize and classify overlapping instances by using label confusion learning techniques; Finally, the predictive results are corrected based on the label prior distribution to further improve service classification effectiveness.

Findings

Experiments based on the ProgrammableWeb data set show that the proposed model demonstrates 4.3%, 3.2% and 1% improvement in Macro-F1 value compared to the ServeNet-BERT, BERT-DPCNN and CARL-NET, respectively.

Originality/value

This paper proposes a Web service classification approach for the overlapping categories of Web services and improve the accuracy of Web services classification.
Global and domestic drivers of inflation: evidence from select South Asian countries
Authors: Sajid Muhammad , Ali Amanat , Ahmad Sareer , Shil Nikhil Chandra , Arshad Izaz
Published: February 2024

Purpose

This study empirically examines the impact of some domestic as well as global factors such as trade openness (TO), money supply (MS), exchange rate, global oil prices (GOPs) and interest rate (IR) on inflation.

Design/methodology/approach

This study deploys a quantitative method considering 30 years of data (1991–2020) from four South Asian countries, namely, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. To determine the potential impact of different factors on inflation, this study applies the panel analysis of the system generalized method of moments (SGMM).

Findings

This study empirically finds that TO, MS, exchange rate and GOPs have a positive impact on inflation, while IR and the structural adjustment program (SAP) have a negative impact on inflation. Out of the various determinants considered in this study, TO, exchange rate and the SAP are insignificant, while the rest of the variables are significant and consistent with previous studies.

Practical implications

This study informs policymakers about maintaining price stability and fostering economic growth in South Asian nations. It breaks new ground as the first empirical examination of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s SAP impact on inflation in the region.

Originality/value

This study tries to find out whether the SAP of the IMF is responsible for inflation in South Asian countries. It gives renewed attention to the causality of inflation from the perspective of countries receiving loans from donors, especially the IMF.
Labour market insecurity and volunteering in the European Union: policy suggestions for job security
Authors: Nappo Nunzia , Fiorillo Damiano , Lubrano Lavadera Giuseppe
Published: February 2024

Purpose

There is extensive literature on the determinants of job tenure insecurity. However, very little is known about the individual drivers of labour market insecurity. Additionally, while a piece of literature shows that volunteering improves workers' income, no study considers volunteering as an activity which could help workers to feel more confident about their perception of labour market insecurity if they lost or resigned their jobs. Therefore, purpose of this paper is to study whether workers who volunteer are less likely to perceive labour market insecurity.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper employs data from the sixth European working conditions survey which provides a great deal of information on working conditions. For the empirical investigation, probit model as well as robustness analysis have been implemented.

Findings

Results show that employees who do voluntary activities have a greater likelihood of declaring perceived labour market insecurity, which is nearly 3 percentage points lower, than employees who do not volunteer. Findings suggest that governments need to improve the relationship between for-profit and non-profit sectors to encourage volunteering.

Originality/value

This is the first study which considers volunteering as an activity which could help workers to feel more confident about their perception of “labour market insecurity”. Most of the studies on “labour market insecurity” do not focus on the workers individual characteristics but mainly on the labour markets institutional characteristics and welfare regimes differences.
Can the Sell in May effect be enhanced by a size tilt?
Authors: Abukari Kobana , Oldford Erin , Jog Vijay
Published: February 2024

Purpose

The authors evaluate the Sell in May effect in the Canadian context to comprehensively explore the Sell in May effect as well as its interactions with the size effect and risk and with multiple indices.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors use ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions to examine the Sell in May effect and Huber M-estimation to handle potential outliers. They also use the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models to explore the role of risk in the Sell in May effect.

Findings

The results demonstrate that the Sell in May effect is present in all three main Canadian stock market indices. More telling, the anomaly is strongest in small cap indices and in indices that give equal weighting to small and large cap stocks. They do not find that the effect is driven by risk.

Originality/value

While several papers have explored the Sell in May phenomenon in several countries, little scholarly attention has been paid to this effect in Canada and to its interaction with the size effect. The authors contribute to the literature by examining of the interactions between Sell in May and the size effect in Canada. They examine the Sell in May effect using CFMRC value-weighted and equally weighted indices of all Canadian companies. They also incorporate in their analysis the role of risk.
CSR inequality, managerial myopia and hostile takeover threats
Authors: Chatjuthamard Pattanaporn , Chintrakarn Pandej , Jiraporn Pornsit , Kitiwong Weerapong , Chaivisuttangkun Sirithida
Published: February 2024

Purpose

Exploiting a novel measure of hostile takeover exposure primarily based on the staggered adoption of state legislations, we explore a crucial, albeit largely overlooked, aspect of corporate social responsibility (CSR). In particular, we investigate CSR inequality, which is the inequality across different CSR categories. Higher inequality suggests a less balanced, more lopsided, CSR policy.

Design/methodology/approach

In addition to the standard regression analysis, we perform several robustness checks including propensity score matching, entropy balancing and an instrumental-variable analysis.

Findings

Our results show that more takeover exposure exacerbates CSR inequality. Specifically, a rise in takeover vulnerability by one standard deviation results in an increase in CSR inequality by 4.53–5.40%. The findings support the managerial myopia hypothesis, where myopic managers promote some CSR activities that are useful to them in the short run more than others, leading to higher CSR inequality.

Originality/value

Our study is the first to exploit a unique measure of takeover vulnerability to investigate the impact of takeover threats on CSR inequality, which is an important aspect of CSR that is largely overlooked in the literature. We aptly fill this void in the literature.
Defining and measuring financial literacy in the Indian context: a systematic literature review
Authors: Arjun T.P. , Subramanian Rameshkumar
Published: February 2024

Purpose

This paper aims to analyse how financial literacy (FL) is conceptualised and operationalised in the Indian context.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) protocol. Thirty-six articles published between 2010 and 2020 were considered for analysis. The FL conceptualisation was examined based on knowledge, ability, skill, attitude and confidence elements. The FL operationalisation was analysed using the modified version of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 model for organising the domain for an assessment framework.

Findings

The findings indicate that, despite offering operationalisation details of the FL, 13 out of 36 studies did not include a conceptual definition of FL. Of the 23 studies that mentioned a conceptual definition, 87% are primarily focused on the “knowledge” element and only 39% have combined knowledge, ability/skill and attitude elements in defining FL. As in the developed countries, the Indian studies also preferred investment/saving-related contents in their FL measures. The volume of content focusing on the financial landscape is meagre amongst the FL measures used in India and developed countries. The survey instruments of most studies have been designed in the individuals’ context but have failed to measure the extent to which individuals apply the knowledge in performing their day-to-day financial transactions. Further, it was found that 20 out of 36 studies did not convert the FL level of their target groups into a single indicator or operational value.

Originality/value

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that explores the FL’s assessment practices in India. Further, this study offers new insights by comparing the contents of FL measures used in Indian studies with those used in developed countries.
When connecting ventures to international markets falls short: examining the root mechanisms of perceived inefficacy in market-driven poverty alleviation efforts
Authors: Jäger Urs , Symmes Felipe , Bucher Silke , Rüegger Stephanie
Published: February 2024

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study triadic market relations between an international aid agency (IAA), local ventures and the poor communities where they are embedded in order to shift the poverty alleviation discussion to account for the perceptions held by each category of actor, especially those of poor communities. Poverty alleviation is a key commitment of the United Nations, and market-driven approaches are increasingly advocated as a means to reduce poverty, particularly among IAAs. One such strategy is to connect ventures in poor communities with international markets. However, research shows that such approaches have mixed success.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a comparative case study of three ventures embedded in urban and rural poor communities receiving support from an IAA. The authors then analyzed the data to determine the mechanisms that led to discrepancies in the perceptions of poverty alleviation held by each actor involved.

Findings

This study suggests three such mechanisms: ‘decoupling markets from poverty’, wherein aiding ventures may paradoxically lead to decoupling them from poor communities; ‘overburden stress’, in which ventures cannot fulfil a poverty alleviation role through their market activities because the expectation to do so overburdens the venture; and ‘value divergence’, in which the actors involved evaluate the impact of these approaches differently.

Originality/value

The authors propose that a key aspect of enabling effective poverty alleviation through market-driven approaches in terms of substantial, long-term contributions is to monitor and support the relations between the actors involved – including the poor communities themselves – and explore how each perceives the efficacy of the approach.
Investigating universities’ social-marketing initiatives that impact students’ pro-environmental behaviors
Authors: Negm Eiman
Published: February 2024

Purpose

This study investigates the impact of universities' social marketing initiatives on students’ development of personal (altruistic, biospheric and egoistic) and social values, leading to their pro-environmental behaviors.

Design/methodology/approach

This study applies quantitative deductive research. This study examined the value-belief-norms (VBN) theory, adding social values to the framework. This study took place in Egypt from January 2023 to March 2023. The population of focus was college students (whether at public or private universities). Students were requested to fill out the questionnaire by scanning a quick-response (QR) code, which linked to a Google Form. After data collection, 410 questionnaires were analyzed using statistical package for social science.

Findings

This study developed empirical evidence that clarifies that social marketing initiatives done by universities have the power to develop students’ personal and social values. Values trigger behavior change. Social values lead to students’ pro-environmental behaviors; personal egoistic values lead to students’ pro-environmental behaviors; personal biospheric values lead to students’ pro-environmental behaviors and personal altruistic values does not lead to students’ pro-environmental behaviors.

Originality/value

This study offers firsthand insight in understanding how social marketing is an effective tool to develop students’ values that are needed to inspire the right behaviors to preserve and protect the environment. This study builds upon the VBN theory, explaining the significant underlying environmental values that should be developed through universities’ non-academic initiatives (such as marketing activities) to inform behaviors needed to better the community, such as pro-environmental behaviors.
Enhancing accuracy in construction overhead cost estimation: a novel integration of activity-based costing and building information modelling
Authors: Naderi Mojdeh , Nazari Ahad , Shafaat Ali , Abrishami Sepehr
Published: February 2024

Purpose

This study addresses the prevailing complexities and limitations in estimating and managing construction overhead costs (COCs) in the existing literature, with the purpose of enhancing the accuracy of cost performance indicators in construction project management.

Design/methodology/approach

An innovative approach is proposed, employing the activity-based costing (ABC) accounting method combined with building information modelling (BIM) to assign real overhead costs to project activities. This study, distinguished by its incorporation of a real case study, focuses on an administrative building with a four-story concrete structure. It establishes an automated method for evaluating project cost performance through the detailed analysis of earned value management (EVM) cost indicators derived from ABC results and BIM data.

Findings

The results show that the ABC integration improves the accuracy of cost performance indicators by over 9%, revealing the project's true cost index for the first time and demonstrating the substantial value of the approach in construction engineering and management.

Research limitations/implications

The current study highlights a notable gap in the existing literature, addressing the challenges in onsite overhead cost estimation and offering a solution that incorporates the state-of-the-art techniques.

Practical implications

The proposed method has significant implications for project managers and practitioners, enabling better-informed decisions based on precise cost data, ultimately leading to enhanced project outcomes.

Originality/value

This research uniquely combines ABC and BIM, presenting a pioneering solution for the accurate estimation and management of COCs in construction projects, adding significant value to the current body of knowledge in this field.
Social versus financial performance: evidence from microfinance institutions in Ethiopia
Authors: Kumar Naveen , Asmare Ayenew Shibabaw
Published: February 2024

Purpose

Today, the sustainability and outreach of microfinance institutions (MFIs) are crucial to the success of microfinance and the sector’s potential to make a lasting impact. The ability of MFIs to operate financially well without sacrificing their social goals has come under scrutiny. This study aims to identify the kind of relationships between the two objectives of MFIs in Ethiopia.

Design/methodology/approach

This study investigated the association between the outreach and financial sustainability of Ethiopian MFIs from the years 2012 to 2021 using a balanced set of panel data. The study used secondary data and employed a descriptive research design and a quantitative research approach. To this end, random and fixed effects estimation models, as well as three-stage least squares, with the model of seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) are used.

Findings

According to the study, outreach performance enables MFIs to achieve sustainability/financial performance. On the other side, MFI that are financially sound improve social performance. There was therefore no trade-off between the two objectives.

Originality/value

As Ethiopia’s microfinance sector shifts away from government and non-government backing and toward commercialization, such research is crucial. This aspect of the Ethiopian microfinance industry has gotten little consideration in research. The SUR model was used in the study together with random and fixed effect estimators, and the most reliable estimation result was chosen based on the necessary tests.
Biogeographic context mediates multifaceted diversity‐productivity relationships in island and mainland forests
Authors: Tolmos Maria Laura , Guerrero‐Ramirez Nathaly R. , Ameztegui Aitor , Barajas Barbosa Martha Paola , Craven Dylan , Kreft Holger
Published: February 2024

Biotic and abiotic conditions have been found to strongly influence how biodiversity affects ecosystem functioning in forests. This context dependency of biodiversity‐productivity relationships in real‐world ecosystems may be shaped by the biogeographic context via deep‐time processes acting on the size and composition of the species pool such as dispersal limitation, environmental filtering, speciation and invasibility. However, the role of the biogeographic context in shaping multifaceted biodiversity and forest productivity relationships remains uncertain.

Using data from the Spanish National Forest Inventory in climatically similar forests on the Canary Islands (637 plots) and mainland Spain (1434 plots), we investigate the extent to which above‐ground productivity is determined by ecological and evolutionary processes associated with the biogeographic context. We used structural equation models to test the drivers of above‐ground productivity in both contexts, that operate via multifaceted tree diversity (taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity) or alternative mechanisms, that is environmental conditions, non‐native species, and the number of trees.

Our results show that mainland and island forests exhibit similar levels of productivity, yet island forests display overall lower multifaceted diversity. We found that the number of trees increased multifaceted diversity and also increased productivity directly and via their effects on phylogenetic diversity in both mainland and island forests. Further, non‐native species increased productivity in island forests.

Synthesis: Our results suggest that multifaceted diversity, by capturing the diversity of evolutionary history, contributes to elucidating diversity‐productivity relationships in mainland and island forests that could not be detected by taxonomic diversity alone. By filling empty niches in island forests, we find that non‐native species are fundamentally altering ecosystem functioning on islands and thus, reveal how biogeographic context can shape biodiversity‐productivity relationships.
Evaluation of CO2 removal rate of ECCO2R for a renal replacement therapy platform in an experimental setting
Authors: Qian Zhicheng , He Hao , Wang Yuxuan , Geng Shike , Li Yang , Yuan Xueyan , Zhang Rui , Yang Yi , Qiu Haibo , Liu Songqiao , Liu Ling
Published: February 2024

Background

A critical parameter of extracorporeal CO2 removal (ECCO2R) applications is the CO2 removal rate (VCO2). Low‐flow venovenous extracorporeal support with large‐size membrane lung remains undefined. This study aimed to evaluate the VCO2 of a low‐flow ECCO2R with large‐size membrane lung using a renal replacement therapy platform in an experimental animal model.

Methods

Twelve healthy pigs were placed under mechanical ventilation and connected to an ECCO2R‐CRRT system (surface area = 1.8 m2; OMNIset®, BBraun, Germany). Respiratory settings were reduced to induce two degrees of hypercapnia. VCO2 was recorded under different combinations of PaCO2 (50–69 or 70–89 mm Hg), extracorporeal blood flow (ECBF; 200 or 350 mL/min), and gas flow (4, 6, or 10 L/min).

Results

VCO2 increased with ECBF at all three gas flow rates. In severe hypercapnia, the increase in sweep gas flow from 4 to 10 L/min increased VCO2 from 86.38 ± 7.08 to 96.50 ± 8.71 mL/min at an ECBF of 350 mL/min, whereas at ECBF of 200 mL/min, any increase was less effective. But in mild hypercapnia, the increase in sweep gas flow result in significantly increased VCO2 at two ECBF. VCO2 increased with PaCO2 from 50–69 to 70–89 mm Hg at an ECBF of 350 mL/min, but not at ECBF of 200 mL/min. Post‐membrane lung PCO2 levels were similar for different levels of premembrane lung PCO2 (p = 0.08), highlighting the gas exchange diffusion efficacy of the membrane lung in gas exchange diffusion. In severe hypercapnia, the reduction of PaCO2 elevated from 11.5% to 19.6% with ECBF increase only at a high gas flow of 10 L/min (p < 0.05) and increase of gas flow significantly reduced PaCO2 only at a high ECBF of 350 mL/min (p < 0.05).

Conclusions

Low‐flow venovenous extracorporeal ECCO2R‐CRRT with large‐size membrane lung is more efficient with the increase of ECBF, sweep gas flow rate, and the degree of hypercapnia. The influence of sweep gas flow on VCO2 depends on the ECBF and degree of hypercapnia. Higher ECBF and gas flow should be chosen to reverse severe hypercapnia.
Mitochondrial involvement in sarcopenia
Authors: Affourtit Charles , Carré Jane E.
Published: February 2024

Sarcopenia lowers the quality‐of‐life for millions of people across the world, as accelerated loss of skeletal muscle mass and function contributes to both age‐ and disease‐related frailty. Physical activity remains the only proven therapy for sarcopenia to date, but alternatives are much sought after to manage this progressive muscle disorder in individuals who are unable to exercise. Mitochondria have been widely implicated in the etiology of sarcopenia and are increasingly suggested as attractive therapeutic targets to help restore the perturbed balance between protein synthesis and breakdown that underpins skeletal muscle atrophy. Reviewing current literature, we note that mitochondrial bioenergetic changes in sarcopenia are generally interpreted as intrinsic dysfunction that renders muscle cells incapable of making sufficient ATP to fuel protein synthesis. Based on the reported mitochondrial effects of therapeutic interventions, however, we argue that the observed bioenergetic changes may instead reflect an adaptation to pathologically decreased energy expenditure in sarcopenic muscle. Discrimination between these mechanistic possibilities will be crucial for improving the management of sarcopenia.
A meta‐analysis of the effect of visiting zoos and aquariums on visitors’ conservation knowledge, beliefs, and behavior
Authors: McNally Xavier , Webb Thomas L. , Smith Charlotte , Moss Andrew , Gibson‐Miller Jilly
Published: February 2024

Zoos and aquariums are well placed to connect visitors with the issues facing biodiversity globally and many deliver interventions that seek to influence visitors’ beliefs and behaviors with respect to conservation. However, despite primary studies evaluating the effect of such interventions, the overall effect of engaging with zoos and the factors that influence this effect remain unclear. We conducted a systematic review to investigate the effect of zoo‐led interventions on knowledge, beliefs (attitudes, intentions, self‐efficacy, and social norms), and behavior among zoo visitors. These outcomes were identified using the Theory of Planned Behavior as a theoretical lens. We identified and described the nature of zoo‐led interventions in 56 studies and used the behavior change technique (BCT) taxonomy to identify 6 specific BCTs used in interventions to date. Multilevel meta‐analyses revealed a small to medium positive effect of engaging with zoo‐led interventions on outcomes (d+ = 0.40, 95% confidence interval = 0.28–0.51). Specifically, visitors were more knowledgeable about conservation issues, held more favorable attitudes toward conservation, and reported being more likely to act for the benefit of biodiversity. No evidence of publication bias was present. Effect sizes were, however, heterogeneous and subgroup analyses revealed that the nature of the intervention or type of outcome did not explain this variance. Larger effects were, however, found in studies conducted at a single institution relative to research at multiple institutions and studies that used within‐participant designs relative to between‐participant designs. Taken together, these findings demonstrate how behavior change frameworks can be used to describe zoo‐led interventions and supports the assertion that zoos and aquariums can promote changes in beliefs and behaviors that may help protect biodiversity.