bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Effectiveness of information technology in reducing corruption in China
Authors: Xinli Hu 
Published: January 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of information technology in reducing corruption in China. Meanwhile this paper explores whether electronic monitoring systems (EMS) can be evaluated in terms of the DeLone and McLean information systems (IS) success model.

Design/methodology/approach
– The status of the EMS in five cities is first proposed, and then a model of e-government system success is designed to evaluate the EMS. Data are obtained from 387 civil servants in the supervision agencies. Then the effectiveness of EMS in reducing corruption is deeply assessed, and the DeLone and McLean IS success model is validated.

Findings
– The findings show that the application of EMS has a positive effect on reducing corruption. IT thus has the potential to reduce corruption, but the institution and the people are more important.

Originality/value
– Although many theories about reducing corruption have been proposed, the EMS application in reducing corruption has seldom been addressed. This study is the first, to the author's knowledge, to examine EMS and corruption reduction from the point of view of the IS success model.
Usage patterns of Punjab University Library website: a transactional log analysis study
Authors: Arshad Alia , Ameen Kanwal 
Published: January 2015

Purpose– This paper aims to assess the usage patterns of a university library website to find out user’s behaviour of monthly use, its top most used resources and services and search phrases used to reach the library website.Design/methodology/approach– Transactional log analysis (TLA) – an unobtrusive research method – was used to identify and analyse data of website-using patterns. The log data of website use from January 2011 to March 2011 were analysed for this study.Findings– The findings of this study revealed that the university library website was heavily used on campus by users; however, it was used by a significant number of clients residing off-campus. Free scholarly journals, resources downloaded, e-journals, e-books and donated personal collections were among the top most used resources and services. However, free scholarly journals were used more than subscribed e-journals accessible on-campus only.Originality/value– This study first used the TLA method to trace user behaviour of website use in a local scenario. Assessing the usage of e-resources is imperative to determine the effectiveness of the library website in providing these services to its on-campus and distant users. The findings of this study are valuable for librarians and webmasters of the library website to redesign and reorient their services.
Role and users’ approach to social networking sites (SNSs): a study of universities of North India
Authors: Singh K P , Gill Malkeet Singh 
Published: January 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and assess the awareness and extent of the use of social networking sites (SNSs) by the students and research scholars of universities of North India.

Design/methodology/approach
– The study is a questionnaire-based survey on the usage of SNSs among the students and research scholars of the universities of North India. The data of the study were collected through questionnaires, which were personally distributed to the identified population, i.e. undergraduate students, postgraduate students and research scholars, by the authors. The survey was based on a sample of 610 questionnaires; of which, 486 questionnaires were received, having a response rate of 79.67 per cent.

Findings
– The study showed that all the respondents were found to be aware of and making use of such applications in their academic affairs. It was revealed from the study that Facebook is the most popular SNS by all categories of respondents. To determine the purpose of SNSs, it emerged that SNSs are mostly used for entertainment and communication. The study also found that the majority of respondents were aware about the security aspects of SNSs. It signifies that excessive time consumption and fear of misusing personal information were the major hurdles in the way of accessing SNSs.

Research limitations/implications
– The study covers the students and research scholars of select universities of North India. It also signifies the use of SNSs in their research and academic environment.

Originality/value
– The paper provides reliable and authentic data. The study is worth, justifiable and enlightens the salient findings on the topic, which will be very useful for researchers in this area.
Political skill in job negotiations: a two-study constructive replication
Authors: Solga Marc , Betz Jaqueline , Düsenberg Moritz , Ostermann Helen 
Published: January 2015

Purpose
– This paper aims to investigate the effects of political skill in a specific workplace setting – the job negotiation. The authors expected negotiator political skill to be positively related to distributive negotiation outcome, problem-solving as a negotiation strategy to mediate this relationship and political skill to also moderate – that is amplify – the link between problem-solving and negotiation outcome.

Design/methodology/approach
– In Study 1, a laboratory-based negotiation simulation was conducted with 88 participants; the authors obtained self-reports of political skill prior to the negotiation and – to account for non-independence of negotiating partners’ outcome – used the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model for data analysis. Study 2 was carried out as a real-life negotiation study with 100 managers of a multinational corporation who were given the opportunity to re-negotiate their salary package prior to a longer-term foreign assignment. Here, the authors drew on two objective measures of negotiation success, increase of annual gross salary and additional annual net benefits.

Findings
– In Study 1, the initial hypothesis – political skill will be positively related to negotiator success – was fully supported. In Study 2, all three hypotheses (see above) were fully supported for additional annual net benefits and partly supported for increase of annual gross salary.

Originality/value
– To the authors' best knowledge, this paper presents the first study to examine political skill as a focal predictor variable in the negotiation context. Furthermore, the studies also broaden the emotion-centered approach to social effectiveness that is prevalent in current negotiation research.
Did anyone notice the transformation of adult social care? An analysis of Safeguarding Adult Board Annual Reports
Authors: Manthorpe Jill , Stevens Martin , Samsi Kritika , Aspinal Fiona , Woolham John , Hussein Shereen , Ismail Mohamed , Baxter Kate 
Published: January 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to report on a part of a study examining the interrelationships between personalisation and safeguarding practice. Specifically the authors aimed to examine how safeguarding practice is affected by the roll out of personalisation in adult social care, particularly when the adult at risk has a personal budget or is considering this.

Design/methodology/approach
– A sample of annual reports from Adult Safeguarding Boards in England was accessed for content analysis covering the period 2009-2011. One part of this sample of local authorities was selected at random; the other authorities selected had been early adopters of personalisation. The reports were analysed using a pro forma to collect salient information on personalisation that was cross-referenced to identify common themes and differences.

Findings
– The authors found variable mentions of personalisation as part of the macro policy context reported in the annual reviews, some examples of system or process changes at mezzo level where opportunities to discuss the interface were emerging, and some small reports of training and case accounts relevant to personalisation. Overall these two policy priorities seemed to be more closely related than had been found in earlier research on the interface between adult safeguarding and personalisation.

Research limitations/implications
– There was wide variation in the annual reports in terms of detail, size and content, and reports for only one year were collected. Developments may have taken place but might not have been recorded in the annual reports so these should not be relied upon as complete accounts of organisational or practice developments.

Practical implications
– Authors of Safeguarding Adults Board reports may benefit from learning that their reports may be read both immediately and potentially in the future. They may wish to ensure their comments on current matters will be intelligible to possible future readers and researchers.

Originality/value
– There does not appear to have been any other previous study of Safeguarding Adult Boards’ annual reports. Documentary analysis at local level is under-developed in safeguarding studies.
Improving food safety – replicating the Abu Dhabi success story
Authors: Taylor Eunice , Taylor Joanne 
Published: January 2015

Purpose
– This paper aims to summarise and draw conclusions from the contents of this Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes issue: What action can government take to improve food safety in a diverse and multi-cultural hospitality industry? The issue presents a comprehensive government strategy for improving food safety management standards across the hospitality industry. It is the seventh and concluding article in the collection.

Design/methodology/approach
– The article revisits the strategic question posed by this theme issue: What action can government take to improve food safety in a diverse and multi-cultural hospitality industry? Using the Abu Dhabi success story, it considers the extent to which the lessons and successes in Abu Dhabi could be applied in other multi-cultural settings.

Findings
– The article provides a detailed and practical response to the strategic question, highlighting the action that can be taken and demonstrating key success factors. In particular, it acknowledges the importance of utilising international benchmarking, key guidance documents, in-depth culturally appropriate research, extensive industry involvement and a project team with the relevant expertise.

Originality/value
– The article provides an overview of the extensive work done in Abu Dhabi to improve food safety standards, while also highlighting success factors that can be applied by other governments and within other projects. It provides an outline of the policy guidelines needed and the action points for the industry to bring about effective long-term improvement across the whole hospitality sector.
Signal architecture: temporal variability and individual consistency of multiple sexually selected signals
Authors: Chaine Alexis S. , Lyon Bruce E. 
Published: January 2015

Summary

Multiple signals should be favoured when the benefit of additional signals outweigh their costs. Despite increased attention on multiple‐signalling systems, few studies have focused on signal architecture to understand the potential information content of multiple signals.

To understand the patterns of signal plasticity and consistency over the lifetime of individuals we conducted a longitudinal study of multiple signals known to be under sexual selection in male lark buntings, Calamospiza melanocorys.

Within years, we found extensive among‐individual variation in all four plumage ornaments we measured. Surprisingly, there were few correlations among these signals, suggesting that individuals contain a mosaic of signals. Signals were only moderately repeatable across years, which indicates some signal plasticity or age related change. In some years, the direction of change in particular signals relative to the previous year was consistent for most individuals in the population, suggesting that broad scale ecological factors affected the ornament phenotype. Different ornaments were affected by different ecological or social factors because the population‐wide shift in a given signal was independent of change in other signals.

Our combined results suggest that different signals—including different components of the same color patch in some cases—provide diverse and independent information about the individual to signal receivers in the context of sexual selection.
Trans‐generational priming of resistance in wild flour beetles reflects the primed phenotypes of laboratory populations and is inhibited by co‐infection with a common parasite
Authors: Tate Ann T. , Graham Andrea L. 
Published: January 2015

Summary

Trans‐generational priming renders offspring of immune‐challenged parents less susceptible to disease‐induced mortality, and has been demonstrated in a variety of arthropod taxa under controlled laboratory conditions. However, relatively little is known about the applicability of these laboratory results to priming in wild populations, especially in the context of environmental variables like maternal co‐infection and potential trade‐offs with other life history traits.
We performed nearly parallel trans‐generational priming experiments on laboratory and wild strains of Tribolium beetles against the bacterial pathogen Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). We investigated the impact of maternal immune challenge on offspring survival and development time, as well as the correlation between development and survival by priming status. Furthermore, we manipulated wild beetle parental co‐infection with a gregarine parasite that was prevalent in the wild population in order to determine the impact of co‐infection on the efficacy of trans‐generational priming.
Trans‐generational priming resulted in a large but birth order‐dependent acceleration of offspring development time, and enhanced offspring survival against infection, in both laboratory and wild populations. However, adult parental co‐infection with gut protozoa severely curtailed primed offspring survival against Bt infection.
These results suggest that shifts in life history traits associated with trans‐generational priming in laboratory model systems extend to wild populations. These traits, including survival, development, and interference from co‐infection, are important parameters for predicting the impact of priming on disease dynamics in the wild.
Vitamin E deficiency in last‐laid eggs limits growth of yellow‐legged gull chicks
Authors: Parolini Marco , Romano Maria , Caprioli Manuela , Rubolini Diego , Saino Nicola 
Published: January 2015

SummaryParental phenotype and environment have cascading effects on offspring performance. Such ‘maternal’ effects are often mediated by the size and quality of the eggs in terms of maternal endogenous substances or exogenous components.Maternal effects can function to maximize parental fitness via adaptive allocation of components among sibling eggs. In birds, the often documented variation in concentration of egg dietary antioxidants or other egg compounds with laying order may thus reflect adaptive parental favouritism or maternal physiological constraints.Vitamins are found in the yolk at high concentrations and accomplish important physiological functions. Tocopherols (‘vitaminE’) have major roles in antioxidant protection, but the consequence of variation in their concentration for chick phenotype has never been experimentally investigated under a natural selection regime.In the yellow‐legged gull (Larus michahellis) free‐ranging population we studied, vitaminEconcentration and egg size decline from the first to the third (last) egg. Chicks from third eggs are smaller and have lower viability compared to those from sibling eggs. Here, we tested the effect of injecting a physiological dose of vitaminEin the egg yolk on chick body size at hatching by comparison with chicks from sham‐injected eggs.As predicted, chicks from vitaminEinjected third eggs were larger than chicks from control third eggs, whereas vitaminEhad no effect on chicks from the other eggs. Thus, vitaminEinjection disrupted the brood size hierarchy according to laying order normally found in this species.In species that adopt a brood reduction strategy, differential allocation of vitaminEto the eggs can contribute to establish a hierarchy of reproductive value among progeny members functioning to maximize parental fitness. The present results therefore have general implications for the study of the evolution of maternal effects mediated by transfer of potentially limiting maternal antioxidants to the eggs.
Under the influence: sublethal exposure to an insecticide affects personality expression in a jumping spider
Authors: Royauté Raphaël , Buddle Christopher M. , Vincent Charles 
Published: January 2015

Summary

Consistent behavioural differences between individuals have far‐reaching implications for ecology and evolution, including how populations cope with increasing anthropogenic changes, notably pesticides. Although sublethal doses of insecticides are known to alter behaviour, current studies on the relationship between toxicants and behaviour tend to ignore effects on individual variation.

Our objective was to determine whether sublethal exposure to an organophosphate insecticide could affect the consistency of individual behaviour and disrupt behavioural correlations, in a jumping spider occurring in agroecosystems. Adults of the jumping spider Eris militaris (Araneae: Salticidae) were scored by an open‐field and a prey‐capture assay, each conducted pre‐ and post‐ exposure to the organophosphate insecticide phosmet. Half of the individuals received no exposure to the insecticide to provide a control group. We then estimated the changes in repeatability, a measure of the extent of personality differences, and in behavioural correlations between control and insecticide‐treated groups.

Although insecticide exposure had no discernable effects on the population's average behaviours, insecticide‐exposed individuals showed an average of 23% lower repeatability and the correlation between activity and prey capture was more strongly collapsed in females.

Our results provide clear evidence that exposure to sublethal doses of insecticides on an important arthropod predator in agroecosystems causes substantial alteration of personality differences even in absence of a population‐wide shift in behaviour. This suggests that insecticide effects are more complex than previously thought and indicates high variation in the way individuals coped with insecticidal exposure.

By altering the consistency of behavioural traits and their correlations, exposure to sublethal concentrations of insecticides can have subtle effects on behavioural expression, which may ultimately affect biocontrol performance in an important arthropod predator in agroecosystems. Our study calls for an increasing focus on individual behavioural variation when testing the effects of pesticides on non‐targeted fauna.
Conquering the world in leaps and bounds: hopping locomotion in toads is actually bounding
Authors: Reilly Stephen M. , Montuelle Stephane J. , Schmidt Andre , Naylor Emily , Jorgensen Michael E. , Halsey Lewis G. , Essner Richard L. 
Published: January 2015

Summary

While most frogs maximize jump distance as an escape behaviour, toads have traded jump distance for endurance with a strategy of hopping repeatedly. This strategy has enabled toads to expand across the continents as one of the most diverse groups of anurans. Multiple studies have revealed physiological endurance adaptations for sustained hopping in toads, however, the kinematics of their sequential hopping behaviour, per se, has not been studied.

We compared kinematics and forces of single hops and multiple hopping sequences and quantified field performance of hopping behaviours in free ranging toads of three species and discovered a novel aspect of locomotion adaptation that adds another facet to their exceptional terrestrial locomotor abilities.

We found that bouts of repeated hopping are actually a series of bounding strides where toads rotate on their hands and then land on their extended their feet and jump again without stopping. In addition, free‐ranging toads appear to use bounding locomotion more frequently than single hops. Bounding in toads has the advantage of maintaining velocity and producing longer jump distances. In comparison to single hops, cyclic bounding steps reduce energy expenditure and appear to provide limb loading dynamics better suited for potential cycling of elastic energy from stride to stride than would be possible with repeated single hops.

This is the first case of the common use of a bounding gait outside of mammals. Bounding adds a key terrestrial locomotor trait to the toad's phenotype that may help explain their history of global expansion and the challenges to modern faunas as introduced toads rapidly invade new ecosystems today.
Adjustments in habitat selection to changing availability induce fitness costs for a threatened ungulate
Authors: Losier Chrystel L. , Couturier Serge , St‐Laurent Martin‐Hugues , Drapeau Pierre , Dussault Claude , Rudolph Tyler , Brodeur Vincent , Merkle Jerod A. , Fortin Daniel 
Published: January 2015

Summary

Functional responses in habitat selection occur when individuals adjust their selection of habitat features as a function of the availability of those features. Functional responses in habitat selection are generally assumed to be fitness‐rewarding tactics and are used to guide conservation actions. Fitness consequences of functional responses, however, have rarely been evaluated.

Eighty‐three caribou were followed with GPS collars to establish the link between functional responses in habitat selection and adult female survival, a strong fitness correlate for caribou. We measured how caribou avoidance of mixed/deciduous stands and 6‐ to 20‐year‐old clear‐cuts varied with the proportion of 6‐ to 20‐year‐old clear‐cuts within their 100% minimal convex polygon (MCP), and if these functional responses were linked to survival. Mixed/deciduous stands and 6‐ to 20‐year‐old clear‐cuts are risky for caribou because they are selected by moose, thereby attracting wolves and increasing predation risk for caribou.

Caribou avoided mixed/deciduous stands, especially when 6‐ to 20‐year‐old clear‐cuts comprised a large proportion of their MCP, but this functional response did not differ between caribou that died and those that survived. When the proportion of 6‐to 20‐year‐old clear‐cuts in the MCP was low, caribou generally had low odds of occurring near 6‐ to 20‐year‐old clear‐cuts. However, when the proportion of clear‐cuts in the MCP was relatively high, caribou that strongly increased their odds of being near 6‐ to 20‐year‐old clear‐cuts were generally those that died.

Synthesis and applications. Assessing the fitness consequences of how animals respond to habitat disturbances is central to wildlife conservation. We demonstrate that distinct functional responses in habitat selection involve different mortality risks and that population dynamics should depend on the frequency of the different tactics observed within populations. Individuals that persistently select riskier areas should be important drivers of population decline. Caribou mortality could be reduced by decreasing the appeal of 6‐ to 20‐year‐old clear‐cuts for moose by removing deciduous vegetation through cleaning, which should reduce the selection of wolves for these stands. Removing deciduous vegetation should be especially effective in areas where those clear‐cuts comprise a large proportion of the landscape, because this is where a subset of the caribou population experiences high mortality rates by selecting 6‐ to 20‐year‐old clear‐cuts.