The Impacts of Maturation and Experience on Volumetric Neuroplasticity in Solitary and Social Bees

Some animals are incredibly social, living and working together as one cohesive group. Alternatively, many animals are solitary, never living with and rarely interacting with others. A large body of biological research has focused on understanding the role that brains play in promoting these behavioral differences across species. Even so, it remains unclear why some brains facilitate social behavior while others do not. My dissertation aims to advance our understanding of this concept by characterizing bees’ brains and how they change over a lifetime. Bees are beneficial for investigating relationships between the brain and social behavior because some species are solitary while others are highly social. However, sociality in bees is more dynamic than that; a blending of these two extremes can also occur. This enables us to explore how brains change with social context within a single group of organisms. My first chapter uses a solitary bee to understand how simple social interactions can impact the brain. I found that—even in a solitary bee—certain brain regions grow in size in response to the presence of other bees. This trait may have been important in the evolutionary origins of social behavior. My second chapter investigated the effects of aging in the brains of two bee species, one that is sometimes social while the other is always social. I found that the brains of these species naturally change over time, a feature common to highly social species, e.g., honey bees. This suggests that having brains that change with age may be an important feature of sociality. My final research chapter made comparisons between queen and worker bees to investigate if their colony roles and behaviors dictated the relative size of different regions of their brains. I found that queen and worker brains respond differently to removing offspring care, a trait fundamental to defining their role in the colony. This highlights a potentially unique relationship between the brain and social life. Collectively, my dissertation used bees to enhance our understanding of what it means to have a social brain

Bespoke Bookselling for the 21st Century: John Smith’s and Current UK Higher Education

The JS Group is the business home to the prize-winning chain of booksellers for higher education institutions, John Smith’s. Under the deceptively simple term ‘bookseller’, however, lies a shift in thinking about books published by John Smith’s, which deserves articulation. This shift moves from regarding books as a source of knowledge conveyed through the book’s text to books as an agency capable of producing a range of notably different outcomes, of which knowledge is one, for each of the actors involved in its book-retail network. Through their aggregated engagement with what Darnton calls the communications circuit, John Smith’s manages to deliver different outcomes for students, lecturers, parents, student support services, for university executive management and for the state. These outcomes are only heightened when combined with Smith’s smart card system, sometimes called ASPIRE. In conjunction with a Samsung tablet, ASPIRE is then able to deliver ‘free’ digitized learning, funded through the UK fair access bursaries. The article examines John Smith’s model and questions the trade-off between effectiveness and freedom, finding the alternatives to be wanting. The research emerges from ongoing work into reading within the frame of commodity culture and, as such, the disciplinary fields supporting it are sociologies of literature, economics and book history studies, expressed in terms of cultural and critical discourse. The combination, it is hoped, will provide a fresh perspective

Quality issues related to the design and construction stage of a project in the Indian construction industry

Purpose – Quality in the construction industry is an important issue yet ignored during the initial stages of the life cycle of a project, that is, the design and construction stage. The contribution of stakeholders, especially the architects is generally suspended though it has huge significance in terms of cost and time related to quality. This research endeavors to examine the issues related to the design and construction stages of the project from architects' purview, to understand the relative importance of these issues in the Indian construction industry. Design/methodology/approach – The study of qualitative data conducted formed a basis for online quantitative data collection that was further analyzed with the help of cross-tabulation and multiple correspondence analysis methods. Findings – The study concludes that the budget of a project is a corresponding factor related to quality concern for architects. The study also established that the quality issues corresponding to high budgets are closely related to the construction stage and are identified as preparation of checklist, and bidding process of hiring the contractor on the lowest bid. Research limitations/implications – The study is limited to analyzing the perspective of architects; however, other stakeholders of the construction industry may represent a different opinion. Practical implications – This research emphasizes the importance of the client's role, and need for integration and coordination among stakeholders in the construction industry for effective quality control and management. Originality/value – The research presents an exhaustive literature review on quality issues and its importance with respect to cost implications, standard practices, sustainability and the life cycle of the project

Ferns and lycophytes in amazonia: diversity patterns and usefulness as habitat indicators

Siirretty Doriast

Traffic Road Congestion System using by the internet of vehicles (IoV)

Traffic problems have increased in modern life due to a huge number of vehicles, big cities, and ignoring the traffic rules. Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) has improved the traffic system in previous some and plays a vital role in the best traffic control system in big cities. But due to some limitations, it is not enough to control some problems in specific conditions. Now a day invention of new technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT) is used for collaboratively and efficiently performing tasks. This technology was also introduced in the transportation system which makes it an intelligent transportation system (ITS), this is called the Internet of vehicles (IOV). We will elaborate on traffic problems in the traditional system and elaborate on the benefits, enhancements, and reasons to better IOV by Systematic Literature Review (SLR). This technique will be implemented by targeting needed papers through many search phrases. A systematic literature review is used for 121 articles between 2014 and 2023. The IoV technologies and tools are required to create the IoV and resolve some traffic rules through SUMO (simulation of urban mobility) which is used for the design and simulation the road traffic. We have tried to contribute to the best model of the traffic control system. This paper will analysis two vehicular congestion control models in term of select the optimized and efficient model and elaborate on the reasons for efficiency by searching the solution SLR based questions. Due to some efficient features, we have suggested the IOV based on vehicular clouds. These efficient features make this model the best and most effective than the traditional model which is a great reason to enhance the network system.Comment: pages 16, figures

Liberal learning in American higher education.

This study explores the often conflicting assumptions that the public and practitioners make about American higher education. In particular, it proposes that we have allowed much of these assumptions to assume the status of myth. The consequence is an imprecision in higher education: it is seen as both training for jobs and at the same time providing us with a heightened aesthetic and moral sense. This is rarely true. The review of the literature of the history of higher education reinforces this confusion. Curricular shifts are recorded with very little examination of the consequences they may have on the institution, itself; new missions, goals, and purposes are added with little concern for the overall effect this process of accretion may have. In the last 100 years, discipline, majors, and other academic responses have occurred to meet the training needs of industry; the atmosphere and goals of the arts, literature, and science are highly professional, as well. The consequences for higher education include trivialization of courses and majors, isolation of units within the universities, learning that exists only in-order-to acquire narrow skills or credentials, and a continuing rationalization of the connection with the marketplace. There is a lack of critical self-analysis by the institutions. Proposals for reform have, on occasion, been advanced in recognition of this proliferation of purpose. However, the trend in American higher education seems to be moving ever closer to vocationalism, in spite of proposed reforms. This movement is being effected at the expense of general or liberal education. The consequences of this trend do not seem to be a major concern in most educational circles, or to be fully understood. The study concludes that an important, even vital part of higher education is being sacrificed to the utilitarian ideal. This reality may force a rethinking of our myth; perhaps, even a reform of our educational ideal

Structure and functional studies of plant cell wall degrading enzymes

Presently, plant biomass is considered as one of the major future renewable sources for the production of second-generation biofuels. While the first generation biofuels essentially are based on starch and sucrose rich feed stocks and which production may compete with food production, the second-generation biofuels may be based on lignocellulose as feedstock, which is less problematic from an ethical point of view. The degradation of carbohydrates in plant biomass to fermentable sugars requires the concerted action of several diverse classes of carbohydrate active enzymes (CAZymes) for a total and efficient conversion of the plant biomass. Through a carefully balanced synergism mechanistically different CAZymes are able to degrade the stable and recalcitrant pol- ymers in the plant cell walls, such as cellulose, to soluble and fermentable monosaccharides. It is crucial to study the properties and function of these enzymes if we want to strive for a sustainable production of chemicals and biofuels, as they serve as a reservoir of environmentally friendly molecular tools. The main focus of the research work presented in this thesis is biochemical and structure-function characterizations of two classes of CAZymes: fungal glycoside hydrolase family 3 (GH3) β-glucosidases, and bacterial lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases, often referred to as LPMOs. GH3 β- glucosidases catalyse the conversion of disaccharides, produced by other CAZymes e.g. cellulases, to glucose. H. jecorina Cel3A, R. emersonii Cel3A and N. crassa NcGH3-3 are three industrially relevant fungal GH3 β-glucosidases for which the structures have been determined using X-ray crystallographic methods. The H. jecorina Cel3A, R. em- ersonii Cel3A enzymes has also been characterized biochemically. The LPMOs act in the very initial stage of plant cell wall degradation and cleave glycosidic bonds in crys- talline polysaccharides via an oxidative mechanism, which facilitates access to new chain ends for other CAZymes. To elucidate the structural and biochemical properties of LPMOs with bacterial origin, the structure of an AA10 LPMO the LPMO10A from Enterococcus faecalis was determined using X-ray crystallography. Furthermore, structural changes of the active site metal configuration by so-called X-ray induced photoreduction, were determined. During this reduction process, which mimics the active enzyme, the bound active site copper atom is reduced from Cu(I) to Cu(II), which causes changes in the ligation configuration