Relationships between perceived teacher and peer support on motivation and achievement in high school mathematics

One hundred fourteen US students were surveyed to test a model of the relationships among motivational variables resulting from students’ first experiences as they transitioned from middle school to high school, and math achievement. Key malleable factors impacting motivation and achievement included perceived supportiveness of respondents’ teacher and peers. Longitudinal Path Analysis revealed that teacher support can impact students’ beliefs about the supportiveness of their peers, but that these social factors are mediated through students developing personal interest in mathematics to ultimately impact achievement

Fundamental social motives measured across forty-two cultures in two waves

How does psychology vary across human societies? The fundamental social motives framework adopts an evolutionary approach to capture the broad range of human social goals within a taxonomy of ancestrally recurring threats and opportunities. These motives—self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate acquisition, mate retention, and kin care—are high in fitness relevance and everyday salience, yet understudied cross-culturally. Here, we gathered data on these motives in 41 countries (N=15,885) in two cross-sectional waves, including 19 countries (N=11,095) for which data were gathered in both waves. Wave 1 was collected from 2016 through mid-2019 (32 countries, N=9353; 3537 male, 5574 female; Mage=24.58, SD=8.07). Wave 2 was collected from May through October 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic (N=6532; 2194 male, 4165 female; Mage=28.82, SD=11.49). These data can be used to assess differences and similarities in people’s fundamental social motives both across and within cultures, at different time points, and in relation to other commonly studied cultural indicators and outcomes

Fundamental social motives measured across forty-two cultures in two waves

How does psychology vary across human societies? The fundamental social motives framework adopts an evolutionary approach to capture the broad range of human social goals within a taxonomy of ancestrally recurring threats and opportunities. These motives—self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate acquisition, mate retention, and kin care—are high in fitness relevance and everyday salience, yet understudied cross-culturally. Here, we gathered data on these motives in 42 countries (N = 15,915) in two cross-sectional waves, including 19 countries (N = 10,907) for which datawere gathered in both waves. Wave 1 was collected from mid-2016 through late 2019 (32 countries, N = 8,998; 3,302 male, 5,585 female; Mage = 24.43, SD = 7.91). Wave 2 was collected from April through November 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic (29 countries, N = 6,917; 2,249 male, 4,218 female; Mage = 28.59, SD = 11.31). These data can be used to assess differences and similarities in people’s fundamental social motives both across and within cultures, at different time points, and in relation to other commonly studied cultural indicators and outcomes

Publisher Correction: Fundamental social motives measured across forty-two cultures in two waves.

This is the final version. Available from Nature Research via the DOI in this record.

Integration of Performance Evaluation in Computer Aided Design

An integrated computerized system for evaluation of the overall performance of a building was developed. The system exemplifies the capability of appropriate CAD techniques to upgrade the decision making process and the quality of the design. This paper describes the specific problems arising from the integration of the performance evaluation within the existing CAAD proces

Energy-optimal strokes for multi-link microswimmers: Purcell's loops and Taylor's waves reconciled

Micron-scale swimmers move in the realm of negligible inertia, dominated by viscous drag forces. In this paper, we formulate the leading-order dynamics of a slender multi-link (N-link) microswimmer assuming small-amplitude undulations about its straight configuration. The energy-optimal stroke to achieve a given prescribed displacement in a given time period is obtained as the largest eigenvalue solution of a constrained optimal control problem. Remarkably, the optimal stroke is an ellipse lying within a two-dimensional plane in the (N - 1)-dimensional space of joint angles, where N can be arbitrarily large. For large N, the optimal stroke is a traveling wave of bending, modulo edge effects. If the number of shape variables is small, we can consider the same problem when the prescribed displacement in one time period is large, and not attainable with small variations of the joint angles. The fully nonlinear optimal control problem is solved numerically for the cases N = 3 (Purcell's three-link swimmer) and N = 5 showing that, as the prescribed displacement becomes small, the optimal solutions obtained using the small-amplitude assumption are recovered. We also show that, when the prescribed displacements become large, the picture is different. For N = 3 we recover the non-convex planar loops already known from previous studies. For N = 5 we obtain non-planar loops, raising the question of characterizing the geometry of complex high-dimensional loops

Bordonein-L, a new L-amino acid oxidase from Crotalus durissus terrificus snake venom: isolation, preliminary characterization and enzyme stability

BackgroundCrotalus durissus terrificus venom (CdtV) is one of the most studied snake venoms in Brazil. Despite presenting several well known proteins, its L-amino acid oxidase (LAAO) has not been studied previously. This study aimed to isolate, characterize and evaluate the enzyme stability of bordonein-L, an LAAO from CdtV.Methods The enzyme was isolated through cation exchange, gel filtration and affinity chromatography, followed by a reversed-phase fast protein liquid chromatography to confirm its purity. Subsequently, its N-terminal amino acid sequence was determined by Edman degradation. The enzyme activity and stability were evaluated by a microplate colorimetric assay and the molecular mass was estimated by SDS-PAGE using periodic acid-Schiff staining and determined by mass spectrometry.Results The first 39 N-terminal amino acid residues exhibited high identity with other snake venom L-amino acid oxidases. Bordonein-L is a homodimer glycoprotein of approximately 101 kDa evaluated by gel filtration. Its monomer presents around 53 kDa estimated by SDS-PAGE and 58,702 Da determined by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. The enzyme exhibited maximum activity at pH 7.0 and lost about 50 % of its activity after five days of storage at 4 °C. Bordonein-L’s activity was higher than the control when stored in 2.8 % mannitol or 8.5 % sucrose.Conclusions This research is pioneering in its isolation, characterization and enzyme stability evaluation of an LAAO from CdtV, denominated bordonein-L. These results are important because they increase the knowledge about stabilization of LAAOs, aiming to increase their shelf life. Since the maintenance of enzymatic activity after long periods of storage is essential to enable their biotechnological use as well as their functional studies