The influence of human resources management practices on identity construction through the promotion of identity motives

Identity is a crucial factor in the human being’s life, comprising the sense we have in respect to who we are and the way we act and interact with the world around us. In this study, it is analyzed the way identity can be constructed, having as a basis six identity motives, namely, continuity, meaning, belonging, efficacy, distinctiveness, and self-esteem. The argument is that this identity construction can be promoted through the implementation of diverse human resources practices, applied in a context where the development of identity is encouraged, having been created a new concept for the effect, namely, identity enhancement context. In this context, the improvement of well-being and reduction of turnover intentions are considered consequences of the human resources practices promoted, as long as they reinforce identity construction. This argument was teste through a correlational study involving 394 participants. The results demonstrated that the identity enhancement context correlates positively with the identity motives, negatively with turnover and positively with well-being. Moreover, each of the identity motives has a negative association with turnover and a positive relationship with well-being, supporting the initial argument.A identidade é um fator crucial na vida do ser humano, compreendendo o sentido que temos relativamente ao que somos e à forma como agimos e interagimos com o mundo à nossa volta. Neste estudo é analisada a forma como a identidade pode ser construída, tendo por base seis motivos de identidade, nomeadamente, continuidade, significado, pertença, eficácia, distintividade e autoestima. O argumento é o de que esta construção da identidade pode ser promovida pela aplicação de diversas práticas de recursos humanos, usadas num contexto em que há um incentivo ao desenvolvimento da identidade, tendo sido criado um novo conceito para o efeito, nomeadamente, o contexto de aprimoramento de identidade. Neste contexto, o aumento do bem-estar e a redução da rotatividade são consideradas consequências das práticas de recursos humanos, desde que estas reforcem a construção da identidade. Este argumento foi testado através de um estudo correlacional envolvendo 394 participantes. Os resultados demonstraram mostram que o contexto de aprimoramento de identidade tem uma correlação positiva com os motivos de identidade, embora negativa com a intenção de rotatividade, e positiva com o bem-estar. Para além disso, verificou-se uma correlação negativa entre os motivos de identidade e a intenção de rotatividade, ao par de uma correlação positiva entre os motivos de identidade e o bem-estar, dando suporte ao argumento inicial

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Fatores que influenciam o neurodesenvolvimento em indivíduos nascidos pré-termo: mini revisão integrativa de literatura

O nascimento é caracterizado como prematuro quando ocorre até antes da 37ª semana. Um número elevado desses nascidos podem apresentar o desenvolvimento de deficiências sutis, como as de aprendizagem, e distúrbios de comportamento. Essa é uma mini revisão integrativa de literatura, sobre a relação entre prematuridade e transtornos no neurodesenvolvimento, buscando analisar, se há ou não, evidências de que recém-nascidos prematuros apresentam maiores chances de desenvolver distúrbios físicos e psíquicos. Para isso foram seguidas as seguintes etapas: identificação do tema; seleção da questão de pesquisa; coleta de dados pela busca na literatura, utilizando-se as bases de dado eletrônicas, com estabelecimento de critérios de inclusão e exclusão para selecionar a amostra; avaliação dos estudos incluídos na revisão integrativa; interpretação dos resultados e apresentação dos resultados evidenciados. Foram excluídos aqueles artigos publicados antes de 2019 ou que não abrangiam sobre o tema. Constatou-se que o grau de prematuridade pode marcar o desenvolvimento da criança, podendo estas apresentar distúrbios em seu desenvolvimento, que variam de sutis a graves, afetando suas capacidades cognitivas e intelectuais. Além disso, estudos complementares mostraram que quanto menor a idade gestacional, maior a probabilidade de desenvolvimento de complicações neonatais e psicomotoras nos infantos. Por outro lado, a alta taxa de abandono e o restrito número de famílias e hospitais disponíveis para o estudo mostraram se fatores limitantes para a pesquisa, uma vez que a necessidade de uma ampla base de análise para melhores resultados e conclusões acerca do assunto

A protocol update for the Selenium Treatment and Chagasic Cardiomyopathy (STCC) trial

Abstract Several studies evaluating clinical forms of chronic Chagas disease show that about one-third of patients present cardiac involvement. Heart failure, sudden death and cardioembolic stroke are the main mechanisms of death in Chagas heart disease. The impact of specific etiologic treatment on the prognosis of patients with chronic Chagas heart disease is very limited regardless of the presence or absence of heart failure. Patients with symptomatic Chagas heart disease present serum selenium (Se) levels lower than patients without Chagas heart disease. Moreover, Se supplementation in animal models showed promising results. The aim of this trial is to estimate the effect of Se treatment on prevention of heart disease progression in patients with Chagas cardiomyopathy. However, we had to introduce some protocol modifications in order to keep trial feasibility, as follows: the primary outcome was restricted to left ventricular ejection fraction as a continuous variable, excluding disease progression; the follow-up period was decreased from 5 years to 1 year, an adjustment that might increase the participation rate of our study; the superior age limit was increased from 65 to 75 years; and diabetes mellitus was no longer considered an exclusion criterion. All of these protocol modifications were extensively debated by the research team enrolled in the design, recruitment and conduction of the clinical trial to guarantee a high scientific quality. Trial registration Clinical Trials.gov, NCT00875173. Registered on 20 October 2008

Unraveling the genetic background of individuals with a clinical familial hypercholesterolemia phenotype

Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is a common genetic disorder of lipid metabolism caused by pathogenic/likely pathogenic variants in LDLR, APOB, and PCSK9 genes. Variants in FH-phenocopy genes (LDLRAP1, APOE, LIPA, ABCG5, and ABCG8), polygenic hypercholesterolemia, and hyperlipoprotein (a) [Lp(a)] can also mimic a clinical FH phenotype. We aim to present a new diagnostic tool to unravel the genetic background of clinical FH phenotype. Biochemical and genetic study was performed in 1,005 individuals with clinical diagnosis of FH, referred to the Portuguese FH Study. A next-generation sequencing panel, covering eight genes and eight SNPs to determine LDL-C polygenic risk score and LPA genetic score, was validated, and used in this study. FH was genetically confirmed in 417 index cases: 408 heterozygotes and 9 homozygotes. Cascade screening increased the identification to 1,000 FH individuals, including 11 homozygotes. FH-negative individuals (phenotype positive and genotype negative) have Lp(a) >50 mg/dl (30%), high polygenic risk score (16%), other monogenic lipid metabolism disorders (1%), and heterozygous pathogenic variants in FH-phenocopy genes (2%). Heterozygous variants of uncertain significance were identified in primary genes (12%) and phenocopy genes (7%). Overall, 42% of our cohort was genetically confirmed with FH. In the remaining individuals, other causes for high LDL-C were identified in 68%. Hyper-Lp(a) or polygenic hypercholesterolemia may be the cause of the clinical FH phenotype in almost half of FH-negative individuals. A small part has pathogenic variants in ABCG5/ABCG8 in heterozygosity that can cause hypercholesterolemia and should be further investigated. This extended next-generation sequencing panel identifies individuals with FH and FH-phenocopies, allowing to personalize each person’s treatment according to the affected pathway

Characterisation of microbial attack on archaeological bone

As part of an EU funded project to investigate the factors influencing bone preservation in the archaeological record, more than 250 bones from 41 archaeological sites in five countries spanning four climatic regions were studied for diagenetic alteration. Sites were selected to cover a range of environmental conditions and archaeological contexts. Microscopic and physical (mercury intrusion porosimetry) analyses of these bones revealed that the majority (68%) had suffered microbial attack. Furthermore, significant differences were found between animal and human bone in both the state of preservation and the type of microbial attack present. These differences in preservation might result from differences in early taphonomy of the bones. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Neotropical xenarthrans: a dataset of occurrence of xenarthran species in the Neotropics.

International audienceXenarthrans—anteaters, sloths, and armadillos—have essential functions forecosystem maintenance, such as insect control and nutrient cycling, playing key roles as ecosys-tem engineers. Because of habitat loss and fragmentation, hunting pressure, and conflicts withdomestic dogs, these species have been threatened locally, regionally, or even across their fulldistribution ranges. The Neotropics harbor 21 species of armadillos, 10 anteaters, and 6 sloths.Our data set includes the families Chlamyphoridae (13), Dasypodidae (7), Myrmecophagidae(3), Bradypodidae (4), and Megalonychidae (2). We have no occurrence data onDasypus pilo-sus(Dasypodidae). Regarding Cyclopedidae, until recently, only one species was recognized,but new genetic studies have revealed that the group is represented by seven species. In thisdata paper, we compiled a total of 42,528 records of 31 species, represented by occurrence andquantitative data, totaling 24,847 unique georeferenced records. The geographic range is fromthe southern United States, Mexico, and Caribbean countries at the northern portion of theNeotropics, to the austral distribution in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay. Regardinganteaters,Myrmecophaga tridactylahas the most records (n=5,941), andCyclopessp. havethe fewest (n=240). The armadillo species with the most data isDasypus novemcinctus(n=11,588), and the fewest data are recorded forCalyptophractus retusus(n=33). Withregard to sloth species,Bradypus variegatushas the most records (n=962), andBradypus pyg-maeushas the fewest (n=12). Our main objective with Neotropical Xenarthrans is to makeoccurrence and quantitative data available to facilitate more ecological research, particularly ifwe integrate the xenarthran data with other data sets of Neotropical Series that will become available very soon (i.e., Neotropical Carnivores, Neotropical Invasive Mammals, andNeotropical Hunters and Dogs). Therefore, studies on trophic cascades, hunting pressure,habitat loss, fragmentation effects, species invasion, and climate change effects will be possiblewith the Neotropical Xenarthrans data set. Please cite this data paper when using its data inpublications. We also request that researchers and teachers inform us of how they are usingthese data

NEOTROPICAL XENARTHRANS: a data set of occurrence of xenarthran species in the Neotropics

Xenarthrans—anteaters, sloths, and armadillos—have essential functions for ecosystem maintenance, such as insect control and nutrient cycling, playing key roles as ecosystem engineers. Because of habitat loss and fragmentation, hunting pressure, and conflicts with domestic dogs, these species have been threatened locally, regionally, or even across their full distribution ranges. The Neotropics harbor 21 species of armadillos, 10 anteaters, and 6 sloths. Our data set includes the families Chlamyphoridae (13), Dasypodidae (7), Myrmecophagidae (3), Bradypodidae (4), and Megalonychidae (2). We have no occurrence data on Dasypus pilosus (Dasypodidae). Regarding Cyclopedidae, until recently, only one species was recognized, but new genetic studies have revealed that the group is represented by seven species. In this data paper, we compiled a total of 42,528 records of 31 species, represented by occurrence and quantitative data, totaling 24,847 unique georeferenced records. The geographic range is from the southern United States, Mexico, and Caribbean countries at the northern portion of the Neotropics, to the austral distribution in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay. Regarding anteaters, Myrmecophaga tridactyla has the most records (n = 5,941), and Cyclopes sp. have the fewest (n = 240). The armadillo species with the most data is Dasypus novemcinctus (n = 11,588), and the fewest data are recorded for Calyptophractus retusus (n = 33). With regard to sloth species, Bradypus variegatus has the most records (n = 962), and Bradypus pygmaeus has the fewest (n = 12). Our main objective with Neotropical Xenarthrans is to make occurrence and quantitative data available to facilitate more ecological research, particularly if we integrate the xenarthran data with other data sets of Neotropical Series that will become available very soon (i.e., Neotropical Carnivores, Neotropical Invasive Mammals, and Neotropical Hunters and Dogs). Therefore, studies on trophic cascades, hunting pressure, habitat loss, fragmentation effects, species invasion, and climate change effects will be possible with the Neotropical Xenarthrans data set. Please cite this data paper when using its data in publications. We also request that researchers and teachers inform us of how they are using these data