Mexican Banks’ Acceptance and Use of Twitter to Assist in Evaluating Farm Loan Applications: Exploring the Role of Agricultural Loans on Food Security

Food security issues are a global concern of countless citizens irrespective of professional vocation or individual residence. Literature indicated numerous factors affect food security and researchers should continue examining elements that may influence food insecurity. The lack of acquiring finance can prohibit farmers from planting and harvesting crops, and thus, is a cause of food insecurity. Mexican banks receive economic agricultural forecasts from the Ministry of Agriculture. This study sought to describe Mexican banks’ degree of acceptance and use of the Ministry’s information on Twitter. Fourteen (N = 14) agricultural loan administrators from Mexican banks were examined to address this study’s research objectives. Agricultural loan administrators were interviewed to determine their acceptance and use of the Ministry’s statistics on Twitter. Participants reported the dissemination of agricultural statistics on Twitter saved banks time by providing a source that delivered specific crop forecasts and not all crop outlooks simultaneously. Twitter can be used to let a bank know the particular value of a commodity in real time thus being able to inform not only their financial decisions but notify farmers pursuing loans. The Ministry of Agriculture’s Twitter feeds increased performance and communication while requiring little effort due to the pervasive nature of the technology. The use of information disseminated on Twitter allowed farmers to receive funds faster thus enabling them to plant and harvest crops in order to aid in the battle against food insecurity

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Does Servant Leadership Moderate the Relationship between Job Stress and Physical Health?

High school teachers experience high levels of job stress, which could lead to serious health problems. This study focused on Chinese high school teachers, as they have to manage negative stress and health issues. The research aimed to: (1) investigate the relationship between hindrance job stress, depersonalization, and physical health; (2) investigate if servant leadership, in fact moderates the relationship between hindrance job stress and depersonalization, as well as physical health. The study desisgn was cross-sectional and data analyses were conducted by using SPSS 21 and Mplus 7. The sample consisted of 857 high school teachers across Southern China. The results showed that hindrance stress is related to depersonalization among high school teachers (β = 0.63, p < 0.01). Both hindrance job stress (β = 0.32, p < 0.01) and depersonalization (β = 0.16, p < 0.01) are positively related to physical health. In addition, servant leadership moderates the relationship between hindrance job stress and physical health among the Chinese high school teachers (β = −0.09, p < 0.01). However, the results did not find that the effect of hindrance job stress on depersonalization is moderated by servant leadership (β = 0.02, p = 0.53). It is suggested that Chinese high schools recruit and train leaders in servant leadership, relieve teachers’ stress, and promote their health to ensure the sustainable development of schools

The Relationship between Challenge and Hindrance Stressors and Emotional Exhaustion: The Moderating Role of Perceived Servant Leadership

Schoolteachers worldwide are facing stressful work conditions with heavy responsibilities. Stress may contribute to psychological disorders and physical health issues. The purposes of this study were (1) to investigate whether both challenge and hindrance stressors are positively associated with emotional exhaustion among Chinese schoolteachers and (2) to examine whether perceived servant leadership moderates the effects of challenge and hindrance stressors on emotional exhaustion. This study was cross-sectional in nature. A sample of 2636 schoolteachers was elicited from schools in South China. Research data were collected in the fall semester of 2019 via WeChat®. Descriptive statistics and inter-correlations were conducted using SPSS 21. Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to test measurement models to determine convergent and discriminant validities using Mplus 7.4. Hierarchical multiple regression was performed to test proposed hypotheses using SPSS 21. The study results demonstrated that both challenge and hindrance stressors were positively related to emotional exhaustion among schoolteachers in Chinese schools. It was also indicated that, while perceived servant leadership buffers the relationship between challenge stressor and emotional exhaustion, it enhances the relationship between hindrance stressor and emotional exhaustion. Implications and limitations are also provided