Do Leader and Organizational Characteristics Affect Scientist's Productivity? A Multilevel Analysis of Nigerian Agricultural Research System

Organizations offer employees with opportunities to cultivate their innovativeness and facilitate greater productivity. In this paper we analyze preconditions for individual productivity of agricultural researchers in Nigeria, measured in terms of the self-reported number of scholarly publications and technologies produced; presence of external collaborators; number of dissemination events for publications produced; and perceived adoption level of technologies developed. It utilizes a multilevel analysis to systematically examine what characteristics of individual scientists and organizations promote greater individual productivity. The statistically significant random-effect estimates show that there is considerable variance across the 47 organizations after adjusting for the effects of differences in individual characteristics. Moreover, several measures of organizational characteristics are statistically significant in explaining variations in individual productivity. This paper contributes to limited studies that systematically analyze the influence of organizational factors and the organization head’s characteristics on individual researcher’s performance.organizational culture, multilevel analysis, poisson, productivity, research, motivation, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q16, L32, D23,

Two-Stage Multi-Objective Meta-Heuristics for Environmental and Cost-Optimal Energy Refurbishment at District Level

Energy efficiency and environmental performance optimization at the district level are following an upward trend mostly triggered by minimizing the Global Warming Potential (GWP) to 20% by 2020 and 40% by 2030 settled by the European Union (EU) compared with 1990 levels. This paper advances over the state of the art by proposing two novel multi-objective algorithms, named Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) and Multi-Objective Harmony Search (MOHS), aimed at achieving cost-effective energy refurbishment scenarios and allowing at district level the decision-making procedure. This challenge is not trivial since the optimisation process must provide feasible solutions for a simultaneous environmental and economic assessment at district scale taking into consideration highly demanding real-based constraints regarding district and buildings’ specific requirements. Consequently, in this paper, a two-stage optimization methodology is proposed in order to reduce the energy demand and fossil fuel consumption with an affordable investment cost at building level and minimize the total payback time while minimizing the GWP at district level. Aimed at demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed two-stage multi-objective approaches, this work presents simulation results at two real district case studies in Donostia-San Sebastian (Spain) for which up to a 30% of reduction of GWP at district level is obtained for a Payback Time (PT) of 2–3 years.Part of this work has been developed from results obtained during the H2020 “Optimised Energy Efficient Design Platform for Refurbishment at District Level” (OptEEmAL) project, Grant No. 680676

The coupling of plasma membrane calcium entry to calcium uptake by endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondria

Producción CientíficaCross-talk between organelles and plasma membrane Ca2+ channels is essential for modulation of the cytosolic Ca2+ ([Ca2+]C) signals, but such modulation may differ among cells. In chromaffin cells Ca2+ entry through voltage-operated channels induces calcium release from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) that amplifies the signal. [Ca2+]C microdomains as high as 20–50 μM are sensed by subplasmalemmal mitochondria, which accumulate large amounts of Ca2+ through the mitochondrial Ca2+ uniporter (MCU). Mitochondria confine the high-Ca2+ microdomains (HCMDs) to beneath the plasma membrane,where exocytosis of secretory vesicles happens. Cell core [Ca2+]C is much smaller (1–2 μM). By acting as a Ca2+ sink, mitochondria stabilise theHCMDin space and time. In non-excitableHEK293 cells, activation of store-operated Ca2+ entry, triggered by ERCa2+ emptying, also generated subplasmalemmal HCMDs, but, in this case, most of the Ca2+ was taken up by the ER rather than bymitochondria. The smaller size of the [Ca2+]C peak in this case (about 2 μM)may contribute to this outcome, as the sarco-endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ ATPase has much higher Ca2+ affinity than MCU. It is also possible that the relative positioning of organelles, channels and effectors, as well as cytoskeleton and accessory proteins plays an important role.2015-09-3

Critical language awareness: A beckoning frontier in social work education?

Introduction: Effective social work practice is predicated on empowering, inclusive and culturally responsive communication, and yet, there appears to be very limited focus on language awareness, let alone critical language awareness, in contemporary social work education - both within and beyond the Australasian context. This gap is more worrying against a background where neoliberal and instrumental discourses (Habermas, 1969 O'Regan, 2001) have freely proliferated, and now threaten to colonise virtually all areas of private and public life (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999). In response, this article advocates the inclusion of Critical Language Awareness (CLA) in contemporary social work education. Approach: This article initially maps the broad scope and historical emergence of CLA, before surveying its key political and theoretical influences. Findings: The key outcome is that CLA - as delineated - clearly shares significant overlaps with social work values, particularly: justice, equality and a commitment to anti-discriminatory and antioppressive practice (Dominelli, 2002 Payne, 1997). More importantly, CLA provides conceptual and analytical resources that promise to significantly sharpen students' abilities to recognise, question and ultimately challenge, oppressive discourses (Fairclough, 2011 Manjarres, 2011 Wodak, 2006). Conclusion: It is recommended that CLA strands be woven into existing social work themes and topics. The final part of the article offers some practical suggestions on how this could be done

The geometric tensor for classical states

We use the Liouville eigenfunctions to define a classical version of the geometric tensor and study its relationship with the classical adiabatic gauge potential (AGP). We focus on integrable systems and show that the imaginary part of the geometric tensor is related to the Hannay curvature. The singularities of the geometric tensor and the AGP allows us to link the transition from Arnold-Liouville integrability to chaos with some of the mathematical formalism of quantum phase transitions

Data Mining to find out the patterns in the data of circulation section log of July, 2022 of Jamia Millia Islamia University library using python

Data mining is a process that is used to find the important and meaningful patterns in the large data-set. It is used to convert the raw data into meaningful information and knowledge. The unknown patterns are extracted from the unstructured data which is stored in proper format and then utilized for developing future strategies. Various questions arise such as what is data mining, its process, tools or software used in the data mining, and what are the applications of data mining in libraries? This article describes the basics of data mining, process, tools and techniques used in data mining. The data of the circulation section of Jamia Millia University is taken to find out the meaningful patterns and to know certain borrowing habits of the patrons of the library. Python as a language is used for the coding for the determination of various helpful sequences which provide a meaningful interpretation for the circulation section log and such kinds of patterns can be used for the decision making for the library