An Exploratory Case Study of the Influences Personal Abilities and Self-Efficacy have on Performance for Remote Workers.

This dissertation explores the personal abilities and self-efficacy variables that have an influence on performance in the context of remote work, advances in technology and the global spread of COVID-19. The recent pandemic has forced many companies to increase employees’ physical proximity from their place of work and, in order to maintain service levels, precipitated a vast expansion in remote working. The research aims of this study were developed to investigate which tools remote workers have available to overcome obstacles in a virtual environment and the challenges faced while performing their jobs. To represent these objectives and provide structure to the research, the following research questions were proposed: 1. What is the importance of self-efficacy for employees in performing their tasks when working remotely? 2. What are the challenges remote workers face when performing their job? The study has an extensive literature review of the pertinent subjects relevant for remote work which allowed for the development of a conceptual framework and informed the approach for primary research. This dissertation takes the form of an exploratory qualitative case study methodology and semi-structured interviews as a data-gathering tool, this approach was selected after considering the research questions and the context of this dissertation. This research contributes to the existing literature by proposing that organisations address certain core issues when adopting remote work as a business strategy, and the role of personal abilities and self-efficacy during the evaluation of the performance of remote workers

O processo de comunicação estética do objeto do design

Este artigo apresenta os resultados do trabalho de Iniciação Científica, intitulado O processo de comunicação estética do objeto do design, realizado no Departamento de Artes Plásticas da ECA-USP, sob orientação da Profa. Dra. Monica Tavares e com financiamento do CNPq/Brasil

Impact of the Application of Landfill Leachate on the Germination of Senna macranthera in Different Substrates

Landfill leachate is a potential environmental pollutant. Physicochemical analyses allow identifying its elements while the use of ecotoxicological tests aims to understand the relation with the environment. The germination assay of Senna macranthera in different substrates (filter paper, commercial-SCM, conventional-SCV and organic-SOR) was performed with different doses of leachate. The objective was to identify the potential impact of leachate by determining the concentration able to cause inhibition in 50% of the seeds (LC50) and the values of the no observable effect concentration (NOEC) and the lowest observed effect concentration (LOEC). The LC50 and LOEC occurred in the treatments with 6.25 while NOEC was with 3.125%. The test in substrates, It was not possible to identify the LC50 in the SCM. For the SCV was with 66 and in SOR with 25%. The NOEC and LOEC for SCM and SCV were 25 and 50% and in SOR with 50 and 100%.O lixiviado de aterro é um potencial poluente ambiental. Análises físico-químicas permitem identificar seus elementos enquanto o uso de testes ecotoxicológicos visa compreender a relação com o ambiente. O ensaio de germinação de Senna macranthera em diferentes substratos (papel de filtro, comercial-SCM, convencional-SCV e orgânica-SOR) foi realizada com diferentes doses de lixiviado. O objetivo foi identificar o impacto potencial do lixiviado via determinação da concentração capaz de causar inibição em 50% do sementes (CL50) e os valores da concentração de efeito não observável (CENO) e a concentração de efeitos observados (CEO). A CL50 e a CEO ocorreu nos tratamentos com 6,25% enquanto a CENO ocorreu com 3,125%. Não foi possível identificar o CL50 no SCM. Para o SCV ocorreu com 66% e em SOR com 25%. A CENO e CEO para SCM e SCV foram 25% e 50% e em SOR com 50% e 100%

Ampliando o acesso livre a informação: a digitalização do acervo do Núcleo Temático da Seca

FREIRE, Isa Maria, et al. Ampliando o acesso livre a informaçao: a digitalizaçao do acervo do Nucleo Tematico da Seca. Pesquisa Brasileira em Ciência da Informação e Biblioteconomia, v.3, n.2, p. 137-142, 2008.Disponivel em: . Acesso em: 04 nov. 2010.As Bibliotecas Digitais constituem, na chamada Sociedade da Informação, ferramentas que permitem uma socialização da informação sem precedentes. Diante disso, esse trabalho relata as experiências em torno da implementação dos projetos constituintes da Rede de Projetos pertencentes ao Núcleo Temático da Seca (Nut-Seca), centro de documentação especializado sobre Seca e Semi-Árido vinculado ao Centro de Ciências Sociais Aplicadas da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). Dentre os projetos, destaca-se a digitalização de uma das coleções do acervo, denominada Coleção Vale do Assú, bem como a experiência de construção de um e-book com a memória intelectual da Professora Terezinha de Queiroz Aranha, mentora e atual coordenadora do referido núcleo. ABSTRACT: Digital libraries are understood as tools in the current society, the so called Information Society. These tools enable wider socialization of information like never before. Thus, this work aims to detail experiences that took place in the digitalization project at Núcleo Temático da Seca (Nut-Seca), a documentation center specialized in the drought phenomenon at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). In order to address these issues, some elements were pointed out such as the ones of the Project Network, the Oficina da Memória, and a satellite project that deals with recollection of the memory of the documentation center, as well as experiences done for the construction of an e-book on the intellectual memory of Professor Terezinha de Queiroz Aranh

Basal gnathostomes provide unique insights into the evolution of vitamin B12 binders

© The Author(s), 2014. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Genome Biology and Evolution 7 (2015): 457-464, doi:10.1093/gbe/evu289.The uptake and transport of vitamin B12 (cobalamin; Cbl) in mammals involves a refined system with three evolutionarily related transporters: transcobalamin 1 (Tcn1), transcobalamin 2 (Tcn2), and the gastric intrinsic factor (Gif). Teleosts have a single documented binder with intermediate features to the human counterparts. Consequently, it has been proposed that the expansion of Cbl binders occurred after the separation of Actinopterygians. Here, we demonstrate that the diversification of this gene family took place earlier in gnathostome ancestry. Our data indicates the presence of single copy orthologs of the Sarcopterygii/Tetrapoda duplicates Tcn1 and Gif, and Tcn2, in Chondrichthyes. In addition, a highly divergent Cbl binder was found in the Elasmobranchii. We unveil a complex scenario forged by genome, tandem duplications and lineage-specific gene loss. Our findings suggest that from an ancestral transporter, exhibiting large spectrum and high affinity binding, highly specific Cbl transporters emerged through gene duplication and mutations at the binding pocket.This work was funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) project PEst-C/MAR/LA0015/2013. PhD grant SFRH/BD/84238/2012 awarded to M.L-.M. Postdoctoral grant SFRH/BPD/72519/2010 awarded to R.R

Environmental Monitoring of Water Quality as a Planning and Management Tool: A Case Study of the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon is an urban water body, representing one of the most popular spots for the local community. It underwent serious environmental degradation, at first through its water mirror reduction and more recently through sewer inflows. Concurrently, the difficulty in renewing the water combined with adverse climatic conditions has repeatedly led to an alarming fish mortality rate. The monitoring of its water quality has been carried out as a management and planning tool that lead to the improvement of the environmental conditions. This study seeks to assess monitoring results by correlating the factors that might be the cause of a failure to comply with environmental regulations. Although it is evident that particular places in the Lagoon might be more often affected by illegal sewer discharges, no evidence could be found of any variations between the six sampling points. However, the rise in the levels of Escherichia coli, nitrogen and phosphorus, and the general temperature conditions, pH, and salinity of the water shows that the most significant alterations occurred in spring 2018.The complexity of the period of phytoplankton growth followed by the fish mortality from anoxia underlines the need for monitoring as a tool for a better understanding of the alterations, providing guidance with regard to the planning and management of the ecosystem

Cx43 can form functional channels at the nuclear envelope and modulate gene expression in cardiac cells

Conexina 43; Expresión génica; Translocación nuclearConnexina 43; Expressió gènica; Translocació nuclearConnexin 43; Gene expression; Nuclear translocationClassically associated with gap junction-mediated intercellular communication, connexin43 (Cx43) is increasingly recognized to possess non-canonical biological functions, including gene expression regulation. However, the mechanisms governing the localization and role played by Cx43 in the nucleus, namely in transcription modulation, remain unknown. Using comprehensive and complementary approaches encompassing biochemical assays, super-resolution and immunogold transmission electron microscopy, we demonstrate that Cx43 localizes to the nuclear envelope of different cell types and in cardiac tissue. We show that translocation of Cx43 to the nucleus relies on Importin-β, and that Cx43 significantly impacts the cellular transcriptome, likely by interacting with transcriptional regulators. In vitro patch-clamp recordings from HEK293 and adult primary cardiomyocytes demonstrate that Cx43 forms active channels at the nuclear envelope, providing evidence that Cx43 can participate in nucleocytoplasmic shuttling of small molecules. The accumulation of nuclear Cx43 during myogenic differentiation of cardiomyoblasts is suggested to modulate expression of genes implicated in this process. Altogether, our study provides new evidence for further defining the biological roles of nuclear Cx43, namely in cardiac pathophysiology.This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Operational Program for Competitiveness Factors (COMPETE) under the projects HealthyAging2020 CENTRO-01-0145-FEDER-000012-N2323, CENTRO-01-0145-FEDER-032179, CENTRO-01-0145-FEDER-032414, EXPL/MED-OUT/0590/2021, UIDB/04539/2020 and PPBI-Portuguese Platform of BioImaging (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022122). This work was also supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement MIA-Portugal no. 857524 and the Comissão de Coordenação da Região Centro (CCDRC) through the Centro2020 Program. T.A. acknowledges funding from Instituto de Salud Carlos III, grant PI16/00772 co-financed by the ERDF, and Fundación Científica Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer (IDEAS20039AASE). This work used the platforms of the Grenoble Instruct-ERIC center (ISBG; UAR 3518 CNRS-CEA-UGA-EMBL) within the Grenoble Partnership for Structural Biology (PSB), supported by FRISBI (ANR-10-INBS-0005-02) and GRAL, financed within the University Grenoble Alpes graduate school (Ecoles Universitaires de Recherche) CBH-EUR-GS (ANR-17-EURE-0003), and the Microscopy and Bioimaging Lab (iLAB) at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra (Coimbra, Portugal). The IBS Electron Microscope facility is supported by the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes Region, the Fonds Feder, the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale and GIS-IBiSA. Super-resolution microscopy experiments benefited from access to CBI/IGBMC (Illkirch, France) and were supported by FRISBI (ANR-10-INBS-0005). Financial support was provided by Instruct-ERIC (PID 14677)