The impact of workplace spiritually on organisational commitment : the case of the Central University of Technology, Free State (CUT)

Published Thesishas become a universal topic in the 21st century for all areas of the global, knowledge-driven society. Globalisation has led to increased diversity in organisations, and universities are regarded as an essential force to effect change. Universities are mandated to meet the changing needs of the modern organisation and assist in socio-economic development through sophisticated education and training programmes. In this regard it has become inevitable for universities to adapt in form and function so that they are responsive to the changing needs of a diverse student component and the intellectual challenges of the modern world of work. The said transformation has placed increased pressure on academic staff members to carry out a variety of functions such as research, teaching, curriculum development, post-graduate supervision, community engagement, administration and the raising of third-stream income. Subsequently academic leaders and human resource practitioners are under pressure to ensure the retention and commitment of qualified academic staff members. Researchers increasingly acknowledge that nourishing the inner life of employees will lead to increased organisational commitment and subsequently the notion of workplace spirituality has gained increased attention. There are many studies on the relationship between workplace spirituality and job outcomes such as organisational commitment, but academic staff members at universities in developing countries have largely been excluded from such research. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of workplace spirituality (sense of meaning, sense of purpose and sense of community) on organisational commitment (affective commitment, normative commitment and continuance commitment) among academic staff members at a South African university, namely the Central University of Technology, Free State. The 52-item online survey instrument was distributed to the total number of permanently employed academic staff of the CUT (286). A total of 174 questionnaires were returned, yielding a response rate of 61%. The survey included a biographical section followed by a section probing workplace spiritualty and a final section measuring organisational commitment. Results from this study provided evidence that the mean scores of academic staff members’ age groups and tenure categories influenced their perception of workplace spirituality. With regards to organisational commitment there was no difference between the mean scores of the gender groups, age groups or tenure categories. Through regression analysis the study established a linear relationship between workplace spirituality and organisational commitment which resulted in an equation that is of potential value for academic leaders. Subsequent recommendations are made to management to enhance commitment through workplace spirituality. Areas for future research are also recommended

On the Movements of Petals

The following paper has to do with an investigation of the physical causes· which bring about opening and closing movements, periodic or otherwise, of certain flowers. With that end in view, seven different species of flowering plants have been experimented upon directly, a much larger number being simply observed with respect to the nature, time, etc., of their anthotropic movements. Movement consists in the corolla taking upon itself either the open or closed position for certain periods of the day or night; for example, the morning glory (Ipomoea purpurea) opens early in the morning (from 4:00 to 5 :00 A.M., in the greenhouse) and closes from II :00 A.M. to 2 :00 P.M., or even 5:00 P.M. on cool days, while the common dandelion (Taraxacum taraxacum) opens from 7:00 to 8:00 A.M. and closes from 5 :00 to 6:00 P.M. In the closed position, the petals or florets may assume practically the same position ,as that of the bud, as in the gentians, asters, dandelions, etc.; often, however, the edges of the petals only touch, forming a dome inside of which the stamens and pistil are well protected, as in the wild rose and in the tulip. In some genera, as in Mentzelia, the sepals may stay reflexed after the first opening. Following is a list of plants which show these movements, those preceded by a * having been experimented upon directly; the others were simply observed. The list is very small when compared with the cases actually known, since it simply includes those coming under personal observation within the last two or three years: So much has been written on the subject of flower movement, and with such different views as to its cause, that it seems advisable to give a rather detailed account of the work of the different investigators

On the Movements of Petals

The following paper has to do with an investigation of the physical causes· which bring about opening and closing movements, periodic or otherwise, of certain flowers. With that end in view, seven different species of flowering plants have been experimented upon directly, a much larger number being simply observed with respect to the nature, time, etc., of their anthotropic movements. Movement consists in the corolla taking upon itself either the open or closed position for certain periods of the day or night; for example, the morning glory (Ipomoea purpurea) opens early in the morning (from 4:00 to 5 :00 A.M., in the greenhouse) and closes from II :00 A.M. to 2 :00 P.M., or even 5:00 P.M. on cool days, while the common dandelion (Taraxacum taraxacum) opens from 7:00 to 8:00 A.M. and closes from 5 :00 to 6:00 P.M. In the closed position, the petals or florets may assume practically the same position ,as that of the bud, as in the gentians, asters, dandelions, etc.; often, however, the edges of the petals only touch, forming a dome inside of which the stamens and pistil are well protected, as in the wild rose and in the tulip. In some genera, as in Mentzelia, the sepals may stay reflexed after the first opening. Following is a list of plants which show these movements, those preceded by a * having been experimented upon directly; the others were simply observed. The list is very small when compared with the cases actually known, since it simply includes those coming under personal observation within the last two or three years: So much has been written on the subject of flower movement, and with such different views as to its cause, that it seems advisable to give a rather detailed account of the work of the different investigators

CYTOMORPHOLOGICAL CORRELATION OF TUBERCULOUS LYMPHADENITIS WITH CB-NAAT IN A TERTIARY CARE CENTRE

Tuberculous lymphadenitis is the most common extra pulmonary manifestation of tuberculosis. FNAC and Ziehl Neelson staining of FNA samples have low specificity and sensitivity respectively. The aim of this study is to correlate the cytomorphological pattern of the lymph nodes with CB-NAAT as an aid to the diagnosis of tuberculous lymphadenitis. Materials and methods-A retrospective study of 58cases were undertaken from January2019 to Decamber2019 in RIMS Ranchi, a tertiary care centre .Result- Out of the total 58cases 52 samples could be run on CB-NAAT. Out of the total cases run [56%] were CB-NAAT positive. The cytomorphological pattern, Necrosis without epithelial aggregates showed the maximum positivity of MTB CB-NAAT being [35%] . The preponderance of males and age group between 21to 30 years was the highest [57%]. Rifampicin resistance was seen in [14%] of cases

An optimized method for cryogenic storage of <i>Xenopus </i>sperm to maximise the effectiveness of research using genetically altered frogs

© The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Theriogenology 92 (2017): 149–155, doi:10.1016/j.theriogenology.2017.01.007.Cryogenic storage of sperm from genetically altered Xenopus improves cost effectiveness and animal welfare associated with their use in research; currently it is routine for X. tropicalis but not reliable for X. laevis. Here we compare directly the three published protocols for Xenopus sperm freeze-thaw and determine whether sperm storage temperature, method of testes maceration and delays in the freezing protocols affect successful fertilisation and embryo development in X. laevis. We conclude that the protocol is robust and that the variability observed in fertilisation rates is due to differences between individuals. We show that the embryos made from the frozen-thawed sperm are normal and that the adults they develop into are reproductively indistinguishable from others in the colony. This opens the way for using cryopreserved sperm to distribute dominant genetically altered (GA) lines, potentially saving travel-induced stress to the male frogs, reducing their numbers used and making Xenopus experiments more cost effective.The EXRC is supported by the Wellcome Trust (101480/Z), BBSRC (BB/K019988/1) and NC3Rs (NC/P001009/1). The NXR is supported by a grant from the NIH (P40 OD010997)

Transcriptomic insights into genetic diversity of protein-coding genes in X. laevis

© The Author(s), 2017. This is the author's version of the work and is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Developmental Biology 424 (2017): 181-188, doi:10.1016/j.ydbio.2017.02.019We characterize the genetic diversity of Xenopus laevis strains using RNA-seq data and allele- specific analysis. This data provides a catalogue of coding variation, which can be used for improving the genomic sequence, as well as for better sequence alignment, probe design, and proteomic analysis. In addition, we paint a broad picture of the genetic landscape of the species by functionally annotating different classes of mutations with a well-established prediction tool (PolyPhen-2). Further, we specifically compare the variation in the progeny of four crosses: inbred genomic (J)- strain, outbred albino (B)-strain, and two hybrid crosses of J and B strains. We identify a subset of mutations specific to the B strain, which allows us to investigate the selection pressures affecting duplicated genes in this allotetraploid. From these crosses we find the ratio of non-synonymous to synonymous mutations is lower in duplicated genes, which suggests that they are under greater purifying selection. Surprisingly, we also find that function-altering ("damaging") mutations constitute a greater fraction of the non-synonymous variants in this group, which suggests a role for subfunctionalization in coding variation affecting duplicated genes.L.P. was supported by the NIH grant R01HD073104, also L.P., A.N. and V.S. were supported by R21HD81675, M.H. and E.P. by P40 OD010997.2018-03-0

Reporting animal research:Explanation and elaboration for the ARRIVE guidelines 2.0

Improving the reproducibility of biomedical research is a major challenge. Transparent and accurate reporting is vital to this process; it allows readers to assess the reliability of the findings and repeat or build upon the work of other researchers. The ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) were developed in 2010 to help authors and journals identify the minimum information necessary to report in publications describing in vivo experiments. Despite widespread endorsement by the scientific community, the impact of ARRIVE on the transparency of reporting in animal research publications has been limited. We have revised the ARRIVE guidelines to update them and facilitate their use in practice. The revised guidelines are published alongside this paper. This explanation and elaboration document was developed as part of the revision. It provides further information about each of the 21 items in ARRIVE 2.0, including the rationale and supporting evidence for their inclusion in the guidelines, elaboration of details to report, and examples of good reporting from the published literature. This document also covers advice and best practice in the design and conduct of animal studies to support researchers in improving standards from the start of the experimental design process through to publication

Building a Systematic Online Living Evidence Summary of COVID-19 Research

Throughout the global coronavirus pandemic, we have seen an unprecedented volume of COVID-19 researchpublications. This vast body of evidence continues to grow, making it difficult for research users to keep up with the pace of evolving research findings. To enable the synthesis of this evidence for timely use by researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders, we developed an automated workflow to collect, categorise, and visualise the evidence from primary COVID-19 research studies. We trained a crowd of volunteer reviewers to annotate studies by relevance to COVID-19, study objectives, and methodological approaches. Using these human decisions, we are training machine learning classifiers and applying text-mining tools to continually categorise the findings and evaluate the quality of COVID-19 evidence

Cellular systems for epithelial invagination

Epithelial invagination is a fundamental module of morphogenesis that iteratively occurs to generate the architecture of many parts of a developing organism. By changing the physical properties such as the shape and/or position of a population of cells, invagination drives processes ranging from reconfiguring the entire body axis during gastrulation, to forming the primordia of the eyes, ears and multiple ducts and glands, during organogenesis. The epithelial bending required for invagination is achieved through a variety of mechanisms involving systems of cells. Here we provide an overview of the different mechanisms, some of which can work in combination, and outline the circumstances in which they apply. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Systems morphodynamics: understanding the development of tissue hardware’