Higher Degree by Research

This open access book provides insights from Indigenous higher degree research (HDR) students on supervision practices in an Australian context. It examines findings from qualitative studies conducted with Indigenous HDR students from different academic disciplines, enrolled higher education institutions across Australia, and supervisors of Indigenous HDR students. Six types of data and their thematic analyses are presented, to understand the needs and experiences of both Indigenous HDR students and supervisors of Indigenous HDR students. This book also unpacks assumptions and commonly held beliefs about Indigenous HDR students, and shares what Indigenous HDRs report they need to experience success in higher education. It reports the experiences of supervisors of Indigenous HDR students, and explore further opportunities which enhance the higher education experiences of Indigenous HDR students. This book also suggests how successful relationships between Indigenous HDR students, and their supervisors may be fostered, and aims to be a useful resource for Indigenous peoples wishing to pursue higher education, and HDR supervisors in countries with Indigenous populations

Higher Degree by Research

This open access book provides insights from Indigenous higher degree research (HDR) students on supervision practices in an Australian context. It examines findings from qualitative studies conducted with Indigenous HDR students from different academic disciplines, enrolled higher education institutions across Australia, and supervisors of Indigenous HDR students. Six types of data and their thematic analyses are presented, to understand the needs and experiences of both Indigenous HDR students and supervisors of Indigenous HDR students. This book also unpacks assumptions and commonly held beliefs about Indigenous HDR students, and shares what Indigenous HDRs report they need to experience success in higher education. It reports the experiences of supervisors of Indigenous HDR students, and explore further opportunities which enhance the higher education experiences of Indigenous HDR students. This book also suggests how successful relationships between Indigenous HDR students, and their supervisors may be fostered, and aims to be a useful resource for Indigenous peoples wishing to pursue higher education, and HDR supervisors in countries with Indigenous populations

Impact of Green Human Resource Management on Sustainable Performance

The major purpose of Green Human Resource Management is to create a workforce that recognizes, values, and implements green ideas while upholding the company's green goal in the Human Resource Management practice of hiring, selecting, training, developing, rewarding, and promoting the human capital of the company. Two key elements of green HR are the protection of intellectual capital and eco-friendly Human Resource practices. Numerous academics have examined the value of green HRM in fostering an environmentally conscious mindset among employees, although this area of study is still in its infancy. Businesses now place a higher priority on environmental management and green management, and they have aligned their goals and tactics to reflect this. As a result of the realities of corporate globalization, the economy has changed from a traditional banking and economic structure to a more modern, capacity-based one. In other words, it takes both environmental economics and environmental management into account. Green human resource management, which has received a lot of attention in corporate organizations, may be used effectively to maintain green workplaces and green practices, which will help to green organizational culture. For businesses to achieve their environmental objectives, such as going green, green HRM is a crucial strategic tool. The results of this study indicate that practices like green hiring have an impact on the sustainable performance of both public and commercial healthcare organizations. Data were acquired using a quantitative research approach. 200 persons, including representatives of both public and private healthcare services, participated in the survey. Partial least squares-structural equation modelling was used to analyze the data. Hiring green candidates benefits the performance of the environment, the economy, and society as a whole. This research benefits organizations by assisting them in applying GHRM techniques that support organizations in every way. Additionally, this research will be helpful to policymakers because it will provide them a better understanding of how to promote GHRM practices and improve organizational sustainability

On the correlation between the oxygen in hydrogen content and the catalytic activity of cathode catalysts in PEM water electrolysis

Altogether five platinum group metal (PGM) and PGM-free cathode catalysts were investigated in full PEM water electrolysis cells regarding their polarisation behaviour and their hydrogen and oxygen recombination properties. It was shown that the recombination activity of permeated oxygen and evolved hydrogen within the cathodic catalyst layer correlates with the activity of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) which was determined ex situ with linear sweep voltammetry. We found that the investigated PGM-free cathode catalysts had a low activity for the ORR resulting in higher measurable oxygen in hydrogen volume fractions compared to the PGM catalysts, which are more active for the ORR. Out of the three investigated PGM-free catalysts, only one commercially available material based on a Ti suboxide showed a similar good polarisation behaviour as the state of the art cathode catalyst platinum, while its recombination activity was the lowest of all catalysts. In addition to the recombination of hydrogen and oxygen on the electrocatalysts, we found that the prevalent carbon-based cathodic porous transport layers (PTL) also offer catalytically active recombination sites. In comparison to an inactive PTL, the measurable oxygen flux using carbon-based PTLs was lower and the recombination was enhanced by microporous coatings with high surface areas. © 2021 The Author(s)

The Organizational, Professional and Social Condition Perceived by Novice Teachers

Part of the formation of teacher professional identity is caused by the organizational, professional and social condition perceived by novice teachers. An international collaboration project involving seven countries across African and Asian region was set up under the name of Group C African Asian Dialogue Project in order to survey professional identity among teachers in the respected countries. This article focused on the first dimension of the research collaboration endeavor which is to study the organizational, professional and social condition perceived by novice teachers in Bangladesh, Japan, Malaysia, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda and Vietnam. Novice teachers were chosen as the samples of the study as they are in the crucial position in coping with the transition from being considered as preservice teachers to in-service teachers. The challenges arise when they have to accommodate with what they have learnt in the classroom at the university with the challenges and the realities in the school setting to rationalize the significance of professional identities among the novice teachers. The findings of this study are reported based on the percentage response distribution of each items asked in the questionnaire. The results showed that there are some uniformity and variability on how novice teachers perceive their organizational, professional and social condition in the context of their professional identity.Group C: Teacher Professional Development・Work in this project was funded by a grant funded by Universiti Sains Malaysia, Research University Grant under the account number 1001/PGURU/816280. ・Work in this project was supported by The Network of the “Africa-Asia University Dialogue for Educational Development” (A-A Dialogue) ・This work was supported by the Vietnam National University, Hanoi research fund [grant number QG.16.85]

Harvey: A Greybox Fuzzer for Smart Contracts

We present Harvey, an industrial greybox fuzzer for smart contracts, which are programs managing accounts on a blockchain. Greybox fuzzing is a lightweight test-generation approach that effectively detects bugs and security vulnerabilities. However, greybox fuzzers randomly mutate program inputs to exercise new paths; this makes it challenging to cover code that is guarded by narrow checks, which are satisfied by no more than a few input values. Moreover, most real-world smart contracts transition through many different states during their lifetime, e.g., for every bid in an auction. To explore these states and thereby detect deep vulnerabilities, a greybox fuzzer would need to generate sequences of contract transactions, e.g., by creating bids from multiple users, while at the same time keeping the search space and test suite tractable. In this experience paper, we explain how Harvey alleviates both challenges with two key fuzzing techniques and distill the main lessons learned. First, Harvey extends standard greybox fuzzing with a method for predicting new inputs that are more likely to cover new paths or reveal vulnerabilities in smart contracts. Second, it fuzzes transaction sequences in a targeted and demand-driven way. We have evaluated our approach on 27 real-world contracts. Our experiments show that the underlying techniques significantly increase Harvey's effectiveness in achieving high coverage and detecting vulnerabilities, in most cases orders-of-magnitude faster; they also reveal new insights about contract code.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1807.0787

Post-stroke inhibition of induced NADPH oxidase type 4 prevents oxidative stress and neurodegeneration

Ischemic stroke is the second leading cause of death worldwide. Only one moderately effective therapy exists, albeit with contraindications that exclude 90% of the patients. This medical need contrasts with a high failure rate of more than 1,000 pre-clinical drug candidates for stroke therapies. Thus, there is a need for translatable mechanisms of neuroprotection and more rigid thresholds of relevance in pre-clinical stroke models. One such candidate mechanism is oxidative stress. However, antioxidant approaches have failed in clinical trials, and the significant sources of oxidative stress in stroke are unknown. We here identify NADPH oxidase type 4 (NOX4) as a major source of oxidative stress and an effective therapeutic target in acute stroke. Upon ischemia, NOX4 was induced in human and mouse brain. Mice deficient in NOX4 (Nox4(-/-)) of either sex, but not those deficient for NOX1 or NOX2, were largely protected from oxidative stress, blood-brain-barrier leakage, and neuronal apoptosis, after both transient and permanent cerebral ischemia. This effect was independent of age, as elderly mice were equally protected. Restoration of oxidative stress reversed the stroke-protective phenotype in Nox4(-/-) mice. Application of the only validated low-molecular-weight pharmacological NADPH oxidase inhibitor, VAS2870, several hours after ischemia was as protective as deleting NOX4. The extent of neuroprotection was exceptional, resulting in significantly improved long-term neurological functions and reduced mortality. NOX4 therefore represents a major source of oxidative stress and novel class of drug target for stroke therapy

A chromosome-length genome assembly and annotation of blackberry (Rubus argutus, cv. "Hillquist")

Blackberries (Rubus spp.) are the fourth most economically important berry crop worldwide. Genome assemblies and annotations have been developed for Rubus species in subgenus Idaeobatus, including black raspberry (R. occidentalis), red raspberry (R. idaeus), and R. chingii, but very few genomic resources exist for blackberries and their relatives in subgenus Rubus. Here we present a chromosome-length assembly and annotation of the diploid blackberry germplasm accession "Hillquist" (R. argutus). "Hillquist" is the only known source of primocane-fruiting (annual-fruiting) in tetraploid fresh-market blackberry breeding programs and is represented in the pedigree of many important cultivars worldwide. The "Hillquist" assembly, generated using Pacific Biosciences long reads scaffolded with high-throughput chromosome conformation capture sequencing, consisted of 298 Mb, of which 270 Mb (90%) was placed on 7 chromosome-length scaffolds with an average length of 38.6 Mb. Approximately 52.8% of the genome was composed of repetitive elements. The genome sequence was highly collinear with a novel maternal haplotype-resolved linkage map of the tetraploid blackberry selection A-2551TN and genome assemblies of R. chingii and red raspberry. A total of 38,503 protein-coding genes were predicted, of which 72% were functionally annotated. Eighteen flowering gene homologs within a previously mapped locus aligning to an 11.2 Mb region on chromosome Ra02 were identified as potential candidate genes for primocane-fruiting. The utility of the "Hillquist" genome has been demonstrated here by the development of the first genotyping-by-sequencing-based linkage map of tetraploid blackberry and the identification of possible candidate genes for primocane-fruiting. This chromosome-length assembly will facilitate future studies in Rubus biology, genetics, and genomics and strengthen applied breeding programs.Peer reviewe