Effectiveness of virtual team learning in entrepreneurship education: a survey study

This study examines the effectiveness of virtual team learning for entrepreneurship competence in the Chinese higher education sector. Related research on the effectiveness of virtual team learning is sparse, especially in the area of entrepreneurship education. We assumed four hypotheses to analyze two sorts of relationships: one between input, respondents’ demographics or characteristics, and mediators, namely virtual teamwork, virtual taskwork, information and communication technology; the other between mediators and output, thus the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. An online survey was carried out to collect respondents’ perceptions of virtual team learning in entrepreneurship education from teamwork, taskwork, and information and communication technology aspects, considering respondents’ demographics or characteristics. By explaining factors of the team process, the findings show that virtual teamwork, taskwork, and information and communication technology positively affect the entrepreneurial outcome of virtual team learning. Additionally, individual characteristics, including gender, education degree, education field, entrepreneurial family history, and prior entrepreneurial experience have different effects on three elements of virtual teams. The applied model provides a holistic perspective on virtual team learning and explains the association between three sectors. These findings may provide an empirical basis for making decisions in the design and development of entrepreneurship learning and teaching offerings

Product schema integration in an agent-based electronic commerce system

The ABECOS (Agent-Based Electronic COmmerce System) project investigates issues in building an infrastructure for a large scale, distributed, agent-based electronic commerce system in which buyer and seller agents liaise with one another to facilitate electronic commerce transactions. In such a system, a buyer agent is interested in purchasing a product from one or more seller agents. However, the heterogeneity of product descriptions is an impediment to successful interactions among agents. Only when agents have a common ontology of product description structures (also called product schemas) are they able to engage correctly in electronic commerce activities. This gives rise to the problem of Product Schema Integration (PSI); to integrate heterogeneous schemas of a certain product type into one globally compatible schema. In this work, we address this problem in the context of the ABECOS system. We divide PSI into two sub-problems set schema integration and tree schema integration, and present a formal definition of each sub-problem and show that they are NP-complete. Then, we propose a set of approximation algorithms for PSI and evaluate their performance experimentally. In addition, we address issues in integrated schema maintenance andxMaster of Applied Scienc

In Situ Stress Distribution and Its Control on the Coalbed Methane Reservoir Permeability in Liulin Area, Eastern Ordos Basin, China

Permeability is one of the important factors that affect the production efficiency of coalbed methane, and it is mainly controlled by in situ stress. Therefore, it is very essential to study the in situ stress and permeability for the extraction of coalbed methane. Based on the injection/falloff well test and in situ stress measurement of 35 coalbed methane wells in the Liulin area in the east of the Ordos basin, the correlations between initial reservoir pressure, in situ stress, lateral stress coefficient, permeability, and burial depth were determined. Finally, the distribution characteristics of in situ stress and its influence on permeability were analyzed systematically. The results show that with the increase of burial depth, the initial reservoir pressure and in situ stress both increase, while the lateral stress coefficient decreases. The permeability variation is related to the type of stress field in different burial depths, and its essence is the deformation and destruction of coal pore structures caused by stress. The distribution characteristics of in situ stress at different depths and its effect on permeability are as follows: at depthsσh) and the permeability is a simple decreasing process with the increase of the depth; at depths>800 m, the vertical stress is dominant (σv≥σH>σh). The permeability of most coal is very small due to the large in situ stresses in this depth zone. However, because of the stress release at the syncline axis, coal with high permeability is still possible at this depth zone. Due to the existence of high permeability data points at burial depth (>800 m) and the fitting relationship between permeability and vertical stress, the maximum and minimum horizontal principal stress is poor. However, the coal permeability and lateral stress coefficient show a good negative exponential relationship. This indicates that the lateral stress coefficient can be used to predict permeability better

Complete Genomic Sequence of <i>Xanthomonas oryzae</i> pv. <i>oryzae</i> Strain, LA20, for Studying Resurgence of Rice Bacterial Blight in the Yangtze River Region, China

Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) is a causative agent of rice bacterial blight (BB). In 2020–2022, BB re-emerged, and there was a break out in the Yangtze River area, China. The pandemic Xoo strain, LA20, was isolated and identified from cultivar Quanyou1606 and demonstrated to be the Chinese R9 Xoo strain, which is able to override the widely adopted xa5-, Xa7- and xa13-mediated resistance in rice varieties in Yangtze River. Here, we report the complete genome of LA20 by PacBio and Illumina sequencing. The assembled genome consists of one circular chromosome of 4,960,087 bp, sharing 99.65% sequence identity with the traditional representative strain, YC11 (R5), in the Yangtze River. Comparative genome analysis of LA20 and YC11 revealed the obvious variability in Tal genes (the uppermost virulence determinants) in numbers and sequences. Particularly, six Tal genes were only found in LA20, but not in YC11, among which Tal1b (pthXo1)/Tal4 (pthXo6), along with the lost one, pthXo3 (avrXa7), might be the major factors for LA20 to overcome xa5-, Xa7- and xa13-mediated resistance, thus, leading to the resurgence of BB. This complete genome of the new pandemic Xoo strain will provide novel insights into pathogen evolution, the traits of pathogenicity on genomic level and the epidemic disease status in China

Development and validation of a simple and noninvasive method for salivary uric acid: potential applications for monitoring the salivary uric acid level in healthy volunteers and gout patients

Serum uric acid (UA) is a traditional biomarker in the clinical diagnosis of gout and hyperuricemia. However, serum treatment and storage are cumbersome, and wounds are susceptible to infection. Therefore, in this study, a simple and noninvasive method was developed to detect the UA in human saliva to monitor the gout. An Inertsil ODS-3 column was used for the analysis under the condition of isocratic elution with the mixed solution phosphate buffer (74 mM, pH=2.2): Methanol=98:2 (v:v) and the UV detection at 284 nm. Using salivary UA data from healthy volunteers (HVs) (n=68) and gout patients (GPs) (n=14), we examined the salivary UA difference in their content. The intra-and inter-day accuracy and precision (RSD %) were less than 2.56%, the limit of detection (LOD) of UA was 5.0 ng/mL, the mean recoveries of the corresponding compounds were 102.48%. Saliva levels of UA in HVs and GPs were 35.26±14.06 µg/mL and 91.96±23.90 µg/mL, respectively. The concentrations of salivary UA in GPs were significantly higher than those in HVs (&nbsp;p&nbsp;&lt; 0.001). This method was also expected to monitor the hyperuricemia and other metabolic disorders in the future

The role of oxygen-increased respirator in humans ascending to high altitude

Abstract Background Acute mountain sickness (AMS) is common for people who live in low altitude areas ascending to the high altitude. Many instruments have been developed to treat mild cases of AMS. However, long-lasting and portable anti-hypoxia equipment for individual is not yet available. Methods Oxygen-increased respirator (OIR) has been designed to reduce the risk of acute mountain sickness in acute exposure to low air pressure. It can increase the density of oxygen by increasing total atmospheric pressure in a mask. Male subjects were screened, and eighty-eight were qualified to perform the experiments. The subjects were divided into 5 groups and were involved in some of the tests at 4 different altitudes (Group 1, 2: 3700 m; Group 3,4,5: 4000 m, 4700 m, 5380 m) with and without OIR. These tests include heart rate, saturation of peripheral oxygen (SpO2), malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD), blood lactate (BLA) and PWC (physical work capacity) -170. Results The results showed that higher SpO2, lower heart rate (except during exercise) and better recovery of heart rate were observed from all the subjects ’with OIR’ compared with ’without OIR’ (P Conclusions We suggested that OIR may play a useful role in protecting people ascending to high altitude before acclimatization.</p