Feedback as intervention for team learning in virtual teams: the role of team cohesion and personality

Scholars and practitioners agree that virtual teams (VTs) have become commonplace in today's digital workplace. Relevant literature argues that learning constitutes a significant contributor to team member satisfaction and performance, and that, at least in face-to-face teams, team cohesion fosters team learning. Given the additional challenges VTs face, e.g. geographical dispersion, which are likely have a negative influence on cohesion, in this paper we shed light on the relationship between team cohesion and team learning. We adopted a quantitative approach and studied 54 VTs in our quest to understand the role of feedback in mediating this relationship and, more specifically, the role of personality traits in moderating the indirect effect of team feedback and guided reflection intervention on TL through team cohesion within the VT context. Our findings highlight the importance of considering aspects related to the team composition when devising intervention strategies for VTs, and provide empirical support for an interactionist model between personality and emergent states such as cohesion. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed

Rapid progress on the vertebrate tree of life

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Among the greatest challenges for biology in the 21st century is inference of the tree of life. Interest in, and progress toward, this goal has increased dramatically with the growing availability of molecular sequence data. However, we have very little sense, for any major clade, of how much progress has been made in resolving a full tree of life and the scope of work that remains. A series of challenges stand in the way of completing this task but, at the most basic level, progress is limited by data: a limited fraction of the world's biodiversity has been incorporated into a phylogenetic analysis. More troubling is our poor understanding of what fraction of the tree of life is understood and how quickly research is adding to this knowledge. Here we measure the rate of progress on the tree of life for one clade of particular research interest, the vertebrates.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using an automated phylogenetic approach, we analyse all available molecular data for a large sample of vertebrate diversity, comprising nearly 12,000 species and 210,000 sequences. Our results indicate that progress has been rapid, increasing polynomially during the age of molecular systematics. It is also skewed, with birds and mammals receiving the most attention and marine organisms accumulating far fewer data and a slower rate of increase in phylogenetic resolution than terrestrial taxa. We analyse the contributors to this phylogenetic progress and make recommendations for future work.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our analyses suggest that a large majority of the vertebrate tree of life will: (1) be resolved within the next few decades; (2) identify specific data collection strategies that may help to spur future progress; and (3) identify branches of the vertebrate tree of life in need of increased research effort.</p

Gender Differences in Carbohydrate Metabolism and Carbohydrate Loading

Prior to endurance competition, many endurance athletes participate in a carbohydrate loading regimen in order to help delay the onset of fatigue. The "classic" regimen generally includes an intense glycogen depleting training period of approximately two days followed by a glycogen loading period for 3–4 days, ingesting approximately 60–70% of total energy intake as carbohydrates, while the newer method does not consist of an intense glycogen depletion protocol. However, recent evidence has indicated that glycogen loading does not occur in the same manner for males and females, thus affecting performance. The scope of this literature review will include a brief description of the role of estradiol in relation to metabolism and gender differences seen in carbohydrate metabolism and loading

Assessing the Value of DNA Barcodes and Other Priority Gene Regions for Molecular Phylogenetics of Lepidoptera

BACKGROUND: Despite apparently abundant amounts of observable variation and species diversity, the order Lepidoptera exhibits a morphological homogeneity that has provided only a limited number of taxonomic characters and led to widespread use of nucleotides for inferring relationships. This study aims to characterize and develop methods to quantify the value of priority gene regions designated for Lepidoptera molecular systematics. In particular, I assess how the DNA barcode segment of the mitochondrial COI gene performs across a broad temporal range given its number one position of priority, most sequenced status, and the conflicting opinions on its phylogenetic performance. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Gene regions commonly sequenced for lepidoptera phylogenetics were scored using multiple measures across three categories: practicality, which includes universality of primers and sequence quality; phylogenetic utility; and phylogenetic signal. I found that alternative measures within a category often appeared correlated, but high scores in one category did not necessarily translate into high scores in another. The DNA barcode was easier to sequence than other genes, and had high scores for utility but low signal above the genus level. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Given limited financial resources and time constraints, careful selection of gene regions for molecular phylogenetics is crucial to avoid wasted effort producing partially informative data. This study introduces an approach to assessing the value of gene regions prior to the initiation of new studies and presents empirical results to help guide future selections

Introduced Mammalian Predators Induce Behavioural Changes in Parental Care in an Endemic New Zealand Bird

The introduction of predatory mammals to oceanic islands has led to the extinction of many endemic birds. Although introduced predators should favour changes that reduce predation risk in surviving bird species, the ability of island birds to respond to such novel changes remains unstudied. We tested whether novel predation risk imposed by introduced mammalian predators has altered the parental behaviour of the endemic New Zealand bellbird (Anthornis melanura). We examined parental behaviour of bellbirds at three woodland sites in New Zealand that differed in predation risk: 1) a mainland site with exotic predators present (high predation risk), 2) a mainland site with exotic predators experimentally removed (low risk recently) and, 3) an off-shore island where exotic predators were never introduced (low risk always). We also compared parental behaviour of bellbirds with two closely related Tasmanian honeyeaters (Phylidonyris spp.) that evolved with native nest predators (high risk always). Increased nest predation risk has been postulated to favour reduced parental activity, and we tested whether island bellbirds responded to variation in predation risk. We found that females spent more time on the nest per incubating bout with increased risk of predation, a strategy that minimised activity at the nest during incubation. Parental activity during the nestling period, measured as number of feeding visits/hr, also decreased with increasing nest predation risk across sites, and was lowest among the honeyeaters in Tasmania that evolved with native predators. These results demonstrate that some island birds are able to respond to increased risk of predation by novel predators in ways that appear adaptive. We suggest that conservation efforts may be more effective if they take advantage of the ability of island birds to respond to novel predators, especially when the elimination of exotic predators is not possible

The taming of an impossible child: a standardized all-in approach to the phylogeny of Hymenoptera using public database sequences

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Enormous molecular sequence data have been accumulated over the past several years and are still exponentially growing with the use of faster and cheaper sequencing techniques. There is high and widespread interest in using these data for phylogenetic analyses. However, the amount of data that one can retrieve from public sequence repositories is virtually impossible to tame without dedicated software that automates processes. Here we present a novel bioinformatics pipeline for downloading, formatting, filtering and analyzing public sequence data deposited in GenBank. It combines some well-established programs with numerous newly developed software tools (available at <url>http://software.zfmk.de/</url>).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We used the bioinformatics pipeline to investigate the phylogeny of the megadiverse insect order Hymenoptera (sawflies, bees, wasps and ants) by retrieving and processing more than 120,000 sequences and by selecting subsets under the criteria of compositional homogeneity and defined levels of density and overlap. Tree reconstruction was done with a partitioned maximum likelihood analysis from a supermatrix with more than 80,000 sites and more than 1,100 species. In the inferred tree, consistent with previous studies, "Symphyta" is paraphyletic. Within Apocrita, our analysis suggests a topology of Stephanoidea + (Ichneumonoidea + (Proctotrupomorpha + (Evanioidea + Aculeata))). Despite the huge amount of data, we identified several persistent problems in the Hymenoptera tree. Data coverage is still extremely low, and additional data have to be collected to reliably infer the phylogeny of Hymenoptera.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>While we applied our bioinformatics pipeline to Hymenoptera, we designed the approach to be as general as possible. With this pipeline, it is possible to produce phylogenetic trees for any taxonomic group and to monitor new data and tree robustness in a taxon of interest. It therefore has great potential to meet the challenges of the phylogenomic era and to deepen our understanding of the tree of life.</p

Citizenship Norms in Eastern Europe

Research on Eastern Europe stresses the weakness of its civil society and the lack of political and social involvement, neglecting the question: What do people themselves think it means to be a good citizen? This study looks at citizens’ definitions of good citizenship in Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, using 2002 European Social Survey data. We investigate mean levels of civic mindedness in these countries and perform regression analyses to investigate whether factors traditionally associated with civic and political participation are also correlated with citizenship norms across Eastern Europe. We show that mean levels of civic mindedness differ significantly across the four Eastern European countries. We find some support for theories on civic and political participation when explaining norms of citizenship, but also demonstrate that individual-level characteristics are differently related to citizenship norms across the countries of our study. Hence, our findings show that Eastern Europe is not a monolithic and homogeneous bloc, underscoring the importance of taking the specificities of countries into account

Raman Spectroscopy and Regenerative Medicine: A Review

The field of regenerative medicine spans a wide area of the biomedical landscape—from single cell culture in laboratories to human whole-organ transplantation. To ensure that research is transferrable from bench to bedside, it is critical that we are able to assess regenerative processes in cells, tissues, organs and patients at a biochemical level. Regeneration relies on a large number of biological factors, which can be perturbed using conventional bioanalytical techniques. A versatile, non-invasive, non-destructive technique for biochemical analysis would be invaluable for the study of regeneration; and Raman spectroscopy is a potential solution. Raman spectroscopy is an analytical method by which chemical data are obtained through the inelastic scattering of light. Since its discovery in the 1920s, physicists and chemists have used Raman scattering to investigate the chemical composition of a vast range of both liquid and solid materials. However, only in the last two decades has this form of spectroscopy been employed in biomedical research. Particularly relevant to regenerative medicine are recent studies illustrating its ability to characterise and discriminate between healthy and disease states in cells, tissue biopsies and in patients. This review will briefly outline the principles behind Raman spectroscopy and its variants, describe key examples of its applications to biomedicine, and consider areas of regenerative medicine that would benefit from this non-invasive bioanalytical tool