Hierarchical Structure Analysis Research Articles

Sustainability of Organizations: The Contribution of Personal Values to Democratic Leadership Behavior Focused on the Sustainability of Organizations

The main purpose of this study was to examine the influence of leaders’ personal values on their democratic behavior from a sustainability perspective. We specified and tested the research model, drawing upon modified versions of the theory of basic values and the autocratic–democratic leadership continuum. A total of 208 Slovenian and 196 Austrian leaders’ responses were used in hierarchical regression and structural equation modeling analysis. The results reveal a significant and positive influence of collectivistic values in both samples on democratic leadership behavior. A significant and negative effect of individualistic values on democratic leadership behavior is present in Austria, while in Slovenia, the effect is positive but not significant. Based on acknowledged associations between leader’s values, leaders’ democratic leadership behavior, and sustainable development, we argue that democratic leadership behavior contributes to the sustainable working and behavior of organizations. These results have theoretical implications, indicating how personal values affect leaders’ democratic behavior and contribute to the sustainable working and behavior of organizations. The practical implications relate to the strengthening of leaders’ democratic behavior in Slovenian and Austrian organizations. In addition, these findings will be helpful in increasing the sustainability of organizations via fostering democratic leadership behavior and its underlying personal values.

Numerical analysis of the biomimetic leaf-type hierarchical porous structure to improve the energy storage efficiency of solar driven steam methane reforming

Due the energy resource comes from solar energy, resulting in a high working temperature, radiation field has a significant influence on the energy storage efficiency of the high temperature solar thermochemistry. In order to promote the solar energy conversion efficiency of solar driven steam methane reforming (SMR), the idea of regulate the radiation field to be in accordance with the energy conversion on-demand is proposed and the biomimetic leaf-type hierarchical porous structure solar thermochemical reactor is introduced, which can regulate the spatial distribution of solar radiation intensity and optimize the temperature field. Combined with thermochemical kinetics and Finite Volume Method (FVM), the numerical calculation model of the SMR reaction in a biomimetic solar thermochemical reactor is established to optimize the temperature field. The effects of different reaction conditions and reactor parameters on steam methane reforming hydrogen production are analyzed. The results show that methane conversion in the biomimetic leaf-type solar thermochemical reactor is increased by 4.5%.

Recognition and applications of hierarchical domain structural analysis for synthetic carbons

Recognition and applications of hierarchical domain structural analysis for synthetic carbons

Analysis of Hierarchical Structure and Reaction in Polymer Composites— Part V

Analysis of Hierarchical Structure and Reaction in Polymer Composites— Part V

Analysis of hierarchical structure of nano composites and its applications for reusable of NM materials

In this study, VCrO4-TiO2 NM has been successfully prepared by Co-precipitation method with sonication technique. This NM was characterized by High-resolution scanning electron microscopy (HR-SEM) with elementary dispersive X-ray (EDX), High- resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) &XRD analysis. The HR-SEM images exposed the nano flower structure, EDX studied that Ti, V, O &Cr were conformed this material. The HR-TEM images indicated a spherical in framework. The NMCrO4-TiO2 was high antibacterial & photo catalytic activity, which is of TiO2 on the Rhoda mine B (Rh B) dye, to be this material has been reusable &stable. The NM is used in company water pollutant wastes & several companies of manufacturing; medicinal application &high electro chemical activity was reported.

Analysis of Hierarchical Structure of Rubber using Small Angle X-ray Scattering

Analysis of Hierarchical Structure of Rubber using Small Angle X-ray Scattering

Analysis of Hierarchical Structure of Silica Aggregates in Rubber Compound using X-ray Computed Tomography Imaging and Ultra Small Angle X-ray Scattering

Analysis of Hierarchical Structure of Silica Aggregates in Rubber Compound using X-ray Computed Tomography Imaging and Ultra Small Angle X-ray Scattering

COPRICSI: COnstraint-PRogrammed Initial Circuit SIzing

This paper presents a new method to automate the sizing of analog circuits. The method emulates the manual design procedure. The sizing task is formulated as a constraint programming problem. Two new algorithms are introduced: First, a hierarchical structural analysis of functional blocks that automatically sets up the analytical equations for the sizing. And second, a heuristic to guide the branching process of a constraint programming solver. We achieve a reproduction of the manual proceeding of designers and at the same time an automation of the set-up of the design problem, reducing the set-up effort to seconds. The method is primarily designed for operational amplifiers. More than 20 circuits, including different variants of two-stage, folded-cascode, telescopic and symmetrical op-amps, are considered at this time. This paper presents a runtime comparison of the newly developed branching heuristic with a generic branching heuristic on 20 different circuits. Furthermore, sizing results for a two-stage op-amp with transistors in weak inversion and a folded-cascode op-amp with common-mode feedback circuit are presented to show the effectiveness of the approach.

Technology adoption in mining: A multi-criteria method to select emerging technology in surface mines

The integration of technologies across the mining value chain is becoming critical, and it is crucial to identify the best possible technologies applicable to an operation, based on the chosen criteria. This study investigates the adoptable technologies for a mining project, develops a conceptual framework for the analytical process and validates the framework using a hypothetical case study. The case study comprised of a technology decision problem, the result of which consisted of six technology alternatives, four criteria, and one decision maker.Of the several Multi-Criterial Decision Making (MCDM) techniques available, the fusion of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and preference ranking organisation method of enrichment (PROMETHEE) techniques were used for this study. The AHP was used to determine the hierarchal weight of each decision-making criterion and its consistency, while the PROMETHEE method was used to carry out the overall process evaluation. Additionally, the fuzzy set theory was infused into the hierarchical structure analysis to evaluate the quantitative economic criterion to curb uncertainty and imprecision. The results of the analysis show that the technology alternative A3 – Artificial Intelligence (AI) – is the most preferred alternative, which outranks other comparative technologies. The approach proposed in this study can help provide the basis for any technology adopting mining company to build its technology business case, strategy and or roadmap to achieve the desired outcome.

HisCoM-G×E: Hierarchical Structural Component Analysis of Gene-Based Gene-Environment Interactions.

Gene–environment interaction (G×E) studies are one of the most important solutions for understanding the “missing heritability” problem in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Although many statistical methods have been proposed for detecting and identifying G×E, most employ single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-level analysis. In this study, we propose a new statistical method, Hierarchical structural CoMponent analysis of gene-based Gene–Environment interactions (HisCoM-G×E). HisCoM-G×E is based on the hierarchical structural relationship among all SNPs within a gene, and can accommodate all possible SNP-level effects into a single latent variable, by imposing a ridge penalty, and thus more efficiently takes into account the latent interaction term of G×E. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated in simulation studies, and we applied the proposed method to investigate gene–alcohol intake interactions affecting systolic blood pressure (SBP), using samples from the Korea Associated REsource (KARE) consortium data.

A medical network clustering method with weighted graph structure

Today, most of the databases used for drug information mining are derived from the collection of many treatments under a single disease, and some special drug compatibility rules can be found from them. However, researchers’ exploration of medical data is not limited to this. The comparative analysis of drugs for different diseases has become a new research point. In this paper, the drug is used as a node, the relationship is the edge connecting the two nodes, the co-occurrence frequency of the drug is used as the weight of the edge to establish a network graph. We use the clustering algorithm of the weighted network graph center diffusion method combining the network topology and the edge weights to divide the network graph into communities. Then we proposed the Structural Clustering Algorithm on Weighted Networks (SCW), it helps to study the prescription of medical prescriptions and provides more scientific recommendations for auxiliary prescriptions. In the experiment, SCW is compared with the classic community discovery algorithm CPM, the network function modular analysis algorithm MCODE and the hierarchical network graph structure analysis algorithm BGLL. We analyze the results according to NMI, ARI and F-Measure. Finally, a case study of real data was conducted to ensure the correctness and effectiveness of the algorithm, and to obtain the potential drug combination in the medical prescription.

Social Support and Well-Being of Chinese Special Education Teachers-An Emotional Labor Perspective.

Due to their high expectations, teachers often hide their real emotions and play a role that conforms to public expectations of educational work. Special education teachers face a group of students with physical and mental disabilities who have high heterogeneity and require individualized services every day. Using social support theory, this study discusses special education teachers’ emotional labor and well-being. A total of 439 special education teachers in China participated in this study. We collected data at two different time-points and verified the research hypotheses with hierarchical regression and structural equation modeling analysis. The research findings show the mediating role of emotional labor in social support and well-being. It is, therefore, suggested that schools should pay more attention to special education teachers’ mental health and provide them with regular guidance and support.

The East Asian Winter Monsoon Acts as a Major Selective Factor in the Intraspecific Differentiation of Drought-Tolerant Nitraria tangutorum in Northwest China.

The influence of Quaternary climate fluctuation on the geographical structure and genetic diversity of species distributed in the regions of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) has been well established. However, the underlying role of the East Asian monsoon system (EAMS) in shaping the genetic structure of the population and the demography of plants located in the arid northwest of China has not been explored. In the present study, Nitraria tangutorum, a drought-tolerant desert shrub that is distributed in the EAMS zone and has substantial ecological and economic value, was profiled to better understand the influence of EAMS evolution on its biogeographical patterns and demographic history. Thus, the phylogeographical structure and historical dynamics of this plant species were elucidated using its five chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) fragments. Hierarchical structure analysis revealed three distinct, divergent lineages: West, East-A, and East-B. The molecular dating was carried out using a Bayesian approach to estimate the time of intraspecies divergence. Notably, the eastern region, which included East-A and East-B lineages, was revealed to be the original center of distribution and was characterized by a high level of genetic diversity, with the intraspecific divergence time dated to be around 2.53 million years ago (Ma). These findings, combined with the data obtained by ecological niche modeling analysis, indicated that the East lineages have undergone population expansion and differentiation, which were closely correlated with the development of the EAMS, especially the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM). The West lineage appears to have originated from the migration of N. tangutorum across the Hexi corridor at around 1.85 Ma, and subsequent colonization of the western region. These results suggest that the EAWM accelerated the population expansion of N. tangutorum and subsequent intraspecific differentiation. These findings collectively provide new information on the impact of the evolution of the EAMS on intraspecific diversification and population demography of drought-tolerant plant species in northwest China.

Uncertainty analysis of hierarchical granular structures for multi-granulation typical hesitant fuzzy approximation space

Hierarchical structures and uncertainty measures are two main aspects in granular computing, approximate reasoning and cognitive process. Typical hesitant fuzzy sets, as a prime extension of fuzzy sets, are more flexible to reflect the hesitance and ambiguity in knowledge representation and decision making. In this paper, we mainly investigate the hierarchical structures and uncertainty measures in typical hesitant fuzzy backgrounds. Firstly, we propose the parameterized scalar cardinalities of typical hesitant fuzzy elements, typical hesitant fuzzy sets and typical hesitant fuzzy relations based on a more reasonable partial orders with a disjunctive semantic meaning, respectively, where the parameters represent the decision makers' risk preferences. Secondly, we present four ordered relations for typical hesitant fuzzy space and four uncertainty measures to characterize the ambiguity in typical hesitant fuzzy approximation space and discuss their relationships. Thirdly, the hierarchical structures of a multi-granulation typical hesitant fuzzy space are analyzed by various multi-granulation typical hesitant fuzzy knowledge bases. In addition, we construct the framework of multi-granulation typical hesitant fuzzy rough sets in terms of optimistic and pessimistic attitudes. Finally, we study the uncertainty measures for the multi-granulation typical hesitant fuzzy approximation space based on the maximal and minimal knowledge bases, respectively.

Genome-wide analysis of diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella L., from Brassica crops and wild host plants reveals no genetic structure in Australia

Molecular studies of population structure can reveal insight into the movement patterns of mobile insect pests in agricultural landscapes. The diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella L., a destructive pest of Brassica vegetable and oilseed crops worldwide, seasonally colonizes winter canola crops in southern Australia from alternative host plant sources. To investigate movement, we collected 59 P. xylostella populations from canola crops, Brassica vegetable and forage crops and brassicaceous wild host plants throughout southern Australia in 2014 and 2015 and genotyped 833 individuals using RAD-seq for genome-wide analysis. Despite a geographic sampling scale > 3,000 km and a statistically powerful set of 1,032 SNP markers, there was no genetic differentiation among P. xylostella populations irrespective of geographic location, host plant or sampling year, and no evidence for isolation-by-distance. Hierarchical STRUCTURE analysis at K = 2–5 showed nearly uniform ancestry in both years. Cluster analysis showed divergence of a small number of individuals at several locations, possibly reflecting an artefact of sampling related individuals. It is likely that genetic homogeneity within Australian P. xylostella largely reflects the recent colonization history of this species but is maintained through some level of present gene flow. Use of genome-wide neutral markers was uninformative for revealing the seasonal movements of P. xylostella within Australia, but may provide more insight in other global regions where the species has higher genetic diversity.

Genotyping-in-Thousands by sequencing reveals marked population structure in Western Rattlesnakes to inform conservation status.

Delineation of units below the species level is critical for prioritizing conservation actions for species at‐risk. Genetic studies play an important role in characterizing patterns of population connectivity and diversity to inform the designation of conservation units, especially for populations that are geographically isolated. The northernmost range margin of Western Rattlesnakes (Crotalus oreganus) occurs in British Columbia, Canada, where it is federally classified as threatened and restricted to five geographic regions. In these areas, Western Rattlesnakes hibernate (den) communally, raising questions about connectivity within and between den complexes. At present, Western Rattlesnake conservation efforts are hindered by a complete lack of information on genetic structure and degree of isolation at multiple scales, from the den to the regional level. To fill this knowledge gap, we used Genotyping‐in‐Thousands by sequencing (GT‐seq) to genotype an optimized panel of 362 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from individual samples (n = 461) collected across the snake's distribution in western Canada and neighboring Washington (USA). Hierarchical STRUCTURE analyses found evidence for population structure within and among the five geographic regions in BC, as well as in Washington. Within these regions, 11 genetically distinct complexes of dens were identified, with some regions having multiple complexes. No significant pattern of isolation‐by‐distance and generally low levels of migration were detected among den complexes across regions. Additionally, snakes within dens generally were more related than those among den complexes within a region, indicating limited movement. Overall, our results suggest that the single, recognized designatable unit for Western Rattlesnakes in Canada should be re‐assessed to proactively focus conservation efforts on preserving total genetic variation detected range‐wide. More broadly, our study demonstrates a novel application of GT‐seq for investigating patterns of diversity in wild populations at multiple scales to better inform conservation management.

HisCoM-PCA: software for hierarchical structural component analysis for pathway analysis based using principal component analysis.

In genome-wide association studies, pathway-based analysis has been widely performed to enhance interpretation of single-nucleotide polymorphism association results. We proposed a novel method of hierarchical structural component model (HisCoM) for pathway analysis of common variants (HisCoM for pathway analysis of common variants [HisCoM-PCA]) which was used to identify pathways associated with traits. HisCoM-PCA is based on principal component analysis (PCA) for dimensional reduction of single nucleotide polymorphisms in each gene, and the HisCoM for pathway analysis. In this study, we developed a HisCoM-PCA software for the hierarchical pathway analysis of common variants. HisCoM-PCA software has several features. Various principle component scores selection criteria in PCA step can be specified by users who want to summarize common variants at each gene-level by different threshold values. In addition, multiple public pathway databases and customized pathway information can be used to perform pathway analysis. We expect that HisCoM-PCA software will be useful for users to perform powerful pathway analysis.

Depicting More Information in Enriched Squarified Treemaps with Layered Glyphs

The Treemap is one of the most relevant information visualization (InfoVis) techniques to support the analysis of large hierarchical data structures or data clusters. Despite that, Treemap still presents some challenges for data representation, such as the few options for visual data mappings and the inability to represent zero and negative values. Additionally, visualizing high dimensional data requires many hierarchies, which can impair data visualization. Thus, this paper proposes to add layered glyphs to Treemap’s items to mitigate these issues. Layered glyphs are composed of N partially visible layers, and each layer maps one data dimension to a visual variable. Since the area of the upper layers is always smaller than the bottom ones, the layers can be stacked to compose a multidimensional glyph. To validate this proposal, we conducted a user study to compare three scenarios of visual data mappings for Treemaps: only Glyphs (G), Glyphs and Hierarchy (GH), and only Hierarchy (H). Thirty-six volunteers with a background in InfoVis techniques, organized into three groups of twelve (one group per scenario), performed 8 InfoVis tasks using only one of the proposed scenarios. The results point that scenario GH presented the best accuracy while having a task-solving time similar to scenario H, which suggests that representing more data in Treemaps with layered glyphs enriched the Treemap visualization capabilities without impairing the data readability.

Common barriers, but temporal dissonance: Genomic tests suggest ecological and paleo-landscape sieves structure a coastal riverine fish community.

Assessments of spatial and temporal congruency across taxa from genetic data provide insights into the extent to which similar processes structure communities. However, for coastal regions that are affected continuously by cyclical sea-level changes over the Pleistocene, congruent interspecific response will not only depend upon codistributions, but also on similar dispersal histories among taxa. Here, we use SNPs to test for concordant genetic structure among four codistributed taxa of freshwater fishes (Teleostei: Characidae) along the Brazilian Atlantic coastal drainages. Based on population relationships and hierarchical genetic structure analyses, we identify all taxa share the same geographic structure suggesting the fish utilized common passages in the past to move between river basins. In contrast to this strong spatial concordance, model-based estimates of divergence times indicate that despite common routes for dispersal, these passages were traversed by each of the taxa at different times resulting in varying degrees of genetic differentiation across barriers with most divergences dating to the Upper Pleistocene, even when accounting for divergence with gene flow. Interestingly, when this temporal dissonance is viewed through the lens of the species-specific ecologies, it suggests that an ecological sieve influenced whether species dispersed readily, with an ecological generalist showing the highest propensity for historical dispersal among the isolated rivers of the Brazilian coast (i.e., the most recent divergence times and frequent gene flow estimated for barriers). We discuss how our findings, and in particular what the temporal dissonance, despite common geographic passages, suggest about past dispersal structuring coastal communities as a function of ecological and paleo-landscape sieves.

Analysis of hierarchical wrinkle structure generated in thin film on winkler spring substrate

The buckling deformation of a structure consisting of a soft substrate and a hard thin film induces autonomous formation of a fine periodic structure represented by wrinkles. In recent years, a hierarchical wrinkle structure in which wrinkles with different periods are superimposed has attracted attention, and its engineering application is expected. However, no methodology has been established for structural control. In this study, we investigate the mechanism of autonomous formation of hierarchical wrinkle structure using thin film-winkle spring substrate system.