High-level Structure Research Articles

Profiles of teachers’ need-support: How do autonomy support, structure, and involvement cohere and predict motivation and learning outcomes?

According to Self-Determination Theory, need-supportive teaching fosters students’ motivation. The present study examined the interplay between the three dimensions of need support: autonomy support, structure, and involvement. Using both student and teacher-reports (N = 287 Grade 7 students), configurations of need support were examined with Latent Profile Analyses. Balanced profiles were identified based on student reports (low, moderate, or high need support), while unbalanced profiles were identified based on student-specific teacher-reports. Higher levels of need support were associated with more motivation and achievement, while high levels of teacher-reported structure and involvement could not compensate for a lack of teacher-reported autonomy support.

The primary, secondary, and structures of higher levels of pectin polysaccharides.

Pectin is a heteropolysaccharide abundant in the cell wall of plants and is obtained mainly from fruit (citrus and apple), thus its properties are particularly prone to changes occurring during ripening process. Properties of pectin depend on the string-like structure (conformation, stiffness) of the molecules that determines their mutual interaction and with the surrounding environment. Therefore, in this review the primary, secondary, and structures of higher levels of pectin chains are discussed in relation to external factors including crosslinking mechanisms. The review shows that the primary structure of pectin is relatively well known, however, we still know little about the conformation and properties of the more realistic systems of higher orders involving side chains, functional groups, and complexes of pectin domains. In particular, there is lack of knowledge on the influence of postharvest changes and extraction method on the primary and secondary structure of pectin that would affect conformation in a given environment and assembly to higher structural levels. Exploring the above-mentioned issues will allow to improve our understanding of pectin functionality and will help to tailor new functionalities for the food industry based on natural but often biologically variable source. The review also demonstrates that atomic force microscopy is a very convenient and adequate tool for the evaluation of pectin conformation since it allows for the relatively straightforward stretching of the pectin molecule in order to measure the force-extension curve which is directly related to its stiffness or flexibility.

Associations between music training and the dynamics of writing music by hand

Learning to write music in the staff notation used in Western classical music is part of a musician’s training. However, writing music by hand is rarely taught formally, and many musicians are not aware of the characteristics of their musical handwriting. As with any symbolic expression, musical handwriting is related to the underlying cognition of the musical structures being depicted. Trained musicians read, think, and play music with high-level structures in mind. It seems natural that they would also write music by hand with these structures in mind. Moreover, improving our understanding of handwriting may help to improve both optical music recognition and music notation and composition interfaces. We investigated associations between music training and experience, and the way people write music by hand. We made video recordings of participants’ hands while they were copying or freely writing music, and analysed the sequence in which they wrote the elements contained in the musical score. The results confirmed experienced musicians wrote faster than beginners, were more likely to write chords from bottom to top, and they tended to write the note heads first, in a flowing fashion, and only afterwards use stems and beams to emphasize grouping, and add expressive markings.

An energy management maturity model for China: Linking ISO 50001:2018 and domestic practices

Well-structured Energy Management Maturity Models (EMMMs) are advanced and easy-to-use energy management (EM) approaches for energy management systems (EnMSs), providing both qualitative metrics and improvement guidelines. And the metrics serve the most valuable role. To furnish the users in different contexts (regional or industrial) with optimal applicability, an EMMM should deliver the most specific, precise, and valid metrics. It requires the latest explorations of this domain to evolve from the existing prototypes and keep improving the theoretical hypotheses about EM maturation, particularly for emerging economies like China. Accordingly, this study attempts to propose a highly practice-based Energy Management Maturity Model for China (EMMM-China), intending to make twofold contributions to this domain. For the methodological perspective, this study has demonstrated a set of highly referable strategies to felicitously formulate a model’s metrics. A solid knowledge base for deducing hypotheses, encompassing both EM imperfections and good practices, was crucially constructed by taking in empirical experience from scientific literature and over 70 domestic cases. On this basis, five maturity levels and four maturation phases were justifiably defined. To validate the reliability of the model, three industrial cases were repeatedly assessed by EMMM-China in a longitudinal study design. And for the outcome perspective, EMMM-China serves as a new ISO 50001-based model for global users. The High Level Structure (HLS) of ISO 50001:2018 and numerous widely recognized success factors for EM were both adopted. With extended knowledge that goes beyond EnMS standards, EMMM-China enables long-term applicability to even certified organizations. The proposed model is believed to work on China and other emerging economies as a referable meta-approach. • A comprehensive strategy to construct a solid knowledge base was demonstrated. • Energy management practices in China were characterized by massive domestic cases. • A maturity model based on ISO 50001:2018 was proposed for China and other emerging economies. • Five maturity levels were justifiably defined, along with four maturation phases. • The model was validated through a longitudinal study of three industrial cases.

Motivational engine and long-term memory coupling within a cognitive architecture for lifelong open-ended learning

This paper considers a cognitive architecture that revolves around a network memory based Long-Term Memory and how it can lead to a working lifelong learning system that can deal with open-ended learning. It focuses on the mutual interaction between the Motivational Engine and the Long-Term Memory and, in particular, on autonomously producing high-level utility representations in order to allow for development. Thus, the main point is to study how this architecture allows to start from primitive policies and models operating over continuous and large state/action spaces and progressively move towards higher level structures defined over smaller and discrete state/action spaces. This progression is demonstrated in a series of experiments carried out on a real robotic setup that involves different contexts, both in terms of domains (worlds) and tasks (goals).

H-Ras Pre-mRNA Contains A Regulatory Non-coding RNA

Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) have emerged as one of the most abundant regulatory molecules. However, their roles and functions are significantly different from those of proteins. Moreover, around 95% of the human genome contains non-coding DNA. ncRNAs contribute by far the majority of human transcriptional units, and the functions of the most are yet unknown. Here, we highlight that an important RNA sequence region, encompassing an exon-intron hairpin loop (also called IDX-rasISS1), of the H-Ras pre-mRNA may encode an ncRNA that regulates p68 RNA helicase. This observation is remarkable owing to the fact that this helicase is responsible for upregulating the hairpin loop. This indicates that an inhibitory feedback mechanism acting on the p68 RNA helicase is mediated by higher structural levels of the hairpin-loop. Initially, two observations prompted the present study: i) previous results revealed down-regulation of p68 RNA helicase resulting from overexpression of the IDX hairpin loop in HeLa cells, and ii) the secondary structure of the IDX hairpin loop resembles pri-miRNAs, implying that an miRNA could be processed from the hairpin loop-containing pri-miRNA and regulate 68 RNA helicase. To validate our hypothesis, we directly compared p68 RNA sequences and the hairpin loop in silico. Furthermore, RNAi assays containing the hairpin loop as an miRNA precursor were conducted, using the pTer vector, to explore the effects on 68 RNA helicase expression levels. These RNAi analyses were quantified by Western blots (using anti-p68 RNA helicase and anti-EIF2α) and Fluc/Rluc 3’UTRs/CDS assays. The effect of hairpin loop overexpression on cell growth and cancer processes was also investigated by analyzing cell-cycle phases and miR-206 expression. Finally, alternative splicing microarrays containing apoptosis targets were incubated to verify whether pre-mRNAs other than H-Ras could also present a similar hairpin loop structure regulated by p68 RNA helicase. We observed that overexpression of the hairpin loop does not activate the phosphorylation of EIF2α and, therefore, does not activate PKR interferon-induced apoptosis. Moreover, a similar effect on p68 RNA helicase-mediated interference is observed during the upregulation of the hairpin loop. Finally, we also identified a similar hairpin loop-like structure in an alternative splicing region of MAPK12/ERK6. Thus it can be inferred from our findings that the alternative splicing exon IDX from H-Ras, coupled with the immediately downstream intron sequences, may contain an ncRNA. We also unveil one potential function of this ncRNA whose expression is regulated by alternative splicing decisions.

Model-based trace variant analysis of event logs

The comparison of trace variants of business processes opens the door for a fine-grained analysis of the distinctive features inherent in the executions of a process in an organization. The current approaches for trace variant analysis do not consider the situation where a process model is present, and therefore, it can guide the derivation of the trace variants by considering high-level structures present in the process model. In this paper we propose a fresh alternative to trace variant analysis, which proposes a generalized notion of trace variant that incorporates concurrency and iteration. This way, the analyst may be relieved from analyzing trace variants that are essentially the same, if these aspects are disregarded. We propose a general algorithm for model based trace variant analysis which is grounded in encoding the problem into SAT, and a family of heuristic alternatives including a very light sampling technique that represents a good trade-off between quality of the trace variants identified, and the complexity of the analysis. All the techniques of the paper are implemented in two open-source tools, and experiments with publicly available benchmarks are reported.

Mining explainable local and global subgraph patterns with surprising densities

The connectivity structure of graphs is typically related to the attributes of the vertices. In social networks for example, the probability of a friendship between any pair of people depends on a range of attributes, such as their age, residence location, workplace, and hobbies. The high-level structure of a graph can thus possibly be described well by means of patterns of the form ‘the subgroup of all individuals with certain properties X are often (or rarely) friends with individuals in another subgroup defined by properties Y’, ideally relative to their expected connectivity. Such rules present potentially actionable and generalizable insight into the graph. Prior work has already considered the search for dense subgraphs (‘communities’) with homogeneous attributes. The first contribution in this paper is to generalize this type of pattern to densities between a pair of subgroups, as well as between all pairs from a set of subgroups that partition the vertices. Second, we develop a novel information-theoretic approach for quantifying the subjective interestingness of such patterns, by contrasting them with prior information an analyst may have about the graph’s connectivity. We demonstrate empirically that in the special case of dense subgraphs, this approach yields results that are superior to the state-of-the-art. Finally, we propose algorithms for efficiently finding interesting patterns of these different types.

Genetic analyses reveal complex introduction histories for the invasive tree Acacia dealbata Link around the world

AbstractAimTo compare genetic diversity and structure between Acacia dealbata populations sampled across the species’ native range in Australia and from its non‐native ranges in Chile, Madagascar, New Zealand, Portugal, La Réunion island, South Africa and the United States, and to investigate the most likely introduction scenarios to non‐native ranges.LocationGlobal.TaxonAcacia dealbata, Fabaceae.MethodsOur dataset comprised 1615 samples representing 92 populations sampled in the species’ native and non‐native ranges. We employed a combination of genetic fingerprinting (microsatellite markers) and genetic modelling approaches. We calculated genetic diversity for each population and tested for genetic isolation by distance within each range. A combination of Bayesian assignment tests and multivariate ordination was applied to identify genetic structure among populations. Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) analyses were conducted to test different competing introduction scenarios for each non‐native range.ResultsThe majority of the species’ non‐native ranges was characterized by high genetic diversity and low levels of genetic structure. With regard to introduction histories, however, our results supported different introduction scenarios for different non‐native ranges. We did not find strong support for any of tested introduction scenarios for populations in Chile and Madagascar, but these likely originated from multiple introductions followed by admixture. Populations in New Zealand and La Réunion most likely originated directly from Tasmania, possibly through multiple introductions. Similar to previous findings for South African populations, no clear introduction history could be identified for populations in Portugal and the United States.Main conclusionsOur study shows that global introductions of A. dealbata were complex and one scenario does not fit the invasion history of the species in different regions. We discuss how this complexity needs to be considered when formulating strategies for the effective management of the species. Future research needs to help bridge persisting knowledge gaps are discussed.

Different landscape effects on the genetic structure of two broadly distributed woody legumes, Acacia salicina and A. stenophylla (Fabaceae).

Restoring degraded landscapes has primarily focused on re‐establishing native plant communities. However, little is known with respect to the diversity and distribution of most key revegetation species or the environmental and anthropogenic factors that may affect their demography and genetic structure. In this study, we investigated the genetic structure of two widespread Australian legume species (Acacia salicina and Acacia stenophylla) in the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB), a large agriculturally utilized region in Australia, and assessed the impact of landscape structure on genetic differentiation. We used AFLP genetic data and sampled a total of 28 A. salicina and 30 A. stenophylla sampling locations across southeastern Australia. We specifically evaluated the importance of four landscape features: forest cover, land cover, water stream cover, and elevation. We found that both species had high genetic diversity (mean percentage of polymorphic loci, 55.1% for A. salicina versus. 64.3% for A. stenophylla) and differentiation among local sampling locations (A. salicina: ΦPT = 0.301, 30%; A. stenophylla: ΦPT = 0.235, 23%). Population structure analysis showed that both species had high levels of structure (6 clusters each) and admixture in some sampling locations, particularly A. stenophylla. Although both species have a similar geographic range, the drivers of genetic connectivity for each species were very different. Genetic variation in A. salicina seems to be mainly driven by geographic distance, while for A. stenophylla, land cover appears to be the most important factor. This suggests that for the latter species, gene flow among populations is affected by habitat fragmentation. We conclude that these largely co‐occurring species require different management actions to maintain population connectivity. We recommend active management of A. stenophylla in the MDB to improve gene flow in the adversity of increasing disturbances (e.g., droughts) driven by climate change and anthropogenic factors.

Toy Models of Top Down Causation.

Models in which causation arises from higher level structures as well as from microdynamics may be relevant to unifying quantum theory with classical physics or general relativity. They also give a way of defining a form of panprotopsychist property dualism, in which consciousness and material physics causally affect one another. I describe probabilistic toy models based on cellular automata that illustrate possibilities and difficulties with these ideas.

Family structure and affluence in adolescent eating behaviour: a cross-national study in forty-one countries.

To investigate the family structure and affluence-related inequality in adolescent eating behaviour. Multivariate binary logistic regression and path analyses were employed to evaluate the impact of family structure and affluence on the consumption of fruits, vegetables, sweets and soft drinks among adolescents. The cross-national Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study in 2013/2014 across forty-one countries. Adolescents aged 11-15 years old (n 192 755). Adolescents from a non-intact family were less likely to eat daily fruits (OR 0·82; 95 % CI 0·80, 0·84), vegetables (OR 0·91; 95 % CI 0·89, 0·93) and sweets (OR 0·96; 95 % CI 0·94, 0·99), but were more likely to consume soft drinks (OR 1·14; 95 % CI 1·11, 1·17), compared with their counterparts from an intact family. Adolescents who had the lowest family affluence scores (FAS) were less likely to eat daily fruits (OR 0·51; 95 % CI 0·49, 0·53), vegetables (OR 0·58; 95 % CI 0·56, 0·60) and sweets (OR 0·94; 95 % CI 0·90, 0·97), but were more likely to consume soft drinks (OR 1·25; 95 % CI 1·20, 1·30), compared with their counterparts who had the highest FAS. Across countries, a wide range of social inequality in daily consumption of foods was observed. Among adolescents in Europe, Canada and Israel, there was a high level of family structure and family affluence inequalities in daily food consumption. Different aspects of family socio-economic circumstances should be considered at the national level designing effective interventions to promote healthy eating among adolescents.

In plain sight: implicit priming of patterns and faces using change symmetry

Aksentijevic–Gibson complexity is an original complexity measure based on the amount of change in a string or 2D array that has been successfully implemented on data from psychology to physics. The key ingredient to computing the measure is a change symmetry (CS)—a novel form of structure (also known as generalised palindrome) which represents a central or mirror symmetry based on the redundant arrangement not of symbols but of changes. This results in patterns that although globally symmetrical do not appear as such when inspected locally. We used this property to (a) affect the registration of a target, (b) prime the symmetry judgment of 2D arrays and (c) faces using 1D patterns possessing change symmetry. In Experiment 2, we applied the lock and key principle to complete the prime without showing its structure at once. In Experiments 3 and 4, we presented subjects with fast sequences of CSs such that the configuration of an individual pattern was masked by the subsequent pattern leaving only the structural “essence” of the prime symmetry. The results strongly support the contention that higher-level hidden structure of change symmetry successfully primes the symmetry perception of 2D arrays as well as facial attractiveness.

Helix Inversion Controlled by Molecular Motors in Multistate Liquid Crystals

Unravelling the rules of molecular motion is a contemporary challenge that promises to support the development of responsive materials and is likely to enhance the understanding of functional motion. Advances in integrating light-driven molecular motors in soft matter have led to the design and realization of chiral nematic (cholesteric) liquid crystals that can respond to light with modification of their helical pitch, and also with helix inversion. Under illumination, these chiral liquid crystals convert from one helical geometry to another. Here, a series of light-driven molecular motors that feature a rich configurational landscape is presented, specifically which involves three stable chiral states. The succession of chiral structures involved in the motor cycle is transmitted at higher structural levels, as the cholesteric liquid crystals that are formed can interconvert between helices of opposite handedness, reversibly. In these materials, the dynamic features of the motors are thus expressed at the near-macroscopic, functional level, into addressable colors that can be used in advanced materials for tunable optics and photonics.

Management System Certification Challenges after Transition

Purpose – the article provides part of the broader research in the area of management systems standards and management systems certification. In the paper we analyse the evolution of management system standards after implementation of High-Level Structure (Annex SL) on the example of the most popular management standard ISO 9001: 2015 with the comparison to ISO 14001:2015. To understand the evolution and predict the future of certification we examine more deeply the behaviour of individual standard worldwide and on the particular markets. Research methodology – this study presents a quantitative overview of the quality management system standard certification during and after the last revision transition period. It presents analyses based on ISO survey data, data of the certification structure in Slovakia and particular data of broader research on adoption of an environmental management system in Slovak companies. The data were presented in graphs and tables to outline the change of dynamics of standards usage. We compare certification markets and analyse the observable impact by the type of standard, sectors penetration and possible certification impacts. Findings – the evolution charts of the volume of certificates over time express a saturation effect and stable reduction in the dynamics of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards. The analysis of certificates numbers by industrial sectors highlights a decrease in the majority of sectors, only a few of them show up a positive trend in the last two years. Practical implications − the results of this study should be considered indicative rather than definitive. Taking into account the assembled data, multiple questions appear about the future. The future studies could proceed in qualitative research on causes of certification reduction and the possible incentives for management system standards application in organizations to sustain a system of credibility in international trade. Originality/Value – the paper analyses the evolution of management system standards ISO 9001 with a focus on “Big Revision” impact.

Supervision of the Infection in an SI (SI-RC) Epidemic Model by Using a Test Loss Function to Update the Vaccination and Treatment Controls

This paper studies and proposes some supervisory techniques to update the vaccination and control gains through time in a modified SI (susceptible-infectious) epidemic model involving the susceptible and subpopulations. Since the presence of linear feedback controls are admitted, a compensatory recovered (or immune) extra subpopulation is added to the model under zero initial conditions to deal with the recovered subpopulations transferred from the vaccination and antiviral/antibiotic treatment on the susceptible and the infectious, respectively. Therefore, the modified model is referred to as an SI(RC) epidemic model since it integrates the susceptible, infectious and compensatory recovered subpopulations. The defined time-integral supervisory loss function can evaluate weighted losses involving, in general, both the susceptible and the infectious subpopulations. It is admitted, as a valid supervisory loss function, that which involves only either the infectious or the susceptible subpopulations. Its concrete definition involving only the infectious is related to the Shannon information entropy. The supervision problem is basically based on the implementation of a parallel control structure with different potential control gains to be judiciously selected and updated through time. A higher decision level structure of the supervisory scheme updates the appropriate active controller (i.e., that with the control gain values to be used along the next time window), as well as the switching time instants. In this way, the active controller is that which provides the best associated supervisory loss function along the next inter-switching time interval. Basically, a switching action from one active controller to another one is decided as a better value of the supervisory loss function is detected for distinct controller gain values to the current ones.

Development of Visual Servoing-Based Autonomous Docking Capabilities in a Heterogeneous Swarm of Marine Robots

This paper describes the design, development, and testing of both hardware and software for a visual servoing-based system that enables agents within a heterogeneous marine robotic swarm to share energy. The goal of this system is prolonging the active operational time of the swarm as a whole, allowing it to perform long-term environmental monitoring and data collection missions. The implementation presented in the paper features an over-actuated autonomous surface platform docking up to four floating sensor nodes at a time and replenishing their batteries using wireless inductive charging. Mechanical solutions for each robot segment related to the docking procedure are presented, along with pertinent high-level and low-level control structures. A node featuring an extended Kalman filter and additional heuristics is used to fuse measurements from a neural network trained for object detection and a hue thresholding image processing algorithm, in order to track the docking target and achieve visual servoing. Finally, experimental results in both a controlled environment and challenging conditions on-site are presented. Once deployed, the developed system successfully enables the approach and docking of the designated target, showing its feasibility in different real-life conditions.

The importance of diversity on boards of directors\u2019 effectiveness and its impact on innovativeness in the bioeconomy

A company’s board of directors plays a critical role in making decisions relating to strategy, high-level structure, and the appointment of the CEO. The role of the board and its impact on corporate performance has been well studied; however, the diversity of the board of directors and the corresponding correlation to the level of corporate innovativeness has not been previously investigated. Here, we provide a critical analysis of board members’ diversity as it relates to innovative corporations in what is considered a mature industry in transition to a bioeconomy: the pulp and paper industry. Our findings contribute to the body of knowledge on the role of board member diversity in shaping company culture and how that drives, shapes, and sustains innovation.

Diminishing returns in habitat restoration by adding biogenic materials: a test using estuarine oysters and recycled oyster shell

Restoration of degraded estuarine oyster reefs typically involves deploying recycled oyster shell. In low‐salinity, low‐predation areas of estuaries, high‐volume shell deployments are known to improve flow conditions and thus oyster survival and growth. It is also hypothesized that the physical structure of restored reefs could suppress foraging by oyster predators in high‐salinity, high‐predation zones. That hypothesis is untested. Given limited resources, it is important to determine how much shell is needed for successful restoration and whether there are diminishing returns in shell addition. In Apalachicola Bay, Florida, we manipulated shell volume on an oyster reef to create three 0.4 ha areas of low (no shell addition), moderate (153 m3 shell), and high (306 m3 shell) habitat structure. We repeated experiments and surveys over 2 years to determine if restoration success increased with habitat structure. Predation on oysters was greater on the non‐shelled area than on the reshelled reefs, but similar between the two reshelled reefs. Oyster larval supply did not differ among the reef areas, but by the end of the experiment, oyster density (per unit area) increased quadratically with habitat structure, plateauing at high levels of structure. Model selection indicated that the most parsimonious explanation for these patterns was that increased habitat structure reduced predation and increased overall recruitment, but that the higher reshelling treatment did not have better outcomes than moderate reshelling. Thus, restoration could be optimized by deploying a moderate amount of shell per unit area.

High phylogeographic and genetic diversity of Tidestromia lanuginosa supports full-glacial refugia for arid-adapted plants in southern and central Coahuila, Mexico.

Recent phylogeographic work suggests the existence of latitudinal gradients in genetic diversity in northern Mexican plants, but very few studies have examined plants of the Chihuahuan Desert. Tidestromia lanuginosa is a morphologically variable annual species whose distribution includes the Chihuahuan Desert Region. Here we undertook phylogeographic analyses of chloroplast loci in this species to test whether genetic diversity and differentiation of Mexican populations of T. lanuginosa change along a latitudinal gradient and whether diversity is higher in Coahuila, consistent with ideas of lower plant community turnover during the Pleistocene. Haplotype network, maximum likelihood tree, and Bayesian phylogenetic haplotype were reconstructed, and genetic diversity was assessed among 26 populations. Barrier analysis was used to explore barriers to gene flow. Four major population groups were identified, corresponding with physiographic provinces in Mexico. Each population group displayed high levels of genetic structure, haplotype, and nucleotide diversity. Diversity was highest in southern populations across the species as a whole and among the Chihuahuan Desert populations. Tidestromia lanuginosa provides an important example of high phylogeographic and genetic diversity in plants of northern Mexico. Barriers to gene flow among the major population groups have most likely been due to a combination of orographic, climatic, and edaphic variables. The high genetic diversity of T. lanuginosa in southern and central Coahuila is consistent with the hypothesis of full-glacial refugia for arid-adapted plants in this area, and highlights the importance of this region as a center of diversity for the Chihuahuan Desert flora.