ALBERT

Description: Several studies have highlighted the importance of parent–teacher collaboration (PTC) in special education (SE). In Lebanon, there is a widespread perception among practitioners that out of many educational challenges facing SE organizations, there is the need to consolidate successful parent–teacher partnerships. We contribute to research on PTC by applying a conceptual framework from complexity science to investigate the interaction between teachers and parents in one SE organization in Lebanon. The interaction between teachers (internal agents) and parents (external agents) constitute an important dimension of the information flow between the school and its surrounding environment. We follow a narrative approach aiming at grasping the temporal dimension of teachers’ experience related to interacting with parents. Findings from this study indicate that teachers play an important role in sensing educational challenges and reaching out for a collaboration. However, although they gain access to valuable information regarding students’ background and social environment, several organizational factors restrain internal knowledge-sharing and communication about innovative practices. Teachers’ narratives depict learning on an individual level, but organizational barriers in the form of negative feedback loops for knowledge-sharing at the organizational level. This study recommends facilitating adaptive processes deriving from PTC. This demands positive feedback loops that facilitate behavioral variation, open communication, and thereby the exploration of innovative practices.

Description: The aim of this study is to identify the minor compounds in Jing liqueur, determine the concentration of metals, amino acids, and polysaccharides, and evaluate their Nrf2 activity and cytotoxicity. Jing liqueur that contains Chinese medicine is one of the best-selling liqueurs in China, which is also marketed in the United States. Totally, we have isolated 189 minor compounds including one new molecule (7) from a concentrated Jing liqueur, with the concentrations of most isolated compounds at micromolar levels. The structures of all these compounds were determined by using MS and NMR (1D and 2D) or by comparison of their chemical and physical data with reported values in the literatures. Besides, the concentrations of iron (0.52 mg/L), zinc (0.21 mg/L), calcium (11.0 mg/L), L-proline (2.33 mg/L), L-arginine (1.73 mg/L), total amino acids (9.84 mg/L), and total polysaccharides (337.4 mg/L) were determined. Jing liqueur, the five fractions and most of the compounds isolated from Jing liqueur were screened for their activities in the Nrf2-ARE and MTT assays. At 5.2 mg/mL the crude enhanced the Nrf2 activity. At 80 μg/mL, fraction IV weakly but fraction V strongly activated Nrf2. Among the compounds screened in the Nrf2 assay, eighteen activated Nrf2 at 40 μg/mL and compounds 51 and 126 from fraction V were the most active. The crude, all the five fractions, and Nrf2 activators were not cytotoxic toward HepG2 cells. In conclusion, Jing liqueur contains different classes of compounds including flavonoids, terpenoids, alkaloids, coumarins, cinnamic acid or coumaric acid, and phenyl ethanol (or acetic acid) derivatives, benzoquinone, naphthoquinone, anthraquinones or phenanphrene derivatives, xanthones, chromone, and γ-pyrone derivatives, lignans, other aromatic compounds, and others. Jing liqueur and the eighteen compounds, which were isolated from Jing liqueur, could activate Nrf2 without any cytotoxicity.

Description: In this article, we study the effect of airports on local economic performance that arises from better access to domestic markets in the context of China’s recent airport network expansion. We measure access through the changes in network closeness centrality implied by the contraction in potential journey times between counties within China. Our key finding is that better access—primarily due to landside distance reductions to airports—increased manufacturing productivity. The analysis is carried out on a panel of counties built from micro data on industrial firms, administrative records and census data. To mitigate endogeneity issues, we focus on a subsample of ‘incidentally’ affected counties, whose location midway between existing and new airports implies that they were neither explicitly targeted for development nor directly affected by airport operations.

Description: In many African countries, such as Madagascar, a large part of the population is currently estimated to be undernourished, and self-subsistence agriculture represents the primary source of food available for the family. Smallholder farmers cultivate crops with limited agricultural input and use old landraces or obsolete hybrid varieties, with a total country-wide production that is far from being able to sustain the national food demand. In this study, we have developed two maize composite cross populations (CCPs) of different kernel colors, through a selection process among 30 half-sib lines, chosen both for their agronomic performance and their environmental adaptability to a Malagasy farm context. The best half-sib lines, identified through field tests, were clustered as a parental group for open-pollinated crosses. The new CCP created, after two years of seed multiplication in an open field, showed promising yields compared with the hybrids, parental varieties, and local landraces, with average values of 2.7 t/ha for the white CCP and 3.5 t/ha for the yellow one. The seeds produced were then distributed among 15 local farmers to begin a participatory breeding program. Our approach represents an innovative step to improve and stabilize maize yields, employing populations adapted to the cultivation environment and able to cope with different stresses, thereby helping farmers' life conditions.

Description: Achieving food security along with environmental sustainability requires high yields with reduced demands on irrigation resources for rice production systems. The goal of the present investigation was to identify traits and germplasms for rice breeding programs that target effective grain production (EGP) under non-flooded field systems where the crop can be subjected to intermittent water stress throughout the growing season. A panel of 15 cultivars was evaluated over three years regarding phenological and agronomic traits under four soil moisture levels ranging from field capacity (29% volumetric water content; VWC) to just above the wilting point (16% VWC) using subsurface drip irrigation. An average of 690 ha-mm ha-1 water was applied for the 30% VWC treatment compared to 360 ha-mm ha-1 for the 14% VWC treatment. The average soil moisture content influenced several traits, including grain quality. Regression analysis identified six traits that explained 35% of the phenotypic variability of EGP. Four varieties (PI 312777, Francis, Zhe 733, and Mars) were found possessing significant slopes for 10 or more traits that respond to a range in soil moisture levels, indicating that they may offer promise for future rice breeding programs. Furthermore, based on the contrasting responses of four parent cultivars, two mapping populations were identified as potential genetic resources for identifying new quantitative trait loci/genes for improving EGP of tropical japonica rice varieties.

Description: The present work was carried out to evaluate the effects of irrigation with two different municipal wastewaters (secondary-treated wastewater (SW) and tertiary-treated wastewater (TW)) compared to freshwater (FW) on main qualitative parameters of three different classes of globe artichoke (main, secondary, and processing heads). The experimental trial was conducted in Southern Italy (Apulia region) for two cropping cycles (GS1 and GS2) using ‘Violetto di Provenza’ as cultivar. The artichoke heads were analyzed for proximate composition (dry matter, total sugar, total fat, ash, and total protein), percentage of edible part, mineral profile (sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, copper, iron, nickel, zinc, chloride, nitrate, phosphate, and sulphate) and polyphenolic acids content (caffeoylquinic acids and flavones). Both SW and TW treatments caused an increase of the percentage of the edible part, head protein contents, and mineral elements of the main and processing heads. Moreover, SW statistically increased the caffeoylquinic acid derivatives and the trans-ferulic acid content, while both SW and TW the flavones content. Finally, according to the multivariate analysis adopted, in our experimental conditions, the mineral component of the heads, such as chloride, potassium, copper, and zinc content, had a greater weight in the separation of FW, SW, and TW. On the other hand, the polyphenolic 5-O-caffeoylquinic acid, trans-ferulic acid, and 1,5-di-O-caffeoylquinic acid had a greater weight in the separation of the head class groups (main, secondary, and processing). Moreover, the trans-ferulic acid content of the heads was related both to the irrigation water type and to the different head classes.

Description: Agroforestry is indicated as a farming practice suited to enhance ecosystem services generated by cropping systems. However, farmers are often reluctant to implement agroforestry systems due to the potential yield loss of crops. In a field trial, soybean was intercropped with poplar short-rotation-coppice rows in an alley-cropping system with 13.5 m wide alleys, in order to assess the effect of tree presence on soybean yield and quality. The light availability (LA) was significantly affected by the tree presence, with an increasing effect along the season due to tree growth, being at its lowest in the tree–crop interface positions (West and East). Significant effects of the tree-distance and LA were registered on soybean yield, with the highest reduction of soybean yield in the West (−78%) and East (−35%) positions. Crude fat content in soybean grain did not vary among positions in the alley, while crude protein content was the lowest in the most shaded position (West −8% than the highest value). The assessment of spatial variability among plots of measured soil characteristics highlighted no significant effect of pedological conditions upon soybean yield. Thus, in our study, the LA effect was more important than soil characteristics in determining a detrimental effect of competition for resources between soybean and poplar. Conversely, soybean quality was affected by soil characteristics, since crude fat significantly correlated with soil nutrients, pH, soil organic matter and soil texture.

Description: It is probably fair to date loss reserving by means of claim modelling from the late 1960s [...]

Description: Knowledge generated using data mining techniques is of great interest for organizations, as it facilitates tactical and strategic decision making, generating a competitive advantage. In the special case of credit granting organizations, it is important to clearly define rejection/approval criteria. In this direction, classification rules are an appropriate tool, provided that the rule set has low cardinality and that the antecedent of the rules has few conditions. This paper analyzes different solutions based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) techniques, which are able to construct a set of classification rules with the aforementioned characteristics using information from the borrower and the macroeconomic environment at the time of granting the loan. In addition, to facilitate the understanding of the model, fuzzy logic is incorporated into the construction of the antecedent. To reduce the search time, the particle swarm is initialized by a competitive neural network. Different variants of PSO are applied to three databases of financial institutions in Ecuador. The first institution specializes in massive credit placement. The second institution specializes in consumer credit and business credit lines. Finally, the third institution is a savings and credit cooperative. According to our results, the incorporation of fuzzy logic generates rule sets with greater precision.