Goat Breeding in the Katanga Copper Belt (KCB): Constraints, Opportunities and Prospects

DR Congo’s copper belt is south of the dismembered former province of Katanga. The population has grown over the past twenty years due to the resumption of industrial and artisanal mining. This situation has led to an increase in demand for agricultural products including meat. The majority of these products are imported due to insufficient local production. Goat meat is the most consumed of the ruminants and most of these animals are imported from Zambia. Thousands of the goats are slaughtered daily and its meat sold in all markets and especially next to thousands of drinking establishments as appetizers. Unfortunately, this opportunity does not benefit local breeders because of several factors including the low productivity of the local goat, a stray breeding system, insufficiency and lack of space for breeding, contamination of pastures by heavy metals, insecurity, supremacy of the mining code over agricultural law, the dispossession of agricultural land belonging to peasants for the benefit of private farmers … In perspective, the establishment of a collaborative structure between breeders, development agents and technicians, researchers and policy makers in sectors related to goat farming and its environment will provide access to information and improve goat production.

Evaluating a programming topic using GitHub data: what we can learn about machine learning

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to define a methodology to analyze links between programming topics and libraries starting from GitHub data. Design/methodology/approach This paper developed an analysis over machine learning repositories on GitHub, finding communities of repositories and studying the anatomy of collaboration around a popular topic such as machine learning. Findings This analysis indicates the significant importance of programming languages and technologies such as Python and Jupyter Notebook. It also shows the rise of deep learning and of specific libraries such as Tensorflow from Google. Originality/value There exists no survey or analysis based on how developers influence each other for specific topics. Other researchers focused their analysis on the collaborative structure and social impact instead of topic impact. Using this methodology to analyze programming topics is important not just for machine learning but also for other topics.

Breaking the Scaling Relationship of ORR on Carbon-based Single-atom Catalysts Through Building the Local Collaborative Structure

The structure of M-N4, on which a metal atom is anchored by 4 N atoms, is main active structure of N-doped carbon-based single atom catalysts (SACs). However, we still lack...

Open science, communal culture, and women’s participation in the movement to improve science

Science is undergoing rapid change with the movement to improve science focused largely on reproducibility/replicability and open science practices. This moment of change—in which science turns inward to examine its methods and practices—provides an opportunity to address its historic lack of diversity and noninclusive culture. Through network modeling and semantic analysis, we provide an initial exploration of the structure, cultural frames, and women’s participation in the open science and reproducibility literatures (n = 2,926 articles and conference proceedings). Network analyses suggest that the open science and reproducibility literatures are emerging relatively independently of each other, sharing few common papers or authors. We next examine whether the literatures differentially incorporate collaborative, prosocial ideals that are known to engage members of underrepresented groups more than independent, winner-takes-all approaches. We find that open science has a more connected, collaborative structure than does reproducibility. Semantic analyses of paper abstracts reveal that these literatures have adopted different cultural frames: open science includes more explicitly communal and prosocial language than does reproducibility. Finally, consistent with literature suggesting the diversity benefits of communal and prosocial purposes, we find that women publish more frequently in high-status author positions (first or last) within open science (vs. reproducibility). Furthermore, this finding is further patterned by team size and time. Women are more represented in larger teams within reproducibility, and women’s participation is increasing in open science over time and decreasing in reproducibility. We conclude with actionable suggestions for cultivating a more prosocial and diverse culture of science.

Fast trade?

This paper addresses two questions. The first is: Do cross-disciplinary teams that exist only for rather short periods of time have a chance to realize some form of dialogue across disciplinary boundaries? To approach this topic, the concept of trading zones is applied, as it has been introduced by Peter Galison and developed by other authors. Empirical data come from participant observation during a workshop on sonification, i.e. the auditory display of data. In this context, a second question is addressed. While there exists a vivid discussion on how to measure outcome or performance of research projects, there has been no attempt to measure the degree of interdisciplinarity within a collaborative structure. I propose a methodology that attempts to transfer concepts found within qualitative frameworks onto a quantitative research strategy. In concluding, I discuss some flaws of this approach and propose further lines of work.

The IAU Office of Astronomy for Education

Since January 2020, the International Astronomical Union has an Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE). The OAE, which joins the previously existing IAU Offices for Astronomy for Development (OAD), Astronomy Outreach (OAO) and Young Astronomers (OYA) is hosted at Haus der Astronomie, a center for astronomy education and outreach operated by the Max Planck Society in Heidelberg, Germany. This contribution outlines the mission of the OAE, the current state of the office, its background, mission and collaborative structure, as well as the activities that have already started or are planned for the future.

Orchestrating absorptive capacity: organizational catalysts of TMT’s influence

Purpose This study aims to tackle the influence of top management team (TMT), socialization capabilities and their interactions on absorptive capacity (ACAP). Specifically, this paper examines a TMT’s diversity and coordination as an “enabler” with the potential to trigger the processes involved in the generation of ACAP. Design/methodology/approach The authors relied on a database comprising 96 manufacturing firms in a developing country. Due to the model suggested as well as the sample size, they opted for a PLS-SEM methodology. Findings The empirical results show that TMT diversity is not significantly related to firm’s ACAP. Additionally, they provide evidence for a mediation of the relationship between a TMT coordination and ACAP through socialization capabilities. Research limitations/implications This paper presents a theoretical framework that underscores the influence of TMT on different dimensions of ACAP. Based on the upper echelon theory, the authors suggest that this is of utmost importance given that the extent to which knowledge is acquired, integrated and exploited within the firm can be contingent on the configuration and collaborative structure of the TMT. The results show that TMT coordination influences firm’s ACAP when it is complemented effectively by structural mechanisms for fostering greater communication, collaboration and cohesiveness between the members of an organization. Practical implications To configure a TMT merely to have diversity or guarantee the coordination between the team members is not enough to foster firm’s ACAP. An alignment of a coordinated TMT with the possibility for employees to freely communicate across functional areas and hierarchical limits is a prerequisite for the acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation of external knowledge. Originality/value The authors consider that this study raises areas for further consideration in efforts to understand how individual-based resources (e.g. TMT configuration) can be transformed into systemic knowledge-based capability (e.g. ACAP).