The Habituation Process in Two Groups of Wild Moor Macaques (Macaca maura)

When studying animal behavior in the wild, some behaviors may require observation from a relatively short distance. In these cases, habituation is commonly used to ensure that animals do not perceive researchers as a direct threat and do not alter their behavior in their presence. However, habituation can have significant effects on the welfare and conservation of the animals. Studying how nonhuman primates react to the process of habituation can help to identify the factors that affect habituation and implement habituation protocols that allow other researchers to speed up the process while maintaining high standards of health and safety for both animals and researchers. In this study, we systematically described the habituation of two groups of wild moor macaques (Macaca maura), an Endangered endemic species of Sulawesi Island (Indonesia), to assess the factors that facilitate habituation and reduce impact on animal behavior during this process. During 7 months, we conducted behavioral observations for more than 7,872 encounters and an average of 120 days to monitor how macaque behavior toward researchers changed through time in the two groups under different conditions. We found that both study groups (N = 56, N = 41) became more tolerant to the presence of researchers during the course of the habituation, with occurrence of neutral group responses increasing, and minimum distance to researchers and occurrence of fearful group responses decreasing through time. These changes in behavior were predominant when macaques were in trees, with better visibility conditions, when researchers maintained a longer minimum distance to macaques and, unexpectedly, by the presence of more than one researcher. By identifying these factors, we contribute to designing habituation protocols that decrease the likelihood of fearful responses and might reduce the stress experienced during this process.

Audit of donor centre: guidelines by the World Marrow Donor Association Quality and Regulation Working Group

According to the Standards of the World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA) 2020 [1] unrelated stem cell donor registries are responsible for compliance of their donor centres with these Standards. To ensure high stem cell product quality and high standards for safety and satisfaction of voluntary unrelated stem cell donors, we present here guidelines for audits of donor centres (DC) that can be used by new and established donor registries. They have been developed for registries relying on independent national or international DCs for the recruitment and management of Unrelated Donors (UD) for verification typing (VT)/extended tying (ET), work up processes and Hemopoietic Progenitor Cell (HPC) donation. The main goal of these guidelines is to support registries in verifying and auditing their affiliated DCs to ensure they are compliant with the WMDA Standards, as well as WMDA recommendations. We define the general requirements and recommendations for collaboration with the DC and guidelines to manage the UD, step by step from recruitment to follow-up. We also provide a checklist, intended to serve as a resource for auditors performing an audit at a DC.

Bioethics and Nutrition in the Older Adult

At the professional practice of nutrition, as in the rest of the health disciplines, it is necessary to follow high standards in order to establish the best doctor-patient relationship and the greatest benefit in the user's health. In a special way, the factors that are indexed in the nutrition of the elderly must be specified; since, during the stage of old age, individuals present physiological and psychosocial changes that affect their nutritional status, which lead to both overweight and malnutrition, implying malnutrition problems. Thus, recommendations are established for both the ethical aspects and the components that must be considered for the adequate feeding of the elderly, including the ethical considerations involved in the interventions.

Factorial Solution for Determination of Critical Success Factors (CSF) in Deployment of Six Sigma and Its Relation to Sustainability

Recently, the interest in being part of more competitive companies has increased. For this, organizations apply various strategies of continuous improvement that allow them to maintain high standards of competitiveness. In this sense, organizations make use of various techniques, tools, and methodologies that support the achievement of objectives. This research presents an approach towards the Six Sigma (SS) strategy, one of the main continuous improvement strategies used to achieve competitiveness. On the other hand, organizations currently seek that during manufacture of their products, caring for the environment is naturally part of their objectives, seeking to achieve benefits with a sustainable impact. Therefore, this research seeks to define the CSF for implementation of SS through a factor analysis that allows identifying the relationship between SS and obtaining sustainable benefits (SB) through its implementation.

To Serve, and to Be Served

Through a systematic literature review, this chapter aims at mapping the servant leader's psychosomatic traits in organizational contexts, and how these induce beneficial effects in organizational performance. It predicts that such leaders would need to display those traits, crystallized into a set of attitudes and behaviors, to address, manage, and overcome the challenges brought by globalization. Leaders would need to be keen on displaying broad knowledge and experience, as well as boundless curiosity and enthusiasm, which also connects to the need of entailing a contagious optimism towards every aspect of life, openly believing in people and teamwork. They need to be assertive and assume high standards in ethical and moral terms, taking risks, and focusing on the long-term growth. Such leaders will commit to excellence, making use of a constant adaptive capacity, because authenticity, integrity, cooperation, and confidence are their distinctive trademarks. Those personality traits, exerted under the servant leadership style, increase overall organizational performance.

Optimization of Maintenance Management Indicators in a Chilled Water Plant

The academic sector, like any other service or industrial sector, requires constant innovation in each of its processes. In Colombia, the Universidad EAFIT, as part of the search for new ways of teaching and learning, has recognized the significance of making learning spaces suitable for the people involved in this process. In consequence, the project described in this chapter shows the most efficient methodology for the optimization of asset management for the Universidad EAFIT's Ice Water Plant. The methodologies used include key concepts and factors such as availability, maintainability, and reliability in the costs related to the behavior and nature of the failures, having as reference an integral model of the maintenance management process. The objective of this project is to maintain these high standards of operation and maintenance throughout the useful life of the system and to show the importance that maintenance and the methodologies associated with it have in any sector or industry.

Faunal features of caddisflies (Insecta, Trichoptera) in Konavle region (Croatia) with notes on DNA barcoding and conservation biology

Throughout this research, 230 Trichoptera specimens were collected in the area of Konavle area, the southernmost region of Croatia. Altogether 21 species, 15 genera and 11 families were identified. DNA barcoding covered 41 specimens represented with 15 species collected in the Konavle region. The highest number of species was recorded at two localities: the spring of the River Ljuta (13) and a spring in the village Vodovađa (8). The highest number of taxa (4) was recorded within the following two families: Hydroptilidae and Hydropsychidae. From a faunistic point of view, the most interesting species in Konavle region are: Agapetus cf. kampos Oláh (the first record for Croatia), Hydroptila martini Marshall (the first record for the Mediterranean part of Croatia), Oxyethira falcata Morton (the first record for Croatia), Tinodes andrasi Oláh (type locality of the species is River Ljuta), Diplectrona cf. afra McLachlan (the first record from the Mediterranean part of Croatia) and Micropterna wageneri Malicky (the second record for Croatia). The first DNA barcoding data for the species Agapetus cf. kampos Oláh and Tinodes andrasi Oláh were entered into the BOLD database. The area of Konavle represents one of the most interesting regions for the fauna of Trichoptera and can be considered as a ”hotspot” for caddisflies in Croatia. Thus, it is necessary to install high standards for their protection.

Identities and Precariousness in the Collaborative Economy, Neither Wage-Earner, nor Self-Employed: Emergence and Consolidation of the Homo Rider, a Case Study

In recent years, courier and home delivery services have experienced extensive growth around the world. These platform companies, that operate through applications on smartphones, have experienced the benefits of the technological leap that has been produced by the conditions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and its restrictions on traditional commerce. This business model integrates novel elements that move away from a classic contractual relationship, employer-employee. They combine a strong cooperative culture, integrated by company values and principles that make the rider assume an identity that defines him/her as a worker and a member of a community. In addition, on the other hand, precarious working conditions, in which extreme competitiveness among colleagues and dependence on high standards of service compliance are encouraged. In Spain, there is a lack of research on the identity of workers in this type of platform. By means of in-depth interviews with drivers of two different companies in the Region of Murcia (Spain), the main objective of this article is to identify and describe the figure of what we define as homo rider, understood as a prototype individual in the context of contemporary labor relations, linked to the incorporation of new technologies for the intermediation and interconnection between people, goods and services. We approach to the socioeconomic spectrum and identity imaginary of the homo rider through two dimensions, material and ideological, to construct this broad, ambiguous figure between self-employment and wage-earner that would also represent a complex relation between precarious work and new technologies.

Powder Surface Roughness as Proxy for Bed Density in Powder Bed Fusion of Polymers

Powder bed fusion of polymers is becoming increasingly adopted by a variety of industries to tailor the strength, weight and functionality of end-use products. To meet the high standards of the modern manufacturing industry, parts built with powder bed fusion require consistent properties and to be free of defects, which is intrinsically connected to the quality of the powder bed prior to melting. The hypothesis of this work is that the roughness of the top surface of an unmelted powder bed can serve as a proxy for the powder bed density, which is known to correlate with final part density. In this study, a laser line scan profilometer is integrated onto the recoater arm of a custom powder test bench, which is able to automatically create layers of powder. A diverse group of polymers was investigated including polyamide 12 (PA12), polyamide 11 (PA11), polypropylene (PP), and a thermoplastic elastomer (TPU) under different recoating speed in order to increase the variance of the dataset. Data analytics were employed to compare roughness to measured powder bed density and a statically significant correlation was established between them.

Research Progress of Biomimetic Memristor Flexible Synapse

With the development of the Internet of things, artificial intelligence, and wearable devices, massive amounts of data are generated and need to be processed. High standards are required to store and analyze this information. In the face of the explosive growth of information, the memory used in data storage and processing faces great challenges. Among many types of memories, memristors have received extensive attentions due to their low energy consumption, strong tolerance, simple structure, and strong miniaturization. However, they still face many problems, especially in the application of artificial bionic synapses, which call for higher requirements in the mechanical properties of the device. The progress of integrated circuit and micro-processing manufacturing technology has greatly promoted development of the flexible memristor. The use of a flexible memristor to simulate nerve synapses will provide new methods for neural network computing and bionic sensing systems. In this paper, the materials and structure of the flexible memristor are summarized and discussed, and the latest configuration and new materials are described. In addition, this paper will focus on its application in artificial bionic synapses and discuss the challenges and development direction of flexible memristors from this perspective.