Quantifying structural relationships of metal-binding sites suggests origins of biological electron transfer

Computational exploration of similarities among metal-binding protein structural motifs elucidates the origins of life.

The AEQ-S: A short version of the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire

The Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ) is a well-established instrument for measuring achievement emotions in educational research and beyond. Its popularity rests on the coverage of the component structure of various achievement emotions across different academic settings. However, this broad conceptual scope requires the administration of 6 to 12 items per scale (Mdn = 10), which limits the applicability of the AEQ in empirical studies that necessitate brief administration times. We therefore developed the AEQ-S, a short version of the AEQ, with only 4 items per scale that nevertheless maintain the conceptual scope of the instrument. We validated the AEQ-S based on a reanalysis of Pekrun, Goetz, Frenzel, Barchfeld, and Perry's (2011) dataset (N = 389 university students) and by administering them to a new and independent validation sample (N = 471 university students). Despite their brevity, the AEQ-S scales achieved satisfactory reliability and correlated substantially with the original AEQ scales. Moreover, structural relationships and intercorrelations between the scales and their relations with external measures of antecedents and outcomes of achievement emotions were highly similar for the AEQ-S and AEQ scales. These findings suggest that the AEQ-S is a suitable substitute for the AEQ when administration time is limited.

Structural Relationships among Household Chaos, Maternal Negative Parenting, Child Executive Function, and Child Aggression

Objectives: This study aimed to identify the structural relationships among household chaos, maternal negative parenting behavior, child execution function, and child aggression; further, it demonstrates the mediating effects of maternal negative parenting and child execution function on the relationship between household chaos and child aggression.Methods: The participants comprised 206 children, aged between 3 and 5, and their mothers. This study observed Cronbach’ α and the descriptive statistics and performed frequency analysis, one-way random analysis, and partial correlation analysis via SPSS 20.0 program. The bootstrapping method was used to examine the mediating effect while the structural equation model analysis was performed using AMOS 22.0.Results: First, child aggression was positively associated with household chaos, mother’s intrusiveness, coercion, and neglect parenting but negatively associated with child inhibition, transition, working memory, and satisfaction delay tasks. Second, maternal negative parenting and child executive function were shown to mediate sequentially in the relationship between household chaos and child aggression. It was also found that maternal negative parenting and child executive function were partially mediated in the relationship between household chaos and child aggression.Conclusion: The data suggest the importance of mediating the effects of maternal negative parenting and child executive function on the relationship between household chaos and child aggression. These findings could highlight the significance of child executive function for the development of aggression and provide the basic data for the program to help those children who show aggressive behaviors in their early childhood educational institutions along with the evidence of parental education programs.

The Influence of Strategic Enrolment Management and Other Factors on the Competence of B.Ed. Graduates

The first part of this study consisted of a qualitative literature review to determine which variables other than strategic enrolment management might affect the competence of B.Ed. graduates. It was found that other factors might include teacher archetype, motivation to become a teacher, career planning and professional identity. This study presented the constructed operational definitions of each of the variables and the proposed structural relationships between them. In the second part, a quantitative approach was used and data were collected through a questionnaire. It is recommended that additional qualitative research is conducted to complement the findings of this study. Keywords: strategic enrolment management, teacher education, student teacher, teacher archetype, teacher competence

Assessment of the degree of restoration of the retinal structure and chorioretinal blood flow after surgical treatment of large-diameter macular holes

The aim: to evaluate the restoration features of the structural relationships of the retina and chorioretinal blood fl ow after surgical treatment of large-diameter macular hole (MH) using a modifi ed technology.Material and methods. A prospective study of 14 patients (14 eyes), 13 women and 1 man, with medium-and large-diameter MH was conducted. The mean age of the patients was 67.7 ± 5.38 (55–80) years. The study included patients with endto-end MH of the 3rd–4th stage according to the classifi cation of J. Gass. All patients underwent surgical treatment of macular rupture according to the proposed method of inverted fl ap of the internal limiting membrane (ILM) and fi lling it into a “pocket” formed between the retina and the ILM.Optical coherence tomography (OCT) was performed along with traditional research methods. The obtained images were used to measure manually the parameters of retinal MH, the thickness of the choroid in the projection of the rupture and the fovea zone before the operation and 1, 3 and 6 months after the operation. In the angio-mode, the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) was evaluated, as well as the density of capillaries of the superfi cial and deep retinal plexus in four quadrants, with the exception of the central zone.Results. In all patients, it was possible to achieve MH blocking. Visual acuity in the eyes with MH varied from 0.02 to 0.3, while in the comparison group, the best corrected visual acuity was from 0.3 to 1.0 (p = 0.002). An increase in the diameter of large choroidal vessels, as well as a pronounced decrease in the diameter of the posterior short ciliary artery, attracted attention. However, despite the improvement in visual acuity, patients retained a signifi cant expansion of the FAZ, which by 6 months exceeded the FAZ area of the paired eye by 25.8 % (p = 0.01).Conclusion. The results obtained indicate that the achievement of an anatomicalreconstructive effect and even a moderate improvement in visual acuity during surgical treatment of macular holes by the modifi ed inverted flap technology of the internal limiting membrane does not determine the restoration of retinal perfusion in full.

Teaching for creativity and entrepreneurial intentions: an empirical study

Purpose This study aims to investigate the structural relationships between pedagogy methods, creativity and entrepreneurial intentions. This study theorizes that work-integrated and active learning methods positively influence personal creativity, which in turn positively influences entrepreneurial intention. Moreover, entrepreneurial inspiration moderates the impact of creativity on entrepreneurial intentions. Design/methodology/approach A sample of 701 valid questionnaires from university students is used to investigate the proposed research model empirically. As the methodological approach, structural equation modelling with multigroup analysis is used. Findings The statistical results confirm the positive impacts of work-integrated and active learning methods on individual perceived creativity and of creativity on entrepreneurial intentions. Further, inspiration towards entrepreneurship moderates the link between individual creativity and entrepreneurial intentions. Originality/value This research fills the gap in the realm of examining the structural relationship among learning methods, creativity and entrepreneurial intentions in an emerging economy context. Specifically, this study confirms experiential teaching methods as important predictors of the development of students’ creativity capability and the moderating role of entrepreneurial inspiration in the relationship between perceived creativity and entrepreneurial intention. These results add to the academic literature on entrepreneurial intentions in emerging economies and provide new insights into how universities in emerging economies can foster the entrepreneurial intentions of their students.

Testing the Synchronicity of Splay-Fault Ruptures in Carson Valley, Nevada, United States

ABSTRACT The Carson City and Indian Hills faults in Carson City, Nevada, splay northeastward from the major range-bounding Genoa fault. Each splay is part of the Carson range fault system that extends nearly 100 km northward from near Markleeville, California, to Reno, Nevada. Stratigraphic and structural relationships exposed in paleoseismic excavations across the two faults yield a record of ground-rupturing earthquakes. The most recent on the Carson City fault occurred around 473–311 B.P., with the two penultimate events between 17.9 and 8.1 ka. Two trench exposures across the Indian Hills fault record the most recent earthquake displacement after ∼900 yr, preceded by a penultimate surface rupture ≥∼10,000, based on radiocarbon and infrared-stimulated luminescence dating of exposed sediments. The age estimates allow that the Carson City and Indian Hills faults ruptured simultaneously with a previously reported large earthquake on the Genoa fault ∼514–448 B.P. Similar synchronicity of rupture is not observed in the record of penultimate events. Penultimate ages of ruptures on the Carson City and Indian Hills faults are several thousand years older than that of the Genoa fault from which they splay. Together, these observations imply a variability in rupture moment through time, demonstrating the importance of considering multi-fault rupture models for seismic hazard analyses.