Green Human Resource Management

This chapter explores the vital role of human resource departments in organisations and their contributions towards environmental sustainability in the nations of sub-Saharan Africa. It posits that the role of HR in recruitment, training and development, learning, rewards, employee relations, and appraisal of employee performance should be conducted with environmental sustainability in mind. It affirms that instilling a culture of environmental awareness into every activity of organisations has a great return on productivity, attracting the best talents, and minimizing the harm of environmental degradation. It contends that organisational policies and behaviour on environmental responsiveness should be of greatest priority to the 21st-century businesses in sub-Saharan Africa.

Non-enzymatic oligonucleotide ligation in photoswitchable coacervate protocells sustains compartment-content coupling

Modern cells are adaptive chemical compartments tightly regulated by an underlying DNA-encoded program. Reproducing such a coupling between information content and chassis in synthetic compartments represents a key step to the assembly of evolvable protocells, but remains challenging. Here, we rationally exploit complexation between end-reactive oligonucleotides able to stack into long physical polymers and a cationic azobenzene photoswitch to produce three different phases – soft solids, liquid crystalline or isotropic coacervates droplets – that promote non-enzymatic oligonucleotide ligation, with a marked phase-dependent reaction efficiency. Changes in the population of polynucleotides during polymerization induce in turn phase transitions that dramatically alter the physical properties of the compartments. Dynamical modulation of coacervate assembly and dissolution via trans-cis azobenzene photoisomerisation is last used to demonstrate cycles of light-actuated oligonucleotide ligation. Overall, by combining a tight reaction-structure coupling and environmental responsiveness, our light-responsive reactive coacervates provide a novel general route to the non-enzymatic synthesis of polynucleotides, and pave the way to the emergence of a primitive genotype-phenotype coupling in membrane-free protocells.

Environmental Responsiveness and Firm Value: Evidence from Nigeria

This paper examines the effects of environmental responsiveness on firm value in Nigeria and provides an insight into the feasibility of corporate entities engaging with the United Nations’ sustainable development agenda, without compromising their wealth creation agenda. Secondary data were gathered from annual reports and audited accounts of 83 quoted non-financial firms for three years covering the period of 2016–2018. Thereafter, a regression analysis using the Ohlson value relevant model for price valuation was done. Results of the empirical analysis confirm the positive influence of value relevance of book values, earnings per share, alongside environmental responsiveness and firm size on the firm value of Nigerian firms, while leverage is inversely related. Remarkably too, firms with higher values tend towards being environmentally responsive. Impliedly, there is an empirical evidence of reverse causality between firm value and environmental responsiveness.

Environmental responsiveness of flowering time in cassava genotypes and associated transcriptome changes

Cassava is an important food security crop in tropical regions of the world. Cassava improvement by breeding is limited by its delayed and poor production of flowers, such that cassava flowering under field conditions indirectly lengthens the breeding cycle. By studying genotype and environment interaction under two Nigerian field conditions (Ubiaja and Ibadan) and three controlled temperature conditions (22°C/18°C, 28/24°C and 34/30°C (day/night)), we found that while early flowering genotypes flowered at similar times and rates under all growing conditions (unfavorable and favorable field and controlled-temperature environments), late flowering genotypes were environmentally sensitive such that they were substantially delayed in unfavorable environments. On the basis of nodes-to-flower, flowering of late genotypes approached the flowering time of early flowering genotypes under relatively cool Ubiaja field conditions and in growth chambers at 22°C, whereas warmer temperatures elicited a delaying effect. Analysis of transcriptomes from leaves of field and controlled-temperature environments revealed that conditions which promote early flowering in cassava have low expression of the flowering repressor gene TEMPRANILLO 1 (TEM1), before and after flowering. Expression data of field plants showed that the balance between flower stimulatory and inhibitory signaling appeared to correlate with flowering time across the environments and genotypes.

Plasticity of maternal environment dependent expression-QTLs of tomato seeds

Seeds are essential for plant reproduction, survival, and dispersal. Germination ability and successful establishment of young seedlings strongly depends on seed quality and on environmental factors such as nutrient availability. In tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) and many other species, seed quality and seedling establishment characteristics are determined by genetic variation, as well as the maternal environment in which the seeds develop and mature. The genetic contribution to variation in seed and seedling quality traits and environmental responsiveness can be estimated at transcriptome level in the dry seed by mapping genomic loci that affect gene expression (expression QTLs) in contrasting maternal environments. In this study, we applied RNA-sequencing to measure gene expression of seeds of a tomato RIL population derived from a cross between S. lycopersicum (cv. Moneymaker) and S. pimpinellifolium (G1.1554). The seeds matured on plants cultivated under different nutritional environments; i.e. on high phosphorus or low nitrogen. The obtained SNPs were subsequently used to construct a high-density genetic map. We show how the genetic landscape of plasticity in gene regulation in dry seeds is affected by the maternal nutrient environment. The combined information on natural genetic variation mediating (variation in) responsiveness to the environment may contribute to knowledge-based breeding programs aiming to develop crop cultivars that are resilient to stressful environments.

Intron-mediated induction of phenotypic heterogeneity

Introns are universally present in the nuclear genomes of eukaryotes. The budding yeast, an otherwise intron-poor species, preserves two sets of ribosomal protein (RP) genes differing primarily in their introns. Despite recent findings on the role of RP introns under stress and starvation, understanding the contribution of introns to ribosome regulation remains challenging. Here, combining isogrowth profiling with single-cell protein measurements, we found that introns can mediate inducible phenotypic heterogeneity conferring a clear fitness advantage. Osmotic stress leads to bimodal expression of the small ribosomal subunit protein Rps22B mediated by 5’UTR-intron retention in its transcript. The two resulting yeast subpopulations differ in their ability to cope with starvation. Low Rps22B protein levels resulted in prolonged survival under sustained starvation, while high Rps22B levels enabled cells to resume growth sooner after transient starvation. Further, yeast growing at high sugar concentrations – similar to those in ripe grapes – exhibit bimodal Rps22B expression when approaching stationary phase. Differential intron-mediated regulation of RP genes thus provides a way to diversify the population when starvation looms in natural environments. Our findings reveal intron retention as a new mechanism for inducing phenotypic heterogeneity in changing environments and suggest that duplicated RP genes in yeast serve to resolve the evolutionary conflict between precise expression control and environmental responsiveness.

A 3-dimensional fast machine learning algorithm for mobile unmanned aerial vehicle base stations

<p>The 5G technology is predicted to achieve the unoptimized millimeter Wave (mmWave) of 30-300 GHz bands. This unoptimized band because of the loss of mm-Wave bands, like path attenuation and propagation losses. Nonetheless, because of: (i) directional transmission paving way for beamforming to recompense for the path attenuation, and (ii) sophisticated placement concreteness of the base stations (BS) is the best alternative for array wireless communications in mmWave bands (that is to say 100-150 m). The advance in technology and innovation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) necessitates many opportunities and uncertainties. UAVs are agile and can fly all complexities if the terrains making ground robots unsuitable. The UAV may be managed either independently through aboard computers or distant controlled of a flight attendant on pulverized wireless communication links in our case 5G. Although a fast algorithm solved the problematic aspect of beam selection for 2-dimensional scenarios. This paper presents 3-dimensional scenarios for UAV. We modeled beam selection with environmental responsiveness in millimeter Wave UAV to accomplish close optimum assessments on the regular period through learning from the available situation.</p>

Environmental responsiveness of flowering time in cassava genotypes and associated transcriptome changes

Cassava is an important food security crop in tropical regions of the world. Cassava improvement by breeding is limited by its delayed and poor production of flowers, such that cassava flowering under field conditions indirectly lengthens the breeding cycle. By studying genotype and environment interaction under two Nigerian field conditions (Ubiaja and Ibadan) and three controlled temperature conditions (22°C/18°C, 28/24°C and 34/30°C (day/night)), we found that while early flowering genotypes flowered at similar times and rates under all growing conditions (unfavorable and favorable field and controlled-temperature environments), late flowering genotypes were environmentally sensitive such that they were substantially delayed in unfavorable environments. Flowering times of late genotypes approached the flowering time of early flowering genotypes under relatively cool Ubiaja field conditions and in growth chambers at 22°C, whereas warmer temperatures elicited a delaying effect. Analysis of field and controlled temperature transcriptomes in leaves revealed that conditions that promote early flowering in cassava have low expression of the flowering repressor gene TEMPRANILLO 1 (TEM1), before and after flowering, among others. Field transcriptomes showed that the balance between flower promoting and inhibitory signaling, appeared to correlate with flowering time across the environments and genotypes.

Intron-mediated induction of phenotypic heterogeneity

Introns are universally present in the nuclear genomes of eukaryotes1. The budding yeast, an otherwise intron-poor species, preserves two sets of ribosomal protein (RP) genes differing primarily in their introns2–4. Despite recent findings on the role of RP introns under stress and starvation5–7, understanding the contribution of introns to ribosome regulation remains challenging. Here, combining isogrowth profiling8 with single-cell protein measurements9, we found that introns can mediate inducible phenotypic heterogeneity conferring a clear fitness advantage. Osmotic stress leads to bimodal expression of the small ribosomal subunit protein Rps22B mediated by 5’UTR-intron retention in its transcript. The two resulting yeast subpopulations differ in their ability to cope with starvation. Low Rps22B protein levels resulted in prolonged survival under sustained starvation, while high Rps22B levels enabled cells to resume growth sooner after transient starvation. Further, yeast growing at high sugar concentrations – similar to those in ripe grapes – exhibit bimodal Rps22B expression when approaching stationary phase. Differential intron-mediated regulation of RP genes thus provides a way to diversify the population when starvation looms in natural environments. Our findings reveal intron retention as a new mechanism for inducing phenotypic heterogeneity in changing environments10,11 and suggest that duplicated RP genes in yeast serve to resolve the evolutionary conflict between precise expression control and environmental responsiveness12.