Search results for: migration organization strategy

Authors: Yutong Wan, John N. Wood

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Introduction: SCN9A encoded Nav1.7 is an ideal therapeutic target with minimal side effects for the pharmaceutical industry because SCN9A variants can cause both human gains of function pain-related mutations and loss of function pain-free mutations. This study reviews the clinical effectiveness of existing Nav1.7 inhibitors, which theoretically should be powerful analgesics. Methods: A systematic review is conducted on the effectiveness of current Nav1.7 blockers undergoing clinical trials. Studies were mainly extracted from PubMed, U.S. National Library of Medicine Clinical Trials, World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry, ISRCTN registry platform, and Integrated Research Approval System by NHS. Only studies with full text available and those conducted using double-blinded, placebo controlled, and randomised designs and reporting at least one analgesic measurement were included. Results: Overall, 61 trials were screened, and eight studies covering PF 05089771 (Pfizer), TV 45070 (Teva & Xenon), and BIIB074 (Biogen) met the inclusion criteria. Most studies were excluded because results were not published. All three compounds demonstrated insignificant analgesic effects, and the comparison between PF 05089771 and pregabalin/ibuprofen showed that PF 05089771 was a much weaker analgesic. All three drug candidates only have mild side effects, indicating the potentials for further investigation of Nav1.7 antagonists. Discussion: The failure of current Nav1.7 small molecule inhibitors might attribute to ignorance of the key role of endogenous systems in Nav1.7 null mutants, the lack of selectivity and blocking potency, and central impermeability. The synergistic combination of analgesic drugs, a recent UCL patent, combining a small dose of Nav1.7 blockers and opioids or enkephalinase inhibitors dramatically enhanced the analgesic effects. Conclusion: The current clinical testing Nav1.7 blockers are generally disappointing. However, the newer generation of Nav1.7 targeting analgesics has overcome the major constraints of its predecessors.

Keywords: chronic pain, Nav1.7 blockers, SCN9A, systematic review

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Authors: Peng Hou

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Natural products produced from marine bacteria serve as an immense reservoir for anti-infective drugs and therapeutic agents. Nowadays, heterologous expression of gene clusters of interests has been widely adopted as an effective strategy for natural product discovery. Briefly, the heterologous expression flowchart would be: biosynthetic gene cluster identification, pathway construction and expression, and product detection. However, gene cluster capture using traditional Transformation-associated recombination (TAR) protocol is low-efficient (0.5% positive colony rate). To make things worse, most of these putative new natural products are only predicted by bioinformatics analysis such as antiSMASH, and their corresponding natural products biosynthetic pathways are either not expressed or expressed at very low levels under laboratory conditions. Those setbacks have inspired us to focus on seeking new technologies to efficiently edit and refractor of biosynthetic gene clusters. Recently, two cutting-edge techniques have attracted our attention - the CRISPR-Cas9 and Gibson Assembly. By now, we have tried to pretreat Brevibacillus laterosporus strain genomic DNA with CRISPR-Cas9 nucleases that specifically generated breaks near the gene cluster of interest. This trial resulted in an increase in the efficiency of gene cluster capture (9%). Moreover, using Gibson Assembly by adding/deleting certain operon and tailoring enzymes regardless of end compatibility, the silent construct (~80kb) has been successfully refactored into an active one, yielded a series of analogs expected. With the appearances of the novel molecular tools, we are confident to believe that development of a high throughput mature pipeline for DNA assembly, transformation, product isolation and identification would no longer be a daydream for marine natural product discovery.

Keywords: biosynthesis, CRISPR-Cas9, DNA assembly, refactor, TAR cloning

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Authors: Adegoriola Mayowa I., Lai Joseph H. K., Yung Esther H. K., Chan Edwin H. K.

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Heritage buildings (HBs) as structures with historical and architectural relevance that form an integral part of contemporary society. These buildings deserve to be protected for as long as possible to retain their significance. Therefore, the need to prioritize HB maintenance management is pertinent. However, the decision-making process of HBMM can be relatively daunting. The decision-making challenge may be attributed to the multiple 'stakeholders' expectation and requirement which needs to be met. To this end, professionals in the built environment have identified the need to apply the strategic concept of facilities management (FM) in decision making. Furthermore, the different maintenance dimensions have been applied to maintenance management of residential, commercial, and health facilities. Unfortunately, these different maintenance approaches, such as FM, sustainable FM, urban FM, green FM, and strategic FM, are yet to be fully explored in the decision-making process of HBMM. To bridge this gap, this study focuses on developing a framework for strategic decision-making HBMM, which helps achieve HBMM sustainability. At the study's inception, relevant works of literature in the domains of HBMM and FM were conducted. This review helped in the identification of contemporary maintenance practices and their applicability to HBMM. Afterward, a conceptual framework to aid decision-making in HBMM was developed. This framework integrated the concept of FM scope (people, place, process, and technology) while ensuring that decisions plans were made at strategic, tactical, and operational levels. Also, the different characteristics of HBs and stakeholders' requirements were considered in the framework. The conceptual framework presents a holistic guide for professionals in HBMM to ensure that decision processes and outcomes are practical and efficient. It also contributes to the existing body of knowledge on the integration of FM in HBMM. Furthermore, it will serve as a basis for future studies by applying the conceptualized framework in actual cases.

Keywords: decision-making, facility management, strategy, sustainability, heritage building, maintenance

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Authors: Marinko Maslaric, Maja Jokic

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When searching for fast and long term responses, sustainable logistics and supply chain applications have developed irrefutable theories and hypotheses towards market requirements. Nevertheless, there are certain misunderstandings on how the implementation of sustainability principles (social, economical, and environmental) and concepts should work in practice, more specifically, within a humanitarian supply chain management context. This paper will focus on the review and analysis of risk management concepts in humanitarian supply chain in order to identify their compliance with sustainable principles. In this direction, the study will look for strategies that suggest: minimization of environmental impacts throughout the reduction of resources consumption, depreciation of logistics costs, including supply chain ones, minimization of transportation and service costs, elaboration of quality performance of supply chain and logistics, and reduction of supply chain delivery time. On the side of meeting all defense, trades and humanitarian logistics needs, the research will be aligned to UN Sustainable Development Goals, standards, and performances. It will start with relevant strategies for identification of risk indicators and it will end with suggestion of valuable strategic approaches for their minimization or total prevention. Finally, a content analysis will propose a suitable methodological structure for the creation of most sustainable strategy in risk management of humanitarian supply chain. Content analysis will accompany thorough, consistent and methodical approach of literature review for potential disaster risk management plan. Thereupon, the propositions of this research will look for contemporary literature gaps, with respect to operate the literature analysis and to suggest the appropriate sustained risk low master plan. The indicated is here to secure the high quality of logistics practices in hazardous events.

Keywords: humanitarian logistics, sustainability, supply chain risk, risk management plan

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Authors: Ghazal Faraj, Andras Micsik

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The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) is an extensible ontology that provides integrated access to heterogeneous and digital datasets. The CIDOC-CRM offers a “semantic glue” intended to promote accessibility to several diverse and dispersed sources of cultural heritage data. That is achieved by providing a formal structure for the implicit and explicit concepts and their relationships in the cultural heritage field. The COURAGE (“Cultural Opposition – Understanding the CultuRal HeritAGE of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries”) project aimed to explore methods about socialist-era cultural resistance during 1950-1990 and planned to serve as a basis for further narratives and digital humanities (DH) research. This project highlights the diversity of flourished alternative cultural scenes in Eastern Europe before 1989. Moreover, the dataset of COURAGE is an online RDF-based registry that consists of historical people, organizations, collections, and featured items. For increasing the inter-links between different datasets and retrieving more relevant data from various data silos, a shared federated ontology for reconciled data is needed. As a first step towards these goals, a full understanding of the CIDOC CRM ontology (target ontology), as well as the COURAGE dataset, was required to start the work. Subsequently, the queries toward the ontology were determined, and a table of equivalent properties from COURAGE and CIDOC CRM was created. The structural diagrams that clarify the mapping process and construct queries are on progress to map person, organization, and collection entities to the ontology. Through mapping the COURAGE dataset to CIDOC-CRM ontology, the dataset will have a common ontological foundation with several other datasets. Therefore, the expected results are: 1) retrieving more detailed data about existing entities, 2) retrieving new entities’ data, 3) aligning COURAGE dataset to a standard vocabulary, 4) running distributed SPARQL queries over several CIDOC-CRM datasets and testing the potentials of distributed query answering using SPARQL. The next plan is to map CIDOC-CRM to other upper-level ontologies or large datasets (e.g., DBpedia, Wikidata), and address similar questions on a wide variety of knowledge bases.

Keywords: CIDOC CRM, cultural heritage data, COURAGE dataset, ontology alignment

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Authors: Ewenam Gbormittah

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Because of the effects of the pandemic, companies are focusing on the future of work arrangements for their employees. This includes adapting to a remote or hybrid working model. It is important that employers provide those working remotely or in a hybrid mode a rewarding onboarding experience and opportunities for interaction. Although, Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) have transformed the ways organisations manage employees over the years, there is still a need for a platform where organisations can adjust their onboarding to suit the social and interactive aspects of their employees, to facilitate successful integration. This study aimed to explore this matter by investigating whether Virtual Reality (VR) technology contributes to new employees integration into the organisation during their job-onboarding (JOB) process. The research questions are as follows: (1) To what extent does VR have an impact on employees successful integration into the organisation, and (2) How does VR help elements of new employees Psychological Contract (PC) during the course of interactions. An exploratory case study approach, which consisted of a semi-structured interview was conducted on 20 employees, split from two different case organisations. The results of the data were analysed according to each case, and then a cross-case comparison was provided. The results have generated 8 themes, presenting in excess of 7 sub-themes for CS1 and presented 7 themes, in excess of 7 sub-themes for CS2. The cross-case analysis has revealed that VR does have the potential to support employees integration into the organisation. However, the effects were shown to be stronger for employees in CS2, compared to employees in CS1. The results highlight practical implications for onboarding psychology and strategic talent solutions within recruitment. Such strategy this research particularly outlines, involves providing insights on how to manage the PC of employees from the recruitment stage to creating successful employment relationships.

Keywords: job-onboarding, psychological contract, virtual reality, case study one, case study two

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Authors: Sylvain Caillol, Maxence Fache, Bernard Boutevin

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Recent years have witnessed an increasing demand on renewable resource-derived polymers owing to increasing environmental concern and restricted availability of petrochemical resources. Thus, a great deal of attention was paid to renewable resources-derived polymers and to thermosetting materials especially, since they are crosslinked polymers and thus cannot be recycled. Also, most of thermosetting materials contain aromatic monomers, able to confer high mechanical and thermal properties to the network. Therefore, the access to biobased, non-harmful, and available aromatic monomers is one of the main challenges of the years to come. Starting from phenols available in large volumes from renewable resources, our team designed platforms of chemicals usable for the synthesis of various polymers. One of these phenols, vanillin, which is readily available from lignin, was more specifically studied. Various aromatic building blocks bearing polymerizable functions were synthesized: epoxy, amine, acid, carbonate, alcohol etc. These vanillin-based monomers can potentially lead to numerous polymers. The example of epoxy thermosets was taken, as there is also the problematic of bisphenol A substitution for these polymers. Materials were prepared from the biobased epoxy monomers obtained from vanillin. Their thermo-mechanical properties were investigated and the effect of the monomer structure was discussed. The properties of the materials prepared were found to be comparable to the current industrial reference, indicating a potential replacement of petrosourced, bisphenol A-based epoxy thermosets by biosourced, vanillin-based ones. The tunability of the final properties was achieved through the choice of monomer and through a well-controlled oligomerization reaction of these monomers. This follows the same strategy than the one currently used in industry, which supports the potential of these vanillin-derived epoxy thermosets as substitutes of their petro-based counterparts.

Keywords: lignin, vanillin, epoxy, amine, carbonate

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Authors: Uzma Ahmad

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hyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) is the most turbulent province of Pakistan, sharing a longborder with Afghanistan. For about four decades, KPK is facing a series of international events. The peak was reached after 9/11when region was labelled as posing a major theatre of militancy and terrorism which was intensified when Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP) began attempts to seize the authority of state. One of the main focus of TTP was to damage and uprooting of female education system and infrastructure in KPK which later became the site of a massacre of school children of Army Public School Peshawar on 16 December 2014.It resulted to the launching of Zarb-e-Azb against the TTP insurgency,casualty and crime rates in the KPKas a whole dropped by 40.0% as compared to 2011–13. All this has badly hampered the female education both in terms of quantity and quality. Malala Yousafzai who is now an advocate of female education has been a victim of Talibans brutality in that area. And thelanguage in which she managed to express herself to the International community is English.Keeping in view the situation, the present project was designed with a sole aim to focus on female students of the area which are few in numbers and to investigate some specific area, where they have been confronting problems in the use of grammar, vocabulary,tenses and organization of ideas in writings. The reasons might be the careless attitude, insufficient reading habits, lack of interest and poor knowledge of English language. The methodology was a descriptive one as it shows the effects of the internal efficiency(independent variables) on an intermediate college’s progress(dependent variables). It was a case study since data was collected from a focused group of 60 female students of arts and humanities at Swabi college at Intermediate level. The ultimate focus was to explore the possibilities of creating a Gender friendly environment for female students. This research has proved how the correct use of English language has given them confidence to move ahead side by side with men and to acknowledge their right of self-determination.

Keywords: capacity building, female education, gender friendly, internal efficiency

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Authors: Laverne Seales

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When most people think of Panama, they immediately think of the Canal; however, the construction and the people who made it possible are often omitted and seldom acknowledged. The reality is that the construction of this waterway was achieved through forced migration and discriminatory practices toward people of African descent, specifically black people from the Caribbean. From the colonial period to the opening and subsequent operation of the Panama Canal by the United States, this paper goes through the rich layers of Panamanian history to examine the life of Afro-Caribbeans and their descendants in Panama. It also considers the role of the United States in Panama; it explores how the United States in Panama forged a racially complex country that made the integration of Afro-Caribbeans and their descendants difficult. After laying a historical foundation, the exploration of Afro-Caribbean people and Panamanians of Afro-Caribbean descent are analyzed through Afro-Panamanian writer Carlos Guillermo ‘Cubena’ Wilson's novels, short stories, and poetry. This study focuses on how Cubena addresses racism, discrimination, inequality, and social justice issues towards Afro-Caribbeans and their descendants who traveled to Panama to construct the Canal. Content analysis methodology can yield several significant contributions, and analyzing Carlos Guillermo Wilson's literature under this framework allows us to consider social commentary and critique of Panamanian society. It identifies the social issues and concerns of Afro-Caribbeans and people of Afro-Caribbean descent, such as inequality, corruption, racism, political oppression, and cultural identity. Analysis methodology allows us to explore how Cubena's literature engages with questions of cultural identity and belonging in Panamanian society. By examining themes related to race, ethnicity, language, and heritage, this research uncovers the complexities of Panamanian cultural identity, allowing us to interrogate power dynamics and social hierarchies in Panamanian society. Analyzing the portrayal of different social groups, institutions, and power structures helps uncover how power is wielded, contested, and resisted; Cubena's fictional world allows us to see how it functions in Panama. Content analysis methodology also provides for critiquing political systems and governance in Panama. By examining the representation and presentation of political figures, institutions, and events in Cubena's literature, we uncover his commentary on corruption, authoritarianism, governance, and the role of the United States in Panama. Content analysis highlights how Wilson's literature amplifies the voices and experiences of marginalized individuals and communities in Panamanian society. By centering the narratives of Afro-Panamanians and other marginalized groups, this researcher uncovers Cubena's commitment to social justice and inclusion in his writing and helps the reader engage with historical narratives and collective memory in Panama. Overall, analyzing Carlos Guillermo ‘Cubena’ Wilson's literature as a platform for social commentary and critique of Panamanian society using content analysis methodology provides valuable insights into the cultural, social, and political dimensions of Afro-Panamanians during and after the construction of the Panama Canal.

Keywords: Afro-Caribbean, Panama Canal, race, Afro-Panamanian, identity, history

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Authors: K. Caban-Piaskowska

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The aim of the article is to show how the role of a designer has changed, from the point of view of human resources management and thanks to the increased importance of design management, and is to present how a rehabilitation product, through technology approach to designing, becomes a universal product. Designing for the disabled is a very undiscovered area on the pattern-designing market, most often because it is associated with devices which support rehabilitation. In consequence, it means that the realizations have a limited group of receivers and are not that attractive for designers. The relation between using modern design in building rehabilitation devices and increasing the efficiency of treatment and physiotherapy. Using modern technology can have marketing significance. Rehabilitation products designed and produced in a modern way makes an impression that experts and professionals are involved in the lives of the user – patient. In order to illustrate the problem presented above i.e. Creating a rehabilitation product as an example of design management, the case study method was used in the research. The analysis of the case was created on the basis of an interview conducted by the author with a designer who took part in meetings with people who use rehabilitation and their physiotherapists, and created universal products in Poland in the years of 2012 to 2017. Usually, engineers and constructors deal with creating products which remind us of old torture devices, however, they are indestructible in construction. Such image of those products for the disabled clearly indicates that it is a wonderful niche for designers and emphasizes the need to make those products more attractive and innovative. Products for the disabled cannot be limited to rehabilitation equipment only e.g. wheelchairs or standing frames. Introducing the idea of universal designing can significantly broaden the circle of pattern-designing receivers – everyday-use items – with the disabled people. Fulfilling these criteria will decide about the advantage on the competitive market. It is possible due to the usage of the design management concept in the functioning of an organization. Using modern technology and materials in the production of equipment, and changing the role of a designer broadening the circle of receivers by designing a wide use process which makes it possible to use the product by people with various needs. What is more, introducing rehabilitation functions in everyday-use items can also become an innovative accent in designing. In the reality of the market, each group of users can and should be treated as a problem and a realization task.

Keywords: design management, innovation, rehabilitation product, universal product

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Authors: Hina Javed

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This study investigated the different strategies used by Pakistani students learning English as a second language at secondary level school. The basic premise of the study is that ESL students face tremendous difficulty while they are reading a text in English. It also purports to dig into the different causes of their slow reading. They might range from word reading accuracy, mental translation, lexical density, cultural gaps, complex syntactic constructions, and back skipping. Sixty Grade 7 students from two secondary mainstream schools in Lahore were selected for the study, thirty being boys and thirty girls. They were administered reading-related and reading speed pre and post-tests. The purpose of the tests was to gauge their performance on different reading tasks so as to be able to see how they used strategies, if any, and also to ascertain the causes hampering their performance on those tests. In the pretests, they were given simple texts with considerable lexical density and moderately complex sentential layout. In the post-tests, the reading tasks contained comic strips, texts with visuals, texts with controlled vocabulary, and an evenly distributed varied range of simple, compound, and complex sentences. Both the tests were timed. The results gleaned through the data gathered corroborated the researchers’ basic hunch that they performed significantly better than pretests. The findings suggest that the morphological structure of words and lexical density are the main sources of reading comprehension difficulties in poor ESL readers. It is also confirmed that if the texts are accompanied by pictorial visuals, it greatly facilitates students’ reading speed and comprehension. There is no substantial evidence that ESL readers adopt any specific strategy while reading in English.

Keywords: slow ESL reading speed, mental translation, complex syntactic constructions, back skipping

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Authors: Majid Mardaniyan Ghahfarokhi, Abdolhamid Habibi, Majid Mohammad Shahi

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The combination of exercise and diet as the most important strategy to reduce weight and control obesity-related factors, including Irisin, Insulin, and Glucose was raised. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of aerobic exercise combined with four different diets on serum levels of Irisin, Insulin, and Glucose in overweight men. Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, 8 overweight men (BMI 29.23±0.47) with average age of (23±1.6) voluntarily participated in 4 sessions by one-week interval. The study was done in exercise physiology lab. In each session, subjects performed a 30 minutes treadmill test with 60-70% of maximum heart rate, after consuming a high carbohydrate, high-fat, high-protein and normal diet. For biochemical measurement, three blood samples were taken in fasting state, two hours after meals and after exercise Results: Statistical analysis of data showed that the serum levels of Irisin after consumption all four diets had been reduced which this reduce as a result of high-fat diet that were significantly (p ≤ 0/038). Serum concentration of Insulin and Glucose increased after consuming four diets. However, increase in serum Insulin and Glucose was significant only after consuming high-carbohydrate diet (Respectively p ≤ 0/001, p ≤ 0/042). In addition, during exercise after consuming all four regular diet, high carbohydrate, high-protein and high-fat, Irisin significant increased significantly (Respectively p ≤ 0/021, p ≤ 0/049, p ≤ 0/001, P ≤ 0/003), Insulin decreased significantly (Respectively p ≤ 0/002, p ≤ 0/001, p ≤ 0/001, p ≤ 0/002) and Glucose were significantly reduced (Respectively p ≤ 0/001, p ≤ 0/001, P ≤ 0/001, p ≤ 0/002). After aerobic activity following the consumption of a high protein diet the highest increase in irisin levels, and after aerobic exercise following consumption of high carbohydrate diet the greatest decrease in insulin and glucose levels were observed. Conclusion: It seems that diet alone and exercises following different consumption diets can have a significant effect on Irisin, Insulin, and Glucose serum levels in overweight young men.

Keywords: acute aerobic exercise, diet, irisin, overweight

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Authors: Sandra Figueiredo, Margarida Alves Martins, Carlos Silva, Cristina Simões

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This study integrates a larger research empirical project that examines second language (SL) learners’ profiles and valid procedures to perform complete and diagnostic assessment in schools. 102 learners of Portuguese as a SL aged 7 and 17 years speakers of distinct home languages were assessed in several linguistic tasks. In this article, we focused on writing performance in the specific task of narrative essay composition. The written outputs were measured using the score in six components adapted from an English SL assessment context (Alberta Education): linguistic vocabulary, grammar, syntax, strategy, socio-linguistic, and discourse. The writing processes and strategies in Portuguese language used by different immigrant students were analysed to determine features and diversity of deficits on authentic texts performed by SL writers. Differentiated performance was based on the diversity of the following variables: grades, previous schooling, home language, instruction in first language, and exposure to Portuguese as Second Language. Indo-Aryan languages speakers showed low writing scores compared to their peers and the type of language and respective cognitive mapping (such as Mandarin and Arabic) was the predictor, not linguistic distance. Home language instruction should also be prominently considered in further research to understand specificities of cognitive academic profile in a Romance languages learning context. Additionally, this study also examined the teachers representations that will be here addressed to understand educational implications of second language teaching in psychological distress of different minorities in schools of specific host countries.

Keywords: home language, immigrant students, Portuguese language, second language, writing assessment

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Authors: Amir Abbas Fatemi, Zahra Tabrizian, Kabir Sadeghi

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To find the location and severity of damage that occurs in a structure, characteristics changes in dynamic and static can be used. The non-destructive techniques are more common, economic, and reliable to detect the global or local damages in structures. This paper presents a non-destructive method in structural damage detection and assessment using GA and static data. Thus, a set of static forces is applied to some of degrees of freedom and the static responses (displacements) are measured at another set of DOFs. An analytical model of the truss structure is developed based on the available specification and the properties derived from static data. The damages in structure produce changes to its stiffness so this method used to determine damage based on change in the structural stiffness parameter. Changes in the static response which structural damage caused choose to produce some simultaneous equations. Genetic Algorithms are powerful tools for solving large optimization problems. Optimization is considered to minimize objective function involve difference between the static load vector of damaged and healthy structure. Several scenarios defined for damage detection (single scenario and multiple scenarios). The static damage identification methods have many advantages, but some difficulties still exist. So it is important to achieve the best damage identification and if the best result is obtained it means that the method is Reliable. This strategy is applied to a plane truss. This method is used for a plane truss. Numerical results demonstrate the ability of this method in detecting damage in given structures. Also figures show damage detections in multiple damage scenarios have really efficient answer. Even existence of noise in the measurements doesn’t reduce the accuracy of damage detections method in these structures.

Keywords: damage detection, finite element method, static data, non-destructive, genetic algorithm

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Authors: Suprehatin Suprehatin

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Improving the participation of smallholder farmers in horticultural value chains to benefit from the rapidly growing demand for high-value agricultural products is one strategy for raising farm income. However, smallholder farmer participation in Indonesian horticultural value chains is under-researched. To address this knowledge gap, this study aims to describe the current status of horticultural crop adoption in Indonesia and analyze the motivations and dynamics of smallholder farmer participation in horticultural value chains: why some small farmers join these new and potentially profitable chains and continue their participation. This study also examines the characteristics of farmers who adopted and those who did not adopt a new horticultural crop with respect to the household (farmer), farm and institutional characteristics. The analysis was conducted using unique data from a 2013 survey of 960 Indonesian farmers on Java Island that produce a variety of agricultural products. Basic statistical analysis showed relatively low adoption rates (10%) of new horticultural crops amongst 960 selected Indonesian farmers with different decisions made in terms of number and timing of new horticultural crop adoption. Adopters were motivated mainly by higher profit, higher yield, and more cash opportunities. The result also showed that current low rates of horticultural crop adoption are associated with a variety of factors, such as lower levels of education among farmers, resource constraints, lack of information on horticultural crop production and low participation in farmer groups. These findings will be helpful for policymakers when designing policies and programs to promote greater participation of Indonesian smallholder farmers in horticultural value chains. In other words, a revitalisation of agricultural policy beyond staple food is important to seize potential benefits from the ongoing agricultural food market transformation.

Keywords: farmer adoption, high value, horticultural crops, Indonesia

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Authors: Srikrishna Pramanik, Sree Chithra, Saurabh Rai, Sameeksha Agrawal, Debanggana Shil, Saptarshi Mukherjee

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The understanding of interactions between organic chromophores and biologically useful luminescent noble metal nanoclusters (NCs) leading to an energy transfer process that has applications in light-harvesting materials is still in its nascent stage. This work describes a photoluminescent supramolecular assembly, made in two stages, employing an energy transfer process between silver (Ag) NCs as the donor and a host-guest system as the acceptor that can find potential applications in diverse fields. Initially, we explored the host-guest chemistry between a cationic guest, Ethidium Bromide and the anionic host Cucurbit[8]uril using spectroscopic and calorimetric techniques to decipher their interaction mechanism in modulating photophysical properties of the chromophore. Next, we synthesized a series of blue-emitting AgNCs using different templates such as protein, peptides, and cyclodextrin. The as-prepared AgNCs were characterized by various spectroscopic techniques. We have established that these AgNCs can be employed as donors in the FRET process with the above acceptor for FRET-based emission color tuning. Our in-depth studies revealed that surface ligands play a key role in modulating FRET efficiency. Overall, by employing a non-covalent strategy, we have tried to develop FRET pairs using blue-emitting NCs and a host-guest complex, which could find potential applications in constructing advanced white light-emitting, anti-counterfeiting materials, and developing biosensors.

Keywords: absorption spectroscopy, cavities, energy transfer, fluorescence, fluorescence resonance energy transfer

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Authors: Dong Tran, Thanh Dac Van, Ly Le

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Hemagglutinin (HA) and Neuraminidase (NA) play an important role in host immune evasion across influenza virus evolution process. The correlation between HA and NA evolution in respect to epitopic evolution and drug interaction has yet to be investigated. In this study, combining of sequence to structure evolution and statistical analysis on epitopic/binding site specificity, we identified potential therapeutic features of HA and NA that show specific antibody binding site of HA and specific binding distribution within NA active site of current inhibitors. Our approach introduces the use of sequence variation and molecular interaction to provide an effective strategy in establishing experimental based distributed representations of protein-protein/ligand complexes. The most important advantage of our method is that it does not require complete dataset of complexes but rather directly inferring feature interaction from sequence variation and molecular interaction. Using correlated sequence analysis, we additionally identified co-evolved mutations associated with maintaining HA/NA structural and functional variability toward immunity and therapeutic treatment. Our investigation on the HA binding specificity revealed unique conserved stalk domain interacts with unique loop domain of universal antibodies (CR9114, CT149, CR8043, CR8020, F16v3, CR6261, F10). On the other hand, NA inhibitors (Oseltamivir, Zaninamivir, Laninamivir) showed specific conserved residue contribution and similar to that of NA substrate (sialic acid) which can be exploited for drug design. Our study provides an important insight into rational design and identification of novel therapeutics targeting universally recognized feature of influenza HA/NA.

Keywords: influenza virus, hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase (NA), sequence evolution

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Authors: Priya Patel, Paresh Patel, Mihir Raval

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Silibinin, a flavanone as an antimicrotubular agent used in the treatment of cancer, was encapsulated in nanoparticles (NPs) of poly (lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) polymer using the spray-drying technique. The effects of various experimental parameters were optimized by box-behnken experimental design. Production yield, encapsulation efficiency and dissolution study along with characterization by scanning electron microscopy, DSC, FTIR followed by bioavailability study. Particle size and zeta potential were evaluated by using zetatrac particle size analyzer. Experimental design it was evaluated that inlet temperature and polymer concentration influence on the drug release. Feed flow rate impact on particle size. Results showed that spray drying technique yield 149 nm indicate nanosize range. The small size of the nanoparticle resulted in an enhanced cellular entry and greater bioavailability. Entrapment efficiency was found between 89.35% and 98.36%. Zeta potential shows good stability index of nanoparticle formulation. The in vitro release studies indicated the silibinin loaded PLGA nanoparticles provide controlled drug release over a period of 32 h. Pharmacokinetic studies demonstrated that after oral administration of silibinin-loaded PLGA nanoparticles to rats at a dose of 10 mg/kg, relative bioavailability was enhanced about 8.85-fold, compared to silibinin suspension as control hence, this investigation demonstrated the potential of the experimental design in understanding the effect of the formulation variables on the quality of silibinin loaded PLGA nanoparticles. These results describe an effective strategy of silibinin loaded PLGA nanoparticles and might provide a promising approach against the cancer.

Keywords: silibinin, cancer, nanoparticles, PLGA, bioavailability

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Authors: Sandra Thompson, Paul Dervan

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Ireland’s first Technological University (TU Dublin) was established on 1st January 2019, and its creation is an exciting new milestone in Irish Higher Education. TU Dublin is now Ireland’s biggest University supporting 29,000 students across three campuses with 3,500 staff. The University aspires to create work-ready graduates who are socially responsible, open-minded global thinkers who are ambitious to change the world for the better. As graduates, they will be enterprising and daring in all their endeavors, ready to play their part in transforming the future. Feedback from Irish employers and students coupled with evidence from other authoritative sources such as the World Economic Forum points to a need for greater focus on the development of students’ employability skills as they prepare for today’s work environment. Moreover, with an increased focus on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and inclusiveness, there is recognition that students are more than a numeric grade value. Robust grading systems have been developed to track a student’s performance around discipline knowledge but there is little or no global consensus on a definition of transversal skills nor on a unified framework to assess transversal skills. Education and industry sectors are often assessing one or two skills, and some are developing their own frameworks to capture the learner’s achievement in this area. Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) have discovered and implemented a framework to allow students to develop, assess and record their transversal skills using transformative learning theory. The model implemented is an adaptation of Student Transformative Learning Record - STLR which originated in the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO). The purpose of this paper therefore, is to examine the views of students, staff and employers in the context of deploying a Transformative Learning model within the University to assess transversal skills. It will examine the initial impact the transformative learning model is having socially, personally and on the University as an organization. Crucially also, to identify lessons learned from the deployment in order to assist other Universities and Higher Education Institutes who may be considering a focused adoption of Transformative Learning to meet the challenge of preparing students for today’s work environment.

Keywords: assessing transversal skills, higher education, transformative learning, students

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Authors: Suantak Demkhosei Vaiphei

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Mental illness is still considered as an illness not to be treated, resulting India becoming the most depressed country in the world. At present, 150 million Indians are suffering from mental illness and desperately in need of immediate care assessment for their mental health condition. However, only 0.06 per cent of India’s health budget is devoted to mental health treatment, in which the available data suggests that the state of spending the sanctioned budget in this regard is abysmal. Lack of awareness, ignorance, social stigma, and discriminations becomes the underlying factors for worsening the individual mental health conditions. Unfortunately, India becomes the most depressed country in the world, which is hugely affected by anxiety, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder followed by China and USA as per the latest World Health Organization report. The National Care of Medical Health stated that at least 6.5 per cent of the Indian populations are under serious mental disorder both in the rural and the urban areas’Mental health is the integral part of health and can be affected by a range of psychosocial-economic factors that need comprehensive strategically approach for promotion, prevention, treatment, and recovery. In a low- and middle-income country like India, the advance progress in mental health service is visible consistently slow and minimal. Some of the major barriers can be seen in the existing public health priorities and its influence on funding; challenges to delivery of basic mental health care in the primary care settings; the minimal numbers of well-trained professionals in the area of mental health care; and lack of mental health perspective in public-health leadership. The existing barriers according to WHO (2007) are; lack of funding for mental health services is the core barrier in implementing quality mental health services, including inadequate coordinated and consensus based national mental health advocacy and plans, the absence of mental health in major donor priorities, marketing of expensive pharmaceuticals by industry, cost-effectiveness information on mental health services that is unknown to senior decision-makers and social stigma among others. Moreover, lack of strong mental health advocacy in countries to increase resources for mental health services and the role of social stigma and the view that mental health is a private responsibility are also the two barriers to mental health.

Keywords: mental health, depression, stigma, barriers

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Authors: D. Amaranatha Reddy

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Highly efficient and stable co-catalysts materials is of great important for boosting photo charge carrier’s separation, transportation efficiency, and accelerating the catalytic reactive sites of semiconductor photocatalysts. As a result, it is of decisive importance to fabricate low price noble metal free co-catalysts with high catalytic reactivity, but it remains very challenging. Considering this challenge here, dual metal organic frame work derived N-Doped Fe3C nanocages have been rationally designed and decorated with ultrathin ZnIn2S4 nanosheets for efficient photocatalytic hydrogen generation. The fabrication strategy precisely integrates co-catalyst nanocages with ultrathin two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor nanosheets by providing tightly interconnected nano-junctions and helps to suppress the charge carrier’s recombination rate. Furthermore, constructed highly porous hybrid structures expose ample active sites for catalytic reduction reactions and harvest visible light more effectively by light scattering. As a result, fabricated nanostructures exhibit superior solar driven hydrogen evolution rate (9600 µmol/g/h) with an apparent quantum efficiency of 3.6 %, which is relatively higher than the Pt noble metal co-catalyst systems and earlier reported ZnIn2S4 based nanohybrids. We believe that the present work promotes the application of sulfide based nanostructures in solar driven hydrogen production.

Keywords: photocatalysis, water splitting, hydrogen fuel production, solar-driven hydrogen

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Authors: Hung-Yuan Chang, Wen-Lung Chiang, Kuo-Liang Wu, Chen-Tsung Lin

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National Space Organization (NSPO) has completed in 2014 the development of a space-borne GPS receiver, including design, manufacture, comprehensive functional test, environmental qualification test and so on. The main performance of this receiver include 8-meter positioning accuracy, 0.05 m/sec speed-accuracy, the longest 90 seconds of cold start time, and up to 15g high dynamic scenario. The receiver will be integrated in the autonomous FORMOSAT-7 NSPO-Built satellite scheduled to be launched in 2019 to execute pre-defined scientific missions. The flight model of this receiver manufactured in early 2015 will pass comprehensive functional tests and environmental acceptance tests, etc., which are expected to be completed by the end of 2015. The space-borne GPS receiver is a pure software design in which all GPS baseband signal processing are executed by a digital signal processor (DSP), currently only 50% of its throughput being used. In response to the booming global navigation satellite systems, NSPO will gradually expand this receiver to become a multi-mode, multi-band, high-precision navigation receiver, and even a science payload, such as the reflectometry receiver of a global navigation satellite system. The fundamental purpose of this extension study is to port some software algorithms such as signal acquisition and correlation, reused code and large amount of computation load to the FPGA whose processor is responsible for operational control, navigation solution, and orbit propagation and so on. Due to the development and evolution of the FPGA is pretty fast, the new system architecture upgraded via an FPGA should be able to achieve the goal of being a multi-mode, multi-band high-precision navigation receiver, or scientific receiver. Finally, the results of tests show that the new system architecture not only retains the original overall performance, but also sets aside more resources available for future expansion possibility. This paper will explain the detailed DSP/FPGA architecture, development, test results, and the goals of next development stage of this receiver.

Keywords: space-borne, GPS receiver, DSP, FPGA, multi-mode multi-band

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Authors: Rajkumar Ghosh

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Jhakri Thrust (JT), Sarahan Thrust (ST), and Chaura Thrust (CT) are the three OOST along Jakhri-Chaura segment along the Sutlej river valley in Himachal Pradesh. CT is deciphered only by Apatite Fission Track dating. Such geochronological information is not currently accessible for the Jhakri and Sarahan thrusts. JT was additionally validated as OOST without any dating. The described rock types include ductile sheared gneisses and upper greenschist-amphibolite facies metamorphosed schists. Locally, the Munsiari (Jutogh) Thrust is referred to as the JT. Brittle shear, the JT, borders the research area's southern and ductile shear, the CT, and its northern margins. The JT has a 50° western dip and is south-westward verging. It is 15–17 km deep. A progressive rise in strain towards the JT zone based on microstructural tests was observed by previous researchers. The high-temperature ranges of the MCT root zone are cited in the current work as supportive evidence for the ductile nature of the OOST. In Himachal Pradesh, the lithological boundaries for OOST are not set. In contrast, the Sarahan thrust is NW-SE striking and 50-80 m wide. ST and CT are probably equivalent and marked by a sheared biotite-chlorite matrix with a top-to-SE kinematic indicator. It is inferred from cross-section balancing that the CT is folded with this anticlinorium. These thrust systems consist of several branches, some of which are still active. The thrust system exhibits complex internal geometry consisting of box folds, boudins, scar folds, crenulation cleavages, kink folds, and tension gashes. Box folds are observed on the hanging wall of the Chaura thrust. The ductile signature of CT represents steepen downward of the thrust. After the STDSU stopped deformation, out-of-sequence thrust was initiated in some sections of the Higher Himalaya. A part of GHC and part of the LH is thrust southwestward along the Jutogh Thrust/Munsiari Thrust/JT as also the Jutogh Nappe. The CT is concealed beneath Jutogh Thrust sheet hence the basal part of GHC is unexposed to the surface in Sutlej River section. Fieldwork and micro-structural studies of the Greater Himalayan Crystalline (GHC) along the Sutlej section reveal (a) initial top-to-SW sense of ductile shearing (CT); (b) brittle-ductile extension (ST); and (c) uniform top-to-SW sense of brittle shearing (JT). A group of samples of schistose rock from Jutogh Group of Greater Himalayan Crystalline and Quartzite from Rampur Group of Lesser Himalayan Crystalline were analyzed. No such physiographic transition in that area is to determine a break in the landscape due to OOST. OOSTs from GHC are interpreted mainly from geochronological studies to date, but proper field evidence is missing. Apart from minimal documentation in geological mapping for OOST, there exists a lack of suitable exposure of rock to generalize the features of OOST in the field in NW Higher Himalaya. Multiple sets of thrust planes may be activated within this zone or a zone along which OOST is engaged.

Keywords: out-of-sequence thrust, main central thrust, grain boundary migration, South Tibetan detachment system, Jakhri Thrust, Sarahan Thrust, Chaura Thrust, higher Himalaya, greater Himalayan crystalline

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Authors: Hazel Ann Gianelli Cu, Stephanie Co, Radcliff Cobankiat

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Objectives: TRC101/Veverimer is an orally administered, non absorbed, sodium- and counterion-free hydrochloric acid binder for the treatment of metabolic acidosis associated with chronic kidney disease. The main objective of this study is to determine the efficacy of TRC 101/ Veverimer 6g/day in increasing serum bicarbonate levels of chronic kidney disease patients with metabolic acidosis. In this meta analysis, we also aim to look at safety outcomes, adverse effects and if the level of serum bicarbonate reached metabolic alkalosis when given TRC101/Veverimer. Methodology: Pubmed, Cochrane, Google Scholar and Science direct were used to search for randomized controlled trials about TRC101/Veverimer use in Chronic kidney disease patients with metabolic acidosis. Search strategy according to the Prisma checklist was done with evaluation of biases and synthesis of results using the Cochrane Review Manager software 5.4. Results: Two randomized controlled trials involving 371 chronic kidney disease patients were included in this study. Results show there was a significant increase in the serum bicarbonate level when given TRC101/Veverimer compared to the placebo. Both studies had a significant number of participants who completed the studies until the end. P value of <0.00001 was used in both studies with a confidence interval of 95%. Conclusion: TRC101/Veverimer 6g/day was shown to effectively and safely increase serum bicarbonate or achieve normalization in chronic kidney disease patients with metabolic acidosis as compared with a placebo. This was associated with delayed progression of kidney disease with improvement of physical functioning, however longer duration of future studies is ideal in order to assess further the long advantages and consequences of TRC 101/Veverimer.

Keywords: chronic kidney disease, metabolic acidosis, Veverimer, TRC101

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Authors: Lorraine Joyce Chua, Sheena Fatima Ragas, Flora Mae Tantay, Carolyn Marie Sunio

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The Philippines is one of the countries most affected by weather-related disasters. The occurrence of natural disasters in this country increases due to environmental degradation making environment preservation a growing trend in the society including the corporate world. Most organizations implemented green practices in order to lower expenses unaware that some of these practices were already a part of a new trend in human resource management known as Green Human Resource Management (GHRM). GHRM is when business organizations implement HR policies programs processes and techniques that bring environmental impact and sustainability practices on the organization. In relation to this, the study hypothesizes that implementing GHRM practices in the workplace will spillover to an employees lifestyle and such lifestyle may moderate the impact of GHRM practices to his job performance. Private industries located in the Philippines National Capital Region (NCR) were purposively selected for the purpose of this study. They must be ISO14001 certified or are currently aiming for such certification. The employee respondents were randomly selected and were asked to answer a reliable and valid researcher-made questionnaire. Structural equation modeling (SEM) supported the hypothesis that GHRM practices may spillover to employees lifestyle stimulating such individual to start a green lifestyle which moderates the impact of GHRM to his job performance. It can also be implied that GHRM practices help shape employees to become environmentally aware and responsible which may help them in preserving the environment. The findings of this study may encourage Human Resource practitioners to implement GHRM practices in the workplace in order to take part in sustaining the environment while maintaining or improving employees job performance and keeping them motivated. This study can serve as a basis for future research regarding the importance of strengthening the GHRM implementation here in the Philippines. Future studies may focus more on the impact of GHRM to other factors, such as job loyalty and job satisfaction of the employees belonging to specific industries which would greatly contribute to the GHRM community in the Philippines.

Keywords: GHRM practices, Green Human Resource Management, Green Lifestyle, ISO14001, job performance, Philippines

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Authors: Vyacheslav Furtak, Merja Roivainen, Olga Mirochnichenko, Majid Laassri, Bella Bidzhieva, Tatiana Zagorodnyaya, Vladimir Chizhikov, Konstantin Chumakov

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Molecular epidemiology and environmental surveillance are parts of a rational strategy to control infectious diseases. They have been widely used in the worldwide campaign to eradicate poliomyelitis, which otherwise would be complicated by the inability to rapidly respond to outbreaks and determine sources of the infection. The conventional scheme involves isolation of viruses from patients and the environment, followed by their identification by nucleotide sequences analysis to determine phylogenetic relationships. This is a tedious and time-consuming process that yields definitive results when it may be too late to implement countermeasures. Because of the difficulty of high-throughput full-genome sequencing, most such studies are conducted by sequencing only capsid genes or their parts. Therefore the important information about the contribution of other parts of the genome and inter- and intra-species recombination to viral evolution is not captured. Here we propose a new approach based on the rapid concentration of sewage samples with tangential flow filtration followed by deep sequencing and reconstruction of nucleotide sequences of viruses present in the samples. The entire nucleic acids content of each sample is sequenced, thus preserving in digital format the complete spectrum of viruses. A set of rapid algorithms was developed to separate deep sequence reads into discrete populations corresponding to each virus and assemble them into full-length consensus contigs, as well as to generate a complete profile of sequence heterogeneities in each of them. This provides an effective approach to study molecular epidemiology and evolution of natural viral populations.

Keywords: poliovirus, eradication, environmental surveillance, laboratory diagnosis

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Authors: Oscar Javier Montiel Mendez

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The link between knowledge-creativity-innovation-entrepreneurship is well established, and broadly emphasized the importance of national innovation systems (NIS) as an approach stresses that the flow of information and technology among people, organizations and institutions are key to its process. Understanding the linkages among the actors involved in innovation is relevant to NIS. Creativity is supposed to fuel NIS, mainly focusing on a personal, group or organizational level, leaving aside the fourth one, as a national system. It is suggested that NIS takes Creativity for granted, an ex-ante stage already solved through some mechanisms, like programs for nurturing it at elementary and secondary schools, universities, or public/organizational specific programs. Or worse, that the individual already has this competence, and that the elements of the NIS will communicate between in a way that will lead to the creation of S curves, with an impact on national systems/programs on entrepreneurship, clusters, and the economy. But creativity constantly appears at any time during NIS, being the key input. Under an initial, exploratory, focused and refined literature review, based on Csikszentmihalyi’s systemic model, Amabile's componential theory, Kaufman and Beghetto’s 4C model, and the OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) NIS model (expanded), an NCS theoretical model is elaborated. Its suggested that its implementation could become a significant factor helping strengthen local, regional and national economies. The results also suggest that the establishment of a national creativity system (NCS), something that appears not been previously addressed, as a strategic/vital companion for a NIS, installing it not only as a national education strategy, but as its foundation, managing it and measuring its impact on NIS, entrepreneurship and the rest of the ecosystem, could make more effective public policies. Likewise, it should have a beneficial impact on the efforts of all the stakeholders involved and should help prevent some of the possible failures that NIS present.

Keywords: national creativity system, national innovation system, entrepreneurship ecosystem, systemic creativity

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Authors: Piotr Podlipniak

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Social consolidation has often been indicated as an adaptive function of music which led to the evolution of music faculty. According to many scholars this function is possible thanks to musical rhythm that enables sensorimotor synchronization to a musical beat. The ability to synchronize to music allows performing music collectively which enhances social cohesion. However, the collective performance of music consists also in spectral synchronization that depends on musical pitch structure. Similarly to rhythmic synchronization, spectral synchronization is a result of ‘brain states alignment’ between people who collectively listen to or perform music. In order to successfully synchronize pitches performers have to adequately expect the pitch structure. The most common form of music which predominates among all human societies is tonal music. In fact tonality understood in the broadest sense as such an organization of musical pitches in which some pitch is more important than others is the only kind of musical pitch structure that has been observed in all currently known musical cultures. The perception of such a musical pitch structure elicits specific emotional reactions which are often described as tensions and relaxations. These facts provoke some important questions. What is the evolutionary reason that people use pitch structure as a form of vocal communication? Why different pitch structures elicit different emotional states independent of extra-musical context? It is proposed in the current presentation that in the course of evolution pitch structure became a human specific tool of communication the function of which is to induce emotional states such as uncertainty and cohesion. By the means of eliciting these emotions during collective music performance people are able to unconsciously give cues concerning social acceptance. This is probably one of the reasons why in all cultures people collectively perform tonal music. It is also suggested that tonal pitch structure had been invented socially before it became an evolutionary innovation of Homo sapiens. It means that a predisposition to tonally organize pitches evolved by the means of ‘Baldwin effect’ – a process in which natural selection transforms the learned response of an organism into the instinctive response. The hypothetical evolutionary scenario of the emergence of tonal pitch structure will be proposed. In this scenario social forces such as a need for closer cooperation play the crucial role.

Keywords: emotion, evolution, tonality, social consolidation

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Authors: Stamatis Zoras, Boris Ceranic, Ashley Redfern

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Green House Gas emissions from domestic properties currently account for a substantial part of the total UK’s carbon emissions and is a priority area for UK to reach zero carbon emissions. However, GHG emissions of urban complexes depend on building, road, structural developments etc surfaces that form urban microclimate. This in turn may further influence renewable energy system power generation that depend on solar or wind potential. Moreover, urban climatic conditions are also influenced by the installation of those power generation systems that may impact their own power generation efficiency. Increased air temperature is attributed to densely installed roof based solar panels that consequently impact their own production efficiency. Installation of roof based solar panels requires adequate guidance to enable housing businesses, councils and organisations to implement sufficient measures for improved power generation in relation to local urban microclimate. How microclimate is affected and how, in return, it affects solar power productivity. Derby Council & Derby Homes have been collecting solar panel power generation data for a large number of properties. The different building areas and system operation performance will be studied against microclimate conditions through time. It is envisaged that the outcomes of the study will support a working up strategy for Derby city to ensure that owned homes would be able to access information and data of solar photo voltaic PV and solar thermal panels potential on social housing, helping residents on low incomes create their own green energy to power their homes and heat their homeshot water.

Keywords: microclimate, solar power, urban climatology, urban morphology

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Authors: Catarina Cruz, Ana Breda

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Tiling problems have been capturing the attention of many mathematicians due to their real-life applications. In this study, we deal with tilings of Zⁿ by Lee spheres, where n is a positive integer number, being these tilings related with error correcting codes on the transmission of information over a noisy channel. We focus our attention on the question ‘for what values of n and r does the n-dimensional Lee sphere of radius r tile Zⁿ?’. It seems that the n-dimensional Lee sphere of radius r does not tile Zⁿ for n ≥ 3 and r ≥ 2. Here, we prove that is not possible to tile Z⁷ with Lee spheres of radius 2 presenting a proof based on a combinatorial method and faithful to the geometric idea of the problem. The non-existence of such tilings has been studied by several authors being considered the most difficult cases those in which the radius of the Lee spheres is equal to 2. The relation between these tilings and error correcting codes is established considering the center of a Lee sphere as a codeword and the other elements of the sphere as words which are decoded by the central codeword. When the Lee spheres of radius r centered at elements of a set M ⊂ Zⁿ tile Zⁿ, M is a perfect r-error correcting Lee code of word length n over Z, denoted by PL(n, r). Our strategy to prove the non-existence of PL(7, 2) codes are based on the assumption of the existence of such code M. Without loss of generality, we suppose that O ∈ M, where O = (0, ..., 0). In this sense and taking into account that we are dealing with Lee spheres of radius 2, O covers all words which are distant two or fewer units from it. By the definition of PL(7, 2) code, each word which is distant three units from O must be covered by a unique codeword of M. These words have to be covered by codewords which dist five units from O. We prove the non-existence of PL(7, 2) codes showing that it is not possible to cover all the referred words without superposition of Lee spheres whose centers are distant five units from O, contradicting the definition of PL(7, 2) code. We achieve this contradiction by combining the cardinality of particular subsets of codewords which are distant five units from O. There exists an extensive literature on codes in the Lee metric. Here, we present a new approach to prove the non-existence of PL(7, 2) codes.

Keywords: Golomb-Welch conjecture, Lee metric, perfect Lee codes, tilings

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