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[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0247655.].

Feline parvovirus (FPV) is a small, non-enveloped, single-stranded DNA virus that infects cats. We recently isolated a feline parvovirus Fe–P2 strain from a dead stray cat in Iksan, 2017. Its partial genomic sequence (4,643 bases) was obtained, and phylogenetic analysis based on the VP2 nucleotide sequence showed that the FPV Fe-P2 strain was closely related to the FPV isolate Gigucheon in cat, 2017 (MN400978). In addition, we performed a serum neutralization (SN) test with the FPV isolates in various mammalian sera. These were from raccoon dog, water deer, Eurasian otter, Korean hare, leopard cat, and Asian badger, which were kindly provided by Chungnam Wild Animal Rescue Center. Notably, serological evidence of its infection was found in Asian badger, Meles leucurus (2/2) and leopard cat, Prionailurus bengalensis (5/8) through SN tests, whereas there was no evidence in raccoon dog, water deer, Eurasian otter, and Korean hare based on the collected sera in this study. These findings might provide partial evidence for the possible circulation of FPV or its related viruses among wild leopard cat and Asian badger in Korea. There should be additional study to confirm this through direct detection of FPVs in the related animal samples.

Collective intelligence (CI) is the ability of a group to solve a wide range of problems. Synchrony in nonverbal cues is critically important to the development of CI; however, extant findings are mostly based on studies conducted face-to-face. Given how much collaboration takes place via the internet, does nonverbal synchrony still matter and can it be achieved when collaborators are physically separated? Here, we hypothesize and test the effect of nonverbal synchrony on CI that develops through visual and audio cues in physically-separated teammates. We show that, contrary to popular belief, the presence of visual cues surprisingly has no effect on CI; furthermore, teams without visual cues are more successful in synchronizing their vocal cues and speaking turns, and when they do so, they have higher CI. Our findings show that nonverbal synchrony is important in distributed collaboration and call into question the necessity of video support.

Management of effort is one of the biggest challenges in any team, and is particularly difficult in distributed teams, where behavior is relatively invisible to teammates. Awareness systems, which provide real-time visual feedback about team members’ behavior, may serve as an effective intervention tool for mitigating various sources of process-loss in teams, including team effort. However, most of the research on visualization tools has been focusing on team communication and learning, and their impact on team effort and consequently team performance has been hardly studied. Furthermore, this line of research has rarely addressed the way visualization tool may interact with team composition, while comprehension of this interaction may facilitate a conceptualization of more effective interventions. In this article we review the research on feedback in distributed teams and integrate it with the research on awareness systems. Focusing on team effort, we examine the effect of an effort visualization tool on team performance in 72 geographically distributed virtual project teams. In addition, we test the moderating effect of team composition, specifically team members’ conscientiousness, on the effectiveness of the effort visualization tool. Our findings demonstrate that the effort visualization tool increases team effort and improves the performance in teams with a low proportion of highly conscientious members, but not in teams with a high proportion of highly conscientious members. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings, and suggest the need of future research to address the way technological advances may contribute to management and research of team processes.

Today, many complex tasks are assigned to teams, rather than individuals. One reason for teaming up is expansion of the skill coverage of each individual to the joint team skill set. However, numerous empirical studies of human groups suggest that the performance of equally skilled teams can widely differ. Two natural question arise: What are the factors defining team performance? and How can we best predict the performance of a given team on a specific task? While the team members' task-related capabilities constrain the potential for the team's success, the key to understanding team performance is in the analysis of the team process, encompassing the behaviors of the team members during task completion. In this study, we extend the existing body of research on team process and prediction models of team performance. Specifically, we analyze the dynamics of historical team performance over a series of tasks as well as the fine-grained patterns of collaboration between team members, and formally connect these dynamics to the team performance in the predictive models. Our major qualitative finding is that higher performing teams have well-connected collaboration networks-as indicated by the topological and spectral properties of the latter-which are more robust to perturbations, and where network processes spread more efficiently. Our major quantitative finding is that our predictive models deliver accurate team performance predictions-with a prediction error of 15-25%-on a variety of simple tasks, outperforming baseline models that do not capture the micro-level dynamics of team member behaviors. We also show how to use our models in an application, for optimal online planning of workload distribution in an organization. Our findings emphasize the importance of studying the dynamics of team collaboration as the major driver of high performance in teams.

Aromatic and aliphatic N-heterocyclic chemical salts were synthesized by counter-anion-exchange reactions after substitution reactions in order to apply them as organic electrolyte supporters in an electrochemical capacitor (super capacitor). The aromatic N-heterocyclic salts were N-methylpyridinium tetrafluoroborate ([MPy]+[BF4]−), N-methylpyridinium hexafluorophosphate ([MPy]+[PF6]−), 1,3-dibuthylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate ([DI]+[BF4]−), 1,3-dibuthylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate ([DI]+[PF6]−), 1-buthyl-4-methyl-1,2,4-triazolium tetrafluoroborate ([BMTA]+[BF4]−), and 1-buthyl-4-methyl-1,2,4-triazolium hexafluorophosphate ([BMTA]+[PF6]−). The aliphatic N-heterocyclic salts were N,N-dimethylpiperilidium tetrafluoroborate ([DMP]+[BF4]−), N,N-dimethylpiperilidium hexafluorophosphate ([DMPy]+[PF6]−), N,N-dimethylpyrrolidium tetrafluoroborate ([DMPy]+[BF4]−) and N,N-dimethylpyrrolidium hexafluorophosphate ([DMPy]+[PF6]−), 1-ethyltriethamine tetrafluoroborate ([E-TEDA]+[BF4]−), and 1-ethyltriethamine hexafluorophosphate ([E-TEDA]+[PF6]−), respectively. We confirmed the successful synthesis of the aromatic and aliphatic N-heterocyclic chemical salts by 1H-NMR, FT-IR, and GC/MS analysis before conducting the counter-anion-exchange reactions. Then, we determined the electrochemical potential of vanadium acetylacetonate (V(acac)3) under acetonitrile in the presence of the N-heterocyclic chemical salts as energy-storage chemicals. By cyclic voltammetry, the maximum voltages with the N-heterocyclic chemical salts in acetonitrile reached 2.2 V under a fixed current value. Charge-discharge experiments were performed in the electrochemical capacitor with an anion-exchange membrane using a non-aqueous electrolyte prepared with a synthesized N-heterocyclic salt in acetonitrile.

Collective intelligence (CI) is critical to solving many scientific, business, and other problems, but groups often fail to achieve it. Here, we analyze data on group performance from 22 studies, including 5,279 individuals in 1,356 groups. Our results support the conclusion that a robust CI factor characterizes a group's ability to work together across a diverse set of tasks. We further show that CI is predicted by the proportion of women in the group, mediated by average social perceptiveness of group members, and that it predicts performance on various out-of-sample criterion tasks. We also find that, overall, group collaboration process is more important in predicting CI than the skill of individual members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, Karmali agar was modified by adding tazobactam (T-Kannali agar) to suppress the growth of extendedspectrum p-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Escherichia coli, which frequently contaminates raw poultry meat. By inoculating 30 Campylobacter spp. strains and 25 ESBL-producing E. coli strains onto Karmali agar and T-Karmali agar containing various concentrations of the antibacterial agent, we determined the optimum concentration of tazobactam to be 4 mg/liter. The Campylobacter spp. isolation rate on T-Karmali agar (13.3%) was higher than that on Karmali agar (8.3%), although the difference was not significant (P > 0.05). However, T-Karmali agar showed a significantly greater selectivity than Karmali agar, as evaluated by comparing the numbers of contaminated agar plates (20.8 versus 82.5%; P < 0.05) and the growth indexes (1.36 versus 2.83) of competing flora. The predominant competing flora on Karmali and T-Karmali agar were identified as ESBLproducing E. coli. Thus, T-Karmali agar might be effective for determining the real prevalence of Campylobacter in raw poultry and, especially, contamination with ESBL-producing E. coli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myostatin is one of the transforming growth factor (TGF)-β family members and plays inhibitory roles in the development and growth of muscle in mammals. Mammalian myostatins have been studied intensively, considering its medical and industrial potential use. Still, limited information is available about myostatin homologues in crustaceans. In the present study, we isolated for the first time cDNA that encodes for myostatin-like protein (Pj-MSTN) from Morotoge shrimp, Pandalopsis japonica. The putative mature peptide of Pj-MSTN was composed of 109 amino acids, which contains an additional amino acid residue compared with mammalian myostatins. Pj-MSTN exhibited 32% amino acid sequence identity and 52% similarity to human myostatin. Multiple sequence alignment analysis indicated that Pj-MSTN shared the conserved proteolytic cleavage site (RXXR) for its maturation and nine cysteine residues for disulphide bridges. These results suggest that Pj-MSTN has conserved the three-dimensional structure of TGF-β family members in vertebrates. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that Pj-MSTN is a primitive form of vertebrate myostatin and GDF11. The expression of Pj-MSTN was not just identified in muscular tissues, suggesting that Pj-MSTN functions differently from mammalian myostatin. Ablation of the X-organ/sinus gland complex significantly reduced the expression of Pj-MSTN in most tissues, suggesting its potential association with moulting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]