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The high pathogenic activity of Bacillus thuringiensis ( Bt ) strains against various insect orders has positioned it as the most effective, environmentally safe, and sustainable approach to integrated insect management. We aimed to identify Bt strains capable of effectively controlling the housefly Musca domestica , a species of significant medical, veterinary, and public health concern. Twelve Bt strains from Macapá, Brazil, were tested against housefly larvae. PCR was employed to detect genes encoding Cry and Cyt proteins and Vips. Six strains exhibited 70 to 100% larval mortality, with five containing cry genes, none harboring cyt genes, and four carrying vip genes. Scanning electron microscopy revealed the production of crystal inclusions with distinct morphologies: spherical (TR4J, SOL5DM, SOL6RN), cuboidal and bipyramidal (TRO1TN and TRO2MQ), and spherical and bipyramidal (UNI2MA). The potential presence of genes from the cry1 , cry2 , vip1 , and vip3 families suggests that these strains also exhibit bioinsecticidal activity against other muscoid flies and insect pests across various orders. This study underscores the bioactive potential of these Brazilian Bt strains for developing new bioinsecticides.

In this study, we investigated psychometric support for a version of the Multidimensional Assessment of Teamwork in Sport (MATS) that would be suitable for Brazilian athletes. Four translators participated in the back-translation of this instrument from English to Portuguese, two specialists synthesized the Portuguese and English back-translation versions, and 10 experts assessed the questionnaire items and judged their content validity. To evaluate structural validity, we performed confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). We evaluated internal item reliability with a sample of 447 athletes who completed the adapted measure (the MATS-B). Finally, 202 other athletes completed both the MATS-B and a second measure of collective efficacy (CEQS-B) to provide external validity correlates. With these data, the MATS-B now provides valid and reliable data supporting its use with Brazilian athletes in an adapted assessment tool that aligns with the conceptual framework of teamwork in sports., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

In sports context, the motivational climate has been widely studied since 2000, when the Perceived Motivational Climate in Sports Questionnaire-2 (PMCSQ-2) was published. Evaluating athletes' perceptions of the motivational climate created by the coach, this questionnaire has been validated and adapted for different countries, including Brazil. However, important psychometric properties of the Brazilian version present problems, such as poor fit indices and the almost exclusively male samples, make it unfeasible for use in future research. Thus, this study aimed to achieve a new process of cross-cultural adaptation, and search for validity evidence of the PMCSQ-2 for the Brazilian sports context to correct distortions, expand the sources of evidence of validity and ecological validity, and make it suitable for application in future research. The sample consisted of 501 athletes (349 males, 152 females) from different sports. The findings of the current study support the multidimensional hierarchical characteristic of the instrument, its factorial structure, and internal consistency. We concluded that the 33-item PMCSQ-2BR, distributed in two high-order scales (ego-involving and task-involving) with three subscales each, can be used to assess athletes' perceived motivational climate in the Brazilian sports context., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

This three-part study aimed to translate, cross-culturally adapt, and validate the Collective Efficacy Questionnaire for Sports (CEQS) for Brazilian athletes. In Study 1, six translators and six specialists developed a Portuguese version of the CEQS (the CEQS-B), and 10 experts and 10 sports participants provided content validity evidence based on test content. In Study 2, 553 athletes completed the CEQS-B, and we provided evidence of construct and convergent validity for the test's internal structure through factor analysis and of reliability evidence based on the instrument's internal consistency and temporal stability. In Study 3, 79 athletes completed both the new CEQS-B and the Group Cohesion Questionnaire, and we provided evidence of concurrent validity for the CEQS-B, based on its relationship to other variables, with specific strong correlations between team task cohesion and collective efficacy among these participants. Overall, the results of this study support the use of the CEQS-B by researchers and professionals wishing to assess various sport athletes' self-perceived collective efficacy.

Collective efficacy, defined as a group's shared belief about its conjoint capability to organize and execute courses of action, plays a pivotal role in understanding the dynamics of sports teams, since it influences what individuals choose to do as team members, how much they invest in motivational terms to perform actions, how much they work collectively, and for how long they persist despite failure. Through a systematic review, it was investigated how collective efficacy has been assessed in the context of soccer and which indicators, attributes, and psychometric properties have been contemplated in the instruments used. Following the PRISMA guidelines, 22 articles were retrieved through electronic databases (APA PsycINFO; SPORTDiscus; Science Direct; BVS; Web of Science; Scopus; PubMed; and Scielo), using as descriptors, in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, collective efficacy and soccer, combined by the Boolean operators AND and OR. The study did not delimit the initial year of publication for the searches carried out, including all articles found until January 14, 2021 (date of the last update). The following eligibility criteria were adopted: scientific articles published in journals; original studies, which specified the instrument used to assess collective efficacy and carried out with soccer athletes. Five instruments (FCEQ, CEQS, CEI, CEC, and CEQsoccer) that evaluated technical-tactical and psychological attributes associated with collective efficacy in soccer players were identified. In most studies, psychometric properties were restricted to content validity and reliability (internal consistency), and there were no suitable validation processes for the instruments used to measure collective efficacy, which can be considered a limiting factor for understanding this psychological construct in soccer modality.