Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
FN-TOPSIS: Fuzzy Networks for Ranking Traded Equities

Fuzzy systems consisting of networked rule bases, called fuzzy networks, capture various types of imprecision inherent in financial data and in the decision-making processes on them. This paper introduces a novel extension of the technique for ordering of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method and uses fuzzy networks to solve multicriteria decision-making problems where both benefit and cost criteria are presented as subsystems. Thus, the decision maker evaluates the performance of each alternative for portfolio optimization and further observes the performance for both benefit and cost criteria. This approach improves significantly the transparency of the TOPSIS methods, while ensuring high effectiveness in comparison with established approaches. The proposed method is further tested to solve the problem of selection/ranking of traded equity covering developed and emergent financial markets. The ranking produced by the method is validated using Spearman rho rank correlation. Based on the case study, the proposed method outperforms the existing TOPSIS approaches in terms of ranking performance.
Academic Correlates of Children and Adolescents' Life Satisfaction

Educators and psychologists alike have trumpeted calls for a reduced focus on deficits and pathology and increased attention to strengths and general wellness in all children. Life satisfaction is one of the most well-established indicators of general wellness and, moreover, positive functioning. Most examinations of children's life satisfaction have examined the role of family relations and intrapersonal variables. Studies of life satisfaction in relation to schooling are less prevalent, despite the extraordinary focus on education during this developmental period. Initial studies have examined the extent to which a few categories of school-related factors (school climate, intelligence and ability grouping at school, academic achievement and overall appraisals of one's happiness with school) are correlated with students' life satisfaction. Notably, most empirical examinations have examined one or few school-related factors in isolation. The purpose of the current article is to provide a comprehensive summary of the multiple school-related correlates of life satisfaction through a thorough review of the literature. Implications of the literature base for educators and future research are discussed.
History of Science and its Sociological Reconstructions

One can either debate the possibility of the historical sociology of scientific knowledge or one can do it. Ludwik Fleck took the latter course of action. In Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache Fleck’s overriding concern was with the interpretation of a particular episode in the history of science, and his focus never strayed from the empirical materials pertinent to that task. His more general theoretical statements always arose out of and referred to the historical particulars and circumstances of that episode. Thus, one way of characterizing Fleck’s book is to regard it as the work of a practising scientist, intimately familiar with the genesis and career of the Wassermann test: and this would not be an incorrect characterization. Another way of appreciating his accomplishment would be to see it as a piece of empirical history, providing a concrete exemplification of the sociology of scientific knowledge. The only wholly misguided approach to Fleck’s work would be to distill his theorizing out of the empirical concerns in which it was grounded.
Gender and the Media

Written in a clear and accessible style, with lots of examples from Anglo-American media, Gender and the Media offers a critical introduction to the study of gender in the media, and an up-to-date assessment of the key issues and debates. Eschewing a straightforwardly positive or negative assessment the book explores the contradictory character of contemporary gender representations, where confident expressions of girl power sit alongside reports of epidemic levels of anorexia among young women, moral panics about the impact on men of idealized representations of the 'six-pack', but near silence about the pervasive re-sexualization of women's bodies, along with a growing use of irony and playfulness that render critique extremely difficult. The book looks in depth at five areas of media - talk shows, magazines, news, advertising, and contemporary screen and paperback romances - to examine how representations of women and men are changing in the twenty-first century, partly in response to feminist, queer and anti-racist critique. Gender and the Media is also concerned with the theoretical tools available for analysing representations. A range of approaches from semiotics to postcolonial theory are discussed, and Gill asks how useful notions such as objectification, backlash, and positive images are for making sense of gender in today's Western media. Finally, Gender and the Media also raises questions about cultural politics - namely, what forms of critique and intervention are effective at a moment when ironic quotation marks seem to protect much media content from criticism and when much media content - from Sex and the City to revenge adverts - can be labelled postfeminist. This is a book that will be of particular interest to students and scholars in gender and media studies, as well as those in sociology and cultural studies more generally.
Cuckoos Combat Socially Transmitted Defenses of Reed Warbler Hosts with a Plumage Polymorphism

Learning to Recognize a Cuckoo Species that are parasitized by cuckoos have evolved several strategies for trying to avoid having their nests hijacked—one of the most obvious being outright attacking, or mobbing, of cuckoos that enter the area. However, cuckoos are not without evolved defenses—most common cuckoo females look remarkably similar to a small hawk, and this mimicry deters mobbing. Thorogood and Davies (p. 578; see the Perspective by Mappes and Lindström) show that social learning in parasitized birds can thwart this protective mimicry. When hosts observe mimics being mobbed, they are more likely to mob them, themselves, later. However, the hosts will only mob the color morph that they observed being mobbed. This specificity may have allowed for the evolution and maintenance of two female morphs within common cuckoos. Parasitic cuckoos sporting new colors flourish after their warbler hosts learn to defend against the mainstream fashion. In predator-prey and host-parasite interactions, an individual’s ability to combat an opponent often improves with experience—for example, by learning to identify enemy signals. Although learning occurs through individual experience, individuals can also assess threats from social information. Such recognition could promote the evolution of polymorphisms if socially transmitted defenses depend on enemy morph frequency. This would allow rare variants to evade detection. Female brood parasitic common cuckoos, Cuculus canorus, are either gray or rufous. The gray morph is a Batesian mimic whose hawk-like appearance deters host attack. Hosts reject this disguise through social learning, increasing their own defenses when they witness neighbors mobbing a cuckoo. Our experiments reveal that social learning is specific to the cuckoo morph that neighbors mob. Therefore, while neighbors alert hosts to local cuckoo activity, frequency-dependent social information selects for a cuckoo plumage polymorphism to thwart host detection. Our results suggest that selection for mimicry and polymorphisms comes not only from personal experience but also from social learning.
Pullback operators on Bargmann spaces

We characterize boundedness and compactness of pullback operators under holomorphic maps between Bargmann spaces of entire holomorphic functions with quadratic strictly plurisubharmonic exponential weights, extending a result of Carswell-MacCluer-Schuster obtained in the case of the radial quadratic weight. We also show that the pullback operator between Bargmann spaces is compact precisely when it is of trace class, with sub-exponentially decaying singular values.
Estrogen receptor α mediates proliferation of breast cancer MCF–7 cells via a p21/PCNA/E2F1‐dependent pathway

High expression of estrogen receptor α (ERα) is associated with a poor prognosis that correlates closely with cellular proliferation in breast cancer. However, the exact molecular mechanism by which ERα controls breast cancer cell proliferation is not clear. Here we report that ERα regulates the cell cycle by suppressing p53/p21 and up‐regulating proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) and proliferation‐related Ki–67 antigen (Ki–67) to promote proliferation of MCF–7 cells. In addition, 17–β–estradiol (E2) enhances ERα‐induced proliferation of MCF–7 cells by stimulating expression of PCNA and Ki–67. Knockdown of ERα significantly affects PCNA/Ki–67 and p53/p21 expression. Furthermore, ERα inhibits the transcriptional activity of p53/p21 in an estrogen response element‐dependent manner. More importantly, we provide new evidence that ERα mediates proliferation of MCF–7 cells by up‐regulating miR–17 to silence the expression of p21. Thus, these data provide new insights into the underlying effect of ERα on breast cancer proliferation.
Enterovirus related metabolic myopathy: a postviral fatigue syndrome

Objective: To detect and characterise enterovirus RNA in skeletal muscle from patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and to compare efficiency of muscle energy metabolism in enterovirus positive and negative CFS patients. Methods: Quadriceps muscle biopsy samples from 48 patients with CFS were processed to detect enterovirus RNA by two stage, reverse transcription, nested polymerase chain reaction (RT-NPCR), using enterovirus group specific primer sets. Direct nucleotide sequencing of PCR products was used to characterise the enterovirus. Controls were 29 subjects with normal muscles. On the day of biopsy, each CFS patient undertook a subanaerobic threshold exercise test (SATET). Venous plasma lactate was measured immediately before and after exercise, and 30 minutes after testing. An abnormal lactate response to exercise (SATET+) was defined as an exercise test in which plasma lactate exceeded the upper 99% confidence limits for normal sedentary controls at two or more time points. Results: Muscle biopsy samples from 20.8% of the CFS patients were positive for enterovirus sequences by RT-NPCR, while all the 29 control samples were negative; 58.3% of the CFS patients had a SATET+ response. Nine of the 10 enterovirus positive cases were among the 28 SATET+ patients (32.1%), compared with only one (5%) of the 20 SATET− patients. PCR products were most closely related to coxsackie B virus. Conclusions: There is an association between abnormal lactate response to exercise, reflecting impaired muscle energy metabolism, and the presence of enterovirus sequences in muscle in a proportion of CFS patients.
Management of foreign language anxiety: Insiders’ awareness and experiences

Abstract This study investigated EFL students’ and teachers’ perspectives and experiences of managing foreign language anxiety (FLA). Data were obtained from 49 student autobiographies, 18 student interviews, 8 teacher interviews and 351 student responses to an open-ended question. Content analysis was used to analyse the data with the use of NVivo. A dual-task approach to managing FLA (i.e. reducing its negative effects and taking advantage of its positive effects) with specific strategies for students, teachers and other stakeholders was identified. The analysis also revealed important findings related to key stakeholders in FLA management, tensions in managing FLA, the extent to which students’ and teachers’ perceptions of FLA management matched, how they managed student FLA at university and the factors affecting students’ success in managing FLA. The findings of the study indicate that one should not expect a one size fits all model for FLA management, and emphasise the need to focus on working with FLA instead of only focusing on reducing it.
Sınıf Öğretmeni Adaylarının Akademik Öz Yeterlik İnançları

Bu arastirmanin amaci, sinif ogretmeni adaylarinin akademik oz yeterlik inanclarini ortaya koymak ve bu inanclarin cesitli degiskenlerine gore degisip degismedigini incelemektir. Arastirmanin calisma grubunu, Dumlupinar Universitesi Egitim Fakultesinde ogrenim goren 148 Sinif Ogretmenligi ogrencisi olusturmaktadir. Veri toplama araci olarak Jerusalem ve Schwarzer (1981) tarafindan gelistirilen; Yilmaz, Gurcay ve Ekici (2007) tarafindan Turkce’ye uyarlanan ve gecerlik guvenirlik calismalari yapilan “Akademik Oz yeterlik Olcegi” kullanilmistir. Verilerin cozumlenmesinde betimsel istatistikler, t testi, varyans analizi, Scheffe testi, Kruskal Wallis H ve Mann Whitney U testleri kullanilmistir. Elde edilen bulgulara gore, sinif ogretmeni adaylarinin akademik oz yeterlik inanclari genel olarak yuksek duzeydedir. Ogretmen adaylari, sinavlara yeterince hazirlandiklarinda basarili olacaklarina daha yuksek duzeyde inanmaktadirlar. Her sinavda basarili olabileceklerine iliskin oz yeterlik inanclari ise, daha alt duzeydedir. Sinif ogretmeni adaylarinin akademik oz yeterlik inanclari; yas, sinif duzeyi, KPSS’ye girip ogretmen olma dusuncesi gibi degiskenlere gore anlamli farklilik gostermektedir. Yirmiiki yas ve ustundeki sinif ogretmeni adaylarinin akademik oz yeterlik inanclari, 20-21 yaslarindaki ogretmen adaylarinin oz yeterlik inanclarindan anlamli olarak daha yuksek duzeydedir
Glibenclamide Is Comparable to Target Temperature Management in Improving Survival and Neurological Outcome After Asphyxial Cardiac Arrest in Rats

Background We previously have shown that glibenclamide (GBC), a sulfonylurea receptor 1–transient receptor potential M4 (SUR1‐TRPM4) channel inhibitor, improves survival and neurological outcome after asphyxial cardiac arrest and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ACA/CPR). Here, we further compare the efficacy of GBC with target temperature management (TTM) and determine whether the efficacy of GBC is affected by TTM. Methods and Results Male Sprague‐Dawley rats (n=213) subjected to 10‐minute ACA/CPR were randomized to 4 groups after return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC): normothermia control (NT); GBC; TTM; and TTM+GBC. Survival, neurodeficit scores, histological injury, as well as the expressions of SUR1 and TRPM4 were evaluated. The 7‐day survival rate was 34.4% (11 of 32) in the NT group, 65% (13 of 20) in the GBC group, 50% (10 of 20) in the TTM group, and 70% (14 of 20) in the TTM+GBC group. Rats that received either GBC, TTM alone, or in combination showed less neurological deficit than NT control at 24, 48, and 72 hours and 7 days after ROSC. Moreover, TTM or GBC ameliorated neuronal degeneration and glial activation in the hippocampal CA1 region with similar efficacy, whereas the combination of them had a trend toward better effect. The subunits of SUR1‐TRPM4 heterodimers were both strongly upregulated after ACA/CPR and expressed in multiple types of brain cells, but partly suppressed by TTM. Conclusions GBC is comparable to TTM in improving survival and neurological outcome after ACA/CPR. When GBC is given along with TTM, less histological injury tended to be achieved.
The Teaching Roles, Institutional Locations, and Terms and Conditions of Employment of Part-time Teachers in UK Higher Education

This article is devoted to a phenomenon of increasing relevance in contemporary higher education in the UK-the growing resort, especially noticeable since the early 1980s, to using part-time adjunct teachers for the performance of conventional teaching duties. It offers a typology to comprehend the variety of such teachers, including many who are not individually enumerated by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), and it discusses two distinctive employment relationships that differentiate between part-timers. It describes some of the existing studies of part-time teachers in UK higher education, as well as drawing analogies to the better-developed North-American literature on the equivalent topic there. The article also describes a telephone survey conducted in mid-/late-1997 among personnel officers in an achieved sample of 22 'old' and 'new' institutions in order to ascertain information on the approximate numbers of particular types of part-timer at each institution and on the terms and conditions of their employment. It presents information on the relative prevalence of various types of part-time teacher according to type of university (including whether 'old' or 'new' sector) and to further institutional characteristics. It discusses, on the basis of the collected data, sector-specific employment practices concerning part-time teachers and, from information about the terms of their employment, it assesses the degree of their contractual disadvantage in relation to conventional full-time staff.
The effect of aloe-emodin-induced photodynamic activity on the apoptosis of human gastric cancer cells: A pilot study

The aim of the present study was to explore the effect of aloe-emodin (AE)-induced photodynamic activity in human gastric cancer cells. AE was used as a photosensitizer to explore the effect of photodynamic therapy (PDT) in human gastric cancer cells (SGC-7901). An MTT assay was used to detect the effect of AE-induced PDT in optimal concentrations and illumination energy densities in human gastric cancer cells. Following AE-induced PDT, morphological changes of the cells and the rate of cell death were evaluated by TUNEL assay and flow cytometry, respectively. The expression levels of caspase-9 and caspase-3 were determined by western blot analysis. The AE and AE-induced PDT demonstrated a significant inhibitive effect on the proliferation of human gastric cancer cells in dose-dependent and energy-dependent manners. For subsequent experiments, 10 µM AE and 12.8 J/cm2 illumination energy density were used. Typical morphological changes of apoptosis were observed in the cells using a TUNEL assay 12 h subsequent to AE-induced PDT. The percentage of apoptotic cells treated with AE-induced PDT significantly increased when compared with the control group, the 10 µM AE group and the illumination group (P<0.05). Upregulation of caspase-9 and caspase-3 protein levels was also observed following AE-induced PDT. The present study revealed that 10 µM AE-induced PDT had an inhibitory effect on human gastric cancer cells, and it may induce cell apoptosis by upregulating caspase-9 and caspase-3, which indicated that the mitochondrial pathway may be involved. AE-induced PDT has the potential to be a novel therapy for the treatment of human gastric cancer. However, further investigations are required.
Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology Effects of the Estrous Cycle, Pregnancy and Interferon Tau on Expression of Cyclooxygenase Two (cox-2) in Ovine Endometrium

In sheep, the uterus produces luteolytic pulses of prostaglandin F 2α (PGF) on Days 15 to 16 of estrous cycle to regress the corpus luteum (CL). These PGF pulses are produced by the endometrial lumenal epithelium (LE) and superficial ductal glandular epithelium (sGE) in response to binding of pituitary and/or luteal oxytocin to oxytocin receptors (OTR) and liberation of arachidonic acid, the precursor of PGF. Cyclooxygenase-one (COX-1) and COX-2 are rate-limiting enzymes in PGF synthesis, and COX-2 is the major form expressed in ovine endometrium. During pregnancy recognition, interferon tau (IFNτ), produced by the conceptus trophectoderm, acts in a paracrine manner to suppress development of the endometrial epithelial luteolytic mechanism by inhibiting transcription of estrogen receptor α (ERα) (directly) and OTR (indirectly) genes. Conflicting studies indicate that IFNτ increases, decreases or has no effect on COX-2 expression in bovine and ovine endometrial cells. In Study One, COX-2 mRNA and protein were detected solely in endometrial LE and sGE of both cyclic and pregnant ewes. During the estrous cycle, COX-2 expression increased from Days 10 to 12 and then decreased to Day 16. During early pregnancy, COX-2 expression increased from Days 10 to 12 and remained higher than in cyclic ewes. In Study Two, intrauterine infusion of recombinant ovine IFNτ in cyclic ewes from Days 11 to 16 post-estrus did not affect COX-2 expression in the endometrial epithelium. These results clearly indicate that IFNτ has no effect on expression of the COX-2 gene in the ovine endometrium. Therefore, antiluteolytic effects of IFNτ are to inhibit ERα and OTR gene transcription, thereby preventing endometrial production of luteolytic pulses of PGF. Indeed, expression of COX-2 in the endometrial epithelia as well as conceptus is likely to have a beneficial regulatory role in implantation and development of the conceptus.
Effects of smoking on survival and morbidity in patients randomized to medical or surgical therapy in the Coronary Artery Surgery Study (CASS): 10-year follow-up. CASS Investigators.

OBJECTIVES The goal of this study was to ascertain how continued cigarette smoking or smoking cessation related to long-term survival and morbidity in patients with established coronary artery disease managed with medical therapy or coronary bypass surgery. BACKGROUND Although the association of cigarette smoking with coronary artery disease is well established, the morbidity and mortality associated with smoking behavior in patients with such disease receiving medical or surgical therapy are less well established. METHODS The 780 patients randomized to medical therapy or coronary bypass surgery in the Coronary Artery Surgery Study (CASS) were subgrouped according to smoking behavior during a mean 11.2-year follow-up interval. Comparisons between smokers and nonsmokers were accomplished by univariate and Cox time-dependent multivariate analyses. RESULTS Survival at 10 years after entry into the study was 82% among 468 patients who reported no smoking during follow-up (nonsmokers) compared with 77% among the 312 smokers (p = 0.025). Survival was 80% among those who smoked at entry but stopped (quitters) versus 69% among those who continued smoking (p = 0.025). For patients who smoked at baseline and were randomized to bypass surgery, survival at 10 years was 84% among quitters and 68% among nonquitters (p = 0.018); the difference in survival between quitters (75%) and nonquitters (71%) was less among those randomized to medical therapy (p = NS). Among those who smoked at baseline, continued smoking increased the relative risk of death by 1.73. After 10 years, smokers, in comparison with nonsmokers, were less likely to be angina free and more likely to be unemployed and had more activity limitation and more hospital admissions (primarily for chest pain, heart attack, cardiac catheterization, peripheral vascular surgery and stroke). CONCLUSIONS Thus, among patients with documented coronary artery disease, continued cigarette smoking may result in decreased survival--especially among those undergoing bypass surgery. Moreover, smokers have more angina, more unemployment, a greater limitation of physical activity and more hospital admissions.
Ambiguity Aversion, Robustness, and the Variational Representation of Preferences

We characterize, in the Anscombe-Aumann framework, the preferences for which there are a utility functionu on outcomes and an ambiguity indexc on the set of probabilities on the states of the world such that, for all acts f and g, Copyright The Econometric Society 2006. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)