Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Job satisfaction of Chilean workers. A model of structural equations

Job satisfaction as a psychosocial phenomenon is associated with a set of attitudes that have an important role in the accomplishment of objectives by organizations in general. In addition, the modernization of managerial practices and the professionalization of both public management and administration, implies the necessity of knowing the attitudes related to work that have a greater influence on workers' job satisfaction. This research seeks to characterize the employees of Chilean public institutions regarding their job satisfaction and six different attitudes that make up this construct. The sample comprised 216 Chilean employees, who answered a survey which had six scales and a reliability coefficient of about 0.8, which defines a valid internal consistency scale. By applying models of structural equations, through a confirmatory factorial analysis, the relationship between the different dimensions that explain the the workers' job satisfaction is studied. Finally, the results reveal that the model of first level structural equations, after a final adjustment, selects four of the six original dimensions, which are: job satisfaction as a whole, satisfaction with the way the work is done, satisfaction with development opportunities and satisfaction with the relationship between the employer and the employee. These dimensions produce positive effects on the overall job satisfaction construct, being “satisfaction with the relationship between the employer and the employee” the best one, as reflected by its indicators, which for this sample correspond to the employer's supervision satisfaction and the proximity and frequency with which they are supervised.
Ghrelin's Effects on Proinflammatory Cytokine Mediated Apoptosis and Their Impact on β-Cell Functionality

Ghrelin is a peptidic hormone, which stimulates cell proliferation and inhibits apoptosis in several tissues, including pancreas. In preclinical stage of type 1 diabetes, proinflammatory cytokines generate a destructive environment for β-cells known as insulitis, which results in loss of β-cell mass and impaired insulin secretion, leading to diabetes. Our aim was to demonstrate that ghrelin could preserve β-cell viability, turnover rate, and insulin secretion acting as a counter balance of cytokines. In the present work we reproduced proinflammatory milieu found in insulitis stage by treating murine cell line INS-1E and rat islets with a cytokine cocktail including IL-1β, IFNγ, and TNFα and/or ghrelin. Several proteins involved in survival pathways (ERK 1/2 and Akt/PKB) and apoptosis (caspases and Bcl-2 protein family and endoplasmic reticulum stress markers) as well as insulin secretion were analyzed. Our results show that ghrelin alone has no remarkable effects on β-cells in basal conditions, but interestingly it activates cell survival pathways, downregulates apoptotic mediators and endoplasmic reticulum stress, and restores insulin secretion in response to glucose when beta-cells are cytokine-exposed. These data suggest a potential role of ghrelin in preventing or slowing down the transition from a preclinical to clinically established diabetes by ameliorating the effects of insulitis on β-cells.
Cell Density Impacts Epigenetic Regulation of Cytokine-Induced E-Selectin Gene Expression in Vascular Endothelium

Growing evidence suggests that the phenotype of endothelial cells during angiogenesis differs from that of quiescent endothelial cells, although little is known regarding the difference in the susceptibility to inflammation between both the conditions. Here, we assessed the inflammatory response in sparse and confluent endothelial cell monolayers. To obtain sparse and confluent monolayers, human umbilical vein endothelial cells were seeded at a density of 7.3×103 cells/cm2 and 29.2×103 cells/cm2, respectively, followed by culturing for 36 h and stimulation with tumor necrosis factor α. The levels of tumor necrosis factor α-induced E-selectin protein and mRNA expression were higher in the confluent monolayer than in the sparse monolayer. The phosphorylation of c-jun N-terminal kinase and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase or nuclear factor-κB activation was not involved in this phenomenon. A chromatin immunoprecipitation assay of the E-selectin promoter using an anti-acetyl-histone H3 antibody showed that the E-selectin promoter was highly and specifically acetylated in the confluent monolayer after tumor necrosis factor α activation. Furthermore, chromatin accessibility real-time PCR showed that the chromatin accessibility at the E-selectin promoter was higher in the confluent monolayer than in the sparse monolayer. Our data suggest that the inflammatory response may change during blood vessel maturation via epigenetic mechanisms that affect the accessibility of chromatin.
High performance parallel logic simulations on a network of workstations

An approach for high performance parallel logic simulation on a local area network of workstation computers is discussed in this paper. The single, shared transmission medium often found in such networks places limitations on parallel execution, hence a reduction in the frequency of synchronization is pursued by combining a circuit partitioning methodology with a specific synchronization constraint. A consequence of the partitioning methodology is replication of objects between blocks of a partition. A partitioning procedure based on iterative improvement is described for reducing replication while preserving load balance. Two interprocessor synchronization techniques for parallel simulation are studied: conservative and optimistic synchronization. Experiments conducted on three large sequential circuits indicate that reasonable speedup is achievable for well-balanced partitions, and that optimistic synchronization provides a modest improvement in performance over conservative synchronization.
Energy Price Shocks and the Macroeconomy: The Role of Consumer Durables

So far, the literature on dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with energy price shocks uses energy on the production side only. In these models, energy shocks are responsible for only a negligible share of output fluctuations. We study the robustness of this finding by explicitly modeling private consumption of energy at the household level in addition to energy use at the firm level to account for total energy use in the economy. Additionally, we distinguish between investment in consumer durables and investment in capital goods. The model economy is calibrated to match total energy use and durable goods consumption as observed in the U.S. data. Simulation results indicate that, despite higher total energy use, this economy has an even smaller proportion of output fluctuations attributable to energy price shocks. Productivity shocks continue to be the primary force behind business cycle fluctuations. The driving force behind our results is that the household now has the flexibility to rebalance its investment portfolio. Specifically, the energy price hike is absorbed by reducing durable goods investment more than investment in capital goods, thereby cushioning the hit to future production at the expense of current consumption. Hence, our model better matches the consumption volatility observed in the data.
Key institutions in business and management education research

ABSTRACT The authors investigate institutional productivity in business and management education (BME) research based on the analysis of 4,464 articles published by 7,210 authors across 17 BME journals over a 10-year period, involving approximately 1,900 schools worldwide. Departing from traditional disciplinary silos, they examine the BME research field as a whole by including all traditional business disciplinary areas and producing two top 100 rankings, one based on raw number of author publications and the other based on weighted scores reflecting journal quality and coauthorship.
An Arabidopsis SUMO E3 Ligase, SIZ1, Negatively Regulates Photomorphogenesis by Promoting COP1 Activity

COP1 (CONSTITUTIVE PHOTOMORPHOGENIC 1), a ubiquitin E3 ligase, is a central negative regulator of photomorphogenesis. However, how COP1 activity is regulated by post-translational modifications remains largely unknown. Here we show that SUMO (small ubiquitin-like modifier) modification enhances COP1 activity. Loss-of-function siz1 mutant seedlings exhibit a weak constitutive photomorphogenic phenotype. SIZ1 physically interacts with COP1 and mediates the sumoylation of COP1. A K193R substitution in COP1 blocks its SUMO modification and reduces COP1 activity in vitro and in planta. Consistently, COP1 activity is reduced in siz1 and the level of HY5, a COP1 target protein, is increased in siz1. Sumoylated COP1 may exhibits higher transubiquitination activity than does non-sumoylated COP1, but SIZ1-mediated SUMO modification does not affect COP1 dimerization, COP1-HY5 interaction, and nuclear accumulation of COP1. Interestingly, prolonged light exposure reduces the sumoylation level of COP1, and COP1 mediates the ubiquitination and degradation of SIZ1. These regulatory mechanisms may maintain the homeostasis of COP1 activity, ensuing proper photomorphogenic development in changing light environment. Our genetic and biochemical studies identify a function for SIZ1 in photomorphogenesis and reveal a novel SUMO-regulated ubiquitin ligase, COP1, in plants.
Connectivity Homology Enables Inter-Species Network Models of Synthetic Lethality

Synthetic lethality is a genetic interaction wherein two otherwise nonessential genes cause cellular inviability when knocked out simultaneously. Drugs can mimic genetic knock-out effects; therefore, our understanding of promiscuous drugs, polypharmacology-related adverse drug reactions, and multi-drug therapies, especially cancer combination therapy, may be informed by a deeper understanding of synthetic lethality. However, the colossal experimental burden in humans necessitates in silico methods to guide the identification of synthetic lethal pairs. Here, we present SINaTRA (Species-INdependent TRAnslation), a network-based methodology that discovers genome-wide synthetic lethality in translation between species. SINaTRA uses connectivity homology, defined as biological connectivity patterns that persist across species, to identify synthetic lethal pairs. Importantly, our approach does not rely on genetic homology or structural and functional similarity, and it significantly outperforms models utilizing these data. We validate SINaTRA by predicting synthetic lethality in S. pombe using S. cerevisiae data, then identify over one million putative human synthetic lethal pairs to guide experimental approaches. We highlight the translational applications of our algorithm for drug discovery by identifying clusters of genes significantly enriched for single- and multi-drug cancer therapies.
Saturating Auto-Encoders

We introduce a simple new regularizer for auto-encoders whose hidden-unit activation functions contain at least one zero-gradient (saturated) region. This regularizer explicitly encourages activations in the saturated region(s) of the corresponding activation function. We call these Saturating Auto-Encoders (SATAE). We show that the saturation regularizer explicitly limits the SATAE's ability to reconstruct inputs which are not near the data manifold. Furthermore, we show that a wide variety of features can be learned when different activation functions are used. Finally, connections are established with the Contractive and Sparse Auto-Encoders.
A new radiative cooling curve based on an up-to-date plasma emission code

This work presents a new plasma cooling curve that is calculated using the SPEX package. We compare our cooling rates to those in previous works, and implement the new cooling function in the grid-adaptive framework “AMRVAC”. Contributions to the cooling rate by the individual elements are given, to allow for the creation of cooling curves tailored to specific abundance requirements. In some situations, it is important to be able to include radiative losses in the hydrodynamics. The enhanced compression ratio can trigger instabilities (such as the Vishniac thin-shell instability) that would otherwise be absent. For gas with temperatures below 10 4 K, the cooling time becomes very long and does not affect the gas on the timescales that are generally of interest for hydrodynamical simulations of circumstellar plasmas. However, above this temperature, a significant fraction of the elements is ionised, and the cooling rate increases by a factor 1000 relative to lower temperature plasmas.
MINDSET DYNAMICS IN RISK TAKING – HOW DECISION MAKING AND PERFORMANCE CAN PROFIT FROM DELIBERATIVE AND IMPLEMENTAL STATES OF MIND

The goal of the research presented in this dissertation is to analyze decision-making processes in different mindsets, specifically their impact on economic risk-taking behavior, and to find out whether they can support better performance and outcomes. This is a major concern of motivation research in general: understanding the reasoning mechanisms that determine actions and using that knowledge to promote healthy and rational behavior. In the present work, this goal related to a specific set of behaviors, that is, decisions under risk and in an economic context. A key strategy to improve outcomes in this field is to increase rational choices. More than that, however, this work also focuses on decision processes that forego rational or irrational behavior, to better understand the nature of mindset effects. Thus, it is not only relevant how individuals decide, but also how they arrive at that decision. To that end, risk-taking situations were examined with repeated measurements, different levels of difficulty, and different incentives. To explain mindset effects and their overall implications for risk taking, achievement motivation, learning processes, and different strategies of goal pursuit are discussed. All in all, the goal of this work is to provide new insights into risk-taking behavior and decision processes in economic contexts, as they are influenced by different states of mind. In addition, possible measures to help increase rationality in risky situations are outlined to provide some practical applications for the findings of this work. For some, the suggestion of the “improvement” of decisions through manipulations of individuals’ states of mind may have an Orwellian ring to it. On the contrary, however, the present research will hopefully increase knowledge about naturally occurring, everyday mindsets and their impact on human perception and behavior, in order to enable or train people to make a targeted use of their mindsets and reach their desired goals.
Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena.

A theory of self-percepti on is proposed to provide an alternative interpretation for several of the major phenomena embraced by Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance and to explicate some of the secondary patterns of data that have appeared in dissonance experiments. It is suggested that the attitude statements which comprise the major dependent variables in dissonance experiments may be regarded as interpersonal judgments in which the observer and the observed happen to be the same individual and that it is unnecessary to postulate an aversive motivational drive toward consistency to account for the attitude change phenomena observed. Supporting experiments are presented, and metatheoretical contrasts between the "radical" behavioral approach utilized and the phenomenological approach typified by dissonance theory are discussed.
Determinants of Exceptional Longevity : Early-Life Conditions , Mid-Life Environment and Parental Characteristics

Earlier studies found that parental characteristics as well as early-life conditions and mid-life environment play a significant role in survival to advanced ages. However, little is known about simultaneous effects of all these three factors on longevity. This ongoing study attempts to fill this gap by comparing American centenarians born in 1890-1891 with their short-lived peers born in 1890 and died at age 65 years. The records were taken from computerized family histories, which were then linked to 1900 and 1930 U.S. censuses. The study found that parental longevity and some mid-life characteristics proved to be significant predictors of longevity while the role of childhood conditions was less important. More centenarians were born in the second half of the year compared to controls suggesting early origins of longevity. The results of this study suggest that familial background, early-life conditions and mid-life characteristics play an important role in longevity.
Efeito da Universidade Aberta à Terceira Idade sobre a qualidade de vida do idoso

The education of older adults fosters knowledge leading to a re-dimensioning required to improve the quality of life (QOL) through the concepts of interdisciplinarity, social participation, and the promotion of healthy activities. The objective of this study was to assess the impact of the Third Age Open University (the acronym in Portuguese is UATI) program on the QOL of elderly students. To this end, the scores were measured before and after the intervention (at the beginning and end of the course year) and were compared with the scores of a group not attending the UATI. The data collection tools were as follows: Characterizations of Participants, the Brazilian Economic Classification Criteria, and the Quality of Life Assessment Scale (QdV-DA). All data obtained were entered into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences instrument for carrying out non-parametric statistical analysis. On analysis, the data revealed the following: (a) a positive difference between the total scores of QOL of older adults who were students of UATI before and after the intervention (at the beginning and end of the course year) (Z = −4.541; p < 0.001); (b) after participation in the UATI, the perceptions of QOL were higher for UATI students compared to the group of individuals who did not participate in the program (χ2 = 7.448; df = 1; p = 0.006). The results of this study indicate that participation in the UATI is favorable for enhancing perceived QOL.
Signalling Pathways in Glioma- Propagating Cells

Signalling Pathways in Glioma-Propagating Cells TGlioblastomas (GBMs) are highly aggressive and malignant brain tumors and have poor prognosis despite advanced surgical resections accompanied by chemo-radiation interventions.Current therapeutic advances remain essentially palliative, with modest amelioration in clinical response, due largely to the acquired resistance of GBM cells to conventional chemoradiation therapies. The cellular and molecular heterogeneity of GBMs highlights a complex interplay of individual mechanisms that contribute to varied patient treatment response.
Cumulative Adversity as a Correlate of Posttraumatic Growth: The Effects of Multiple Traumas, Discrimination, and Sexual Harassment

ABSTRACT While trauma is, by definition, a necessary precursor of posttraumatic growth, other aspects of individuals’ life experiences affect their ability to cope with trauma, foster resilience, and grow following adversity. Most research on posttraumatic growth overlooks the accumulation of trauma and sub-trauma stressors as possible predictors of growth. In addition, most research on cumulative adversity omits all but the most extreme examples of discrimination and sexual harassment stressors. This exploratory study of 46 university students with trauma histories used measures of posttraumatic growth, trauma, major (sub-trauma) life events, chronic stressors, sexual harassment, and discrimination to examine the relationship between cumulative adversity and the development of posttraumatic growth. We found that cumulative adversity is positively correlated with posttraumatic growth, and that there are important relationships between gender, race, and cumulative adversity. A hypothesized curvilinear relationship between cumulative adversity and posttraumatic growth was not supported. These findings suggest that successfully coping with some amount of sub-trauma adversity may facilitate the development of posttraumatic growth. Additionally, sexual harassment and discrimination were closely linked to the number of chronic stressors; thus, they need to be included in measures of cumulative adversity to more fully represent the experiences of marginalized groups.
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND ITS ASSOCIATION WITH READING COMPREHENSION OF EFL SAUDI UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

In the past ten years, there has a research interest in morphological awareness, which refers to an individual’s ability to decode the morphemic structure of words and further analyze them. The current study is an attempt to investigate levels of awareness of EFL Saudi university students and also to discover any potential relationship between their morphological awareness and successful reading comprehension. To this end, the researcher administered a modified version of Morphological Awareness Test (McBride- Chang et al. 2008) to 35 undergraduate students at the Department of Foreign Languages at Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Al Baha University in the academic year 2016/2017. The test included the analytic and synthetic aspects of word formation rules. Instruments of the study also included an adopted version of Reading Comprehension Test for Smart Choice Learners (Oxford, 2007). Results of the study indicated that the average score of the Morpheme Identification section (the analytic aspect of morphological awareness) was the highest among the students (M= 27.11, SD= 6.20) in comparison to the synthetic aspect of morphological awareness (M= 14.66, SD= 11.91). The students noticeably scored better in the Morpheme Identification Test (88.57%) than they did in the Morphological Structure Test (57.6%). The overall mean score of the Morphological Awareness Test was 41.77 out of 68 with a considerable dispersion among the results (SD= 14.63) with overall percentage (65.71%) which indicated that the students had intermediate awareness of word formation rules. In addition, EFL students scored better in the Inflectional affixes in both the analysis section (63%, SD= 5.32) and the synthesis section (50%, SD=9.85) than they did with the Derivational affixes (59.15%, SD= 7.38 in the analysis section, 46.33%, SD=13.72 in the synthesis section). Furthermore, there is high positive correlation between total students' scores on analytical aspect section of the morphological awareness test and reading comprehension test (0.871) (0.009). There is positive correlation between students' scores on synthetic aspect section of the morphological test and reading comprehension (0.841) (0.005), but it is weaker than that of the first section of the test. The total scores of students on morphological test positively correlate with their total scores on reading comprehension test (0.869) (0.005). The present study ended up with a set of pedagogical implications and recommendations to include training on rules of word formation in EFL curriculum so as to increase their morphological awareness and to develop their successful reading comprehension endeavors. Future research themes were also recommended such as the role of morphological awareness in tracing semantic irregularities to enhance learners' understanding of different English words and to explore the relationship between morphological awareness and other language learning skills including listening and speaking. Article visualizations: