Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A novel criterion for global asymptotic stability of cellular neural networks with time delays

This paper provided a new sufficient condition for the global asymptotic stability of cellular neural networks (CNNs) with time delays. An asymptotic stability of CNNs with time delays was considered by constructing a new suitable Lyapunov functional and some matrix inequality technique. A novel delay-independent stability criterion which considered the excitatory and inhibitory connection was given in terms of matrix inequalities. This condition was expressed in terms of linear matrix inequalities, which can be easily checked by various recently developed algorithms in solving convex optimization problems. Numerical examples are provided to show that the proposed stability result is less conservative than some previously established ones in the literature.
Development and Validation of the Self-Acceptance Scale for Persons with Early Blindness: The SAS-EB

Investigations of self-acceptance are critical to understanding the development and maintenance of psychological health. However, valid and reliable instruments for measuring self-acceptance in persons with early blindness have yet to be developed. The current research describes three studies designed to develop and validate the Self-acceptance Scale for Persons with Early Blindness (SAS-EB). In Study 1, we developed the initial item pool. Thirty-three items were generated, based on data from specialized literature and from 2 focus groups. Items were organized in a three-factor structure, theoretically predicted for SAS-EB - (1) body acceptance, (2) self-protection from social stigmas, and (3) feeling and believing in one's capacities. In Study 2, information obtained from a panel of 9 experts and 22 persons with early blindness representing the target population was used to refine the initial item pool, generating a new pool of 27 items. In Study 3, 318 persons with early blindness (141 women and 177 men), between 18 and 60 years of age (M = 37.74 years, SD = 12.37) answered the new pool of 27 items. After the elimination of 9 items using confirmatory factor analysis, we confirmed the theoretical three-factor structure of the SAS-EB. Study 3 also provided support for the scale's internal consistency and construct validity. Finally, the psychometric properties of the SAS-EB, its utility, and its limitations are discussed along with considerations for future research.
Investigation of Pedagogical Formation Certification Program Students’ Attitudes Towards Teaching Profession in Terms Of Some Variables

The aim of the current study is to determine the attitudes of students who have training on pedagogical formation in order to be assigned as a teacher towards teaching profession. Within the scope of this general aim the following question is sought an answer: Do pedagogical formation certification program students’ attitudes towards teaching profession change significantly in terms of (1) gender, (2) level of education (grade or graduation) (3) department (studying or graduated), (4) faculty/ high school (studying or graduated) variables? The present study has the characteristics of descriptive survey model. The participants include 644 students who take pedagogical formation at 2010- 2011 Academic year Spring term at Sakarya University’s Faculty of Education and who are studying at or graduated from Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Faculty of Fine Arts, Faculty of Theology, School of Physical Education and Sports, Health High School, and School of State Conservatory. Attitude Scale towards Teaching Profession (ASTP), developed by Ustuner (2006), is used as a data collection tool. In order to determine whether total scores obtained from data collection tools differ in terms of variables or not T test, analysis of variance, Mann Whitney U Test and Kruskal Wallis H-test are conducted. According to results, the attitudes of students, taking pedagogical formation, towards teaching profession show significant differences in the sense of faculty/ high school variable and do not show a significant difference with regard to gender and level of education variables. Moreover, attitude scores of students differ in accordance with Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Health High School and do not differ with regards to other departments in other faculties or high schools.
The paradoxical effect of self-categorization on work stress in a high-status occupation: Insights from management consulting

Following social identity theory, the way in which individuals appraise stressful encounters and cope with them is influenced by their membership of social groups, which presumes self-categorization as a group member. To date, the impact of self-categorization on stress has mainly been studied for low-status groups. This article uses an interview study among management consultants to explore how self-categorization in terms of occupational identity impacts work stress in a high-status occupation. Adding to previous research, we find that not only low-status but also high-status groups benefit from self-categorization when coping with stressful situations. In line with prevailing theoretical assumptions, we even empirically find an ‘upward spiral’. We illustrate how consultants’ social identity as high-performing professionals helps them cope with stress, which in turn creates a feeling of social inclusion. However, we also find a ‘downward spiral’, where social identity provokes work stress among management consultants who cannot meet the high occupational standards. They cope less effectively and fear social exclusion from the group. These new findings relate to the specifics of our research context, including high status and increased stress. We thus argue for a research agenda that includes such context characteristics when further developing self-categorization models of stress.
Molecular Cloning and Functional Characterization of the Dual Oxidase (BmDuox) Gene from the Silkworm Bombyx mori

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) from nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) oxidases and their related dual oxidases are known to have significant roles in innate immunity and cell proliferation. In this study, the 5,545 bp cDNA of the silkworm Bombyx mori dual oxidase (BmDuox) gene containing a full-length open reading frame was cloned. It was shown to include an N-terminal signal peptide consisting of 28 amino acid residues, a 240 bp 5′-terminal untranslated region (5′-UTR), an 802 bp 3′-terminal region (3′-UTR), which contains nine ATTTA motifs, and a 4,503 bp open reading frame encoding a polypeptide of 1,500 amino acid residues. Structural analysis indicated that BmDuox contains a typical peroxidase domain at the N-terminus followed by a calcium-binding domain, a ferric-reducing domain, six transmembrane regions and binding domains for flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD). Transcriptional analysis revealed that BmDuox mRNA was expressed more highly in the head, testis and trachea compared to the midgut, hemocyte, Malpighian tube, ovary, fat bodies and silk glands. BmDuox mRNA was expressed during all the developmental stages of the silkworm. Subcellular localization revealed that BmDoux was present mainly in the periphery of the cells. Some cytoplasmic staining was detected, with rare signals in the nucleus. Expression of BmDuox was induced significantly in the larval midgut upon challenge by Escherichia coli and Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV). BmDuox-deleted larvae showed a marked increase in microbial proliferation in the midgut after ingestion of fluorescence-labeled bacteria compared to the control. We conclude that reducing BmDuox expression greatly increased the bacterial load, suggesting BmDuox has an important role in inhibiting microbial proliferation and the maintenance of homeostasis in the silkworm midgut.
COPD care delivery pathways in five European Union countries: mapping and health care professionals’ perceptions

Background COPD is among the leading causes of chronic morbidity and mortality in the European Union with an estimated annual economic burden of €25.1 billion. Various care pathways for COPD exist across Europe leading to different responses to similar problems. Determining these differences and the similarities may improve health and the functioning of health services. Objective The aim of this study was to compare COPD patients’ care pathway in five European Union countries including England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Greece, and Germany and to explore health care professionals’ (HCPs) perceptions about the current pathways. Methods HCPs were interviewed in two stages using a qualitative, semistructured email interview and a face-to-face semistructured interview. Results Lack of communication among different health care providers managing COPD and comorbidities was a common feature of the studied care pathways. General practitioners/family doctors are responsible for liaising between different teams/services, except in Greece where this is done through pulmonologists. Ireland and the UK are the only countries with services for patients at home to shorten unnecessary hospital stay. HCPs emphasized lack of communication, limited resources, and poor patient engagement as issues in the current pathways. Furthermore, no specified role exists for pharmacists and informal carers. Conclusion Service and professional integration between care settings using a unified system targeting COPD and comorbidities is a priority. Better communication between health care providers, establishing a clear role for informal carers, and enhancing patients’ engagement could optimize current care pathways resulting in a better integrated system.
MicroRNA‐203 mimics age‐related aortic smooth muscle dysfunction of cytoskeletal pathways

Increased aortic stiffness is a biomarker for subsequent adverse cardiovascular events. We have previously reported that vascular smooth muscle Src‐dependent cytoskeletal remodelling, which contributes to aortic plasticity, is impaired with ageing. Here, we use a multi‐scale approach to determine the molecular mechanisms behind defective Src‐dependent signalling in an aged C57BL/6 male mouse model. Increased aortic stiffness, as measured in vivo by pulse wave velocity, was found to have a comparable time course to that in humans. Bioinformatic analyses predicted several miRs to regulate Src‐dependent cytoskeletal remodelling. qRT‐PCR was used to determine the relative levels of predicted miRs in aortas and, notably, the expression of miR‐203 increased almost twofold in aged aorta. Increased miR‐203 expression was associated with a decrease in both mRNA and protein expression of Src, caveolin‐1 and paxillin in aged aorta. Probing with phospho‐specific antibodies confirmed that overexpression of miR‐203 significantly attenuated Src and extracellular signal regulated kinase (ERK) signalling, which we have previously found to regulate vascular smooth muscle stiffness. In addition, transfection of miR‐203 into aortic tissue from young mice increased phenylephrine‐induced aortic stiffness ex vivo, mimicking the aged phenotype. Upstream of miR‐203, we found that DNA methyltransferases (DNMT) 1, 3a, and 3b are also significantly decreased in the aged mouse aorta and that DNMT inhibition significantly increases miR‐203 expression. Thus, the age‐induced increase in miR‐203 may be caused by epigenetic promoter hypomethylation in the aorta. These findings indicate that miR‐203 promotes a re‐programming of Src/ERK signalling pathways in vascular smooth muscle, impairing the regulation of stiffness in aged aorta.
Adaptive effort investment in cognitive and physical tasks: a neurocomputational model

Despite its importance in everyday life, the computational nature of effort investment remains poorly understood. We propose an effort model obtained from optimality considerations, and a neurocomputational approximation to the optimal model. Both are couched in the framework of reinforcement learning. It is shown that choosing when or when not to exert effort can be adaptively learned, depending on rewards, costs, and task difficulty. In the neurocomputational model, the limbic loop comprising anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and ventral striatum in the basal ganglia allocates effort to cortical stimulus-action pathways whenever this is valuable. We demonstrate that the model approximates optimality. Next, we consider two hallmark effects from the cognitive control literature, namely proportion congruency and sequential congruency effects. It is shown that the model exerts both proactive and reactive cognitive control. Then, we simulate two physical effort tasks. In line with empirical work, impairing the model's dopaminergic pathway leads to apathetic behavior. Thus, we conceptually unify the exertion of cognitive and physical effort, studied across a variety of literatures (e.g., motivation and cognitive control) and animal species.
Architectural impact of stateful networking applications

The explosive and robust growth of the Internet owes a lot to the "end-to-end principle", which pushes stateful operations to the end-points. The Internet grew both in traffic volume, and in the richness of the applications it supports. The growth also brought along new security issues and network monitoring applications. Edge devices, in particular, tend to perform upper layer packet processing. A whole new class of applications require stateful processing. In this paper we study the impact of stateful networking applications on architectural bottlenecks. The analysis covers applications with a variety of statefulness levels. The study emphasizes the data cache behavior. Nevertheless, we also discuss other issues, such as branch prediction and ILP. Additionally, we analyze the architectural impact through the TCP connection life. Our results show an important memory bottleneck due to maintaining the states. Moreover, depending on the target of the application, the memory bottleneck may be concentrated within a set of packets or distributed along the TCP connection lifetime.
Cyclic AMP Represents a Crucial Component of Treg Cell-Mediated Immune Regulation

T regulatory (Treg) cells are one of the key players in the immune tolerance network, and a plethora of manuscripts have described their development and function in the course of the last two decades. Nevertheless, it is still a matter of debate as to which mechanisms and agents are employed by Treg cells, providing the basis of their suppressive potency. One of the important candidates is cyclic AMP (cAMP), which is long known as a potent suppressor at least of T cell activation and function. While this suppressive function by itself is widely accepted, the source and the mechanism of action of cAMP are less clear, and a multitude of seemingly contradictory data allow for, in principle, two different scenarios of cAMP-mediated suppression. In one scenario, Treg cells contain high amounts of cAMP and convey this small molecule via gap junction intercellular communication directly to the effector T cells (Teff) leading to their suppression. Alternatively, it was shown that Treg cells represent the origin of considerable amounts of adenosine, which trigger the adenylate cyclases in Teff cells via A2A and A2B receptors, thus strongly increasing intracellular cAMP. This review will present and discuss initial findings and recent developments concerning the function of cAMP for Treg cells and its impact on immune regulation.
Toward an Understanding of Managing Local Adaptation of Practices2

As globalization accelerates, firms across countries increasingly adopt so-called “advanced practices” created by global market leaders (e.g., Six Sigma, Total Quality Management (TQM), and process reengineering). Such practices tend to create value for firms both from the superior techniques they deliver and from the legitimacy their adoption confers in the global market. However, it is also true that the implementation of a new practice is often difficult as it may require drastic changes in an organization’s mindset, culture, and actions (Klein & Sorra, 1996; Reger, Gustafson, & Mullane, 1994). The difficulty becomes greater when a firm adopts a new practice from overseas, due to contextual differences between the environment in which a practice originated and the one in which it is adopted (Kostova, 1999). Facing such difficulties, firms often adapt a given practice to make it work better in their own unique environment. Therefore, it is critical for these firms to understand how they can manage the adaptation process effectively in order to obtain better implementation outcomes.
Optimal foraging and predator-prey dynamics, II.

In this paper we consider one-predator-two-prey population dynamics described by a control system. We study and compare conditions for permanence of the system for three types of predator feeding behaviors: (i) specialized feeding on the more profitable prey type, (ii) generalized feeding on both prey types, and (iii) optimal foraging behavior. We show that the region of parameter space leading to permanence for optimal foraging behavior is smaller than that for specialized behavior, but larger than that for generalized behavior. This suggests that optimal foraging behavior of predators may promote coexistence in predator-prey systems. We also study the effects of the above three feeding behaviors on apparent competition between the two prey types.
GLOBAL EXISTENCE OF SOLUTION FOR REACTION DIFFUSION SYSTEMS WITH A FULL MATRIX OF DIFFUSION COEFFICIENTS

The goal of this work is to study the global existence in time of solutions for some coupled systems of reaction diffusion which describe the spread within a population of infectious disease. We consider a full matrix of diffusion coefficients and we show the global existence of the solutions. Full text References [1] N. D. Alikakos, L-Bounds of Solutions of Reaction-Diffusion Equations, Comm. Partial. Differential. Equations 4 (1979), 827-868. MR0537465. Zbl 0421.35009. [2] C. Castillo-Chavez, K. Cook, W. Huang and S. A. Levin, On the role of long incubation periods in the dynamics of acquires immunodeficiency syndrome, AIDS, J. Math. Biol. 27 (1989) 373-398. MR1009897. Zbl 0715.92029. [3] E. L. Cussler, Multicomponent diffusion, Chemical Engineering Monographs 3 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1976. [4] A. Haraux and A.Youkana, On a Result of K. Masuda Concerning Reaction- Diffusion Equations, Tohoku. Math. J. 40 (1988), 159-163. MR0927083. Zbl 0689.35041. [5] D. Henry, Theory of Semi-Linear Parabolic Equations, Lecture Notes in Math. 840, Springer Verlas, New York, 1984. 2010 Mathematics Subject Classification: 35K45; 35K57.
Posturas en la atención psicosocial a víctimas del conflicto armado en Colombia

The article presents a review of the national academic production related to the subject of psycho-social care to armed conflict victims. The review was conducted from the year 2000, in order to locate main considerations about the processes of psycho-social accompaniment to the victims of violence by the armed conflict in the recent history of Colombia. The analysis was made from four categories: 1) State initiatives for psycho-social care to victims of the armed conflict; (2) research reflections on processes of care to victims; (3) recommendations for the institutions and professionals carried out processes of care and full reparation to victims; and (4) the claim of the subject in the care processes. The results of this work present an overview of the main positions assumed in the scenarios of psycho-social care to victims of the conflict in Colombia.
‘These are not the realities I imagined’: an inquiry into the lost hopes and aspirations of beginning teachers

Abstract The Program for Excellence in Teaching (PET) conducted in Israel aspires towards training excellent teachers but also towards creating agents of change within the educational system. This qualitative study, focusing on 21 students and beginning teachers who participated in the PET at a certain college of education in Israel, examines their professional expectations and the disparity between intentions and implementations that happens as the beginning teachers encounter the reality in schools. The article suggests three factors that address this disparity: the participants’ positive conception of the educational system, the isolation of the beginning teachers, and the induction process they must undergo. This article proposes various innovative recommendations for coping with this situation.
Walking the straight and narrow: linguistic choice and gendered presentation

The social category of gender is often considered binary in linguistic research, but this division glosses over the myriad identities within the broad categories of 'masculine' and 'feminine'. It also ignores the gendered experiences of participants, particularly transsexuals, for whom language is an important signal of identity. Two sociolinguistic variables (adjectival intensification and the phonetic production of [s]) are used to explore the linguistic construction of gender within a corpus of straight, queer, and transsexual speakers in Ottawa, Canada. Both variables emerge as sites for social identity work, suggesting that speakers with the most to lose practice a kind of linguistic conservatism. Straight men, who run the risk of losing the enormous social capital associated with heteronormative masculinity, take pains to avoid sounding gay or effeminate. Transsexuals, who risk both emotional and physical repercussions should their gender identities be questioned, aim for a safer middle ground.
Synergistic immunotherapeutic effects of Lycium barbarum polysaccharide and interferon-α2b on the murine Renca renal cell carcinoma cell line in vitro and in vivo

Novel therapeutic strategies to improve clinical efficacy in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) are required. The possibility of combination therapy with Lycium barbarum polysaccharides (LBP) and recombinant interferon (IFN)-α2b remains to be elucidated in RCC. The present study investigated the putative synergistic immunotherapeutic roles of LBP and IFN-α2b against RCC in vitro and in vivo. The mouse RCC cell line, Renca, was used for in vitro experiments. Treatment of the cells with a combination of LBP and IFN-α2b markedly inhibited cell proliferation, retarded cell cycle growth and promoted apoptosis in the Renca cells. Western blot analysis revealed that LBP and IFN-α2b synergistically downregulated the expression levels of cyclin D1, c-Myc and Bcl-2, and upregulated the expression of the antiapoptotic protein, Bax. Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) were markedly upregulated during tumour progression and promoted tumour growth by inhibiting the T-cell-mediated immune response. In vivo, a marked reduction in the MDSC ratio and tumour volume was observed in a group receiving combined treatment with LBP and IFN-α2b in a xenograft tumour model. In conclusion, the present study suggested that the combination of LBP and IFN-α2b is likely to be more effective in treating murine RCC compared with the less pronounced immunotherapeutic effects of administering LBP or IFN-α2b alone.
Two curious $q$-analogues of Hermite polynomials

Two well-known q-Hermite polynomials are the continuous and discrete q-Hermite polynomials. In this paper we consider two new q-Hermite polynomials and prove several curious properties about these polynomials. One striking property is the connection with q-Fibonacci polynomials and the recent works on the combinatorics of the Matrix Ansatz of the PASEP.