Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New Approach for Diagonal Line Model of Importance-Performance Analysis: A Case Study of Tourist Satisfaction in China

Two types of importance-performance analysis (IPA), quadrant model and diagonal line model, are applied widely. Some studies have described the advantages of the diagonal line model, but multiple studies have reported disadvantages of direct measures of importance, as used in the traditional diagonal line model. In addition, there is no clear rationale for the use of a 45-degree diagonal line as a distinguishing line in the diagonal line model. This study used the partial correlation coefficient-base of attributes corresponding to overall satisfaction to measure a new importance value to replace direct importance in the traditional method. The new diagonal line reflects the average of the slope formed by the impact of various attributes on overall satisfaction, rather than a 45-degree diagonal line. The new approach was successfully applied to determine a management strategy of tourist satisfaction, and the results confirm the rationality of the studied case and were considered reasonable by appropriate managers.
Exploring Teacher Leadership and the Factors Contributing to It: An Empirical Study on Chinese Private Higher Education Institutions

China has witnessed a considerable expansion of private higher education institutions (HEIs) over the last two decades, and research has shown that teacher leadership (TL) is an essential aspect of providing quality higher education. This study proposed a model to explain TL and the factors that contribute to it in private HEIs. A sample of 4,152 participants responded to an 11-item questionnaire using a 5-point scale designed to measure three variables: TL, teacher self-efficacy (TSE), and teacher competence (TC). The results showed that the three variables were valid in explaining TL and the factors that contribute to it. Hypothesis tests revealed that both hypotheses were supported. Finally, the results revealed that TSE and TC are both significantly associated with TL. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings and the scope for future research are discussed.
The oral language productive vocabulary profile of children starting school: A resource for teachers

The oral language proficiency of students in early education is crucial as teachers draw on this as a resource when developing literacy. There is a need to better understand what this oral language resource consists of at school entry, particularly the diversity amongst children so as to address inequalities. This article reports a study on a key component of oral language, namely productive vocabulary. It profiles the oral language vocabulary in approximately 3.6 million words produced by a large sample of almost 800 children under the age of five. The results are reported in a productive vocabulary resource, structured as a list of 2767 vocabulary targets. This profile represents highly productive vocabulary presumably known by most children as well as more advanced vocabulary not part of every child’s oral language. The article demonstrates the pedagogical implications of this research in the context of the National Literacy Learning Progressions of the Australian National Curriculum.
Psychometric Properties of the Turkish Version of the Experiences in Close Relationships–Relationship Structures Questionnaire (ECR-RS)

The aim of this study was to adapt the Turkish version of the Experiences in Close Relationships–Relationship Structures Questionnaire in a sample of Turkey. Study I was conducted to prove the reliability and validity of the results obtained as a result of the adaptation of the Experiences in Close Relationships–Relationship Structures (ECR-RS) Questionnaire to Turkish culture. The study showed that the Experiences in Close Relationships–Relationship Structures Questionnaire and its subscales were reliable and valid. The study showed that the ECR-RS subscales correlated with the Relationship Questionnaire, the Relationship Styles Questionnaire, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Subscale, the Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale, the Contact with parents and the Relationship experience, denoting content validity of the Experiences in Close Relationships–Relationship Structures Questionnaire. According to the research results, the Experiences in Close Relationships–Relationship Structures Questionnaire are a reliable and valid measurement tool that can be used for the purpose of evaluating attachment representation in Turkish culture. In addition, this study provides attachment researchers with a basis for reviewing the assumption that dimensional models overlap with categorical models. It is suggested that The Experiences in Close Relationships-Relationship Structures Questionnaire be adapted to different relationship structures (e.g., therapist, god, ideological groups), retested on different age groups and its relationship with personality traits and psychological problems be investigated.
Selection of the Number of Participants in Intensive Longitudinal Studies: A User-Friendly Shiny App and Tutorial for Performing Power Analysis in Multilevel Regression Models That Account for Temporal Dependencies

In recent years, the popularity of procedures for collecting intensive longitudinal data, such as the experience-sampling method, has increased greatly. The data collected using such designs allow researchers to study the dynamics of psychological functioning and how these dynamics differ across individuals. To this end, the data are often modeled with multilevel regression models. An important question that arises when researchers design intensive longitudinal studies is how to determine the number of participants needed to test specific hypotheses regarding the parameters of these models with sufficient power. Power calculations for intensive longitudinal studies are challenging because of the hierarchical data structure in which repeated observations are nested within the individuals and because of the serial dependence that is typically present in these data. We therefore present a user-friendly application and step-by-step tutorial for performing simulation-based power analyses for a set of models that are popular in intensive longitudinal research. Because many studies use the same sampling protocol (i.e., a fixed number of at least approximately equidistant observations) within individuals, we assume that this protocol is fixed and focus on the number of participants. All included models explicitly account for the temporal dependencies in the data by assuming serially correlated errors or including autoregressive effects.
A Cross-Linguistic Study of L3 Phonological Acquisition of Stop Contrasts

The research reported in this article investigated how students learning Japanese or Russian as a third language (L3) perceived and produced word-initial stops in their respective target language and the link between perception and production. The participants in the study were 39 Chinese university students who spoke Mandarin Chinese as their first language (L1), English as their second language (L2), and Japanese or Russian as their L3. An L3 identification task, an L3 reading task, and an L2 reading task were used to investigate the learners’ perception and production of word-initial stops. The results demonstrated that the phonetic similarity in different stop categories between L1, L2, and L3 contributed to learners’ confusion in perception. On the contrary, L3 learners could perceive the new acoustic feature voicing lead, but found it difficult to produce L3 voiced stops. In addition, the study found a positive relationship between the perception and production of voiceless stops in the initial stage of L3 acquisition, but there was no correlation between the perception and production of voiced stops. Pedagogical implications for L3 speech learning are discussed on the basis of the results.
Server consolidation: A technique to enhance cloud data center power efficiency and overall cost of ownership

Cloud computing is a well-known technology that provides flexible, efficient, and cost-effective information technology solutions for multinationals to offer improved and enhanced quality of business services to end-users. The cloud computing paradigm is instigated from grid and parallel computing models as it uses virtualization, server consolidation, utility computing, and other computing technologies and models for providing better information technology solutions for large-scale computational data centers. The recent intensifying computational demands from multinationals enterprises have motivated the magnification for large complicated cloud data centers to handle business, monetary, Internet, and commercial applications of different enterprises. A cloud data center encompasses thousands of millions of physical server machines arranged in racks along with network, storage, and other equipment that entails an extensive amount of power to process different processes and amenities required by business firms to run their business applications. This data center infrastructure leads to different challenges like enormous power consumption, underutilization of installed equipment especially physical server machines, CO2 emission causing global warming, and so on. In this article, we highlight the data center issues in the context of Pakistan where the data center industry is facing huge power deficits and shortcomings to fulfill the power demands to provide data and operational services to business enterprises. The research investigates these challenges and provides solutions to reduce the number of installed physical server machines and their related device equipment. In this article, we proposed server consolidation technique to increase the utilization of already existing server machines and their workloads by migrating them to virtual server machines to implement green energy-efficient cloud data centers. To achieve this objective, we also introduced a novel Virtualized Task Scheduling Algorithm to manage and properly distribute the physical server machine workloads onto virtual server machines. The results are generated from a case study performed in Pakistan where the proposed server consolidation technique and virtualized task scheduling algorithm are applied on a tier-level data center. The results obtained from the case study demonstrate that there are annual power savings of 23,600 W and overall cost savings of US$78,362. The results also highlight that the utilization ratio of already existing physical server machines has increased to 30% compared to 10%, whereas the number of server machines has reduced to 50% contributing enormously toward huge power savings.
Experiment-Wise Type I Error Control: A Focus on 2 × 2 Designs

Factorial designs are common in psychology research. But they are nearly always used without control of the experiment-wise Type I error rate (EWER), perhaps because of a lack of awareness about viable procedures for that purpose and perhaps also because of a lack of appreciation for the problem of Type I error inflation. In this article, key concepts relating to Type I error inflation are discussed, with emphasis on the 2 × 2 factorial design. Simulations are used to evaluate various approaches in that context. I show that conventional approaches often do not control the EWER. Alternative approaches are recommended that reliably control the EWER and are simple to implement.
Manipulation of Chlorella vulgaris polyunsaturated ω‐3 fatty acid profile by supplementation with vegetable amino acids and fatty acids

The present research aims to investigate the fatty acid profile of the microalgae Chlorella vulgaris supplemented with bioactive oils and amino acids from Oliveria decumbens, Thymus kotschyanus, Trachyspermum ammi, and Zataria multiflora. C. vulgaris was cultured during 4 days in presence of the plant oil (5 mL/1000 mL) and amino acid (5 g/1000 mL) extracts at the end of the logarithmic phase. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis (GC–MS) revealed that major fatty acids of C. vulgaris were palmitic (29.33%), oleic (15.76%), linoleic (10.02%), α‐linolenic (8.69%), γ‐linolenic (4.11%), palmitoleic (3.43%), and lauric (2.48%) acids, as well as 5,8,11,14,17‐eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) (2.26%). The used vegetable oil mainly composed of ω‐3 and ω‐6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and significantly induced ω‐3 and ω‐6 fatty acids such as linoleic, α‐linolenic, γ‐linolenic, and oleic acids, as well as EPA in C. vulgaris. Furthermore, the analyzed vegetable amino acids significantly induced ω‐3 and ω‐6 PUFAs, such as linoleic, α‐linolenic, γ‐linolenic, and oleic acids, as well as EPA in C. vulgaris, but with a differential manner relative to fatty acids.
Profiling of 120 types of herbal extracts and their effects on morphology in cultured neuronal or glial cell lines, followed by RNA extraction for a cDNA library: Consideration for use in studies based on Kampo theories

Kampo medicine is composed of a variety of crude drugs. Each crude drug has its own effects, and the interaction of all drugs produces the therapeutic effect of Kampo medicine. In order to examine the characteristics of Kampo medicine and its crude drugs, 120 types of herbal medicines were characterized based on their three‐dimensional high‐performance liquid chromatography (3D‐HPLC) profiles as well as their effects on cell morphology/proliferation when added to cultured cells and gene expression changes such as on BNIP‐3 mRNA levels as an example.
Dynamical processing of orientation precision in the primary visual cortex

In our daily visual environment, the primary visual cortex (V1) processes distributions of oriented features as the basis of our visual computations. Changes of the global, median orientation of such inputs form the basis of our canonical knowledge about V1. However, another overlooked but defining characteristic of these sensory variables is their precision, which characterizes the level of variance in the input to V1. Such variability is an intrinsic part of natural images, yet it remains unclear if and how V1 accounts for the changes in orientation precision to achieve its robust orientation recognition performances. Here, we used naturalistic stimuli to characterize the response of V1 neurons to quantified variations of orientation precision. We found that about thirty percent of the recorded neurons showed a form of invariant responses to input precision. While feedforward mechanisms failed to account for the existence of these resilient neurons, neuronal competition within V1 explained the extent to which a neuron is invariant to precision. Using a decoding algorithm, we showed that the existence of such neurons in the population response of V1 can serve to encode both the orientation and its precision in the V1 population activity, which improves the robustness of the overall neural code. These precision-specific neurons operate with slow recurrent cortical dynamics, which supports the notion of predictive precisionweighted processes in V1.
Organelle calcium-derived voltage oscillations in pacemaker neurons drive food-seeking behavior in Aplysia

The expression of motivated behaviors depends on both external and internally-arising neural stimuli, yet the intrinsic releasing mechanisms for such variably occurring behaviors remain elusive. In isolated nervous system preparations of Aplysia, we have found that irregularly expressed cycles of motor output underlying food-seeking behavior arise from regular membrane potential oscillations of varying magnitude in an identified pair of interneurons (B63) in the bilateral buccal ganglia. This rhythmic signal, which is endogenous and specific to the B63 cells, is generated by organelle-derived intracellular calcium fluxes that activate voltage-independent plasma membrane channels. The resulting voltage oscillation spreads throughout a subset of gap junction-coupled buccal network neurons and by triggering plateau potential-mediated bursts in B63, can initiate motor output driving food-seeking action. Thus, an atypical neuronal pacemaker mechanism, based on rhythmic intracellular calcium store release and intercellular propagation, can act as an autonomous intrinsic releaser for the occurrence of a motivated behavior.
Association of stress-related neural activity and baseline interleukin-6 plasma levels in healthy adults

Several studies suggest a link between acute changes in inflammatory parameters due to an endotoxin or (psychological) stressor and the brain’s stress response. The extent to which basal circulating levels of inflammatory markers are associated with the brain’s stress response has been hardly investigated so far. In the present study, baseline plasma levels of the cytokine interleukin (IL)-6 were obtained and linked to neural markers of psychosocial stress using a modified version of the Montreal Imaging Stress Task in a sample of N=65 healthy subjects (N=39 female). Of three a-priori defined regions of interest – the amygdala, anterior insula, and anterior cingulate cortex – baseline IL-6 was significantly and negatively associated with stress-related neural activation in the right amygdala and left anterior insula. Our results suggest that baseline cytokines might be related to differences in the neural stress response and that this relationship could be inverse to that previously reported for induced acute changes in inflammation markers.
A novel theoretical framework for simultaneous measurement of excitatory and inhibitory conductances

Firing of neurons throughout the brain is determined by the precise relations between excitatory and inhibitory inputs and disruption of their balance underlies many psychiatric diseases. Whether or not these inputs covary over time or between repeated stimuli remains unclear due to the lack of experimental methods for measuring both inputs simultaneously. We developed a new analytical framework for instantaneous and simultaneous measurements of both the excitatory and inhibitory neuronal inputs during a single trial under current clamp recording. This can be achieved by injecting a current composed of two high frequency sinusoidal components followed by analytical extraction of the conductances. We demonstrate the ability of this method to measure both inputs in a single trial under realistic recording constraints and from morphologically realistic CA1 pyramidal model cells. Experimental implementation of our new method will facilitate the understanding of fundamental questions about the health and disease of the nervous system. Classification System Neuroscience, Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
TOR represses stress responses through global regulation of H3K27 trimethylation in plants

Target of Rapamycin (TOR) functions as a central sensory hub to link a wide range of external stimuli to gene expression. However, the mechanisms underlying stimulus-specific transcriptional reprogramming by TOR remains elusive. Our in silico analysis in Arabidopsis demonstrates that TOR-repressed genes are associated with either bistable or silent chromatin states. Both states regulated by TOR signaling pathway are associated with high level of H3K27me3 deposited by CURLY LEAF (CLF) in specific context with LIKE HETEROCHROMATIN PROTEIN1 (LHP1). Combinations of epigenetic modifications H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 implicate bistable feature which alternates between on and off state allowing rapid transcriptional changes upon external stimuli. Chromatin remodeler SWI2/SNF2 ATPase BRAHMA (BRM) activates TOR-repressed genes only at bistable chromatin domains to rapidly induce biotic stress responses. Here we demonstrated both in silico and in vivo that TOR represses transcriptional stress responses through global maintenance of H3K27me3.
Small RNA-sequencing for Analysis of Circulating miRNAs: Benchmark Study

Small RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq) is being increasingly used for profiling of circulating microRNAs (miRNAs), a new group of promising biomarkers. Unfortunately, small RNA-Seq protocols are prone to biases limiting quantification accuracy, which motivated development of several novel methods. Here, we present comparison of all small RNA-Seq library preparation approaches that are commercially available for quantification of miRNAs in biofluids. Using synthetic and human plasma samples, we compared performance of traditional two-adaptor ligation protocols (Lexogen, Norgen) as well as methods using randomized adaptors (NEXTflex), polyadenylation (SMARTer), circularization (RealSeq), capture probes (EdgeSeq) or unique molecular identifiers, UMIs (QIAseq). Globally, there was no single protocol outperforming others across all metrics. We documented limited overlap of measured miRNA profiles between methods largely owing to protocol-specific biases. We found that methods designed to minimize bias largely differ in their performance and we identified contributing factors. We found that usage of UMIs has rather negligible effect and if designed incorrectly can even introduce spurious results. Together, these results identify strengths and weaknesses of current methods and provide guidelines for applications of small RNA-Seq in biomarker research.
Fasciola hepatica fatty acid binding protein (Fh12) induces apoptosis and tolerogenic properties in murine bone marrow derived dendritic cells

In a previous study we demonstrated that Fasciola hepatica fatty acid binding protein (Fh12) significantly suppress macrophage function by inhibiting IL-6, IL-1B, tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and IL-12 production in TLR4-stimulated murine macrophages, an effect mediated through the signaling of CD14 co-receptor without affecting the viability of these cells. Given that dendritic cells (DCs) are immune cells that play a central role in the initiation of primary immune responses and that are the only antigen-presenting cells capable of stimulating naive T-cells, in the present study we investigated the effect of Fh12 on DCs. We found that Fh12 exerts a strong suppressive effect on activation and function of DCs. However, in contrast to the effect observed on macrophages, Fh12 induces early and late apoptosis of DCs being this phenomenon dose-dependent and CD14-coreceptor independent. At low concentration Fh12 modulates the LPS-induced DCs maturation status by suppressing the MHC-II, and co-stimulatory molecules CD40 and CD80 surface expression together with the pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-12p70 and IL-6 production whereas increase the IL-10 levels. Besides, Fh12 decreased the ability of LPS-activated DCs to induce IFNg production against allogeneic splenocytes, while increasing IL-4 production. We have described for the first time the ability of Fh12 to modify selectively the viability of DCs by apoptosis induction. The selective diminution in DCs survival could be a F. hepatica strategy in order to prevent a host immune response during the earliest phases of infection.