Controlling mathematics anxiety by the views of guidance and psychological counseling candidates

The aim of this study is to reveal the suggestions of guidance and psychological counseling candidates (GPC) in dealing with math anxiety. The study analysed 50 GPC candidates’ opinions and suggestions on math anxiety. The research study utilized case study method. The participants were asked to respond what kind of studies they would suggest to their clienst in order to overcome math anxiety once they begin to work in their profession. The interviews transcripts were converted into written documents. Content analysis was made on those documents to find GPC candidates’ suggestions and opinions. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the reasons of math anxiety can vary from individual to individual. Therefore, it was emphasized that the studies to determine the causes of math anxiety should be specific for each individual. Then, consultancy service should be formed based on the assessment of reasons that cause anxiety for each person. If the individual's math anxiety is caused by environmental factors such as teachers, families and peers, guidance and psychological counseling services should be offered to these environmental factors. © 2019 Eurasian Society of Educational Research. All rights reserved

Morphological variation of carotid artery bifurcation level in digital angiography

Knowing of the level of carotid artery bifurcation (CB) is important for vascular surgery in the neck, radical neck dissections, carotid sinus baroreceptor stimulation, catheterisations, and aneurysms. The aim of this study was to determine the CB level in relation with the cervical vertebral levels, compare them on the right and the left sides, and investigate the relation of CB level with the length of neck. In this study, 100 conventional carotid angiographies were performed. The CB level was determined in relation with 10 different levels which were the levels of the cervical vertebrae and intervertebral disks, and the relation of CB level with the length of neck was investigated. The right and left CB levels of the patients were also determined, and compared. The highest level of CB was at the level of C2 vertebra, and the lowest level of CB was at the level of C6–C7 intervertebral disk in both male and female. When all patients were taken into consideration, CB level was most frequently seen at the level of C4–C5 (29%) on the right side, and at the level of C4 (26%) on the left side. The CB levels were not symmetrical in 10 female and 23 male. Knowing of the anatomical variations of CB level is important in surgical procedures. The anatomical differences must be taken into consideration since the neighbouring structures of CB change in case of variations. We believe that the results of this study will shed light to planning of all interventional methods concerning common carotid artery and its branches as well as surgery in the neck, and will help to minimise the complications

Self-supervised multicontrast super-resolution for diffusion-weighted prostate MRI

Purpose: This study addresses the challenge of low resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in diffusion-weighted images (DWI), which are pivotal for cancer detection. Traditional methods increase SNR at high b-values through multiple acquisitions, but this results in diminished image resolution due to motion-induced variations. Our research aims to enhance spatial resolution by exploiting the global structure within multicontrast DWI scans and millimetric motion between acquisitions. Methods: We introduce a novel approach employing a "Perturbation Network" to learn subvoxel-size motions between scans, trained jointly with an implicit neural representation (INR) network. INR encodes the DWI as a continuous volumetric function, treating voxel intensities of low-resolution acquisitions as discrete samples. By evaluating this function with a finer grid, our model predicts higher-resolution signal intensities for intermediate voxel locations. The Perturbation Network's motion-correction efficacy was validated through experiments on biological phantoms and in vivo prostate scans. Results: Quantitative analyses revealed significantly higher structural similarity measures of super-resolution images to ground truth high-resolution images compared to high-order interpolation (p Conclusion: High-resolution details in DWI can be obtained without the need for high-resolution training data. One notable advantage of the proposed method is that it does not require a super-resolution training set. This is important in clinical practice because the proposed method can easily be adapted to images with different scanner settings or body parts, whereas the supervised methods do not offer such an option.</p

Boosting Object Recognition in Point Clouds by Saliency Detection

Object recognition in 3D point clouds is a challenging task, mainly when time is an important factor to deal with, such as in industrial applications. Local descriptors are an amenable choice whenever the 6 DoF pose of recognized objects should also be estimated. However, the pipeline for this kind of descriptors is highly time-consuming. In this work, we propose an update to the traditional pipeline, by adding a preliminary filtering stage referred to as saliency boost. We perform tests on a standard object recognition benchmark by considering four keypoint detectors and four local descriptors, in order to compare time and recognition performance between the traditional pipeline and the boosted one. Results on time show that the boosted pipeline could turn out up to 5 times faster, with the recognition rate improving in most of the cases and exhibiting only a slight decrease in the others. These results suggest that the boosted pipeline can speed-up processing time substantially with limited impacts or even benefits in recognition accuracy.Comment: International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing (ICIAP) 201

Educational paper: Defects in number and function of neutrophilic granulocytes causing primary immunodeficiency

The neutrophilic granulocyte (neutrophil) is the most important cellular component of the innate immune system. A total absence of neutrophils or a significant decrease in their number leads to severe immunodeficiency. A mature neutrophil, released from the bone marrow, should be able to migrate from the blood towards the tissues, following a chemotactic gradient to a pathogen. In order to be neutralized, this pathogen has to be recognized, phagocytosed, and destroyed by lytic enzymes contained in the neutrophil's granules and reactive oxygen species formed by the enzyme complex NADPH oxidase. Rare genetic defects leading to the loss of each one of these biological properties of the neutrophil have been described and are associated with immunodeficiency. This review provides a summary of the normal development and biological functions of neutrophils and describes the diseases caused by defects in neutrophil number and function

Levels of selected minerals, nitric oxide, and vitamins in aborted Sakis sheep raised under semitropical conditions

The serum levels of calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, copper, zinc and iron and of nitric oxide, retinol, and β-carotene were determined in Sakiz ewes that had experienced an abortion and in healthy controls. Ten healthy and 25 aborted Sakiz sheep were selected from Afyon zone in western Turkey. Their ages ranged between 2 and 4 years weighing between 40 and 60 kg at the time of experiment. All of the abortions occurred in October. The concentrations of retinol, β-carotene, phosphorus, and zinc were significantly lower and those of calcium and nitric oxide were increased in aborted ewes relative to healthy controls. The serum levels of iron, copper, and magnesium were not significantly different among the two groups. In conclusion, abortion is an important problem in commercially important species of ruminants in many regions in the tropics including of western Turkey. Deficiencies of retinol, β-carotene, phosphorus and zinc, and the increase of calcium and nitric oxide concentration may play an important role in the etiology of abortion in ewes. Prophylactic measures such as vitamin and mineral supplementation may be of help to prevent or reduce the incidence of abortion in sheep

Conspiracy theory as spatial practice: the case of the Sivas arson attack, Turkey

This article discusses the relationship between conspiratorial thinking and physical space by focusing on the ways conspiracy theories regarding political violence shape and are shaped by the environments in which it is commemorated. Conspiratorial thinking features space as a significant element, but is taken to do so mainly figuratively. In blaming external powers and foreign actors for social ills, conspiracy theorists employ the spatial metaphor of inside versus outside. In perceiving discourses of transparency as the concealment rather than revelation of mechanisms of governance, conspiracy theorists engage the trope of a façade separating the space of power’s formulations from that of its operations. Studying the case of an arson attack dating from 1990s Turkey and its recent commemorations, this article argues that space mediates conspiracy theory not just figuratively but also physically and as such serves to catalyze two of its deadliest characteristics: anonymity and non-linear causality. Attending to this mediation requires a shift of focus from what conspiracy theory is to what it does as a spatial practice