Counselor Preferences of White University Students: Ethnicity and Other Important Characteristics

In the last several decades, multiculturalism has became the one of the most popular research topics in psychology and counseling, and the counselor preferences of ethnic minority clients has been well researched. However, in the history of research on counselor preferences, the needs and preferences of ethnic majority clients have been neglected. This study investigated the counselor preferences of White university students. This study examined three primary research questions: whether counselor ethnicity influenced White university students’ initial counselor preferences, what were White university students’ preferences for various counselor characteristics, and whether White university students preferred specific counseling styles for different problem types. A survey consisting of three parts, a demographic questionnaire, a questionnaire including three analogical counselor-client vignettes, and a Preferred Counselor Characteristics Inventory, was administered to students at a university in the southeastern United States. With regard to preferences for counselor ethnicity, the findings suggested that counselor ethnicity generally did not affect White participants’ initial counselor preferences. Aside from ethnicity, the study investigated White students’ preferences for various counselor characteristics: credibility, counseling style, age, gender and race. The results indicated that the characteristics valued by the highest percentage of White students were counselor credibility and counseling style. Moreover, participants’ preferences were influenced by their own gender and past experiences with counseling. Lastly, participants favored different counseling styles depending on the problem type, and gender played an important role in preference for counseling style

Multimode optical feedback dynamics in InAs/GaAs quantum dot lasers emitting exclusively on ground or excited states: transition from short- to long-delay regimes

© 2018 Optical Society of America. Users may use, reuse, and build upon the article, or use the article for text or data mining, so long as such uses are for non-commercial purposes and appropriate attribution is maintained. All other rights are reserved.The optical feedback dynamics of two multimode InAs/GaAs quantum dot lasers emitting exclusively on sole ground or excited lasing states is investigated. The transition from long- to short-delay regimes is analyzed, while the boundaries associated to the birth of periodic and chaotic oscillations are unveiled to be a function of the external cavity length. The results show that depending on the initial lasing state, different routes to chaos are observed. These results are of importance for the development of isolator-free transmitters in short-reach networks

The Trend of Mathematics Teaching Method Has Change From Fragments To Systematics

According to the school observation in China, There are still fragmentation and superficiality problems in front-line teachers’ mathematics teaching method. The reason is that the general system theory has not been rooted in the mathematics teaching method. This study aims to develop Dick-Carey model of systematic design and used in the learning activity. Based on system analysis model,  Dick-Carey model of systematic design, and the “Six Questions” cognitive concepts, this paper tries to construct a systematic plan of teaching mathematics. In order to restore the structure, improve the breadth, depth and openness of teaching plan and to promote the systematic model into better teaching method. At the same time, taking the design of "intersecting lines" as an example, this paper explores the effective strategies of systematic design in mathematics teaching

Population and allelic variation of A-to-I RNA editing in human transcriptomes.

BackgroundA-to-I RNA editing is an important step in RNA processing in which specific adenosines in some RNA molecules are post-transcriptionally modified to inosines. RNA editing has emerged as a widespread mechanism for generating transcriptome diversity. However, there remain significant knowledge gaps about the variation and function of RNA editing.ResultsIn order to determine the influence of genetic variation on A-to-I RNA editing, we integrate genomic and transcriptomic data from 445 human lymphoblastoid cell lines by combining an RNA editing QTL (edQTL) analysis with an allele-specific RNA editing (ASED) analysis. We identify 1054 RNA editing events associated with cis genetic polymorphisms. Additionally, we find that a subset of these polymorphisms is linked to genome-wide association study signals of complex traits or diseases. Finally, compared to random cis polymorphisms, polymorphisms associated with RNA editing variation are located closer spatially to their respective editing sites and have a more pronounced impact on RNA secondary structure.ConclusionsOur study reveals widespread cis variation in RNA editing among genetically distinct individuals and sheds light on possible phenotypic consequences of such variation on complex traits and diseases

A Novel Adaptive Elite-Based Particle Swarm Optimization Applied to VAR Optimization in Electric Power Systems

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) has been successfully applied to solve many practical engineering problems. However, more efficient strategies are needed to coordinate global and local searches in the solution space when the studied problem is extremely nonlinear and highly dimensional. This work proposes a novel adaptive elite-based PSO approach. The adaptive elite strategies involve the following two tasks: (1) appending the mean search to the original approach and (2) pruning/cloning particles. The mean search, leading to stable convergence, helps the iterative process coordinate between the global and local searches. The mean of the particles and standard deviation of the distances between pairs of particles are utilized to prune distant particles. The best particle is cloned and it replaces the pruned distant particles in the elite strategy. To evaluate the performance and generality of the proposed method, four benchmark functions were tested by traditional PSO, chaotic PSO, differential evolution, and genetic algorithm. Finally, a realistic loss minimization problem in an electric power system is studied to show the robustness of the proposed method

Semaphorin 4D Promotes Skeletal Metastasis in Breast Cancer.

Bone density is controlled by interactions between osteoclasts, which resorb bone, and osteoblasts, which deposit it. The semaphorins and their receptors, the plexins, originally shown to function in the immune system and to provide chemotactic cues for axon guidance, are now known to play a role in this process as well. Emerging data have identified Semaphorin 4D (Sema4D) as a product of osteoclasts acting through its receptor Plexin-B1 on osteoblasts to inhibit their function, tipping the balance of bone homeostasis in favor of resorption. Breast cancers and other epithelial malignancies overexpress Sema4D, so we theorized that tumor cells could be exploiting this pathway to establish lytic skeletal metastases. Here, we use measurements of osteoblast and osteoclast differentiation and function in vitro and a mouse model of skeletal metastasis to demonstrate that both soluble Sema4D and protein produced by the breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 inhibits differentiation of MC3T3 cells, an osteoblast cell line, and their ability to form mineralized tissues, while Sema4D-mediated induction of IL-8 and LIX/CXCL5, the murine homologue of IL-8, increases osteoclast numbers and activity. We also observe a decrease in the number of bone metastases in mice injected with MDA-MB-231 cells when Sema4D is silenced by RNA interference. These results are significant because treatments directed at suppression of skeletal metastases in bone-homing malignancies usually work by arresting bone remodeling, potentially leading to skeletal fragility, a significant problem in patient management. Targeting Sema4D in these cancers would not affect bone remodeling and therefore could elicit an improved therapeutic result without the debilitating side effects

Effect of the presence of virus-like particles on bacterial growth in sunlit xurface and dark deep ocean environments in the southern East China Sea

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Tsai, A.-Y., Lin, Y.-T., & Gong, G.-C. Effect of the presence of virus-like particles on bacterial growth in sunlit xurface and dark deep ocean environments in the southern East China Sea. Water, 13(20), (2021): 2934, https://doi.org/10.3390/w13202934.Virus-like particles (VLPs) are thought to increase the dissolved organic carbon by releasing the contents of the host cell, which, in turn, can affect bacterial growth in natural aquatic environments. Yet, experimental tests have shown that the effect of VLPs on the bacterial growth rate at different depths has seldom been studied. Bacteria–VLP interaction and the effect of VLPs on bacterial growth rate in the sunlit surface (3 m) and dark, deep ocean (130 m) environments were first explored at a test site in the southern East China Sea of the northwest Pacific. Our experimental results indicated that bacterial and virus-like particle (VLP) abundance decreased with depth from 0.8 ± 0.3 × 105 cells mL−1 and 1.8 ± 0.4 × 106 VLPs mL−1 at 3 m to 0.4 ± 0.1 × 105 cells mL−1 and 1.4 ± 0.3 × 106 VLPs mL−1 at 130 m. We found that the abundance of VLPs to Bacteria Ratio (VBR) in the dark deep ocean (VBR = 35.0 ± 5.6) was higher than in the sunlit surface environment (VBR = 22.5 ± 2.1). The most interesting finding is that in the dark, deep ocean region the bacterial growth rate in the presence of VLPs was higher (0.05 h−1) than that in virus-diluted treatments (0.01 h−1). However, there was no significant difference in the bacterial growth rates between the treatments in the sunlit surface ocean region. Deep-sea ecosystems are dark and extreme environments that lack primary photosynthetic production, and our estimates imply that the contribution of recycled carbon by viral lysis is highly significant for bacterial growth in the dark, deep ocean environment. Further work for more study sites is needed to identify the relationship of VLPs and their hosts to enable us to understand the role of VLPs at different depths in the East China Sea.The research was supported by RFBR projects 18-44-920026, and the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, grant number NSC 109-2611-M-019-013 and NSC 110-2611-M-019-005