Mating type idiomorphs of Pyrenophora teres in Turkey

Pyrenophora teres f. maculata (Ptm) and Pyrenophora teres f. teres (Ptt) causes spot form and net form of net blotch diseases of barley, respectively. Although both forms of P. teres are morphologically similar, their symptoms and genetic background differ. In this study, 175 single spore (109 Ptm and 66 Ptt) isolates obtained from different regions of Turkey were evaluated for their mating type distribution and prevalence. Fungal isolates of both forms were verified using species-speci.c polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primers. For mating type determination studies, duplex PCR was performed using MAT-specific single nucleotide polymorphism primers. Sixty and 49 of 109 Ptm isolates were found as MAT1-1 and MAT1-2 types, respectively and 43 and 23 of 66 Ptt isolates were found as MAT1-1 and MAT1-2 types, respectively. These results show the possibility of sexual reproduction among the Ptm isolates in Turkey and Ptt population of Central Anatolia, Turkey. However, the overall pattern of Ptt isolates did not support the sexual reproduction hypothesis in Turkey. Sexual reproduction in the life cycle of P. teres is important since it could lead to genetic and pathogenic variation. As a result of new sexual combinations more virulent pathotypes of P. teres may occur

Determination of plasma vitellogenin levels and localization of vitellogenin in liver of Lake Van pearl mullet (Chalcalburnus tarichi Pallas, 1811)

This study focused on hepatosomatic and gonadosomatic index and levels of plasma 17β-estradiol (E2), vitellogenin (Vtg) and total protein and determined the localization of Vtg in the liver during vitellogenesis in female Chalcalburnus tarichi, an endemic cyprinid species living in the Lake Van, Turkey. The levels of plasma E2, Vtg and total protein in female fish increased during vitellogenesis and they are positively correlated with each other. According to the results from the female fish, the lowest levels of E2 and Vtg were measured in December at 120.60±23.38 pg ml^-1 and 1.10±0.26 mg ml^-1, respectively. The highest levels of plasma E2 and Vtg were in May (833.40±211.58 pg ml^-1) and April (31.31±4.9 mg ml^-1), respectively. The Vtg-positive hepatocytes were not uniform in liver of fishes. Generally, the hepatocytes surrounding the portal and central veins were strongly Vtg positive. These results showed that plasma Vtg levels in female fish increased during vitellogenesis related to plasma E2 and gonadosomatic index

Comparison of depression and anxiety levels in patients between Behçet’s disease and recurrent aphtous stomatitis

The aim of this study was to determine the existing relation between the Behçet’s Disease (BD), Recurrent Aphthous Stomatitis (RAU) and psychological alterations of the patient, such as depression and anxiety. 30 patients with RAU, and 30 patients with BD, and 15 patients with healthy subjects were participated in the study. Systemic, dental and aphthous ulceration anamnesias of all the patients in the study group have been taken in detail and neckhead, oral mucosa and dental examinations have been made and data has been recorded. Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and Beck Depression Inventory have been applied. It was observed that the depression level is higher in patient with BD and RAU in comparison with healthy subjects (p<0.05). Depression may play a role in manifestations of BD and RAU

BAT-TR: Turkish adaptation of Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT)

Avrupa ülkeleri arasında Türkiye, çalışanın bilişsel, duygusal ve fizyolojik fonksiyonlarını olumsuz etkileyen iş tükenmişliğinin oldukça yüksek olduğu ülkelerden birisidir. Bu anlamda Türkiye’de tükenmişlik düzeyinin doğru ölçülmesi ve müdahaleler geliştirilmesi büyük önem taşımaktadır. Bugüne kadar tükenmişliğin ölçümünde en çok kullanılan ölçeğin kavramsal, teknik ve uygulama anlamında önemli eksikliklerinin bulunduğunun tespit edilmesi üzerine bu eksiklikleri gideren yeni bir tükenmişlik ölçümü geliştirmek için Tükenmişlik Ölçeği Konsorsiyumu 26 ülkeden katılımcılarla Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) Ölçeğini geliştirmiştir. Bu çalışmanın amacı BAT’ı Türkçeye uyarlamaktır. Bu amaçla üç çalışma yürütülmüştür. İlk çalışmada 295 katılımcılı bir çalışma ile ölçek tercümesi tamamlanmış ve faktör yapısı belirlenmiş, ikinci çalışmada 399 kişilik bir örneklem ile ölçeğin yapı geçerliği ve güvenirliği sınanmıştır. Üçüncü aşamada ise İş Talepleri-Kaynakları Modeli (İT-K, Demerouti ve ark., 2001) çerçevesinde 2778 katılımcılı bir çalışma ile ölçeğin nomolojik geçerliği test edilmiştir. Yapılan analizlerde BAT’ın Türkçe formunun (BAT-TR) dördü birincil ve ikisi ikincil olmak üzere altı faktörlü yapıya sahip olduğuna dair görgül destek bulunmuştur. Ayrıca, ölçekten elde edilen tükenmişlik puanlarının, İT-K (Demerouti ve ark., 2001) modeline uygun olarak iş talepleri tarafından pozitif olarak ve iş kaynakları tarafından negatif olarak yordandığı görülmüştür. BAT-TR’nin tükenmişliği ölçen Maslach Tükenmişlik Ölçeği (MTÖ) ve Oldenburg Tükenmişlik Ölçeği (OTÖ) ile pozitif, çalışmaya tutkunluk ile negatif ilişkisi olduğu bulunmuştur. Ayrıca, BAT-TR’nin, işle ilgili tutum ve davranışları MTÖ ve OTÖ’nün ötesinde açıklayarak artışlı geçerliğe sahip olduğu görülmüştür. Dolayısıyla, BAT-TR’nin dört kök faktörü ve iki ikincil semptomlu yapısı kullanılarak ölçeğin geçerliği ve güvenirliğine dair güçlü kanıtlar bulunmuştur. Çalışmanın literatüre katkıları ve kısıtlamaları tartışılmış, BAT-TR ölçeğinin Türkiye’deki tükenmişlik araştırmalarında kullanılabilecek bir ölçek olduğu önerilmiştir.Like many other European countries, Turkey has a high rate of employee burnout which negatively affects employees’ cognitive, emotional, and physiological functions. In this regard, accurate measurement of burnout and the development of interventions in Turkey are critical. It has been determined that the scale that has been used most frequently in the measurement of burnout has significant conceptual, technical, and application deficiencies. Thus, the Burnout Scale Consortium developed the Burnout Assesment Tool (BAT), with participants from 26 countries, to address these shortcomings. The purpose of this study is to adapt BAT to Turkish. Three studies were conducted for this purpose. First, the scale translation was completed, with the factorial structure being determined through a study of 295 participants. For the second study, the scale’s reliability and validity was tested with a study of 399 participants. For the third study, the scale’s nomological network validity was tested with a study of 2,778 participants, using the Job Demands-Resources Model (JD-R; Demerouti et al., 2001). As a result, the empirical evidence was found to support the six-factor structure, of which four are primary and two are secondary. Additionally, in line with the JD-R model (Demerouti et al., 2001), it was discovered that job demands positively predicted the scale, while job resources negatively predicted it. The BAT-TR was found to have a positive correlation with both the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Oldenburg Burnout Scale (OBS), but a negative correlation with work engagement. Additionally, it has been observed that, when compared to MBI and OBS, it has incremental validity for work-related attitudes and behaviors. Thus, the BAT-TR four core factors and two secondary symptoms provide strong evidence for the validity and reliability of the Turkish form. A discussion is presented with contributions to the literature and the study’s limitations, suggesting that the BAT-TR scale can be used in burnout research in Turkey

Investigation of antioxidant effects of rosmarinic acid on liver, lung and kidney in rats: a biochemical and histopathological study

Background: The aim of the study was to investigate the protective effects of rosmarinic acid in rats exposed to hepatic ischaemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. Materials and methods: Thirty-two rats were randomly classified into four groups of 8 rats each: laparotomy without medication, rosmarinic acid (dose of 50 mg/kg via oral gavage) followed by laparotomy, laparotomy followed by hepatic I/R, and hepatic I/R with rosmarinic acid. Serum aspartate aminotransferase, alaninę aminotransferase, and malondialdehyde levels and total oxidant activity and total antioxidant capacity levels of the liver, lung, and kidney were assessed. The histopathologic assessment was also performed. Results: Rosmarinic acid significantly reduced liver function test parameters and decreased oxidative stress and abnormal histopathologic findings in the liver. The oxidative stress in the lung significantly increased in the I/R group but significantly decreased in the I/R + rosmarinic acid group due to the addition of rosmarinic acid. Rosmarinic acid led to no reduction in oxidative stress in kidney following hepatic I/R injury. There were no statistically significant differences among the groups regarding histopathologic changes in kidney and lung sections. Conclusions: Rosmarinic acid has antioxidant properties and is an effective hepatoprotective agent. However, although rosmarinic acid provides useful effects in the lung by increasing antioxidant capacity and reducing oxidative stress after I/R injury, it does not ameliorate histopathologic changes. These findings suggest that rosmarinic acid is likely to provide favourable outcomes in the treatment of hepatic I/R injury

Answering Complex Open-Domain Questions with Multi-Hop Dense Retrieval

We propose a simple and efficient multi-hop dense retrieval approach for answering complex open-domain questions, which achieves state-of-the-art performance on two multi-hop datasets, HotpotQA and multi-evidence FEVER. Contrary to previous work, our method does not require access to any corpus-specific information, such as inter-document hyperlinks or human-annotated entity markers, and can be applied to any unstructured text corpus. Our system also yields a much better efficiency-accuracy trade-off, matching the best published accuracy on HotpotQA while being 10 times faster at inference time

On guarding real terrains: the terrain guarding and the blocking path problems

Locating a minimum number of guards on a terrain such that every point on the terrain is guarded by at least one of the guards is known as the Terrain Guarding Problem (TGP). In this paper, a realistic example of the terrain guarding problem is studied, involving the surveillance of a rugged geographical terrain by means of thermal cameras. A number of issues related to TGP are addressed with integer-programming models proposed to solve the problem. Also, a sensitivity analysis is carried out in which five fictitious terrains are created to see the effect of the resolution of the terrain, and of terrain characteristics, on coverage optimization and the required number of guards. Finally, a new problem, which is called the Blocking Path Problem (BPP), is introduced. BPP is about guarding a path on the terrain with a minimum number of guards such that the path blocks all possible infiltration routes. A discussion is provided about the relation of BPP to the Network Interdiction Problem (NIP), which has been studied extensively by the operations research community, and to the k-Barrier Coverage Problem, which has been studied under the Sensor Deployment Problem. BPP is solved via an integer-programming formulation based on a network paradigm

Noncrystalline structures of ultrathin unsupported nanowires

Computer simulations suggest that ultrathin metal wires should develop exotic, non-crystalline stable atomic structures, once their diameter decreases below a critical size of the order of a few atomic spacings. The new structures, whose details depend upon the material and the wire thickness, may be dominated by icosahedral packings. Helical, spiral-structured wires with multi-atom pitches are also predicted. The phenomenon, analogous to the appearance of icosahedral and other non-crystalline shapes in small clusters, can be rationalized in terms of surface energy anisotropy and optimal packing

Mimicking human neuronal pathways in silico: an emergent model on the effective connectivity

International audienceWe present a novel computational model that detects temporal configurations of a given human neuronal pathway and constructs its artificial replication. This poses a great challenge since direct recordings from individual neurons are impossible in the human central nervous system and therefore the underlying neuronal pathway has to be considered as a black box. For tackling this challenge, we used a branch of complex systems modeling called artificial self-organization in which large sets of software entities interacting locally give rise to bottom-up collective behaviors. The result is an emergent model where each software entity represents an integrate-and-fire neuron. We then applied the model to the reflex responses of single motor units obtained from conscious human subjects. Experimental results show that the model recovers functionality of real human neuronal pathways by comparing it to appropriate surrogate data. What makes the model promising is the fact that, to the best of our knowledge, it is the first realistic model to self-wire an artificial neuronal network by efficiently combining neuroscience with artificial self-organization. Although there is no evidence yet of the model's connectivity mapping onto the human connectivity, we anticipate this model will help neuroscientists to learn much more about human neuronal networks, and could also be used for predicting hypotheses to lead future experiments