Evaluation of Pax6 Mutant Rat as a Model for Autism

Autism is a highly variable brain developmental disorder and has a strong genetic basis. Pax6 is a pivotal player in brain development and maintenance. It is expressed in embryonic and adult neural stem cells, in astrocytes in the entire central nervous system, and in neurons in the olfactory bulb, amygdala, thalamus, and cerebellum, functioning in highly context-dependent manners. We have recently reported that Pax6 heterozygous mutant (rSey2/+) rats with a spontaneous mutation in the Pax6 gene, show impaired prepulse inhibition (PPI). In the present study, we further examined behaviors of rSey2/+ rats and revealed that they exhibited abnormality in social interaction (more aggression and withdrawal) in addition to impairment in rearing activity and in fear-conditioned memory. Ultrasonic vocalization (USV) in rSey2+ rat pups was normal in male but abnormal in female. Moreover, treatment with clozapine successfully recovered the defects in sensorimotor gating function, but not in fear-conditioned memory. Taken together with our prior human genetic data and results in other literatures, rSey2/+ rats likely have some phenotypic components of autism

Ethical Awareness, Ethical Judgment and Whistleblowing: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

This study aims to examine the ethical decision-making (EDM) model proposed by Schwartz (J Bus Ethics, doi:10.1007/s10551-015-2886-8,2016), where we consider the factors of non-rationality and aspects that affect ethical judgments of auditors to make the decision to blow the whistle. In this paper, we argue that the intention of whistleblowing depends on ethical awareness (EAW) and ethical judgment (EJW) as well as there is a mediation–moderation due to emotion (EMT) and perceived moral intensity (PMI) of auditors. Data were collected using an online surveywith 162 external auditors who worked on audit firms in Indonesia as well as 173 internal auditors working in the manufacturing and financial services. The result of multigroup analysis shows that emotion (EMT) can mediate the relationship between EAW and EJW. The nature of this relationship is more complex and then tested by adding moderating variables using consistent partial least squares approach. We found that EMT and PMI can improve the relationship between ethical judgments and whistleblowing intentions. These findings indicate that internal auditors are more likely to blow the whistle than external auditors; and reporting wrongdoing internally and anonymously are the preferred way of professional accountants to blow the whistle in Indonesia

Distinguishability of biological material by use of ultraviolet multispectral fluorescence.

Recent interest in the detection and analysis of biological samples by spectroscopic methods has led to questions concerning the degree of distinguishability and biological variability of the UV fluorescent spectra from such complex samples. We show that the degree of distinguishability of such spectra is readily determined numerically. As a practical example of this technique, we show its application to the analysis of UV fluorescence spectra taken of E. coli, S. aureus, and S. typhimurium. The use of this analysis to determine the degree of biological variability and also to verify that measurements are being made in a linear regime in which analytic methods such as multivariate analysis are valid is discussed

Calculation of the expected number of failures for a repairable asset system

The expected number of failures is the essential element in cost analysis for a repairable system in engineering asset management. A renewal process is typically used for modelling a repairable system with perfect repairs while a nonhomogeneous Poisson process can be used to model a repairable system with minimal repair. An asset system with imperfect repair will be restored to the state which is somewhere between as bad as old and as good as new. While imperfect repairs are more realistic, it is more challenging to calculate the expected number of failures. In this paper, we propose an imperfect reparable system assuming decreasing restoration levels conditional on the previous repair actions. Compared with a popular imperfect repairable system settings which assumes a constant discount restoration level after the first failure occurrence, our decreasing restoration levels model may better represent the actual repair-restoration patterns for many asset systems. The likelihood function of the newly proposed model is derived and the model parameters can be estimated based on historical failure time data. We adopt a cumulative hazard function based Monte Carlo simulation approach to calculate the expected number of failures for the newly proposed reparable system model. This new simulation algorithm is demonstrated on both simulated and real data and compared to a popular existing model under a Weibull distribution setting. An advantage of our simulation algorithm is that a bootstrap version confidence band on the estimated expected number of failures can easily be constructed. The modelling and simulation results in the paper can be used for the development of a reliability engineering analysis and asset management decision making too