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This study examines the relationship between stylistic coach leadership style, team cohesion, and team performance for young student athletes who take part in a team sport. The stylistic coach leadership style is defined as a combination of both democratic and holistic coach leadership styles. In other words, the stylistic coach leadership style is when the coaches make the final decision based on what young student athletes think while ensuring that they are content and that the team is able to be successful overall. In order to determine the effect of stylistic coach leadership style on team cohesion and team performance, a study was conducted using an online questionnaire that was split into two parts. Young student athletes in grades 6 through 12 who were taking part in a team sport at the time were eligible to participate in this study. Demographic information was collected through the first part of the questionnaire while the second part measured each of the three constructs through questions that required the athletes to rank the statements based on the 5-point Likert scale. The results highlight that the stylistic coach leadership style directly affects both team cohesion and team performance, and team cohesion acts as a partial mediator in the relationship between stylistic coach leadership style and team performance. Finally, this study also provides some practical suggestions for coaches, with the aim of aiding them to be more efficient and effective in leading those young student athletes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Process Capability Indices (PCIs) are devices widely used in the industry to evaluate process quality. The commonly used process capability indices all contain accuracy indices and precision indices. As the accuracy index is closer to zero, the process accuracy is higher. The precision index mainly represents the extent of process variation. As the value is smaller, the process variation is smaller, that is, the precision is higher. In fact, process capability indices are the functions of accuracy indices and precision indices. Obviously, as long as accuracy indices and precision indices are controlled, the process capability indices can be controlled as well. Therefore, this study first derived accuracy and precision control charts to observe not only process accuracy but also process precision. Then, this study adopted in-control data to acquire a 100 (1 −  α)% confidence region of an accuracy index and a precision index, with which statistical tests were performed. Subsequently, according to the definition of the six sigma quality level, both indices were examined. Furthermore, based on the testing results, suggestions for process improvement were proposed, including correcting the direction of process deviation and deciding whether to reduce process variation. Finally, this study demonstrated the applicability of the proposed model using an empirical example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media has become an important part of most people's lives since the pandemic and lockdowns. With little to do during lockdowns, some people created and managed social media accounts and became influencers. Following this trend, companies, governments, and individuals related to the leisure and hospitality industry turned to social media and influencer marketing to promote tourism in specific destinations in hopes of spurring an economic recovering. Since the pandemic, consumers have turned to social media to gather information and ideas for travel plans. To better understand the connection between what consumers read online and their desire to travel, this study aims to analyse the impacts of influencers, including their content and the fitness of destination, on consumers, who have their own perceived value and desire for the destination. A total of 332 Taiwanese respondents aged 18 to 55 were sampled to conduct a data analysis using the structural equation model (SEM). The results showed that content has a positive impact on the fitness of destination and the desire to travel, with no significant impact on perceived value, and the fitness of destination has a positive impact on perceived value and the desire to travel; in contrast, perceived value has a negative impact on the desire to travel. The mediation effect of influencer fitness of destination was also investigated through the bootstrap method. Fitness of destination acts as a full mediator between content and perceived value. Finally, the findings and managerial implications are further discussed to examine how the desire to travel among consumers can be affected by influencer marketing in the post-pandemic era. Practical suggestions for applying influencer marketing strategies based on the results are also proposed to help the tourism industry boost tourism revenue and achieve sustainable development goals after the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the dissemination of news information has become more rapid, liberal, and open to the public. People can find what they want to know more and more easily from a variety of sources, including traditional news outlets and new social media platforms. However, at a time when our lives are glutted with all kinds of news, we cannot help but doubt the veracity and legitimacy of these news sources; meanwhile, we also need to guard against the possible impact of various forms of fake news. To combat the spread of misinformation, more and more researchers have turned to natural language processing (NLP) approaches for effective fake news detection. However, in the face of increasingly serious fake news events, existing detection methods still need to be continuously improved. This study proposes a modified proof-of-concept model named NER-SA, which integrates natural language processing (NLP) and named entity recognition (NER) to conduct the in-domain and cross-domain analysis of fake news detection with the existing three datasets simultaneously. The named entities associated with any particular news event exist in a finite and available evidence pool. Therefore, entities must be mentioned and recognized in this entity bank in any authentic news articles. A piece of fake news inevitably includes only some entitlements in the entity bank. The false information is deliberately fabricated with fictitious, imaginary, and even unreasonable sentences and content. As a result, there must be differences in statements, writing logic, and style between legitimate news and fake news, meaning that it is possible to successfully detect fake news. We developed a mathematical model and used the simulated annealing algorithm to find the optimal legitimate area. Comparing the detection performance of the NER-SA model with current state-of-the-art models proposed in other studies, we found that the NER-SA model indeed has superior performance in detecting fake news. For in-domain analysis, the accuracy increased by an average of 8.94% on the LIAR dataset and 19.36% on the fake or real news dataset, while the F1-score increased by an average of 24.04% on the LIAR dataset and 19.36% on the fake or real news dataset. In cross-domain analysis, the accuracy and F1-score for the NER-SA model increased by an average of 28.51% and 24.54%, respectively, across six domains in the FakeNews AMT dataset. The findings and implications of this study are further discussed with regard to their significance for improving accuracy, understanding context, and addressing adversarial attacks. The development of stylometric detection based on NLP approaches using NER techniques can improve the effectiveness and applicability of fake news detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three types of three-line baluns are studied in this paper. The equivalent circuits of these baluns are derived using the model of coupled transmission lines. The balun designs with Chebyshev response can then be exactly synthesized. A complete design procedure of the baluns with second-, third-, and fourth-order insertion loss functions is presented. Balun designs with wide bandwidths of more than 2 to 1 are achievable by this method. Some guidelines for practical realization are also suggested. A third-order balun design with a fractional bandwidth of 80% is given to demonstrate the proposed procedure. Index Terms--Baluns, circuit synthesis, distributed parameter filters, impedance matching.

In this paper, improved dual-band filter design is studied. The dual-band resonators are composed of shunt open- and short-circuited stubs. In order to fulfill the requirements of dual-band inverters, a structure of stepped-impedance asymmetric coupled lines is proposed and its equivalent circuit is also derived. The dual-band filter is then designed based on this equivalent circuit. This type of filter can achieve relatively large practical passband center frequency ratios (in theory infinite), and it has more freedom of bandwidth ratio. The circuit size is also reduced. Detailed design procedure is presented and, finally, a filter example is given to validate the theoretical study. Index Terms--Coupled transmission lines, distributed parameter filters, immittance inverters, transmission line resonators.

New designs of the dual-band filter realized by distributed circuits are studied in this paper. Series and parallel open stubs are used as the resonators to fulfill the dual-band characteristics. Two dual-band inverters are proposed, which can be easily merged with adjacent resonators to reduce the circuit size. All the theoretical analysis and design procedures are discussed in detail and have been successfully verified by experiment results. Index Terms--Coupled transmission lines, distributed parameter filters, immittance inverters, transmission-line resonators.

The transmission zeros of two coupled-microstrip circuits are studied in this research. Estimates for the frequencies of transmission zeros are given. A new concept of effective even- and odd-mode characteristic impedances is introduced. Useful design equations are given for improving the passband responses that are inherently distorted by different mode velocities. Finally, two filters with different topologies are designed for their zeros to be at the frequencies of the spurious harmonics and, thus, yield wide out-of-band rejections. Index Terms--Coupled transmission lines, distributed parameter filters, microwave circuits.

Coupled lines with loads at one end, which can create tunable transmission zeros, are studied in this paper. The equation for the transmission zeros is derived from the analysis of even-and odd-mode excitations. Based on this equation, coupled lines with different loads are analyzed and the rules for controlling the transmission-zero frequency are given. The structures are used in the designs of several second-order filters and they are experimentally verified. The use of a skew-symmetric (0[degrees]) feed structure in these filters is also discussed and an example is given. Index Terms--Coupled transmission lines, distributed parameter filters, microwave circuits, transmission-line resonators.

The advantage of using a 0[degrees] feed structure in filter design is that two extra transmission zeros are created in the stopband while the passband response remains unchanged. This feed structure is analyzed by using transmission matrices. A new lumped-circuit model for a coupled resonator filter is then proposed to take into account the effects of this feed structure. Finally, the feed structure is applied to the design of a cross-coupled filter. All the theoretical analysis and design procedures have been successfully verified by experiment results. Index Terms--Coupled transmission lines, distributed parameter filters, microwave circuits, transmission-line resonators.

This article discusses the challenges in developing an effective vaccine for Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), a leading cause of infection and antibiotic resistance. Despite numerous vaccine trials, there has not been a successful S. aureus vaccine. The article focuses on a study that suggests immune imprinting, caused by prior exposure to S. aureus, may be the reason for vaccine failures. The study found that antibodies generated in mice previously infected with S. aureus were non-protective and interfered with the efficacy of the vaccine. The article suggests further investigation into the effect of immune imprinting on vaccine outcomes and the development of vaccines targeting different antigens. It also discusses potential strategies to overcome immune imprinting, such as targeting subdominant epitopes and modulating Fc glycosylation. The article concludes by highlighting the need to rethink traditional vaccine development strategies for pathogens like S. aureus. [Extracted from the article]

A generalized network model for asymmetrical and inhomogeneous coupled lines has been derived based on normal mode parameters. This model is useful for synthesis of single and multi-layer coupled-line circuits, such as planar baluns and directional couplers. The synthesis procedures are described and have been verified by comparing with analysis results.

A successful Staphylococcus aureus vaccine remains elusive, and one controversy in the field is whether humans generate a protective adaptive immune response to infection. We developed a bacterial challenge murine assay that directly assesses the protective capacity of adoptively transferred human serum samples. We first validated the model by showing that postpneumococcal vaccine serum samples from humans induced effective clearance of Streptococcus pneumoniae in mice. We then found that human serum samples adoptively transferred from children with invasive S. aureus infections exhibited protection from disease in a murine model, with some samples conferring near complete protection. These findings demonstrate that human serum samples are capable of conferring a protective adaptive response generated by humans during invasive staphylococcal disease, allowing for the study of protective factors in a murine model. Identification of the protective factors present in the most efficacious serum samples would be of high interest as potential staphylococcal vaccine candidates or passive therapeutics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is one of the most common bacterial infections worldwide, and antibiotic resistant strains such as Methicillin-Resistant S. aureus (MRSA) are a major threat and burden to public health. MRSA not only infects immunocompromised patients but also healthy individuals and has rapidly spread from the healthcare setting to the outside community. However, all vaccines tested in clinical trials to date have failed. Immunocompromised individuals such as patients with HIV or decreased levels of CD4+ T cells are highly susceptible to S. aureus infections, and they are also at increased risk of developing fungal infections. We therefore wondered whether stimulation of antifungal immunity might promote the type of immune responses needed for effective host defense against S. aureus. Here we show that vaccination of mice with a fungal β-glucan particle (GP) loaded with S. aureus antigens provides protective immunity to S. aureus. We generated glucan particles loaded with the four S. aureus proteins ClfA, IsdA, MntC, and SdrE, creating the 4X-SA-GP vaccine. Vaccination of mice with three doses of 4X-SA-GP promoted protection in a systemic model of S. aureus infection with a significant reduction in the bacterial burden in the spleen and kidneys. 4X-SA-GP vaccination induced antigen-specific Th1 and Th17 CD4+ T cell and antibody responses and provided long-term protection. This work suggests that the GP vaccine system has potential as a novel approach to developing vaccines for S. aureus. Author summary: Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is a serious burden to public health as it is a leading cause of antibiotic-resistant infections worldwide. Vaccines aimed at targeting S. aureus have failed in clinical trials, and the reason for this lack of success remains unclear. As this pathogen continues to rapidly spread on a global scale, it is vital that new approaches to S. aureus vaccination are developed. In this study, we show that activation of antifungal immunity with a β-glucan particle vaccine can be harnessed to direct protection against S. aureus systemic infections in mice. This work broadens the use of the β-glucan particle vaccine system for potential use as a much-needed vaccine targeting S. aureus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stepped-impedance resonators have been thoroughly studied in this paper. Two equations for odd- and even-mode resonance are derived from a new network model. The size and resonant frequencies of the resonator could then be designed based on these two equations. A new resonator-embedded cross-coupled filter, constructed by stepped-impedance hairpin resonators and miniaturized hairpin resonators, is presented. This new filter is very compact and has lower spurious response. A 0 [degrees] feed structure, which adds two transmission zeros to the filter response, is also studied. The two zeros are so close to the passband that the selectivity and out-of-band rejection of the filter are significantly increased. The design has been verified by experiment results. Index Terms--Coupled transmission lines, transmission-line resonators, elliptic filters, microwave circuits.

We present a low-cost online system for monitoring the axial thermal displacement of machine tools. The proposed monitoring system includes an embedded optical sensor derived from a laser mouse; an image acquisition microcontroller; speckle patterns; and an edge computer that hosts software, including an image display module, a displacement calculation module, an image enhancement module, and a data visualization module. The proposed sensing system can measure the displacement in two orthogonal directions simultaneously by employing digital image correlation; thus, the proposed system is a two-dimensional displacement sensor. The sensing system is benefited from image enhancement techniques and customized optimal speckle patterns printed using a standard low-cost monochrome laser printer. Experimental results indicate that the proposed displacement sensing system has an accuracy and a precision of <5 μm in both orthogonal directions. The two-dimensional displacement sensing system was used for the online monitoring of the thermal deformation of a feed drive system for machine tools, and the performance was assessed experimentally. The complete procedure for measuring the displacement due to thermal deformation was conducted automatically and can be completed in 2 min using a program coded in a computer numerical control controller. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have developed an expeditious procedure to yield large amounts of orthogonally protected Gal- β1,3/4-GlcNAc, which allowed for the systematic introduction of a sulfate group onto the C3/C6 positions of Gal and/or the C6 position of GlcNAc. In particular, the disaccharide precursors were prepared in five or six steps and high overall yield from para-tolyl-6- O- tert-butyldiphenylsilyl-1-thio- β- D-galactopyranoside. After and steps, the final products were characterized by using several NMR methods to unambiguously confirm the location of each introduced sulfate group and they were examined for their binding specificity of human galectin-1 and galectin-8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a performance evaluation of a portable parallel programming paradigm, the OpenMP, for thermohydrodynamic (THD) lubrication analysis. The THD model is described by two coupled partial differential equations, a simplified generalized Reynolds equation and a 3-D time-dependent energy equation. The numerical methods used for solving these equations are coded and compiled as a multithread application to minimize execution time in a dual-CPU workstation. It was found that the program coded in thread-level parallelism can effectively use the computing resources in the current setup. The attributes of conditional compilation and incremental parallelization of OpenMP make it a powerful tool for fine-grain applications in shared-memory platforms. A program coded in thread-level parallelism should understand the caching operation to fully exploit the capacity of coming dual- or multi-core desktop CPUs in either uniprocessor or multiprocessor systems. As illustrated in this study, some of the parallel programming techniques used in solving the Reynolds equation and the thermal energy equation can facilitate applications using similar lubrication models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of powerful, yet inexpensive PCs and readily available open sources for parallel computation marks a new era of easy access to massive computation for the tribology community. The study demonstrates the applicability of embarrassingly parallel computation in the optimization of air-lubricated porous bearings with four design variables. To achieve high speedup without increasing the coding complexity, the master computer implements the lattice method to allocate the near-the-same computational load in the master-slave cluster. The effect of master capability on the cluster performance is also presented. The results are compared with that of an unparallelized simplex method and indicate a significant reduction in execution time due to parallelism. in a simulated analysis, a high speedup can also be obtained in dealing with a problem with many design variables. This study provides the framework for optimization of applications with complex tribological models to be solved with minimum execution time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acanthamoeba castellanii is a protist that has a high predation efficiency for bacteria in a number of monoxenic culture experiments. However, the role of A. castellanii in the microbial community is still unknown because of the lack of studies on multiple-species interactions. The aim of this study was to investigate the change of bacterial composition after A. castellanii emerges in a water environment. We added A. castellanii to an environmental water sample and incubated it for two days. Then, we performed 16S ribosomal RNA sequencing techniques to analyze the changes in bacterial composition. In this study, A. castellanii slightly increased the relative abundance of a few opportunistic pathogens, such as Legionella , Roseomonas , and Haemophilus. This result may be related to the training ground hypothesis. On the other hand, the growth of some bacteria was inhibited, such as Cyanobacteria and Firmicutes. Although A. castellanii did not drastically change the whole bacterial community, we surprisingly found the dissolved oxygen concentration was increased after incubation with A. castellanii. We applied environmental water at the laboratory scale to investigate the interactions among A. castellanii, complex microbial communities and the environment. We identified the bacteria that are sensitive to A. castellanii and further found the novel relationship between dissolved oxygen and microbial interaction. Our results helped to clarify the role of A. castellanii in microbial communities. Image 1 • Acanthamoeba is a widespread predator which induce selection pressure on microbial community. • Some pathogenic bacteria increased in abundance after Acanthamoeba emerged in the experimental aquatic model. • Acanthamoeba inhibits oxygen-consuming bacteria growth, lead to the recovery of the dissolved oxygen concentration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exact synthesis of compact and wide-band filters with stub-loaded multiple-mode resonators is investigated in this letter. The multi-mode behavior and characteristics of the proposed filter structure are studied by conventional natural modes analysis. To develop the complete synthesis procedure, a bandpass prototype in the S-plane is used for good spurious suppression and size reduction. Approximation of the driving point impedance then proceeds, with the help of transformed variable. Network elements are then extracted by using Richards' theorem. The method is demonstrated by a design example of a third-order bandpass filter. Although six elements are used in this design, the total length is only one third of the wavelength at its center frequency. The experiment results justify the proposed procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) can regulate target gene expression by acting in cis (locally) or in trans (non‐locally). Here, we performed genome‐wide expression analysis of Toll‐like receptor (TLR)‐stimulated human macrophages to identify pairs of cis‐acting lncRNAs and protein‐coding genes involved in innate immunity. A total of 229 gene pairs were identified, many of which were commonly regulated by signaling through multiple TLRs and were involved in the cytokine responses to infection by group B Streptococcus. We focused on elucidating the function of one lncRNA, named lnc‐MARCKS or ROCKI (Regulator of Cytokines and Inflammation), which was induced by multiple TLR stimuli and acted as a master regulator of inflammatory responses. ROCKI interacted with APEX1 (apurinic/apyrimidinic endodeoxyribonuclease 1) to form a ribonucleoprotein complex at the MARCKS promoter. In turn, ROCKI–APEX1 recruited the histone deacetylase HDAC1, which removed the H3K27ac modification from the promoter, thus reducing MARCKS transcription and subsequent Ca2+ signaling and inflammatory gene expression. Finally, genetic variants affecting ROCKI expression were linked to a reduced risk of certain inflammatory and infectious disease in humans, including inflammatory bowel disease and tuberculosis. Collectively, these data highlight the importance of cis‐acting lncRNAs in TLR signaling, innate immunity, and pathophysiological inflammation. Synopsis: Activation of Toll‐like receptors (TLRs) induced expression changes in lncRNAs that regulate their neighboring genes involved in inflammation. A lncRNA named ROCKI forms a ribonucleoprotein complex and controls inflammatory responses via chromatin modification. More than 200 cis‐acting lncRNAs and protein‐coding gene pairs were identified in TLR‐stimulated macrophages.Lnc‐MARCKS, also designated ROCKI, is a master regulator of inflammatory responses to TLR ligands.ROCKI interacts with APEX1 and HDAC1 enzymes at the MARCKS promoter.ROCKI expression is significantly associated with inflammation‐ and infection‐related disease phenotypes in humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Being capable of directly utilizing solar thermal energy, the solar membrane distillation desalination system (SMDDS) has evolved as a promising green technology for alleviating the water resource problem. This paper reports the experimental and simulation study of a SMDDS which utilizes the air gap type membrane distillation. A laboratory system with automatic control function was established. A control scheme for fully automatic operation was designed using the PI (proportional–integral) control algorithm, which is robust and commonly employed by industries. The control structure adopted PI temperature control for the solar thermal and the membrane distillation subsystems. A dynamic mathematical model including the control algorithm for the overall system was developed, built on Aspen Custom Modeler® platform, and verified by the experimental results. The optimization analysis using the model reveals the operation strategy for maximum water production. Because of the unpredictable solar irradiation, the corresponding optimal dynamic operation cannot be pre-determined and implemented during system operation. However, the proposed PI control scheme could provide a fairly good level of performance, for example up to about 80% of the maximum water production for sunny day operation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]