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A change in the driver's vision quality might result in deterioration of their perception and effectiveness. The lack of an integrated algorithm to distinguish the location of driver vision impairment motivated this study. The proposed model benefits from a combination of several sub-algorithms such as sun positioning, glare detection, and contrasting shadow illustrator derived from raw geospatial data. The methodology is implemented through a case study involving a road network in a large metropolitan area, a digital elevation model, the associated hillshade geographic data, and weather data from Montreal, Canada. The methodology and corresponding data analysis were implemented in Python. The results revealed a geospatial model to estimate the boundaries of transition points between the glare and contrasting shadows created by changes in the roadway surroundings. The results provided by the model can be used as a tool to aid decisionmakers in new road construction and urban planning by creating safety countermeasure strategies and design review of road geometry. Key words: sun glare, contrasting shadow, geospatial data processing, road environment mapping. Un changement au niveau de la qualite de vision des conducteurs pourrait entrainer une deterioration de leur perception et de leur efficacite. L'absence d'un algorithme integre pour discerner l'emplacement ou se produit la deficience visuelle des conducteurs motive cette etude. Le modele propose beneficie d'une combinaison de plusieurs sous-algorithmes, tels que le positionnement du soleil, la detection de la reflexion du soleil et l'illustrateur d'ombres contrastantes derive de donnees geospatiales brutes. La methodologie est mise en reuvre au moyen d'une etude de cas portant sur un reseau routier metropolitain de grande taille, un modele altimetrique numerique, les donnees geographiques connexes sur l'ombrage des collines et les donnees meteorologiques de Montreal, au Canada. La methodologie et l'analyse des donnees correspondantes sont effectuees en Python. Le resultat a revele un modele geospatial pour estimer les limites des points de transition entre la reflexion et les ombres contrastantes creees par les changements dans l'environnement routier. Les resultats fournis par le modele peuvent etre utilises comme un outil pour aider les decideurs dans la construction de nouvelles routes et la planification urbaine en creant des strategies de contre-mesures de securite et la revision de la conception de la geometrie routiere. [Traduit par la Redaction] Mots-cles : reflexion du soleil, ombre contrastante, traitement des donnees geospatiales, modelisation de l'environnement routier., Introduction Road environment and driving perception are hidden tips for queue forming and safety degradation. The shining of direct sunlight in the driver's eye affects the driving perception. This has [...]

Despite the recognition of the importance of teachers' professional development, the exploration of teachers' Critical Incidents (CIs) as a type of professional development initiative has received insufficient attention in L2 teaching contexts. Motivated by the dearth of research in this area and building on complexity theory as its conceptual framework, this study aimed to unearth Iranian L2 teachers' CIs over a three-month course. The initiative was framed around dialogic interaction among the participants who shared their written CIs, followed by online group reflection over the CIs. Post-course interviews were also conducted with the teachers to explore their reflections on the course. The analysis of the data through grounded theory indicated the interconnection among various factors and their contributions to the varied nature of the CIs experienced by the teachers, particularly the nonlinear nature of the CIs and their interpretations in the cognitive structure of the teachers. Additionally, the teachers regarded the initiative as a positive experience, enhancing their awareness of classroom occurrences and boosting their ability to manage their pedagogical decisions. The study concludes with a number of implications for teacher education.

In all educational settings, teachers are likely to encounter learners with different emotional and cognitive characteristics, particularly learners who are demotivated or disengaged and as a result misbehave in the classroom. Learned helplessness (LH) is associated with such emotional and motivational deficits in academic performance. This study investigated the feelings of LH experienced by secondary students in the public middle schools of Iran. To this end, we administered the Learned Helplessness Scale (LHS) and the Student Behavior Checklist (SBC) to 154 students in a public middle school in Tehran. We identified 58 students (aged 13-15 years) with school-related LH and randomly assigned them to the control and experimental groups. These students participated in a motivational intervention program based on Dörnyei's motivational strategies (MSs) with social reinforcement integrated into the English language classroom to improve their academic performance and alleviate feelings of helplessness. The results revealed positive effects of the program on the participants' academic achievement and experienced LH. The delayed posttests also showed acceptable durability effects of the program six months after the intervention. It was found that the teacher and his practices in the classroom could be an effective means of alleviating LH in public schools. Further implications are discussed.

Differentiated instruction (DI) has received extensive attention in general teacher education. Little research, however, has specifically focused on language teachers' understanding of DI, particularly the developmental trajectory of their understanding. The present study, framed within and informed by sociocultural theory, investigated EFL teachers' understanding of DI through exposure to and investigation of their own video-recorded classroom performance. The teachers also received three scaffolding sessions in which a number of DI-related notions were introduced to them to mediate the development of their understanding microgenetically. Analyses of the data revealed changes in the language with which teachers' understanding of the concepts was articulated and the scope of the understanding. Furthermore, the results of post-scaffolding interviews showed that the initiative had been productive in assisting the teachers with developing awareness of individual differences, particularly its contribution to enhancing their management skills.

Readers are expected to construct balanced mental representations of socioscientific issues discussed across controversial documents. However, readers tend to be biased toward documents that present belief-consistent perspectives and tend to refute documents that argue against their stance (text-belief consistency effect). Published studies on text-belief consistency effects have used imbalanced designs with all participants typically endorsing one standpoint in the controversy. The present experiment used a balanced design to examine the text-belief consistency in Iranian students of English as a foreign language and to investigate the extent that prior knowledge moderates the effect. Eighty-two students read two texts on an applied linguistics issue (native vs. non-native speakers as English as a foreign language teachers). Based on their performance on a prior beliefs measure, participants were assigned to three groups that varied in agreement to the stance of the texts. A recognition task was used to measure their situation-model strength and text-base strength. The results revealed a large text-belief consistency effect. Participants constructed stronger situation models for the text that communicated belief-consistent information compared with those who read the text that communicated belief-inconsistent information. No difference was found for text-base representation. Although prior knowledge was found to exert a significant positive effect on the strength of participants' situation-model representations, it did not moderate the text-belief consistency effect.

The article discusses the impact of L2 reader-writers' prior beliefs on their integrated written representations of controversial information sources. It also examines how strategic source processing affects the content of these representations. The findings show that pre-existing beliefs have a biasing effect on the content, and cross-text elaboration moderates the inclusion of pro-belief and contra-belief content. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to integrated writing instruction. The study examines how prior beliefs and strategic source processing influence the integrated representations of reader-writers when synthesizing information from diverse and contradictory sources. The researchers hypothesize that the written representations will exhibit a bias towards the reader-writers' prior beliefs. They also predict that strategic source processing, specifically accumulation and cross-text elaboration, will impact the overall content. The study involves undergraduate students majoring in English as a Foreign Language in Iran, with participants classified as holding a pro-stance or contra-stance towards the global expansion of the English language. The study examined how readers' pre-existing beliefs and strategic processing of conflicting sources influenced their written representations. The results showed that readers' prior beliefs significantly influenced the inclusion of content, with a higher proportion of belief-compatible ideas included. Strategic processing strategies, specifically accumulation and cross-text elaboration, also had an impact on the inclusion of content. The study suggests that readers' beliefs and processing strategies play a role in shaping their understanding and representation of conflicting information. The text discusses the impact of prior beliefs on the construction of cognitive models [Extracted from the article]

Background: Hereditary transthyretin (ATTRv) amyloidosis, a multifaceted disorder affecting multiple systems, substantially diminishes patients' physical capabilities and overall quality of life. Patisiran and Vutrisiran, two Ribonucleic acid (RNA) interference therapies, target reducing both pathogenic and wildtype transthyretin (TTR) protein levels. This systematic review assesses the effectiveness and safety of these treatments in managing ATTRv. Methods: A comprehensive, thorough literature search across databases including Embase, PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Central, and Google Scholar yielded 858 studies. Following removing duplicate and irrelevant articles, 676 distinct studies underwent review. These studies, conducted on a global scale, encompassed a range of methodologies, including clinical trials and indirect treatment comparisons. Results: Ten studies, spanning a total population of 756 patients, were selected for in-depth analysis. Patisiran and Vutrisiran consistently demonstrated significant improvements in primary and secondary endpoints related to neuropathy, quality of life, and cardiac function. Both medications were welltolerated, with primarily mild to moderate adverse events. Indirect treatment comparison studies indicated Vutrisiran's superiority over Tafamidis in treating ATTRv amyloidosis. Conclusion: This systematic review recommends using Patisiran and Vutrisiran to treat ATTRv amyloidosis. The findings suggest that these RNA interference therapies improve neuropathy, quality of life, and cardiac symptoms. The results indicate sustained benefits over prolonged treatment, with satisfactory safety profiles. However, potential biases, conflicts of interest in the studies, and limited follow-up periods in some trials necessitate cautious interpretation. Future research should address these limitations and provide more robust evidence for the long-term efficacy and safety of Patisiran and Vutrisiran in ATTRv treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, research on the emotional side of language teachers' work has grown exponentially. One progressively-developing subset of this line of inquiry concerns how institutional discourses/expectations interact with teachers' internal feelings, which bears on how they manage their emotions in response to such an interaction and is known as emotion labor. One type of institutional expectation of concern to the present study is the feedback that institutional supervisors provided for the teachers and could be a source of emotion labor. Motivated by this consideration, this study explored 12 Iranian EFL teachers' emotion labor in relation to supervisor feedback on their classroom instruction. The context of the study was a language school governed by mostly top-down policies, especially those of classroom observation, realized mainly through providing post-class feedback by school supervisors, with little interaction between them and the teachers. Drawing on data from interviews and narrative frames, we report on how supervisor feedback on the teachers' classroom instruction functioned as a source of emotional tension for the teachers and how they engaged in surface- and deep-acting management of their emotions to navigate the supervisory feedback. Based on the findings, we provide implications for teacher educators and school supervisors to reconsider their post-class supervisory feedback so that teachers experience less emotional tension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this review was to evaluate the efficiency of using ankle foot orthosis (AFO) on the loads applied on the knee joint in the subjects with knee osteoarthritis (OA) based on available literature. A search was done in some data bases including Medline, PubMed, Cochrane central register of controlled trial (CCTR), Embase, and ISI web of knowledge. The key words selected by national library of medicine were selected in this study. Those included Ankle foot orthosis (AFO) in combination with knee osteoarthritis (OA). Based on the aforementioned key words, 25 papers were selected. Based on abstracts and titles, 9 papers were finalized. AFO reduces knee adduction moment, which is more than lateral wedge. Moreover, AFO is more comfortable than other interventions. Although use of AFO reduces knee adduction moment, its effect on pain and functional performance is still controversial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate a new class of Atangana-Baleanu fractional stochastic differential systems under the influence of the Rosenblatt process and non-instantaneous impulses. We analyze the existence and uniqueness of piecewise continuous mild solutions by using the fixed point method, fractional calculus, and resolvent family. Further, we define a new piecewise control function and investigate the approximate controllability results for the proposed problem. Finally, the main results are validated with the aid of an example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship serves as a driving force for the advancement of renewable energy. Entrepreneurs are often at the forefront of innovation, bringing new technologies and business models to the clean energy sector. This study conducts a comprehensive examination of the intricate relationship between entrepreneurship and renewable energy production in 23 developed countries throughout the period from 2000 to 2020. For this purpose, the impact of 11 sub‐index of entrepreneurship on renewable energy production has been estimated. The method is dynamic panel data with the system GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) technique. After estimating 11 entrepreneurship sub‐indices effects separately on renewable energy production, the impact of each is ranked. The findings showed that the impact rank of 11 sub‐indexes of entrepreneurship on renewable energy production is as follows: Commercial and professional infrastructure (CP), R&D transfer (RD), Physical and services infrastructure (PS), Governmental support and policies (GS), Taxes and bureaucracy (TB), Governmental programs (GP), Internal market openness (MO), Internal market dynamics (MD), Post‐school entrepreneurial education and training (PE), Basic school entrepreneurial education and training (BE), and Cultural and social norms (CS). The importance of Commercial and professional infrastructure (CP) as an entrepreneurship sub‐indices is 2 times more than R&D transfer (RD), so Commercial and professional infrastructure is vital for the development of entrepreneurship that affects the production of renewable energies. This study not only underscores the central role of entrepreneurship in driving the adoption of renewable energy but also provides essential insights into key policy measures to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy sources. It highlights the urgency of addressing environmental challenges and emphasizes the imperative for collaboration among governments, NGOs, and educational institutions to achieve these critical goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research publication has increasingly turned into academics' top priority around the world. Since researchers' professional survival/growth in the current competitive academic atmosphere hinges upon their research profile, there is a need for investigating how researchers' possible selves may guide their research productivity. Therefore, in this study, we explored, through interviews and narratives, how ideal, ought-to, and feared selves of Applied Linguistics researchers at various academic career stages -- doctoral students, assistant professors and associate professors -- interact with their research productivity. The findings demonstrated that the ideal selves motivating the researchers to publish are oriented towards images of problem-solving or insight-providing, highly-focused, world-recognised, and influential life-long learner-researchers. Additionally, fears of ending up as publishing-or-perishing, unknowledgeable non-publishing, academically marginalised, and unfocused researchers are among the dimensions of researchers' feared selves which guide their research productivity. Furthermore, researchers' desires to gain visibility in the research community, fulfill the university requirements, preserve their international researcher positions, and turn into prolific publishing-practicing researchers trigger them to publish in top-tier publication outlets. The study provides practical implications for researchers, professors, and researcher educators.

PURPOSE:To assess the effect of "N-Acetylation and C-Amidation" on the cellular uptake, cytotoxicity and performance of amphiphilic cell penetrating peptides (CPP) loaded with methotrexate (MTX). METHODS:Several CPPs were synthesized by solid phase peptide synthesis method. Some of these sequences were modified with pyroglutamic acid at N-terminus and benzylamine or memantine at C-terminus. The resultant nanomaterials were prepared due to the physical linkage between CPPs and MTX. The internalization and cytotoxicity of both CPP-MTX bioconjugates and unmodified CPPs against MCF-7 human breast adenocarcinoma cells was evaluated. RESULTS:N-l and C-terminal modification did not alter the toxicity of CPPs. Physical linkage of CPPs with MTX resulted in a lower drug loading efficiency in comparison with chemically conjugated CPP-MTX bio-conjugates. Both nano-complexes increase the toxic effect of MTX on MCF-7 cells. Furthermore, N- and C-terminal modification may cause a tangible reduction in cellular uptake of CPPs. CONCLUSION:In conclusion, it was shown that cytotoxicity of modified peptides which were physically linked with MTX, considerably higher than both physically loaded unmodified peptides and chemically conjugated peptides with MTX. Also, cell internalization was reduced after peptide end-protection. These findings confirmed the effectiveness of N- and C-terminal modifications on cell viability and CPPs internalization.

The development of cell therapy for repairing damaged or diseased skeletal muscle has been hindered by the inability to significantly expand immature, transplantable myogenic stem cells (MuSCs) in culture. To overcome this limitation, a deeper understanding of the mechanisms regulating the transition between activated, proliferating MuSCs and differentiation-primed, poorly engrafting progenitors is needed. Here, we show that methyltransferase Setd7 facilitates such transition by regulating the nuclear accumulation of β-catenin in proliferating MuSCs. Genetic or pharmacological inhibition of Setd7 promotes in vitro expansion of MuSCs and increases the yield of primary myogenic cell cultures. Upon transplantation, both mouse and human MuSCs expanded with a Setd7 small-molecule inhibitor are better able to repopulate the satellite cell niche, and treated mouse MuSCs show enhanced therapeutic potential in preclinical models of muscular dystrophy. Thus, Setd7 inhibition may help bypass a key obstacle in the translation of cell therapy for muscle disease.