Simple guide to starting a research group

Conducting cutting-edge research and scholarship becomes more complicated with each passing year; forming a collaborative research group offers a way to navigate this increasing complexity. Yet many individuals whose work might benefit from the formation of a collaborative team may feel overwhelmed by the prospect of attempting to build and maintain a research group. We propose this simple guide for starting and maintaining such an enterprise

Consumer credit information systems: A critical review of the literature. Too little attention paid by lawyers?

This paper reviews the existing literature on consumer credit reporting, the most extensively used instrument to overcome information asymmetry and adverse selection problems in credit markets. Despite the copious literature in economics and some research in regulatory policy, the legal community has paid almost no attention to the legal framework of consumer credit information systems, especially within the context of the European Union. Studies on the topic, however, seem particularly relevant in view of the establishment of a single market for consumer credit. This article ultimately calls for further legal research to address consumer protection concerns and inform future legislation

Parental predictors of children's executive functioning from ages 6 to 10.

According to prominent models of child development, parental factors may contribute to individual differences in children's executive functioning (EF). Here, we examine the relative importance of parents' socio-economic status, mental health, and parenting as predictors of EF development, drawing on a large (n = 1,070) community sample of Norwegian children who received biennial EF assessments from 6 to 10 years of age. We measure EF by means of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function. We assess parenting through observer ratings of parent-child interactions and parental mental health via the Beck Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory, and Hopkins Symptom Checklist. When we adjust for all time-invariant unmeasured confounders, higher parental education predicts superior EF development, whereas harsh parenting forecasts poorer EF development. However, parenting does not mediate the effect of parental education. These results indicate that harsh parenting should be targeted in interventions aimed at improving EF. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Parental factors seem to affect child development of executive functions (EF). Specifically, parental socio-economic status, mental health, and their parenting seem to influence the developmental course of child EF. What does this study add? To what degree the parental influence on EF development is likely to be driven by time-invariant factors, for example, genetics. The relative influence of positive and negative parenting on EF development

March 1964

Turf and Lawn Grass Association Better turf through research and Educatio

The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world

Tyrosine 23 Phosphorylation-Dependent Cell-Surface Localization of Annexin A2 Is Required for Invasion and Metastases of Pancreatic Cancer

The aggressiveness of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is characterized by its high metastatic potential and lack of effective therapies, which is the result of a lack of understanding of the mechanisms involved in promoting PDA metastases. We identified Annexin A2 (ANXA2), a member of the Annexin family of calcium-dependent phospholipid binding proteins, as a new molecule that promotes PDA invasion and metastases. We found ANXA2 to be a PDA-associated antigen recognized by post-treatment sera of patients who demonstrated prolonged survival following treatment with a PDA-specific vaccine. Cell surface ANXA2 increases with PDA development and progression. Knockdown of ANXA2 expression by RNA interference or blocking with anti-ANXA2 antibodies inhibits in vitro invasion of PDA cells. In addition, post-vaccination patient sera inhibits in vitro invasion of PDA cells, suggesting that therapeutic anti-ANXA2 antibodies are induced by the vaccine. Furthermore, cell-surface localization of ANXA2 is tyrosine 23 phosphorylation-dependent; and tyrosine 23 phosphorylation is required for PDA invasion. We demonstrated that tyrosine 23 phosphorylation resulting in surface expression of ANXA2 is required for TGFβ-induced, Rho-mediated epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), linking the cellular function of ANXA2 which was previously shown to be associated with small GTPase-regulated cytoskeletal rearrangements, to the EMT process in PDA. Finally, using mouse PDA models, we showed that shRNA knock-down of ANXA2, a mutation at tyrosine 23, or anti-ANXA2 antibodies, inhibit PDA metastases and prolong mouse survival. Thus, ANXA2 is part of a novel molecular pathway underlying PDA metastases and a new target for development of PDA therapeutics

Genetics of callous-unemotional behavior in children

Callous-unemotional behavior (CU) is currently under consideration as a subtyping index for conduct disorder diagnosis. Twin studies routinely estimate the heritability of CU as greater than 50%. It is now possible to estimate genetic influence using DNA alone from samples of unrelated individuals, not relying on the assumptions of the twin method. Here we use this new DNA method (implemented in a software package called Genome-wide Complex Trait Analysis, GCTA) for the first time to estimate genetic influence on CU. We also report the first genome-wide association (GWA) study of CU as a quantitative trait. We compare these DNA results to those from twin analyses using the same measure and the same community sample of 2,930 children rated by their teachers at ages 7, 9 and 12. GCTA estimates of heritability were near zero, even though twin analysis of CU in this sample confirmed the high heritability of CU reported in the literature, and even though GCTA estimates of heritability were substantial for cognitive and anthropological traits in this sample. No significant associations were found in GWA analysis, which, like GCTA, only detects additive effects of common DNA variants. The phrase ‘missing heritability’ was coined to refer to the gap between variance associated with DNA variants identified in GWA studies versus twin study heritability. However, GCTA heritability, not twin study heritability, is the ceiling for GWA studies because both GCTA and GWA are limited to the overall additive effects of common DNA variants, whereas twin studies are not. This GCTA ceiling is very low for CU in our study, despite its high twin study heritability estimate. The gap between GCTA and twin study heritabilities will make it challenging to identify genes responsible for the heritability of CU

Ex vivo Inhibition of NF-κB Signaling in Alloreactive T-cells Prevents Graft-Versus-Host Disease

The ex vivo induction of alloantigen-specific hyporesponsiveness by costimulatory pathway blockade or exposure to immunoregulatory cytokines has been shown to inhibit proliferation, IL-2 production, and the GVHD capacity of adoptively transferred T-cells. We hypothesized that inhibition of the intracellular NF-κB pathway in alloreactive T-cells, which is critical for T cell activation events including IL-2 transcription, could lead to alloantigen hyporesponsiveness and loss of GVHD capacity. We demonstrate that treatment of mixed lymphocyte reaction (MLR) cultures with PS1145, a potent inhibitor of NF-κB activation, can induce T cell hyporesponsiveness to alloantigen in primary and secondary responses while preserving in vitro responses to potent mitogenic stimulation. GVHD lethality in recipients of ex vivo PS1145-treated cells was profoundly inhibited. Parking of control- or PS1145- treated MLR cells in syngeneic Rag−/− recipients resulted in intact contact hypersensitivity responses. However, GVHD lethality capacity also was restored, suggesting that lymphopenic expansion uncoupled alloantigen hyporesponsiveness. These results indicate that the NF-κB pathway is a critical regulator of alloresponses and provide a novel small molecule inhibitor based approach that is effective in preventing early post-transplant GVHD lethality but that also permits donor T cell responses to recover after a period of lymphopenic expansion

‘Change Today, Choose Fairtrade’ Fairtrade Fortnight and the citizen-consumer

The Fairtrade consumer is widely represented as an individual who intentionally and reflexively consumes Fairtrade goods in order to register their support for the plight of producers in the developing world. This figure is imagined to ‘vote’ with her/his pocket every time they visit the supermarket thus demonstrating their commitment to the Fairtrade trading model. However, this image of the Fairtrade citizen-consumer does not emerge automatically as a response to the increasing availability of Fairtrade goods in the market-place but has to be made by various intermediary actors and organizations. This paper examines how the Fairtrade consumer was constructed and called to action by the Fairtrade Fortnight promotional campaign that occurred within the UK in 2008 and was co-ordinated by the Fairtrade Foundation. This annual event offers a unique window into the processes and actors involved in the mobilization of the Fairtrade citizen-consumer. Through a close focus on the promotional material distributed to different audiences and the events that occurred during this Fortnight, this paper reveals the contingent and shifting nature of the citizen-consumer identity. In so doing, it highlights how varying degrees of reflexivity and action are demanded of different audiences and how this shapes the way that Fairtrade goods are qualified and distributed in the market