Thinking Pink? Consumer Reactions to Pink Ribbons and Vague Messages in Advertising

Many brands partner with causes in their advertising campaigns. Consumers appreciate that the brands they purchase participate in activities that contribute to a society’s well-being. This study uses copy-testing techniques to evaluate the number and types of thoughts and brand attitudes in the presence and absence of cause-related messages. Individuals saw an ad for one of two products. None of the ads stated the brand’s financial support to the cause, which is representative of many messages today. People viewing the Dansko ads with the pink ribbon generated significantly fewer thoughts than those viewing the ad without the pink ribbon. For the Fitbit ads, more thoughts were generated for the ad with the pink ribbon than the ad without the pink ribbon. The Fitbit ad with the pink ribbon and support message generated fewer positive and negative thoughts but more neutral thoughts that questioned the brand/cause relationship. Attitudes toward the brand did not vary based on the presence or absence of the pink ribbon. People who saw ads with the pink ribbon displayed more positive attitudes toward the brands’ commitment to society and misestimated the brands’ contributions to the cause

miRGator v2.0 : an integrated system for functional investigation of microRNAs

miRGator is an integrated database of microRNA (miRNA)-associated gene expression, target prediction, disease association and genomic annotation, which aims to facilitate functional investigation of miRNAs. The recent version of miRGator v2.0 contains information about (i) human miRNA expression profiles under various experimental conditions, (ii) paired expression profiles of both mRNAs and miRNAs, (iii) gene expression profiles under miRNA-perturbation (e.g. miRNA knockout and overexpression), (iv) known/predicted miRNA targets and (v) miRNA-disease associations. In total, >8000 miRNA expression profiles, ∼300 miRNA-perturbed gene expression profiles and ∼2000 mRNA expression profiles are compiled with manually curated annotations on disease, tissue type and perturbation. By integrating these data sets, a series of novel associations (miRNA–miRNA, miRNA–disease and miRNA–target) is extracted via shared features. For example, differentially expressed genes (DEGs) after miRNA knockout were systematically compared against miRNA targets. Likewise, differentially expressed miRNAs (DEmiRs) were compared with disease-associated miRNAs. Additionally, miRNA expression and disease-phenotype profiles revealed miRNA pairs whose expression was regulated in parallel in various experimental and disease conditions. Complex associations are readily accessible using an interactive network visualization interface. The miRGator v2.0 serves as a reference database to investigate miRNA expression and function (http://miRGator.kobic.re.kr)

Women over 40, foreigners of color, and other missing persons in globalizing mediascapes: understanding marketing images as mirrors of intersectionality

Media diversity studies regularly invoke the notion of marketing images as mirrors of racism and sexism. This article develops a higher-order concept of marketing images as “mirrors of intersectionality.” Drawing on a seven-dimensional study of coverperson diversity in a globalizing mediascape, the emergent concept highlights that marketing images reflect not just racism and sexism, but all categorical forms of marginalization, including ableism, ageism, colorism, fatism, and heterosexism, as well as intersectional forms of marginalization, such as sexist ageism and racist multiculturalism. Fueled by the legacies of history, aspirational marketing logics, and an industry-wide distribution of discriminatory work, marketing images help to perpetuate multiple, cumulative, and enduring advantages for privileged groups and disadvantages for marginalized groups. In this sense, marketing images, as mirrors of intersectionality, are complicit agents in the structuration of inequitable societies

COSY catalyses trans-cis isomerization and lactonization in the biosynthesis of coumarins

Coumarins, also known as 1,2-benzopyrones, comprise a large class of secondary metabolites that are ubiquitously found throughout the plant kingdom. In many plant species, coumarins are particularly important for iron acquisition and plant defence. Here, we show that COUMARIN SYNTHASE (COSY) is a key enzyme in the biosynthesis of coumarins. Arabidopsis thaliana cosy mutants have strongly reduced levels of coumarin and accumulate o-hydroxyphenylpropanoids instead. Accordingly, cosymutants have reduced iron content and show growth defects when grown under conditions in which there is a limited availabil-ity of iron. Recombinant COSY is able to produce umbelliferone, esculetin and scopoletin from their respective o-hydroxycin-namoyl-CoA thioesters by two reaction steps—a trans–cis isomerization followed by a lactonization. This conversion happens partially spontaneously and is catalysed by light, which explains why the need for an enzyme for this conversion has been overlooked. The combined results show that COSY has an essential function in the biosynthesis of coumarins in organs that are shielded from light, such as roots. These findings provide routes to improving coumarin production in crops or by microbial fermentation

The role of the pion cloud in electroproduction of the Δ\Delta(1232)

We calculate the ratios $E2/M1$ and $C2/M1$ of the multipole amplitudes for electroproduction of the $\Delta$(1232) in the range of photon virtuality $0<-K^2<1$~GeV$^2$ in a chiral chromodielectric model and a linear $\sigma$-model. We find that relatively large experimental values can be explained in terms of the pion contribution alone; the contribution arising from d-state quark admixture remains below 10\%. We describe the pion cloud as a coherent state and use spin and isospin projection to obtain the physical nucleon and the $\Delta$. The $A_{1/2}$ and $A_{3/2}$ amplitudes are reasonably well reproduced in the $\sigma$-model; in the chromodielectric model, however, they are a factor of two too small.Comment: 10 pages LaTeX2e, 3 LaTeX figures within the text; Requires elsart.cls (included in the self-unpacking uuencoded gzipped file). (Accepted for publication in Phys. Lett. B

Clusters of microRNAs emerge by new hairpins in existing transcripts

Genetic linkage may result in the expression of multiple products from a polycistronic transcript, under the control of a single promoter. In animals, protein-coding polycistronic transcripts are rare. However, microRNAs are frequently clustered in the genomes of animals, and these clusters are often transcribed as a single unit. The evolution of microRNA clusters has been the subject of much speculation, and a selective advantage of clusters of functionally related microRNAs is often proposed. However, the origin of microRNA clusters has not been so far explored. Here, we study the evolution of microRNA clusters in Drosophila melanogaster. We observed that the majority of microRNA clusters arose by the de novo formation of new microRNA-like hairpins in existing microRNA transcripts. Some clusters also emerged by tandem duplication of a single microRNA. Comparative genomics show that these clusters are unlikely to split or undergo rearrangements. We did not find any instances of clusters appearing by rearrangement of pre-existing microRNA genes. We propose a model for microRNA cluster evolution in which selection over one of the microRNAs in the cluster interferes with the evolution of the other linked microRNAs. Our analysis suggests that the study of microRNAs and small RNAs must consider linkage associations

One Decade of Development and Evolution of MicroRNA Target Prediction Algorithms

Nearly two decades have passed since the publication of the first study reporting the discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs). The key role of miRNAs in post-transcriptional gene regulation led to the performance of an increasing number of studies focusing on origins, mechanisms of action and functionality of miRNAs. In order to associate each miRNA to a specific functionality it is essential to unveil the rules that govern miRNA action. Despite the fact that there has been significant improvement exposing structural characteristics of the miRNA-mRNA interaction, the entire physical mechanism is not yet fully understood. In this respect, the development of computational algorithms for miRNA target prediction becomes increasingly important. This manuscript summarizes the research done on miRNA target prediction. It describes the experimental data currently available and used in the field and presents three lines of computational approaches for target prediction. Finally, the authors put forward a number of considerations regarding current challenges and future direction