Multilingualism Alive

This study focuses on the implications of the ideologies behind monolingualism and multilingualism, drawing from past social issues and research analysis. The exploration of the issue endorses the English Plus proposal, supporting the continuation and cultivation of one’s heritage language(s). The study further investigates the social and cultural influences of monolingualism and multilingualism, highlighting the finding that multilingualism contributes to higher education and social expression while monolingualism depresses cultural identification. In evaluating multilingualism, the research focused on the predominant tutoring strategy employed by immigrant parents to bridge the language and cultural gap with their America-born children. The findings of this study confirm the advantages of a multilingualism society, leading to future investigations on identifying and evaluating the means to establishing multilingual environments

Macroeconomic Announcements: How Announcements Shape Trading Strategies

The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is a widely used and tractable model relating financial risk and return. However, it has been less successful when taken to the data. In their seminal paper, Frazzini and Pedersen propose a Betting Against Beta (BAB) factor to take advantage of this fact. In their construction, the BAB factor is a portfolio which longs low-beta stocks and shorts high-beta stocks. Since its construction, the BAB factor has been widely cited and used both in financial academics and in industry. This paper proposes a novel betting on and against beta (BOAB) strategy, which bets on beta on days with macroeconomic announcements and bets against beta on days without. Here, macroeconomic announcement days are defined as days when inflation, unemployment, or interest rate decisions are released. Our findings confirm the persistent positive beta-return relationship observed on macroeconomic announcement days. We show that compared to the BAB strategy, BOAB delivers higher average daily excess returns over the time period 1964 to 2021 when applied to the U.S. stock market. This outperformance of the BOAB strategy is robust to different constructions of the BAB factor and is economically and statistically significant when compared with the usual asset pricing factors such as value, size, and momentum. The outperformance of the BOAB strategy could be used to inform agents’ portfolio allocation choices. Limitations are also discussed

Adaptive bidirectional extracellular electron transfer during accelerated microbiologically influenced corrosion of stainless steel

Microbiologically influenced corrosion is a major source of degradation of metals. Here, extracellular electron transfer is studied during pitting corrosion of stainless steel in the presence of an electroactive bacterium and a riboflavin electron shuttle, revealing bidirectional electron transfer

Variations in pleural microbiota and metabolic phenotype associated with malignant pleural effusion in human lung adenocarcinoma

Abstract Background Lung cancer is the most common cancer‐related death worldwide. In 2022, the number of daily deaths of lung cancer was estimated to reach around 350 in the United States. Lung adenocarcinoma is the main subtype of lung cancer and patients with malignant pleural effusion (MPE) suffer from poor prognosis. Microbiota and its metabolites are associated with cancer progression. However, the effect of pleural microbiota on pleural metabolic profile of MPE in lung adenocarcinoma patients remains largely unknown. Methods Pleural effusion samples collected from lung adenocarcinoma patients with MPE (n = 14) and tuberculosis pleurisy patients with benign pleural effusion (BPE group, n = 10) were subjected to microbiome (16S rRNA gene sequencing) and metabolome (liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry [LC‐MS/MS]) analyses. The datasets were analyzed individually and integrated for combined analysis using various bioinformatic approaches. Results The metabolic profile of MPE in lung adenocarcinoma patients were clearly distinguished from BPE with 121 differential metabolites across six significantly enriched pathways identified. Glycerophospholipids, fatty and carboxylic acids, and derivatives were the most common differential metabolites. Sequencing of microbial data revealed nine significantly enriched genera (i.e., Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Lactobacillus) and 26 enriched ASVs (i.e., species Lactobacillus_delbrueckii) in MPE. Integrated analysis correlated MPE‐associated microbes with metabolites, such as phosphatidylcholine and metabolites involved in the citrate cycle pathway. Conclusion Our results provide substantial evidence of a novel interplay between the pleural microbiota and metabolome, which was drastically perturbed in MPE in lung adenocarcinoma patients. Microbe‐associated metabolites can be used for further therapeutic explorations

Adaptive bidirectional extracellular electron transfer during accelerated microbiologically influenced corrosion of stainless steel

Microbiologically influenced corrosion of metals is prevalent in both natural and industrial environments, causing enormous structural damage and economic loss. Exactly how microbes influence corrosion remains controversial. Here, we show that the pitting corrosion of stainless steel is accelerated in the presence of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 biofilm by extracellular electron transfer between the bacterial cells and the steel electrode, mediated by a riboflavin electron shuttle. From pitting measurements, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Mott-Schottky analyses, the addition of an increased amount of riboflavin is found to induce a more defective passive film on the stainless steel. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy reveals that enhanced bioanodic and biocathodic process can both promote the corrosion of the stainless steel. Using in situ scanning electrochemical microscopy, we observe that extracellular electron transfer between the bacterium and the stainless steel is bidirectional in nature and switchable depending on the passive or active state of the steel surface.Team Arjan Mo