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

A Digital Repository and Execution Platform for Interactive Scholarly Publications in Neuroscience

The CARMEN Virtual Laboratory (VL) is a cloud-based platform which allows neuroscientists to store, share, develop, execute, reproduce and publicise their work. This paper describes new functionality in the CARMEN VL: an interactive publications repository. This new facility allows users to link data and software to publications. This enables other users to examine data and software associated with the publication and execute the associated software within the VL using the same data as the authors used in the publication. The cloud-based architecture and SaaS (Software as a Service) framework allows vast data sets to be uploaded and analysed using software services. Thus, this new interactive publications facility allows others to build on research results through reuse. This aligns with recent developments by funding agencies, institutions, and publishers with a move to open access research. Open access provides reproducibility and verification of research resources and results. Publications and their associated data and software will be assured of long-term preservation and curation in the repository. Further, analysing research data and the evaluations described in publications frequently requires a number of execution stages many of which are iterative. The VL provides a scientific workflow environment to combine software services into a processing tree. These workflows can also be associated with publications and executed by users. The VL also provides a secure environment where users can decide the access rights for each resource to ensure copyright and privacy restrictions are met

Quantitative imaging of concentrated suspensions under flow

We review recent advances in imaging the flow of concentrated suspensions, focussing on the use of confocal microscopy to obtain time-resolved information on the single-particle level in these systems. After motivating the need for quantitative (confocal) imaging in suspension rheology, we briefly describe the particles, sample environments, microscopy tools and analysis algorithms needed to perform this kind of experiments. The second part of the review focusses on microscopic aspects of the flow of concentrated model hard-sphere-like suspensions, and the relation to non-linear rheological phenomena such as yielding, shear localization, wall slip and shear-induced ordering. Both Brownian and non-Brownian systems will be described. We show how quantitative imaging can improve our understanding of the connection between microscopic dynamics and bulk flow.Comment: Review on imaging hard-sphere suspensions, incl summary of methodology. Submitted for special volume 'High Solid Dispersions' ed. M. Cloitre, Vol. xx of 'Advances and Polymer Science' (Springer, Berlin, 2009); 22 pages, 16 fig

Cell-Cycle Dependence of Transcription Dominates Noise in Gene Expression

The large variability in mRNA and protein levels found from both static and dynamic measurements in single cells has been largely attributed to random periods of transcription, often occurring in bursts. The cell cycle has a pronounced global role in affecting transcriptional and translational output, but how this influences transcriptional statistics from noisy promoters is unknown and generally ignored by current stochastic models. Here we show that variable transcription from the synthetic tetO promoter in S. cerevisiae is dominated by its dependence on the cell cycle. Real-time measurements of fluorescent protein at high expression levels indicate tetO promoters increase transcription rate ~2-fold in S/G2/M similar to constitutive genes. At low expression levels, where tetO promoters are thought to generate infrequent bursts of transcription, we observe random pulses of expression restricted to S/G2/M, which are correlated between homologous promoters present in the same cell. The analysis of static, single-cell mRNA measurements at different points along the cell cycle corroborates these findings. Our results demonstrate that highly variable mRNA distributions in yeast are not solely the result of randomly switching between periods of active and inactive gene expression, but instead largely driven by differences in transcriptional activity between G1 and S/G2/M.GM095733BBBE 103316MIT Startup Fun

Germline mutations and somatic inactivation of TRIM28 in Wilms tumour

© 2018 Halliday et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Wilms tumour is a childhood tumour that arises as a consequence of somatic and rare germline mutations, the characterisation of which has refined our understanding of nephrogenesis and carcinogenesis. Here we report that germline loss of function mutations in TRIM28 predispose children to Wilms tumour. Loss of function of this transcriptional co-repressor, which has a role in nephrogenesis, has not previously been associated with cancer. Inactivation of TRIM28, either germline or somatic, occurred through inactivating mutations, loss of heterozygosity or epigenetic silencing. TRIM28-mutated tumours had a monomorphic epithelial histology that is uncommon for Wilms tumour. Critically, these tumours were negative for TRIM28 immunohistochemical staining whereas the epithelial component in normal tissue and other Wilms tumours stained positively. These data, together with a characteristic gene expression profile, suggest that inactivation of TRIM28 provides the molecular basis for defining a previously described subtype of Wilms tumour, that has early age of onset and excellent prognosis

Conservation genetics of the annual hemiparasitic plant Melampyrum sylvaticum (Orobanchaceae) in the UK and Scandinavia

Melampyrum sylvaticum is an endangered annual hemiparasitic plant that is found in only 19 small and isolated populations in the United Kingdom (UK). To evaluate the genetic consequences of this patchy distribution we compared levels of diversity, inbreeding and differentiation from ten populations from the UK with eight relatively large populations from Sweden and Norway where the species is more continuously distributed. We demonstrate that in both the UK and Scandinavia, the species is highly inbreeding (global F IS = 0.899). Levels of population differentiation were high (F’ST = 0.892) and significantly higher amongst UK populations (F’ST = 0.949) than Scandinavian populations (F’ST = 0.762; P < 0.01). The isolated populations in the UK have, on average, lower genetic diversity (allelic richness, proportion of loci that are polymorphic, gene diversity) than Scandinavian populations, and this diversity difference is associated with the smaller census size and population area of UK populations. From a conservation perspective, the naturally inbreeding nature of the species may buffer the species against immediate effects of inbreeding depression, but the markedly lower levels of genetic diversity in UK populations may represent a genetic constraint to evolutionary change. In addition, the high levels of population differentiation suggest that gene flow among populations will not be effective at replenishing lost variation. We thus recommend supporting in situ conservation management with ex situ populations and human-mediated seed dispersal among selected populations in the UK

A Selective HDAC 1/2 Inhibitor Modulates Chromatin and Gene Expression in Brain and Alters Mouse Behavior in Two Mood-Related Tests

Psychiatric diseases, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression, are projected to lead global disease burden within the next decade. Pharmacotherapy, the primary – albeit often ineffective – treatment method, has remained largely unchanged over the past 50 years, highlighting the need for novel target discovery and improved mechanism-based treatments. Here, we examined in wild type mice the impact of chronic, systemic treatment with Compound 60 (Cpd-60), a slow-binding, benzamide-based inhibitor of the class I histone deacetylase (HDAC) family members, HDAC1 and HDAC2, in mood-related behavioral assays responsive to clinically effective drugs. Cpd-60 treatment for one week was associated with attenuated locomotor activity following acute amphetamine challenge. Further, treated mice demonstrated decreased immobility in the forced swim test. These changes are consistent with established effects of clinical mood stabilizers and antidepressants, respectively. Whole-genome expression profiling of specific brain regions (prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus) from mice treated with Cpd-60 identified gene expression changes, including a small subset of transcripts that significantly overlapped those previously reported in lithium-treated mice. HDAC inhibition in brain was confirmed by increased histone acetylation both globally and, using chromatin immunoprecipitation, at the promoter regions of upregulated transcripts, a finding consistent with in vivo engagement of HDAC targets. In contrast, treatment with suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA), a non-selective fast-binding, hydroxamic acid HDAC 1/2/3/6 inhibitor, was sufficient to increase histone acetylation in brain, but did not alter mood-related behaviors and had dissimilar transcriptional regulatory effects compared to Cpd-60. These results provide evidence that selective inhibition of HDAC1 and HDAC2 in brain may provide an epigenetic-based target for developing improved treatments for mood disorders and other brain disorders with altered chromatin-mediated neuroplasticity.Stanley Medical Research InstituteNational Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R01DA028301)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R01DA030321

Short-Lived Trace Gases in the Surface Ocean and the Atmosphere

The two-way exchange of trace gases between the ocean and the atmosphere is important for both the chemistry and physics of the atmosphere and the biogeochemistry of the oceans, including the global cycling of elements. Here we review these exchanges and their importance for a range of gases whose lifetimes are generally short compared to the main greenhouse gases and which are, in most cases, more reactive than them. Gases considered include sulphur and related compounds, organohalogens, non-methane hydrocarbons, ozone, ammonia and related compounds, hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Finally, we stress the interactivity of the system, the importance of process understanding for modeling, the need for more extensive field measurements and their better seasonal coverage, the importance of inter-calibration exercises and finally the need to show the importance of air-sea exchanges for global cycling and how the field fits into the broader context of Earth System Science