How Virtuous are Virtual Influencers? – A Qualitative Analysis of Virtual Actors’ Virtues on Instagram

Recently, virtual influencers (VIs) have become a more frequent alternative to human influencers (HIs). VIs can be described as non-human agents who behave in a human-like pattern. Big enterprises such as Prada, Porsche, Samsung, or Ikea have already collaborated with VIs in the past. Even though it should be clear to users that VIs cannot practice values and virtues in the real world, VIs seem to express certain virtues. This research paper focuses on identifying virtues conveyed by VIs and the effect of expressing virtues on follower engagement by conducting a qualitative content analysis of social media posts. Furthermore, we checked on VIs being abused by companies to convey a more favorable image. Our findings suggest that conveying certain virtues seems to have a positive effect on the engagement. In addition, some VIs were used by companies for virtue signaling without being noticed by their followers

Automating Crisis Communication in Public Institutions – Towards Ethical Conversational Agents That Support Trust Management

To improve disaster relief and crisis communication, public institutions (PIs) such as administrations rely on automation and technology. As one example, the use of conversational agents (CAs) has increased. To ensure that information and advisories are taken up seriously, it is important for PIs to be perceived as a trusted source and a trustworthy point of contact. In this study, we therefore examine how CAs can be applied by PIs to, on the one hand, automate their crisis communication and, on the other hand, maintain or even increase their perceived trustworthiness. We developed two CAs – one equipped with ethical cues in order to be perceived more trustworthy and one without such cues – and started to conduct an online experiment to evaluate the effects. Our first results indicate that applying ethical principles such as fairness, transparency, security and accountability have a positive effect on the perceived trustworthiness of the CA

Identification of MiR-205 As a MicroRNA That Is Highly Expressed in Medullary Thymic Epithelial Cells

<div><p>Thymic epithelial cells (TECs) support T cell development in the thymus. Cortical thymic epithelial cells (cTECs) facilitate positive selection of developing thymocytes whereas medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs) facilitate the deletion of self-reactive thymocytes in order to prevent autoimmunity. The mTEC compartment is highly dynamic with continuous maturation and turnover, but the genetic regulation of these processes remains poorly understood. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are important regulators of TEC genetic programs since miRNA-deficient TECs are severely defective. However, the individual miRNAs important for TEC maintenance and function and their mechanisms of action remain unknown. Here, we demonstrate that miR-205 is highly and preferentially expressed in mTECs during both thymic ontogeny and in the postnatal thymus. This distinct expression is suggestive of functional importance for TEC biology. Genetic ablation of miR-205 in TECs, however, neither revealed a role for miR-205 in TEC function during homeostatic conditions nor during recovery from thymic stress conditions. Thus, despite its distinct expression, miR-205 on its own is largely dispensable for mTEC biology.</p></div

An integrated nano-scale approach to profile miRNAs in limited clinical samples

Profiling miRNA expression in cells that directly contribute to human disease pathogenesis is likely to aid the discovery of novel drug targets and biomarkers. However, tissue heterogeneity and the limited amount of human diseased tissue available for research purposes present fundamental difficulties that often constrain the scope and potential of such studies. We established a flow cytometry-based method for isolating pure populations of pathogenic T cells from bronchial biopsy samples of asthma patients, and optimized a high-throughput nano-scale qRT-PCR method capable of accurately measuring 96 miRNAs in as little as 100 cells. Comparison of circulating and airway T cells from healthy and asthmatic subjects revealed asthma associated and tissue-specific miRNA expression patterns. These results establish the feasibility and utility of investigating miRNA expression in small populations of cells involved in asthma pathogenesis, and set a precedent for application of our nano-scale approach in other human diseases. The microarray data from this study (Figure 7) has been submitted to the NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO; http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo) under accession no. GSE31030

Radiation-induced thymic stress does not reveal a role for miR-205 in TECs.

<p><b>(A)</b> 6-week old mice were exposed to sub-lethal total body irradiation and then harvested after either 15 or 30 days of recovery to enumerate total thymic cellularity. <b>(B)</b> Enumeration of total mTEC and cTEC cellularity from mice shown in <b>(A)</b>. mTECs were defined as CD45^-, EpCAM⁺, Ly51^-, MHC II⁺ events. cTECs were defined as CD45^-, EpCAM⁺, Ly51⁺, MHC II⁺ events. <b>(C)</b> Subset composition of mTECs was assessed by flow cytometry of mTECs as defined in <b>(B)</b>. <b>(D)</b> Quantification of mTEC cellularity and assessment of the proliferation marker Ki67 for the mTEC subsets shown in <b>(C)</b>. Data in <b>(A-D)</b> are shown as mean ±SEM of 10 samples per group pooled from two independent experiments. Total cellularity plotted as percent of untreated <i>miR-205</i>^CTRL mice to allow for direct comparison between the two timepoints. Blue bars indicate untreated <i>miR-205</i>^CTRL mice, gray bars indicate treated <i>miR-205</i>^CTRL mice, and red bars indicate treated <i>miR-205</i>^ΔTEC mice. * denotes p≤0.05, Student’s <i>t</i>-test.</p

Validation of miR-205 ablation in TECs.

<p><b>(A)</b> mTECs from 4–6 week old <i>miR-205</i>^CTRL and <i>miR-205</i>^ΔTEC mice were sorted to analyze miR-205 expression by qPCR. Reactions were normalized to sno202 and normalized to CD45⁺ cells. Values depict mean ±SD. Data is representative of two independent experiments. <b>(B)</b><i>in situ</i> hybridizations were performed using a miR-205 probe on frozen thymic sections from 4–6 week old <i>miR-205</i>^CTRL and <i>miR-205</i>^ΔTEC mice to confirm the uniform deletion of miR-205 in mTECs. Scale bars = 200 μm (top), and 100 μm (bottom).</p

MicroRNAs 24 and 27 Suppress Allergic Inflammation and Target a Network of Regulators of T Helper 2 Cell-Associated Cytokine Production

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are important regulators of cell fate decisions in immune responses. They act by coordinate repression of multiple target genes, a property that we exploited to uncover regulatory networks that govern T helper-2 (Th2) cells. A functional screen of individual miRNAs in primary T cells uncovered multiple miRNAs that inhibited Th2 cell differentiation. Among these were miR-24 and miR-27, miRNAs coexpressed from two genomic clusters, which each functioned independently to limit interleukin-4 (IL-4) production. Mice lacking both clusters in T cells displayed increased Th2 cell responses and tissue pathology in a mouse model of asthma. Gene expression and pathway analyses placed miR-27 upstream of genes known to regulate Th2 cells. They also identified targets not previously associated with Th2 cell biology which regulated IL-4 production in unbiased functional testing. Thus, elucidating the biological function and target repertoire of miR-24 and miR-27 reveals regulators of Th2 cell biology