Beyond ‘greeting’ and ‘thanking’: politeness in job interviews

Despite the steps taken by Malaysian institutions of higher learning to equip their graduates with the necessary communication skills, local graduates are still failing to create a positive impression on the employers especially during job interviews. Hence this study explored the face-related concept of politeness proposed by Brown and Levinson (1999) at job interviews. Eight final-year undergraduates taking a communication for employment course volunteered for a mock-interview session with a human resource manager from the banking industry. The interviews were audio- and video-recorded and subsequently transcribed. Then a micro-analysis of the data was carried out using Brown and Levinson’s (1999) framework to identify the politeness strategies that the candidates used. Two positive politeness strategies were identified, the first is noticing and attending to interviewer’s interests, wants, needs or goods, and second is raising/asserting common grounds to establish solidarity. One negative politeness strategy was identified which is requesting for clarification or repetition. The pedagogical implications of these findings will be discussed and recommendations for teaching face-related politeness in communication for employment courses will be offered

Opinion diversity and community formation in adaptive networks

It is interesting and of significant importance to investigate how network structures co-evolve with opinions. The existing models of such co-evolution typically lead to the final states where network nodes either reach a global consensus or break into separated communities, each of which holding its own community consensus. Such results, however, can hardly explain the richness of real-life observations that opinions are always diversified with no global or even community consensus, and people seldom, if not never, totally cut off themselves from dissenters. In this article, we show that, a simple model integrating consensus formation, link rewiring and opinion change allows complex system dynamics to emerge, driving the system into a dynamic equilibrium with co-existence of diversified opinions. Specifically, similar opinion holders may form into communities yet with no strict community consensus; and rather than being separated into disconnected communities, different communities remain to be interconnected by non-trivial proportion of inter-community links. More importantly, we show that the complex dynamics may lead to different numbers of communities at steady state with a given tolerance between different opinion holders. We construct a framework for theoretically analyzing the co-evolution process. Theoretical analysis and extensive simulation results reveal some useful insights into the complex co-evolution process, including the formation of dynamic equilibrium, the phase transition between different steady states with different numbers of communities, and the dynamics between opinion distribution and network modularity, etc.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, Journa

HPV16 E7-driven epithelial hyperplasia promotes impaired antigen presentation and regulatory T cell development

Human papillomaviruses (HPV) infect keratinocytes and can lead to hyperproliferative dysplasia and malignant transformation if not cleared by the immune system. HPV has evolved an array of mechanisms to evade and manipulate the immune system to improve replication efficiency and promote persistent infection. We here demonstrate that hyperproliferative skin expressing the high-risk HPV16 E7 oncogene as a transgene drives immune-modulation of dendritic cells (DCs) resulting in reduced capacity to take up antigen and prime effector CD4 T cell responses. The phenotype of DCs in the E7-expressing hyperproliferative skin was not reversible by activation through intradermal immunization. Naïve CD4 T cells primed by E7-driven hyperproliferative skin acquired FoxP3 expression and an anergic phenotype. DC and T help modulation was dependent on E7-Rb interaction-driven epithelial hyperproliferation, rather than on expression of E7, as inhibition of binding of E7 to retinoblastoma protein, and of consequent epithelial hyperplasia was associated with normal skin DC phenotype, and Th1 effector responses to immunization were restored. We conclude that HPV-induced epithelial hyperplasia modulates epithelial DCs and inhibits Th1 immunity while polarizing T cell differentiation to a regulatory or anergic phenotype

Tapered microchannel for multi-particles passive separation based on hydrodynamic resistance

Researches on separation of multi-particles utilizing microfluidic have been flourishing in recent years with the aid from advancements in microfabrication design and technology. Generally, separation is beneficial for biomedical application especially involving heterogeneous samples. Due to inherent problems of samples isolation, a simple and efficient separation device is required. Here, we present a passive tapered microchannel for multi-particles separation using hydrodynamic principle. Our emphasis is on the effect of hydrodynamic resistance coupled with tapered microchannel design. In the experiment, successful multi-particles samples separation was observed. The results were further analyzed and were in agreement with the proposed concept. This method opens the route toward robust, low-cost and high-throughput, thus it may holds potential to be integrated as one functional module in Micro Total Analysis System (µTAS)

Segmental resection for ureter urothelial carcinoma is safe as radical nephroureterectomy

Introduction & Objectives: Kidney-sparing surgery (KSS) seems inferior to radical nephroureterectomy (RNU) in recurrence-free survival (RFS). However, there is limited data regarding the potential influence of the location of the upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC). The current study aims to provide further evidence by the largest UTUC registry

Predictors of allergen sensitization in Singapore children from birth to 3 years

10.1186/s13223-016-0161-xAllergy, asthma, and clinical immunology : official journal of the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology121Article number 56GUSTO (Growing up towards Healthy Outcomes

Genome sequences of two cold-adaptedCryobacterium spp. SO1 and SO2 from FildesPeninsula, Antarctica

Psychrophilic and psychrotrophic bacteria play important roles in nutrient cycling in cold environments. These bacteria are suitable as model organisms for studying cold-adaptation, and sources of cold-active enzymes and metabolites for industrial applications. Here, we report the genome sequences of two Cryobacterium sp. strains SO1 and SO2. Genes coding major proteins related to cold- or thermal-stress adaptations and those with industrial applications found in their genomes are described

Genome sequences of two cold-adaptedCryobacterium spp. SO1 and SO2 from FildesPeninsula, Antarctica

Psychrophilic and psychrotrophic bacteria play important roles in nutrient cycling in cold environments. These bacteria are suitable as model organisms for studying cold-adaptation, and sources of cold-active enzymes and metabolites for industrial applications. Here, we report the genome sequences of two Cryobacterium sp. strains SO1 and SO2. Genes coding major proteins related to cold- or thermal-stress adaptations and those with industrial applications found in their genomes are described

Adult Human Brain Neural Progenitor Cells (NPCs) and Fibroblast-Like Cells Have Similar Properties In Vitro but Only NPCs Differentiate into Neurons

The ability to culture neural progenitor cells from the adult human brain has provided an exciting opportunity to develop and test potential therapies on adult human brain cells. To achieve a reliable and reproducible adult human neural progenitor cell (AhNPC) culture system for this purpose, this study fully characterized the cellular composition of the AhNPC cultures, as well as the possible changes to this in vitro system over prolonged culture periods. We isolated cells from the neurogenic subventricular zone/hippocampus (SVZ/HP) of the adult human brain and found a heterogeneous culture population comprised of several types of post-mitotic brain cells (neurons, astrocytes, and microglia), and more importantly, two distinct mitotic cell populations; the AhNPCs, and the fibroblast-like cells (FbCs). These two populations can easily be mistaken for a single population of AhNPCs, as they both proliferate under AhNPC culture conditions, form spheres and express neural progenitor cell and early neuronal markers, all of which are characteristics of AhNPCs in vitro. However, despite these similarities under proliferating conditions, under neuronal differentiation conditions, only the AhNPCs differentiated into functional neurons and glia. Furthermore, AhNPCs showed limited proliferative capacity that resulted in their depletion from culture by 5–6 passages, while the FbCs, which appear to be from a neurovascular origin, displayed a greater proliferative capacity and dominated the long-term cultures. This gradual change in cellular composition resulted in a progressive decline in neurogenic potential without the apparent loss of self-renewal in our cultures. These results demonstrate that while AhNPCs and FbCs behave similarly under proliferative conditions, they are two different cell populations. This information is vital for the interpretation and reproducibility of AhNPC experiments and suggests an ideal time frame for conducting AhNPC-based experiments