Gambling for more : casinos as a development strategy for a shrinking Korean region

A South Korean former coal mining region, Gangwon Province, faced with a severe economic downturn and rapid out-migration, chose to develop a casino to revive its economy and to stabilise its shrinking population. More than a decade on, in spite of some positives from this expansionist strategy, population decline continues with no fundamental change to the relative economic position of the region. Using information from interviews, site visits, company reports and other relevant sources, this paper examines the impacts of the casino development on the region. The paper concludes that a development strategy with a well-designed institutional structure can ensure long term flow of benefits to the region, but a successful project is insufficient to arrest economic and population decline if the key issues are of national origin. A planning paradigm that takes into account national regional strategies, institutions that ensure benefits remain in the region and locally sustainable programmes are required

LED Lights Enhance Metabolites and Antioxidants in Chinese Cabbage and Kale

Light emitting diode (LED) lights play an important role in the plant physiology and alter the metabolites in a significant manner. Glucosinolates (GSLs), polyphenols, flavonoids and antioxidant properties of Chinese cabbage and kale cultivated in varying LED lights were investigated. Analysis revealed 7 aliphatic, 3 indolyl and 1 aromatic GSLs in Chinese cabbage and kale. The total GSL content ranged from 1.5-19.08 and 1.85-24.87 µmol/g DW, and glucobrassicanapin was the predominant GSL (3) in Chinese cabbage, whereas; sinigrin (3.49 µmol/g DW) was in kale. Blue and red LED lights produced significantly higher amount of GSLs in Chinese cabbage and kale respectively. Results revealed higher amount of total polyphenol (3.845 µg/mL) and total flavanoids (3.939 μg/mL) in Chinese cabbage. Chinese cabbage and kale showed significant antioxidant activities when compare with positive control, and the antioxidant assays were slightly correlated with total GSLs, polyphenols and flavanoids contents. The influence of LED lights on glucobrassicin in Chinese cabbage and kale should be studied extensively, because GSL is the precursor of indole-3-carbinol, a potent anticancer isothiocyanate

Investigation of heteroscedasticity in polygenic risk scores across 15 quantitative traits

The polygenic risk score (PRS) could be used to stratify individuals with high risk of diseases and predict complex trait of individual in a population. Previous studies developed a PRS-based prediction model using linear regression and evaluated the predictive performance of the model using the R2 value. One of the key assumptions of linear regression is that the variance of the residual should be constant at each level of the predictor variables, called homoscedasticity. However, some studies show that PRS models exhibit heteroscedasticity between PRS and traits. This study analyzes whether heteroscedasticity exists in PRS models of diverse disease-related traits and, if any, it affects the accuracy of PRS-based prediction in 354,761 Europeans from the UK Biobank. We constructed PRSs for 15 quantitative traits using LDpred2 and estimated the existence of heteroscedasticity between PRSs and 15 traits using three different tests of the Breusch-Pagan (BP) test, score test, and F test. Thirteen out of fifteen traits show significant heteroscedasticity. Further replication using new PRSs from the PGS catalog and independent samples (N = 23,620) from the UK Biobank confirmed the heteroscedasticity in ten traits. As a result, ten out of fifteen quantitative traits show statistically significant heteroscedasticity between the PRS and each trait. There was a greater variance of residuals as PRS increased, and the prediction accuracy at each level of PRS tended to decrease as the variance of residuals increased. In conclusion, heteroscedasticity was frequently observed in the PRS-based prediction models of quantitative traits, and the accuracy of the predictive model may differ according to PRS values. Therefore, prediction models using the PRS should be constructed by considering heteroscedasticity

Table1_Identification of five genetic variants with differential effects on obesity-related traits based on age.XLSX

Obesity is a major public health concern, and its prevalence generally increases with age. As the number of elderly people is increasing in the aging population, the age-dependent increase in obesity has raised interest in the underlying mechanism. To understand the genetic basis of age-related increase in obesity, we identified genetic variants showing age-dependent differential effects on obesity. We conducted stratified analyses between young and old groups using genome-wide association studies of 355,335 United Kingom Biobank participants for five obesity-related phenotypes, including body mass index, body fat percentage, waist-hip ratio, waist circumference, and hip circumference. Using t-statistic, we identified five significant lead single nucleotide polymorphisms: rs2258461 with body mass index, rs9861311 and rs429358 with body fat percentage, rs2870099 with waist-hip ratio, and rs145500243 with waist circumference. Among these single nucleotide polymorphisms, rs429358, located in APOE gene was associated with diverse age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, coronary artery disease, age-related degenerative macular diseases, and cognitive decline. The C allele of rs429358 gradually decreases body fat percentage as one grows older in the range of 40–69 years. In conclusion, we identified five genetic variants with differential effects on obesity-related phenotypes based on age using a stratified analysis between young and old groups, which may help to elucidate the mechanisms by which age influences the development of obesity.</p

Image1_Identification of five genetic variants with differential effects on obesity-related traits based on age.PDF

Obesity is a major public health concern, and its prevalence generally increases with age. As the number of elderly people is increasing in the aging population, the age-dependent increase in obesity has raised interest in the underlying mechanism. To understand the genetic basis of age-related increase in obesity, we identified genetic variants showing age-dependent differential effects on obesity. We conducted stratified analyses between young and old groups using genome-wide association studies of 355,335 United Kingom Biobank participants for five obesity-related phenotypes, including body mass index, body fat percentage, waist-hip ratio, waist circumference, and hip circumference. Using t-statistic, we identified five significant lead single nucleotide polymorphisms: rs2258461 with body mass index, rs9861311 and rs429358 with body fat percentage, rs2870099 with waist-hip ratio, and rs145500243 with waist circumference. Among these single nucleotide polymorphisms, rs429358, located in APOE gene was associated with diverse age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, coronary artery disease, age-related degenerative macular diseases, and cognitive decline. The C allele of rs429358 gradually decreases body fat percentage as one grows older in the range of 40–69 years. In conclusion, we identified five genetic variants with differential effects on obesity-related phenotypes based on age using a stratified analysis between young and old groups, which may help to elucidate the mechanisms by which age influences the development of obesity.</p

Regeneration of plantlet via somatic embryogenesis from hypocotyls of Tartary Buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum)

Abstract Buckwheat is a well-known minor cereal crops in South Asia. In vitro tissue cultures of buckwheat serve as an important mean for its improvement through genetic transformation as well as induced somaclonal variation

DataSheet1_The effect of heteroscedasticity on the prediction efficiency of genome-wide polygenic score for body mass index.PDF

Globally, more than 1.9 billion adults are overweight. Thus, obesity is a serious public health issue. Moreover, obesity is a major risk factor for diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease, and cardiovascular disease. Recently, GWAS examining obesity and body mass index (BMI) have increasingly unveiled many aspects of the genetic architecture of obesity and BMI. Information on genome-wide genetic variants has been used to estimate the genome-wide polygenic score (GPS) for a personalized prediction of obesity. However, the prediction power of GPS is affected by various factors, including the unequal variance in the distribution of a phenotype, known as heteroscedasticity. Here, we calculated a GPS for BMI using LDpred2, which was based on the BMI GWAS summary statistics from a European meta-analysis. Then, we tested the GPS in 354,761 European samples from the UK Biobank and found an effective prediction power of the GPS on BMI. To study a change in the variance of BMI, we investigated the heteroscedasticity of BMI across the GPS via graphical and statistical methods. We also studied the homoscedastic samples for BMI compared to the heteroscedastic sample, randomly selecting samples with various standard deviations of BMI residuals. Further, we examined the effect of the genetic interaction of GPS with environment (GPS×E) on the heteroscedasticity of BMI. We observed the changing variance (i.e., heteroscedasticity) of BMI along the GPS. The heteroscedasticity of BMI was confirmed by both the Breusch-Pagan test and the Score test. Compared to the heteroscedastic sample, the homoscedastic samples from small standard deviation of BMI residuals showed a decreased heteroscedasticity and an improved prediction accuracy, suggesting a quantitatively negative correlation between the phenotypic heteroscedasticity and the prediction accuracy of GPS. To further test the effects of the GPS×E on heteroscedasticity, first we tested the genetic interactions of the GPS with 21 environments and found 8 significant GPS×E interactions on BMI. However, the heteroscedasticity of BMI was not ameliorated after adjusting for the GPS×E interactions. Taken together, our findings suggest that the heteroscedasticity of BMI exists along the GPS and is not affected by the GPS×E interaction.</p