Soft power: Power of attraction or confusion?

Despite its popularity soft power remains power of confusion. The paper examines the concept, with a special focus on the nature and sources of soft power. Nye’s notion of soft power is largely ethnocentric and based on the assumption that there is a link between attractiveness and the ability to influence others in international relations. This poses two problems: Firstly, a country has many different actors. Some of them like the attraction and others don’t. Whether the attraction will lead to the ability to influence the policy of the target country depends on which groups in that country find it attractive and how much control they have on policymaking. Secondly, policymaking at the state level is far more complicated than at the personal level; and has different dynamics that emphasise the rational considerations. This leaves little room for emotional elements thus significantly reducing the effect of soft power. Given the nature of soft power being uncontrollable and unpredictable, it would be impossible to wield soft power in any organised and coordinated fashion as Nye suggested. Furthermore, the relationship between two countries is shaped by many complex factors. It is ultimately decided by the geopolitics and strategic interests of nations, in which soft power may play only a limited role. The paper also discusses the link between soft power and nation branding as both concepts are concerned with a nation’s influence on the world stage. Public diplomacy is a subset of nation branding that focuses on the political brand of a nation; whereas nation branding is about how a nation as whole to reshape the international opinions. A successful nation branding campaign will help create a more favourable and lasting image among the international audience thus further enhancing a country’s soft power

Cluster Based Term Weighting Model for Web Document Clustering

The term weight is based on the frequency with which the term appears in that document. The term weighting scheme measures the importance of a term with respect to a document and a collection. A term with higher weight is more important than a term with lower weight. A document ranking model uses these term weights to find the rank of a document in a collection. We propose a cluster-based term weighting models based on the TF-IDF model. This term weighting model update the inter-cluster and intra-cluster frequency components uses the generated clusters as a reference in improving the retrieved relevant documents. These inter cluster and intra-cluster frequency components are used for weighting the importance of a term in addition to the term and document frequency components

Common variants in FOXP1 are associated with generalized vitiligo

In a recent genome-wide association study of generalized vitiligo, we identified ten confirmed susceptibility loci. By testing additional loci that showed suggestive association in the genome-wide study, using two replication cohorts of European descent, we observed replicated association of generalized vitiligo with variants at 3p13 encompassing FOXP1 (rs17008723, combined P = 1.04 × 10−8) and with variants at 6q27 encompassing CCR6 (rs6902119, combined P = 3.94 × 10−7)

Mouse podoplanin supports adhesion and aggregation of platelets under arterial shear: a novel mechanism of haemostasis

The Podoplanin-CLEC-2 axis is critical in mice for prevention of haemorrhage in the cerebral vasculature during mid-gestation. This raises the question as to how platelets are captured by podoplanin on neuroepithelial cells in a high shear environment. In this study, we demonstrate that mouse platelets form stable aggregates on mouse podoplanin at arterial shear through a CLEC-2 and Src kinase-dependent pathway. Adhesion and aggregation are also dependent on the platelet glycoprotein (GP) receptors, integrin αIIbβ3 and GPIb, and the feedback agonists ADP and thromboxane A2 (TxA2). CLEC-2 does not bind to von Willebrand factor (VWF) suggesting that the interaction with podoplanin is sufficient to both tether and activate platelets. Consistent with this, surface plasmon resonance measurements reveal that mouse CLEC-2 binds to mouse podoplanin with nanomolar affinity. The present findings demonstrate a novel pathway of haemostasis in which podoplanin supporting platelet capture and activation at arteriolar rates of shear

Developmental changes in the role of different metalinguistic awareness skills in Chinese reading acquisition from preschool to third grade

Copyright @ 2014 Wei et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.The present study investigated the relationship between Chinese reading skills and metalinguistic awareness skills such as phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness for 101 Preschool, 94 Grade-1, 98 Grade-2, and 98 Grade-3 children from two primary schools in Mainland China. The aim of the study was to examine how each of these metalinguistic awareness skills would exert their influence on the success of reading in Chinese with age. The results showed that all three metalinguistic awareness skills significantly predicted reading success. It further revealed that orthographic awareness played a dominant role in the early stages of reading acquisition, and its influence decreased with age, while the opposite was true for the contribution of morphological awareness. The results were in stark contrast with studies in English, where phonological awareness is typically shown as the single most potent metalinguistic awareness factor in literacy acquisition. In order to account for the current data, a three-stage model of reading acquisition in Chinese is discussed.National Natural Science Foundation of China and Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Rpgrip1 is required for rod outer segment development and ciliary protein trafficking in zebrafish

The authors would like to thank the Royal Society of London, the National Eye Research Centre, the Visual Research Trust, Fight for Sight, the W.H. Ross Foundation, the Rosetrees Trust, and the Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity for supporting this work. This work was also supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University for funding this research (Research Project) grant number ‘RGP – VPP – 219’.Mutations in the RPGR-interacting protein 1 (RPGRIP1) gene cause recessive Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), juvenile retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and cone-rod dystrophy. RPGRIP1 interacts with other retinal disease-causing proteins and has been proposed to have a role in ciliary protein transport; however, its function remains elusive. Here, we describe a new zebrafish model carrying a nonsense mutation in the rpgrip1 gene. Rpgrip1homozygous mutants do not form rod outer segments and display mislocalization of rhodopsin, suggesting a role for RPGRIP1 in rhodopsin-bearing vesicle trafficking. Furthermore, Rab8, the key regulator of rhodopsin ciliary trafficking, was mislocalized in photoreceptor cells of rpgrip1 mutants. The degeneration of rod cells is early onset, followed by the death of cone cells. These phenotypes are similar to that observed in LCA and juvenile RP patients. Our data indicate RPGRIP1 is necessary for rod outer segment development through regulating ciliary protein trafficking. The rpgrip1 mutant zebrafish may provide a platform for developing therapeutic treatments for RP patients.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Novel lines of Pax6-/- embryonic stem cells exhibit reduced neurogenic capacity without loss of viability

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Embryonic stem (ES) cells can differentiate into all cell types and have been used extensively to study factors affecting neuronal differentiation. ES cells containing mutations in known genes have the potential to provide useful in vitro models for the study of gene function during neuronal differentiation. Recently, mouse ES cell lines lacking the neurogenic transcription factor Pax6 were reported; neurons derived from these <it>Pax6</it>^-/-ES cells died rapidly after neuronal differentiation in vitro.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we report the derivation of new lines of <it>Pax6</it>^-/-ES cells and the assessment of their ability to survive and differentiate both in vitro and in vivo. Neurons derived from our new <it>Pax6</it>^-/-lines were viable and continued to elaborate processes in culture under conditions that resulted in the death of neurons derived from previously reported <it>Pax6</it>^-/-ES cell lines. The new lines of <it>Pax6</it>^-/-ES cells showed reduced neurogenic potential, mimicking the effects of loss of Pax6 in vivo. We used our new lines to generate <it>Pax6</it>^-/-↔ <it>Pax6</it>^+/+chimeras in which the mutant cells survived and displayed the same phenotypes as <it>Pax6</it>^-/-cells in <it>Pax6</it>^-/-↔ <it>Pax6</it>^+/+chimeras made by embryo aggregation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We suggest that loss of Pax6 from ES cells reduces their neurogenic capacity but does not necessarily result in the death of derived neurons. We offer these new lines as additional tools for those interested in the generation of chimeras and the analysis of in vitro ES cell models of Pax6 function during neuronal differentiation, embryonic and postnatal development.</p

The fate of steroid estrogens: Partitioning during wastewater treatment and onto river sediments

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.The partitioning of steroid estrogens in wastewater treatment and receiving waters is likely to influence their discharge to, and persistence in, the environment. This study investigated the partitioning behaviour of steroid estrogens in both laboratory and field studies. Partitioning onto activated sludge from laboratory-scale Husmann units was rapid with equilibrium achieved after 1 h. Sorption isotherms and Kd values decreased in the order 17α-ethinyl estradiol > 17α-estradiol > estrone > estriol without a sorption limit being achieved (1/n >1). Samples from a wastewater treatment works indicated no accumulation of steroid estrogens in solids from primary or secondary biological treatment, however, a range of steroid estrogens were identified in sediment samples from the River Thames. This would indicate that partitioning in the environment may play a role in the long-term fate of estrogens, with an indication that they will be recalcitrant in anaerobic conditions.EPSR