The effect of mobile application-driven customer participation on bakery purchase behavior: evidence from a field experiment

This paper empirically examines individual and joint effects of two types of customer participation (CP)—mandatory and replaceable—within a mobile app on bakery purchase behavior. This research conducts a field experiment to track customer decisions on whether to participate in in-app CP events—store loyalty program enrollment and store satisfaction survey—and whether to change their purchasing amount and frequency. After controlling other influencing factors, the authors performed ANOVA with the sample of 19,065 bakery customers’ behavioral decisions. The results confirm that mandatory CP has a positive effect on purchase behavior, while replaceable CP has mixed effects across stores. In addition, the results confirm that customers who engaged in both types of CP increased their purchase amount and frequency, compared to customers who engaged in one type or neither. The study suggests hospitality firms should motivate customers to engage in mandatory and replaceable CP to enhance customer loyalty cost-effectively

L-carnitine supplement reduces skeletal muscle atrophy induced by prolonged hindlimb suspension in rats

L-carnitine was recently found to down-regulate the ubiquitin proteasome pathway (UPP) and increase IGF-1 concentrations in animal models. However, the effect of L-carnitine administration on disuse muscle atrophy induced by hindlimb suspension has not yet been studied. Thus, we hypothesized that L-carnitine may have a protective effect on muscle atrophy induced by hindlimb suspension via the Akt1/mTOR and or UPP. Male Wistar rats were assigned to 3 groups: hindlimb suspension group, hindlimb suspension with L-carnitine administration (1250 mgâ ˘kg-1â ˘day-1) group, and pair-fed group adjusted hindlimb suspension. L-carnitine administration for 2 weeks of hindlimb suspension alleviated the decrease in weight and fiber size in the soleus muscle. In addition, L-carnitine suppressed atrogin-1 mRNA expression, which has been reported to play a pivotal role in muscle atrophy. The present study shows that L-carnitine has a protective effect against soleus muscle atrophy caused by hindlimb suspension and decreased E3 ligase mRNA expression, suggesting the possibility that L-carnitine protects against muscle atrophy, at least in part, through the inhibition of the ubiquitin proteasome pathway. These observations suggest that L-carnitine could serve as an effective supplement in the decrease of muscle atrophy caused by weightlessness, in the fields of clinical and rehabilitative research.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author

Acute Administration of Exogenous Lactate Increases Carbohydrate Metabolism during Exercise in Mice

In this study, we investigated the effects of exogenous lactate administration before exercise on energy substrate utilization during exercise. Mice were divided into exercise control (EX) and exercise with lactate intake (EXLA) groups; saline/lactate was administered 30 min before exercise. Respiratory gas was measured during moderate intensity treadmill exercise (30 min). Immediately after exercise, blood, liver, and skeletal muscle samples were collected and mRNA levels of energy metabolism-related and metabolic factors were analyzed. At 16–30 min of exercise, the respiratory exchange ratio (p = 0.045) and carbohydrate oxidation level (p = 0.014) were significantly higher in the EXLA than in the EX group. Immediately after exercise, the muscle and liver glycogen content and blood glucose level of the EXLA group were lower than those of the EX group. In addition, muscle mRNA levels of HK2 (hexokinase 2; p = 0.009), a carbohydrate oxidation-related factor, were higher in the EXLA than in the EX group, whereas the expression of PDK4 (pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 4; p = 0.001), CS (citrate synthase; p = 0.045), and CD36 (cluster of differentiation 36; p = 0.002), factors related to oxidative metabolism, was higher in the EX than in the EXLA group. These results suggest that lactate can be used in various research fields to promote carbohydrate metabolism

A Functional Analysis of Deception Detection of a Mock Crime using Infrared Thermal Imaging and the Concealed Information Test

The purpose of this study was to utilize thermal imaging and the Concealed Information Test to detect deception in participants who committed a mock crime. A functional analysis using a functional ANOVA and a functional discriminant analysis was conducted to decrease the variation in the physiological data collected through the thermal imaging camera. Participants chose between a non-crime mission (Innocent Condition: IC), or a mock crime (Guilty Condition: GC) of stealing a wallet in a computer lab. Temperature in the periorbital region of the face was measured while questioning participants regarding mock crime details. Results revealed that the GC showed significantly higher temperatures when responding to crime relevant items compared to irrelevant items, while the IC did not. The functional ANOVA supported the initial results that facial temperatures of the GC elevated when responding to crime relevant items, demonstrating an interaction between group (guilty/innocent) and relevance (relevant/irrelevant). The functional discriminant analysis revealed that answering crime relevant items can be used to discriminate guilty from innocent participants. These results suggest that measuring facial temperatures in the periorbital region while conducting the Concealed Information Test is able to differentiate the GC from the IC

Lactate administration induces skeletal muscle synthesis by influencing Akt/mTOR and MuRF1 in non‐trained mice but not in trained mice

Abstract The perception regarding lactate has changed over the past decades, and some of its physiological roles have gradually been revealed. However, the effects of exogenous lactate on skeletal muscle synthesis remain unclear. This study aimed to confirm the effects of a 5‐week lactate administration and post‐exercise lactate administration on skeletal muscle synthesis. Thirty‐two Institute of Cancer Research mice were randomly assigned to non‐trained + placebo, non‐trained + lactate, trained + placebo, and trained + lactate groups. Furthermore, 3 g/kg of lactate or an equivalent volume of saline was immediately administered after exercise training (maximum oxygen uptake: 70%). Lactate administration and/or exercise training was performed 5 days/week for 5 weeks. After the experimental period, it was observed that lactate administration tended to elevate skeletal muscle weight, increased protein kinase B (p < 0.05) and mammalian target of rapamycin (p < 0.05) mRNA levels, and decreased muscle ring‐finger protein‐1 expression (p < 0.05). Lactate administration after exercise training significantly enhanced plantaris muscle weight; however, it had no additional effects on most signaling factors. This study demonstrated that a 5‐week lactate administration could stimulate skeletal muscle synthesis, and lactate administration after exercise training may provide additional effects, such as increasing skeletal muscle

Network perturbation by recurrent regulatory variants in cancer

<div><p>Cancer driving genes have been identified as recurrently affected by variants that alter protein-coding sequences. However, a majority of cancer variants arise in noncoding regions, and some of them are thought to play a critical role through transcriptional perturbation. Here we identified putative transcriptional driver genes based on combinatorial variant recurrence in <i>cis</i>-regulatory regions. The identified genes showed high connectivity in the cancer type-specific transcription regulatory network, with high outdegree and many downstream genes, highlighting their causative role during tumorigenesis. In the protein interactome, the identified transcriptional drivers were not as highly connected as coding driver genes but appeared to form a network module centered on the coding drivers. The coding and regulatory variants associated via these interactions between the coding and transcriptional drivers showed exclusive and complementary occurrence patterns across tumor samples. Transcriptional cancer drivers may act through an extensive perturbation of the regulatory network and by altering protein network modules through interactions with coding driver genes.</p></div

Complementary recurrence of variants of coding drivers and interacting transcriptional drivers.

<p>(A) Schematic illustration and description of the variant complementarity measure between the interacting CD and TD. (B) Variant complementarity of interacting CD-TD pairs (red boxplots), all CD-TD pairs (blue boxplots), and all pairs (inclusive of non-recurrent genes) with background coding-regulatory variants (gray boxplots). (C) Complementary recurrence patterns between coding variants of TP53 and regulatory variants of top 5 genes with highest complementarity in breast cancer and top 5 genes with highest complementarity in liver cancer. Each column indicates each breast or liver cancer sample. Regarding variant types, the same color-coding as in <a href="http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005449#pcbi.1005449.g003" target="_blank">Fig 3C</a> was used.</p

Additional file 2: Table S1. of Predicting the recurrence of noncoding regulatory mutations in cancer

Annotation of random forest input features. (XLSX 13 kb

Combinatorial <i>cis</i>-regulatory recurrence.

<p>(A) Illustration of our recurrence model. Four variants from different samples are scattered in <i>cis</i>-regulatory regions but converge on the same gene via chromatin interactions. (B) A radar plot showing the significance of enrichment for eight cancer-related Gene Ontology terms. The length of the plot scales with log₁₀ (P value). The P values were derived from the hypergeometric distribution and adjusted for multiple testing by the Bonferroni correction. (C) Relative causal score of the TDs grouped by the recurrence level and the CDs (CGC and 20/20) in the Bayesian network of breast cancer. Causal scores were calculated as described in the Methods and normalized by dividing by the average causal score of all genes in the network. (D) The relative degree of the TDs and CDs in the coexpression network in breast cancer. The degree was divided by the network average. (E) Schematic illustration of genomic simulation (<i>in silico</i> or clinical) in which variants are randomized, and epigenomic simulation in which K562 chromatin interactome is used in place of MCF-7 and HepG2.</p