The relationship among Safety Culture Model Constructs in construction

Recent years have seen an increasing number of studies on safety climate across multiple industries. These studies include efforts in validating the role of safety climate as an indicator for safety behavior and organizational safety management. Although extensive studies empirically validated the relationships among the safety culture constructs and safety outcomes, the theoretical underlying relationships are not well defined. Moreover, the results of these studies are not consistent based on various theoretical hypothesis and methodological approaches. There lacks a systematic analysis of these theories and methodologies that were utilized in these studies to identify the inconsistency. Lastly, the relationships were established across multiple industries with a broad view of measuring safety climate and safety performance. The validation of safety climate in the construction industry remains challenging. This research studies the conceptual basis and methodologies within safety climate literature, with a focus on the construction industry, and discusses the gaps in establishing the relationships. Two types of gaps are identified: conceptual and methodological gaps. Conceptual gaps include the misalignment in concepts and the misalignment in domain context. Methodological gaps refer to the misalignment between the theoretical implications of safety climate and its measurement in terms of data collection and/or data analysis approaches. The main outcome is the need to define a framework to validate leading indicators, such as safety climate, based upon the underlying relationships specific in the construction industry.published_or_final_versio

Extended phase space thermodynamics for charged and rotating black holes and Born-Infeld vacuum polarization

We investigate the critical behaviour of charged and rotating AdS black holes in d spacetime dimensions, including effects from non-linear electrodynamics via the Born-Infeld action, in an extended phase space in which the cosmological constant is interpreted as thermodynamic pressure. For Reissner-Nordstrom black holes we find that the analogy with the Van der Walls liquid-gas system holds in any dimension greater than three, and that the critical exponents coincide with those of the Van der Waals system. We find that neutral slowly rotating black holes in four space-time dimensions also have the same qualitative behaviour. However charged and rotating black holes in three spacetime dimensions do not exhibit critical phenomena. For Born-Infeld black holes we define a new thermodynamic quantity B conjugate to the Born-Infeld parameter b that we call Born-Infeld vacuum polarization. We demonstrate that this quantity is required for consistency of both the first law of thermodynamics and the corresponding Smarr relation.Comment: 23 pages, 32 figures, v2: minor changes, upgraded reference

The impact of point mutations in the human androgen receptor : classification of mutations on the basis of transcriptional activity

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Drivers for Rift Valley fever emergence in Mayotte: A Bayesian modelling approach

Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a major zoonotic and arboviral hemorrhagic fever. The conditions leading to RVF epidemics are still unclear, and the relative role of climatic and anthropogenic factors may vary between ecosystems. Here, we estimate the most likely scenario that led to RVF emergence on the island of Mayotte, following the 2006–2007 African epidemic. We developed the first mathematical model for RVF that accounts for climate, animal imports and livestock susceptibility, which is fitted to a 12-years dataset. RVF emergence was found to be triggered by the import of infectious animals, whilst transmissibility was approximated as a linear or exponential function of vegetation density. Model forecasts indicated a very low probability of virus endemicity in 2017, and therefore of re-emergence in a closed system (i.e. without import of infected animals). However, the very high proportion of naive animals reached in 2016 implies that the island remains vulnerable to the import of infectious animals. We recommend reinforcing surveillance in livestock, should RVF be reported is neighbouring territories. Our model should be tested elsewhere, with ecosystem-specific data

Construction and Application of an Electronic Spatiotemporal Expression Profile and Gene Ontology Analysis Platform Based on the EST Database of the Silkworm, Bombyx mori

An Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) is a short sub-sequence of a transcribed cDNA sequence. ESTs represent gene expression and give good clues for gene expression analysis. Based on EST data obtained from NCBI, an EST analysis package was developed (apEST). This tool was programmed for electronic expression, protein annotation and Gene Ontology (GO) category analysis in Bombyx mori (L.) (Lepidoptera: Bombycidae). A total of 245,761 ESTs (as of 01 July 2009) were searched and downloaded in FASTA format, from which information for tissue type, development stage, sex and strain were extracted, classified and summed by running apEST. Then, corresponding distribution profiles were formed after redundant parts had been removed. Gene expression profiles for one tissue of different developmental stages and from one development stage of the different tissues were attained. A housekeeping gene and tissue-and-stage-specific genes were selected by running apEST, contrasting with two other online analysis approaches, microarray-based gene expression profile on SilkDB (BmMDB) and EST profile on NCBI. A spatio-temporal expression profile of catalase run by apEST was then presented as a three-dimensional graph for the intuitive visualization of patterns. A total of 37 query genes confirmed from microarray data and RT—PCR experiments were selected as queries to test apEST. The results had great conformity among three approaches. Nevertheless, there were minor differences between apEST and BmMDB because of the unique items investigated. Therefore, complementary analysis was proposed. Application of apEST also led to the acquisition of corresponding protein annotations for EST datasets and eventually for their functions. The results were presented according to statistical information on protein annotation and Gene Ontology (GO) category. These all verified the reliability of apEST and the operability of this platform. The apEST can also be applied in other species by modifying some parameters and serves as a model for gene expression study for Lepidoptera

Protective effect of stromal Dickkopf-3 in prostate cancer: opposing roles for TGFBI and ECM-1

Aberrant transforming growth factor–β (TGF-β) signaling is a hallmark of the stromal microenvironment in cancer. Dickkopf-3 (Dkk-3), shown to inhibit TGF-β signaling, is downregulated in prostate cancer and upregulated in the stroma in benign prostatic hyperplasia, but the function of stromal Dkk-3 is unclear. Here we show that DKK3 silencing in WPMY-1 prostate stromal cells increases TGF-β signaling activity and that stromal cellconditioned media inhibit prostate cancer cell invasion in a Dkk-3-dependent manner. DKK3 silencing increased the level of the cell-adhesion regulator TGF-β–induced protein (TGFBI) in stromal and epithelial cell-conditioned media, and recombinant TGFBI increased prostate cancer cell invasion. Reduced expression of Dkk-3 in patient tumors was associated with increased expression of TGFBI. DKK3 silencing reduced the level of extracellular matrix protein-1 (ECM-1) in prostate stromal cell-conditioned media but increased it in epithelial cell-conditioned media, and recombinant ECM-1 inhibited TGFBI-induced prostate cancer cell invasion. Increased ECM1 and DKK3 mRNA expression in prostate tumors was associated with increased relapse-free survival. These observations are consistent with a model in which the loss of Dkk-3 in prostate cancer leads to increased secretion of TGFBI and ECM-1, which have tumor-promoting and tumor-protective roles, respectively. Determining how the balance between the opposing roles of extracellular factors influences prostate carcinogenesis will be key to developing therapies that target the tumor microenvironment

MicroRNAs in pulmonary arterial remodeling

Pulmonary arterial remodeling is a presently irreversible pathologic hallmark of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). This complex disease involves pathogenic dysregulation of all cell types within the small pulmonary arteries contributing to vascular remodeling leading to intimal lesions, resulting in elevated pulmonary vascular resistance and right heart dysfunction. Mutations within the bone morphogenetic protein receptor 2 gene, leading to dysregulated proliferation of pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells, have been identified as being responsible for heritable PAH. Indeed, the disease is characterized by excessive cellular proliferation and resistance to apoptosis of smooth muscle and endothelial cells. Significant gene dysregulation at the transcriptional and signaling level has been identified. MicroRNAs are small non-coding RNA molecules that negatively regulate gene expression and have the ability to target numerous genes, therefore potentially controlling a host of gene regulatory and signaling pathways. The major role of miRNAs in pulmonary arterial remodeling is still relatively unknown although research data is emerging apace. Modulation of miRNAs represents a possible therapeutic target for altering the remodeling phenotype in the pulmonary vasculature. This review will focus on the role of miRNAs in regulating smooth muscle and endothelial cell phenotypes and their influence on pulmonary remodeling in the setting of PAH

P-V criticality of charged AdS black holes

Treating the cosmological constant as a thermodynamic pressure and its conjugate quantity as a thermodynamic volume, we reconsider the critical behaviour of charged AdS black holes. We complete the analogy of this system with the liquid-gas system and study its critical point, which occurs at the point of divergence of specific heat at constant pressure. We calculate the critical exponents and show that they coincide with those of the Van der Waals system.Comment: 13 pages, 15 figures, v2:added reference