Associations of vitamin D receptor polymorphisms with risk of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and mild cognitive impairment: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Vitamin D is a lipid soluble steroid hormone, which plays a critical role in the calcium homeostasis, neuronal development, cellular differentiation, and growth by binding to vitamin D receptor (VDR). Associations between VDR gene polymorphism and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) risk has been investigated extensively, but the results remain ambiguous. The aim of this study was to comprehensively assess the correlations between four VDR polymorphisms (FokI, BsmI, TaqI, and ApaI) and susceptibility to AD, PD, and MCI. Crude odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to determine the relationship of interest. Pooled analyses suggested that the ApaI polymorphism decreased the overall AD risk, and the TaqI increased the overall PD susceptibility. In addition, the BsmI and ApaI polymorphisms were significantly correlated with the overall MCI risk. Stratified analysis by ethnicity further showed that the TaqI and ApaI genotypes reduced the AD predisposition among Caucasians, while the TaqI polymorphism enhanced the PD risk among Asians. Intriguingly, carriers with the BB genotype significantly decreased the MCI risk in Asian descents, and the ApaI variant elevated the predisposition to MCI in Caucasians and Asians. Further studies are need to identify the role of VDR polymorphisms in AD, PD, and MCI susceptibility

Strain-restricted transfer of ferromagnetic electrodes for constructing reproducibly superior-quality spintronic devices

Spintronic device is the fundamental platform for spin-related academic and practical studies. However, conventional techniques with energetic deposition or boorish transfer of ferromagnetic metal inevitably introduce uncontrollable damage and undesired contamination in various spin-transport-channel materials, leading to partially attenuated and widely distributed spintronic device performances. These issues will eventually confuse the conclusions of academic studies and limit the practical applications of spintronics. Here we propose a polymer-assistant strain-restricted transfer technique that allows perfectly transferring the pre-patterned ferromagnetic electrodes onto channel materials without any damage and change on the properties of magnetism, interface, and channel. This technique is found productive for pursuing superior-quality spintronic devices with high controllability and reproducibility. It can also apply to various-kind (organic, inorganic, organic-inorganic hybrid, or carbon-based) and diverse-morphology (smooth, rough, even discontinuous) channel materials. This technique can be very useful for reliable device construction and will facilitate the technological transition of spintronic study

Nonlocal Variational Model for Saliency Detection

We present a nonlocal variational model for saliency detection from still images, from which various features for visual attention can be detected by minimizing the energy functional. The associated Euler-Lagrange equation is a nonlocal p-Laplacian type diffusion equation with two reaction terms, and it is a nonlinear diffusion. The main advantage of our method is that it provides flexible and intuitive control over the detecting procedure by the temporal evolution of the Euler-Lagrange equation. Experimental results on various images show that our model can better make background details diminish eventually while luxuriant subtle details in foreground are preserved very well

Dynamics of a Nonautonomous Stochastic SIS Epidemic Model with Double Epidemic Hypothesis

We investigate the dynamics of a nonautonomous stochastic SIS epidemic model with nonlinear incidence rate and double epidemic hypothesis. By constructing suitable stochastic Lyapunov functions and using Has’minskii theory, we prove that there exists at least one nontrivial positive periodic solution of the system. Moreover, the sufficient conditions for extinction of the disease are obtained by using the theory of nonautonomous stochastic differential equations. Finally, numerical simulations are utilized to illustrate our theoretical analysis

Dynamics of a Nonautonomous Stochastic SIS Epidemic Model with Double Epidemic Hypothesis

We investigate the dynamics of a nonautonomous stochastic SIS epidemic model with nonlinear incidence rate and double epidemic hypothesis. By constructing suitable stochastic Lyapunov functions and using Has’minskii theory, we prove that there exists at least one nontrivial positive periodic solution of the system. Moreover, the sufficient conditions for extinction of the disease are obtained by using the theory of nonautonomous stochastic differential equations. Finally, numerical simulations are utilized to illustrate our theoretical analysis

Application of inequalities technique to dynamics analysis of a stochastic eco-epidemiology model

Abstract This paper formulates an infected predator-prey model with Beddington-DeAngelis functional response from a classical deterministic framework to a stochastic differential equation (SDE). First, we provide a global analysis including the global positive solution, stochastically ultimate boundedness, the persistence in mean, and extinction of the SDE system by using the technique of a series of inequalities. Second, by using Itô’s formula and Lyapunov methods, we investigate the asymptotic behaviors around the equilibrium points of its deterministic system. The solution of the stochastic model has a unique stationary distribution, it also has the characteristics of ergodicity. Finally, we present a series of numerical simulations of these cases with respect to different noise disturbance coefficients to illustrate the performance of the theoretical results. The results show that if the intensity of the disturbance is sufficiently large, the persistence of the SDE model can be destroyed

Corporate Charitable Donations, Earnings Performance and Tax Avoidance

Under the traditional research framework of corporate social responsibility and tax avoidance, there is no agreement on whether charitable donations constitutes an altruistic behavior or a management tool. Using a sample of Chinese firms, this paper examines the relationship between corporate charitable donations, earnings performance and tax avoidance. The evidence shows that there is a significant negative relationship between corporate charitable donations and tax avoidance. Furthermore, we found that the negative relationship between charitable donations and tax avoidance only exists in enterprises with a good earnings performance, while it is positively correlated with tax avoidance in enterprises with a poor earnings performance. This shows that earnings performance can affect the motivation for corporate charitable donations, as the charitable donations of enterprises with a good performance are mainly an altruistic behavior, while the charitable donations of enterprises with a poor performance are more of a management tool. This conclusion not only enriches and expands the research framework of corporate social responsibility and tax avoidance but also helps to clarify the disputes in the existing literature

Evolutionary analysis of a predator-prey community under natural and artificial selections

This paper investigates the evolutionary impacts of size-selective harvesting and size-dependent competition in predators on an evolving trait of predator individuals (e.g. body size and maturation age) in a predator-prey model. By using population dynamics and adaptive dynamics, we obtain the evolutionary conditions allowing for evolutionary branching and continuously stable strategy under asymmetric competition in predators for natural selection and size-dependent harvesting for artificial selection. The evolution of polymorphism is explored by numerical analysis and simulations. It is shown that high levels of sequence polymorphism may work up during adaptive evolution that leads to biological diversity. First, increase in competition among predators can result in rapid evolution towards larger body size or maturation age, but harvesting has an opposite effect. Second, competition can make for evolutionary branching, while harvesting can go against evolutionary branching and promote evolutionary stability. Last, from an evolutionary point of view, that competition can promote species diversity among predator populations, however, harvesting has an opposite effect

Corporate Charitable Donations, Earnings Performance and Tax Avoidance

Under the traditional research framework of corporate social responsibility and tax avoidance, there is no agreement on whether charitable donations constitutes an altruistic behavior or a management tool. Using a sample of Chinese firms, this paper examines the relationship between corporate charitable donations, earnings performance and tax avoidance. The evidence shows that there is a significant negative relationship between corporate charitable donations and tax avoidance. Furthermore, we found that the negative relationship between charitable donations and tax avoidance only exists in enterprises with a good earnings performance, while it is positively correlated with tax avoidance in enterprises with a poor earnings performance. This shows that earnings performance can affect the motivation for corporate charitable donations, as the charitable donations of enterprises with a good performance are mainly an altruistic behavior, while the charitable donations of enterprises with a poor performance are more of a management tool. This conclusion not only enriches and expands the research framework of corporate social responsibility and tax avoidance but also helps to clarify the disputes in the existing literature