The role of tripartite motif-containing 28 in cancer progression and its therapeutic potentials

Tripartite motif-containing 28 (TRIM28) belongs to tripartite motif (TRIM) family. TRIM28 not only binds and degrades its downstream target, but also acts as a transcription co-factor to inhibit gene expression. More and more studies have shown that TRIM28 plays a vital role in tumor genesis and progression. Here, we reviewed the role of TRIM28 in tumor proliferation, migration, invasion and cell death. Moreover, we also summarized the important role of TRIM28 in tumor stemness sustainability and immune regulation. Because of the importance of TRIM28 in tumors, TIRM28 may be a candidate target for anti-tumor therapy and play an important role in tumor diagnosis and treatment in the future

The Formation of Reputation in CSR Disclosure: The Role of Signal Transmission and Sensemaking Processes of Stakeholders

A growing number of companies are issuing corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports to publicize their commitment to sustainable development. However, skepticism remains among stakeholders about firms’ CSR information, which could hinder the success of worldwide CSR campaigns. Our paper examines mechanisms of how CSR disclosure resonates with stakeholders and influences their attitudes towards firms. Extending the current knowledge of CSR signaling effects, this paper provides a framework illustrating the interplay between CSR signaling properties and readers’ sensemaking processes, thereby predicting how corporate reputation is shaped through CSR communication. In order to test our theoretical hypotheses, a survey was conducted on 53 firms with 1521 respondents. The results show that the better the readers’ comprehension of a CSR report is, the stronger the signals of authenticity and corporate social performance (CSP) they perceive, the better the report value and value fit are recognized, and eventually, the more trust they hold for the firm. The relationship between comprehension of CSR reports and trust is partially mediated by the signaling-sensemaking process. Our research contributes to the literature on micro-foundations of strategic CSR by applying signaling theory in the context of CSR disclosure. The research findings have practical implications for firms’ CSR disclosure strategies

Perceptions on the risk communication strategy during the 2013 avian influenza A/H7N9 outbreak in humans in China: a focus group study

Objective: To identify the general public’s perceptions of the overall risk communication strategy carried out by Chinese public health agencies during the first wave of avian influenza A(H7N9) outbreak in humans in 2013. Methods: Participants were recruited from communities in Beijing, Lanzhou and Hangzhou, China in May and June 2013 by convenience sampling. Demographics and other relevant information were collected using a self-administered questionnaire. Focus group interviews were conducted using a set of nine pre-developed questions and a tested moderator guide. The interviews were audio recorded and were transcribed verbatim. The constant comparative method was used to identify trends and themes. Results: A total of nine focus group interviews, with 94 participants recruited from nine communities, were conducted. Most participants received H7N9 information via television and the Internet. A majority of the participants appreciated the transparency and timeliness of the information released by the government. They expressed a sense of trust in the recommended public health advice and followed most of them. The participants suggested that the government release more information about clinical treatment outcomes, have more specific health recommendations that are practical to their settings and expand the use of new media channels for risk communication. Conclusion: The public perceived the overall risk communication strategy by the Chinese public health agencies as effective, though the moderator had a governmental agency title that might have biased the results. There is a need to expand the use of social media for risk communication in the future

Experimental Study on the Effects of Matric Suction on Shear Properties of Polypropylene Fiber Reinforced Unsaturated Clay

Matric suction has an important effect on the behavior of unsaturated soils, and polypropylene fibers are often used to improve soil. In order to probe into the mechanism of matric suction and fiber reinforcement, triaxial shear tests are carried out with changing matric suction and net confining pressure. Unsaturated clay in the Shaoxing section of East Zhejiang Grand Canal is selected with polypropylene fiber as a reinforcement material in the tests. The results show that the total cohesion intercept and effective internal friction angle of soil increase with the increase in matric suction, while the adsorption internal friction angle decreases gradually. Similarly, the contribution of matric suction to shear strength decreases. The total cohesion intercept is more sensitive to matric suction. As the length of fiber is 12 mm, the shear strength parameters of soil will be improved accordingly, which makes the fiber reinforcement achieve the best. The stress–strain relationship is approximately hyperbolic and strain hardening. The characteristics of strain hardening are more obvious with the increase in matric suction, and the soil specimens present plastic failure. The volumetric strain of specimen is more sensitive to the changing net confining pressure. It increases with the increase in net confining pressure, and increases linearly as the matric suction is zero. The failure modes of triaxial tests are divided into tensile failure and friction failure

Teaching ICT with the Flipped Classroom Approach in Higher Education Settings

In this study, three design cycles have been conducted in three different courses taught by the research team members at the Education University of Hong Kong. The duration of the research spanned two years and all courses were ICT related. In the first case, we focused on how to implement the flipped classroom in the lesson while in the second and third cases, we put more emphasis on the technology issues and assessment strategies in a flipped classroom. The findings show that the flipped classroom approach can be applied to courses in higher education settings. In ICT related courses, the technology issue is not a problem as the technical hurdle is low and the course lecturers should be more ICT educated. Thus, we can implement this approach in courses focused on learning ICT, learning to teach with ICT or learning to teach ICT

An Empirical Study on Disentanglement of Negative-free Contrastive Learning

Negative-free contrastive learning has attracted a lot of attention with simplicity and impressive performance for large-scale pretraining. But its disentanglement property remains unexplored. In this paper, we take different negative-free contrastive learning methods to study the disentanglement property of this genre of self-supervised methods empirically. We find the existing disentanglement metrics fail to make meaningful measurements for the high-dimensional representation model so we propose a new disentanglement metric based on Mutual Information between representation and data factors. With the proposed metric, we benchmark the disentanglement property of negative-free contrastive learning for the first time, on both popular synthetic datasets and a real-world dataset CelebA. Our study shows that the investigated methods can learn a well-disentangled subset of representation. We extend the study of the disentangled representation learning to high-dimensional representation space and negative-free contrastive learning for the first time. The implementation of the proposed metric is available at \url{https://github.com/noahcao/disentanglement_lib_med}.Comment: Implementation available at https://github.com/noahcao/disentanglement_lib_me

In-situ TEM investigation of defect evolution in FeCrAl during post-irradiation annealing

Aiming to newly-developed FeCrAl alloys for accident-tolerant fuels (ATF) in light water reactors (LWR), an in-situ investigation of scan transmission electron microscopy (STEM) observation and annealing was performed in order to understand the evolution of radiation-induced defects (RID) and the Cr segregation during elevating the temperature. In this study, the FeCrAl alloys were irradiated with 6Mev Au+ ions up to a dose of 10 dpa at 400 °C, and the RID in depth of 1 μm were assess by in-situ TEM during annealing. A Cr layer, the dislocation loop raft and Cr-decorated dislocation loops were formed in the near-surface region I. Cavities, Cr-rich precipitates were formed in the interior region II. By calculating thermal equilibrium vacancies theoretically, the cavity formation is ascribed to the surface effect of the foil and the damage of TEM electrons. Shrinkage of some loops could be ascribed to produced vacancies. Formations of the raft and Cr-decorated loops are due to the strain or stress constructed by the surface C species or damages when annealing below 500 °C. The pronounced Cr-rich precipitates during 550–600 °C are due to the Cr atomic segregation initiated by vacancies via a long-time recovery towards low-energy sites. This work indicates the defect-caused stress profile is important for the Cr segregation

Influence of Cyclodextrins on Thermosensitive and Fluorescent Properties of Pyrenyl-Containing PDMAA

A series of pyrenyl-containing PDMAA copolymers were prepared by free radical copolymerization of dimethylacrylamide (DMAA) with pyrenebutanoyloxy ethyl methacrylate (PyBEMA). The structure of as-prepared copolymers was characterized by UV, FT-IR and 1H NMR spectroscopy. The effect of cyclodextrins (α-CD, β-CD and γ-CD) on the thermosensitivity and fluorescence of the copolymers in aqueous solutions were investigated. It was found that the as-prepared copolymers exhibit lower critical solution temperature (LCST)-type thermosensitivity. Cloud point (Tcp) decreases with the increasing molar content of PyBEMA unit in the copolymers. Tcp of the copolymers increases after the CD is added from half molar to equivalent amount relative to pyrenyl moiety, and that further adding twice equivalent CD results in a slight decrease in Tcp. The copolymers exhibit a pyrene emission located at 377 nm and a broad excimer emission centered at 470 nm. The copolymers in water present a stronger excimer emission (Intensity IE) relative to monomer emission (Intensity IM) than that in ethanol. The IE/IM values decrease after the addition of equivalent α-CD, β-CD and γ-CD into the copolymers in aqueous solution, respectively. The IE/IM values abruptly increase as the copolymers’ concentration is over 0.2 mg/L whether in ethanol solution or aqueous solution with or without CD, from which can probably be inferred that intra-polymeric pyrene aggregates dominate for solution concentration below 0.2 mg/L and inter-polymeric pyrene aggregates dominate over 0.2 mg/L. Furthermore, the formation of the CD pseudopolyrotaxanes makes it possible to form pyrene aggregates. For high concentration of 5 g/L, the copolymers and their inclusion complexes completely exhibit an excimer emission. The IE values abruptly increased as the temperature went up to Tcp, which indicates that the IE values can be used to research phase separation of polymers

An Orthogonal Experimental Study on the Preparation of Cr Coatings on Long-Size Zr Alloy Tubes by Arc Ion Plating

Cr-coated Zr alloys are widely considered the most promising accident-tolerant fuel (ATF) cladding materials for engineering applications in the near term. In this work, Cr coatings were prepared on the surfaces of 1400 mm long N36 cladding tubes using an industrial multiple arc source system. Orthogonal analyses were conducted to demonstrate the significance level of various process parameters influencing the characteristics of coatings (surface roughness, defects, crystal orientation, grain structure, etc.). The results show that the arc current mainly affects the coating deposition rate and the droplet particles on the surface or inside the coatings; however, the crystal preferred orientation and grain structure are more significantly influenced by the gas pressure and negative bias voltage, respectively. Then, the underlying mechanisms are carefully discussed. At last, a set of systemic methods to control the quality and microstructures of Cr coatings are summarized

Dual-Emissive and Color-Tunable Mn-Doped InP/ZnS Quantum Dots via a Growth-Doping Method

Abstract In this letter, dual-emissive and color-tunable Mn-doped InP/ZnS quantum dots (Mn:InP/ZnS QDs) with the absolute photoluminescence quantum yield (PL QY) up to 78% were successfully synthesized via a growth-doping method. The dual emission of Mn:InP/ZnS QDs is composed of intrinsic emission and Mn-doped emission, which can be tuned by different Mn/In ratios. With the increase of Mn dopant concentration, the intrinsic emission shows a red shift from 485 to 524 nm. The new class of dual-emissive QDs provides potential for future application in white LED