Impact of Bt Cotton on the Farmer's Livelihood System in China

In order to analyze the impacts of Bt cotton on the farmers' livelihood system, we interviewed 169 farmers and extension personnel in the main cotton production areas in Hebei province in the year 2002 and 2003. An integrative method was used in which a multidisciplinary approach was employed including agronomy, economics and sociology. The results showed that the application of Bt cotton increased the cotton growing area as well as farmers' income. For 67% of the farmers interviewed, cotton area has been continuously increasing since 1997. The cotton net margin in one cropping cycle came out to be higher than the combined net margins of wheat and corn in two cropping cycles. The income from cotton played a significant role in the investment to education, leisure and health care. The socio-economic impacts of cotton production are nevertheless not yet optimal because there were still many factors limiting them. Lack of labor and land were the main limiting factors. Productivity is restrained by the high price of Bt cotton seeds which pushed farmers to keep seeds from their own cotton production (42% of the farmers in 2002 and 2003). Farmers are still lacking technical command in using Bt-cotton: 78% of the farmers admitted that while more than 94% of the farmers complained not getting information from local extension and technical services. More success in using Bt-cotton calls upon going beyond providing seeds and asks for continuous assistance from research and extension department, notably to achieve a full knowledge of the Bt-cotton characteristic so as to optimally integrate it into the farmers' system.China; Bt Cotton; biotechnologies; impact evaluation; Livelihood

AN IMPROVEMENT TO E-COMMERCE RECOMMENDATION USING PRODUCT NETWORK ANALYSIS

To help consumers find the most wanted products effectively, e-commerce recommendation saves lots of time spent on viewing unnecessary web pages and increases revenue for ecommerce websites. Because of this significance, this paper concentrates on technology of recommendation and makes an improvement to recommender system. To solve the problem of current technology that only concerns association between two products, this model considers the product network and guides consumers to view products following the intended path. The object is to maximize revenue of the entire product network. An empirical study of yhd.com shows our model is more effective than current model

Merchants’ Replies to Customer Reviews in Online Malls: The Role of Positive Reviews

It is common to see merchants reply to customer reviews in online malls. While extant research generally investigates the effects of merchants’ replies to negative reviews, the role of positive reviews remains a rather neglected factor in extant studies. In order to better reflect the real conditions in online malls, this study examines the role of positive reviews in the context of merchants’ online review response in two aspects. Firstly, we examine whether responding to positive reviews influences merchants’ sales by using the panel data collected from taobao.com. Secondly, little attention has been paid to whether the exhibition of positive reviews influences the effectiveness of merchants’ responses to negative reviews. Our study extends extant studies by introducing the moderating effect of the percentage of positive reviews. The exhibition of positive reviews is closely related to the generation of positive word-of-mouth and a high percentage of positive reviews can improve customers’ perceived credibility of the merchant. Therefore, if merchants gain a high degree of consumers’ trust, their responses are generally more effective and influence the sales more significantly

Brand Effect on Customers’ Value Perception in Online Customization

This paper investigates the brand effect on customer’s value perception in online customization. We argue that though the online customization can add value for the customers, this effect is attenuated by brand because of the obfuscation of the attribution. Specifically, with the presence of brand, the output of customization process may be erroneously attributed to the brand so that the attitude and evaluation on the customization may be lowered because consumers always make decision and attribute the result based on the available and salient information

The independence of neutral and ionized gas outflows in low-z galaxies

Using a large sample of emission line galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we investigate the kinematics of the neutral gas in the interstellar medium (ISM) based on the Na I$\lambda\lambda$5890,5896 (Na D) doublet absorption line. By removing the Na D contribution from stellar atmospheres, we isolate the line profile of the Na D excess, which represents the neutral gas in the ISM. The kinematics traced by the Na D excess show high velocity and velocity dispersion for a fraction of galaxies, indicating the presence of neutral gas outflows. We find that the kinematics measured from the Na D excess are similar between AGNs and star-forming galaxies. Moreover, by comparing the kinematics traced by the Na D excess and those by the [O III]$\lambda$5007 line taken from Woo et al. (2017), which traces ionized outflows driven by AGNs, we find no correlation between them. These results demonstrate that the neutral gas in the ISM traced by the Na D excess and the ionized gas traced by [O III] are kinematically independent, and AGN has no impact on the neutral gas outflows. In contrast to [O III], we find that the measured line-of-sight velocity shift and velocity dispersion of the Na D excess increase for more face-on galaxies due to the projection effect, supporting that Na D outflows are radially driven (i.e., perpendicular to the major axis of galaxies), presumably due to star formation.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures; Accepted for publication in ApJ, corrected the titl

Inhibition of Tyrosine 3-Monooxygenase/Tryptophan 5-Monooxygenase Activation Protein Zeta (YWHAZ) Overcomes Drug Resistance and Tumorigenicity in Ovarian Cancer

Background/Aims: Cancer stem-like cells are the main cause of tumor occurrence, progression, and therapeutic resistance. However, the precise signals required for the maintenance of the stem-like traits of these cells in ovarian cancer remain elusive. We have thus worked to elucidate the functional role of Tyrosine 3-monooxygenase/tryptophan 5-monooxygenase activation protein zeta (YWHAZ), a gene encoding the 14-3-3ζ protein, in the regulation of multidrug resistance and stem cell-like traits in ovarian cancer. Methods: We detected the YWHAZ levels in human ovarian cancer specimens and cell lines using quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and western blots. MTS assays, soft agar colony formation assays, migration assays, cell cycle analysis, sphere formation assays, and flow cytometry were applied to investigate the functional role of YWHAZ in ovarian cancer. Results: Our data reveals substantially increased YWHAZ expression in both cisplatin- and paclitaxel-resistant ovarian cancer cells. Silencing YWHAZ restored the sensitivity of resistant ovarian cancer cells to cisplatin and paclitaxel. Furthermore, in vitro studies showed that down-regulation of YWHAZ inhibited cell cycle progression, migration, and the expression of stem cell markers. Moreover, tumorigenicity was suppressed in tumor-bearing BALB/c nude mice following YWHAZ knockdown. Additionally, we demonstrated that the expression of YWHAZ was directly down-regulated by miR-30e in resistant ovarian cancer cells. Conclusion: Our results have led to new insights into the essential role of YWHAZ in the regulation of tumourigenesis, stem-like traits, and drug resistance in ovarian cancer, thereby helping to identify a potential target for ovarian cancer therapy

Cripto-1 Promotes the Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma Cells

Esophageal carcinoma is a major public health problem worldwide and one of the most aggressively malignant neoplasms. Although considerable diagnostic and therapeutic progress has been made in recent years, the prognosis of EC patients still remains dismal due to high rates of recurrence/metastasis and invasion. Previous studies have demonstrated that Epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) is proposed as a critical mechanism for the acquisition of malignant phenotypes by epithelial cells. Several lines of evidence have shown that Cripto-1 plays an important oncogenic role during tumorigenesis by promoting EMT. The aim of our study was to evaluate the significance of Cripto-1 which plays a role in EMT and its metastasis in esophageal carcinoma. Data of this study suggest that Cripto-1 overexpression is connected with the tumorigenesis and progression of esophageal carcinoma; shRNA might be feasible for the inhibition of the invasion and metastasis of esophageal carcinoma