Direct and indirect effects of climate on richness drive the latitudinal diversity gradient in forest trees

Data accessibility statement: Full census data are available upon reasonable request from the ForestGEO data portal, http://ctfs.si.edu/datarequest/ We thank Margie Mayfield, three anonymous reviewers and Jacob Weiner for constructive comments on the manuscript. This study was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFC0506100), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31622014 and 31570426), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (17lgzd24) to CC. XW was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB3103). DS was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (grant no. 16-26369S). Yves Rosseel provided us valuable suggestions on using the lavaan package conducting SEM analyses. Funding and citation information for each forest plot is available in the Supplementary Information Text 1.Peer reviewedPostprin

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Appropriation of affordances of multiliteracies for Chinese literacy teaching in Canada

Abstract Innovative literacy teaching and learning approaches have proved that multiliteracies enables teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. However, few studies have shed light on examining Chinese teachers’ understanding and practices of multiliteracies in Canada. To respond to this challenge, this qualitative case study aims to understand how Chinese teachers who pursued multiliteracies graduate studies perceive and implement multiliteracies in teaching young CLD children Chinese literacy in Canada. We investigated narratives of two Chinese teachers to provide useful insights into their lived experiences of multiliteracies for Chinese literacy teaching. A constant comparison approach was adopted to analyze three data sources through narrative analysis: interviews, reflective writings, and curriculum materials. Findings suggest that these teachers actively appropriated affordances of multiliteracies for Chinese literacy teaching in Canada drawing upon graduate courses in multiliteracies. The paper concludes with the pertaining implications to highlight the importance of teacher professional development

Does social pension expansion relieve depression and decrease medical costs? Evidence from the rural elderly in China

Objectives: This study was designed to explore the effect of the New Rural Pension Scheme on depressive symptoms or medical costs induced by depression. Methods: We used the Logit, OLS and 2SLS models to explore the impact of the pension on depression and medical costs. We also adopt the method of quantile regression and discontinuity regression to verify the causal relationship between the New Rural Pension Scheme and depression or medical costs induced by depression of the rural elderly. Results: We have found that the New Rural Pension Scheme decreases depressive symptoms of elderly in rural China (OR = 0.90), and the medical costs induced by depressive symptoms by 4.6%. Regression discontinuity results showed that pension significantly reduced the depressive symptoms (depression) and the medical expenditure caused by depressive symptoms (depression) by using parametric and non-parametric methods, and performing a placebo test. The mediating effect results showed that pension may improve mental health by increasing confidence about the future. Conclusion: We demonstrate that the pension significantly decreased both mental health problems and the medical expenses due to depressive symptoms and depression of elderly in rural China. Therefore, our results suggest that the Chinese government should perfect the New Rural Pension Scheme to eliminate barriers to mental health resources, especially for the rural elderly

Parental Migration and Left-Behind Children’s Depressive Symptoms: Estimation Based on a Nationally-Representative Panel Dataset

China&rsquo;s rapid urbanization in the past several decades have been accompanied by rural labor migration. An important question that has emerged is whether rural labor migration has a positive or negative impact on the depressive symptoms of children left behind in the countryside by their migrating parents. This paper uses a nationally representative panel dataset to investigate whether parental migration impacts the prevalence of depressive symptoms among left-behind children in China. Using DID and PSM-DID methods, our results show that parental migration significantly increases the depression scores of 10 and 11-year-old children by 2 points using the CES-D depression scale. Furthermore, we also find that the negative effect of decreased parental care is stronger than the positive effect of increased income in terms of determining the depressive symptoms status of children in rural China

TP53INP2 Promotes Bovine Adipocytes Differentiation Through Autophagy Activation

Tumor protein p53 inducible nuclear protein 2 (TP53INP2) is a key positive regulator of autophagy, and it has been shown to modulate adipocyte differentiation. However, the molecular mechanism involved in autophagy regulation during adipocyte differentiation has not been clarified. Our experiments were intended to investigate whether TP53INP2 is involved in the regulation of autophagy during bovine adipocyte differentiation and how TP53INP2 affects the differentiation of bovine adipocytes. In our research, using RT-qPCR and Western blot methods, we found that the overexpression of TP53INP2 resulted in the upregulation of adipogenesis and autophagy-related genes, and autophagy flux and the degree of differentiation were detected by LipidTOX&trade; Deep Red Neutral Lipid staining and dansylcadaverine staining, respectively. The knockdown of TP53INP2 produced results that were the inverse of those produced by the overexpression of TP53INP2. Overall, our results suggested that TP53INP2 can activate autophagy during the early stage of differentiation in bovine adipocytes and positively regulate adipocyte differentiation by affecting autophagy. Additionally, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPAR&gamma;) also contributed to the function of TP53INP2 in modulating adipocyte differentiation