Irish consumers' perception of Chinese brands and how to improve the "Made in China" image

The Chinese government launched the “going abroad” policy in 2001 to encourage Chinese companies to invest and create Chinese brands in international markets. However, the perceptions of Chinese brands among Western consumers have been shown to be consistently low, especially amongst European consumers. This research aims to investigate the Irish consumers’ perception of Chinese brands and how to improve the “Made in China” image. This paper also investigates consumers’ perceptions and attitudes when making purchase decisions for Chinese brands based on gender, age, and nationality. The paper provides important recommendations for Chinese companies who plan to enter the European, and more particularly, the Irish market

Interaction of silver nanoparticles with HIV-1

The interaction of nanoparticles with biomolecules and microorganisms is an expanding field of research. Within this field, an area that has been largely unexplored is the interaction of metal nanoparticles with viruses. In this work, we demonstrate that silver nanoparticles undergo a size-dependent interaction with HIV-1, with nanoparticles exclusively in the range of 1–10 nm attached to the virus. The regular spatial arrangement of the attached nanoparticles, the center-to-center distance between nanoparticles, and the fact that the exposed sulfur-bearing residues of the glycoprotein knobs would be attractive sites for nanoparticle interaction suggest that silver nanoparticles interact with the HIV-1 virus via preferential binding to the gp120 glycoprotein knobs. Due to this interaction, silver nanoparticles inhibit the virus from binding to host cells, as demonstrated in vitro

Association of chemerin mRNA expression in human epicardial adipose tissue with coronary atherosclerosis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Growing evidence suggests that epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) may play a key role in the pathogenesis and development of coronary artery disease (CAD) by producing several inflammatory adipokines. Chemerin, a novel adipokine, has been reported to be involved in regulating immune responses and glucolipid metabolism. Given these properties, chemerin may provide an interesting link between obesity, inflammation and atherosclerosis. In this study, we sought to determine the relationship of chemerin expression in EAT and the severity of coronary atherosclerosis in Han Chinese patients.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Serums and adipose tissue biopsies (epicardial and thoracic subcutaneous) were obtained from CAD (n = 37) and NCAD (n = 16) patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery. Gensini score was used to assess the severity of CAD. Serum levels of chemerin, adiponectin and insulin were measured by ELISA. Chemerin protein expression in adipose tissue was detected by immunohistochemistry. The mRNA levels of chemerin, chemR23, adiponectin and TNF-alpha in adipose tissue were detected by RT-PCR.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that EAT of CAD group showed significantly higher levels of chemerin and TNF-alpha mRNA, and significantly lower level of adiponectin mRNA than that of NCAD patients. In CAD group, significantly higher levels of chemerin mRNA and protein were observed in EAT than in paired subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT), whereas such significant difference was not found in NCAD group. Chemerin mRNA expression in EAT was positively correlated with Gensini score (r = 0.365, <it>P </it>< 0.05), moreover, this correlation remained statistically significant (r = 0.357, <it>P </it>< 0.05) after adjusting for age, gender, BMI and waist circumference. Chemerin mRNA expression in EAT was also positively correlated with BMI (r = 0.305, <it>P </it>< 0.05), waist circumference (r = 0.384, <it>P </it>< 0.01), fasting blood glucose (r = 0.334, <it>P </it>< 0.05) and negatively correlated with adiponectin mRNA expression in EAT (r = -0.322, <it>P </it>< 0.05). However, there were no significant differences in the serum levels of chemerin or adiponectin between the two groups. Likewise, neither serum chemerin nor serum adiponectin was associated with Gensini score (<it>P </it>> 0.05).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The expressions of chemerin mRNA and protein are significantly higher in EAT from patients with CAD in Han Chinese patients. Furthermore, the severity of coronary atherosclerosis is positive correlated with the level of chemerin mRNA in EAT rather than its circulating level.</p

Automatic monitoring of maize seedling growth using unmanned aerial vehicle-based RGB imagery

Accurate and rapid monitoring of maize seedling growth is critical in early breeding decision making, field management, and yield improvement. However, the number and uniformity of seedlings are conventionally determined by manual evaluation, which is inefficient and unreliable. In this study, we proposed an automatic assessment method of maize seedling growth using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) RGB imagery. Firstly, high-resolution images of maize at the early and late seedling stages (before and after the third leaf) were acquired using the UAV RGB system. Secondly, the maize seedling center detection index (MCDI) was constructed, resulting in a significant enhancement of the color contrast between young and old leaves, facilitating the segmentation of maize seedling centers. Furthermore, the weed noise was removed by morphological processing and a dual-threshold method. Then, maize seedlings were extracted using the connected component labeling algorithm. Finally, the emergence rate, canopy coverage, and seedling uniformity in the field at the seedling stage were calculated and analyzed in combination with the number of seedlings. The results revealed that our approach showed good performance for maize seedling count with an average R2 greater than 0.99 and an accuracy of F1 greater than 98.5%. The estimation accuracies at the third leaf stage (V3) for the mean emergence rate and the mean seedling uniformity were 66.98% and 15.89%, respectively. The estimation accuracies at the sixth leaf stage (V6) for the mean seedling canopy coverage and the mean seedling uniformity were 32.21% and 8.20%, respectively. Our approach provided the automatic monitoring of maize growth per plot during early growth stages and demonstrated promising performance for precision agriculture in seedling management

Shadow compensation from UAV images based on texture-preserving local color transfer

The lack of color information and texture information in the shadow region seriously affect the recognition and interpretation of remote sensing image information. The commonly used methods focus on the restoration of texture information, but it is often easy to overcompensate, resulting in color distortion of the shadow region. However, some methods only ensure accurate correction of color information, and tend to cause texture blurring. In order to not lose the texture information and to accurately compensate the color information in the shadow region of the image, we propose a shadow compensation method from UAV images based on texture-preserving local color transfer in this paper. Firstly, homogeneous regions are extracted from UAV images and homogeneous subregion segmentation is performed on the basis of homogeneous regions using the mean shift method. Secondly, in combination with the shadow mask, each shadow subregion is matched with the corresponding non-shadow subregion based on its texture features and spatial distance. Then, the matched non-shadow subregion is used as the reference region, and the color transfer based on preserving texture is performed on the shadow subregion. Finally, pixel-by-pixel width shadow compensation is applied to the penumbra region. The results of the qualitative and quantitative analysis validate the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed methodology to compensate for the color and texture details of the shadow regions

Individual maize location and height estimation in field from UAV-borne LiDAR and RGB images

Crop height is an essential parameter used to monitor overall crop growth, forecast crop yield, and estimate crop biomass in precision agriculture. However, individual maize segmentation is the prerequisite for precision field monitoring, which is a challenging task because the maize stalks are usually occluded by leaves between adjacent plants, especially when they grow up. In this study, we proposed a novel method that combined seedling detection and clustering algorithms to segment individual maize plants from UAV-borne LiDAR and RGB images. As seedlings emerged, the images collected by an RGB camera mounted on a UAV platform were processed and used to generate a digital orthophoto map. Based on this orthophoto, the location of each maize seedling was identified by extra-green detection and morphological filtering. A seed point set was then generated and used as input for the clustering algorithm. The fuzzy C-means clustering algorithm was used to segment individual maize plants. We computed the difference between the maximum elevation value of the LiDAR point cloud and the average elevation value of the bare digital terrain model (DTM) at each corresponding area for individual plant height estimation. The results revealed that our height estimation approach test on two cultivars produced the accuracy with R2 greater than 0.95, with the mean square error (RMSE) of 4.55 cm, 3.04 cm, and 3.29 cm, as well as the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 3.75%, 0.91%, and 0.98% at three different growth stages, respectively. Our approach, utilizing UAV-borne LiDAR and RGB cameras, demonstrated promising performance for estimating maize height and its field position

Activation of miR-9 by human papillomavirus in cervical cancer

Cervical cancer is the third most common cancer in women worldwide, leading to about 300,000 deaths each year. Most cervical cancers are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. However, persistent transcriptional activity of HPV oncogenes, which indicates active roles of HPV in cervical cancer maintenance and progression, has not been well characterized. Using our recently developed assays for comprehensive profiling of HPV E6/E7 transcripts, we have detected transcriptional activities of 10 high-risk HPV strains from 87 of the 101 cervical tumors included in the analysis. These HPV-positive patients had significantly better survival outcome compared with HPV-negative patients, indicating HPV transcriptional activity as a favorable prognostic marker for cervical cancer. Furthermore, we have determined microRNA (miRNA) expression changes that were correlated with tumor HPV status. Our profiling and functional analyses identified miR-9 as the most activated miRNA by HPV E6 in a p53-independent manner. Further target validation and functional studies showed that HPV-induced miR-9 activation led to significantly increased cell motility by downregulating multiple gene targets involved in cell migration. Thus, our work helps to understand the molecular mechanisms as well as identify potential therapeutic targets for cervical cancer and other HPV-induced cancers

GmGBP1, a homolog of human ski interacting protein in soybean, regulates flowering and stress tolerance in Arabidopsis

BACKGROUND: SKIP is a transcription cofactor in many eukaryotes. It can regulate plant stress tolerance in rice and Arabidopsis. But the homolog of SKIP protein in soybean has been not reported up to now. RESULTS: In this study, the expression patterns of soybean GAMYB binding protein gene (GmGBP1) encoding a homolog of SKIP protein were analyzed in soybean under abiotic stresses and different day lengths. The expression of GmGBP1 was induced by polyethyleneglycol 6000, NaCl, gibberellin, abscisic acid and heat stress. GmGBP1 had transcriptional activity in C-terminal. GmGBP1 could interact with R2R3 domain of GmGAMYB1 in SKIP domain to take part in gibberellin flowering pathway. In long-day (16 h-light) condition, transgenic Arabidopsis with the ectopic overexpression of GmGBP1 exhibited earlier flowering and less number of rosette leaves; Suppression of AtSKIP in Arabidopsis resulted in growth arrest, flowering delay and down-regulation of many flowering-related genes (CONSTANS, FLOWERING LOCUS T, LEAFY); Arabidopsis myb33 mutant plants with ectopic overexpression of GmGBP1 showed the same flowering phenotype with wild type. In short-day (8 h-light) condition, transgenic Arabidopsis plants with GmGBP1 flowered later and showed a higher level of FLOWERING LOCUS C compared with wild type. When treated with abiotic stresses, transgenic Arabidopsis with the ectopic overexpression of GmGBP1 enhanced the tolerances to heat and drought stresses but reduced the tolerance to high salinity, and affected the expressions of several stress-related genes. CONCLUSIONS: In Arabidopsis, GmGBP1 might positively regulate the flowering time by affecting CONSTANS, FLOWERING LOCUS T, LEAFY and GAMYB directly or indirectly in photoperiodic and gibberellin pathways in LDs, but GmGBP1 might represse flowering by affecting FLOWERING LOCUS C and SHORT VEGETATIVE PHASE in autonomous pathway in SDs. GmGBP1 might regulate the activity of ROS-eliminating to improve the resistance to heat and drought but reduce the high-salinity tolerance