Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and Urban Land Use Evolution: Did the 2008 Olympics Benefit Local Communities?

This paper examines the on-site and off-site impacts in the surrounding neighborhoods imposed by the Beijing 2008 Olympics. It firstly develops discussions about the site selection process before and during the bidding process, then looks into the land use evolution resulted from staging the sport event and its influences on local economics, on-site transportation improvements and reuse of the venues. The conclusion is drawn based upon data retrieved from the Beijing municipal government's database, online articles and news reports, site visit, and interviews with planners and business owners. Recommendations are supposed to shed a light on how the city could have achieved greater benefits to the local residents, and what measures it can take to improve the situation. This paper identifies the benefits and costs to local residents of staging the 2008 Olympics, and thus serving to inform planners of Beijing and of future host cities to balance between the impacts on the whole city and the impacts on the local communities when planning for similar mega-events

Suppression of Gluconeogenic Gene Expression by LSD1-Mediated Histone Demethylation

Aberrant gluconeogenic gene expression is associated with diabetes, glycogen storage disease, and liver cancer. However, little is known how these genes are regulated at the chromatin level. In this study, we investigated in HepG2 cells whether histone demethylation is a potential mechanism. We found that knockdown or pharmacological inhibition of histone demethylase LSD1 causes remarkable transcription activation of two gluconeogenic genes, FBP1 and G6Pase, and consequently leads to increased de novo glucose synthesis and decreased intracellular glycogen content. Mechanistically, LSD1 occupies the promoters of FBP1 and G6Pase, and modulates their H3K4 dimethylation levels. Thus, our work identifies an epigenetic pathway directly governing gluconeogenic gene expression, which might have important implications in metabolic physiology and diseases

How small things affect the big picture? The effect of service product innovation on perceived experience value

Purpose – By adopting retrospective evaluation theories, this study aims to explain how innovations provided by separate suppliers in the tourism value chain influence tourist’s perceived value of the overall experience, and further uncover which innovative product attributes are more effective in improving tourist perceptions of the overall value.Design/methodology/approach – A survey yielded 584 valid responses from tourists who had experienced specific tourist product innovations during their travels. Structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed theoretical model. Findings – The results reveal that tourists evaluate overall travelling experience value either by recalling an intense, impressive moment (i.e. a heuristic approach), or through an evaluation of the overall utility gained from the whole trip (i.e. a normative approach). Furthermore, innovations that are perceived as increasing convenience and enabling learning contribute to tourists’ overall value perception through both normative and heuristic approaches, while immersion resulting from innovation only contributes to overall perceived value through the heuristic approach.Practical implications – Given the complex service ecosystem of tourism destinations, each tourism service provider should consider how innovations contribute to the experience of the whole trip and which attributes of innovations increase tourists’ overall perceived experience value.Originality/value – This study complements existing knowledge by revealing the relationship between product innovation in tourism sectors and tourists’ perceived value of the whole trip. Moreover, it offers a theoretical framework for further investigation into service product innovation in hospitality and tourism industry

Realistic Volume Rendering with Environment-Synced Illumination in Mixed Reality

Interactive volume visualization using a mixed reality (MR) system helps provide users with an intuitive spatial perception of volumetric data. Due to sophisticated requirements of user interaction and vision when using MR head-mounted display (HMD) devices, the conflict between the realisticness and efficiency of direct volume rendering (DVR) is yet to be resolved. In this paper, a new MR visualization framework that supports interactive realistic DVR is proposed. An efficient illumination estimation method is used to identify the high dynamic range (HDR) environment illumination captured using a panorama camera. To improve the visual quality of Monte Carlo-based DVR, a new spatio-temporal denoising algorithm is designed. Based on a reprojection strategy, it makes full use of temporal coherence between adjacent frames and spatial coherence between the two screens of an HMD to optimize MR rendering quality. Several MR development modules are also developed for related devices to efficiently and stably display the DVR results in an MR HMD. Experimental results demonstrate that our framework can better support immersive and intuitive user perception during MR viewing than existing MR solutions.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

A Novel Prognostic Predictor of Immune Micro-environment and Therapeutic Response in Kidney Renal Clear Cell Carcinoma based on Necroptosis-related Gene Signature

Background: Necroptosis, a cell death of caspase-independence, plays a pivotal role in cancer biological regulation. Although necroptosis is closely associated with oncogenesis, cancer metastasis, and immunity, there remains a lack of studies determining the role of necroptosis-related genes (NRGs) in the highly immunogenic cancer type, kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC). Methods: The information of clinicopathology and transcriptome was extracted from TCGA database. Following the division into the train and test cohorts, a three-NRGs (TLR3, FASLG, ZBP1) risk model was identified in train cohort by LASSO regression. The overall survival (OS) comparison was conducted between different risk groups through Kaplan-Meier analysis, which was further validated in test cohort. The Cox proportional hazards regression model was introduced to assess its impact of clinicopathological factors and risk score on survival. ESTIMATE and CIBERSORT algorithms were introduced to evaluate immune microenvironment, while enrichment analysis was conducted to explore the biological significance. Correlation analysis was applied for the correlation assessment between checkpoint gene expression and risk score, between gene expression and therapeutic response. Gene expressions from TCGA were verified by GEO datasets and immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis. Results: This NRGs-related signature predicted poorer OS in high-risk group, which was also verified in test cohort. Risk score could also independently predict survival outcome of KIRC. Significant changes were also found in immune microenvironment and checkpoint gene expressions between different risk groups, with immune functional enrichment in high-risk group. Interestingly, therapeutic response was correlated with the expressions of NRGs. The expressions of NRGs from TCGA were consistent with those from GEO datasets and IHC analysis. Conclusion: The NRGs-related signature functions as a novel prognostic predictor of immune microenvironment and therapeutic response in KIRC

Platelets can reflect the severity of Crohn’s disease without the effect of anemia

OBJECTIVES: Anemia and changes in platelets (PLT) are common in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In our study, we aimed to verify whether PLT count can independently reflect the severity of IBD. METHODS: In our hospital, 137 Crohn’s Disease (CD), 69 Ulcerative colitis (UC) patients, and 412 healthy controls were included to compare the differences in PLT count. In addition, the effect of anemia, C-reactive protein (CRP), age, CD activity index (CDAI) or Mayo on PLTs was also analyzed. If PLTs independently affected CD or UC, we used the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve to verify the diagnostic value and obtain the cut-off value of PLT. RESULTS: CD and UC patients had higher PLT than controls (po0.001, po0.001; respectively). In CD patients, the results showed that patients with anemia (Po0.01), Iron Deficiency Anemia (IDA) (po0.001), CRPX8 mg/L (p=0.046), and CDAIX150 (po0.001) had higher PLT, while in UC patients, those with anemia (p=0.018), CRPX8 mg/L (p=0.045), and MayoX3 (p=0.029) had higher PLT. Univariate analysis showed that CDAI was positively correlated with PLT count (po0.001), while hemoglobin (p=0.001) and age (po0.001) were negatively correlated with PLT in CD. In UC patients, Mayo (p=0.001) and CRP (po0.001) were positively correlated with PLT, while hemoglobin (p=0.002) was negatively correlated. Finally, by linear stepwise multivariate analysis, we clarified the positive relationship between PLT and CD (po0.001) by eliminating the interference of hemoglobin, and determined the cut-off value of PLT as 298 109/L. For UC, we did not obtain similar results. CONCLUSIONS: PLT can be an indicator of disease severity in CD, while there is a lack of evidence regarding this finding in UC

Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy under Local Infiltration Anesthesia in Kneeling Prone Position for a Patient with Spinal Deformity

Urolithiasis, a common condition in patients with spinal deformity, poses a challenge to surgical procedures and anesthetic management. A 51-year-old Chinese male presented with bilateral complex renal calculi. He was also affected by severe kyphosis deformity and spinal stiffness due to ankylosing spondylitis. Dr. Li performed the percutaneous nephrolithotomy under local infiltration anesthesia with the patient in a kneeling prone position, achieving satisfactory stone clearance with no severe complications. We found this protocol safe and effective to manage kidney stones in patients with spinal deformity. Local infiltration anesthesia may benefit patients for whom epidural anesthesia and intubation anesthesia are difficult

Reconstructing human activities via coupling mobile phone data with location-based social networks

In the era of big data, the ubiquity of location-aware portable devices provides an unprecedented opportunity to understand inhabitants' behavior and their interactions with the built environments. Among the widely used data resources, mobile phone data is the one passively collected and has the largest coverage in the population. However, mobile operators cannot pinpoint one user within meters, leading to the difficulties in activity inference. To that end, we propose a data analysis framework to identify user's activity via coupling the mobile phone data with location-based social networks (LBSN) data. The two datasets are integrated into a Bayesian inference module, considering people's circadian rhythms in both time and space. Specifically, the framework considers the pattern of arrival time to each type of facility and the spatial distribution of facilities. The former can be observed from the LBSN Data and the latter is provided by the points of interest (POIs) dataset. Taking Shanghai as an example, we reconstruct the activity chains of 1,000,000 active mobile phone users and analyze the temporal and spatial characteristics of each activity type. We assess the results with some official surveys and a real-world check-in dataset collected in Shanghai, indicating that the proposed method can capture and analyze human activities effectively. Next, we cluster users' inferred activity chains with a topic model to understand the behavior of different groups of users. This data analysis framework provides an example of reconstructing and understanding the activity of the population at an urban scale with big data fusion