Nudge or Puppet? Decision-Making, Ethics, and Leadership in the Information Age

In the past two decades, algorithm-based information technology has provided great convenience and a strong theoretical foundation for organizational leadership decision-making, since the analysis of contextual information from data analysis and mathematical models enhances decision-makers’ judgments. However, improper use and insufficient understanding of information technology also bring negative results throughout the practical application. To eliminate adverse effects, organization leader requires rigorous ethical demands. A case study for IBM and literature review constituted the paper’s methodology, analyzed through the East-West decision theory, the duality of information technology, and the ancient Chinese ethics. Also, the leadership ethics and the adaptive leadership theory established the theoretical basis for the argument, and the interpretation of ethics based on ancient Chinese from Yin and Yang theory set an alternative for organizational leaders to make optimal decisions

Unbiased estimation and asymptotically valid inference in multivariable Mendelian randomization with many weak instrumental variables

Mendelian randomization (MR) is an instrumental variable (IV) approach to infer causal relationships between exposures and outcomes with genome-wide association studies (GWAS) summary data. However, the multivariable inverse-variance weighting (IVW) approach, which serves as the foundation for most MR approaches, cannot yield unbiased causal effect estimates in the presence of many weak IVs. In this paper, we prove that the bias of the multivariable IVW estimate is a product of weak instrument and estimation error biases, where the latter is linearly composed of measurement error and confounder biases with a trade-off due to sample overlap among multiple GWAS cohorts. To address this problem, we propose a novel multivariable MR approach, MR using Bias-corrected Estimating Equation (MRBEE), which can infer unbiased causal relationships with many weak IVs. Asymptotic behaviors of multivariable IVW and MRBEE are investigated under moderate conditions, showing that MRBEE outperforms multivariable IVW in terms of unbiasedness and asymptotic validity. We apply MRBEE to examine myopia and confirm that schooling and driving time are causal factors for myopia. A novel locus of myopia is identified in the subsequent whole-genome pleiotropy test.Comment: 25 pages, 3 figure

Adversarial Training with Fast Gradient Projection Method against Synonym Substitution based Text Attacks

Adversarial training is the most empirically successful approach in improving the robustness of deep neural networks for image classification.For text classification, however, existing synonym substitution based adversarial attacks are effective but not efficient to be incorporated into practical text adversarial training. Gradient-based attacks, which are very efficient for images, are hard to be implemented for synonym substitution based text attacks due to the lexical, grammatical and semantic constraints and the discrete text input space. Thereby, we propose a fast text adversarial attack method called Fast Gradient Projection Method (FGPM) based on synonym substitution, which is about 20 times faster than existing text attack methods and could achieve similar attack performance. We then incorporate FGPM with adversarial training and propose a text defense method called Adversarial Training with FGPM enhanced by Logit pairing (ATFL). Experiments show that ATFL could significantly improve the model robustness and block the transferability of adversarial examples.Comment: Accepted by AAAI 2021, code is available at https://github.com/JHL-HUST/FGP

The exposure to volatile organic chemicals associates positively with rheumatoid arthritis: a cross-sectional study from the NHANES program

IntroductionRheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease and closely associated with both genetic and environmental factors. Volatile organic chemicals (VOC), a common environment pollutant, was associated with some autoimmune diseases, while whether VOC exposure or which VOC leads to RA is yet clarified.MethodsA cross-sectional study using data from the 6 survey cycles (2005-2006, 2011-2012, 2013-2014, 2015-2016, 2017-2018, 2017-2020) of NHANES program was performed. The RA or non-arthritis status of participant was identified through a questionnaire survey. The quantile logistic regression method was used for correlation analysis between VOC metabolites (VOCs) in urine and RA. The covariates included age, gender, race, educational level, marital status, total energy intake, physical activity, smoking, hypertension, diabetes, urine creatinine, albumin and marihuana use.ResultsA total of 9536 participants (aged 20 to 85) with 15 VOCs, comprising 618 RA and 8918 non-arthritis participants, was finally included for analysis. Participants in the RA group showed higher VOCs in urine than that in the non-arthritis group. A positive association between 2 VOCs (AMCC: Q4: OR=2.173, 95%CI: 1.021, 4.627. 3HPMA: Q2: OR=2.286, 95%CI: 1.207 - 4.330; Q4: OR=2.663, 95%CI: 1.288 -5.508.) and RA was detected in the model 3, which was independent of all the covariates. The relative parent compounds of the two VOCs included N,N-Dimethylformamide and acrolein.DiscussionThese findings suggested that the VOC exposure significantly associated with RA, providing newly epidemiological evidence for the establishment that environmental pollutants associated with RA. And also, more prospective studies and related experimental studies are needed to further validate the conclusions of this study

Effect of Preharvest Spraying of Diethyl Aminoethyl Hexanoate on Membrane Lipid Metabolism of Grapes during Storage

In order to investigate the effect of preharvest spraying of diethyl aminoethyl hexanoate (DA-6) on membrane lipid metabolism in ‘Kyoho’ grapes during postharvest storage, distilled water (control) and 50 mg/L DA-6 were used to spray grapes at the veraison stage. The grapes were harvested when they were ripe, stored at (0 ± 1) ℃ and relative humidity of 65%–70%, and evaluated for cell membrane related indicators of grape skin after 0, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 days. The results showed that compared with the control group, DA-6 treatment effectively inhibited the increase in the relative permeability of cell membrane during postharvest storage, maintained the activities of lipoxygense (LOX), lipase and phospolipase D (PLD), inhibited the decrease of phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylinositol content and the increase of phosphatidyl acid content, and maintained a high relative content of unsaturated acids such as linoleic acid and linolenic acid as well as saturated fatty acids such as stearic acid, behenic acid, arachidic acid and palmitoleic acid, consequently maintaining the degree of unsaturation of fatty acids at a high level. Additionally, DA-6 treatment suppressed the expression of the LOX, Lipase, and PLD genes. In summary, preharvest spraying of 50 mg/L DA-6 can delay the senescence and prolong the storage period of ‘Kyoho’ grapes by effectively relieving the membrane lipid metabolism during storage

Contrast-enhanced spectral mammography: are kinetic patterns useful for differential diagnoses of enhanced lesions?

PURPOSETo investigate the diagnostic efficiency of the kinetic curves of enhanced lesions on contrast-en-hanced spectral mammography (CESM) and whether they were similar to those of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).METHODSTwo hundred and twelve patients with 222 enhanced lesions were included in this prospective study. Single-view craniocaudal of an affected breast was acquired at 3, 5, and 7 min after contrast media injection. The kinetic patterns of each lesion were evaluated and classified as elevated (type I), steady (type II), and depressed (type III). Statistical comparison used the chi-squared test, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and Cohen’s kappa.RESULTSOf 222 enhanced lesions, 140 were breast cancers, and 82 were benign lesions. The distribution of the kinetic curves for breast cancer was type I, 3.57%, type II, 35.71%, and type III, 60.72%. As for benign lesions, the distribution was type I, 43.90%, type II, 45.12%, and type III, 10.98%. The difference in the enhancement patterns between benign lesions and breast cancers was significant (P < 0.001). The likelihood of breast cancer related to a type I, II, and III curve was 12.20%, 57.47%, and 90.43%, respectively. For the enhancement intensity, the area under curve (AUC) of the ROC curves was 0.702 ± 0.036; for enhancement patterns, the AUC increased to 0.819 ± 0.030. Cohen’s kappa coefficient was 0.752 (P < 0.001) regarding the kinetic curves for CESM and MRI.CONCLUSIONThe kinetic patterns on CESM show promise in differentiating between benign lesions and breast cancers, with good agreement, when compared with MRI

The Effects of Storage Conditions on Lycopene Content and Color of Tomato Hot Pot Sauce

Tomato hot pot sauce (THPS) at different storage temperatures (0, 25, and 37°C) and with two kinds of packaging for 120 days was investigated in this study. High performance liquid chromatography was employed for detecting lycopene and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). The changes of lycopene and HMF during storage were regressed with kinetic equation of both zero-order and first-order models, and the latter fitted better. The kinetic equation constant (k value) of lycopene or HMF at 37°C was higher than that at 25°C. The k value of lycopene of PET/PE (P1) packaged THPS was 1.60 times of that of PET/Al/EAA/PE (P2) packaged at 37°C, while it was 2.12 times at 25°C. The k value of HMF of P1 packaged THPS was 1.69 times of that of P2 packaged at 37°C, while it was 1.01 times at 25°C. Significant correlations between color index of L⁎, a⁎, and a⁎/b⁎ and lycopene or HMF were found at storage temperature. Browning color was attributed to both Maillard reaction and degradation of lycopene. In conclusion, lower storage temperature and stronger oxygen barrier property of package could maintain color stability and extend shelf life

Single-Cell Rna Sequencing Deconvolutes the in Vivo Heterogeneity of Human Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs) are multipotent stromal cells that have a critical role in the maintenance of skeletal tissues such as bone, cartilage, and the fat in bone marrow. In addition to providing microenvironmental support for hematopoietic processes, BM-MSCs can differentiate into various mesodermal lineages including osteoblast/osteocyte, chondrocyte, and adipocyte that are crucial for bone metabolism. While BM-MSCs have high cell-to-cell heterogeneity in gene expression, the cell subtypes that contribute to this heterogeneity in vivo in humans have not been characterized. To investigate the transcriptional diversity of BM-MSCs, we applied single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) on freshly isolated CD271+ BM-derived mononuclear cells (BM-MNCs) from two human subjects. We successfully identified LEPRhi CD45low BM-MSCs within the CD271+ BM-MNC population, and further codified the BM-MSCs into distinct subpopulations corresponding to the osteogenic, chondrogenic, and adipogenic differentiation trajectories, as well as terminal-stage quiescent cells. Biological functional annotations of the transcriptomes suggest that osteoblast precursors induce angiogenesis coupled with osteogenesis, and chondrocyte precursors have the potential to differentiate into myocytes. We also discovered transcripts for several clusters of differentiation (CD) markers that were either highly expressed (e.g., CD167b, CD91, CD130 and CD118) or absent (e.g., CD74, CD217, CD148 and CD68) in BM-MSCs, representing potential novel markers for human BM-MSC purification. This study is the first systematic in vivo dissection of human BM-MSCs cell subtypes at the single-cell resolution, revealing an insight into the extent of their cellular heterogeneity and roles in maintaining bone homeostasis

An Approach to Identify Gene-Environment interactions and Reveal New Biological insight in Complex Traits

There is a long-standing debate about the magnitude of the contribution of gene-environment interactions to phenotypic variations of complex traits owing to the low statistical power and few reported interactions to date. to address this issue, the Gene-Lifestyle Interactions Working Group within the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genetic Epidemiology Consortium has been spearheading efforts to investigate G × E in large and diverse samples through meta-analysis. Here, we present a powerful new approach to screen for interactions across the genome, an approach that shares substantial similarity to the Mendelian randomization framework. We identify and confirm 5 loci (6 independent signals) interacted with either cigarette smoking or alcohol consumption for serum lipids, and empirically demonstrate that interaction and mediation are the major contributors to genetic effect size heterogeneity across populations. The estimated lower bound of the interaction and environmentally mediated heritability is significant (P \u3c 0.02) for low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides in Cross-Population data. Our study improves the understanding of the genetic architecture and environmental contributions to complex traits