75 research outputs found

    Interferon Tau Affects Mouse Intestinal Microbiota and Expression of IL-17

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    This study was conducted to explore the effects of interferon tau (IFNT) on the intestinal microbiota and expression of interleukin 17 (IL-17) in the intestine of mice. IFNT supplementation increased microbial diversity in the jejunum and ileum but decreased microbial diversity in the feces. IFNT supplementation influenced the composition of the intestinal microbiota as follows: (1) decreasing the percentage of Firmicutes and increasing Bacteroidetes in the jejunum and ileum; (2) enhancing the percentage of Firmicutes but decreasing Bacteroidetes in the colon and feces; (3) decreasing Lactobacillus in the jejunum and ileum; (4) increasing the percentage of Blautia, Bacteroides, Alloprevotella, and Lactobacillus in the colon; and (5) increasing the percentage of Lactobacillus, Bacteroides, and Allobaculum, while decreasing Blautia in the feces. Also, IFNT supplementation decreased the expression of IL-17 in the intestines of normal mice and of an intestinal pathogen infected mice. In conclusion, IFNT supplementation modulates the intestinal microbiota and intestinal IL-17 expression, indicating the applicability of IFNT to treat the intestinal diseases involving IL-17 expression and microbiota

    Multimodal Single-Cell/Nucleus RNA Sequencing Data Analysis Uncovers Molecular Networks Between Disease-Associated Microglia and Astrocytes With Implications for Drug Repurposing in Alzheimer’s Disease

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    Because disease-associated microglia (DAM) and disease-associated astrocytes (DAA) are involved in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD), we systematically identified molecular networks between DAM and DAA to uncover novel therapeutic targets for AD. Specifically, we develop a network-based methodology that leverages single-cell/nucleus RNA sequencing data from both transgenic mouse models and AD patient brains, as well as drug-target network, metaboliteenzyme associations, the human protein-protein interactome, and large-scale longitudinal patient data. Through this approach, we find both common and unique gene network regulators between DAM (i.e., PAK1, MAPK14, and CSF1R) and DAA (i.e., NFKB1, FOS, and JUN) that are significantly enriched by neuro-inflammatory pathways and well-known genetic variants (i.e., BIN1). We identify shared immune pathways between DAM and DAA, including Th17 cell differentiation and chemokine signaling. Last, integrative metabolite-enzyme network analyses suggest that fatty acids and amino acids may trigger molecular alterations in DAM and DAA. Combining network-based prediction and retrospective case-control observations with 7.2 million individuals, we identify that usage of fluticasone (an approved glucocorticoid receptor agonist) is significantly associated with a reduced incidence of AD (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.86, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.83-0.89, P \u3c 1.0 Ă— 10 - 8). Propensity score-stratified cohort studies reveal that usage of mometasone (a stronger glucocorticoid receptor agonist) is significantly associated with a decreased risk of AD (HR = 0.74, 95% CI 0.68-0.81, P \u3c 1.0 Ă— 10 - 8) compared to fluticasone after adjusting age, gender, and disease comorbidities. In summary, we present a network-based, multimodal methodology for single-cell/nucleus genomics-informed drug discovery and have identified fluticasone and mometasone as potential treatments in AD

    Effects of Person–Environment Fit on Users’ Willingness to Contribute Knowledge in Virtual Brand Communities

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    Virtual brand communities and users’ knowledge contributions have become strategic resources for enterprises. It is of great significance to explore the driving mechanism of users’ willingness to contribute knowledge in virtual brand communities to promote the sustainable development of enterprises. Previous studies on the potential drivers of users’ willingness to contribute knowledge placed a great emphasis on either communities or users alone but overlooked the synergistic effects generated by both. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of person–environment fit on users’ willingness to contribute knowledge. Based on two theories, we develop and test a mediation model to investigate the effects of person–environment (P–E) fit and psychological contract fulfillment on users’ willingness to contribute knowledge in virtual brand communities. Hierarchical regression methods and bootstrap analysis were used to examine data collected from 287 online survey responses. The results indicate that the three constructs of P–E fit, including values–culture (V–C) fit, needs–supplies (N–S) fit and demands–abilities (D–A) fit, have significant positive effects on users’ willingness to contribute knowledge, and transactional and relational psychological contract fulfillments partially mediate these relationships. We provide some theoretical contributions to explore users’ willingness to contribute knowledge in virtual brand communities, and practical implications are also offered. The limitation of this study is that it does not consider the influence of users’ willingness to contribute with regard to actual contribution behavior

    Serving organization goals by organizational information dissemination: An empirical study from the Communist Youth League of China.

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    From the perspective of news topic modeling, this paper investigated how the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC) uses organizational information communication to serve organizational goals-"Keep the Party Assured and the Youth Satisfied" (", "). Using the Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) algorithm, we performed a topic analysis on 1898 news articles published on the CYLC website. We discovered that nearly all of the CYLC's news centered on the achievement of its organizational goals, reflecting the characteristics of information dissemination that is highly supportive of organizational objectives. We discovered distinct differences in the dissemination of organizational information between the central, provincial, municipal, county, and school league committees through cluster analysis. The various league organizations have distinct positioning and distinguishing characteristics. In addition, correlation analysis reveals that higher-level league organizations prioritize the dissemination of "Keep the Party Assured" information. While lower-level organizations gradually implement "Keep the Youth Satisfied" initiatives. This paper fills a gap in research on mass organizations in the field of information dissemination and serves as a resource for other political organizations involved in public information dissemination

    Team Leader’s Conflict Management Style and Team Innovation Performance in Remote R&D Teams—With Team Climate Perspective

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    Remote work has become a new way of working due to the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which inevitably aggravates team conflicts caused by cognitive differences given the lack of face-to-face communication. With a team climate perspective, this paper investigates the impact of the team leader’s conflict management style on team innovation performance in remote R&D teams in China based on social cognition theory and two-dimension theory. A theoretical model is constructed which describes the mediating effect of team psychological safety and the moderating impact of team trust. Paired data from 118 remote R&D teams in China including 118 leaders and 446 members were collected. The results show that team leader’s cooperative conflict management style is conducive to enhancing team psychological safety and further effectively improves team innovation performance. Therefore, team psychological safety has a mediating effect between team leader’s cooperative conflict management style and team innovation performance. In addition, team trust has a negative moderating effect between team leader’s cooperative conflict management style and team psychological safety. Besides, this study obtains some valuable culture-related insights and provides more views for conflict management research in the cross-cultural context since the samples in this study are from China, a society with high collectivism, which is different from the western cultural context from which many conflict management theories develop

    The Impact of Mentoring Relationships on Innovation Performance of Post-90s Employees: A Dual-Path Model of Cognition and Affect

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    (1) Background: In recent years, post-90s employees have emerged as the driving force behind enterprise innovation, presenting unique challenges for innovation management. Their distinct characteristics and attitudes towards work require a thoughtful and adaptable approach from businesses to harness their potential effectively; (2) Methods: through empirical analysis of 518 valid samples in the Chinese context, with SPSS 26.0 and PROCESS V4.1 being used for the analysis, and to test the moderated mediation model; (3) Results: a. Mentoring relationships positively predict innovation performance; b. This relationship is mediated by role stress (cognition) and job vigor (affect); c. Innovative self-efficacy negatively moderates the impact of role stress on innovation performance and positively moderates the impact of job vigor on innovation performance; d. Moreover, innovative self-efficacy significantly moderates the mediating effect of role stress and job vigor, and the moderated mediating model is established; (4) Conclusions: Our findings reveal the “black box” of mentoring relationships in the process of influencing the innovation performance of post-90s employees, an area that has received limited research attention. This study further reveals the boundary effect of innovative self-efficacy

    An extended TODIM method for project manager’s competency evaluation

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    The project managers’ high efficiency and leadership ability is very important for the success of the whole project. Evaluating the competency of project manager accurately and selecting the suitable project manager from alternatives is a very core research issue that should be paid high attention to in the field of project management. When evaluating the competency of project manager, multiple criteria with interactive relationship should be considered, and the decision makers may have bounded rational behavior which may have a great impact on the result of evaluation, whereas the decision makes’ psychological behavior is rarely taken into account in the existing studies on the evaluation of project managers’ competency. TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese of interactive and multi-criteria decision making) is a multi-criteria decision making method considering the decision makers’ behavior. In this paper, an extended TODIM method which combines λ -fuzzy measure with Choquet integral considering incomplete criteria information and decision makers’ bounded rational behaviors are presented to evaluate the competency of project manager. Furthermore, a numerical example is presented to illustrate the method proposed. We hope that this method can provide some valuable references for the evaluation of project manager’s competency

    Optic disk localization by a robust fusion method

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    The optic disk localization plays an important role in developing computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems for ocular diseases such as glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and age-related macula degeneration. In this paper, we propose an intelligent fusion of methods for the localization of the optic disk in retinal fundus images. Three different approaches are developed to detect the location of the optic disk separately. The first method is the maximum vessel crossing method, which finds the region with the most number of blood vessel crossing points. The second one is the multichannel thresholding method, targeting the area with the highest intensity. The final method searches the vertical and horizontal region-of-interest separately on the basis of blood vessel structure and neighborhood entropy profile. Finally, these three methods are combined using an intelligent fusion method to improve the overall accuracy. The proposed algorithm was tested on the STARE database and the ORIGAlight database, each consisting of images with various pathologies. The preliminary result on the STARE database can achieve 81.5%, while a higher result of 99% can be obtained for the ORIGAlight database. The proposed method outperforms each individual approach and state-of-the-art method which utilizes an intensity-based approach. The result demonstrates a high potential for this method to be used in retinal CAD systems.Published versio
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