Responses of Real Output in Serbia to the Financial and Global Economic Conditions

Applying and extending Taylor (1993, 1999) and Romer (2000, 2006), this paper examines output fluctuations for Serbia based on a simultaneous equation model consisting of the open-economy IS function, the monetary policy function, and uncovered interest parity. The GARCH(1,0) model is employed because the residual variance is affected by the past variance. Real GDP is positively affected by the real stock price and real government deficit and negatively influenced by expected real depreciation of the dinar, the world real interest rate, and the inflation rate. There are significant seasonal effects. Therefore, a healthy stock market, a stronger dinar, a lower world real interest rate, a lower inflation rate, and an active fiscal policy will play important roles in the recovery of the Serbian economy.monetary policy function, uncovered interest parity, exchange rate, world interest rate, inflation rate, government deficit

GPER-induced signaling is essential for the survival of breast cancer stem cells.

G protein-coupled estrogen receptor-1 (GPER), a member of the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) superfamily, mediates estrogen-induced proliferation of normal and malignant breast epithelial cells. However, its role in breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs) remains unclear. Here we showed greater expression of GPER in BCSCs than non-BCSCs of three patient-derived xenografts of ER- /PR+ breast cancers. GPER silencing reduced stemness features of BCSCs as reflected by reduced mammosphere forming capacity in vitro, and tumor growth in vivo with decreased BCSC populations. Comparative phosphoproteomics revealed greater GPER-mediated PKA/BAD signaling in BCSCs. Activation of GPER by its ligands, including tamoxifen (TMX), induced phosphorylation of PKA and BAD-Ser118 to sustain BCSC characteristics. Transfection with a dominant-negative mutant BAD (Ser118Ala) led to reduced cell survival. Taken together, GPER and its downstream signaling play a key role in maintaining the stemness of BCSCs, suggesting that GPER is a potential therapeutic target for eradicating BCSCs

Therapeutic and Radiosensitizing Effects of Armillaridin on Human Esophageal Cancer Cells

Background. Armillaridin (AM) is isolated from Armillaria mellea. We examined the anticancer activity and radiosensitizing effect on human esophageal cancer cells. Methods. Human squamous cell carcinoma (CE81T/VGH and TE-2) and adenocarcinoma (BE-3 and SKGT-4) cell lines were cultured. The MTT assay was used for cell viability. The cell cycle was analyzed using propidium iodide staining. Mitochondrial transmembrane potential was measured by DiOC6(3) staining. The colony formation assay was performed for estimation of the radiation surviving fraction. Human CE81T/VGH xenografts were established for evaluation of therapeutic activity in vivo. Results. AM inhibited the viability of four human esophageal cancer cell lines with an estimated concentration of 50% inhibition (IC50) which was 3.4–6.9 μM. AM induced a hypoploid cell population and morphological alterations typical of apoptosis in cells. This apoptosis induction was accompanied by a reduction of mitochondrial transmembrane potential. AM accumulated cell cycle at G2/M phase and enhanced the radiosensitivity in CE81T/VGH cells. In vivo, AM inhibited the growth of CE81T/VGH xenografts without significant impact on body weight and white blood cell counts. Conclusion. Armillaridin could inhibit growth and enhance radiosensitivity of human esophageal cancer cells. There might be potential to integrate AM with radiotherapy for esophageal cancer treatment

Impacts of macroeconomic variables on the stock market index in Poland: new evidence

Applying the GARCH or ARCH model, this paper finds that Poland's stock market index is positively associated with industrial production or real GDP and the German stock market index, negatively affected by the government borrowing/GDP ratio, the real interest rate, the nominal effective exchange rate, the expected inflation rate, and the government bond yield in the euro area, and exhibits a quadratic relationship with the M2/GDP ratio. It suggests that the stock market index and the M2/GDP ratio show a positive (negative) relationship if the M2/GDP ratio is less (greater) than the critical value of 43.68%. Hence, to maintain a healthy stock market, the Polish authorities are expected to pursue economic growth, reduce government borrowing, avoid currency appreciation, and keep a relatively low interest rate or a relatively low expected inflation rate. Although currency appreciation has a negative impact on the stock market index, it is possible that the negative relationship might change if a certain threshold value is reached in the future

THE REGULATION OF LEG STIFFNESS AND EMG ACTIVITIES ON PERSON WITH VISUAL IMPAIRED DURING STEP-DOWN WALKING

The purpose of present study was to evaluate leg muscular regulation and neuromuscular activation by investigating the stiffness and EMG amplitude of normal vision students and visually impaired students. 10 normal vision (age: 24.3±20 years; height: 171.5±4.6cm; mass: 65.9±8.0kg) and 10 visually impaired students (age: 23.2±2.4 years; height: 163.4±9.6cm; mass: 62.8±15.0kg) were served as subjects. AMTI force platform (1200 Hz), Peak Performance motion analysis system (60Hz) and Biovision EMG system were used synchronously to record the ground reaction force, the kinematic parameters and EMG signals of lower extremity during the subjects stepped down from height 20, 30 and 40cm. The results revealed that the regulation of neuromuscular system of the impaired is less efficient compared to the normal one because of lower muscle stiffness and EMG activity

Sialylation of vasorin by ST3Gal1 facilitates TGF-β1-mediated tumor angiogenesis and progression.

ST3Gal1 is a key sialyltransferase which adds α2,3-linked sialic acid to substrates and generates core 1 O-glycan structure. Upregulation of ST3Gal1 has been associated with worse prognosis of breast cancer patients. However, the protein substrates of ST3Gal1 implicated in tumor progression remain elusive. In our study, we demonstrated that ST3GAL1-silencing significantly reduced tumor growth along with a notable decrease in vascularity of MCF7 xenograft tumors. We identified vasorin (VASN) which was shown to bind TGF-β1, as a potential candidate that links ST3Gal1 to angiogenesis. LC-MS/MS analysis of VASN secreted from MCF7, revealed that more than 80% of its O-glycans are sialyl-3T and disialyl-T. ST3GAL1-silencing or desialylation of VASN by neuraminidase enhanced its binding to TGF-β1 by 2- to 3-fold and thereby dampening TGF-β1 signaling and angiogenesis, as indicated by impaired tube formation of HUVECs, suppressed angiogenesis gene expression and reduced activation of Smad2 and Smad3 in HUVEC cells. Examination of 114 fresh primary breast cancer and their adjacent normal tissues showed that the expression levels of ST3Gal1 and TGFB1 were high in tumor part and the expression of two genes was positively correlated. Kaplan Meier survival analysis showed a significantly shorter relapse-free survival for those with lower expression VASN, notably, the combination of low VASN with high ST3GAL1 yielded even higher risk of recurrence (p = 0.025, HR = 2.967, 95% CI = 1.14-7.67). Since TGF-β1 is known to transcriptionally activate ST3Gal1, our findings illustrated a feedback regulatory loop in which TGF-β1 upregulates ST3Gal1 to circumvent the negative impact of VASN

Pion PDFs confronted by Fixed-Target Charmonium Production

The pion, as the Goldstone boson of the strong interaction, is the lightest QCD bound state and responsible for the long-range nucleon-nucleon interaction inside the nucleus. Our knowledge on the pion partonic structure is limited by the existing Drell-Yan data which are primarily sensitive to the pion valence-quark distributions. The recent progress of global analysis of pion's parton distribution functions (PDFs) utilizing various experimental approaches are introduced. From comparisons between the pion-induced $J/\psi$ and $\psi(2S)$ production data with theoretical calculations using the CEM and NRQCD models, we show how these charmonium production data could provide useful constraints on the pion PDFs.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures; invited review. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2006.06947, arXiv:2209.0407