Perceived teacher support, peer relationship, and university students’ mental health: The mediation of reality and Internet altruistic behaviors

Studying in universities is a crucial development stage for students, whose thoughts, feelings, and actions are affected by interactions with their teachers and peers. This study explored the relationships between perceived teacher support and mental health as well as those between peer relationship and mental health among university students, and examined the mediating effects of reality and Internet altruistic behaviors on these relationships. Perceived teacher support questionnaire, peer relationship satisfaction questionnaire, self-reported altruism questionnaire, Internet altruistic behavior questionnaire, and general health questionnaire were administered to 553 university students. Results demonstrated that perceived teacher support and peer relationship positively predicted reality and Internet altruistic behaviors and positively predicted mental health. Reality and Internet altruistic behaviors positively predicted mental health and exerted significant mediating effects on the correlations between perceived teacher support and mental health as well as those between peer relationship and mental health. The male and female students differed insignificantly in the mediating effects of reality and Internet altruistic behaviors. Therefore, no matter for males or females, teachers should provide sufficient support for the students and establish favorable relationships with them. Friendly relationships, comfort, and active communication among peer students are also essential for creating a healthy and harmonious interaction environment. Those various factors of the school have impacts on the mental health of university students through their altruistic behaviors. This study suggests that further emphasis on teacher support and peer relationship is needed to promote the positive development of altruistic behaviors among university students, and ultimately provide a viable contribution to the university students’ mental health interventions

Junk food marketing on instagram: Content analysis

Background: Omnipresent marketing of processed foods is a key driver of dietary choices and brand loyalty. Market data indicate a shift in food marketing expenditures to digital media, including social media. These platforms have greater potential to influence young people, given their unique peer-to-peer transmission and youths\u27 susceptibility to social pressures. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency of images and videos posted by the most popular, energy-dense, nutrient-poor food and beverage brands on Instagram and the marketing strategies used in these images, including any healthy choice claims. Methods: A content analysis of 15 accounts was conducted, using 12 months of Instagram posts from March 15, 2015, to March 15, 2016. A pre-established hierarchical coding guide was used to identify the primary marketing strategy of each post. Results: Each brand used 6 to 11 different marketing strategies in their Instagram accounts; however, they often adhered to an overall theme such as athleticism or relatable consumers. There was a high level of branding, although not necessarily product information on all accounts, and there were very few health claims. Conclusions: Brands are using social media platforms such as Instagram to market their products to a growing number of consumers, using a high frequency of targeted and curated posts that manipulate consumer emotions rather than present information about their products. Policy action is needed that better reflects the current media environment. Public health bodies also need to engage with emerging media platforms and develop compelling social counter-marketing campaigns

Transcriptional Repressor NIR Functions in the Ribosome RNA Processing of Both 40S and 60S Subunits

BACKGROUND: NIR was identified as an inhibitor of histone acetyltransferase and it represses transcriptional activation of p53. NIR is predominantly localized in the nucleolus and known as Noc2p, which is involved in the maturation of the 60S ribosomal subunit. However, how NIR functions in the nucleolus remains undetermined. In the nucleolus, a 47S ribosomal RNA precursor (pre-rRNA) is transcribed and processed to produce 18S, 5.8S and 28S rRNAs. The 18S rRNA is incorporated into the 40S ribosomal subunit, whereas the 28S and 5.8S rRNAs are incorporated into the 60S subunit. U3 small nucleolar RNA (snoRNA) directs 18S rRNA processing and U8 snoRNA mediates processing of 28S and 5.8 S rRNAs. Functional disruption of nucleolus often causes p53 activation to inhibit cell proliferation. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Western blotting showed that NIR is ubiquitously expressed in different human cell lines. Knock-down of NIR by siRNA led to inhibition of the 18S, 28S and 5.8S rRNAs evaluated by pulse-chase experiment. Pre-rRNA particles (pre-rRNPs) were fractionated from the nucleus by sucrose gradient centrifugation and analysis of the pre-RNPs components showed that NIR existed in the pre-RNPs of both the 60S and 40S subunits and co-fractionated with 32S and 12S pre-rRNAs in the 60S pre-rRNP. Protein-RNA binding experiments demonstrated that NIR is associated with the 32S pre-rRNA and U8 snoRNA. In addition, NIR bound U3 snoRNA. It is a novel finding that depletion of NIR did not affect p53 protein level but de-repressed acetylation of p53 and activated p21. CONCLUSIONS: We provide the first evidence for a transcriptional repressor to function in the rRNA biogenesis of both the 40S and 60S subunits. Our findings also suggested that a nucleolar protein may alternatively signal to p53 by affecting the p53 modification rather than affecting p53 protein level

1A6/DRIM, a Novel t-UTP, Activates RNA Polymerase I Transcription and Promotes Cell Proliferation

BACKGROUND: Ribosome biogenesis is required for protein synthesis and cell proliferation. Ribosome subunits are assembled in the nucleolus following transcription of a 47S ribosome RNA precursor by RNA polymerase I and rRNA processing to produce mature 18S, 28S and 5.8S rRNAs. The 18S rRNA is incorporated into the ribosomal small subunit, whereas the 28S and 5.8S rRNAs are incorporated into the ribosomal large subunit. Pol I transcription and rRNA processing are coordinated processes and this coordination has been demonstrated to be mediated by a subset of U3 proteins known as t-UTPs. Up to date, five t-UTPs have been identified in humans but the mechanism(s) that function in the t-UTP(s) activation of Pol I remain unknown. In this study we have identified 1A6/DRIM, which was identified as UTP20 in our previous study, as a t-UTP. In the present study, we investigated the function and mechanism of 1A6/DRIM in Pol I transcription. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Knockdown of 1A6/DRIM by siRNA resulted in a decreased 47S pre-rRNA level as determined by Northern blotting. Ectopic expression of 1A6/DRIM activated and knockdown of 1A6/DRIM inhibited the human rDNA promoter as evaluated with luciferase reporter. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) experiments showed that 1A6/DRIM bound UBF and the rDNA promoter. Re-ChIP assay showed that 1A6/DRIM interacts with UBF at the rDNA promoter. Immunoprecipitation confirmed the interaction between 1A6/DRIM and the nucleolar acetyl-transferase hALP. It is of note that knockdown of 1A6/DRIM dramatically inhibited UBF acetylation. A finding of significance was that 1A6/DRIM depletion, as a kind of nucleolar stress, caused an increase in p53 level and inhibited cell proliferation by arresting cells at G1. CONCLUSIONS: We identify 1A6/DRIM as a novel t-UTP. Our results suggest that 1A6/DRIM activates Pol I transcription most likely by associating with both hALP and UBF and thereby affecting the acetylation of UBF

Scalable Content-Based Image and Video Retrieval

The popularity of the Internet and portable image capturing devices brings in unprecedented amount of images and videos. Content-based visual search provides an important tool for users to consume the ever-growing digital media repositories, and is becoming an increasingly demanding task as never before. In this thesis, we focus on improving the scalability, efficiency and usability of content-based image and video retrieval systems, particularly in dynamic and open environments. Towards our goal, we make four contributions to the research community. First, we propose a scalable approach to adopt bag-of-visual-words (BoVW) to content-based image retrieval (CBIR) in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. To overcome the dynamic P2P environment, we propose a distributed codebook updating algorithm based on splitting/merging of individual codewords, which maintains the workload balance in the network churn. Our approach offers a scalable framework for content-based visual search in P2P environment. Second, we improve the retrieval performance of CBIR with relevance feedback (RF). We formulate the RF process as an energy minimization problem, and utilize graph cuts algorithm to solve the problem and obtain relevant/irrelevant labels for the images. Our method enables flexible partitioning of the feature space and is capable of handling challenging scenarios. Third, we improve the retrieval performance of trajectory based action video retrieval with spatial-temporal context. We exploit the spatial-temporal correlations among trajectories for descriptor coding, and tackle the trajectory segment mis-alignment issue with an offset-aware distance for trajectory matching. Finally, we develop a toolset to improve the efficiency and provide better insight of the BoVW pipeline. Our toolset provides robust integration of different methods, automatic parallel execution and result reusing, and visualization of the retrieval process

Evolutionary Game Analysis for Key Participants’ Behavior in Digital Transformation of the Chinese Construction Industry

The transformation and upgrading of the construction industry has made obvious progress in China. However, the low degree of digitalization is still prominent. The digital transformation decision-making behavior of key participants in the construction industry is easily affected by economic interests, meaning that the implementation of digital transformation is a dynamic evolution process of repeated adjustment and continuous learning. Therefore, this study constructed a tripartite evolutionary game model of the government, service providers, and construction enterprises, and analyzed the strategy selection of each game player and the stability of the system equilibrium point. Moreover, the validity of the model and the influence of various factors on the system were verified and analyzed by numerical simulation. The results showed the following: (1) The government’s tax refund ratio and subsidy coefficient can significantly increase the motivation of construction enterprises and digital construction service providers within a certain threshold. (2) Whether enterprises carry out a comprehensive digital transformation depends on the revenue of the system solution strategy; the greater the revenue, the more positive the enterprises. (3) The adoption of high rewards and high penalties by the superior government can effectively encourage the local government to actively promote digital transformation. The contribution of this study lies in providing a theoretical basis and decision support for promoting the digital transformation of construction enterprises

Discovery and characterization of novel protein methyltransferases in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Protein methylation is emerging as the fourth most prevalent post-translational modification in eukaryotes. Arginine and lysine methylation are implicated in a myriad of biological processes， such as RNA processing and transport, transcriptional control, translation, ribosome biogenesis, signal transduction, DNA repair and cellular differentiation. Although many methyltransferases have been identified, along with their substrate proteins, there is evidence that more methyltransferases and their substrate proteins are yet to be discovered in S. cerevisiae. The predominance of both methylarginine and methyllysine was examined in the yeast proteome with a range of biochemical techniques such as immunoblotting, proteome arrays and tandem mass spectrometry. The substrate pool for Efm2p was expanded to include 103 proteins, with novel sites found on known substrate, elongation factor 2 (Eft1p). A series of approaches were then used to discover new methyltransferases. These included affinity capture agents, bioinformatics analysis using sequence alignment and genetic networks and screening of putative methyltransferase knockouts. These approaches identified several probable protein methyltransferases, of which Yjr129cp was confirmed to be a novel lysine methyltransferase. This protein appears to perform multiple types of methylation on more than one protein, making it unusual in the lysine methyltransferases

Evolutionary game analysis for rent-seeking behavior supervision of major infrastructure projects based on prospect theory

Major infrastructure projects (MIPs) possess significant strategic positions in the national economy and social development. However, recently, the rent-seeking behavior between supervision units and project contractors has intensified in project construction. This paper aims to study the behavior decision-making of stakeholders in rent-seeking behavior supervision system of MIPs. In the complex and uncertain environment of MIPs, game players have cognitive bias and value perception preference. Therefore, this study introduced prospect theory and constructed the perceived return matrix and evolutionary game model of MIP rent-seeking behavior supervision among project owners, supervision units, and project contractors. From the perspective of risk perception theory, the reasons for the behavioral tendencies of game participants and the conditions for the steady state of strategy selection were explored through system dynamics simulations. The results showed that the stable state of the optimal strategy in the rent-seeking behavior supervision system of MIPs is related to the cognitive bias of the game players and is influenced by the level of regulation cost, the intensity of punishment and the size of accident losses. The contribution of this study lies in providing theoretical basis and decision support for constructing a long-term preventive mechanism for rent-seeking activities in MIPs. First published online 31 December 202