Will Stock Rise on Valentine’s Day?

This study is a pioneer in academic literature to investigate the relationship between Valentine’s Day and stock market returns of major economies around the world. The findings indicate that stock returns are higher on the days when Valentine’s Day is approaching than on other days for most cases, showing “the Valentine Effect” in the stock market. Specific control variables for Valentine’s Day are also introduced to eliminate the potential influence of other effects. Unlike other holiday effects in previous literature, the Valentine’s Day Effect cannot be explained by many conventional theories, such as tax-loss selling and the inventory adjustment hypothesis

Will Stock Rise on Valentine’s Day?

This study is a pioneer in academic literature to investigate the relationship between Valentine’s Day and stock market returns of major economies around the world. The findings indicate that stock returns are higher on the days when Valentine’s Day is approaching than on other days for most cases, showing “the Valentine Effect” in the stock market. Specific control variables for Valentine’s Day are also introduced to eliminate the potential influence of other effects. Unlike other holiday effects in previous literature, the Valentine’s Day Effect cannot be explained by many conventional theories, such as tax-loss selling and the inventory adjustment hypothesis

Making Art Accessible to All: Co-Creating Multi-sensory Art with Visually Impaired People

Blind and visually impaired people experience many limitations when encountering artworks, and most of the general public lack attention and understanding of the visually impaired community. Despite previous research efforts to make visual art more accessible to blind and visually impaired people through audio descriptions, tactile graphics, or digital media technologies, they still face challenges in experiencing art independently and feeling an emotional connection with artworks. This study explores how to create multi-sensory art for blind and visually impaired people to awaken a new form of experience. The study conducted semi-structured interviews to understand the experiences and perspectives of curators and blind artists on multi-sensory art. At the same time, by analyzing two case studies on co-creation with the visually impaired community, this study explores practices of involving the visually impaired community in the creative process. In addition, this study aims to investigate the potential of multi-sensory experiences to enhance the enjoyment and accessibility of art and culture for the visually impaired community. This study will broaden the knowledge about vulnerable communities by exploring the possibility of the visually impaired community as co-designers in multi-sensory art. This knowledge will benefit galleries, museums, and disabled communities and may lead to a positive reconsideration of the importance of an expanded sensory culture in our society

Measurement of the proton structure parameters in the forward-backward charge asymmetry

The forward-backward asymmetry ($A_{FB}$) in the Drell-Yan process $pp/p\bar p \to Z/\gamma^* \to \ell^+\ell^-$ is sensitive to the proton structure information. Such information has been factorized into well-defined proton structure parameters which can be regarded as experimental observables. In this paper, we extract the structure parameters from the $A_{FB}$ distributions reported by the CMS collaboration in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 8$ TeV, and by the D0 collaboration in $p\bar p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 1.96$ TeV. It is the first time that the unique parton information in the $A_{FB}$ spectrum can be decoupled from the electroweak calculation and measured as standalone observables, which can be used as new data constraints in the global quantum chromodynamics analysis of the parton distribution functions (PDFs). Although the parton information in the $pp$ and $p\bar p$ collisions are different, and the precisions of the measured structure parameters are statistically limited, the results from both the hadron colliders indicate that the down quark contribution might be higher than the theoretical predictions with the current PDFs at the relevant momentum fraction range

Causal association of circulating cholesterol levels with dementia: a mendelian randomization meta-analysis

Prospective studies have shown that abnormally circulating cholesterol is associated with the risk of dementia. However, whether the association is causal or not remains unclear. We attempt to infer the causal association in a MR meta-analysis by using ApoE gene polymorphisms as instrument variables. Studies with dementia risk (27 studies) or circulating lipid levels (7 studies) were included, with totally 3136 dementia patients and 3103 healthy controls. The analyses showed that carriers of ε2 allele significantly were of decreased risk of AD (OR = 0.70; 95% CI: 0.58–0.84; P \u3c 0.01), whereas carriers of ε4 allele were of increased risk of AD (OR = 3.62; 95% CI: 3.03–4.32; P \u3c 0.05), compared to these of ε3 allele. Circulating TC was significantly reduced in carriers of ε2 allele (WMD = − 0.29 mmol/L; 95% CI: −0.54 to −0.03; P \u3c 0.05) and increased in carriers of ε4 allele (WMD = 0.42 mmol/l; 95% CI: 0.001–0.84; P \u3c 0.05). In addition, carriers of ε4 allele had reduction in circulating HDL-C (WMD = − 0.04 mmol/L; 95% CI: − 0.07 to −0.001; P \u3c 0.05). In comparing allele ε2 with ε3, the predicted OR of having AD for 1 mg/dL increment in circulating TC was 0.97 (95% CI: 0.86–0.98; P \u3c 0.05). Comparing allele ε4 with ε3, the predicted OR for a 1 mg/dL increment in TC was 1.08 (95% CI: 1.05–17.58; P \u3c 0.05), and reduction in HDL-C was 2.30 (95% CI: 1.51–43.99; P \u3c 0.05). Our findings demonstrate that high circulating TC and reduced HDL-C levels might be potential risk factors of the development of AD

Expression Profiling of Transcriptome and Its Associated Disease Risk in Yang Deficiency Constitution of Healthy Subjects

Objectives. Differences among healthy subjects and associated disease risks are of substantial interest in clinical medicine. According to the theory of “constitution-disease correlation” in traditional Chinese medicine, we try to find out if there is any connection between intolerance of cold in Yang deficiency constitution and molecular evidence and if there is any gene expression basis in specific disorders. Methods. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were collected from Chinese Han individuals with Yang deficiency constitution (n=20) and balanced constitution (n=8) (aged 18–28) and global gene expression profiles were determined between them using the Affymetrix HG-U133 Plus 2.0 array. Results. The results showed that when the fold change was ≥1.2 and q ≤ 0.05, 909 genes were upregulated in the Yang deficiency constitution, while 1189 genes were downregulated. According to our research differential genes found in Yang deficiency constitution were usually related to lower immunity, metabolic disorders, and cancer tendency. Conclusion. Gene expression disturbance exists in Yang deficiency constitution, which corresponds to the concept of constitution and gene classification. It also suggests people with Yang deficiency constitution are susceptible to autoimmune diseases, enteritis, arthritis, metabolism disorders, and cancer, which provides molecular evidence for the theory of “constitution-disease correlation.

Multi-omics analysis reveals the prognostic and tumor micro-environmental value of lumican in multiple cancer types

Background: Lumican (LUM), a proteoglycan of the extracellular matrix, has been reported to be involved in the regulation of immune escape processes, but the data supporting this phenomenon are not sufficient. In this study, we aimed to explore the links among LUM expression, survival, tumor microenvironment (TME), and immunotherapy in 33 cancer types.Methods: Data from several databases, such as UCSC Xena, GTEx, UALCAN, HPA, GEPIA2, TISIDB, PrognoScan, TIMER2, and GEO, as well as published studies, were used to determine the relationship between LUM expression and clinical features, TME, heterogeneity, and tumor stemness.Results: The expression of LUM was statistically different in most tumors versus normal tissues, both at the RNA and protein expression levels. High expression of LUM was typically associated with a poor prognosis in tumors. Additionally, immune scores, six immune cells, four immunosuppressive cells, cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs)-associated and immunosuppressive factors, tumor mutation burden (TMB), microsatellite instability (MSI), DNAss, and RNAss were all significantly associated with LUM. Among them, LUM expression displayed a significant positive correlation with CAFs and their factors, and exhibited immunosuppressive effects in six independent immunotherapy cohorts.Conclusion: Multi-omics analysis suggests that LUM may have been a prognostic marker, contributed to immunosuppression in the TME, and decreased the effectiveness of immune checkpoint inhibitors