The symbolic effect of minority representation and perceptions of the majority: how majority citizens perceive marriage-based immigrant representation in the South Korean government

This study investigates how minority representation affects the trust and perceived legitimacy of the government among the majority. To that end, this article examines the effect of marriage-based immigrant representation in the South Korean government in shaping native Koreans’ perceptions of job performance, trustworthiness, and fairness of the government through the utilization of survey experiment data. The analyses show that a greater representation of the marriage-based immigrant population does not produce positive effects on the native Koreans’ perceptions of the government. This finding indicates that the positive effects of minority representation may come at the expense of the majority’s trust and perceived legitimacy of the government. However, this article argues that representative bureaucracy may be able to reduce reputational damage among the majority by increasing and advertising their organizational competency

Venue Preference and Earthquake Mitigation Policy: Expanding the Micro-Model of Policy Choice

Seismologists have reported that a majority of recent earthquakes in Oklahoma have been triggered by the activities of oil and gas companies. Despite this fact, there is evidence of strong opposition toward earthquake mitigation policy. In this article, we argue that how individuals define issues affect their policy choice. Furthermore, we incorporate the concept of venue shopping from the literature on macro theories of the policy process to investigate the effect of problem definition in shaping individual venue preference for policy choice. Using unique survey data, we find that problem definition, particularly issue causality and issue image, is strongly related to individual support for earthquake mitigation policy. However, a more nuanced relationship between individual problem definition and venue preference is observed. Our findings contribute to scholarly endeavors to understand the politics of problem definition at an individual level, which may be the precursor of understanding policy choices at the institutional level

A hepatitis B virus-derived peptide combined with HBsAg exerts an anti-HBV effect in an HBV transgenic mouse model as a therapeutic vaccine

IntroductionFor complete or functional cure of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, application of immunotherapy is now being attempted. Recently, we reported that a 6-mer hepatitis B virus (HBV)-derived peptide, Poly6, exerts a strong anticancer effect in tumor-implanted mice through inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS)-producing DCs (Tip-DCs) in a type 1 interferon (IFN-I)-dependent manner, suggesting its potential as a vaccine adjuvant.MethodsIn this study, we explored the potential of Poly6 in combination with HBsAg as a therapeutic vaccine against hepatitis B virus infection. We investigated the immunotherapeutic potential of Poly6 combined with HBsAg vaccination against hepatitis B virus infection in C57BL/6 mice or an HBV transgenic mouse model.ResultsIn C57BL/6 mice, Poly6 enhanced DC maturation and DC migration capacity in an IFN-I-dependent manner. Moreover, the addition of Poly6 to alum in combination with HBsAg also led to enhanced HBsAg-specific cell-mediated immune (CMI) responses, suggesting its potential as an adjuvant of HBsAg-based vaccines. In HBV transgenic mice, vaccination with Poly6 combined with HBsAg exerted a strong anti-HBV effect via induction of HBV-specific humoral and cell-mediated immune responses. In addition, it also induced HBV-specific effector memory T cells (TEM).DiscussionOur data indicated that vaccination with Poly6 in combination with HBsAg exerts an anti-HBV effect in HBV transgenic mice, which is mainly mediated by HBV-specific CMI and humoral immune responses via IFN-I-dependent DC activation, suggesting the feasibility of Poly6 as an adjuvant for an HBV therapeutic vaccine

Myotis rufoniger genome sequence and analyses: M-rufoniger's genomic feature and the decreasing effective population size of Myotis bats

Myotis rufoniger is a vesper bat in the genus Myotis. Here we report the whole genome sequence and analyses of the M. rufoniger. We generated 124 Gb of short-read DNA sequences with an estimated genome size of 1.88 Gb at a sequencing depth of 66x fold. The sequences were aligned to M. brandtii bat reference genome at a mapping rate of 96.50% covering 95.71% coding sequence region at 10x coverage. The divergence time of Myotis bat family is estimated to be 11.5 million years, and the divergence time between M. rufoniger and its closest species M. davidii is estimated to be 10.4 million years. We found 1,239 function-altering M. rufoniger specific amino acid sequences from 929 genes compared to other Myotis bat and mammalian genomes. The functional enrichment test of the 929 genes detected amino acid changes in melanin associated DCT, SLC45A2, TYRP1, and OCA2 genes possibly responsible for the M. rufoniger's red fur color and a general coloration in Myotis. N6AMT1 gene, associated with arsenic resistance, showed a high degree of function alteration in M. rufoniger. We further confirmed that the M. rufoniger also has batspecific sequences within FSHB, GHR, IGF1R, TP53, MDM2, SLC45A2, RGS7BP, RHO, OPN1SW, and CNGB3 genes that have already been published to be related to bat's reproduction, lifespan, flight, low vision, and echolocation. Additionally, our demographic history analysis found that the effective population size of Myotis clade has been consistently decreasing since similar to 30k years ago. M. rufoniger's effective population size was the lowest in Myotis bats, confirming its relatively low genetic diversity

Are we ready to track climate-driven shifts in marine species across international boundaries? - A global survey of scientific bottom trawl data

Marine biota are redistributing at a rapid pace in response to climate change and shifting seascapes. While changes in fish populations and community structure threaten the sustainability of fisheries, our capacity to adapt by tracking and projecting marine species remains a challenge due to data discontinuities in biological observations, lack of data availability, and mismatch between data and real species distributions. To assess the extent of this challenge, we review the global status and accessibility of ongoing scientific bottom trawl surveys. In total, we gathered metadata for 283,925 samples from 95 surveys conducted regularly from 2001 to 2019. We identified that 59% of the metadata collected are not publicly available, highlighting that the availability of data is the most important challenge to assess species redistributions under global climate change. Given that the primary purpose of surveys is to provide independent data to inform stock assessment of commercially important populations, we further highlight that single surveys do not cover the full range of the main commercial demersal fish species. An average of 18 surveys is needed to cover at least 50% of species ranges, demonstrating the importance of combining multiple surveys to evaluate species range shifts. We assess the potential for combining surveys to track transboundary species redistributions and show that differences in sampling schemes and inconsistency in sampling can be overcome with spatio-temporal modeling to follow species density redistributions. In light of our global assessment, we establish a framework for improving the management and conservation of transboundary and migrating marine demersal species. We provide directions to improve data availability and encourage countries to share survey data, to assess species vulnerabilities, and to support management adaptation in a time of climate-driven ocean changes.En prensa6,86