334 research outputs found
The moderating role of individualism/collectivism in predicting male Chinese university students’ exercise behavior using the theory of planned behavior
The purpose of this study was to check the moderating role of
individualism/collectivism in predicting male Chinese university
students’ exercise behavior using the theory of planned behavior (TPB) model.
The TPB model was validated through SEM (structure equation
model), and the moderating effect of individualism and collectivism was validated
through a hierarchical regression and simple slopes analysis using a sample
collected from 115 male Chinese university students. The results showed that the
product terms of individualism and TPB factors were not able to significantly
predict exercise intention after inclusion in the regression equation, nor were
the product terms of collectivism and PBC (perceived behavior control) able to do
so. However, the product terms of collectivism and attitude, as well as
collectivism and SN (subjective norm) were able to significantly predict exercise
intention when included in the regression equation. That is,
horizontal and vertical collectivism can significantly moderate
TPB constructs, primarily by moderating the relationship between
attitude-exercise intention and SN-exercise intention. This study found that the
predictive validity of exercise attitudes on exercise intentions in TPB
constructs is greater only at low levels of horizontal and vertical collectivism
and low at high levels. The predictive validity of SN is greater at high levels
of horizontal and vertical collectivism and low in the inverse case.
This research serves to enrich the theoretical framework for
the theory of planned behavior and provides useful information for understanding
university students’ exercise intentions and
behaviors
Query-dominant User Interest Network for Large-Scale Search Ranking
Historical behaviors have shown great effect and potential in various
prediction tasks, including recommendation and information retrieval. The
overall historical behaviors are various but noisy while search behaviors are
always sparse. Most existing approaches in personalized search ranking adopt
the sparse search behaviors to learn representation with bottleneck, which do
not sufficiently exploit the crucial long-term interest. In fact, there is no
doubt that user long-term interest is various but noisy for instant search, and
how to exploit it well still remains an open problem.
To tackle this problem, in this work, we propose a novel model named
Query-dominant user Interest Network (QIN), including two cascade units to
filter the raw user behaviors and reweigh the behavior subsequences.
Specifically, we propose a relevance search unit (RSU), which aims to search a
subsequence relevant to the query first and then search the sub-subsequences
relevant to the target item. These items are then fed into an attention unit
called Fused Attention Unit (FAU). It should be able to calculate attention
scores from the ID field and attribute field separately, and then adaptively
fuse the item embedding and content embedding based on the user engagement of
past period. Extensive experiments and ablation studies on real-world datasets
demonstrate the superiority of our model over state-of-the-art methods. The QIN
now has been successfully deployed on Kuaishou search, an online video search
platform, and obtained 7.6% improvement on CTR.Comment: 10 page
Transforming growth factor β-activated kinase 1 transcriptionally suppresses hepatitis B virus replication
Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) replication in hepatocytes is restricted by the host innate immune system and related intracellular signaling pathways. Transforming growth factor β-activated kinase 1 (TAK1) is a key mediator of toll-like receptors and pro-inflammatory cytokine signaling pathways. Here, we report that silencing or inhibition of endogenous TAK1 in hepatoma cell lines leads to an upregulation of HBV replication, transcription, and antigen expression. In contrast, overexpression of TAK1 significantly suppresses HBV replication, while an enzymatically inactive form of TAK1 exerts no effect. By screening TAK1-associated signaling pathways with inhibitors and siRNAs, we found that the MAPK-JNK pathway was involved in TAK1-mediated HBV suppression. Moreover, TAK1 knockdown or JNK pathway inhibition induced the expression of farnesoid X receptor α, a transcription factor that upregulates HBV transcription. Finally, ectopic expression of TAK1 in a HBV hydrodynamic injection mouse model resulted in lower levels of HBV DNA and antigens in both liver and serum. In conclusion, our data suggest that TAK1 inhibits HBV primarily at viral transcription level through activation of MAPK-JNK pathway, thus TAK1 represents an intrinsic host restriction factor for HBV replication in hepatocytes
Nodal degeneracy of guided modes in uniaxial crystal slabs
We study the dispersions of the guided modes in the continuous uniaxial crystal slab waveguide and engineer their degeneracies through dielectric anisotropy. By switching the uniaxial positivity and negativity, we can obtain distinctive nodal types, point and line, for the lowest degeneracy in frequency. The mirror symmetry protections, Mx and My, are pointed out, and the degeneracy properties are intuitively analyzed through comparing the approximate slopes of the guided modes. Our results reveal a link between the lowest nodal types and the positivity/negativity of the uniaxial crystal, and provide a new approach to regulate the topology of degeneracy in two-dimensional photonic bands
High L-Carnitine Levels Impede Viral Control in Chronic Hepatitis B Virus Infection
Persistent antigen exposure during chronic hepatitis B infection leads to exhausted immune responses, thus impeding viral control. In recent years, immunometabolism opens new therapeutic possibilities for the modulation of immune responses. Herein, we investigated the immunomodulatory effect of L-carnitine (L-Cn) on immune cells in chronic HBV infection. In this study, 141 treatment-naïve patients with chronic HBV infection, 38 patients who achieved HBsAg loss following antiviral treatment, and 47 patients who suffered from HBV-related HCC from real-life clinical practice were recruited. The plasma L-Cn levels were measured by ELISA. RNA sequencing was conducted to define the transcriptional profiles of peripheral blood mononuclear cells after L-Cn stimulation. In vitro assays were performed to assess the effect of L-Cn on immune cells; the frequencies and function of immune cells were analyzed by flow cytometry. We found that compared with patients with HBsAg loss, patients with HBsAg positivity and patients who suffered from HBV-related HCC had higher levels of L-Cn, and the plasma levels of L-Cn in the HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis patients who had elevated ALT were significantly higher than that of HBeAg-negative chronic infection and HBsAg loss groups. Moreover, a positive correlation between plasma levels of L-Cn and HBsAg levels was found. Additionally, RNA sequencing analysis demonstrated that L-Cn altered the transcriptional profiles related to immune response. In vitro assays revealed that L-Cn suppressed the proliferation of and IFN-γ production by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. It also down-regulated the proliferation and IgG production of B cells. Notably, L-Cn enhanced IL-10 secretion from regulatory T cells and up-regulated the expression of inhibitory receptors on T cells. Moreover, a variant in CPT2 (rs1799821) was confirmed to be associated with L-Cn levels as well as complete response in CHB patients following Peg-IFNα antiviral therapy. Taken together, the immunosuppressive properties of L-Cn may hinder the control of HBV in chronic HBV infection, implicating that L-Cn manipulation might influence the prognosis of patients with HBV infection
Effects of Fluorination on Fused Ring Electron Acceptor for Active Layer Morphology, Exciton Dissociation, and Charge Recombination in Organic Solar Cells
Fluorination is one of the effective approaches to alter the organic semiconductor properties that impact the performance of the organic solar cells (OSCs). Positive effects of fluorination are also revealed in the application of fused ring electron acceptors (FREAs). However, in comparison with the efforts allocated to the material designs and power conversion efficiency enhancement, understanding on the excitons and charge carriers' behaviors in high-performing OSCs containing FREAs is limited. Herein, the impact of fluorine substituents on the active layer morphology, and therefore exciton dissociation, charge separation, and charge carriers' recombination processes are examined by fabricating OSCs with PTO2 as the donor and two FREAs, O-IDTT-IC and its fluorinated analogue O-IDTT-4FIC, as the acceptors. With the presence of O-IDTT-4FIC in the devices, it is found that the excitons dissociate more efficiently, and the activation energy required to split the excitons to free charge carriers is much lower; the charge carriers live longer and suffer less extent of trap-assisted recombination; the trap density is 1 order of magnitude lower than that of the nonfluorinated counterpart. Overall, these findings provide information about the complex impacts of FREA fluorination on efficiently performed OSCs
Knockout of CAFFEOYL-COA 3-O-METHYLTRANSFERASE 6/6L enhances the S/G ratio of lignin monomers and disease resistance in Nicotiana tabacum
BackgroundNicotiana tabacum is an important economic crop, which is widely planted in the world. Lignin is very important for maintaining the physiological and stress-resistant functions of tobacco. However, higher lignin content will produce lignin gas, which is not conducive to the formation of tobacco quality. To date, how to precisely fine-tune lignin content or composition remains unclear.ResultsHere, we annotated and screened 14 CCoAOMTs in Nicotiana tabacum and obtained homozygous double mutants of CCoAOMT6 and CCoAOMT6L through CRSIPR/Cas9 technology. The phenotype showed that the double mutants have better growth than the wild type whereas the S/G ratio increased and the total sugar decreased. Resistance against the pathogen test and the extract inhibition test showed that the transgenic tobacco has stronger resistance to tobacco bacterial wilt and brown spot disease, which are infected by Ralstonia solanacearum and Alternaria alternata, respectively. The combined analysis of metabolome and transcriptome in the leaves and roots suggested that the changes of phenylpropane and terpene metabolism are mainly responsible for these phenotypes. Furthermore, the molecular docking indicated that the upregulated metabolites, such as soyasaponin Bb, improve the disease resistance due to highly stable binding with tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase targets in Ralstonia solanacearum and Alternaria alternata.ConclusionsCAFFEOYL-COA 3-O-METHYLTRANSFERASE 6/6L can regulate the S/G ratio of lignin monomers and may affect tobacco bacterial wilt and brown spot disease resistance by disturbing phenylpropane and terpene metabolism in leaves and roots of Nicotiana tabacum, such as soyasaponin Bb
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