Environmental concern and apparel consumption: an empirical study of Chinese consumers

In the past three decades, the apparel manufacturing industry has been one of driving forces for the rapid growth of China’s economy. In 2010, China exported $130 billion apparel products accounting for 37$150 billion (Zheng, 2010). With the booming consumption and export, the impacts of apparel production, use and disposal on the environment have been accelerating. The level of air, water, and land pollutions has been unprecedented. According to a recent environmental awareness survey of Chinese consumers, 80 percent respondents rated environmental deterioration as the most concerned issue. Against this backdrop, a growing number of Chinese consumers are changing their apparel consumption behaviors with the belief that individual small efforts will add together to make a notable impact on the environmental protection (Lee, 2009)

magu is required for germline stem cell self-renewal through BMP signaling in the Drosophila testis

AbstractUnderstanding how stem cells are maintained in their microenvironment (the niche) is vital for their application in regenerative medicine. Studies of Drosophila male germline stem cells (GSCs) have served as a paradigm in niche-stem cell biology. It is known that the BMP and JAK-STAT pathways are necessary for the maintenance of GSCs in the testis (Kawase et al., 2004; Kiger et al., 2001; Schulz et al., 2004; Shivdasani and Ingham, 2003; Tulina and Matunis, 2001). However, our recent work strongly suggests that BMP signaling is the primary pathway leading to GSC self-renewal (Leatherman and DiNardo, 2010). Here we show that magu controls GSC maintenance by modulating the BMP pathway. We found that magu was specifically expressed from hub cells, and accumulated at the testis tip. Testes from magu mutants exhibited a reduced number of GSCs, yet maintained a normal population of somatic stem cells and hub cells. Additionally, BMP pathway activity was reduced, whereas JAK-STAT activation was retained in mutant testes. Finally, GSC loss caused by the magu mutation could be suppressed by overactivating the BMP pathway in the germline

Total genetic contribution assessment across the human genome

Quantifying the overall magnitude of every single locus' genetic effect on the widely measured human phenome is of great challenge. We introduce a unified modelling technique that can consistently provide a total genetic contribution assessment (TGCA) of a gene or genetic variant without thresholding genetic association signals. Genome-wide TGCA in five UK Biobank phenotype domains highlights loci such as the HLA locus for medical conditions, the bone mineral density locus WNT16 for physical measures, and the skin tanning locus MC1R and smoking behaviour locus CHRNA3 for lifestyle. Tissue-specificity investigation reveals several tissues associated with total genetic contributions, including the brain tissues for mental health. Such associations are driven by tissue-specific gene expressions, which share genetic basis with the total genetic contributions. TGCA can provide a genome-wide atlas for the overall genetic contributions in each particular domain of human complex traits. Quantifying the effects of individual loci on the human phenome is a challenging task. Here, the authors introduce a modelling technique, TGCA, that assesses total genetic contribution per locus and apply this to UK Biobank phenotype domains, revealing top loci and links to tissue-specific gene expression