Green entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) refers to individuals’ conviction that they can contribute to solving environmental issues and shows self-assurance in their efforts to protect the ...environment. The present investigation attempts to determine the role of employees’ green ESE in the green innovation (GI) of SMEs. It is also proposed that GI positively impacts organizational environmental, economic, and social performance. This study also evaluates the mediating role of GI and moderating role of the green knowledge-sharing culture. This study tested the hypothesis using a partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) by applying smart PLS software. A total of 289 employees from SMEs in China were targeted for data collection. The results confirmed that green ESE positively impacts GI. Additionally, the findings verified that GI positively enhances firms’ environmental, economic, and social performance. The results validate the mediating role of GI. The moderating results revealed that green knowledge-sharing culture does not play a moderating role in proposed relationships. This study serves the existing body of literature by providing empirical evidence on the significance of green ESE. The study outcomes highlighted the bridging role of employees’ green ESE for firms’ GI. The results also offer companies a road map for how staff members’ green ESE might help the businesses to improve their performance in terms of the environment, economy, and society.
Metabolic reprogramming is an emerging hallmark of cancer cells, in which cancer cells exhibit distinct metabolic phenotypes to fuel their proliferation and progression. The significant advancements ...made in the area of metabolic reprogramming make possible new strategies for overcoming malignant cancer, including triple-negative breast cancer. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is associated with high histologic grade, aggressive phenotype, and poor prognosis. Even though triple-negative breast cancer patients benefit from standard chemotherapy, they still face high recurrence rates and are more likely to develop resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs. Therefore, there is an urgent need to explore vulnerabilities of triple-negative breast cancer and develop novel therapeutic drugs to improve clinical outcomes for triple-negative breast cancer patients. Metabolic reprogramming may provide promising therapeutic targets for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer. In this paper, we primarily discuss how triple-negative breast cancer cells reprogram their metabolic phenotype and that of stromal cells in the microenvironment to survive under nutrient-poor conditions. Considering that metastasis and chemoresistance are the main contributors to mortality in triple-negative breast cancer patients, we also focus on the role of metabolic adaption in mediating metastasis and chemoresistance of triple-negative breast cancer tumors.
This paper introduces the R package meta4diag for implementing Bayesian bivariate meta-analyses of diagnostic test studies. Our package meta4diag is a purpose-built front end of the R package INLA. ...While INLA offers full Bayesian inference for the large set of latent Gaussian models using integrated nested Laplace approximations, meta4diag extracts the features needed for bivariate meta-analysis and presents them in an intuitive way. It allows the user a straightforward model specification and offers user-specific prior distributions. Further, the newly proposed penalized complexity prior framework is supported, which builds on prior intuitions about the behaviors of the variance and correlation parameters. Accurate posterior marginal distributions for sensitivity and specificity as well as all hyperparameters, and covariates are directly obtained without Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling. Further, univariate estimates of interest, such as odds ratios, as well as the summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve and other common graphics are directly available for interpretation. An interactive graphical user interface provides the user with the full functionality of the package without requiring any R programming. The package is available from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) at https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=meta4diag/ and its usage will be illustrated using three real data examples.
Recording technologies for rodents have seen huge advances in the last decade, allowing users to sample thousands of neurons simultaneously from multiple brain regions. This has prompted the need for ...digital tool kits to aid in curating anatomical data, however, existing tools either provide limited functionalities or require users to be proficient in coding to use them. To address this we created HERBS (Histological E-data Registration in rodent Brain Spaces), a comprehensive new tool for rodent users that offers a broad range of functionalities through a user-friendly graphical user interface. Prior to experiments, HERBS can be used to plan coordinates for implanting electrodes, targeting viral injections or tracers. After experiments, users can register recording electrode locations (e.g. Neuropixels and tetrodes), viral expression, or other anatomical features, and visualize the results in 2D or 3D. Additionally, HERBS can delineate labeling from multiple injections across tissue sections and obtain individual cell counts.Regional delineations in HERBS are based either on annotated 3D volumes from the Waxholm Space Atlas of the Sprague Dawley Rat Brain or the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas, though HERBS can work with compatible volume atlases from any species users wish to install. HERBS allows users to scroll through the digital brain atlases and provides custom-angle slice cuts through the volumes, and supports free-transformation of tissue sections to atlas slices. Furthermore, HERBS allows users to reconstruct a 3D brain mesh with tissue from individual animals. HERBS is a multi-platform open-source Python package that is available on PyPI and GitHub, and is compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems.
The impulsive vibration induced by human running and jumping, object falling, striking during decoration, etc., significantly disturbs the learning, work, and life of people through building ...structure transmission. To study the influence of impulsive vibration in buildings, a vacant frame building was selected as a tested building. The vibration at each floor besides hitting spot would be measured when a solid metal ball falling freely hit the first floor of this building. The vibration response at each floor caused by the excitation above was simulated through a finite element method. The parameters of the simulation model were optimized according to measured results. Furthermore, the influence of building structure, the total amount of stories, and slab dimension on the transmission of vibration from 1 Hz to 80 Hz which can be perceived by human bodies was quantitatively studied. Results showed that the vertical weighted vibration acceleration level at each floor linearly decreased with the increase of the logarithm of the distance between each floor and the hitting spot. A prediction model of vertical weighted vibration acceleration level from 1 Hz to 80 Hz induced by the impulsive vibration in buildings was developed according to simulation results. The corrections relating to the number of story, building structure, slab span, slab length-to-width ratio, and slab thickness were respectively introduced in the model which can predict the vertical weighted vibration acceleration level at each floor above the hitting spot. The results of this study can provide a basis for the prediction and control of impulsive vibration caused by an impact source with great stiffness in buildings.
The cortical population code is pervaded by activity patterns evoked by movement, but it remains largely unknown how such signals relate to natural behavior or how they might support processing in ...sensory cortices where they have been observed. To address this we compared high-density neural recordings across four cortical regions (visual, auditory, somatosensory, motor) in relation to sensory modulation, posture, movement, and ethograms of freely foraging male rats. Momentary actions, such as rearing or turning, were represented ubiquitously and could be decoded from all sampled structures. However, more elementary and continuous features, such as pose and movement, followed region-specific organization, with neurons in visual and auditory cortices preferentially encoding mutually distinct head-orienting features in world-referenced coordinates, and somatosensory and motor cortices principally encoding the trunk and head in egocentric coordinates. The tuning properties of synaptically coupled cells also exhibited connection patterns suggestive of area-specific uses of pose and movement signals, particularly in visual and auditory regions. Together, our results indicate that ongoing behavior is encoded at multiple levels throughout the dorsal cortex, and that low-level features are differentially utilized by different regions to serve locally relevant computations.
Background Hepatic fibrosis is a common pathologic stage in chronic liver disease development, which might ultimately lead to liver cirrhosis. Accumulating evidence suggests that adipose-derived ...stromal cells (ADSCs)-based therapies show excellent therapeutic potential in liver injury disease owing to its superior properties, including tissue repair ability and immunomodulation effect. However, cell-based therapy still limits to several problems, such as engraftment efficiency and immunoreaction, which impede the ADSCs-based therapeutics development. So, ADSCs-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs), especially for exosomes (ADSC-EXO), emerge as a promise cell-free therapeutics to ameliorate liver fibrosis. The effect and underlying mechanisms of ADSC-EXO in liver fibrosis remains blurred. Methods Hepatic fibrosis murine model was established by intraperitoneal sequential injecting the diethylnitrosamine (DEN) for two weeks and then carbon tetrachloride (CCl.sub.4) for six weeks. Subsequently, hepatic fibrosis mice were administrated with ADSC-EXO (10 mug/g) or PBS through tail vein infusion for three times in two weeks. To evaluate the anti-fibrotic capacity of ADSC-EXO, we detected liver morphology by histopathological examination, ECM deposition by serology test and Sirius Red staining, profibrogenic markers by qRT-PCR assay. LX-2 cells treated with TGF-beta (10 ng/ml) for 12 h were conducted for evaluating ADSC-EXO effect on activated hepatic stellate cells (HSCs). RNA-seq was performed for further analysis of the underlying regulatory mechanisms of ADSC-EXO in liver fibrosis. Results In this study, we obtained isolated ADSCs, collected and separated ADSCs-derived exosomes. We found that ADSC-EXO treatment could efficiently ameliorate DEN/CCl.sub.4-induced hepatic fibrosis by improving mice liver function and lessening hepatic ECM deposition. Moreover, ADSC-EXO intervention could reverse profibrogenic phenotypes both in vivo and in vitro, including HSCs activation depressed and profibrogenic markers inhibition. Additionally, RNA-seq analysis further determined that decreased glutamine synthetase (Glul) of perivenous hepatocytes in hepatic fibrosis mice could be dramatically up-regulated by ADSC-EXO treatment; meanwhile, glutamine and ammonia metabolism-associated key enzyme OAT was up-regulated and GLS2 was down-regulated by ADSC-EXO treatment in mice liver. In addition, glutamine synthetase inhibitor would erase ADSC-EXO therapeutic effect on hepatic fibrosis. Conclusions These findings demonstrated that ADSC-derived exosomes could efficiently alleviate hepatic fibrosis by suppressing HSCs activation and remodeling glutamine and ammonia metabolism mediated by hepatocellular glutamine synthetase, which might be a novel and promising anti-fibrotic therapeutics for hepatic fibrosis disease. Keywords: Adipose-derived stromal cells, Exosomes, Hepatic fibrosis, Glutamine synthetase
We aimed to determine the molecular characteristics of carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains 18081308 and 18083286, which were isolated from the urine and the sputum of two Chinese ...patients, respectively. Additionally, we conducted a comparative analysis between Tn 6411 carrying bla IMP-1 in strain 18083286 and transposons from the same family available in GenBank. Bacterial genome sequencing was carried out on strains 18081308 and 18083286 to obtain their whole genome sequence. Average nucleotide identity (ANI) was used for their precise species identification. Serotyping and multilocus sequence typing were performed. Furthermore, the acquired drug resistance genes of these strains were identified. The carbapenem-resistant P . aeruginosa strains isolated in the present study were of sequence type ST865 and serotype O6. They all carried the same resistance genes ( aacC2 , tmrB , and bla IMP-1 ). Tn 6411 , a Tn 7 -like transposon carrying bla IMP-1 , was found in strain 18083286 by single molecule real time (SMRT) sequencing. We also identified the presence of this transposon sequence in other chromosomes of P . aeruginosa and plasmids carried by Acinetobacter spp . in GenBank, indicating the necessity for heightening attention to the potential transferability of this transposon.
There are few reports on the material transformation and dominant microorganisms in the process of greening waste (GW) composting. In this study, the target microbial community succession and ...material transformation were studied in GW composting by using MiSeq sequencing and PICRUSt tools. The results showed that the composting process could be divided into four phases. Each phase of the composting appeared in turn and was unable to jump. In the calefactive phase, microorganisms decompose small molecular organics such as FA to accelerate the arrival of the thermophilic phase. In the thermophilic phase, thermophilic microorganisms decompose HA and lignocellulose to produce FA. While in the cooling phase, microorganisms degrade HA and FA for growth and reproduction. In the maturation phase, microorganisms synthesize humus using FA, amino acid and lignin nuclei as precursors. In the four phases of the composting, different representative genera of bacteria and fungi were detected. Streptomyces, Myceliophthora and Aspergillus, maintained high abundance in all phases of the compost. Correlation analysis indicated that bacteria, actinomycetes and fungi had synergistic effect on the degradation of lignocellulose. Therefore, it can accelerate the compost process by maintaining the thermophilic phase and adding a certain amount of FA in the maturation phase.
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