In this article, firstly, we talk about why we respond to “climate change impacts in nature and society” educationally. Secondly, we try to find ways that Jeju also has the ability to halt biodiversity loss and apply nature-based solutions to conserve biodiversity, enhance resilience, and so improve the well-being of the people on the island and in turn to improve the well-being of the people on the planet at the grass roots level of UNESCO internationally protected areas. Thirdly, we try to develop World Environment University Online School Leads Establishment of World Environment University so called “Lead WEU.” We will announce “World Environment University Online School Leads Establishment of World Environment University” at Private Meeting of the 2020 World Conservation Congress on September 9, 2021 in Marseille of France. We propose ”Jeju Global Governance of World Heritage; Climate Change Impacts and Integrated Management of UNESCO internationally Protected Area, at the graduate class of Jeju National University from September 2 to December 9, 2021. The core program centered at the University itself would be developed initially on the basis of the comparative advantage offered by its location in Jeju and the quality of faculty, full and part time, that could be recruited to the University.
We investigate the construct of privacy concern and its dimensions, together with its expected counterbalance, trust in the information collector, on willingness to disclose different information types to a digital seller in a multicountry study. This issue is critical, given the evolution of technologies that now allow for the collection and analysis of a huge amount of data. We conceptualise consumers’ privacy concerns as the extent to which a consumer is concerned about (Milberg, et al., 2000; Rose, 2006): (1) the general collection of personal information (data collection), (2) unauthorised secondary use (data secondary usage), (3) improper access (data access) and (4) errors (data accuracy). The first contribution of our research is that we will verify the validity of the four dimensions of information privacy concern in a multiple-country study. We then develop a model by testing the impacts of privacy concern and trust on the willingness to disclose sensitive and non-sensitive information. First, our results validate the privacy concern scale based on the four dimensions (data collection, data secondary usage, data access and data accuracy) in eight countries and show that information disclosure can contain an inner trap based on customer training to disclose information that may transform information disclosure in an habit that increases willingness to share that may overcome the effects of privacy concern and trust on customers’ intended behaviours, opening possibilities of potential harmful behaviours on the part of companies to get data from their prospects that should be carefully monitored and managed.
Social media have been proved as a tool for social branding, but not as a tool for return on investment (ROI) generation. The ultimate goal of any business activities is to generate ROI; therefore, businesses should know what social media practices actually increase their ROI. Researchers in the computer science and engineering areas have attempted to create a systematic model/statistical method to quantify data collected from social media to generate meaningful consumer and market trends and ROI (Zeng, Chen, Lusch, & Li. 2010). This process is called Social Media Intelligence (SMI) or Social Media Analytics (SMA). Researchers have not been yet successful in developing an effective analytical system for social media data to generate ROI. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore which social media practices would affect ROI based on SMA process with key techniques used to analyze the indicators in social media (i.e., Key Performance Indicators; KPIs) that show the effectiveness of a company in achieving its business objectives. This study is an exploratory research to determine the nature of a problem in the SMI, to gain further insight, and to show opportunities in the subject area. The result shows that using crawling, topic modeling and social network analysis techniques, businesses could collect and monitor right KPIs depending on their social media goals (e.g., number of followers for awareness, number of link clicks for engagement, number of lead magnets for conversion). After then, using the techniques to analyze the KPIs (e.g., opinion mining, sentiment analysis, etc. for the understand stage), businesses would be able to identify/predict consumer demands and market trends. Based on this prediction, businesses need to visualize the result to customers by executing right marketing strategies (e.g., effective viral marketing, personalized Call-To-Action, customized product/service, direct relationship establishment, frequent communication, establish long relationship, etc.). This study could contribute to the field by presenting the effective KPIs and techniques organized based on the SMA stages and social media goals and could provide the industry a right tool and a direction for their social media promotional practices.
Excessive body weight gain during the growth period of early life may predispose individuals towards obesity and metabolic disorder in later life. We investigated the possibility of using the food efficiency ratio as an early indicator for predicting susceptibility to diet-induced obesity and insulin resistance. Four-week-old, prepubertal, male Sprague Dawley rats were divided into obesity-prone and obesity-resistant groups based on food efficiency ratio values after five days on a high-fat diet. Metabolic parameters measured after 2, 6, and 10 weeks, and specific phenotypes were compared with each group. Obesityprone rats had higher increases in body weight and fat mass compared to obesity-resistant rats over the study period. Obesity-prone rats became glucose intolerant early in this study and remained so throughout the experimental period, with increases in fat weight and leptin levels occurring first, followed by increases in insulin level. Gluconeogenesis and insulin resistance significantly increased in obesity-prone groups in which activities of glucose-6-phosphatase and phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase were increased and glucokinase activity decreased. Higher food efficiency ratio at an early age was closely correlated with body fat accumulation, hyperleptinemia, and hyperinsulinemia of middle and elderly age. We suggest a high food efficiency ratio in prepubertal subjects may be a useful predictor of future obesity and insulin resistance.
Tet1 is well known initiatior of DNA demethylation by converting 5-methylcytosine to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine in CpG-rich regions of the brain. There have been studies using Tet1-KO mice about adult neurogenesis, cognition and memory extinction, it is still unclear whether Tet1 overexpression is beneficial for CNS networks. Thus in this study, Tet1 overexpression TG mice were developed and behavioral phenotypes were analyzed with related gene studies. Most of all, they showed anxiety-like behaviors and improved memories with increased immature neurons in the hippocampal dentate gyrus. Hence, they showed increased immediate-early gene levels (c-Fos, Arc, Egr-1, and BDNF), activation of intracellular calcium signaling (CamKII, ERK, and CREB) and changes in the expression of GABA receptor subunits (GABRA2, and GABRA4) in several brain regions. By overexpressing Tet1 in NB41A3 cells, effect of Tet1 overexpression on intracellular calcium levels with higher Egr-1 promoter activity was evaluated. These findings suggests Tet1 overexpression affects excitatory synaptic networks via activating NMDAR-dependent calcium signaling which leads to dysregulation of inhibitory synaptic networks. Also, it implies chronic and excessive activation of intraneuronal calcium signaling by Tet1 leads to behavioral differences in mice. Additionally, it suggests Tet1 overexpression in the PFC, hippocampus, and amygdala contributes as both beneficial and harmful for neural networks in differing aspects.
Crystals of proteinaceous insecticidal proteins, Cry proteins, produced by Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) have been generally used to control insect pests. In this study, through the 3D structure prediction and accompanying mutagenesis study for the Mod-Cry1Ac, 7 and 16 amino acid residues from domain I and II, respectively, responsible for its insecticidal activity against larvae of Spodoptera exigua and Ostrinia furnacalis were identified. To construct novel cry genes with enhanced insecticidal activity, we randomly mutated these 23 amino acid sequences by in vitro muti site-directed mutagenesis, resulting in totally 24 mutant cry genes. For further characterization, these mutant cry genes were expressed as a fusion protein with polyhedrin using baculovirus expression system. SDS-PAGE analysis of the recombinant polyhedra revealed that expressed Cry proteins was occluded into polyhedra and activated stably to 65 kDa by trypsin. When the insecticidal activities of these mutant Cry proteins against to larvae of P. xylostella and S. exigua were assayed, they showed higher or similar insecticidal activity compared to those of Cry1Ac and Cry1C. Especially, among them Mutant-N16 showed the highest insecticidal activity against to both of P. xylostella and S. exigua. Therefore, Mutant-N16 is considered to have the potential for the efficacious biological insecticide.
Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) have detrimental effects on human health. Among these EDCs, bisphenol A (BPA) binds to estrogen receptors (ERs) to stimulate estrogen-mediated responses. BPA is assumed to disrupt the reproductive and developmental system of humans. In addition, BPA has recently been suspected as a risk of carcinogenesis. Because BPA can cause abnormal estrogen-mediated response in the organism, exposure to BPA may stimulate growth of estrogen-dependent breast cancers in human. In breast cancer, cyclin E and cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p27 are important in G1/S phase transition during cell cycle progression. In this study, using an MTT assay, we investigated the effect of BPA on proliferation of MCF-7 breast cancer cells in vitro. In addition, we also analyzed the transcriptional levels of cyclin E and p27 following treatment with BPA using semi-quantitative RT-PCR. As a result, treatment with BPA resulted in significant induction of breast cancer cell growth, compared to a vehicle. BPA caused alterations of cyclin E and p27 mRNA expression. Expression of cyclin E was increased by BPA, while p27 was decreased at 24 h after treatment with BPA in MCF-7 breast cancer cells. Taken together, these collective results suggest that exposure to BPA induced breast cancer cell proliferation with deregulation of the cell cycle. A further study is required in order to determine the effects of BPA on the carcinogenic process in in vivo models.
Fibroblasts of large animals are easy to isolate and to maintain in vitro culture. Thus, these cells are extensively applied to donor cell for somatic cell nuclear transfer, and to substrate cells to generate induced pluripotent stem cells after transfection of required genes to be essentially required for direct reprogramming. However, limited mitotic activity of fibroblasts to differentiate along a terminal lineage becomes restrictive for their versatile application. Recently, commercial culture medium and systems developed for primary cells are provided by manufactures. In this study, we examined whether one of the systems developed for primary fibroblasts of human are effective on porcine ear skin fibroblasts. To this end, we performed proliferation assay after five days culture in vitro of porcine fibroblasts in medium DMEM, which is generally used for fibroblasts culture, and medium M106 for human dermal fibroblasts, supplemented with various concentrations of FBS and LSGS contained mainly growth factors, respectively. Consequence was that presence of 15% FBS and 0.1 X concentrations of LSGS in DMEM showed most active proliferation of porcine fibroblasts.
Apolipophorin-Ⅲ (apoLp-Ⅲ) is a hemolymph protein whose function is to facilitate lipid transport in an aqueous medium in insect. Recently, apolipophorin-Ⅲ in Galleria mellonella and Hyphantria cunea was shown to play an unexpected role in insect immune activation. We show here a novel possible function/role of apoLp-Ⅲ in insects. To investigate the genes which have a relationship with apoLp-Ⅲ in fall webworm larvae, we reduction of endogenous Hc apoLp-Ⅲ mRNA levels in larvae via RNA interference (RNAi). The RNAi-mediated Hc apoLp-Ⅲ reduction resulted in the reduction of antioxidants, like MnSOD, catalase, and glutathione S transferase as well as immune proteins. In particular, expression of MnSOD commonly decreased in fat body, midgut, and hemocytes following the knockdown of Hc apoLp-Ⅲ, which induced an elevated level of superoxide anion in H. cunea larvae. The observed effect of Hc apoLp-Ⅲ RNAi suggests that Hc apoLp-Ⅲ is related to the action/expression of antioxidants.