Search

BACKGROUND: Tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), a melanin synthesis pathway enzyme hydroxylating tyrosine into 3,4‐dihydroxyphenylalanine, is involved in the pigmentation and sclerotization of insect cuticles. However, the role of TH in 28‐spotted potato ladybeetle (Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata), an emerging pest of the solanaceous crops has been explored to a limited extent. In this study, we integrated dietary RNA interference (RNAi) and hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining with various bioassays to analyze the role of tyrosine hydroxylase (HvTH) throughout the developmental processes of Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata. RESULTS: The results revealed that ingestion of dsHvTH led to cuticle tanning impairment, arrested larval feeding in the first and second instars of Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata, and subsequently resulted in 100% mortality. The H&E staining assays revealed that dsHvTH prevented new abdominal cuticle formation. A pharmacological study using 3‐iodo‐tyrosine (3‐IT), a HvTH inhibitor, disrupted larval–larval–pupal cuticle tanning during the third–fourth instar larval development and eventually failed to pupate. Similarly, dsHvTH fed to fourth instars hindered larval–pupal–adult cuticle tanning, and the eclose adults were 100% malformed. Ingestion of dsHvTH or 3‐IT significantly down‐regulated HvTH, HvDDC, Hvebony, and Hvlaccase2 expression and reduced dopamine levels. Finally, HvTH silencing in adult females substantially reduced the offspring hatching rates. CONCLUSIONS: The collective results of the study suggested that HvTH plays conserved roles in larval–pupal–adult cuticle melanization and sclerotization while exhibiting a novel function in Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata reproduction. © 2022 Society of Chemical Industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Use of RNA interference (RNAi) technology in effective pest management has been explored for decades. Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata is a major solanaceous crop pest in Asia. In this study, the effects of the RNAi‐mediated silencing of clathrin heavy chain in H. vigintioctopunctata were investigated. RESULTS: Feeding either the in vitro‐synthesized or the bacterially expressed double‐stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) significantly impaired the normal physiology of H. vigintioctopunctata instars and adults. However, the bacterially expressed dsHvChc caused higher mortality than the in vitro‐synthesized ones in the larvae and adults. Moreover, on evaluating the potential risk of dsHvChc on Propylea japonica, significant transcriptional effects of dsHvChc1 were observed, while the organismal level effects were not significant. On the contrary, dsHvChc2 did not affect P. japonica at either level. A similar test revealed significant transcriptional effects of dsPjChc1 on H. vigintioctopunctata, while staying ineffective at the organismal levels. Conversely, dsPjChc2 did not affect H. vigintioctopunctata at either level. Importantly, no effect of dsPjChc1 exposure on H. vigintioctopunctata suggested that other factors besides the 21‐nucleotide (nt) matches between sequences were responsible. Finally, ingestion of dsHvmChc1 derived from H. vigintioctomaculata, containing 265‐nt matches with dsHvChc1, caused 100% mortality in H. vigintioctopunctata. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that (i) species with numerous 21‐nt matches in homologous genes are more likely to be susceptible to dsRNA; (ii) dsRNA can be safely designed to avoid negative effects on non‐target organisms at both transcriptional and organismal levels; (iii) HvChc can be used as an efficient RNAi target gene to effectively manage H. vigintioctopunctata. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hash join algorithms suffer from extensive CPU cache stalls. This article shows that the standard hash join algorithm for disk-oriented databases (i.e. GRACE) spends over 80% of its user time stalled on CPU cache misses, and explores the use of CPU cache prefetching to improve its cache performance. Applying prefetching to hash joins is complicated by the data dependencies, multiple code paths, and inherent randomness of hashing. We present two techniques, group prefetching and software-pipelined prefetching, that overcome these complications. These schemes achieve 1.29-4.04X speedups for the join phase and 1.37-3.49X speedups for the partition phase over GRACE and simple prefetching approaches. Moreover, compared with previous cache-aware approaches (i.e. cache partitioning), the schemes are at least 36% faster on large relations and do not require exclusive use of the CPU cache to be effective. Finally, comparing the elapsed real times when disk I/Os are in the picture, our cache prefetching schemes achieve 1.12-1.84X speedups for the join phase and 1.06-1.60X speedups for the partition phase over the GRACE hash join algorithm. Categories and Subject Descriptors: D.1.m [Programming Techniques]: Miscellaneous; H.2.4 [Database Management]: Systems--Query processing General Terms: Algorithms, Design, Performance Additional Key Words and Phrases: Hash join, CPU cache performance, CPU cache prefetching, group prefetching, software-pipelined prefetching

ABSTRACT: Understanding the incentives for and consequences of accounting method choices is important to various constituents of accounting. In 1998, a Chinese accounting regulation allowed listed companies to voluntarily write-down [...]

Rapamycin is an immunosuppressant that has been shown to prevent tumor growth following organ transplantation. However, its exact mode of antitumor action remains unknown. The present study used the B16-F10 (B16) murine melanoma model to explore the antitumor mechanism of rapamycin, and it was revealed that rapamycin reduced B16 cell viability in vitro and in vivo. In addition, in vitro and in vivo, the results of western blotting showed that rapamycin reduced Bcl2 expression, and enhanced the protein expression levels of cleaved caspase 3 and Bax, indicating that it can induce the apoptosis of B16 melanoma cells. Furthermore, the results of cell cycle analysis and western blotting showed that rapamycin induced B16 cell cycle arrest in the G1 phase, based on the reduction in the protein expression levels of CDK1, cyclin D1 and CDK4, as well as the increase in the percentage of cells in G1 phase. Rapamycin also significantly increased the number of autophagosomes in B16 melanoma cells, as determined by transmission electron microscopy. Furthermore, the results of RT-qPCR and western blotting showed that rapamycin upregulated the protein expression levels of microtubule-associated protein light chain 3 (LC3) and Beclin-1, while downregulating the expression of p62 in vitro and in vivo, thus indicating that rapamycin could trigger cellular autophagy. The present study revealed that rapamycin in combination with chloroquine (CQ) further increased LC3 expression compared with that in the CQ group, suggesting that rapamycin induced an increase in autophagy in B16 cells. Furthermore, the results of western blotting showed that rapamycin blocked the phosphorylation of p70 ribosomal S6 kinase (p70-S6k) and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) proteins in vitro and in vivo, thus suggesting that rapamycin may exert its antitumor effect by inhibiting the phosphorylation of the mTOR/p70-S6k pathway. In conclusion, rapamycin may inhibit tumor growth by inducing cellular G1 phase arrest and apoptosis. In addition, rapamycin may exert its antitumor effects by inducing the autophagy of B16 melanoma cells in vitro and in vivo, and the mTOR/p70-S6k signaling pathway may be involved in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic Value Added (EVA[TM]) has been acclaimed to be the most recent and exciting innovation in company performance measures. Although the popular press reports numerous anecdotal stories of successful EVA adoption, there has been little empirical evidence supporting the claim that EVA is the most useful measure of corporate performance. This study examines the EVA performance of 566 U.S. companies and compares the information usefulness of EVA with accounting earnings and residual income. Three conclusions result from the examination: (1) although improving EVA performance is associated with a higher stock return, the association is not as perfect as claimed by EVA advocates, (2) EVA is more powerful than traditional measures of accounting profit in explaining stock return; however, accounting earnings are still of significant incremental information value in addition to EVA, and (3) not only is EVA similar to residual income in concept, the two metrics are empirically comparable. The implications of the findings for researchers and practitioners are discussed., Is there a single measure of corporate performance enabling investors to identify investment opportunities and motivate managers to make value-added business decisions? Obviously, this is a question of utmost importance [...]

Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata is a highly polyphagous pest of solanaceous plants in Asia and has been predominantly controlled using synthetic insecticides. The intensive use of insecticides has led to the development of resistance, creating an urgent need for new control strategies, for this insect pest. RNA interference (RNAi) has been explored as a pest management strategy in multiple insect pests. In this study, we explored RNAi as a potential alternative for controlling H. vigintioctopunctata. Based on preliminary research, we hypothesized that HvCOPI, a coat protein complex that facilitates retrograde transport, is a promising novel molecular target for H. vigintioctopunctata control. To test this overarching hypothesis, we examined the toxicity of double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) towards H. vigintioctopunctata using dietary RNAi toxicity assays targeting eight HvCOPI subunits, including α-, β-, β′-, γ-, δ-, ε-, ζ-, and Arf1-COPI using in vitro synthesized and bacterially expressed dsRNAs. The results demonstrated that ingestion of dsHvCOPIs induced acute feeding cessation in both larvae and adults, which led to significant mortality. In this study, H. vigintioctopunctata showed similar sensitivity to both types of dsHvCOPIs production. Ingestion of bacterially expressed dsHvαCOPI and dsHvγCOPI led to the highest mortality in both larvae and adults. Interestingly, there was a significant positive relationship between the knockdown efficiency of different HvCOPI subunits and the corresponding mortality on day 2 and 4, respectively. These combined results suggest that α and γ subunits of HvCOPI are promising targets for the development of RNAi-based biopesticides for the management of H. vigintioctopunctata. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is challenging to model the performance of distributed graph computation. Explicit formulation cannot easily capture the diversified factors and complex interactions in the system. Statistical learning methods require a large number of training samples to generate an accurate prediction model. However, it is time-consuming to run the required graph computation tests to obtain the training samples. In this paper, we propose TransGPerf, a transfer learning based solution that can exploit prior knowledge from a source scenario and utilize a manageable amount of training data for modeling the performance of a target graph computation scenario. Experimental results show that our proposed method is capable of generating accurate models for a wide range of graph computation tasks on PowerGraph and GraphX. It outperforms transfer learning methods proposed for other applications in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Payback methods of capital budgeting are commonly used by business for project evaluation, though discounted cashflow techniques are recommended, and there are pragmatic factors related to the position of management which help explain this behavior. Payback methods are used by 85% of firms in the survey, and nearly half of firms answering the survey say that payback methods are important in decisions on capital budgeting. If management rewrads are linked to accounting earnings, payback methods are more likely to be used, and shareholder wealth interests are less likely to be given importance.

Metastasis is the main cause of cancer-related death. Growing evidence has shown that changes in glucose metabolism in nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells affect the invasion and metastasis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma through many pathways. This review summarizes the molecular mechanism underlying abnormal glucose metabolism in nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells and analyzes its relationship with the invasion and metastasis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, including aerobic glycolysis, aerobic oxidation, and pentose phosphate pathway. The aim is to provide novel approaches using the relationships among glucose metabolism, invasion, and metastasis in the targeted therapy of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

We investigate the value relevance of two different accounting methods, predecessor vs. acquisition, for business combination under common control (BCUCC) in China. Based on the return and price models, we find that net income under the predecessor method is of higher value relevance than that under the acquisition method. Further analysis suggests that the difference appears to be driven by uncertainties in fair value estimation surrounding the BCUCC and that net incomes under predecessor method can better predict future earnings and future operating cash flows than under the acquisition method. Our research provides some initial evidence to support the use of the predecessor method in China, and at the same time, we discuss implications for the IASB standard setting project for the BCUCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]