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Introduction: The cowpea weevil, Callosobruchus maculatus Fab., is the most economically important storage pest of cowpeas, causing up to 100 percent grain losses within six months of storage. To sustainably resist weevil damage, the cowpea cultivar IT86D-1010 was genetically modified via Agrobacterium -mediated transformation to produce event CSI-32, which expresses the kidney bean alpha-amylase inhibitor 1 (αAI-1) protein exclusively in the seed, providing suppression of weevil development. Methods: Trials were conducted in Ghana and Nigeria during the 2023 growing season to assess the performance in the field and in post-harvest storage of this transgenic event (CSI-32) and of four check lines: the non-transformed parental line (IT86D-1010) and three released varieties (SAMPEA 7, SAMPEA 20-T and IT13K-1070-2). Data collected from the field trials comprised plant growth parameters, pest infestations and damage, and grain yield. Harvested grain from each replicated entry was used in a storage assessment of bruchid resistance following artificial infestation with laboratory-reared cowpea weevils. Data were collected on egg oviposition, adult emergence, and grain damage as well as computation of median development period and Dobie's susceptibility index for each entry. Results and discussion: The agronomic performance and phenotypic characteristics of event CSI-32 were very similar to its parental counterpart and the other compared varieties. However, event CSI-32 exhibited complete suppression of weevil emergence and resistance to seed damage over the four-month period of the post-harvest study. Conclusions: This work represents the first field study of genetically modified cowpea expressing the αAI-1 protein. It demonstrates how a biotechnology solution to mitigate significant economic losses during cowpea storage, offers great potential for cowpea improvement programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that Latour's distinction between 'intermediaries' and 'mediators' captures important facets of tensions in market encounters and in the co-creation of 'supply' and 'demand' within digital advertising. Drawing upon 110 interviews with 87 practitioners, participation in sector meetings and training courses, and McGowan's 'autoethnographic' experiences, we explore the different forms tensions take in the two main configurations of digital advertising: (1) the 'open marketplace,' which is the site of much effort to turn mediators into intermediaries; and (2) 'walled gardens,' which increasingly are unequivocally mediators, and which are 'de-agencing' advertising's human practitioners in specific ways (e.g. by making human-guided targeting less attractive and more difficult). De-agencing interacts with current initiatives, especially Apple's, that partially 'de-individualize' advertising's audiences and reinforce walled gardens' mediator roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How was the European Union's privacy regime built? Drawing on regime theory and carrying out qualitative document analysis, we present the evolution of the privacy regime across the three decades from the 1995 European Data Protection Directive to the 2016 General Data Protection Regulation, the 2022 Data Governance Act and finally the 2022 Digital Markets package. Our analysis focuses on the European Commission and suggests that the privacy regime emerged out of the seemingly conflicting interplay between the (digital) single market whose power draws on the network effects of expanding data resources and concerns for personal privacy that seek limiting data gathering itself. Contrary to expectations, potential tensions between competition law and consumer protection have not hindered or decelerated the formation of the regulatory regime. In fact, these tensions have proven to be surprisingly productive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a poll made among the members of the editorial and advisory boards of Valuation Studies. The purpose is to overview the topic that is the remit of the new journal. The poll focused on three questions: 1. Why is the study of valuation topical? 2. What specific issues related to valuation are the most pressing ones to explore? 3. What sites and methods would be interesting for studying valuation? The answers to these questions provided by sixteen board members form the basis of the article. Based on these answers, it identi!es a number of themes concerning the study of valuation, elaborating on the rationale for attending to valuation, the conceptual challenges linked to this, and the specific issues and sites that deserve further attention.

Darier's disease (DD), caused by mutations in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) Ca(2+) ATPase ATP2A2 (SERCA2b), is a skin disease that exhibits impaired epidermal cell-to-cell adhesion and altered differentiation. Although previous studies have shown that keratinocyte Ca(2+) sequestration and fluxes are controlled by sphingolipid signaling, the role of this signaling pathway in DD previously has not been investigated. We show here that sphingosine levels increase and sphingosine kinase (SPHK1) expression decreases after inactivating SERCA2b with the specific SERCA2 inhibitors thapsigargin (TG) or small interfering RNA to SERCA2b. Conversely, inhibiting sphingosine lyase rescues the defects in keratinocyte differentiation, E-cadherin localization, desmoplakin (DP) translocation, and ER Ca(2+) sequestration seen in TG-treated keratinocytes. Here, we report early evidence that the keratinocyte sphingolipid and Ca(2+) signaling pathways intersect in ATP2A2-controlled ER Ca(2+) sequestration, E-cadherin and DP localization, and Ca(2+)-controlled differentiation, and thus may be important mediators in DD.

Two critical defensive functions of the outer epidermis, the permeability barrier and antimicrobial defense, share certain structural and biochemical features. Moreover, three antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), i.e., mouse β-defensin 3 (mBD3), mouse cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide (mCAMP), and the neuroendocrine peptide, catestatin (Cst), all localize to the outer epidermis, and both mBD3 and mCAMP are secreted from the epidermal lamellar bodies with other organelle contents that subserve the permeability barrier. These three AMPs are upregulated in response to acute permeability barrier disruption, whereas conversely, mCAMP-/- mice (unable to combat Gram-positive pathogens) also display abnormal barrier homeostasis. To determine further whether these two functions are co-regulated, we investigated changes in immunostaining for these three AMPs in skin samples in which the permeability barrier function in mice had been either compromised or enhanced. Compromised or enhanced barrier function correlated with reduced or enhanced immunohistochemical expression of mCAMP, respectively, but conversely with Cst expression, likely due to the role of this AMP as an endogenous inhibitor of cathelicidin expression. mBD3 expression correlated with experimental barrier perturbations, but poorly with developmental changes in barrier function. These studies show that changes in cathelicidin and Cst expression parallel changes in permeability barrier status, with a less clear relationship with mBD3 expression.