scholarly journals Epigenetic Regulations of AhR in the Aspect of Immunomodulation

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (17) ◽  
pp. 6404
Author(s):  
Anna Wajda ◽  
Joanna Łapczuk-Romańska ◽  
Agnieszka Paradowska-Gorycka

Environmental factors contribute to autoimmune disease manifestation, and as regarded today, AhR has become an important factor in studies of immunomodulation. Besides immunological aspects, AhR also plays a role in pharmacological, toxicological and many other physiological processes such as adaptive metabolism. In recent years, epigenetic mechanisms have provided new insight into gene regulation and reveal a new contribution to autoimmune disease pathogenesis. DNA methylation, histone modifications, chromatin alterations, microRNA and consequently non-genetic changes in phenotypes connect with environmental factors. Increasing data reveals AhR cross-roads with the most significant in immunology pathways. Although study on epigenetic modulations in autoimmune diseases is still not well understood, therefore future research will help us understand their pathophysiology and help to find new therapeutic strategies. Present literature review sheds the light on the common ground between remodeling chromatin compounds and autoimmune antibodies used in diagnostics. In the proposed review we summarize recent findings that describe epigenetic factors which regulate AhR activity and impact diverse immunological responses and pathological changes.

Author(s):  
Sanja Tatalović Vorkapić ◽  
Petra Prović

The Positive Psychology frame and definition present a natural environment for understanding and researching children's play in the context of nurturing overall positive characteristics in children's development. Therefore, this article presents a structured review of the common ground between the basic principles of positive psychology and children's play in the context of early and preschool institutions. Also, it demonstrates the implementation of positive psychology principles in children's play and the methods by which positive psychology could be promoted through children's play in kindergartens. Within that frame, the importance is given to the needed preschool teachers' competences in this area. In this context, various activities are presented that reflect a common ground of positive psychology and children's play. Finally, some significant guidelines for future research and practice enhancement are presented.


Author(s):  
Sanja Tatalović Vorkapić ◽  
Petra Prović

The Positive Psychology frame and definition present a natural environment for understanding and researching children's play in the context of nurturing overall positive characteristics in children's development. Therefore, this article presents a structured review of the common ground between the basic principles of positive psychology and children's play in the context of early and preschool institutions. Also, it demonstrates the implementation of positive psychology principles in children's play and the methods by which positive psychology could be promoted through children's play in kindergartens. Within that frame, the importance is given to the needed preschool teachers' competences in this area. In this context, various activities are presented that reflect a common ground of positive psychology and children's play. Finally, some significant guidelines for future research and practice enhancement are presented.


Author(s):  
Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm ◽  
Ljuba N. Veselinova

The goal of this chapter is to explicate the common ground and shared pursuits of lexical typology and morphology. Bringing those to the fore is beneficial to the scholarship of both disciplines and will allow their methodologies to be combined in more fruitful ways. In fact, such explication also opens up a whole new domain of study. This overview article focuses on a set of important research questions common to both lexical typology and morphology. Specifically, it considers vocabulary structure in human languages, cross-linguistic research on morphological analysis and word formation, and finally inventories of very complex lexical items. After a critical examination of the pertinent literature, some directions for future research are suggested. Some of them include working out methodologies for more systematic exploration of vocabulary structure and further scrutiny of how languages package and distribute semantic material among linguistic units. Finally, more effort is to be devoted to the study of vocabularies where basic concepts are encoded by complex lexical items.


Author(s):  
Anna Rapani ◽  
Dimitra Nikiforaki ◽  
Dimitra Karagkouni ◽  
Konstantinos Sfakianoudis ◽  
Petroula Tsioulou ◽  
...  

Ovarian insufficiency is identified as a perplexing entity in the long list of pathologies impairing fertility dynamics. The three distinct classifications of ovarian insufficiency are poor ovarian response, premature ovarian insufficiency/failure, and advanced maternal age, sharing the common denominator of deteriorated ovarian reserve. Despite efforts to define clear lines among the three, the vast heterogeneity and overlap of clinical characteristics renders their diagnosis and management challenging. Lack of a consensus has prompted an empirically based management coupled by uncertainty from the clinicians’ perspective. Profiling of patients in the era of precision medicine seems to be the way forward, while the necessity for a novel approach is underlined. Implicating miRNAs in the quest for patient profiling is promising in light of their fundamental role in cellular and gene expression regulation. To this end, the current study sets out to explore and compare the three pathophysiologies—from a molecular point of view—in order to enable profiling of patients in the context of in vitro fertilization treatment and enrich the data required to practice individualized medicine. Following a systematic investigation of literature, data referring to miRNAs were collected for each patient category based on five included studies. miRNA–target pairs were retrieved from the DIANA-TarBase repository and microT-CDS. Gene and miRNA annotations were derived from Ensembl and miRbase. A subsequent gene-set enrichment analysis of miRNA targets was performed for each category separately. A literature review on the most crucial of the detected pathways was performed to reveal their relevance to fertility deterioration. Results supported that all three pathophysiologies share a common ground regarding the affected pathways, naturally attributed to the common denominator of ovarian insufficiency. As evidenced, miRNAs could be employed to explore the fine lines and diverse nature of pathophysiology since they constitute invaluable biomarkers. Interestingly, it is the differentiation through miRNAs and not through the molecular affected pathways that corresponds to the three distinctive categories. Alarming discrepancies among publications were revealed, pertaining to employment of empirical and arbitrary criteria in categorizing the patients. Following bioinformatic analysis, the final step of the current study consisted of a critical analysis of the molecular data sourced, providing a clear and unique insight into the physiological mechanisms involved. It is our intention to contribute to mapping future research dedicated to ovarian insufficiency and to help researchers navigate the overwhelming information published in molecular studies.


Author(s):  
Sarah E. Murray

This book gives a compositional, truth‐conditional, crosslinguistic semantics for evidentials set in a theory of the semantics for sentential mood. Central to this semantics is a proposal about a distinction between what propositional content is at‐issue, roughly primary or proffered, and what content is not‐at‐issue. Evidentials contribute not‐at‐issue content, more specifically what I will call a not‐at‐issue restriction. In addition, evidentials can affect the level of commitment a sentence makes to the main proposition, contributed by sentential mood. Building on recent work in the formal semantics of evidentials and related phenomena, the proposed semantics does not appeal to separate dimensions of illocutionary meaning. Instead, I argue that all sentences make three contributions: at‐issue content, not‐at‐issue content, and an illocutionary relation. At‐issue content is presented, made available for subsequent anaphora, but is not directly added to the common ground. Not‐at‐issue content directly updates the common ground. The illocutionary relation uses the at‐issue content to impose structure on the common ground, which, depending on the clause type (e.g., declarative, interrogative), can trigger further updates. Empirical support for this proposal comes from Cheyenne (Algonquian, primary data from the author’s fieldwork), English, and a wide variety of languages that have been discussed in the literature on evidentials.


Author(s):  
Deborah Tollefsen

When a group or institution issues a declarative statement, what sort of speech act is this? Is it the assertion of a single individual (perhaps the group’s spokesperson or leader) or the assertion of all or most of the group members? Or is there a sense in which the group itself asserts that p? If assertion is a speech act, then who is the actor in the case of group assertion? These are the questions this chapter aims to address. Whether groups themselves can make assertions or whether a group of individuals can jointly assert that p depends, in part, on what sort of speech act assertion is. The literature on assertion has burgeoned over the past few years, and there is a great deal of debate regarding the nature of assertion. John MacFarlane has helpfully identified four theories of assertion. Following Sandy Goldberg, we can call these the attitudinal account, the constitutive rule account, the common-ground account, and the commitment account. I shall consider what group assertion might look like under each of these accounts and doing so will help us to examine some of the accounts of group assertion (often presented as theories of group testimony) on offer. I shall argue that, of the four accounts, the commitment account can best be extended to make sense of group assertion in all its various forms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 563
Author(s):  
Bing Ran ◽  
Scott Weller

Despite the growing utility and prevalence of social entrepreneurship, an accepted definition remains elusive and infeasible. Yet, it is imperative that the principles guiding social entrepreneurship are identified so that common ground is established to facilitate future research. On the basis of a systematic literature review, this conceptual paper proposes a theoretical framework outlining social entrepreneurship as a three-dimensional framework as a function of continua of “social” and “business” logics, “beneficial” and “detrimental” social change logics, and “innovation” and “mundane” logics. The framework accommodates the fuzziness and ambiguity associated with social entrepreneurship whilst remaining a workable, identifiable construct. By accounting for the shifting logics practiced by social entrepreneurship that both influence and are influenced by the organizational environment, this framework provides an exit strategy for the definitional elusiveness of social entrepreneurship. The resultant structures and functions of social entrepreneurship are shaped by these constraints as reflected by the fluidity and flexibility endorsed by the framework. Four avenues for future research regarding social entrepreneurship are recommended on the basis of the framework proposed in this article.


Author(s):  
Xiangbo Ji ◽  
Jianhua Xu ◽  
Liping Cheng ◽  
Jianfei Sun ◽  
Xiaocheng Zhang

Efforts to improve coaching effectiveness require an understanding of the common sources of coaches’ knowledge acquisition. Sports coaches utilise multiple learning sources, yet limited direct evidence elucidates the manner in which Chinese coaches learn to coach and the evolution of their learning sources throughout their careers’ development. This research examines the actual and preferred sources of coaching knowledge for Chinese coaches and analyses changes in learning sources from Junior to Senior level coaches. One hundred coaches from China, including 60 Junior coaches, 23 Intermediate coaches and 17 Senior coaches, completed an online questionnaire. The survey results indicated that coaches acquire knowledge from formal, informal and non-formal learning situations. However, formal coach education (coach education programmes) is the most important source of knowledge acquisition for all coaches. Furthermore, as coaches develop, the sources to acquire knowledge will gradually change from athletic experience to interaction with other coaches. Based on these findings, we suggest that national sport governing bodies build more comprehensive coach education systems by establishing a scientific mentoring system and organising regular coach-themed clinics, seminars, meetings and so on. Future research is needed to examine how coaches in China’s dominant programmes learn to coach and how this learning is practically applied.


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