bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A conserved mechanism for regulation of endo-lysosomal pH by histone deacetylases
Authors: Prasad Hari , Rao Rajini 
Published: January 2018

ABSTRACTThe pH of the endo-lysosomal system is tightly regulated by a balance of proton pump and leak mechanisms that are critical for storage, recycling, turnover and signaling functions in the cell. Dysregulation of endo-lysosomal pH has been linked to aging, amyloidogenesis, synaptic dysfunction, and various neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease. Therefore, understanding mechanisms that regulate luminal pH may be key to identifying new targets for treatment of these disorders. Meta-analysis of yeast microarray databases revealed that nutrient limiting conditions upregulated transcription of the endosomal Na+/H+exchanger Nhx1 by inhibition of the histone deacetylase (HDAC) Rpd3, resulting in vacuolar alkalinization. Consistent with these findings, Rpd3 inhibition by the HDAC inhibitor and antifungal drug trichostatin A induced Nhx1 expression and vacuolar alkalinization. Bioinformatics analysis of Drosophila and mouse databases revealed that caloric control of Nhx1 orthologs DmNHE3 and NHE6 respectively, was also mediated by histone deacetylases. We show that NHE6 is a target of cAMP-response element-binding (CREB) protein, providing a molecular mechanism for nutrient and HDAC dependent regulation of endosomal pH. Control of NHE6 expression by pharmacological targeting of the CREB pathway can be used to regulate endosomal pH and restore defective amyloid Aβ clearance in an ApoE4 astrocyte model of Alzheimer’s disease. These observations from yeast, fly, mouse and cell culture models reveal an evolutionarily conserved mechanism for regulation of endosomal NHE expression by histone deacetylases and offer new therapeutic strategies for modulation of endo-lysosomal pH in fungal infection and human disease.
Discovering the entrepreneurial endowment of the youth
Authors: Bignotti Alex , le Roux Ingrid 
Published: January 2018

PurposeEntrepreneurship is considered as a possible solution to youth unemployment, and the number of initiatives fostering youth entrepreneurship has multiplied accordingly, also in Africa. However, the effectiveness of such initiatives also lies in whether young people display personality and contextual dimensions conducive to starting and running businesses. The purpose of this paper is to examine the composition of young South Africans’ “entrepreneurial endowment”, represented by personality traits and contextual variables commonly associated with entrepreneurship.Design/methodology/approachThis paper surveyed secondary students using a questionnaire constructed from validated measurement instruments, obtaining 827 valid responses. It employed exploratory factor analysis to investigate the composition of respondents’ entrepreneurial endowment. It also compared respondents’ entrepreneurial endowment across demographic variables by means oft-tests and ANOVA.FindingsThe results reveal the existence of an entrepreneurial endowment composed of: need for achievement, locus of control, community support, two role models sub-constructs and two family support sub-constructs. Significant differences from the perspective of gender, cultural background and entrepreneurship education also emerged.Practical implicationsThe findings confirm that young South Africans have the entrepreneurial endowment needed to be the recipients of entrepreneurship support and highlight relevant differences across demographic variables.Originality/valueFrom a theoretical perspective, this paper unveils the structure of young South Africans’ entrepreneurial endowment, composed of four unique dimensions not found in previous research. The insights gained from comparing entrepreneurial endowment results across different groups offer practical implications.
The impact of leverage on discretionary investment: African evidence
Authors: Vengesai Edson , Kwenda Farai 
Published: January 2018

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of leverage on firms’ discretionary investment in Africa.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors employ a dynamic panel data model estimated with generalised method of moments (GMM) estimation techniques on the panel data of listed African non-financial firms. A dynamic model and the generalised methods of moments estimations are handy in controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, endogeneity, autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity, etc.

Findings
In spite of different settings, markets, leverage levels and methodologies, the authors found evidence that leverage constrains investment in African firms. The negative impact is more pronounced in firms with low-growth opportunities than in firms with high-growth opportunities. The results are inclined to the theory that leverage plays a disciplinary role to avoid overinvestment.

Research limitations/implications
African firms’ investment policy does not solely depend on the neoclassical fundamentals determinants of profitability, net worth and cash flows. Financing strategy also has a considerable bearing on the investment policy. The results provide evidence that leverage is a negative externality to the firm’s discretional investment policy for both lowly levered and highly leveraged firms. African firms’ should consider maintaining their low debt levels and rely more on internally generated funds so as not to suppress any available cash flows to interest payments and loan covenants from debt holders.

Originality/value
The study contributes to the literature on investment and financial leverage by the authors providing evidence from Africa, a developing continent, that has not been explored. It shows how conservative leverage levels of African firms, which have been reported to be rising, are impacting on investments. Pertaining to empirical methodology, the authors employ a dynamic panel data model, the GMM estimation technique, which is robust in controlling endogeneity, and a possible bi-directional causality between leverage and investment which have not been used in literature. The study also enables a comparison of the effect of high leverage and low leverage on firm’s discretional investment.
The variations in religious and legal understandings on halal slaughter
Authors: Chandia Mahmood , Soon Jan Mei 
Published: January 2018

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of different understandings regarding the concept of “what constitutes halal” and “who determines this concept?” In practice, this equates to contemporary legal understandings vs religious understandings. The paper further aims to provide an overview of competing Muslim understandings regarding the concept of “What does or does not constitute halal slaughter?” In practice, this equates to evaluating the application of no stunning at all upon an animal (unanimous acceptance) vs the application of reversible stunning upon an animal (contested).

Design/methodology/approach
The study includes a review of prior literature and considers the current scenario of the halal poultry trade and raises important questions regarding Islamic dietary practices, halal food integrity, religious and animal welfare understandings. Three key questions were raised: “To what extent does stunning impact halal slaughter?”; “Who determines what is halal slaughter?”; and “What are the variations and tensions between legal and religious understandings of halal slaughter?”.

Findings
The examination of such requirements and concomitant consumer and provider expectations is underpinned by a study of an operational framework, i.e. industry practices with poultry (hand slaughter, stunning, mechanical slaughter, etc.), ethical values and market forces to appraise whether there is a point of convergence for these that can be beneficial for both seller and consumer concerns. This paper has considered different perspectives on the religious slaughter and provided an overview of competing understandings regarding the above concepts.

Originality/value
This study although academic and philosophical in nature, raises questions on route to suggesting future research directions. It provides real value in stimulating more research in the area of halal food production and contributes to the understanding of different slaughter requirements for religious slaughter and the meat industry. It further sheds light on not only the religious and secular legal frameworks on animal slaughter and welfare but also the variations in understanding between them and provides examples of attempts to bridge any gap. The paper highlights the importance of halal food based on religious values and its implications for wider society.
Stakeholder responses to governmental dietary guidelines
Authors: Bergman Karolin , Persson-Osowski Christine , Eli Karin , Lövestam Elin , Elmståhl Helena , Nowicka Paulina 
Published: January 2018

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how stakeholders in the food and nutrition field construct and conceptualise “appropriate” national dietary advice.

Design/methodology/approach
In total, 40 voluntarily written stakeholder responses to updated official dietary guidelines in Sweden were analysed thematically. The analysis explored the logics and arguments employed by authorities, interest organisations, industry and private stakeholders in attempting to influence the formulation of dietary guidelines.

Findings
Two main themes were identified: the centrality of anchoring advice scientifically and modes of getting the message across to the public. Stakeholders expressed a view of effective health communication as that which is nutritionally and quantitatively oriented and which optimises individuals’ capacities to take action for their own health. Their responses did not offer alternative framings of how healthy eating could be practiced but rather conveyed an understanding of dietary guidelines as documents that provide simplified answers to complex questions.

Practical implications
Policymakers should be aware of industrial actors’ potential vested interests and actively seek out other stakeholders representing communities and citizen interests. The next step should be to question the extent to which it is ethical to publish dietary advice that represents a simplified way of conceptualising behavioural change, and thereby places responsibility for health on the individual.

Originality/value
This research provides a stakeholder perspective on the concept of dietary advice and is among the first to investigate referral responses to dietary guidelines.
A novel and efficient approach to specifying Dirichlet far-field boundary condition of pressure Poisson equation
Authors: Lee Jun-Hyeok , Lee Seung-Jae , Suh Jung-chun 
Published: January 2018

Purpose
As the penalized vortex-in-cell (pVIC) method is based on the vorticity-velocity form of the Navier–Stokes equation, the pressure variable is not incorporated in its solution procedure. This is one of the advantages of vorticity-based methods such as pVIC. However, dynamic pressure is an essential flow property in engineering problems. In pVIC, the pressure field can be explicitly evaluated by a pressure Poisson equation (PPE) from the velocity and vorticity solutions. How to specify far-field boundary conditions is then an important numerical issue. Therefore, this paper aims to robustly and accurately determine the boundary conditions for solving the PPE.

Design/methodology/approach
This paper introduces a novel non-iterative method for specifying Dirichlet far-field boundary conditions to solve the PPE in a bounded domain. The pressure field is computed using the velocity and vorticity fields obtained from pVIC, and the solid boundary conditions for pressure are also imposed by a penalization term within the framework of pVIC. The basic idea of our approach is that the pressure at any position can be evaluated from its gradient field in a closed contour because the contour integration for conservative vector fields is path-independent. The proposed approach is validated and assessed by a comparative study.

Findings
This non-iterative method is successfully implemented to the pressure calculation of the benchmark problems in both 2D and 3D. The method is much faster than all the other methods tested without compromising accuracy and enables one to obtain reasonable pressure field even for small computation domains that are used regardless of a source distribution (the right-hand side in the Poisson equation).

Originality/value
The strategy introduced in this paper provides an effective means of specifying Dirichlet boundary conditions at the exterior domain boundaries for the pressure Poisson problems. It is very efficient and robust compared with the conventional methods. The proposed idea can also be adopted in other fields dealing with infinite-domain Poisson problems.
Thermal performance of angled, V-shaped and leaning-V-shaped ribs in a rotating rectangular channel with 45° orientation
Authors: Wang Jinsheng , Luo Lei , Wang Lei , Sunden Bengt Ake , Wang Songtao 
Published: January 2018

Purpose
The fluid flow in a rotating channel is obviously different from that in a stationary channel due to the existence of Coriolis force, which, in turn, enhances the heat transfer on the trailing side and reduces the heat transfer on the leading side. The purpose of this paper is to study various rib configurations combined with channel orientation on heat transfer and frictional loss in a rotating channel.

Design/methodology/approach
In the present study, the k-ω SST model was used as the turbulence model. The fluid flow direction in the channel is radially outward. The angle between the rotation axis and leading side is 45°. The channel aspect ratio (W/H) is 2, the blockage ratio (e/Dn ) is 0.1 and the pitch ratio (P/e) is 10. The Reynolds number is fixed at 10,000 and the rotation number varies from 0 to 0.7. Angled ribs, reversed angled ribs, standard V-shaped ribs and outer-leaning V-shaped ribs, are examined.

Findings
It is found that the reversed angled rib configuration and the outer-leaning V-shaped rib configuration display better heat transfer performance than the V-shaped ribs in rotating condition, which is in contrast to stationary condition. At the leading side, the reversed angled rib and the outer-leaning V-shaped rib show better performance in recovering the heat transfer recession due to the negative effects of the Coriolis force.

Research limitations/implications
In the present study, the fluid is incompressible with constant thermophysical properties and the flow is steady.

Practical implications
The results of this study will be helpful in design of ribbed channels internal cooling for turbine blade.

Originality/value
The results imply that the rib configuration combined with channel orientation significantly impacts the heat transfer performance in a rotating channel. The reversed angled rib and the outer-leaning V-shaped rib show better heat transfer performance than standard V-shaped ribs, especially at high Rotating numbers, which is in contrast to stationary condition. The outer-leaning V-shaped rib has a relatively good heat transfer uniformity along the widthwise direction.
Symmetry reduction and numerical solution of a nonlinear boundary value problem in fluid mechanics
Authors: Bilige Sudao , Han Yanqing 
Published: January 2018

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the applications of Lie symmetry method on the boundary value problem (BVP) for nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) in fluid mechanics.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors solved a BVP for nonlinear PDEs in fluid mechanics based on the effective combination of the symmetry, homotopy perturbation and Runge–Kutta methods.

Findings
First, the multi-parameter symmetry of the given BVP for nonlinear PDEs is determined based on differential characteristic set algorithm. Second, BVP for nonlinear PDEs is reduced to an initial value problem of the original differential equation by using the symmetry method. Finally, the approximate and numerical solutions of the initial value problem of the original differential equations are obtained using the homotopy perturbation and Runge–Kutta methods, respectively. By comparing the numerical solutions with the approximate solutions, the study verified that the approximate solutions converge to the numerical solutions.

Originality/value
The application of the Lie symmetry method in the BVP for nonlinear PDEs in fluid mechanics is an excellent and new topic for further research. In this paper, the authors solved BVP for nonlinear PDEs by using the Lie symmetry method. The study considered that the boundary conditions are the arbitrary functions Bi(x)(i = 1,2,3,4), which are determined according to the invariance of the boundary conditions under a multi-parameter Lie group of transformations. It is different from others’ research. In addition, this investigation will also effectively popularize the range of application and advance the efficiency of the Lie symmetry method.
Police use of technology: insights from the literature
Authors: Rogers Colin , Scally Emily Jayne 
Published: January 2018

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider the existing literature surrounding the use of technology in today’s society to inform future developments across emergency services. Reference to the Police Service in particular will have a resonance for many other public agencies who are utilising more and more technology.

Design/methodology/approach
Literature from a policing background will be reviewed to discover the positive impacts and benefits attached to its use, the potential obstacles to its implantation, and how lessons from one agency may be of benefit to others.

Findings
The findings suggest that there appears to be attention required in the application of technology by public agencies, namely, workforce culture, training and budgets, and legislation which need to be addressed if the use of technology by public agencies is to be successful.

Originality/value
This paper seeks to learn lessons for the implementation technology by a public agency, namely, the police, in an attempt to inform other public bodies. By doing so, it is believed the lessons learned will make the application of such technologies more effective.
Flood victims’ evacuation decisions: a semi-nonparametric estimation
Authors: Soon Jan-Jan , Kamaruddin Roslina , Anuar Abdul Rahim 
Published: January 2018

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the determinants of actual evacuation decisions of victims of the unprecedented 2014 year-end flood disaster which wreaked havoc across two east-coast states in Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachThe target population of this study is the group of victims affected by the December 2014 flood in the Malaysian east-coast states of Kelantan and Pahang. Sampling frames of the flood victims were obtained from the National Security Council offices of the two states. The empirical analysis of this paper is based on a unique data set obtained from a questionnaire survey of the flood victims. The final working sample consists of 372 respondents.FindingsImportant findings from this study are: victims who were given evacuation notices were five times more likely to evacuate, victims who participated in flood awareness programmes were less likely to move to evacuation centres, the further away victims’ homes were from the evacuation centres the more likely they were to evacuate, older victims were less likely to evacuate, larger households were more likely to evacuate, and victims with tertiary education were also less likely to evacuate.Originality/valueThis paper is unique because previous studies of Malaysian flood-related disasters are confined to floods of regular magnitude. This paper is also unique because it uses a semi-parametric estimation approach to obtain the marginal effects of the explanatory variables on evacuation decisions.
Learner ownership of technology-enhanced learning
Authors: Dommett Eleanor J. 
Published: January 2018

Purpose
This paper aims to examine the different ways in which learners may have ownership over technology-enhanced learning by reflecting on technical, legal and psychological ownership.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses a variety of examples of technology-enhanced learning ranging from open-source software to cloud storage to discuss the three types of ownership.

Findings
It is suggested that learners do not yet own technology-enhanced learning and that, at present, there are different degrees of learner ownership depending on whether technical, legal or psychological ownership are considered.

Originality/value
The discussion presented here is the first to consider all three types of ownership of technology-enhanced learning and demonstrates the complexity of the issue when this broad view is considered.
New technology in health education
Authors: Buabeng-Andoh Charles 
Published: January 2018

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate undergraduate nursing students’ use of mobile learning (m-learning) and the factors contributing to their use of m-learning.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 586 nursing students from three universities in Ghana participated in this study. Survey questionnaires were used to collect data. Descriptive statistics, samplet-test and multiple regression were used to analyze the data.FindingsThe research found that most students owned smartphones. Mobile technology was mainly used for doing homework. The result indicates that gender differences exist in terms of perceived usefulness of m-learning. In addition, age differences exist with regard to the perceived ease of use of m-learning. Furthermore, students showed positive attitudes toward the use of technology. Finally, perceived usefulness and attitudes toward the use of technology predicted students’ intention to use m-learning.Originality/valueDespite the abundance of research on nursing education in other countries, there is a lack of research on nursing students’ use of m-learning and factors influencing their implementation of m-learning in higher learning institutions in Ghana. This study is important because it provides a clear description of nursing students’ use of m-learning and factors affecting their use in schools. Also, the author suggests that information from this study assists school administrators and nursing educators to understand students’ positions regarding m-learning in classroom.