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The basic premise of this study is that the traditional method to treating all older people as coming from the same distribution misspecifies the true model and ignores potentially important information in wellbeing outcomes of social participation. Using data from the China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey (CLASS), this paper proposes a finite mixture model (FMM) to identify the heterogeneous relationship between volunteer participation and older people's subjective well-being (SWB) and then explore the determinants of wellbeing heterogeneity in volunteer participation. The results reveal that older people can be classified into two latent subgroups, that is the volunteering beneficiary group (accounting for about 42%) and the volunteering non-beneficiary group (accounting for about 58%). The FMM is therefore more appropriate in estimating the complex impact of volunteering. Rural older people with poorer health, weaker social networks, better economic status, and better community environments are more likely to benefit from volunteer participation. Our findings have suggested some practical implications to increase the probability of benefit from volunteer participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Altered expressions of genes in immune cells and synovial tissues are involved in the pathology of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Long noncoding RNAs act as competing endogenous RNAs and can cause immune disorders. The goal of this study was to reveal the association between noncoding RNA linc00324 and RA, and a plausible action mechanism was proposed. Methods: RT‐qPCR was used to evaluate the expression of linc00324 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells isolated from 50 RA patients and 50 healthy controls, and the correlations between linc00324 level and the clinical indicators were analyzed. Flow cytometry was used to characterize CD4+ T cells. The effects of linc00324 on cytokine production and cell proliferation of CD4+ T cells were evaluated by ELISA assay and Western blot. The interaction between linc00324 and miR‐10a‐5p was investigated by RNA immunoprecipitation and dual‐luciferase assays. Results: The linc00324 expression was significantly enhanced in RA patients, and linc00324 expression was positively correlated with rheumatoid factor and CD4+ T cells. Overexpression of linc00324 promoted CD4+ T cells proliferation, and enhanced chemokine MIP‐1α secretion and NF‐κB phosphorylation level, whereas knockout of linc00324 blocked CD4+ T cell proliferation and NF‐κB phosphorylation. Overexpression of miR‐10a‐5p led to the decrease of CD4+ T cells proliferation and NF‐κB phosphorylation, and reversed the effects of linc00324 on cell proliferation and NF‐κB activity. Conclusion: Linc00324 was upregulated in RA and may exaggerate inflammation by targeting miR‐10a‐5p through NF‐κB signaling pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to reduce household food waste has emerged as an important issue worldwide. Considering the potential endogeneity issue, the present study utilizes the treatment effects model to analyse the effect of dietary awareness on household food waste using data from China. The results showed that improving dietary awareness could significantly increase household food waste overall. However, this impact is heterogeneous among households of different characteristics. Improving dietary awareness leads to more food waste for households with young and old food decision-makers, but contributes to less food waste for households of middle-aged makers. Also, the positive effect of dietary awareness on household food waste weakens as income increases. These findings propose a new perspective to understand the heterogeneity in household food waste in the context of dietary awareness promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water and soil scarcity and pollution have become more severe problems in China in recent years. On one hand, rapid economic growth has led to increasing environmental problems. On the other hand, the environmental problems resulting from human economic activities can impose new constraints on industrial agglomeration, making economic development unsustainable. In the present study, an individual fixed-effect model was constructed based on the framework of the new economic geography and the provincial-level data of China. The model estimated its parameters with OLS in order to analyze how the mechanisms of industrial agglomeration are affected by resource security and environmental factors. In addition, this study also used Hausman statistical tests and Fisher–PP unit root tests to analyze the endogenous problems and robustness of the model, respectively. The results showed that water and soil scarcity and environmental pollution have negative effects on industrial agglomeration. The negative effects were observed to significantly increase with levels of local government competition, but did not vary with the regional market segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To investigate the relationship between long-chain intergenic non-coding RNA324 (LINC00324) and immunophenotype in peripheral blood leukocytes of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients. Methods Real-time quantitative PCR and bioinformatics databases were utilized to analyze the expression level of LINC00324 in peripheral blood leukocytes and cell lines KG-1, THP-1 and U937 in AML patients. The relationships of the expression level of LINC00324 with the red blood cell and platelet count, the expression levels of LINC00324 and immunophenotypes in 40 AML patients were analyzed by Person correlation analysis. The immunophenotypes included CD14, CD68, CD64, CD11b, CD4, CD45, CD33, HLA-DR, CD163, CD2, CD58, CD117, CD43, CD34, CD99, CD8, CD38, CD10, CD13, CD56, CD7, TdT, CD235a, CD138, CD61, MPO and CD19. Simultaneously, the cBioPortal database datasets (TCGA, NEJM 2013) were used to analyze the clinical characteristics of 173 AML patients, and to analyze the correlations between the expression level of LINC00324 and the peripheral blood blast percentage and white blood cell count in tumor samples. Results The expression of LINC00324 in peripheral blood leukocytes of AML patients was down-regulated, and its expression level was significantly correlated with immunophenotype CD33, red blood cell and platelet count. Analysis of bioinformatics database showed that LINC00324 was under-expressed in myeloid leukemia cell lines. The expression of LINC00324 in AML patients was associated with multiple immunophenotypes such as CD33, CD117, CD11b, CD14 and CD64 and was negatively correlated with peripheral blood blast percentage and white blood cell count. Conclusion LINC00324 may be involved in regulating the differentiation, development and function of immune cells, which providing a new strategy for the development of targeted drugs or treatment of AML.