Dr. Weihong He, Associate Professor

Department of Physiology, West China School of Basic Medical Sciences and Forensic Medicine, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

Topic: Inhibiting RUNX1 Leads to Reduced Infarct Size and Repressed Cardiac Cathepsin Levels Following Acute Myocardial Infarction

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2024 8th International Conference on Health, Medicine and Life Sciences

Jun. 1-2, 2024

Acute myocardial infarction (MI) is a leading cause of death worldwide. Acute MI results in prolonged myocardial ischemia and the subsequent cell death leads to heart failure which is linked with increased deaths or hospitalizations. Cathepsins are lysosomal proteases involved in protein degradation and can also be secreted into extracellular spaces. Recent evidence has shown that cardiac release of a subtype of cathepsin (cathepsin-L) in MI patients leads to elevated serum cathepsin-L levels which are associated with reduced cardiac function and increased infarct size. However, the mechanism of the increased cathepsin-L level is unknown. Runt-related transcription factor-1 (RUNX1) is a master-regulator transcription factor, which is implicated in the transcriptional regulation of gene expression. Recent evidence demonstrated that RUNX1 plays a critical role in the heart after MI. This work sought to investigate whether inhibition of RUNX1 affects cathepsin levels in a rat MI model. MI was surgically induced by performing coronary artery ligation. Heart samples were taken at 24 hours post-MI and analyzed by LC-MS/MS operating in the data-independent acquisition (DIA) mode. We found that overall cathepsin levels were increased in control hearts after MI. In contrast, rats treated with RUNX1 inhibitors demonstrated decreased cathepsin levels. Furthermore, RUNX1 inhibition led to a reduced infarct size at 24 hours post-MI as determined through 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) staining. These results are in line with Dr. He’s previous study performed in isolated rat hearts which demonstrates that inhibition of cathepsin-L reduces infarct size and improves cardiac function ex vivo. The present study shows that inhibition of RUNX1 after acute MI can also reduce infarct size in rat hearts in vivo and the beneficial effects may be achieved by repressed cathepsin levels, thus suggesting the translational potential of RUNX1 and cathepsins as therapeutic targets of cardiac protection against acute MI.

Dr. Weihong He is a principal investigator and Associate Professor at the Department of Physiology, West China School of Basic Medical Sciences and Forensic Medicine, Sichuan University. Dr. Weihong He obtained an MD (2012) at West China School of Medicine & West China Hospital, Sichuan University, and completed a PhD (2017) at the BHF Glasgow Cardiovascular Research Centre, University of Glasgow. He was an associate professor at Jining Medical University (2018-2020). Since 2020, he has led a research group to study the pathophysiology of cardiovascular diseases and to investigate novel therapeutic drugs for myocardial infarction and cerebral infarction at Sichuan University. He also teaches physiology and mentors both national and international students. He has expertise in many methodologies which span the level of biochemistry, cell biology, isolated heart, and whole animal in vivo disease models.

Dr. Jihua Dong, Professor

The School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Shandong University, Jinan, China

Topic: Mapping Out the Disciplinary Variation of Syntactic Complexity in Student Academic Writing

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2024 9th International Conference on Education and Innovation

May 31-Jun. 1, 2024

This study investigated disciplinary variation with respect to syntactic complexity in students' written аcаԁemіc texts from the British Αᴄaԁemiᴄ Written English (BAWE) corpus. We measured syntactic complexity using the Tool for Automatic Analysis of Syntactic Sophistication and Complexity and then conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses to examine the disciplinary differences across four disciplinary groups and 31 disciplines. The analyses identified statistically significant variation in length, subordination, coordination, phrasal sophistication, and overall sentence complexity among the disciplinary groups as well as disciplines, which was discussed from a form-function mapping perspective. This study also revealed the systematic variation and form-function mappings of syntactic complexity in discipline-specific аcаԁemіc writing in both disciplinary groups and disciplines. Pedagogically, these findings can be incorporated into the curriculum design and class instruction to cultivate students' discipline-specific аcаԁemіc literacy.

Dr. Jihua Dong is a professor, PhD supervisor, and postdoc supervisor in the Foreign Language Department of Shandong University, a Young Taishan Scholar of Shandong Province, and a Young Qilu Scholar of Shandong University. She obtained her doctoral degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is also working as a co-supervisor for doctoral students at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Dr. Jihua Dong is the principal investigator (PI) for over 10 research funds at the national, provincial, and university levels. Her publications have appeared in renowned SSCI journals such as English for Specific Purposes, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, System and ReCALL, etc.

Dr. Peiwen Bai, Professor

School of Economics, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

Topic: Digital Economy Development and Markup of Firm

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2024 8th International Conference on Economics, Finance and Management Science

May 31-Jun. 1, 2024

The integration of the digital economy with the real economy is a major issue for sustainable economic development in the new era. A large amount of economics literature focuses on the benefits of digital economy, such as increased productivity, increased innovation and improved organizational structure of firms. However, little literature has explored the costs of digital economy development to firms, such as increased competition and rising cost pressures. In this paper, we use the markup of firms as a combined reflection of the net value of these two effects, and theoretically construct a variable markup model to explore the mechanism. Further, this paper uses data on Chinese industrial firms from 2004-2013, combined with the newly developed imperfect instrumental variables method. It is found that digital economy development significantly reduces markup of firms, with a robust upper bound of -0.31%. The analysis of the mechanism reveals that the increase in competition among firms and the imperfect transfer of cost pressures by firms are important channels. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the negative impact of digital economy development on markup is larger for firms with characteristics such as less digitalization, tighter financing constraints, and weaker cost-saving capabilities. The study also finds that digital economy development reduces the dispersion of markup and significantly improves the efficiency of resource allocation. The findings of this paper have important implications for understanding the significance of digital economy and real economy integration, and how to further promote digital economy development effectively.

Dr. Peiwen Bai currently works as a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Economics of Xiamen University, deputy director of the Economic Research Institute, deputy editor of "China Economic Issues", visiting scholar at Monash University, chief expert of major projects of the National Social Science Fund, and vice president of the Fujian Economic Association. He received a doctorate in management from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2006. His research areas are the digital economy and income distribution. He has published over 80 papers as first author in domestic and foreign journals. He has participated in and chaired research on multiple projects, including the National Social Science Fund Major Project and the Ministry of Education Major Project.