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Increased ASM mass, primarily due to ASM hyperplasia, has been recognized as a hallmark of airway remodeling in asthma. Increased ASM mass is the major contributor to the airway narrowing, thus worsening the bronchoconstriction in response to stimuli. Inflammatory mediators and growth factors released during inflammation induce increased ASM mass surrounding airway wall via increased ASM proliferation, diminished ASM apoptosis and increased ASM migration. Several major pathways, such as MAPKs, PI3K/AKT, JAK2/STAT3 and Rho kinase, have been reported to regulate these cellular activities in ASM and were reported to be interrelated at certain points. This article aims to provide an overview of the signaling pathways/molecules involved in ASM hyperplasia as well as the mapping of the interplay/crosstalk between these major pathways in mediating ASM hyperplasia. A more comprehensive understanding of the complexity of cellular signaling in ASM cells will enable more specific and safer drug development in the control of asthma.

In recent years, a number of academic analyses have emerged which draw attention to how most artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) activities - low-tech, labour-intensive, mineral extraction and processing - occur in informal 'spaces'. This body of scholarship, however, is heavily disconnected from work being carried out by policy-makers and donors who, recognising the growing economic importance of ASM in numerous rural sections of the developing world, are now working to identify ways in which to facilitate the formalisation of its activities. It has rather drawn mostly on theories of informality that have been developed around radically different, and in many cases, incomparable, experiences, as well as largely redundant ideas, to contextualise phenomena in the sector. This paper reflects critically on the implications of this widening gulf, with the aim of facilitating a better alignment of scholarly debates on ASM's informality with overarching policy/donor objectives. The divide must be bridged if the case for formalising ASM is to be strengthened, and policy is to be reformulated to reflect more accurately the many dimensions of the sector's operations.

The connection between hydrogen-enhanced plasticity and the hydrogen-induced fracture mechanism and pathway is established through examination of the evolved microstructural state immediately beneath fracture surfaces including voids, “quasi-cleavage,” and intergranular surfaces. This leads to a new understanding of hydrogen embrittlement in which hydrogen-enhanced plasticity processes accelerate the evolution of the microstructure, which establishes not only local high concentrations of hydrogen but also a local stress state. Together, these factors establish the fracture mechanism and pathway.

The Asian summer monsoon (ASM) is a vast climate system, whose variability is critical to the livelihoods of billions of people across the Asian continent. During the past half-century, much progress has been made in understanding variations on a wide range of timescales, yet several significant issues remain unresolved. Of note are two long-standing problems concerning orbital-scale variations of the ASM. (1) Chinese loess magnetic susceptibility records show a persistent glacial-interglacial dominated ~100 kyr (thousand years) periodicity, while the cave oxygen-isotope ( δ 18 O) records reveal periodicity in an almost pure precession band (~20 kyr periodicity)—the “Chinese 100 kyr problem”. (2) ASM records from the Arabian Sea and other oceans surrounding the Asian continent show a significant lag of 8–10 kyr to Northern Hemisphere summer insolation (NHSI), whereas the Asian cave δ 18 O records follow NHSI without a significant lag—a discrepancy termed the “sea-land precession-phase paradox”. How can we reconcile these differences? Recent and more refined model simulations now provide spatial patterns of rainfall and wind across the precession cycle, revealing distinct regional divergences in the ASM domain, which can well explain a large portion of the disparities between the loess, marine, and cave proxy records. Overall, we also find that the loess, marine, and cave records are indeed complementary rather than incompatible, with each record preferentially describing a certain aspect of ASM dynamics. Our study provides new insight into the understanding of different hydroclimatic proxies and largely reconciles the “Chinese 100 kyr problem“ and “sea-land precession-phase paradox”.

From being \"the cradle\" of raw diamonds in the world in the eighteenth century, India has turned into an insignificant producer of rough diamonds today. Yet, even now, the indigenous Gonds mine diamonds artisanally in a remote location in central India, largely hidden away from public vision. This article presents an exposition of artisanal diamond mining in central India from the humanistic tradition in geography to illuminate the \"realm\" of the Gonds, where magic and social relations rule imaginaries of the diamonds in the particular place. It argues that the imaginations of diamonds and their mining by indigenous miners in Panna are shaped through the prism of their particular regional history, myth, geography, and culture. Without faith in the restrictive authority of science, capital, and state, and refusing domestication, the miners dig, smuggle, and spend for the savoir vivre. They remain dynamic and rely on traditional ideas of luck, masculinity, and success. They bind themselves to work and to each other in ways that preclude the possibility of amassing wealth and direct wealth in ways that reaffirm their dependence on the miner's life. The argument is illustrated through the story of protagonist Ramu, who proudly spends the earnings from his big diamond find. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Panna, Madhya Pradesh State in central India, this article explores the magic of artisanal diamond mining, shows how place shapes such mining, and shows how informal mining shapes the context.