Internationalization, cultural appreciation and institutional governmentality for quality control in transnational higher education cooperation: An empirical assessment.

This article examines the dynamic mechanism of cultural appreciation and institutional governmentality to ensure successful quality control in a transnational higher education collaboration context. Adopting participatory action research and a case study approach, this paper investigates the quality control system in a Chinese tourism university. The present study finds that mutual cultural appreciation, responsible government guidance and institutional governmentality are essential quality control measures for transnational higher education cooperation. The quality control system is suggested to be established to enrich and improve the quality standards of joint international higher education collaboration. This study proposes to expand the international influence and recognition of China-foreign education collaboration through quality international exchange and cooperation.

Sodium butyrate potentiates insulin secretion from rat islets at the expense of compromised expression of ß cell identity genes.

Short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) produced by the gut microbiota have been well demonstrated to improve metabolic homeostasis. However, the role of SCFAs in islet function remains controversial. In the present study, none of the sodium acetate, sodium propionate, and sodium butyrate (SB) displayed acute impacts on insulin secretion from rat islets, whereas long-term incubation of the three SCFAs significantly potentiated pancreatic ß cell function. RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) revealed an unusual transcriptome change in SB-treated rat islets, with the downregulation of insulin secretion pathway and ß cell identity genes, including Pdx1, MafA, NeuroD1, Gck, and Slc2a2. But these ß cell identity genes were not governed by the pan-HDAC inhibitor trichostatin A. Overlapping analysis of H3K27Ac ChIP-seq and RNA-seq showed that the inhibitory effect of SB on the expression of multiple ß cell identity genes was independent of H3K27Ac. SB treatment increased basal oxygen consumption rate (OCR), but attenuated glucose-stimulated OCR in rat islets, without altering the expressions of genes involved in glycolysis and tricarboxylic acid cycle. SB reduced the expression of Kcnj11 (encoding KATP channel) and elevated basal intracellular calcium concentration. On the other hand, SB elicited insulin gene expression in rat islets through increasing H3K18bu occupation in its promoter, without stimulating CREB phosphorylation. These findings indicate that SB potentiates islet function as a lipid molecule at the expense of compromised expression of islet ß cell identity genes.