MicroRNA-155 (miR-155) is dysregulated in human cancers. In this study, we reported that miR-155 was over-expressed in bladder cancer tissues. We found that miR-155 promoted cell proliferation in vitro and tumorigenesis in vivo. MiR-155 directly reduced the expression of the tumor suppressor DMTF1. The expression of DMTF1 was decreased in bladder cancer tissues. Similar to the restoring miR-155 expression, knockdown of DMTF1 promoted cell growth and cell cycle progression, whereas DMTF1 over-expression rescued the effect of miR-155. Moreover, we investigated DMTF1-Arf-p53 pathway and found that DMTF1 worked in both p53-dependent and p53-independent manners. Taken together, our findings suggested that miR-155 functions as a tumor promoter in bladder cancer, which is partially through repressing DMTF1 expression. The identification of miR-155 and its novel target DMTF1 will be valuable in developing diagnostic markers and therapeutic applications for bladder cancer.

The recreational value of Bama Area in China is estimated to be 2.73 hundred millions dollars in 2009 via a revisionary travel cost method (TCM) in this paper. To make the estimation more applicable to the case of Bama, one of the five top longevity townships in the world, this paper adopts a new partition method and revises two calculation principles. Firstly, the conventional zonal travel cost method is amended to divide tourists by their travel cost instead of geographical or administrative zones. Secondly, the cost of tourists for different duration in Bama is calculated respectively. For short-term tourists, travel cost is estimated with the opportunity cost coefficient 1/3. The opportunity cost of the long-term tourists is replaced by their daily board and lodging cost in Bama. Thirdly, the total recreational value only covers special visits to Bama but excludes multi-destination visits. With the three modifications, it is plausible that the recreational value of Bama estimated in this paper reflects more objectively the resource characteristics and real value of the site.

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