Professional association football is a game of talent. The success of a professional club hinges largely on its ability of assembling the best team. Building on a dataset of player transfer records among more than 400 clubs in 24 world-wide top class leagues from 2011 to 2015, this study aims to relate a club’s success to its activities in the player transfer market from a network perspective. We confirm that modern professional football is indeed a money game, in which larger investment spent on the acquisition of talented players generally yields better team performance. However, further investigation shows that professional football clubs can actually play different strategies in surviving or even excelling this game, and the success of strategies is strongly associated to their network properties in the football player transfer network.

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Low-cost and facile fabrication of titanium dioxide coated oxidized titanium diboride-epoxy resin composites with high dielectric constant and extremely low dielectric loss

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Cataract is a major cause of blindness worldwide, its complicated and unclear etiopathogenesis limit effective therapy. Here, we found that Yap, a downstream effector of the Hippo pathway, is specifically expressed in lens epithelial cells and Yap conditional knockout (cKO) in the lens leads to cataract. Histologically, Yap deficient lens show fewer epithelial cells, retention of nuclei and accumulation of morgagnian globules in the transitional zone and the posterior area. Mechanistically, GFAP-mediated Yap cKO leads to the reduced proliferation of epithelial cells, delayed fiber cell denucleation and increased cellular senescence in lens. Further RNA profiling analysis reveals Yap cKO results in a significant alteration in gene transcription that is involved in eye development, lens structure, inflammation, cellular proliferation and polarity. Collectively, our data reveal a novel function of Yap in the lens and links Yap deficiency with the development of cataract, making Yap a promising target for cataract therapy.