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This research manuscript is aimed at to examine entrepreneurial intentions through the cognitive approach of Chinese and Pakistani adults. Data for this research was acquired from the database of GEM 2012 APS Global Individual Level. The entrepreneurial intention was a dependent variable while independent variables were individual perceptions, socio-cultural perceptions and perceptions of economic opportunities. Their effect on intentions is tested along with some control variables. Four logistic regressions were employed to test three hypotheses. Fear of failure was not found as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intentions in both countries. Gender is also not a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intentions in China. But it is significant in Pakistan; therefore, we can say that males are more likely to hold entrepreneurial intentions in Pakistan. The results of role model, self-efficacy and perception of economic opportunities are positive and significant predictors of entrepreneurial intentions in both countries. From socio-cultural perceptions, status and respect and news in media have been found strong predictors of entrepreneurial intentions among Chinese adults while career choice and news in media have been found strong predictors of entrepreneurial intentions among Pakistani adults. Pakistani government should encourage Small and Medium Enterprise Development Authority to provide basic entrepreneurial training (Entrepreneurial Idea Generation) to adults and commercial and micro-finance banks/institutes to lend small and big loans to adults who prefer to open their firms/businesses.

Environmental pollution has become a pressing global issue, severely threatening human health and ecosystems. As an emerging driver of economic development in countries worldwide, the digital economy (DE) has the potential to enhance resource utilization efficiency and promote the development of clean technologies, thereby reducing environmental pollution. Based on the panel data of 267 cities in China from 2012 to 2021, the spatial econometric model is used to test the impact of DE on environmental pollution. The mediating effect model is used to explore the transmission mechanism of DE affecting environmental pollution. The panel threshold model is used to examine the threshold effect of marketization. The results are as follows: (1) DE can significantly reduce environmental pollution. The conclusion is still valid after conducting robustness tests such as selecting historical data as instrumental variables and the "Broadband China" pilot as a quasi-natural experiment. (2) From the perspective of transmission mechanism, DE can reduce environmental pollution through green technology innovation and industrial structure upgrading. (3) From the perspective of spatial spillover effect, DE can reduce the environmental pollution level of surrounding cities. (4) From the perspective of threshold effect, DE has obvious market-oriented single threshold effect on environmental pollution. When the marketization level crosses the threshold of 11.6611, the emission reduction effect of DE is significant. (5) From the perspective of heterogeneity, DE has a heterogeneous impact on environmental pollution in cities with different geographic locations, resource endowments and administrative level. Regarding geographical heterogeneity, DE can effectively reduce environmental pollution in eastern and central regions, but has no significant impact on environmental pollution in western regions. Regarding the heterogeneity of resource endowment, compared to non-resource-based cities, resource-based cities suffer more from the negative effects of DE on their environment. Regarding the heterogeneity of administrative levels, compared with non-central cities, the DE of central cities has a greater emission reduction effect. Based on empirical results, this paper proposes strategic recommendations in areas such as enhancing the application of DE in emission reduction, upgrading industrial structures, promoting green technology innovation, and improving the level of marketization. This study not only enriches the research of DE and environmental pollution, but also provides a reference for the formulation of environmental pollution control policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The petrogenesis of aluminous A-type granites is a contentious subject. Here, we focused on the North Kudi pluton in the Western Kunlun orogen to investigate the origin and magmatic processes responsible for generating A-type granites. Samples from the North Kudi pluton are metaluminous to weakly peraluminous. K-feldspar granite samples are characterized by high alkali and Cl contents, high HFSE concentrations and FeO/MgO, low F content, negative Ba, Sr, P, Eu, and Ti anomalies, and high magma temperature (>903 °C), showing affinity to aluminous A-type granites. However, their 10,000 × Ga/Al ratios (1.86–3.18) are relatively lower than typical A-type granites. Quartz-monzonite displays similar Sr–Nd isotopic compositions and Ga/Al ratios with the K-feldspar granite but less pronounced negative Sr, P, and Ti anomalies and no discernable negative Ba and Eu anomalies. Fractional crystallization of alkali-rich, Cl-rich, and F-poor magmas can generate some typical geochemical characteristics of A-type granites (e.g., negative Ba, Sr, P, and Eu anomalies) but has little influence on Ga/Al ratios. The enriched Sr–Nd isotopic compositions, high Cl and alkali contents, arc-like geochemical features, and the involvement of slab-derived components, as indicated by high zircon Ce4+/Ce3+ (up to 503), suggest that the North Kudi pluton was possibly derived from partial melting of the metasomatized lithospheric mantle in the time of asthenosphere upwelling during the post-collisional stage. The emplacement of the North Kudi pluton thus indicates the onset of the post-orogenic stage in the Western Kunlun orogen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the time of J. H. van’t Hoff [1], it has been known that chemical equilibrium is dynamic, meaning that at equilibrium, chemical reactions do not cease, but instead the forward and backward reaction rates are equal. The constant concentrations at equilibrium preclude the use of concentrations to measure reaction rates at equilibrium. Therefore, with the exception of a few special cases, no reaction rates at equilibrium have been published in the literature of chemistry, physics, or chemical engineering. Here we report dissolution and precipitation rates at equilibrium for quartz and barite with the isotope-doping method. Experimental data show that dissolution and precipitation rates are equal at equilibrium, indicating the principle of detailed balance (PDB) appear to be applicable at these experimental conditions. The PDB has been a cornerstone for irreversible thermodynamics and chemical kinetics for a long time, and its wide application in geochemistry has mostly been implicit and without experimental testing of its applicability. Nevertheless, many extrapolations based on PDB without experimental validation have far reaching impacts on society’s mega environmental enterprises. The isotope doping method appears to able to test its applicability for a variety of minerals at a wide range of conditions.

Aeschynanthus pulcher (Blume) G. Don, the "lipstick plant" is a prized ornamental plant with distinctive flowers. Here, we introduce a novel in vitro regeneration method for A. pulcher using leaf explants and an optimized combination of phytohormone plant growth regulators (PGRs). The optimal conditions for shoot regeneration included 1 mg L−1 polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) plus 3 mg L−1 thidiazuron (TDZ), inducing a response rate of 82.4% and a shoot/explant ratio of 38.6. When the Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium contained indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) alone, leaves first differentiated into adventitious roots and then adventitious shoots. Leaves cultured on MS medium containing 1 g L−1 PVP, 3 mg L−1 TDZ, 5 mg L−1 casein, and 0.1 mg L−1 α-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) for 30 d exhibited the highest embryogenic callus (EC) induction rate (95.6%). The optimal shoot proliferation coefficient (21.5) was obtained when shoots derived from EC were cultured on the same medium as that used for EC induction for 5 weeks. The most effective medium for rooting of elongated shoots was MS medium containing 1 g L−1 PVP, 5 mg L−1 casein, 3 mg L−1 6-benzyladenine (BA), and 0.1 mg L−1 NAA, and the number of roots reached 18.8. The regenerated plants grown in a greenhouse had 100% survival following one week of hardening. Overall, our effective and efficient propagation method should result in shortened culture periods and reduced production costs, allowing for the future selective breeding and genetic improvement of A. pulcher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning about the regional business model is essential for the sustainable development of the regional economy. From the perspective of urban renewable energy, city A is the product of energy development. This paper analyzes the current situation and existing problems of the industrial model of city A through fuzzy k-means clustering algorithm. The results show that although the optimization of industrial structure in city A has achieved some results, the more intuitive problems mainly include low labor productivity of the primary industry, strong resource dependence, insufficient extension of industrial chain, and slow development of technology intensive industries. This paper uses fuzzy k-means clustering algorithm to select the leading industries from the perspective of the current situation of leading industries, urban development pattern, and regional policies in city A. The results show that, as a renewable resource-based city, the leading industries suitable for the current development of city A include manufacturing, power, alkali gas and water production and supply, transportation, warehousing and postal industry, leasing, and business services. The results of fuzzy k-means clustering algorithm are quite excellent, and the accuracy rate is 93.3%. This paper uses the grey dynamic linear programming model to predict the future development of the Urban A business model and combines the selection of key functions to obtain the best business model: deep and efficient technical equipment as a good goal, achieved through regional logistics, transportation, new services, etc., to enhance the output value of the tertiary industry in city A and optimize the internal structure of the secondary industry in city A. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Coptis chinensis Franch., is a widely used medicinal plant in China. This plant is often contaminated by cadmium (Cd) and render health risk to human consumers. Understanding distribution of Cd and its chemical forms is important to evaluate accumulation of the metal and its detoxification mechanisms in this plant. Since few studies have focused on this aspect, we used laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to spatially locate Cd in rhizome cross-sections, and ICP-MS to analyze the Cd subcellular distribution and the chemical forms of Cd in different tissues. Rhizome bioimaging results showed that Cd was distributed predominantly within the periderm, cortex, pith, and root trace vascular bundle. The LA-ICP-MS results suggested that Ca2+ channels might be a pathway for Cd entry into the plant. Subcellular distribution data indicated that most of Cd was associated with the cell wall (41.8–77.1%) and the soluble fraction (14.4–52.7%) in all tissues. Analysis of chemical forms revealed that majority Cd existed in less mobile and less toxic forms in all tissues, and P could convert to insoluble phosphate with Cd to moderate Cd toxicity. The new understanding of Cd accumulation and detoxification might provide novel strategies for reducing the levels of Cd in C. chinensis Franch., thereby mitigating its potential transfer to humans and providing a theoretical basis for evaluating the Cd status in other medicinal plants. Further, our findings might provide a basis for establishing a reasonable Cd limit level of traditional Chinese medicinal materials. Graphical abstract fx1 Highlights • Cd and other element bioimagings were mapped on rhizomes of Coptis chinensis Franch. using LA-ICP-MS. • Cd subcellular distribution and chemical forms were studied to better understand their accumulation and detoxification mechanisms. • The total content of heavy metal elements in traditional Chinese medicines cannot represent the toxicity of the heavy metal elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Routing protocol is an important topic in the wireless sensor networks. For MultiSink wireless sensor networks, the routing protocol designs and implementations are more difficult due to the structure complexity. The paper deals with the problem of a multiple-dimensional tree routing protocol for multisink wireless sensor networks based on ant colony optimization. The proposed protocol is as follows: (1) listening mechanism is used to establish and maintain multidimensional tree routing topology; (2) taking into consideration hops, packet losses, retransmission, and delay account, a distributed ant colony algorithm is proposed. When nodes select routes in the data transmission, the algorithm is utilized to realize the real-time optimization by coordination between nodes. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol can realize the QoS optimization for multisink wireless sensor networks, and its performance is better than the routing protocol of minimum hop numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep learning has achieved great success on robotic vision tasks. However, when compared with other vision-based tasks, it is difficult to collect a representative and sufficiently large training set for six-dimensional (6D) object pose estimation, due to the inherent difficulty of data collection. In this paper, we propose the RobotP dataset consisting of commonly used objects for benchmarking in 6D object pose estimation. To create the dataset, we apply a 3D reconstruction pipeline to produce high-quality depth images, ground truth poses, and 3D models for well-selected objects. Subsequently, based on the generated data, we produce object segmentation masks and two-dimensional (2D) bounding boxes automatically. To further enrich the data, we synthesize a large number of photo-realistic color-and-depth image pairs with ground truth 6D poses. Our dataset is freely distributed to research groups by the Shape Retrieval Challenge benchmark on 6D pose estimation. Based on our benchmark, different learning-based approaches are trained and tested by the unified dataset. The evaluation results indicate that there is considerable room for improvement in 6D object pose estimation, particularly for objects with dark colors, and photo-realistic images are helpful in increasing the performance of pose estimation algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To enhance the degradation of wheat straw (WS) and corn straw (CS) in rumen fermentation, characterization of degradation and ruminal microorganisms of monosubstrate (WS/CS) groups and a cosubstrate strategy with food waste (FW) group was performed. The cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin degradation efficiency of WS and CS; soluble chemical oxygen demand; volatile fatty acid yields; and activity of ligninolytic, cellulolytic, and hemicellulolytic enzymes for the cosubstrate group were improved compared with those for the corresponding monosubstrate groups. An accurate and a good of fit of the Weibull kinetic model, decreased crystallinity index values, and characteristic absorbance bands in the Fourier transform-infrared spectra further confirmed that cosubstrate addition with FW decreased the resistance of cellulose and hemicellulose to biodegradation. High-throughput sequencing results suggested that the bacterial diversity in CS rumen fermentation and fungal diversity and richness in WS rumen fermentation were promoted with FW as a cosubstrate. The cosubstrate addition with FW significantly affected the composition of the ruminal bacteria and fungi in rumen fermentation. The relative abundances (RAs) of rumen bacteria were increased in the cosubstrate CS/WS and FW fermentation conditions, and the enhancement of CS degradation with FW supplementation was stronger than that of WS rumen fermentation with FW supplementation. The RAs of the ruminal fungal genera Ustilago and Fusarium were promoted in CS and WS fermentation with FW, respectively. Moreover, the fermentation properties and rumen flora in the FW rumen fermentation also provided some evidence to suggest an enhancement of the cosubstrate strategy compared with the monosubstrate strategy. Image 1 • Food waste (FW) increased alkalinity and improved VFAs yield in rumen fermentation. • Wheat/corn straw (WS/CS) rumen degradation was enhanced by cosubstrate with FW. • Lignocellulases and bacterial diversity in CS and FW fermentation were improved. • Fungal diversity and richness in WS fermentation were promoted with FW addition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study performed a series of comparable experiments (with or without column chromatography) to evaluate whether non-deviated Cu isotope ratios can be obtained directly by Nu Plasma II multi-collector inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS) using standard-sample bracketing with Ga as internal mass bias correction model (C-SSBIN) without column chromatography. Twelve Cu-dominated minerals (copper plate, native copper, chalcopyrite, bornite, chalcocite, digenite, covellite, tetrahedrite, azurite, malachite, atacamite, and cyanotrichite) displayed little drift in δ 65 Cu values compared with those of minerals with column chromatography, with Δδ 65 Cu without-with ranging from -0.04 to +0.02‰. This means that Cu isotope ratios in Cu-dominated minerals can be achieved without column chromatography, due to the simple matrix and the stability of the machine by using C-SSBIN mode. The acidity and internal standard concentration mismatch effects, as well as the matrix effect, were strictly assessed by Nu Plasma II MC-ICP-MS in a wet-plasma mode in the State Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics (SKLCD). Finally, a long-term reproducibility of better than ±0.03‰ [ n = 38, 2 standard deviations (2s)] were achieved by repeatedly measuring chalcopyrite without column chromatography over 4 months., (Copyright © 2020 Zhang, Bao, Lv, Chen, Zong and Yuan.)