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This study focuses on the role of information diversity in household portfolio diversification, using data from the China Household Financial Survey. We first propose a novel information diversity index which incorporates both information channels and information fields (i.e., information topics people pay attention to). Subsequently, empirical tests demonstrate that information diversity significantly affects households' participation in stock, fund and insurance markets. We further construct a household portfolio diversification index and find that information diversity also has a significant positive effect on portfolio diversification. Furthermore, a positive relationship between information diversity and portfolio returns is confirmed. Finally, this study identifies the crucial role of economic and financial information; if this information is lacking, information diversity does not have the same positive impact in some cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) has become a common illness affecting the elderly, adding to society's social and financial burden. We used two‐sample Mendelian randomization (MR) in this study to determine the association between working status and AD. Methods: We performed a two‐sample MR analysis. The genetic associations were derived from the UK Biobank (n = 263,615) and the International Genomics of Alzheimer's Project (n = 63,926). Inverse variance weighted (IVW), MR‐Egger, and weighted median were used in the MR analysis. The funnel plot, Cochran's Q test, MR‐Egger intercept test, and leave‐one‐out analysis were used in sensitivity analyses. Further risk factor analyses were carried out to look into the potential mediators. Results: Jobs involve heavy manual or physical work (OR = 2.13, 95%CI 1.36–3.36; p =.0011), job involves mainly walking or standing (OR = 1.74, 95%CI 1.19–2.54; p =.004), and job involves shift work (OR = 2.78, 95%CI 1.14–6.80; p =.02) increased the risk of AD in the IVW analysis. There was no heterogeneity and no horizontal pleiotropy in the sensitivity analysis. Risk factor analysis suggested that each of the above association may be mediated by different risk factors. Conclusion: Our study adds to the evidence that the development of AD is associated with the working status (job involves heavy manual or physical work, job involves mainly walking or standing, and job involves shift work) by using extensive human genetic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The selective hydrogenation of 5‐hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) has been of great interest to many scientists and researchers. However, conventional hydrogenation inevitably requires the use of gaseous hydrogen as a reducing agent, which is detrimental to its storage and transport. In this regard, other economical and environmentally friendly strategies, such as catalytic transfer hydrogenation/hydrogenolysis without external molecular H2, become more and more attractive. This Review provides the status and insight into the current research of hydrogenating HMF to high‐value chemicals, using formic acid, alcohols, polymethylhydrosiloxane, water, and sodium borohydride as hydrogen donors and explains the hydrogenation mechanisms and the related hydrogenation characteristics of different hydrogen donors in the catalytic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Protein gels made from cow milk and soymilk can yield products of exceptional value. Transglutaminase (TG) affect rennet‐induced gelation of proteins, and improves the functionality of the final products. In this paper, TG and rennet were added to skim milk and soymilk mixtures simultaneously, and the rennet‐induced coagulation was studied. Diffusing wave spectroscopy and rheology measurements were used to access the structural changes of the mixtures during renneting. Syneresis analysis and microscopy can give more information for understanding the system. RESULTS: Soymilk and TG have synergetic effects and inhibit rennet‐induced gelation to a certain degree. With increasing soymilk and TG, elastic index and storage modulus decreased, gelation time was delayed, and curd yield and moisture content increased. At excess soymilk and TG, no curds can be formed. There were significant effects of soymilk and TG on curd microstructure. Soymilk inhibited the aggregation of casein micelles and contributed to more coarse and heterogeneous networks. TG limited reorganization of the proteins, leading to more homogenous networks with small pores. CONCLUSION: The use of soymilk and TG simultaneously impair rennet‐induced gelation and curd syneresis, and consequently lead to a higher yield of high‐moisture curd. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of three dimensional (3D) nanoplate-assembled lanthanum oxide hierarchical microspheres in the detection of the chemical compound hydrogen peroxide. Topics mentioned include the preparation process of lanthanum oxide through hydrothermal method, the use of field emission scanning electron microscopy in observing its morphology and the assembling pattern of hexagonal nanoplates.

Currently, levulinic acid (LA) and formic acid (FA) are considered as important carbohydrates for the production of valueadded chemicals. Their direct production from biomass will open up a new opportunity for the transformation of biomass resource to valuable chemicals. In this study, one-pot transformation of cellobiose into LA and FA was demonstrated, using a series of multiple-functional ionic liquid-based polyoxometalate (IL-POM) hybrids as catalytic materials. These IL-POMs not only markedly promoted the production of valuable chemicals including LA, FA and monosaccharides with high selectivities, but also provided great convenience of the recovery and the reuse of the catalytic materials in an environmentally friendly manner. Cellobiose conversion of 100%, LA selectivity of 46.3%, and FA selectivity of 26.1% were obtained at 423 K and 3 MPa for 3 h in presence of oxygen. A detailed catalytic mechanism for the one-pot transformation of cellobiose was also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Titania-supported gold nanoparticles were prepared by using the deposition-precipitation method, followed by reduction under a hydrogen flow. The catalytic activity of these as-prepared catalysts was explored in the oxidation of cellobiose to gluconic acid with molecular oxygen, and the properties of these catalysts were examined by using XRD, TEM, temperature-programmed desorption of NH3, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, UV/Vis, and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS). The catalyst sample reduced at high temperature demonstrated an excellent catalytic activity in the oxidation of cellobiose. The characterization results revealed the strong metal-support interaction between the gold nanoparticles and titania support. Hydrogen reduction at higher temperatures (usually >600 °C) plays a vital role in affording a unique interface between gold nanoparticles and titania support surfaces, which thus improves the catalytic activity of gold/titania by fine-tuning both the electronic and structural properties of the gold nanoparticles and titania support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary With the development of Internet of Things (IoT), more and more computation‐intensive tasks are generated by IoT devices. Due to the limitation of battery and computing capacity of IoT devices, these tasks can be offloaded to mobile edge computing (MEC) and cloud for processing. However, as the channel states and task generation process are dynamic, and the scales of task offloading problem and solution space size are increasing rapidly, the collaborative task offloading for MEC and cloud faces severe challenges. In this paper, we integrate the two conflicting offloading goals, which are maximizing the task finish ratio with tolerable delay and minimizing the power consumption of devices. We formulate the task offloading problem to balance the two conflicting goals. Then, we reformulate it as an MDP‐based dynamic task offloading problem. We design a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)‐based dynamic task offloading (DDTO) algorithm to solve this problem. Our DDTO algorithm can adapt to the dynamic and complex environment and adjust the task offloading strategies accordingly. Experiments are also carried out which show that our DDTO algorithm can converge quickly. The experiment results also validate the effectiveness and efficacy of our DDTO algorithm in balancing finish ratio and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]