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With the rapid development of China's economy, the continuous improvement of people's living standards and the rapid development of the taxi industry in China, the trip volume of urban taxi and the traveling demands rise rapidly. In this paper, based on the goal and direction of taxi price adjustment of Beijing, from the perspective of economic behavior choice of pedestrians, through the cost-demand equilibrium and the break-even analysis, it finds taxi demands are negatively correlated to fixed costs and the private car population is negatively correlated to the relative traveling cost of the private by the public transportation. Finally, combined with the influence of current taxi software application, thus it puts forward the targeted taxi traffic demand management policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese chestnut trees ( Castanea mollissima BL.) planted in a suburb of Beijing, China developed symptoms including yellowing, leaf crinkling, little leaf, shortened internodes, and empty burrs. Transmission electron microscopy revealed presence of phytoplasma cells in phloem sieve elements of the symptomatic chestnut trees. Molecular cloning and sequence analysis of PCR-amplified near-full length 16S rRNA gene indicated that the phytoplasma associated with the Chinese chestnut yellow crinkle disease is closely related to Japanese chestnut witches'-broom phytoplasma. This is the first report of a phytoplasmal disease in Chinese chestnut trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Host genetic factors and environment factors including hepatitis B virus (HBV) genotypes are widely studied for the different outcomes of HBV infection. Recent studies suggest that tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) plays a pivotal role in the viral clearance and host immune response to HBV, and the capacity for TNF-alpha production in individuals is influenced by a major genetic component. In this study, we aimed to explore whether the single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of TNF-alpha promoter are associated with the outcomes of HBV infection in the Chinese Han population. One hundred and forty-three spontaneously recovered HBV subjects and 196 chronic hepatitis B patients were recruited in this case–control study in the Beijing area of China. Polymerase chain reaction–restriction fragment-length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) and sequence-specific primer-PCR (SSP-PCR) were used to detect the SNPs of five sites in the TNF-alpha promoter (−238G/A, −308G/A, −857C/T, −863C/A, −1031T/C). The frequency distributions of genotypes and haplotypes in two groups were analysed by EPI and EH programs. The presence of the −238GG genotype was significantly correlated with persistence of HBV infection (OR = 4.08, P = 0.02), and −857TT genotype appeared in relation to the spontaneous clearance of HBV (OR = 0.47, P = 0.03). Frequency of haplotype GGCCT (−238/−308/−857/−863/−1031) in the chronic HB group was significantly lower than that in spontaneously recovered group ( P = 0.03), and frequencies of haplotypes GGCAT and GGTAT in the chronic HB group were significantly higher than those in the spontaneously recovered group ( P = 0.0001, P = 0.0004). In conclusion, TNF-alpha promoter polymorphisms are independently associated with different outcomes of HBV infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]