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Present studies on ethnicity and intestinal flora show that different ethnic factors, such as diet, geography, and genetics, can make remarkable differences in the structure of intestinal microbiota. To the best of our knowledge, in this study, the differences in intestinal flora of healthy Dai and Han Chinese in the Yunnan region of China were determined for the first time by high-throughput sequencing, and the correlation between polymorphisms of FOXC2 C-512T and the structure of intestinal flora was analyzed. The study found that there were significant differences in α and β diversity in intestinal flora between healthy Dai and Han people, and the two ethnic groups had dominant microbiota, through analysis at gate and genus levels. Moreover, our study shows that the intestinal flora structure of FOXC2 C-512T locus CT is different from that of the other two genotypes in terms of α and β diversity and that FOXC2 C-512T polymorphism can affect the composition of human intestinal flora. This study mainly fills the gap in the field of ethnic-gut microbiome research of Dai people and reveals the effect of FOXC2 C-512T polymorphism on the structure of human intestinal flora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Upper gastrointestinal (G.I.) cancer screening has been conducted in China for decades. However, the economic burden for treatment "intensively" occurred in advance due to screening in resource-limited communities remain unclear. Methods: We compared the treatment costs for upper G.I. cancers from the screening and control arms of a population-based randomized trial in a high-risk area for esophageal cancer (EC) in China based on claims data from the health insurance system in the local area which included whole population coverage. Results: The average out-of-pocket cost per treatment of EC in the screening arm was lower than that in the control arm ($5,972 vs. $7,557). This difference was a consequence of down-staging from screening which resulted in lower cost therapy for earlier stage cancers. Moreover, this result is similar for cardial and non-cardial gastric cancer in the two study arms ($7,933 vs. $10,605). However, three times as many (103 vs. 36) families in the screening arm suffered catastrophic health expenditure for all cancer types. The overall treatment cost for all EC patients in the screening arm ($1,045,119) was 2.44 times that in the control arm ($428,292), and the ratio for cardial and non-cardial gastric cancer was 1.12 ($393,261 vs. $351,557). Conclusion: Cancer treatment secondary to screening may triple the likelihood of catastrophic patient medical expenditure, and sharply increase the economic pressure on the local community, particularly for cancer types which are of high prevalence. Financial support for patients and the health insurance system should be taken into consideration when planning budgets for cancer screening programs in communities which are resource-limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper measures the regional oceanic economic performance in China's 11 coastal areas from 2007 to 2014 using a dynamic growth efficiency framework. We construct a new global Malmquist ocean performance index (GMOPI), which integrates the global benchmark technology with the slacks-based measure (SBM) and Malmquist-Luenberger (ML) productivity index. This index can successfully eliminate a common infeasibility problem encountered in ML cross-period problem. Furthermore, the labour input, capital input, economic output, and environmental output contribution indexes are proposed by internally decomposing the GMOPI, which can explain which factor could bias technological progress. The empirical results indicate two different modes of China's oceanic economic growth during the examined time period, i.e., a volatility phase (2007–2010) and a stability phase (2011–2014). Moreover, the factor contribution indexes show that the low contribution scores for environmental integrity and capital in the volatility phase. The findings highlight the need for the further strengthening of environmental and investment policies in China. • China's ocean economy performance depends on environmental integrity was examined. • The four factor contributions to GMOPI are explored. • The empirical results indicated two phases of China's ocean economy. • The findings will call for further strengthening of the coordination of environmental policies in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Li, L.; Lei, L., and Han, D., 2018. Regional green innovation efficiency in high-end manufacturing. In: Ashraf, M.A. and Chowdhury, A.J.K. (eds.), Coastal Ecosystem Responses to Human and Climatic Changes throughout Asia. Using regional panel data of the high-end manufacturing industry in China from 2011 to 2015, the authors use projection tracking and a stochastic frontier model to analyze regional green innovation efficiency and influencing factors. Research shows that the innovation efficiency national average in high-end manufacturing is between 0.7 and 0.8 and that regional green innovation efficiency is polarized, presenting as high in the east and low in the west. Both of these measures illustrate some room for green innovation improvement. The number of research and development institutions and industry agglomeration have a significant positive influence on green innovation, while government funding plays a supporting role. Environmental regulation, market maturity, and degree of openness to the outside world have some negative effects on green innovation, with environmental regulation having significant effects. This paper provides evidence for the improvement of green innovation efficiency in the high-end manufacturing industry in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study constructs a fully fuzzy data envelopment analysis (DEA) with large datasets to evaluate the urban circular economy. The proposed fully fuzzy DEA model considers uncertainties of circular economy indicators and introduces fuzzy trigonometric numbers. Additionally, the model provides a modified algorithm to overcome calculation difficulties due to voluminous data and large-scale decision-making units. The proposed model can quickly solve urban circular economy efficiency under uncertainty and with large datasets. An empirical study of 264 Chinese cities over 2009–2018 was conducted. Overall, the average annual fuzzy efficiency scores (theoretically vary from 0 ˜ to 1 ˜) of the urban circular economy in these cities are (0.7471, 0.7463, 0.7451), indicating that there is substantial room for improvement. The average efficiency scores and the subitem coordination levels of western cities are the highest compared to those of the other regions. Moreover, Northeast China exhibits the lowest efficiency score, which may be attributed to its decaying industry and unadvanced technical level. The overall urban economy performance presents two distinct trends: in 2009–2015, the urban circular economy exhibited negative growth, whereas it increased in 2015–2018. However, the growth rate declined, and negative growth remains a risk. Based on the results, several policy implications are provided for promoting urban circular economy. • Novel fully fuzzy DEA with large datasets is proposed for urban circular economy evaluation • Proposed model applied to 264 Chinese cities for the 2009–2018 period. • Average circular economy efficiency scores indicated great room for improvement. • Western China efficiency scores high, whereas those of Northeast China were low. • Although the circular economy grew from 2015 to 2018, negative growth remains a risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel cooperative game network DEA model for evaluating marine circular economy (MCE) performance. The proposed model considers the bidirectional link between the economic production (EP) and environmental treatment (ET) subsystems within the MCE system. Then, the cooperative game strategy between subsystems is modeled by maximizing the factor inefficiency both of subsystems into the model's measurement from a centralized control perspective. The evaluation results of China's regional MCE performances over 2006–2015 show that while most coastal areas have a better efficiency score for the EP system, their performance of the ET system is worse and leads to poor MCE performances. In addition, converge analysis indicates that there exists β converge of efficiency difference across coastal regions in the long term. Furthermore, the efficiency decomposition reveals that many inefficient environmental treatment inputs contribute to the worse performance of the ET system. Based on the above findings, several specific policy implications for the existing problems are provided to promote China's MCE. • A novel two-stage game DEA is proposed for evaluating MCE performance. • Regional disparity and stage characteristic of MCE in China are explored. • Convergence analysis of efficiency change are provided. • Factor efficiency is given as the determinant of system performance. • Policy suggestions are proposed for promoting marine circular economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy and carbon emission performance evaluation is a focus topic in the field of environmental protection and energy utilization. However, the current studies are not high in identifying economic output inefficiency and neglect to control target energy carbon emission intensity (ECI), which may cause evaluation bias. Hence, this paper presents a constrained performance index measure (CPIM) model to solve the issues. The proposed model takes the performance index measure and can identify more numbers of positive economic output inefficiency compared to the directional distance function (DDF) model. Besides, the ECI constraint is presented and imposed into the proposed model to restrict the target ECI of decision making units. The numerical example from China's provincial dataset demonstrates and confirms the validity and merit of the proposed model through the measure and constraint comparison among different models. Then, it is found that most provinces exist certain economic output inefficiency and the center regions have a worst score of energy carbon emission performance index due to the rapid development of their secondary industry by using the proposed model. Several valuable modeling directions and questions related to performance index measure and energy pollution emission constraints are provided for future research. • We propose a constrained performance index measure (CPIM) model. • The CPIM model can identify more economic output inefficiency than the DDF model. • The CPIM model can restrict target energy carbon emission intensity of DMUs. • The numerical example demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poisonous weeds are a global problem since they not only hinder local economic development, but also cause ecological harm. Consolida rugulosa (family Ranunculaceae) is a weed that is widespread in Northwestern China and causes severe poisoning when ingested by livestock. In the present study, we purified the toxins in this plant and investigated their mechanism of action. Five natural diterpene alkaloids (compounds 1-5)-including two new compounds (1 and 2)-were isolated, and five semi-synthetic derivatives (6-10) were synthesised based on 4 or 5 for structure-activity analysis. The toxicity of the compounds was evaluated in vitro with lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) assay. All of the compounds-especially 1-stimulated LDH release in primary cultured rat myocardial cells, an effect that was blocked by the Na + channel blocker lidocaine. Electrocardiography revealed that rats treated with 1 had severe arrhythmia, while heart Doppler echocardiography and analysis of serum biomarkers levels revealed that administration of 1 for 15 days induced changes in cardiac structure and myocardial enzyme levels. These effects were antagonised by lidocaine treatment. Thus, diterpene alkaloids are the main compounds responsible for the cardiotoxicity of C. rugulosa, which can be mitigated by co-administration of lidocaine., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objectives: Endothelial dysfunction plays a key role in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease. However, the gender-related differences in risk factors for endothelial dysfunction are controversial. We investigated the gender differences in the risk factor profiles for endothelial dysfunction in Chinese hypertensive patients., Methods: Vascular endothelial functions in 213 hypertensive patients were measured by digital reactive hyperemia peripheral arterial tonometry (RH-PAT). Peripheral blood samples were collected, and the self-reported smoking and alcohol consumption status, age, body mass index, heart rate, blood pressure and drug administrations were recorded., Results: RH-PAT indexes were attenuated in both male and female hypertensive patients [1.60 (1.38-2.02) vs. 1.63 (1.44-1.98)]. Multivariate logistic regression analysis identified plasma creatinine (p < 0.001), total cholesterol (p = 0.001), homocysteine (p = 0.002) and smoking (p < 0.001) as the independent factors correlated with gender (male). Multivariate linear regression analysis further identified homocysteine as the factor that is significantly and independently correlated with the decrease in the RH-PAT indexes in female patients (odds ratio: -0.166, 95% confidence interval: -0.292 to -0.040, p = 0.01). However, none of these four factors were correlated with the RH-PAT indexes in male patients., Conclusions: There are gender-related differences in the risk factors for endothelial dysfunction in Chinese hypertensive patients. Homocysteine is an independent factor for endothelial dysfunction in female hypertensive patients.

We determined the allele frequencies and forensic parameters for the 26 short tandem repeat (STR) autosomal markers in two commercial kits (the Investigator HDplex and AmpFLSTR(®) Identifiler(®) systems) for 183 unrelated individuals from the Han population of the Hebei Province of China. The 26 STRs were all in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. No linkage disequilibrium was detected between any pair of loci. The combined power of discrimination and the combined power of exclusion for the 26 STR loci were 1-7.74E-31 and 1-1.21E-11, respectively. Six rare alleles of D10S2325 were identified and named 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 31. All the length of the six rare alleles were out of the range of allelic ladder. We calculated the population pairwise genetic distance based on the allele frequencies, using published population data including German, central Polish, south Dutch, northeastern Polish, south Brazilian, Korean, Sichuan Han of China, and Shanghai Han of China. Also we examined the population pairwise genetic distance of loci included in Identifiler system between Hebei Han and other ethnic population of China. These 26 autosomal STR loci could provide highly informative polymorphic data for paternity testing and forensic identification in the Hebei Han population in China. Because they are all in linkage equilibrium, they could be used together to solve deficient kinship cases or cases with mutations.

Objective: To investigate genetic polymorphisms of 12 X chromosome short tandem repeat (X-STR) loci in ethnic Hebei Han population using an Investigator Argus X-12 amplification kit., Methods: DNA was extracted for 198 unrelated individuals (96 males and 102 females) and amplified with a fluorescence labeled multiplex PCR system. PCR products were separated and genotyped with capillary array electrophoresis., Results: Only DXS10103 and DXS10101 showed significant linkage disequilibrium at the 12 X-STR loci. One hundred and forty-eight alleles, including 22 off-ladder (OL) alleles, were observed at the 12 X-STR loci in the population. The heterozygosity and polymorphic information content (PIC) were 0.5074-0.9143 and 0.4377-0.9079, respectively. The power of discrimination (PD) was 0.5074-0.9143 in males and 0.6876-0.9863 in females. The mean exclusion chance was 0.4377-0.9079 in the trios cases and 0.2984-0.8373 in the duo cases, respectively., Conclusion: The Investigator Argus X12 amplification system is highly polymorphic in ethnic Han population from Hebei and is useful for personal identification and paternity testing.