Search

Using Chinese manufacturing enterprises during 2006-2014 as research sample, we examine the effect of adoption of industrial robots on firm entry and its mechanism. The empirical results show that the application of industrial robots can significantly improve the number of new enterprises, total industrial output value, the sales revenue of main business products and the entry rate of new enterprises. After the robustness tests such as solving endogeneity problems and changing the measurement of key variables by constructing Bartik instrumental variables, the conclusion is still valid. The mechanism analysis reveals that first, the application of industrial robots has a certain substitution effect on labor demand. The real labor cost is relatively low in areas with high installation density of industrial robots, thus promoting the scale of firm entry. Second, the application of industrial robots can improve the productivity and profits of enterprises, thus attracting new enterprises. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the adoption of industrial robots has a larger impact on the market entry of non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) than on that of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) ; and compared with technology-intensive industries, it has a larger impact on new enterprises in labor-intensive and capital-intensive industries. In addition, it has a larger effect on new enterprises in areas with higher level of marketization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is considered as an important business agenda in the current age. Based on the data of A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2020, this study used a fixed-effect model, heterogeneity analysis and intermediary effect test to investigate the relationship between parent-subsidiary geographical distance and CSR. Our study findings revealed that the parent-subsidiary companies' geographic distance has a negative effect on CSR. Results of our study further indicated that the effect was more stronger for non-state-owned enterprises and the firms in the eastern region. Findings of our study also reported that the enterprise internal control had an obvious mediating effect in the association among parent-subsidiary companies' geographic distance and CSR. The government needs to reinforce legal construction, actively guide enterprises to perform CSR through incentive measures, and implement special supervision on enterprises with a large number of subsidiaries. This study not only enriches the literature on the factors influencing corporate social responsibility but also provides a theoretical perspective and important ideas for the effective implementation of regional diversification and the improvement of CSR levels in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT A compact microstrip-fed multiband planar antenna for global positioning system, worldwide interoperability for microwave access, and wireless local area network applications is presented. Three operating frequency bands are achieved by a pair of L-shaped slots and rectangular slots, and defected ground structure. The fabricated prototype for the proposed antenna occupies an area of 32 × 22.6 mm2. The measured results show that the proposed antenna has 10 dB impedance bandwidth of 420 MHz (1.34-1.76 GHz), 590 MHz (3.21-3.80 GHz), and 1.5 GHz (5.05-6.55 GHz). The proposed antenna shows good radiation patterns and acceptable gain over three operating bands. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 57:1769-1773, 2015 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The interaction between environmental endocrine-disrupting chemicals, such as Bisphenol A (BPA), and their influence on cancer progression, particularly regarding the GOLPH3 gene in colorectal cancer, remains unclear., Methods: We performed an integrated analysis of transcriptional profiling, clinical data, and bioinformatics analyses utilizing data from the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database and The Cancer Genome Atlas. The study employed ClueGO, Gene Set Enrichment Analysis, and Gene Set Variation Analysis for functional enrichment analysis, alongside experimental assays to examine the effects of BPA exposure on colorectal cancer cell lines, focusing on GOLPH3 expression and its implications for cancer progression., Results: Our findings demonstrated that BPA exposure significantly promoted the progression of colorectal cancer by upregulating GOLPH3, which in turn enhanced the malignant phenotype of colorectal cancer cells. Comparative analysis revealed elevated GOLPH3 protein levels in cancerous tissues versus normal tissues, with single-cell analysis indicating widespread GOLPH3 presence across various cell types in the cancer microenvironment. GOLPH3 was also associated with multiple carcinogenic pathways, including the G2M checkpoint. Furthermore, our investigation into the colorectal cancer microenvironment and genomic mutation signature underscored the oncogenic potential of GOLPH3, exacerbated by BPA exposure., Conclusion: This study provides novel insights into the complex interactions between BPA exposure and GOLPH3 in the context of colorectal cancer, emphasizing the need for heightened awareness and measures to mitigate BPA exposure risks. Our findings advocate for further research to validate these observations in clinical and epidemiological settings and explore potential therapeutic targets within these pathways., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Chen, Chen, Li, Qiu, Chen, Wu, Deng, Chen, Wang, Hong and Qiu.)

Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is of great value to both clinical diagnosis and scientific research. However, most MRI experiments remain qualitative, especially dynamic MRI, because repeated sampling with variable weighting parameter makes quantitative imaging time-consuming and sensitive to motion artifacts. A single-shot quantitative T 2 mapping method based on multiple overlapping-echo acquisition (dubbed MOLED-4) was proposed to obtain reliable T 2 mapping in milliseconds. Different from traditional MRI acceleration methods, such as compressed sensing and parallel imaging, MOLED-4 accelerates quantitative T 2 mapping via synchronized multisampling and then deep learning to map the complex nonlinear relationship that is difficult to solve by traditional optimization-based methods. The results of simulation, phantom, and in vivo human brain experiments show the great performance of the proposed method. The principle of MOLED-4 may be extended to other ultrafast quantitative parameter mappings and potentially lead to new dynamic MRI with high efficiency to catch quantitative variation of tissue properties.

Objective: To explore the predictive value of plasma cell-free DNA (cf-DNA) for prognosis in patients with sepsis., Methods: 105 patients with sepsis admitted to department of emergency of the First Hospital of Quanzhou Affiliated to Fujian Medical University from June 2015 to June 2017 were enrolled. Patients were divided into sepsis group (n = 50) and severe sepsis group (n = 55). At the same time, 50 cases of physical examination center in our hospital were randomly selected as the healthy control group. The differences of cf-DNA, procalcitonin (PCT) and acute physiology and chronic health evaluation II (APACHE II) score among the three groups were compared. The correlation between cf-DNA and PCT or APACHE II were analyzed by Bivarite method. Logistic regression was used to analyze the independent predictors of sepsis. The receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was made to evaluate cf-DNA, PCT, APACHE II alone or combined ability to predict the prognosis of sepsis., Results: The PCT, APACHE II and cf-DNA in the sepsis group and severe sepsis group were significantly higher than those in the healthy control group [PCT (μg/L): 5.80 (3.28, 8.85), 17.53 (8.40, 29.61) vs. 0.02 (0.01, 0.03); APACHE II: 13.04±3.03, 23.29±8.02 vs. 2.10±1.05; cf-DNA (μg/L): 1 438.0 (1 154.0, 1 576.0), 2 595.0 (2 162.0, 5 198.0) vs. 17.0 (13.0, 20.5); all P < 0.05], and the indicators in the severe sepsis group were further higher than the sepsis group (all P < 0.05). Correlation analysis showed that cf-DNA was significantly positive correlated with PCT [r = 0.675, 95% confidence interval (95%CI) = 0.575-0.766, P < 0.001] and APACHE II (r = 0.911, 95%CI = 0.874-0.939, P < 0.001). ROC curve analysis showed that the areas under ROC curve (AUC) of PCT, APACHE II, cf-DNA, PCT+APACHE II, cf-DNA+PCT, cf-DNA+APACHE II, cf-DNA+PCT+APACHE II to predict the prognosis of sepsis patients were 0.898, 0.905, 0.961, 0.941, 0.974, 0.976 and 0.982, respectively. It was shown that when predicted alone with PCT, APACHE II and cf-DNA, the AUC of cf-DNA was the largest (0.961), the sensitivity was 100%, and the specificity was 81.43%; the combined prediction of cf-DNA with PCT or APACHE II could further increase AUC, and the combined prediction of cf-DNA, PCT and APACHE II had the highest AUC (0.982), the sensitivity was 94.29%, the specificity was 98.57%., Conclusions: cf-DNA, PCT and APACHE II have certain predictive value for the prognosis of sepsis. The value of cf-DNA was the highest when predicted alone, but the predictive ability of cf-DNA combined with PCT and APACHE II was the best.