Search

Taking the provinces, autonomous regions and cities in mainland China as the research objects, this paper collects and collates the data of production, input and energy consumption of the financial industry from 2009 to 2014, and analyzes the production efficiency of each region. The empirical results show that the production efficiency of all prefecture-level cities is 0.782. If analysed on region basis, the average production efficiency of prefecture-level cities is the highest in the eastern provinces, followed by the central provinces and the lowest in the western provinces. If analysed on annual basis, the distribution of production efficiency shows a trend of decline during 2009-2010 and increase after 2012.

This paper combs the literature related to financial development and energy research. Reviewing the relevant literature, we find that few studies in China have paid attention to the changes of efficiency and energy productivity in the financial industry as well as their correlation. The interlinkage between green finance and energy efficiency is still a topic that has been less discussed. In addition, considering the untouched issues in these studies, this paper proposes the application of Metafrontier performance theory.

We study the impact of the political cycle on financial lending. The change of party secretaries every several years in the Chinese cities provides a good setting for our analysis. Empirical results indicate the scale of lending by financial institutions increased one year before and after the congress of the Chinese Communist Party and decreased during the convening year, showing political cyclicality. In addition, the size of financial lending by the cities whose party secretary's age is over 55 is smaller than others. The results reflect the incentive to achieve promotion by stimulating economic performance is smaller for the ageing secretary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) are associated with immunogenic cell death and have the ability to enhance maturation and antigen presentation of dendritic cells (DCs). Specific microtubule-depolymerizing agents (MDAs) such as colchicine have been shown to confer anti-cancer activity and also trigger activation of DCs. Methods In this study, we evaluated the ability of three MDAs (colchicine and two 2-phenyl-4-quinolone analogues) to induce immunogenic cell death in test tumor cells, activate DCs, and augment T-cell proliferation activity. These MDAs were further evaluated for use as an adjuvant in a tumor cell lysate-pulsed DC vaccine. Results The three test phytochemicals considerably increased the expression of DAMPs including HSP70, HSP90 and HMGB1, but had no effect on expression of calreticulin (CRT). DC vaccines pulsed with MDA-treated tumor cell lysates had a significant effect on tumor growth, showed cytotoxic T-lymphocyte activity against tumors, and increased the survival rate of test mice. In vivo antibody depletion experiments suggested that CD8+ and NK cells, but not CD4+ cells, were the main effector cells responsible for the observed anti-tumor activity. In addition, culture of DCs with GM-CSF and IL-4 during the pulsing and stimulation period significantly increased the production of IL-12 and decreased production of IL-10. MDAs also induced phenotypic maturation of DCs and augmented CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell proliferation when co-cultured with DCs. Conclusions Specific MDAs including the clinical drug, colchicine, can induce immunogenic cell death in tumor cells, and DCs pulsed with MDA-treated tumor cell lysates (TCLs) can generate potent anti-tumor immunity in mice. This approach may warrant future clinical evaluation as a cancer vaccine.

Using Taiwan's Manpower Utilization Survey from 2012–2014, this paper investigates the impacts that salary variation caused by insufficient information, then evaluates the condition of information holding between the employee and the employer. The results indicate that the ignorance of employee and employer are deeper in the private sector than that in the public sector; the employees and employer ignorance with the white-collar both larger than the blue-collar. Besides, the results demonstrate insignificantly effect in both ignorance estimation in the public sector, which may reflect the labors enter to the public sector mainly through national examination and cause the insignificant estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Taiwan's Manpower Utilization Survey from 2012–2014, this paper investigates the impacts that salary variation caused by insufficient information, then evaluates the condition of information holding between the employee and the employer. The results indicate that the ignorance of employee and employer are deeper in the private sector than that in the public sector; the employees and employer ignorance with the white-collar both larger than the blue-collar. Besides, the results demonstrate insignificantly effect in both ignorance estimation in the public sector, which may reflect the labors enter to the public sector mainly through national examination and cause the insignificant estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on elections indicates that the rise of social media has had a positive impact on political participation and political interest, resulting in more voters going to the polls. However, there has been no research on the impact that social media have on bringing about a change in government. This research investigates the impact that the Internet and the Chinese version of Facebook have had on election results in Taiwan from 2001 to 2016. The findings indicate that after the Chinese version of Facebook appeared in 2008, the higher the penetration rate of the Internet in the Taiwan region, the more likely that political power will change hands and the ruling party will lose an election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]