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Schematic diagram of the photocatalytic reduction mechanism for the PAM40 system.

In order to assess the impact of Daya Bay Nuclear Power Base on the surrounding environment during its operation, the radioactive level of the surrounding environmental media was monitored and investigated according to the monitoring standard (HJ 61-2021). The monitoring results show that during the operation of Daya Bay Nuclear Power Base, the radioactivity level of the surrounding environmental media is at the natural background level. The nuclear power base did not cause radioactive pollution to the surrounding environment. The research results provide technical support for nuclear emergency response and data basis for evaluating the impact of Fukushima radioactive waste water.

Samuelson’s Dictum refers to the conjecture that there is more informational inefficiency at the aggregate stock market level than at the individual stock level. Our paper recasts it in a global setup: there should be more informational inefficiency at the global level than at the country level. We find that sovereign CDS spreads can predict future stock market index returns, GDP, and PMI of their underlying countries. Consistent with the global version of Samuelson’s Dictum, the predictive power for both stock returns and macro variables is almost entirely from the global, rather than country-specific, information from the sovereign CDS market. (JEL G12, G14, G17)

We document issuance overpricing of corporate debt securities in China, which is robust across subsamples with different credit ratings, maturities, and issuers. This phenomenon contrasts with underpricing of equity and debt securities in Western countries and reflects China's distinct institutional environment. The average overpricing dropped from 7.44 basis points to 2.41 basis points after the government prohibited underwriters from using rebates in issuances in October 2017. By analyzing overpricing before and after the rebate ban and across different issuers and underwriters, we uncover two channels for underwriters, who compete for future underwriting business, to drive up overpricing: rebates and self-purchases.

Green buildings are an important initiative to address energy and environmental issues in the construction field. The high-quality development of green buildings is affected by many factors, and it is necessary to identify the critical factors affecting the high-quality development of green buildings and analyze them systematically. The adopted literature analysis method and expert consultation method, the DIM (DEMATEL-ISM-MICMAC) model was established to explore critical factors influencing green buildings’ high-quality development and their internal hierarchical structure, interrelationships, and mechanisms. Then, targeted suggestions were put forward to promote green buildings’ high-quality development. The results showed that: (1) The critical factors influencing green buildings’ high-quality development could be divided into five levels, three groups, and four areas. The economic development level, living standard of residents, education level, incentive policies, and compulsory laws and regulations were in the deep factor group, fundamentally affecting green buildings’ high-quality development. (2) In terms of drive and centrality, the economic development level, living standard of residents, education level, and incentive policies were at the forefront, playing a vital role in the high-quality development of green buildings.

The construction megaproject team (CMPT) emphasises integration as a megaproject multiteam system (MTS) to facilitate knowledge learning. This paper synthesises the CMPT structure characteristics and team learning processes into a conceptual framework named the CMPT-MTS learning framework to advance future CMPT learning research. The constructs included are identified from published research. A case example is the island and tunnel project of the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge, which provides practical grounding for framework refinement. The conceptual framework deemed to follow a cyclical pattern identifies the CMPT-MTS structure variables and team learning processes affecting learning outcomes and contextual variables hypothesised to influence the intra- and inter-team interaction. We discuss how the conceptual framework might identify the CMPT learning research gaps for future research. The framework’s contribution to the body of knowledge expands our lens to understand team learning practices in the complex CMPT by considering CMPT as an MTS.

Combining novel data on analyst employment history and mutual fund commission payments, we show that client funds generate higher returns on stocks for which they have access to research by industry expert analysts. The outperformance is greater when funds are more important clients and cannot be attributed to tipping. Client funds place modestly higher weights on stocks covered by industry expert analysts and allocate more commissions to brokers providing such coverage. For identification, we exploit exogenous analyst coverage disruptions. Our findings contribute to the debate on whether mutual funds obtain any investment value from access to analysts through the soft-dollar arrangement.

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common joint disease. The surface of joint cartilage is a defensive and first affected structure of articular cartilage (AC) during the pathogenesis of OA. Alk5 signaling is critical for maintaining AC homeostasis, however, the role and underlying mechanism for the involvement of Alk5 signaling in the phenotypes of articular cartilage stem cells (ACSCs) at the surface of AC is still unclear. The role of Alk5 in OA development was explored using an ACSCs-specific Alk5-deficient (cKO) mouse model. Alterations in cartilage structure were evaluated histologically. Senescence was detected by SA-β-gal, while reactive oxygen species (ROS), MitoTracker, and LysoTracker staining were used to detect changes related to senescence. In addition, mice were injected intra-articularly with ganciclovir to limit the detrimental roles of senescent cells (SnCs). Alk5 cKO mice showed a decreased number of the slow-cell cycle cells and less lubricant secretion at the surface accompanied with drastically accelerated cartilage degeneration under ageing and surgically induced OA conditions. Further studies showed that Alk5 deficient ACSCs exhibited senescence-like manifestations including decreased proliferation and differentiation, more SA-β-gal-positive cells and ROS production, as well as significantly swollen mitochondria and lysosome breakdown. We further found that local limitation of the detrimental roles of SnCs can attenuate the development of posttraumatic OA. Taken together, our findings suggest that Alk5 signaling acts as an important regulator of the SnCs in the superficial layer during AC maintenance and OA initiation.

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of ultrasound-guided microwave ablation combined with glucocorticoid therapy for treating idiopathic granulomatous mastitis (IGM). METHODS From June 2017 to March 2020, 50 consecutive patients diagnosed with IGM using puncture histology were included. All patients received prednisone and ultrasound-guided microwave ablation and were closely monitored for 12-15 months. RESULTS A total of 222 lesions in 50 patients were ablated. The results indicated that 78% of cases were cured within 12 months and an additional 20% were cured within 15 months; the recurrence rate was 2%. The clinical and pathological remission rate of the entire group was 98%. The main postoperative complications were local pain, skin ulcerations and sinus formation, skin and areola heat damage, subcutaneous congestion, and fat liquefaction, all of which were conservatively treated. CONCLUSION Microwave ablation combined with glucocorticoid therapy was safe and effective for the treatment of IGM, with a low recurrence rate. In addition, the cosmetic appearance of the affected breast was preserved with little trauma. Therefore, microwave ablation is a viable method that can be successfully applied in clinical practice.

Systemic application of glucocorticoids is an essential anti-inflammatory and immune-modulating therapy for severe inflammatory or autoimmunity conditions. However, its long-term effects on articular cartilage of patients' health need to be further investigated. In this study, we studied the effects of dexamethasone (Dex) on the homeostasis of articular cartilage and the progress of destabilization of medial meniscus (DMM)-induced osteoarthritis (OA) in adult mice. Long-term administration of Dex aggravates the proteoglycan loss of articular cartilage and drastically accelerates cartilage degeneration under surgically induced OA conditions. In addition, Dex increases calcium content in calcified cartilage layer of mice and the samples from OA patients with a history of long-term Dex treatment. Moreover, long term usage of Dex results in decrease subchondral bone mass and bone density. Further studies showed that Dex leads to calcification of extracellular matrix of chondrocytes partially through activation of AKT, as well as promotes apoptosis of chondrocytes in calcified cartilage layer. Besides, Dex weakens the stress-response autophagy with the passage of time. Taken together, our data indicate that long-term application of Dex may predispose patients to OA and or even accelerate the OA disease progression development of OA patients.

Reversible lanes constitute an important solutions for sustainable transportation, with the aim to solve the practical problem of reversible lane optimization of urban road networks constrained by adjustment time. Considering the relationship between the number of lanes and the capacity of sections, a mixed-integer bilevel programming model of reversible lane optimization constrained by adjustment time is constructed in order to minimize the total travel time of the system. The results show that the model can effectively obtain the optimal strategy for any number of reversible sections subject to adjustment time constraints. With the increase of the number of reversible sections that can be optimized within the adjustment time, the cumulative reduced system time increases monotonically and the road network optimization effect improves, but as a whole, the optimization effect of the newly added reversible sections in each stage shows a decreasing trend. When the number of reversible sections that can be optimized within the adjustment time reaches a certain number, increasing the number of reversible sections will have a limited further effect on the overall system. For the reversible lane optimization problem of urban road networks, only efficient reversible sections need to be optimized to achieve a good optimization effect.

Houses are the largest component of most households’ wealth and their risk is important. Recent research shows that pricier houses have lower price appreciation risk. This relationship can be due to competing reasons: risk is related to the price level, or risk is related to location-related features that are reflected in prices. This paper disentangles these two relationships by analyzing condo data from China with a special feature: Condos in the same subdivision have identical location but different prices. Our results indicate that larger and pricier condos are less risky than smaller ones in the same location. Furthermore, for condos with the same size, those with higher price per square meter are less risky. These results seem to indicate that pricier houses are less risky not due to location-related features that are reflected in prices.

We find that the 2013 Chinese anti-corruption campaign remarkably reduced charitable donations from listed companies with strong political connections, and lessened government subsidies to these companies, implying a reciprocal relationship between companies and the government prior to the campaign. The campaign also improved the productivity of companies with strong connections. The results are consistent with a model in which favor exchanges between firms and the government divert resources away from production in a corrupt environment. These findings highlight a self-serving, and sometimes corrupt, motive of corporate donation, and imply that the campaign is effective in curbing corrupt collusion between companies and government officials. Moreover, they give empirical support to the negative efficiency implications of corruption.

Effective removal of human pathogenic viruses is an indispensable yet rarely studied aspect for sustainable treatment of domestic wastewater by anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR). In this study, the interface behaviors and removal mechanisms of norovirus genogroup I (GI), genogroup II (GII), and rotavirus A from domestic wastewater was systematically investigated in a one-stage AnMBR. On average, norovirus GI, GII and rotavirus were reduced by 4.64, 5.00, and 2.31 logs, respectively. Viruses tended to be transferred to larger-sized suspended solids from sewage influent to the mixed liquor, and the weight-specific concentration of the virus in100 μm particles of the mixed liquor was significantly higher than that of sewage, indicating a particle scale-dependent affinity with the virus. In-series membrane filtration test showed the main contribution of the membrane retention, which was dominated by the bio-cake layer and the pristine membrane, while the membrane and associated pore foulants can retain viruses in a filtration resistance-efficient way. An unsteady-state mass balance model revealed that free viruses in the bulk liquid of AnMBR were minimally attached to the cake layer but mainly retained by the membrane and pore foulants (99%). In addition, despite the small virus decay rates in the mixed liquor, the associated contribution increased with run time due to the prolonged sludge retention time. These insights into virus behaviors and removal mechanisms may provide novel regulation strategies for enhanced virus removal by AnMBR.

Systemic application of glucocorticoids is an essential anti-inflammatory and immune-modulating therapy for severe inflammatory or autoimmunity conditions. However, its long-term effects on articular cartilage of patients' health need to be further investigated. In this study, we studied the effects of dexamethasone (Dex) on the homeostasis of articular cartilage and the progress of destabilization of medial meniscus (DMM)-induced osteoarthritis (OA) in adult mice. Long-term administration of Dex aggravates the proteoglycan loss of articular cartilage and drastically accelerates cartilage degeneration under surgically induced OA conditions. In addition, Dex increases calcium content in calcified cartilage layer of mice and the samples from OA patients with a history of long-term Dex treatment. Moreover, long term usage of Dex results in decrease subchondral bone mass and bone density. Further studies showed that Dex leads to calcification of extracellular matrix of chondrocytes partially through activation of AKT, as well as promotes apoptosis of chondrocytes in calcified cartilage layer. Besides, Dex weakens the stress-response autophagy with the passage of time. Taken together, our data indicate that long-term application of Dex may predispose patients to OA and or even accelerate the OA disease progression development of OA patients.

Text classification is a typical problem in NLP, which is to classify a given text into a certain category. In this article, we propose a classification-based training method, which is mainly based on the input text adaptive masking, and then further pre-training and fine-tuning training. This training method makes it easier to obtain the semantic features of the text, and thus can improve the semantic learning ability of the model, and thus can improve the classification effect. Experiments show that compared with other classic methods, this method can now improve the classification performance.

AIM To provide medical evidence for the feasibility and clinical efficacy of microwave ablation (MWA) in the treatment of benign breast lesions, especially multiple benign breast lesions. METHODS We included patients with multiple benign breast lesions who were seen at our hospital during the period from June 2016 to December 2017. After signed informed consent had been obtained and core breast biopsy, all included patients who underwent MWA at 2450 MHz with 30 W power adjustment. Postoperative follow-up was performed for 1 year, at 3-month intervals. Ablation time, complications, volume-reduction ratio (VRR), and lesion residuals after ablation were analyzed. RESULTS We ultimately included 1274 lesions from 164 cases in the study with a median follow-up time of 13.6 months. For a single lesion, the median ablation time was 36 s. Pain, fat liquefaction, and skin scalding were the most common complications. The overall complete disappearance rate was 92.1% (1173/1274), with the highest complete disappearance rate observed among those patients with lesions

Combining novel data on analyst employment history and mutual fund commission payments, we show that client funds generate higher returns on stocks for which they have access to research by industry expert analysts. The outperformance is greater when funds are more important clients, and it cannot be attributed to tipping. Client funds place modestly higher weights on stocks covered by industry expert analysts and allocate more commissions to brokers providing such coverage. For identification, we exploit exogenous analyst coverage disruptions. Our findings contribute to the debate concerning the unbundling of commissions under MiFID II and its implications for the U.S.

Samuelson’s Dictum refers to the conjecture that there is more informational inefficiency at the aggregate stock market level than at the individual stock level. Our paper recasts it in a global setup: there should be more informational inefficiency at the global level than at the country level. We find that sovereign CDS spreads can predict future stock market index returns, GDP, and PMI of their underlying countries. Consistent with the global version of Samuelson’s Dictum, the predictive power for both stock returns and macro variables is almost entirely from the global, rather than country-specific, information from the sovereign CDS market.

This paper analyzes the background information of business and political leaders born around China’s 1959-1961 famine, including the CEOs and board chairman of China’s public firms and the mayors and CPC secretaries of cities. We find that the likelihood of becoming business (political) leaders for people born in 1962 and 1963 jumps to 2-3 times as high as those born before the famine. The upsurge gradually declines for the following birth cohorts. This phenomenon exists not only at the country level, but also across the provinces. In a difference-in-differences test, we find evidence indicating that the 1962-63 phenomenon is caused by the close to 40 percent birth loss during the 1959-1961 famine. Our findings not only shed light on the unexpected long-run social impact of the famine, but also lend support to the prevalence of meritocracy in both business and politics in China.

A puzzle of China’s shadow banking system is its stark growth since the 2008 Subprime Crisis, which is in sharp contrast to most of countries. We present a model to explain why the shadow banking activities have been allowed to expand with the full awareness of regulators in China. In the presence of local government intervention, which tends to distort the banks’ portfolio choices towards inefficient low-quality projects, the policy combination of formal banking sector credit tightening and shadow banking sector loosening forces banks to improve credit quality. This is because shadow banking assets are less diversified than commercial bank assets, thereby subject to higher bank run risk, which forces banks to improve the quality of shadow banking assets. Negative shocks to project quality may trigger information production in the shadow banking sector and prevent banks from providing funding to efficient projects, which creates additional welfare losses. This result provides a rationale for China's new regulations on shadow banking sector since 2018 in the background of increasing risks.

Objective To explore the effect of dexamethasone (Dex) infusion on articular cartilage and the underlying mechanisms in vitro and in vivo. Methods Destabilization of medial meniscus (DMM)-induced OA mouse model was used in this study. The mice with Dex treatment were sacrificed and then the knee joint samples were obtained for pathological analysis. Mouse primary chondrocytes were isolated and cultured in the presence or absence of Dex, which were used for calcification analysis and western blot assay. Results Dex accelerated the loss of articular cartilage matrix in mice, while it aggravated the damage of cartilage in DMM-induced OA model at the late stage. The calcium content in calcified cartilage layer in the joints from Dex treated OA mice was significantly higher than that from control mice. Dex treatment enhanced mineralization of articular cartilage matrix and leaded to massive apoptosis of chondrocytes in OA model. In addition, Dex caused autophagy of chondrocytes in the early stage, which was decreased at the late stage of Dex treatment. Moreover, we found that the effect of Dex on the mineralization of articular cartilage matrix in mice was related to AKT activation. Conclusions Continuous infusion of Dex can enhance the calcification of cartilage via AKT activation and increase chondrocyte apoptosis through inhibiting autophagy, which aggravates the damage of articular cartilage and accelerates the progression of OA in vivo.

This paper aims to assess the role of CEMIP in human breast cancer, and explore the potential mechanisms of CEMIP in the progression of breast cancer.We examined the expression levels of CEMIP in breast cancer tissues and cell lines by quantitative PCR and immunohistochemical assays. The effects of CEMIP on the proliferation, migration and invasion of breast cancer cells were determined through colony formation assay, flow cytometry (FCM) assay, wound healing assay and transwell assay, respectively. Additionally, the downstream targets of CEMIP were examined by Immunoblot assays.CEMIP expression was upregulated in both breast cancer tissues and cell lines. Patients with higher CEMIP expression displayed shorter survival time than those with lower expression. In addition, CEMIP knockdown inhibited breast cancer cell proliferation, migration, and invasionOur data demonstrated the role of CEMIP in breast cancer was associated with STAT3 signaling pathway. Therefore, CEMIP might act as a possible therapeutic target for breast cancer.

A variety of different signals induce specific responses through a common, extracellular-signal regulated kinase (ERK)-dependent cascade. It has been suggested that signaling specificity can be achieved through precise temporal regulation of ERK activity. Given the wide distrubtion of ERK susbtrates across different subcellular compartments, it is important to understand how ERK activity is temporally regulated at specific subcellular locations. To address this question, we have expanded the toolbox of Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET)-based ERK biosensors by creating a series of improved biosensors targeted to various subcellular regions via sequence specific motifs to measure spatiotemporal changes in ERK activity. Using these sensors, we showed that EGF induces sustained ERK activity near the plasma membrane in sharp contrast to the transient activity observed in the cytoplasm and nucleus. Furthermore, EGF-induced plasma membrane ERK activity involves Rap1, a noncanonical activator, and controls cell morphology and EGF-induced membrane protrusion dynamics. Our work strongly supports that spatial and temporal regulation of ERK activity is integrated to control signaling specificity from a single extracellular signal to multiple cellular processes.

Objectives: Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome candidate gene-1 (WHSC1) is highly expressed in various malignant tumors. We investigated the correlation and regulatory pathway of WHSC1 in the progression of ...

During the reign of the Qing dynasty, the policy of “Zhong Nong Yi Shang” (encouraging agriculture and restraining commerce) was continued. The bud of capitalism in China’s south-east coast areas was stifled because of the banning of marine trade which was carried out from the late Southern Song dynasty to the beginning of the Ming dynasty.

After the Opium War, China was threatened with a growing crisis of invasion by the western powers. Under this national situation, the enlightened ideologists and politicians began to wage up the struggle to fight against the autocratic monarchy and to pursue constitutionalism, i.e., to adopt the modern democratic politics of the western countries in an attempt to gain independence and to achieve prosperity in China.

The Spring and Autumn and the Warring States Period refers to the time starting from the year 770 B.C. when King Ping of the Zhou Dynasty moved the capital eastward to Luoyi to the year 211 B.C. when the nation was unified by Qin Dynasty. This is also the time of great transition from the slavery to the feudal society. Thus, sharp contradiction between the new and the old and between the reformative and the conservative has existed in almost all areas, such as politics, economy, culture, and ideology. The fundamental reason for the social upheaval is the improvement of the level of productive forces.

Sui Dynasty was a famous but a short-lived state in ancient China. The role of the legal system of Sui Dynasty was very important because it had formed a connection between the legal systems of the preceding and the later dynasties, so it had continued the legal systems of Wei and Jin dynasties and initiated those of Tang and Song dynasties.