With the growing digital economy and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in the past two years, video games have become the mainstream entertainment for general public. Some game companies have ...chosen acquisitions over the past few years to expand their market share and enhance their competitiveness, but acquisitions come with many risks. This paper analyses the strategic intentions and risks of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and puts forward forward-looking suggestions based on the concept of metacomes. It is believed that the meta-universe is the core of the future of the game industry, and Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard helps it occupy a strategic commanding height in the meta-universe field, but it needs to pay attention to antitrust risks and cultural integration problems. To this end, it can be suggested that Microsoft should strengthen cultural management and regulatory responsibility, open platform cooperation, and strengthen meta-cosmic technology research and innovation.
The complexity of Chinese characters and the differences in learners’ cultural backgrounds make the process of teaching Chinese characters to non-native speakers of Chinese challenging. This review ...provides a comprehensive examination of five key strategies used in this instructional context: individualized instruction, contextualized instruction, technology-assisted instruction, innovative materials and resource development, and interdisciplinary integration. The ultimate approach to teaching non-native speakers of Chinese may come from the effective integration of these five strategies, so future research should focus on developing integrated instructional models that effectively combine these strategies. Further empirical research is also needed to verify the effectiveness of these strategies and to refine their implementation in different educational contexts.
Decision making is crucial for animal survival because the choices they make based on their current situation could influence their future rewards and could have potential costs. This review ...summarises recent developments in decision making, discusses how rewards and costs could be encoded in the brain, and how different options are compared such that the most optimal one is chosen. The reward and cost are mainly encoded by the forebrain structures (e.g., anterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex), and their value is updated through learning. The recent development on dopamine and the lateral habenula's role in reporting prediction errors and instructing learning will be emphasised. The importance of dopamine in powering the choice and accounting for the internal state will also be discussed. While the orbitofrontal cortex is the place where the state values are stored, the anterior cingulate cortex is more important when the environment is volatile. All of these structures compare different attributes of the task simultaneously, and the local competition of different neuronal networks allows for the selection of the most appropriate one. Therefore, the total value of the task is not encoded as a scalar quantity in the brain but, instead, as an emergent phenomenon, arising from the computation at different brain regions.
•Caring for natural resources and their sustainable use is vital for MSR countries.•An SDG-based index system is proposed.•The concepts of strong and weak sustainability are introduced.•Croatia, ...Italy, Greece, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore rank top five.•MSR countries should refine their actions for improvement.
Depletion of natural resources is one of the obstacles for coastal countries along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Assessing the performance in sustainable use of natural resources (SUNR) at the national level is of great significance for MSR countries to meet the SDGs. However, few studies have evaluated the sustainability of MSR countries regarding resource utilization or measured progress against SDGs from the perspective of natural resources. This paper aims to assess national performance in SUNR by proposing an index system based on SDG 6 (Clean water and sanitation), SDG 7 (Affordable and clean energy), SDG 14 (Life below water), and SDG 15 (Life on land), thereby providing evidence needed for effective resource utilization strategies. Here, the progress of 35 coastal states along the MSR in 2020 is evaluated. Concepts of strong and weak sustainability are introduced, the Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) function and Combined Compromise Solution (CoCoSo) method are used for calculation, and the robustness of the proposed index system is validated by uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. Our results show that scores in the weak sustainability scenario are generally higher than those in the strong sustainability scenario. The significant differences in target (SDG) scores between the two sustainability scenarios reveal the uneven performance across indicators (targets). The relatively low scores of MSR countries in Target 6.3, 6.4, 7.2, 14.5, 14.a, 15.1, and 15.6 suggest that governments should take appropriate actions for improvement. In terms of individual SDGs, Croatia and Italy lead all SDGs, whereas Iran and Somalia lag. As for the overall performance in SUNR, the top five performers are Croatia, Italy, Greece, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore, while Djibouti, Somalia, and Yemen rank last. The regional ability of SUNR is, in descending order, Europe, Asia, and Africa, related to the economic development level and resource endowment. The proposed index system is also compared with the actual SDG indices in the United Nations' SDGs Reports. The prime reason for the distinct differences in SDG rankings is that the proposed index system considers some critical issues absent in the actual SDG indices. These findings provide a scientific basis for MSR countries to identify their strengths and deficiencies in resource utilization and provide a reference for improving their resource policies to achieve sustainable development.
Electrochemistry has a lot of inherent advantages in organic synthesis and many redox reactions have been achieved under electrochemical condition. However, the electrochemical C-C bond cleavage and ...functionalization reactions are less studied. Here we develop electrochemical C-C bond cleavage and 1,3-difuntionalization of arylcyclopropanes under catalyst-free and external-oxidant-free conditions. 1,3-difluorination, 1,3-oxyfluorination and 1,3-dioxygenation of arylcyclopropanes are achieved with a high chemo- and regioselectivity by the strategic choice of nucleophiles. This protocol has good functional groups tolerance and can be scaled up. Mechanistic studies demonstrate that arylcyclopropane radical cation obtained from the anode oxidation and the subsequently generated benzyl carbonium are the key intermediates in this transformation. This development provides a scenario for constructing 1,3-difunctionalized molecules.
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has gained growing popularity in the treatment of articular cartilage lesions in the last decade. However, the potential harmful effects of leukocytes in PRP on cartilage ...regeneration have seldom been studied in vitro, and not at all in vivo yet. The objective of the present study is to compare the effects of leukocyte- and platelet-rich plasma (L-PRP) and pure platelet-rich plasma (P-PRP) on cartilage repair and NF-κB pathway, in order to explore the mechanism underlying the function of leukocytes in PRP in cartilage regeneration. The constituent analysis showed that P-PRP had significantly lower concentrations of leukocytes and pro-inflammatory cytokines compared with L-PRP. In addition, cell proliferation and differentiation assays indicated P-PRP promoted growth and chondrogenesis of rabbit bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (rBMSC) significantly compared with L-PRP. Despite similarity in macroscopic appearance, the implantation of P-PRP combining rBMSC in vivo yielded better cartilage repair results than the L-PRP group based on histological examination. Importantly, the therapeutic effects of PRP on cartilage regeneration could be enhanced by removing leukocytes to avoid the activation of the NF-κB pathway. Thus, PRP without concentrated leukocytes may be more suitable for the treatment of articular cartilage lesions.
This study evaluated the relationship between the neuroprotective effects of procyanidins and their structural characteristics. In vitro, a rat pheochromocytoma cell line (PC12) was exposed to the ...grape seed-derived procyanidin monomers: catechin (C), epicatechin (EC), and epicatechin gallate (ECG); the procyanidin dimers: procyanidin B1 (B1), procyanidin B2 (B2), procyanidin B3 (B3), procyanidin B4 (B4), procyanidin B1-3-
-gallate (B1-G), and procyanidin B2-3-
-gallate (B2-G); and the procyanidin trimers: procyanidin C1 (C1) and
-acetyl-l-cysteine (NAC) for 24 h. Cells were then incubated with 200 μM H
O
for 24 h. In vivo, zebrafish larvae (AB strain) 3 days post-fertilization were incubated with NAC or procyanidins (C, EC, ECG, B1, B2, B3, B4, B1-G, B2-G, C1) in 300 µM H
O
for 4 days. Different grape seed procyanidins increased the survival of PC12 cells challenged with H
O
, improved the movement behavior disorder of zebrafish caused by H
O
, inhibited the increase of ROS and MDA and the decrease of GSH-Px, CAT, and SOD activities, and up-regulated the Nrf2/ARE pathway. The neuroprotective effects of the procyanidin trimer C1 treatment group were greater than the other treatment groups. These results suggest that the neuroprotective effect of procyanidins is positively correlated with their degree of polymerization.
Thin-film p-type Co-Si and n-type Cr-Si Schottky diodes have been fabricated, in which a thin silicon layer is sandwiched between the anode and the cathode of the diodes, in a vertical configuration. ...The thicknesses of the silicon are 70 and 40 nm, for Co-Si and Cr-Si diodes, respectively. The thin layer significantly reduces the series resistance and the vertical structure reduces the parasitic capacitances in the diode, resulting in a high cutoff frequency, 100 and 54 THz, for the Co-Si and Cr-Si diodes, respectively. The dc current-voltage measurements show that the ideality factor is ~ 1.25 . The small ideality factor is attributed to the use of crystalline silicon, enabled by the transfer method. This leads to a relatively high theoretical estimation of responsivity of the diodes in nonlinear detection/rectification. The high cutoff frequency and high responsivity make these diodes a suitable candidate for terahertz (THz) detection, in the range of infrared (IR) and beyond. Our fabrication method and device structure allow for a better integration of Schottky diodes with a strip antenna, which provides a better mechanical stability for practical THz and IR applications.
This study evaluated the effect of grape seed-derived monomer, dimeric, and trimeric procyanidins on rat pheochromocytoma cell line (PC12) cells and in a zebrafish Parkinson’s disease (PD) model. ...PC12 cells were cultured with grape seed-derived procyanidins or deprenyl for 24 h and then exposed to 1.5 mm 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium (MPP+) for 24 h. Zebrafish larvae (AB strain) 3 days post-fertilization were incubated with deprenyl or grape seed-derived procyanidins in 400 µM 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) for 4 days. The results showed that the procyanidin dimers procyanidin B1 (B1), procyanidin B2 (B2), procyanidin B3 (B3), procyanidin B4 (B4), procyanidin B1-3-O-gallate (B1-G), procyanidin B2-3-O-gallate (B2-G), and the procyanidin trimer procyanidin C1 (C1) had a protective effect on PC12 cells, decreasing the damaged dopaminergic neurons and motor impairment in zebrafish. In PC12 cells and the zebrafish PD model, procyanidin (B1, B2, B3, B4, B1-G, B2-G, C1) treatment decreased the content of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and malondialdehyde (MDA), increased the activity of antioxidant enzymes glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), catalase (CAT), and superoxide dismutase (SOD), and upregulated the expression of nuclear factor-erythroid 2-related factor (Nrf2), NAD(P)H: quinone oxidoreductase 1 (NQO1), and heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1). These results suggest that in PC12 cells and the zebrafish PD model, the neuroprotective effects of the procyanidins were positively correlated with their degree of polymerization.
Sourcing polymers from biobased materials is desirable for a transition to a more sustainable world. However, finding new monomers sourced from biobased molecules requires extensive experimental ...effort, due to the fact that most biomolecules lack the functional groups or properties needed to serve as a monomer in a particular polymeric system without chemical modification. Here, we demonstrate a computational screening method to obtain monomers of a nonisocyanate polyurethane (NIPU), polyhydroxyurethane (PHU), from biomolecules. Our method generates candidate monomers from a list of 15 selected biobased starting molecules by performing chemical transformations that are standard to chemical catalysis and organic synthesis on these starting molecules and then screening the results for molecules with moieties that can be used as monomers for a PHU. Product molecules from two generations of reaction, a total number of 22,571, were analyzed automatically to identify molecules that have two or more epoxy or cyclic carbonate functional groups as candidates for further derivatization. These 21 candidate molecules were then subjected to another two generations of reaction, producing a set of 17,913 additional molecules. Further scrutiny of this set for desired functional groups characterizing PHUs and querying against the PubChem database were carried out, and 15 known molecules that are commercially available were identified, with the desirable features that they are predicted to be derived from biobased starting molecules in four or fewer steps. Moreover, molecule space generated from this process was primarily comprised of molecules that were not known to PubChem, indicating the framework also has the ability to generate novel candidate monomers that originate from biobased starting points.
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