This article examines how the experience of childhood has changed in urban China against the backdrop of the wider political, social and economic transformations in the 20th century. Drawing on 95 ...life history interviews in three urban sites in China, it explores the nature, origins and impact of continuities and changes in childhood experiences across three generations. While expressive intimacy between the only-child generation and their parents increased, the three-generational comparison disputes previous theorizing about the modernization of childhood and the value of children based upon a Euro-American empirical reality. Rather than being trapped in a linear progression model, this article reveals that while the economic value of children as family helpers has dramatically reduced across three generations, the economic prospect of children as old age security goes hand in hand with the emotional value of children, which is shaped by the cultural tradition of filial piety, social welfare context and demographic structure. As a consequence, in contrast with the existing argument of an individualization of childhood in China, this article indicates that the youngest generation – the only-child generation – experienced an increasing regimentalization of childhood, exercised by their parents and driven by both neoliberal market and post-socialist state forces. This article also draws attention to the gender difference in childhood experience across three generations and reveals how the one-child policy has contributed to the increasing value of girls in urban China.
The Routledge Handbook of East Asian Gender Studies presents up-to-date theoretical and conceptual developments in key areas of the field, taking a multi-disciplinary and comparative approach.
...Featuring contributions by leading scholars of Gender Studies to provide a cutting-edge overview of the field, this handbook includes examples from China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and covers the following themes:
theorising gender relations;
women's and feminist movements;
work, care and migration;
family and intergenerational relationships;
cultural representation;
masculinity; and
state, militarism and gender.
This handbook is an essential reading for scholars and students of Gender and Women's Studies, as well as East Asian societies, social policy and culture.
Legumes and actinorhizal plants are capable of forming root nodules symbiosis with rhizobia and
bacteria. All these nodulating species belong to the nitrogen fixation clade. Most likely, nodulation ...evolved once in the last common ancestor of this clade. NIN (NODULE INCEPTION) is a transcription factor that is essential for nodulation in all studied species. Therefore, it seems probable that it was recruited at the start when nodulation evolved. NIN is the founding member of the NIN-like protein (NLP) family. It arose by duplication, and this occurred before nodulation evolved. Therefore, several plant species outside the nitrogen fixation clade have NLP(s), which is orthologous to NIN. In this review, we discuss how NIN has diverged from the ancestral NLP, what minimal changes would have been essential for it to become a key transcription controlling nodulation, and which adaptations might have evolved later.
To acquire sufficient mineral nutrients such as phosphate (Pi) from the soil, most plants engage in symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Attracted by plant-secreted strigolactones (SLs), ...the fungi colonize the roots and form highly branched hyphal structures called arbuscules inside inner cortex cells. The host plant must control the different steps of this interaction to maintain its symbiotic nature. However, how plants sense the amount of Pi obtained from the fungus, and how this determines the arbuscule lifespan, are far from understood. Here, we show that Medicago truncatula SPX-domain containing proteins SPX1 and SPX3 regulate root Pi starvation responses, in part by interacting with PHOSPHATE RESPONSE REGULATOR2, as well as fungal colonization and arbuscule degradation. SPX1 and SPX3 are induced upon Pi starvation but become more restricted to arbuscule-containing cells upon the establishment of symbiosis. This induction in arbuscule-containing cells is associated with the presence of cis-regulatory AW-boxes and transcriptional regulation by the WRINKLED1-like transcription factor WRI5a. Under Pi-limiting conditions, SPX1 and SPX3 facilitate the expression of the SL biosynthesis gene DWARF27, which could help explain the increased fungal branching in response to root exudates. Later, in arbuscule-containing cells, SPX1 and SPX3 redundantly control arbuscule degradation. Thus, SPX proteins play important roles as phosphate sensors to maintain a beneficial AM symbiosis.
Currently, many fault diagnosis methods for rolling bearings based on deep learning are facing two main challenges. Firstly, the deep learning model exhibits poor diagnostic performance and limited ...generalization ability in the presence of noise signals and varying loads. Secondly, there is incomplete utilization of fault information and inadequate extraction of fault features, leading to the low diagnostic accuracy of the model. To address these problems, this paper proposes an improved dual-branch convolutional capsule neural network for rolling bearing fault diagnosis. This method converts the collected bearing vibration signals into grayscale images to construct a grayscale image dataset. By fully considering the types of bearing faults and damage diameters, the data are labeled using a dual-label format. A multi-scale convolution module is introduced to extract features from the data and maximize feature information extraction. Additionally, a coordinate attention mechanism is incorporated into this module to better extract useful channel features and enhance feature extraction capability. Based on adaptive fusion between fault type (damage diameter) features and labels, a dual-branch convolutional capsule neural network model for rolling bearing fault diagnosis is established. The model was experimentally validated using both Case Western Reserve University’s bearing dataset and self-made datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that the fault type branch of the model achieves an accuracy rate of 99.88%, while the damage diameter branch attains an accuracy rate of 99.72%. Both branches exhibit excellent classification performance and display robustness against noise interference and variable working conditions. In comparison with other algorithm models cited in the reference literature, the diagnostic capability of the model proposed in this study surpasses them. Furthermore, the generalization ability of the model is validated using a self-constructed laboratory dataset, yielding an average accuracy rate of 94.25% for both branches.
Oxygen redox catalysis, including the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), is crucial in determining the electrochemical performance of energy conversion and storage ...devices such as fuel cells, metal–air batteries,and electrolyzers. The rational design of electrochemical catalysts replaces the traditional trial‐and‐error methods and thus promotes the R&D process. Identifying descriptors that link structure and activity as well as selectivity of catalysts is the key for rational design. In the past few decades, two types of descriptors including bulk‐ and surface‐based have been developed to probe the structure–property relationships. Correlating the current descriptors to one another will promote the understanding of the underlying physics and chemistry, triggering further development of more universal descriptors for the future design of electrocatalysts. Herein, the current benchmark activity descriptors for oxygen electrocatalysis as well as their applications are reviewed. Particular attention is paid to circumventing the scaling relationship of oxygen‐containing intermediates. For hybrid materials, multiple descriptors will show stronger predictive power by considering more factors such as interface reconstruction, confinement effect, multisite adsorption, etc. Machine learning and high‐throughput simulations can thus be crucial in assisting the discovery of new multiple descriptors and reaction mechanisms.
The descriptors for the activity of oxygen redox reactions are summarized with special attention being paid to their applications as well as the challenges and outlook of these descriptor‐based approaches.
Abstract
This paper investigates the adaptive robust control problem based on reinforcement learning for an affine nonlinear system with unknown time‐varying uncertainty. Inspired by the ability to ...estimate uncertainty of neural network, a novel policy iteration algorithm is proposed which alternates between the value evaluation, uncertainty estimation, and policy update steps until the adaptive robust control law is obtained. Especially during the step of uncertainty estimation, the unknown time‐varying uncertainty is approximated by a radial basis function neural network and introduce it into the reinforcement learning framework. By designing an appropriate utility function, the algorithm improves both convergence rate and final approximate error comparing with existing reinforcement learning algorithm. The Lyapunov stability theorem provides theoretical demonstrations of the stability and convergence. Furthermore, the uniformly ultimately bounded stability of the affine nonlinear system is demonstrated with unknown time‐varying uncertainty. Finally, the performance of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated through a torsion pendulum system.
Uncontrolled overactivation of autophagy may lead to autophagic cell death, suppression of which is a pro-survival strategy for tumors. However, mechanisms involving key regulators in modulating ...autophagic cell death remain poorly defined. Here, we report a novel long noncoding RNA, p53 upregulated regulator of p53 levels (PURPL), functions as an oncogene to promote cell proliferation, colony formation, migration, invasiveness, and inhibits cell death in melanoma cells. Mechanistic studies showed that PURPL promoted mTOR-mediated ULK1 phosphorylation at Ser757 by physical interacting with mTOR and ULK1 to constrain autophagic response to avoid cell death. Loss of PURPL led to AMPK-mediated phosphorylation of ULK1 at Ser555 and Ser317 to over-activate autophagy and induce autophagic cell death. Our results identify PURPL as a key regulator to modulate the activity of autophagy initiation factor ULK1 to repress autophagic cell death in melanoma and may represent a potential intervention target for melanoma therapy.
Exposure to triclosan (TCS) has been implicated in neurotoxicity including autism spectrum disorders in vivo and oxidative stress and cell apoptosis in vitro. Thus, the molecular mechanisms ...underlying TCS-induced neurotoxicity warrants further research. In this study, we try to address the mode of action that TCS induced the expression of inflammatory cytokines by shifting metabolism to glycolysis. BV-2 cells were treated with 20 μM TCS for 24 h, and the conditional medium from TCS-induced activated microglia reduced the viability of the murine hippocampal neurons cell line HT22. Protein expression levels in the nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) signaling pathway were measured through Western blotting, and the expression levels of inflammatory cytokine were measured using quantitative real-time PCR. The results showed that exposure to TCS enhanced NF-κB activation, increased inflammatory cytokine expression including interleukin (IL) 1β, IL-6, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF) α in the BV-2 cells. The glucose consumption and lactate production in BV2 cell increased sharply after exposure to TCS for 24 h. Based on our qPCR and Western blotting results, the expression of the key glycolysis enzymes—namely hexokinase 1, pyruvate kinase M2, and lactate dehydrogenase A—increased after treatment with 20 μM TCS. Furthermore, inhibiting glycolysis by 2-deoxy-D-glucose reduced the activation of NF-κB and the mRNA expression of the inflammatory cytokines in the TCS-activated BV-2 microglia. The expression of the proteins of the Akt/mTOR/HIF1α pathway examined through Western blotting, which regulates glycolysis, also increased in the BV2 cells exposed to TCS. Moreover, Akt and mTOR inhibition by using LY294002 and rapamycin, respectively, blocked inflammatory cytokine overexpression induced by TCS. In conclusion, TCS can induce glycolysis and directly drive inflammatory activation in microglia; with the mediation of the Akt/mTOR/HIF1α pathway.
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•Triclosan (TCS) induces microglial activation.•TCS directly induces the microglial metabolism to deviate toward glycolysis.•This activation causes inflammatory cytokine overexpression and reduces neuron viability.•The Akt/mTOR/HIF1α signaling pathway regulates this overexpression.
A comprehensive understanding of NO catalytic oxidation on different La-based perovskites LaBO3 (B=Mn, Fe, Co) enables to ultimately utilize the catalyst in the lean-burn NOx after treatment system. ...Here, we report a comparative study of the NO oxidation on LaBO3 (B = Mn, Fe and Co) surfaces by first-principles calculations though density functional theory (DFT). Based on the adsorption of NOx (x=1, 2 and 3) on the LaO and BO2 terminations of (001) surface, we find that the NOx adsorbates are bound stronger on the LaO terminations than BO2 ones. Infrared vibrational spectra and the NO oxidation reactions calculations suggest that BO2 surfaces are more active compared to LaO ones. The primary step for NO oxidation is the desorption of NO2* from the BO2 surfaces with a sequence of barrier 1.43eV, 1.60eV, 1.68 eV for CoO2, MnO2, and FeO2 terminations, respectively. Fundamentally, least charge transfer from CoO2 surface to NO2 ensures its smallest activation energy in contrast to the other two BO2 terminations. These findings provide insights into the influence of B-site transition metal and different terminations on NO oxidation activity of La-based perovskites which might be extended to design of other NO oxidation catalysts.
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