Extreme weather anomalies act as threat multipliers, warning us to focus on low-carbon transition and sustainable development. This study analyses the dynamic bidirectional causality between climate ...policy uncertainty (CPU) and traditional energy, represented by oil, coal, and natural gas, as well as green markets, represented by clean energy, green bonds, and carbon trading. This research provides the first comprehensive assessment of CPUs across multiple dimensions of different energy properties, causal spillover directions, and temporal heterogeneity using the time-varying Granger test. The results indicate that significant dynamic causality exists within each series rather than the entire period, and that causality manifests differently between pairs of series. In addition, CPU is more inclined to act as a risk recipient than a sender in the market volatility spillover. Whenever extreme climate events or major climate policy changes are encountered, the causal relationship between CPU and the relevant markets will rise significantly. Overall, governments should pay attention to the role of climate policy implementation in energy transition as well as attempt to reduce uncertainty.
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•Exploring the dynamic bidirectional causality between CPU and traditional energy and green markets.•Causality exhibits a time-varying pattern, with significant spillover exists within each series rather than the entire period.•Significant Granger causality is detected when abnormal weather occurs or major climate policies are introduced.•CPU prefers to act as a risk recipient rather than a spillover of market price volatilities.•Energy transition process should improve the prudential regulatory system to address climate risks.
Vigorously developing the clean energy industry, improving the carbon allowance trading scheme, and issuing green bonds can effectively reduce emissions. To this end, this study aims to investigate ...the time-varying connections among clean energy, carbon, and green bonds through the DCC-MIDAS model, thus providing a bird's-eye view of their dynamic nexus. A non-parametric causality-in-quantile method is also employed to adequately capture the asymmetric causation of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and the oil volatility index (OVX) on cross-asset correlations under different market conditions. The primary results imply complicated links among these three assets, with alternating positive and negative trends throughout the sample period. Notably, turbulence in financial markets can exacerbate network connectivity, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, EPU and OVX can serve as strong predictors across various distributions of cross-market connections, which indicates that co-movement between assets is vulnerable to exogenous risks, especially under normal market conditions. Our findings have broader implications for market participants and policymakers.
•The time-varying connections among the markets are investigated through the DCC-MIDAS model.•The asymmetric causality of EPU and OVXon cross-asset correlations is explored via the causality-in-quantile approach.•There are complicated links among the clean energy, carbon, and green bonds, with alternating positive and negative trends throughout the sample period.•Turbulence in financial markets will exacerbate the network connectivity, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.•EPU and OVX can serve as predictors across various distributions of cross-market correlations, especially under the normal market conditions.
Amyloids are self-assembled protein aggregates that take cross-β fibrillar morphology. Although some amyloid proteins are best known for their association with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, ...many other amyloids are found across diverse organisms, from bacteria to humans, and they play vital functional roles. The rigidity, chemical stability, high aspect ratio, and sequence programmability of amyloid fibrils have made them attractive candidates for functional materials with applications in environmental sciences, material engineering, and translational medicines. This review focuses on recent advances in fabricating various types of macroscopic functional amyloid materials. We discuss different design strategies for the fabrication of amyloid hydrogels, high-strength materials, composite materials, responsive materials, extracellular matrix mimics, conductive materials, and catalytic materials.
Abstract
With this research opinion article, we aim to contribute to the ongoing conversation concerning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within the IS community. Following Windeler et al.'s ...(2020) research on perceptions of DEI among members of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), we focus on how conferences should be convened in the post‐COVID‐19 era to maximise inclusivity. What are the benefits, challenges and implications of holding online and hybrid conferences? Informed by feedback from a survey involving IS scholars in the Global South and from a wide array of AIS senior scholars and conference leaders, we identify several challenges and opportunities of online and hybrid conferences (or, more generally, conferences allowing remote access) for the IS community. We weigh these tradeoffs and implications for DEI and provide reflections to generate constructive discussion on the future of AIS conferences.
The objective of this study is twofold. On the one hand, we investigate the dynamic correlations among the energy, clean energy, crude oil, and carbon markets using a DCC-MIDAS specification. On the ...other hand, we check whether the Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) has had an impact on the cross-asset correlations under different market conditions using the Quantile-on-Quantile (QQ) technique. Further, we comparatively compare the hedging potential and diversification performance of these energy sources in a context of uncertainty. Accordingly, we, first, show that the connections among the four markets have time-varying characteristics with positive and negative alternating changes in most periods. Random events might cause ephemeral structural changes in correlations. Second, we identify different ways of hedging specific to the energy assets under consideration that provides an efficient risk management framework. Third, we find that the EPU has an asymmetrical and often a positive impact on energy cross-market linkages. Particularly, when macroeconomy facing high uncertainty, then markets become more inseparable.
•Exploring the dynamic nexus of energy, clean energy, crude oil, and carbon markets using a DCC-MIDAS specification.•Investigating the asymmetric impact of EPU on cross-asset correlations under different market conditions via the QQ technique.•Comparing the hedging potential and diversification performance of energy assets.•The correlations have time-varying characteristics with positive and negative alternating changes.•The EPU has an asymmetrical and often a positive impact on cross-market linkages.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection-induced inflammatory responses are largely responsible for the death of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. ...However, the mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2 triggers inflammatory responses remains unclear. Here, we aimed to explore the regulatory role of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in infected cells and attempted to elucidate the molecular mechanism of SARS-CoV-2-induced inflammation.
SARS-CoV-2 spike pseudovirions (SCV-2-S) were generated using the spike-expressing virus packaging system. Western blot, mCherry-GFP-LC3 labeling, immunofluorescence, and RNA-seq were performed to examine the regulatory mechanism of SCV-2-S in autophagic response. The effects of SCV-2-S on apoptosis were evaluated by terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL), Western blot, and flow cytometry analysis. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was carried out to examine the mechanism of SCV-2-S in inflammatory responses.
Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2)-mediated SCV-2-S infection induced autophagy and apoptosis in human bronchial epithelial and microvascular endothelial cells. Mechanistically, SCV-2-S inhibited the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway by upregulating intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels, thus promoting the autophagic response. Ultimately, SCV-2-S-induced autophagy triggered inflammatory responses and apoptosis in infected cells. These findings not only improve our understanding of the mechanism underlying SARS-CoV-2 infection-induced pathogenic inflammation but also have important implications for developing anti-inflammatory therapies, such as ROS and autophagy inhibitors, for COVID-19 patients.
•SARS-CoV-2 spike triggers autophagy and apoptosis in ACE2-expressing cells.•SARS-CoV-2 spike induces autophagy through ROS-suppressed PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway.•SARS-CoV-2 spike-induced autophagy promotes inflammatory responses and apoptosis.
Elucidating genome-scale regulatory networks requires a comprehensive collection of gene expression profiles, yet measuring gene expression responses for every transcription factor (TF)-gene pair in ...living prokaryotic cells remains challenging. Here, we develop pooled promoter responses to TF perturbation sequencing (PPTP-seq) via CRISPR interference to address this challenge. Using PPTP-seq, we systematically measure the activity of 1372 Escherichia coli promoters under single knockdown of 183 TF genes, illustrating more than 200,000 possible TF-gene responses in one experiment. We perform PPTP-seq for E. coli growing in three different media. The PPTP-seq data reveal robust steady-state promoter activities under most single TF knockdown conditions. PPTP-seq also enables identifications of, to the best of our knowledge, previously unknown TF autoregulatory responses and complex transcriptional control on one-carbon metabolism. We further find context-dependent promoter regulation by multiple TFs whose relative binding strengths determined promoter activities. Additionally, PPTP-seq reveals different promoter responses in different growth media, suggesting condition-specific gene regulation. Overall, PPTP-seq provides a powerful method to examine genome-wide transcriptional regulatory networks and can be potentially expanded to reveal gene expression responses to other genetic elements.
Microbially-synthesized protein-based materials are attractive replacements for petroleum-derived synthetic polymers. However, the high molecular weight, high repetitiveness, and highly-biased amino ...acid composition of high-performance protein-based materials have restricted their production and widespread use. Here we present a general strategy for enhancing both strength and toughness of low-molecular-weight protein-based materials by fusing intrinsically-disordered mussel foot protein fragments to their termini, thereby promoting end-to-end protein-protein interactions. We demonstrate that fibers of a ~60 kDa bi-terminally fused amyloid-silk protein exhibit ultimate tensile strength up to 481 ± 31 MPa and toughness of 179 ± 39 MJ*m
, while achieving a high titer of 8.0 ± 0.70 g/L by bioreactor production. We show that bi-terminal fusion of Mfp5 fragments significantly enhances the alignment of β-nanocrystals, and intermolecular interactions are promoted by cation-π and π-π interactions between terminal fragments. Our approach highlights the advantage of self-interacting intrinsically-disordered proteins in enhancing material mechanical properties and can be applied to a wide range of protein-based materials.
Countrywide and worldwide business, like gaming and social networks, drives the popularity of inter-data-center transactions. To support inter-data-center transaction processing and data center fault ...tolerance simultaneously, existing protocols suffer from significant performance degradation due to high-latency and unstable networks. In this paper, we propose RedT, a novel distributed transaction processing protocol that works in heterogeneous networks. In detail, nodes within a data center are inter-connected via the RDMA-capable network and nodes across data centers are inter-connected via TCP/IP networks. RedT extends two-phase commit (2PC) by decomposing transactions into sub-transactions in terms of the data center granularity, and proposing a pre-write-log mechanism that is able to reduce the number of inter-data-center round-trips from a maximal of 6 to 2. Extensive evaluation against state-of-the-art protocols shows that RedT can achieve up to 1.57× higher throughputs and 0.56× lower latency.
The wide application of neonicotinoid insecticides in soil may affect soil microbial community, yet the information is limited. This study first reports the effects of thiamethoxam and dinotefuranon ...on soil microbial community. Soil from a forest land was collected and spiked with different nominal levels (0.02 mg kg−1, 0.2 mg kg−1 and 2.0 mg kg−1) of thiamethoxam and dinotefuran, respectively, and cultivated for 112 days. During the study, concentrations of the two neonicotinoids and their potential degradation products were monitored by LC-MS/MS. At day 112, the soils were analyzed for genetic profile by high-throughput sequencing and carbon metabolic profile by Biolog-ECO plate. The results showed that thiamethoxam and dinotefuran were both attenuated during the study with rate constants being 0.008–0.017 d−1 and 0.024–0.032 d−1, respectively, and biodegradation played an important role. As compared to the blank control, the exposure to the studied two neonicotinoids changed the microbial community, and the changes were influenced by both the type of neonicotinoid and the level of exposure. As compared to the blank control, the relative abundances of phyla Gemmatimonadetes and OD1 decreased under most exposed conditions, while the relative abundances of Chloroflexi and Nitrospirae increased under most exposed conditions. The community transition changed the functional potential, particularly carbon metabolism (mostly decreased) and nitrogen metabolism (mostly increased). As compared to the blank control, the utilization of total 31 carbon sources (including six categories) was increased under low exposure to thiamethoxam, but was decreased under all other exposed conditions. Low exposure to dinotefuran stimulated the utilization of three categories of carbon sources (amines, carbohydrates and phenolic compounds). Low exposure to both neonicotinoids increased the community diversity, while middle and high exposure to both neonicotinoids decreased the community diversity. These findings provide new insights into the effects of neonicotinoids on microbial community in soil.
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•The persistence of thiamethoxam in soil was longer than that of dinotefuran.•Exposure to thiamethoxam and dinotefuran changed bacterial community genetically.•The genetic community transition changed the carbon source utilization profile.•Effect on soil microbial community was influenced by type and level of exposure.•Chloroflexi and Nitrospirae increased after exposure to both studied neonicotinoids.
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