Leveraging the unique matched land transaction and firm survey data, we empirically examine if firm ownership will affect the access to land factor for Chinese manufacturers. The state-owned firms ...display no advantage in paying less when acquiring land, while it is more costly for foreign-owned firms. Consistent with this finding, we find land acquisitions for foreign-owned firms are more likely to take place via the nonmarket-based transaction in the early stage of China's land market reform with the goal of eliminating corruption. The research suggests that potential land miss-allocation (if any) could be resulted from 'tax' to the foreign firm rather than 'subsidy' to state-owned firms.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are the common cancer treatments. However, the development of adverse effects resulting from chemotherapy and ...radiotherapy hinders the clinical use, and negatively reduces the quality of life in cancer patients. Natural products including crude extracts, bioactive components-enriched fractions and pure compounds prepared from herbs as well as herbal formulas have been proved to prevent and treat cancer. Of significant interest, some natural products can reduce chemotherapy and radiotherapy-induced oral mucositis, gastrointestinal toxicity, hepatotoxicity, nephrotoxicity, hematopoietic system injury, cardiotoxicity, and neurotoxicity. This review focuses in detail on the effectiveness of these natural products, and describes the possible mechanisms of the actions in reducing chemotherapy and radiotherapy-induced side effects. Recent advances in the efficacy of natural dietary supplements to counteract these side effects are highlighted. In addition, we draw particular attention to gut microbiotan in the context of prebiotic potential of natural products for the protection against cancer therapy-induced toxicities. We conclude that some natural products are potential therapeutic perspective for the prevention and treatment of chemotherapy and radiotherapy-induced side effects. Further studies are required to validate the efficacy of natural products in cancer patients, and elucidate potential underlying mechanisms.
Lead zirconate titanate (PZT)–based piezoelectric ceramics as important functional materials are widely used in many electromechanical devices. The piezoelectric coefficient and mechanical quality ...factor are vital property parameters for piezoelectric applications. However, the piezoelectric coefficient is inversely proportional to the mechanical quality factor, resulting in a strong limitation among wide applications. Herein, piezoelectric ceramics composed of (xSb2O3, 0.3‐wt% MnCO3)‐doped (Pb0.92Sr0.08)(Zr0.533Ti0.443Nb0.024)O3 ((xSb, Mn)‐PSZTN) were prepared by a conventional solid‐state process. The excellent piezoelectric properties d33 = 554 pC/N, kp = 0.645, and high mechanical quality factor Qm = 540 were simultaneously obtained at x = 0.1 ceramic in the morphotropic phase boundary region. The enhancement of piezoelectric properties was mainly due to the contribution of irreversible domain wall motion. In particular, the regulation of different defect chemical reactions on the properties showed that Sb2O3 could play the role of both donor and acceptor dopant. This work demonstrated that (0.1Sb, Mn)‐PSZTN ceramic was a good candidate material for high‐power piezoelectric devices.
Abstract
Hexagonal boron nitride (h‐BN) with low dielectric loss and high temperature resistance opens up new opportunities for the preparation of polymer‐derived SiCN ceramics (PDCs‐SiCN ceramics) ...with excellent mechanical and dielectric properties. BN‐containing polymer‐derived SiCN composite ceramics (PDCs‐SiCN(BN) composite ceramics) with different BN content were prepared via a pyrolysis process of ball‐milling‐blended Polyvinylsilazane/boron nitride (PVSZ/BN) precursors. BN is stably embedded in the SiCN tissue and tightly bound with it. The appropriate content of BN greatly improves the mechanical properties of PDCs‐SiCN ceramics, as BN reduces the number of pores and prevents crack expansion. Additionally, BN is also beneficial in lowering the dielectric loss of PDCs‐SiCN ceramics because of the weakened polarization relaxation behavior. PDCs‐SiCN (BN) composite ceramics have optimal mechanical and dielectric properties when the BN content is 1 wt%. The flexural strength, flexural modulus and compression strength of PDCs‐SiCN(BN) composite ceramics with 1 wt% BN doping content were 189.37 MPa, 46.38 GPa, and 399.02 MPa, respectively. Its average dielectric loss (tanδ
ε
) at 12.4‐18 GHz is 0.0049.
The incidence and prevalence of metabolic syndrome has steadily increased worldwide. As a major risk factor for various diseases, metabolic syndrome has come into focus in recent years. Some natural ...aporphine alkaloids are very promising agents in the prevention and treatment of metabolic syndrome and its components because of their wide variety of biological activities. These natural aporphine alkaloids have protective effects on the different risk factors characterizing metabolic syndrome. In this review, we highlight the activities of bioactive aporphine alkaloids: thaliporphine, boldine, nuciferine, pronuciferine, roemerine, dicentrine, magnoflorine, anonaine, apomorphine, glaucine, predicentrine, isolaureline, xylopine, methylbulbocapnine, and crebanine. We particularly focused on their impact on metabolic syndrome and its components, including insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes mellitus, endothelial dysfunction, hypertension and cardiovascular disease, hyperlipidemia and obesity, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, hyperuricemia and kidney damage, erectile dysfunction, central nervous system-related disorder, and intestinal microbiota dysbiosis. We also discussed the potential mechanisms of actions by aporphine alkaloids in metabolic syndrome.
The explorations of brain functional connectivity network (FCN) using resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging can provide crucial insights into discriminative analysis of neuropsychiatric ...disorders, such as schizophrenia (SZ). Pearson's correlation (PC) is widely used to construct a densely connected FCN which may overlook some complex interactions of paired regions of interest (ROIs) under confounding effect of other ROIs. Although the method of sparse representation takes into account this issue, it penalizes each edge equally, which often makes the FCN look like a random network. In this paper, we establish a new framework, called convolutional neural network with sparsity‐guided multiple functional connectivity, for SZ classification. The framework consists of two components. (1) The first component constructs a sparse FCN by integrating PC and weighted sparse representation (WSR). The FCN retains the intrinsic correlation between paired ROIs, and eliminates false connection simultaneously, resulting in sparse interactions among multiple ROIs with the confounding effect regressed out. (2) In the second component, we develop a functional connectivity convolution to learn discriminative features for SZ classification from multiple FCNs by mining the joint spatial mapping of FCNs. Finally, an occlusion strategy is employed to explore the contributive regions and connections, to derive the potential biomarkers in identifying associated aberrant connectivity of SZ. The experiments on SZ identification verify the rationality and advantages of our proposed method. This framework also can be used as a diagnostic tool for other neuropsychiatric disorders.
We first propose sparsity‐guided multiple functional connectivity patterns, by integrating Pearson's correlation and connectivity strength‐weighted sparse representation. Then an improved convolutional neural network module is introduced to learn the discriminative features of brain networks with different sparsity and the occlusion method is used to find potential biomarkers related to schizophrenia. The experimental results from the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence database demonstrate the promising performance of our method.
Polyesters from renewable resources with glass transition temperature (Tg) higher than 100°C are crucial in broadening their application range. In this work, a series of high molecular weight ...copolyesters, poly(butylene bis4‐(2‐hydroxyethoxy) phenyl sulfone 2,5‐furandicarboxylate) (PBSF), was synthesized from bis4‐(2‐hydroxyethoxy) phenyl sulfone (BHEPS), bio‐based 1,4‐butanediol (BDO), and 2,5‐furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) via transesterification. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H‐NMR and 13C‐NMR) was used to confirm their chemical structures, composition, and sequence distribution. Characterizations demonstrated that with the increasing content of BHEPS unit, Tg of synthesized polyesters was increased from 38.2°C for PBF to 122°C for PBSF‐95, in which the content of BHEPS unit was 95%. However, the weight average molecular weight (Mw) of PBSF was dramatically decreased after the addition of BHEPS, from 95,300 g/mol for PBF to only 9600 g/mol for PBSF‐95, which was too low for practical application. Taking molecular weight, Tg, and mechanical properties into account, PBSF‐65 was considered to be a promising polyester with Mw of 28,500 g/mol, Tg of 104.7°C, tensile strength of 82 MPa, and elongation‐at‐break of 98%. Besides, it was a completely amorphous polyester with a transmittance of 89.9% by cutoff at 700 nm. Summarily, PBSF‐65 showed great potential to be used as raw material for the manufacture of baby bottles, children's toys, kitchen appliances, and beverage packaging, especially in the case when high transparency and heat resistance are required.
Polyesters derived from renewable resources with glass transition temperature higher than 100 °C were developed.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer mortality globally. In addition, most patients present in advanced stages with limited curative treatment options. Therefore, ...multidisciplinary treatment is often warranted. Here, we report a patient with HCC and severe arterioportal shunt (APS) who was treated with a multidisciplinary approach comprising interventional radiology procedures, apatinib and camrelizumab. After treatment, the intrahepatic mass was stable, and a notable decrease in the number and size of lung lesions was observed. The patient achieved a long-term survival of more than 2 years. These data suggest that multidisciplinary treatments may be effective in the treatment of advanced HCC with severe APS.
Since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1973, evolution has been the defining feature of changes in the IMS. The IMS has always been dominated by the US dollar. With it comes four ...structural issues: imbalance, lack of coordination, inade quacy, and weaponization of financial infrastructure. The Russia-Ukraine conflict will further accelerate the diversification and fragmentation of the IMS. But it might also lead to revolutionary changes such as balkanization of the IMS and even the end of financial globalization. Diversification of reserve currency could alleviate the imbalance and inadequacy problems of the IMS, restraining the dollar weaponization to some extent, but could not solve the problem of incoordination. Without a fair and inclusive IMS, ever larger financial spillovers will come from center countries to peripheral ones, and the global economy and financial system will face greater challenges in both efficiency and stability.
The big challenge today is the upgrading of sustainable materials to replace miscellaneous ones from petroleum resources. Thus, a generic bio-based building block lays the foundation of the huge ...bio-market to green economy. 2,5-Furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA), a rigid diacid derived from lignocellulose or fructose, represents a great potential as a contender to terephthalic acid (TPA). Recently, studies on the synthesis, modification, and functionalization of bio-based polyesters based on FDCA have attracted widespread attention. To apply furanic polyesters on engineering plastics, packaging materials, electronics, etc., researchers have extended the properties of basic FDCA-based homo-polyesters by directional copolymerization and composite preparation. This review covers the synthesis and performance of polyesters and composites based on FDCA with emphasis bedded on the thermomechanical, crystallization, barrier properties, and biodegradability. Finally, a summary of what has been achieved and the issues waiting to be addressed of FDCA-based polyester materials are suggested.
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