This paper employs the slack-based measure method and an extended Luenberger productivity indicator to estimate and decompose the atmospheric environmental performance under the constraints of energy ...and atmospheric pollutant emissions i.e., the growth of the atmospheric environment total factor productivity (AETFP) of the “three regions and ten urban agglomerations” (TRTAs) in China. Specifically, undesirable output is considered as both carbon and air pollutant emissions, i.e., CO
2
, SO
2
, and NO
x
emissions. Also, based on the proposed approach, we identify the different paths of the technical change as a crucial driver of the AETFP growth. Furthermore, using the spatial econometric model with a symmetric geographical distance weight matrix and an asymmetric economic geography weight matrix, we investigate the effect of different types of environmental regulation on the AETFP growth to verify the Porter hypothesis in China. The results show that the main drivers of China’s atmospheric environment inefficiency are air pollutant emissions (SO
2
and NO
x
), carbon emissions, and fossil energy use. Spatially, the environment inefficiency presents a decreasing trend from northern China to southern China. The improved performance of SO
2
emissions made more contributions to the AETFP growth during China’s 11th “Five-Year Plan” period (2006–2010), while NO
x
emissions has a marginal positive effect on the AETFP growth is marginal. Despite the differences in the technical change across regions, the technical progress offsets the negative impact of declining technical efficiency on the AETFP growth. Overall, energy-saving and emission-reduction policies and technologies in TRTAs exert a decisive influence on the AETFP growth. In particular, the spatial econometric results indicate that the market-motivated environmental regulation has a positive effect on the AETFP growth and thus conforms to the Porter hypothesis in China but does not cause the “race-to-the-bottom” effect among local governments, while the command-and-control oriented regulation leads to a “race-to-the-bottom” effect and undermines the AETFP growth.
The sustainability of the industrial sector is often evaluated in a one-stage process. On the other hand, industrial activities are characterized by complex and multistage natures, which creates ...challenges for industrial performance assessment. Properly measuring industrial sustainability and understanding the driving factors (e.g., energy use or labor) of whole-process industrial operation is important for sustainable industrial sector management. To address these difficulties, we propose two new frameworks: the network variable-specific bounded-adjusted measure and network variable-specific Luenberger productivity indicators decomposition. These both take into account the whole-process context and network nature of industrial production, and unpack and quantify the contributions of specific components of the industrial process affecting sustainability. In order to capture both the status and evolution of sustainability performance, two indices are constructed. These are then decomposed to investigate the contribution of particular components to overall sustainability. The proposed approach is applied to analyze the sustainability of the industrial sector in 30 of China's provincial administrative regions between 2006 and 2015. The static sustainability inefficiency indicator results indicate that in the production and treatment process, use of the most efficient existing technology would allow a further 48.0% and 23.6% of pollutant emissions to be reduced and treated, respectively. In the production process, the most efficient technology could produce a 10.7% improvement in energy conservation. The average annual dynamic environmental performance was 2.45% and 2.07% for the production and treatment processes, respectively. There is significant heterogeneity between regions and for different variables.
Due to the advantages in efficacy and safety compared with traditional chemotherapy drugs, targeted therapeutic drugs have become mainstream cancer treatments. Since the first tyrosine kinase ...inhibitor imatinib was approved to enter the market by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2001, an increasing number of small-molecule targeted drugs have been developed for the treatment of malignancies. By December 2020, 89 small-molecule targeted antitumor drugs have been approved by the US FDA and the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) of China. Despite great progress, small-molecule targeted anti-cancer drugs still face many challenges, such as a low response rate and drug resistance. To better promote the development of targeted anti-cancer drugs, we conducted a comprehensive review of small-molecule targeted anti-cancer drugs according to the target classification. We present all the approved drugs as well as important drug candidates in clinical trials for each target, discuss the current challenges, and provide insights and perspectives for the research and development of anti-cancer drugs.
The identification of “industrial soot” or “vehicle exhaust” pollution facilitates developing proper measures for the mitigation of regional air pollution. In order to identify the pollution types at ...a regional level, this paper applies the Luenberger productivity indicator to decompose air pollutant emissions performance. Furthermore, we simultaneously consider pollution rates and the productivity change. Thus, we propose a new modeling framework allowing for the variable-specific decomposition of the environmental performance along time and quantity dimensions to identify the underlying patterns. The panel data for 30 provinces and autonomous regions are then applied to identify regional atmospheric pollution type. The results show that SO2 emission from industrial soot and NOx emissions from vehicle exhaust constitute an important source of regional atmospheric environmental inefficiency, though the former seems to be more decisive. The southeast coastal provinces showed generally lower levels of inefficiency, compared to the northwest inland area. During the period of the 11th Five-Year Plan of China, industrial SO2 emission performance contributed to the increase in the atmospheric environmental productivity, while traffic NOx emissions acted as a negative factor in this regard. Therefore, the government should seek to increase the intensity of environmental regulation in transportation sector. At the country level, technical progress associated with both types of pollutions was positive and thus exceed the negative efficiency change for the same variables. In particular, in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the productivity changes in industrial SO2 emissions and traffic NOx emissions indicate a “stably advancing” type. The results further indicate that there are 18 provinces of China which have experienced mixed-type pollution. Jilin and Hainan were classified as provinces experiencing vehicle exhaust gas pollution, whereas Guizhou was defined as that subject to industrial soot pollution. The government should formulate and implement diversified support and regulation policies to govern SO2 and NOx pollution at the regional level.
•It identifies regional level atmospheric pollution types for 30 Chinese provinces over the period from 2006 to 2015.•It applies the Luenberger productivity indicator to decompose atmospheric TFP to industrial SO2 and traffic NOx emissions.•It proposes a new modeling framework allowing for the variable-specific decomposition along time and quantity dimensions.•It shows that industrial SO2 and traffic NOx emissions constitute an important source of regional atmospheric inefficiency.•It suggests Chinese government should implement diversified regulations to govern SO2 and NOX pollution at regional levels.
Creation of the climate‐smart agriculture requires efficient resource use and mitigation of the environmental pressures among other objectives. Therefore, it is important to assess the energy ...efficiency and productivity growth in the European Union's agriculture. This paper analyses the sample of the selected European Union member states. The productive technology including the energy consumption and the resulting greenhouse gas (GHG) emission is constructed. The measurement of the energy efficiency and productivity change relies on the slacks‐based measure and Luenberger productivity indicator. The productivity growth was decomposed with respect to the input/output variables and the sources of growth (i.e., efficiency change and technical progress). The average annual productivity growth of 0.79% was obtained for the selected countries during 1995–2016. The highest productivity gains were observed in Lithuania, Denmark, Belgium and Romania (1.27%–1.94% per year). The productivity growth related to GHG emission dominated the contributions by the input/output variables in Lithuania, Denmark, Belgium, Romania, Poland, Austria, France, the Netherlands, Hungary and Estonia.
A circularly polarized (CP) endfire leaky-wave antenna (LWA) array with the merits of a high-gain and broad operation band is proposed in this communication. This array configuration is composed of ...double-row antenna cells arranged linearly, which derives from the performance of the complementary dipole (loop and electric dipole). By introducing the coupling loop and the electric dipole along both sides of a metallic parallel strip line (PSL), effective radiation is generated from this structure due to the periodic perturbation. Based on the intrinsic 90° phase differences of the complementary dipole, CP performance is easily achieved by turning the antenna unit size reasonably. Similar to the Yagi antenna, this linear antenna array achieves endfire radiation. A fabricated prototype has verified the design concept, which shows that the proposed antenna has a relative impedance bandwidth of 51.1%, a 3 dB axial ratio (AR) bandwidth of 25%, and a gain of 1.1–13.59 dBi within the operation band.
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a critical member of the neurotrophic family, plays an important role in multiple stress-related mental disorders. Although alterations in BDNF in multiple ...brain regions of individuals experiencing stress have been demonstrated in previous studies, it appears that a set of elements are involved in the complex regulation. In this review, we summarize the specific brain regions with altered BDNF expression during stress exposure. How various environmental factors, including both physical and psychological stress, affect the expression of BDNF in specific brain regions are further summarized. Moreover, epigenetic regulation of BDNF, including DNA methylation, histone modification, and noncoding RNA, in response to diverse types of stress, as well as sex differences in the sensitivity of BDNF to the stress response, is also summarized. Clarification of the underlying role of BDNF in the stress process will promote our understanding of the pathology of stress-linked mental disorders and provide a potent target for the future treatment of stress-related illness.
This paper adopts data envelopment analysis, namely the range adjusted measure (RAM) which is based on the additive structure, to measure the technical efficiency and productivity change. Note that ...we distinguish among energy and non-energy inputs in the analysis. The Luenberger productivity indicator is decomposed for the provinces of China for the period of 2006–2015. Specifically, we seek to identify the key directions for energy conservation and emission reduction by analyzing the environmental productivity change decomposition. The results show that sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide emissions from primary energy consumption along with primary energy consumption are important variables contributing to atmospheric environmental inefficiency in Chinese provinces. Furthermore, static efficiency scores associated with energy consumption and atmospheric emission (sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide emissions) are lower for Hebei, Shandong, Henan and Shanxi in North China, whereas Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangdong and Fujian show higher values of this kind of efficiency. Atmospheric emissions contribute to the growth in the atmospheric environmental productivity to a higher extent if compared to energy consumption. Therefore, Chinese energy policy should address the environmental regulation of energy consumption.
•Joint decomposition of RAM and Luenberger productivity indicator.•Identify the key directions for energy conservation and emission reduction.•Atmospheric emissions contribute to the growth in the productivity.•Government can opt for source control or end-of-pipe control.
A novel visible-light photoelectrochemical (PEC) biosensor based on localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) enhancement and dye sensitization was fabricated for highly sensitive analysis of ...protein kinase activity with ultralow background. In this strategy, DNA conjugated gold nanoparticles (DNA@AuNPs) were assembled on the phosphorylated kemptide modified TiO2/ITO electrode through the chelation between Zr4+ ions and phosphate groups, then followed by the intercalation of Ru(bpy)32+ into DNA grooves. The adsorbed Ru(bpy)32+ can harvest visible light to produce excited electrons that inject into the TiO2 conduction band to form photocurrent under visible light irradiation. In addition, the photocurrent efficiency was further improved by the LSPR of AuNPs under the irradiation of visible light. Moreover, because of the excellent conductivity and large surface area of AuNPs that facilitate electron-transfer and accommodate large number of Ru(bpy)32+, the photocurrent was significantly amplified, affording an extremely sensitive PEC analysis of kinase activity with ultralow background signals. The detection limit of as-proposed PEC biosensor was 0.005 U mL–1 (S/N = 3). The biosensor also showed excellent performances for quantitative kinase inhibitor screening and PKA activities detection in MCF-7 cell lysates under forskolin and ellagic acid stimulation. The developed dye-sensitization and LSPR enhancement visible-light PEC biosensor shows great potential in protein kinases-related clinical diagnosis and drug discovery.
Transformer-based architecture network has shown excellent performance in the coarse-grained image classification. However, it remains a challenge for the fine-grained image classification task, ...which needs more significant regional information. As one of the attention mechanisms, transformer pays attention to the most significant region while neglecting other sub-significant regions. To use more regional information, in this letter, we propose a complemental attention multi-feature fusion network (CAMF), which extracts multiple attention features to obtain more effective features. In CAMF, we propose two novel modules: (i) a complemental attention module (CAM) that extracts the most salient attention feature and the complemental attention feature. (ii) a multi-feature fusion module (MFM) that uses different branches to extract multiple regional discriminative features. Furthermore, a new feature similarity loss is proposed to measure the diversity of inter-class features. Experiments were conducted on four public fine-grained classification datasets. Our CAMF achieves 91.2%, 92.8%, 93.3%, 95.3% on CUB-200-2011, Stanford Dogs, FGVC-Aircraft, and Stanford Cars. The ablation study verified that CAM and MFM can focus on more local discriminative regions and improve fine-grained classification performance.
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