This study investigates the impacts of high-speed rail (HSR) on domestic air transportation in China using a new comprehensive modeling framework utilizing both demand and supply perspectives. For ...the first time the assessment was conducted using an improved panel regression model by taking into account of the detailed opening schedules of various HSR services during the period 2001–2014. The research findings reveal that the deployed HSR services have a significant substitutional effect on domestic air transportation in China, but the effect varies across different HSR routes, travel distance and city type. Specifically, the research found a decrease in domestic passengers of 28.2%, in flights of 24.6% and in seat capacity of 27.9% after the introduction of HSR services. The impacts are found much stronger among those air routes that connect major hub within a distance range of 500 to 800km. The uneven nature of the impact can be seen in the different experiences of selected cities. For example, air travel declined approximately 45% after commencement of the Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR, whereas it fell by 34% after the opening of the Beijing-Shanghai HSR.
High-Speed Rail (HSR) has experienced a rapid development in many countries in the world, but how can planners and decision makers better understand the regional economic impact of the gigantic ...system remains a challenge. This paper introduces a comprehensive framework to assess the regional economic impacts of HSR using China as an example. The regional economic impacts of HSR are evaluated under a dynamic and spatial computable general equilibrium-modelling framework. Such a framework provides a comprehensive assessment of the impacts in terms of both temporal and spatial variations. The assessment provides an ex post evaluation of the impacts based on the actual data reflecting the infrastructure development and operation in the period 2002-2013. The research findings confirm that HSR infrastructure development in China has generated a positive regional economic impact. The growth rate of the real GDP stimulated by rail infrastructure investment were found particularly substantial in the southwest, but relatively small in the developed eastern regions. Conversely, the real GDP level change was found to be relatively large in the developed regions, such as the south and the east. The disaggregated analysis shows that the contributions to regional economic growth are primarily derived from the productivity increase in rail transport sector and the stimulus effect of rail infrastructure capital investment. The research findings provide implications for future HSR development in both Europe and China.
This paper investigates a fundamental question related to the massive railway infrastructure development in China. What is the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) on regional economic disparity? The ...question is investigated from three perspectives. First, the influence of HSR on regional economic disparity is discussed theoretically from the perspective of New Economic Geography. Second, the variation in economic disparity at both the national and regional levels is investigated using three indexes: the weighted coefficient of variation, the Theil index and the Gini index. Third, the linkages between regional economic growth and HSR is measured empirically from a quantitative and qualitative perspective using an endogenous growth modelling framework with a panel data covering the period 2000–2014. The rail network density is adopted as a proxy to reflect the quantity change in rail investment. Three accessibility indicators (weighted average travel time, potential accessibility and daily accessibility) are introduced to capture the improvement of HSR transport quality. Our findings confirm that regional economic disparity has been decreased since the development of HSR. HSR has promoted regional economic convergence in China. Specifically, the positive effect of rail network density on regional economic growth is found to be significant in the East and North, whereas the positive effect of accessibility change is found to be more significant in the Middle Reaches of Yangtze River, the Southwest and the South China.
•A significant impact of HSR accessibility on housing value is found in the case of the Beijing–Shanghai HSR line.•Such impacts vary substantially between provincial capitals and noncapital (medium ...and small cities) cities.•The establishment of the BJHSR service has considerable regional impact (local effect plus spillover effect) on housing value in medium and small cities, whereas its impact in capital cities tends to be localized.
This study investigates the ex post impact of the Beijing–Shanghai high speed rail (BJHSR) on housing values. A dataset including 1016 housing communities from the 22 cities along the BJHSR line are analyzed in the tradition of the hedonic pricing model using three estimation procedures: a robust ordinary-least square regression, a Box-Cox transformation technique and a spatial econometric model. After controlling for physical characteristics of housing property, neighboring environment and locational accessibility, the study finds that the establishment of the BJHSR service has a considerable regional impact (including local effects and spillover effects) on housing values in medium and small cities but a negligible impact in larger capital cities. This may be the results of the competitive nature of housing market in Chinese capital cities.
Recently, with the emergence of new light sources, polarization devices, and detectors, together with a prominent increase in data processing capability, polarization techniques find more and more ...applications in various areas, one of which is biomedicine. For probing the characteristic features of complex biomedical specimen, Mueller matrix polarimetry has demonstrated distinctive advantages. Mueller matrix polarimetry can be achieved on other optical techniques by adding the polarization state generator and analyzer to their existing optical paths appropriately. Common biomedical optical equipment, such as microscopes and endoscopes, can be upgraded to fulfill Mueller matrix imaging and measurement abilities. Compared with traditional non-polarization optical methods, Mueller matrix polarimetry can provide far more information to characterize the samples, including the anisotropic optical properties, such as birefringence and diattenuation, as well as the distinctive features of various scattering particles and microstructures. Also, Mueller matrix polarimetry is more sensitive to scattering by sub-wavelength microstructures. As a label-free and non-invasive tool, Mueller matrix polarimetry has broad application prospects in biomedical studies and clinical diagnosis. In this review, we provide an introduction to the Mueller matrix methodology, including the Stokes-Mueller formalism, and also the decomposition and transformation methods to derive new parameters. We also summarize the status of the Mueller matrix polarimetric field, including recent improvements, both in instrumentation and data analysis. The current and future applications of Mueller matrix polarimetry in biomedicine are provided and discussed.
The outbreak of 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been a challenge for hospital laboratories because of the huge number of samples that must be tested for the presence of the causative ...pathogen, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Simple and rapid immunodiagnostic methods are urgently needed to identify positive cases. Here we report the development of a rapid and sensitive lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA) that uses lanthanide-doped polysterene nanoparticles (LNPs) to detect anti-SARV-CoV-2 IgG in human serum. A recombinant nucleocapsid phosphoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 was dispensed onto a nitrocellulose membrane to capture specific IgG. Mouse anti-human IgG antibody was labeled with self-assembled LNPs that served as a fluorescent reporter. A 100-μL aliquot of serum samples (1:1000 dilution) was used for this assay and the whole detection process took 10 min. The results of the validation experiment met the requirements for clinical diagnostic reagents. A value of 0.0666 was defined as the cutoff value by assaying 51 normal samples. We tested 7 samples that were positive by reverse-transcription (RT-)PCR and 12 that were negative but clinically suspicious for the presence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG. One of the negative samples was determined to be SARS-CoV-2 IgG positive, while the results for the other samples were consistent with those obtained by RT-PCR. Thus, this assay can achieve rapid and sensitive detection of anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG in human serum and allow positive identification in suspicious cases; it can also be useful for monitoring the progression COVID-19 and evaluating patients' response to treatment.
•A dynamic recursive CGE framework is adopted.•The investment impact is measured through land use, output effect and demand effect.•A positive stimulus to both the economy and social welfare were ...confirmed.•The effect on generation of CO2 emissions has been large.
This study investigates the impact of high-speed rail investment on the economy and environment in China using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The analysis is implemented in a dynamic recursive framework capturing long-run capital accumulation and labor market equilibrium. A national level impact was simulated through direct impact drivers including land use conversion, output expansion, cost reduction, productivity increase, transport demand substitution and induced demand. The results suggest that rail investment in China over the past decade has been a positive stimulus to the economy, while the effect on CO2 emissions generation has been large. Overall, the economic impacts of rail investment are achieved primarily through induced demand and output expansion, whereas the contribution from a reduction of rail transportation costs and rail productivity increases were modest. In addition, negligible negative impacts were found from land use for rail development and the substitution effect among other modes. Emissions reduction from substitution of rail for other modes was small and offset by output expansion due to lowered rail transport costs and induced demand.
The bacterial phoD gene encodes alkaline phosphomonoesterase, an enzyme which plays an important role in the release of plant-available inorganic phosphorus (P) from organic P in soil. However, the ...relationships between phoD gene community, alkaline phosphomonoesterase activity, and P availability in soil are poorly understood. In this study, we investigated how alkaline phosphomonoesterase activity, phoD gene abundance, and community structure are influenced by plant-available P using soils (0–10, 10–20 and 20–40 cm) from a long-term field trial in which a continuous maize (Zea mays L.) crop had received different levels of P fertilizer inputs (30, 60 kg P ha−1 year−1) for 28 years. Quantitative PCR and high-throughput sequencing were used to analyze phoD gene abundance and community composition. Alkaline phosphomonoesterase enzyme activity was negatively correlated with soil available P, which was reflected in corresponding data for phoD gene abundance. On the other hand, positive correlations were determined between phoD gene α-diversity and available P, while shifts in phoD gene community structure were related to changes in soil pH and P availability. The relative abundance of Pseudomonas was negatively correlated with P availability and positively correlated with alkaline phosphomonoesterase activity, suggesting that Pseudomonas may play an important role in soil organic P mineralization. The findings of this study demonstrated that changes of soil P availability as a result of long-term P fertilizer inputs significantly affected alkaline phosphomonoesterase activity by regulating phoD gene abundance, diversity, as well as altering the phoD gene community composition.
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•phoD gene abundance was negatively correlated with available soil phosphorus (P).•Long-term P fertilizer inputs increased phoD gene diversity.•Shifts in phoD-harboring bacterial community structure were related to soil pH and available P.•Relative abundance of Pseudomonas bacteria was negatively correlated with P availability.
The oxygen redox reaction in lithium-rich layered oxide battery cathode materials generates extra capacity at high cell voltages (i.e., >4.5 V). However, the irreversible oxygen release causes ...transition metal (TM) dissolution, migration and cell voltage decay. To circumvent these issues, we introduce a strategy for tuning the Coulombic interactions in a model Li-rich positive electrode active material, i.e., Li
Mn
Ni
O
. In particular, we tune the Coulombic repulsive interactions to obtain an adaptable crystal structure that enables the reversible distortion of TMO
octahedron and mitigates TM dissolution and migration. Moreover, this strategy hinders the irreversible release of oxygen and other parasitic reactions (e.g., electrolyte decomposition) commonly occurring at high voltages. When tested in non-aqueous coin cell configuration, the modified Li-rich cathode material, combined with a Li metal anode, enables a stable cell discharge capacity of about 240 mAh g
for 120 cycles at 50 mA g
and a slower voltage decay compared to the unmodified Li
Mn
Ni
O
.
Emerging evidence showed that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in a wide range of biological processes and dysregulated lncRNAs are involved in many complex human diseases, ...including cancer. Although a few lncRNAs' functions in cancer have been characterized, the detailed regulatory mechanisms of majority of lncRNAs in cancer initiation and progression remain largely unknown. In this review, we summarized recent progress on the mechanisms and functions of lncRNAs in cancer, especially focusing on the oncogenic and tumor suppressive roles of the newly identified lncRNAs, and the pathways these novel molecules might be involved in. Their potentials as biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis in cancer are also discussed in this paper.
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