The development of supply chain finance in China

Fast economic growth inChina, as one of the largest manufacturing bases and markets in global economy, has stimulated innovations in financial service for facilitating supply chain operations.  We have surveyed the supply chain finance industry inChina, and provide an introduction of commonly used financial products.  We point out the obstacles and shortfalls in the development of the supply chain finance inChinaand provide recommendations for both private companies and policy makers on how to facilitate the growth of supply chain finance

An efficient surrogate model for emulation and physics extraction of large eddy simulations

In the quest for advanced propulsion and power-generation systems, high-fidelity simulations are too computationally expensive to survey the desired design space, and a new design methodology is needed that combines engineering physics, computer simulations and statistical modeling. In this paper, we propose a new surrogate model that provides efficient prediction and uncertainty quantification of turbulent flows in swirl injectors with varying geometries, devices commonly used in many engineering applications. The novelty of the proposed method lies in the incorporation of known physical properties of the fluid flow as {simplifying assumptions} for the statistical model. In view of the massive simulation data at hand, which is on the order of hundreds of gigabytes, these assumptions allow for accurate flow predictions in around an hour of computation time. To contrast, existing flow emulators which forgo such simplications may require more computation time for training and prediction than is needed for conducting the simulation itself. Moreover, by accounting for coupling mechanisms between flow variables, the proposed model can jointly reduce prediction uncertainty and extract useful flow physics, which can then be used to guide further investigations.Comment: Submitted to JASA A&C

Metabolomics reveals the response of hydroprimed maize to mitigate the impact of soil salinization

Soil salinization is a major environmental stressor hindering global crop production. Hydropriming has emerged as a promising approach to reduce salt stress and enhance crop yields on salinized land. However, a better mechanisitic understanding is required to improve salt stress tolerance. We used a biochemical and metabolomics approach to study the effect of salt stress of hydroprimed maize to identify the types and variation of differentially accumulated metabolites. Here we show that hydropriming significantly increased catalase (CAT) activity, soluble sugar and proline content, decreased superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity and peroxide (H2O2) content. Conversely, hydropriming had no significant effect on POD activity, soluble protein and MDA content under salt stress. The Metabolite analysis indicated that salt stress significantly increased the content of 1278 metabolites and decreased the content of 1044 metabolites. Ethisterone (progesterone) was the most important metabolite produced in the roots of unprimed samples in response to salt s tress. Pathway enrichment analysis indicated that flavone and flavonol biosynthesis, which relate to scavenging reactive oxygen species (ROS), was the most significant metabolic pathway related to salt stress. Hydropriming significantly increased the content of 873 metabolites and significantly decreased the content of 1313 metabolites. 5-Methyltetrahydrofolate, a methyl donor for methionine, was the most important metabolite produced in the roots of hydroprimed samples in response to salt stress. Plant growth regulator, such as melatonin, gibberellin A8, estrone, abscisic acid and brassinolide involved in both treatment. Our results not only verify the roles of key metabolites in resisting salt stress, but also further evidence that flavone and flavonol biosynthesis and plant growth regulator relate to salt tolerance

DDX19 inhibits RLR/IRF3 mediated type I interferon signaling of black carp Mylopharyngodon piceus by restricting IRF3 from entering nucleus

Members of DExD/H-box helicase family are important receptors for detecting viral nucleic acids. Mammalian DExD/H-box RNA helicase 19 (DDX19) has been reported to play as a negative regulator of type I interferon (IFN). However, the role of teleost DDX19 during the innate immune response is still obscure. In this study, the DDX19 homolog of black carp (bcDDX19) has been cloned and characterized. The open reading frame (ORF) of bcDDX19 consists of 1440 nucleotides and encodes contains 479 amino acids. bcDDX19 migrates around 54 kDa in immunoblotting assay and is identified as a cytosolic protein by immunofluorescence staining. The qPCR results show that the transcription of bcDDX19 in host cells rises in response to Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), Poly (I:C), spring viremia of carp virus (SVCV) or grass carp reovirus (GCRV) stimulation. In the report assay, bcDDX19 suppressed bcIRF3-, but not bcIRF7-mediated transcription activities of bcIFNa and DrIFNφ1 promoter. Co-immunoprecipitation assays identify that bcDDX19 interacts with bcIRF3 but not bcIRF7. According, plaque assay results demonstrate that bcDDX19 dampens bcIRF3- but not bcIRF7-induced antiviral activity of EPC cells. Knockdown of bcDDX19 offers host cells the increase of mRNA levels of bcIFNa, bcMx1 and bcViperin, and the improved antiviral ability against SVCV. In addition, the nuclear translocation of bcIRF3 is dampened when co-expressed with bcDDX19. All of these findings demonstrate that bcDDX19 negatively regulates RLR/IRF3 mediated type I IFN signaling in the innate immune activation through restricting IRF3 from entering nucleus. •DDX19 negatively regulates the interferon signaling of black carp.•DDX19 targets IRF3 to regulate RLRs/IFN signaling.•DDX19 restricts IRF3 from entering nucleus

Fault mode probability factor based fault-tolerant control for dissimilar redundant actuation system

This paper presents a Fault Mode Probability Factor (FMPF) based Fault-Tolerant Control (FTC) strategy for multiple faults of Dissimilar Redundant Actuation System (DRAS) composed of Hydraulic Actuator (HA) and Electro-Hydrostatic Actuator (EHA). The long-term service and severe working conditions can result in multiple gradual faults which can ultimately degrade the system performance, resulting in the system model drift into the fault state characterized with parameter uncertainty. The paper proposes to address this problem by using the historical statistics of the multiple gradual faults and the proposed FMPF to amend the system model with parameter uncertainty. To balance the system model precision and computation time, a Moving Window (MW) method is used to determine the applied historical statistics. The FMPF based FTC strategy is developed for the amended system model where the system estimation and Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) are updated at the end of system sampling period. The simulations of DRAS system subjected to multiple faults have been performed and the results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Keywords: Dissimilar redundant actuation system, Fault mode probability factor, Fault-tolerant control, Linear quadratic regulator, Monte Carlo simulation, Moving windo