The Belt and Road Initiative Policy: How Chinese Policy Influences Southeast Asia and South Asia

This article would be divided into two main parts. In the first part, this article introduces what is the BRI policy and the history of the BRI policy. The BRI policy is a Chinese strategy and network to connect with Chinese partners and potential partners through economic, political, and cultural three perspectives. In the second part, this article describes the BRI policy development and the response from Chinese neighboring countries which mainly include the Southeast and South Asian Countries. Southeast Asian nations and south Asian nations would first be directly impacted by politics, the economy, and culture. Southeast Asian countries improved their fundamental infrastructure and economic aid from this policy and the economic cooperation improved the development of South Asian countries. However, the political and cultural pressure from the Chinese government keeps interfering in the Southeast and South Asian countries. In 2020, the spread of the pandemic damaged and interrupted the achievements of the BRI policy. For sustaining international relations and the local achievements of the BRI policy, the Chinese government implemented the Mask and Vaccine diplomatic policy and health assistance to support other countries in maintaining the achievements of the BRI policy in the local area. The article attempts to explain the impact of the BRI program and the reactions of Southeast and South Asian countries to this policy

Neural differentiation from human embryonal carcinoma stem cells

It is understood that retinoic acid (RA), sonic hedgehog (Shh) and bone morphogenic proteins (BMPs) play an important role in cell fate determination and the specification of inter-neurons and motor neurons along the dorsal-ventral axis in the neural tube. In this study, we investigated the function of these signalling molecules to instruct the differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells to form specific neuronal subtypes. TERA2.cl.SP12 embryonal carcinoma (EC) cells are a robust caricature of human embryogenesis and an accepted model of neural differentiation. Gene and protein expression analyses using RT-PCR, western blotting and immunocytochemical techniques indicated that human EC cells respond to RA, BMPs and Shh in a conserved manner and regulate neural transcription factors and structural proteins in a predicted way as cells commit toward the motor neuron phenotype. To assess the function of these differentiated neurons, we tested their ability to innervate skeletal muscle myotubes and induce muscle cell contraction. Myotubes contracted only when cocultured with neurons. The number of contractile events increased significantly when cells differentiated into motor neurons were cocultured with myotubes compared to cocultures with cells that formed intemeurons. Staining for α-bungarotoxin showed positive staining in a pattern characteristic of boutons found in neuromuscular junctions. We also showed that muscle contraction could be manipulated pharmacologically: curare and atropine blocked myotube contraction, whereas acetylcholine and carbachol increased the number of contractile events. In other experiments, we have also shown that cells exposed to RA and Shh in conjunction with other growth factors over different time periods, preferentially form oligodendrocytes and/or interneurons. These results indicate it is feasible to control and direct the differentiation of human stem cells and produce specific neuron subtypes in vitro. Furthermore, this system acts as a useful model to investigate the molecular mechanisms and signalling pathways that control neural differentiation in man

An adaptive lifting scheme and its application in rolling bearing fault diagnosis

Vibration signals of rolling bearings usually are corrupted by heavy noise and it is very important to extract fault features from such signals. In this paper, an adaptive lifting scheme is proposed for fault diagnosis of rolling bearings. The kurtosis indexes of scale decomposition signals are used as the optimization indicator to select the prediction operator and update operator, which can adapt to the dominant signal characteristics, and reveal the fault feature. Fourier transform is adopted to remove the overlapping signal frequency components at every scale decomposition signal. Experimental results confirm the advantage of the adaptive lifting scheme over lifting scheme for feature extraction, and the typical features of rolling bearing in time domain are successfully extracted by adaptive lifting scheme

Nanoscaled Fluorescent Films and Layers for Detection of Environmental Pollutants

Hazardous gas and ion pollutants are the most serious environmental problems around the world. It is of great importance to develop devices for easy detection of these hazardous substances. Fluorescence technology with high resolution and operational simplicity has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. Organic fluorescent dyes absorb/emit lights within a broad wavelength range, which is suitable for various demands. Chromophores, such as perylene, cyanine dyes, spiropyran, and so on, are widely studied as fluorescent probes for gases and ions. The dyes could respond to external stimuli through structural changes of the conjugated chromophore itself or the attached functional groups, leading to detectable spectral changes. Organic dyes are incorporated into nanoscaled films and layers, which are portable and durable for effective sensing in complex environments. In this chapter, preparation and application of fluorescent films and layers (FFL) for gaseous/ionic detection are reviewed. We discuss the response mechanism of fluorescent dyes, the fabrication of nanoscaled FFL, and some examples of FFL for the detection of gas and ion pollutants