The evolution of Chinese entrepreneurial firms: Township-village enterprises revisited

"Township-village enterprises (TVEs) were a major engine of China's rapid rural industrialization in the past three decades. TVEs also played a key role in fostering entrepreneurship and served as a major stepping-stone for institutional changes when legal protections of private property rights were not in place and the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were slow to react to changing market demand. As private ownership was gradually recognized legally, TVEs lost their edge in competing with private firms. In the past two decades, industrial clusters with a concentration of private entrepreneurial firms coordinated by local governments have emerged rapidly in many areas. The structures of such firms as TVEs and the subsequent clustering modes of production are an outcome of interaction with other local and macro environments. As the environment changes, a firm's organization and organizational structure may change as well." from authors' abstractCluster, Firm theory, Industrialization, Growth, Development strategies,

Comparative study of the physical and mechanistic properties of HMA mixture: field vs laboratory

The objectives of this study were to investigate the variability in the physical and mechanistic properties of HMA due to production, characterize and compare the mechanistic properties of roadway cores and laboratory compacted samples, develop the relationship between modulus from in situ NDT and those obtained from laboratory tests on roadway cores, and compare air voids measurements between laboratory and field test methods. Six ongoing rehabilitation projects in Louisiana were selected, in each of which several test sections were tested. Comparative analyses were conducted on density measurements between two laboratory (AASHTO T-166 and ASTM D6752-02, or Vacuum sealing) and one in situ test (Pavement Quality Indicator) methods. Three types of nondestructive in situ test (NDT) devices, Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD), Light Falling Weight Deflectometer (LFWD), and Potable Seismic Pavement Analyzer (PSPA) were conducted on asphalt layers. Four laboratory mechanistic tests including Indirect Tensile Strength test (ITS), Indirect Tensile Resilient Modulus test (ITMr), Frequency Sweep at Constant Height test (FSCH), and Loaded Wheel Tracking (LWT) test were conducted on roadway cores and/or Superpave Gyratory Compactor (SGC) samples. High variation was observed in mixture composition and air voids, as well as mechanistic properties along the mixture production. A strong correlation was observed between the two laboratory air void measurement methods. In general, SGC samples had higher mechanistic properties than those of roadway cores. Good correlations were observed between roadway cores and SGC samples in terms of complex shear moduli and indirect tensile resilient moduli. A methodology was developed for the prediction of laboratory resilient modulus from the in situ PSPA test parameter. Field test results indicated that the LFWD test might be used as an alternative for the FWD test in pavement structure evaluation. Pavement Quality Indicator (PQI) results did not correlate well with laboratory air void measurement methods

Canvas: End-to-End Kernel Architecture Search in Neural Networks

The demands for higher performance and accuracy in neural networks (NNs) never end. Existing tensor compilation and Neural Architecture Search (NAS) techniques orthogonally optimize the two goals but actually share many similarities in their concrete strategies. We exploit such opportunities by combining the two into one and make a case for Kernel Architecture Search (KAS). KAS reviews NAS from a system perspective and zooms into a more fine-grained level to generate neural kernels with both high performance and good accuracy. To demonstrate the potential of KAS, we build an end-to-end framework, Canvas, to find high-quality kernels as convolution replacements. Canvas samples from a rich set of fine-grained primitives to stochastically and iteratively construct new kernels and evaluate them according to user-specified constraints. Canvas supports freely adjustable tensor dimension sizes inside the kernel and uses two levels of solvers to satisfy structural legality and fully utilize model budgets. The evaluation shows that by replacing standard convolutions with generated new kernels in common NNs, Canvas achieves average 1.5x speedups compared to the previous state-of-the-art with acceptable accuracy loss and search efficiency. Canvas verifies the practicability of KAS by rediscovering many manually designed kernels in the past and producing new structures that may inspire future machine learning innovations. For source code and implementation, we open-sourced Canvas at https://github.com/tsinghua-ideal/Canvas

Performance of Private Enterprises Under the Background of New Round of Expansion of State-Owned Enterprises

In this paper, we used the super-efficient DEA method to analyze the performance of Chinese private enterprises. Talked 100 best private enterprises from 2008 to 2012 in China as the representative, we analyze the performance of private enterprises. The results showed that the efficiency levels of the private enterprises had continuously improved from 2008 to 2012, but the overall efficiency level of the private enterprise was lower. There existed large different among the private companies, and nearly half of the efficiency values of the enterprises were at 0.7658 or less. Therefore, the state should pay more attention to the living environment of the private enterprises, the private enterprises should play its due the potential to promote the country’s sustainable development

Comparison of efficacy and safety of three different drugs combined with radiotherapy in the treatment of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer

Purpose: To investigate the clinical efficacy and safety of three different drugs combined with radiotherapy, viz, apatinib mesylate combined radiotherapy (group A), gemcitabine combined oxaliplatin (group B), and Huachansu capsules combined radiotherapy (group C)] in advanced pancreatic cancer patients. Methods: A total of 174 patients with advanced pancreatic cancer treated in Yantai Qishan Hospital, Yantai, China from June 2015 to December 2016 were randomly and evenly divided into groups A, B, and C. The incidence of adverse reactions during treatment, immune reaction, efficacy, quality of life, and survival were compared among the three groups after four courses of treatment. Results: Compared with groups B and C, the incidence of nausea and vomiting was higher in group A (p < 0.05), but the incidence of other adverse events was not significantly different (p > 0.05). Group A showed higher response rate and disease control rate, higher CD4+, CD4+/CD8+ levels and QOL scores, as well as lower CD8+ level in peripheral blood after treatment than groups B and C (p < 0.05). Group A also exhibited longer median OS and median PFS, and higher 2-year survival than groups B and C (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Among the three different drug treatments combined with radiotherapy, apatinib mesylate combined radiotherapy enhanced efficacy and quality of life, and lengthen the survival time of advanced pancreatic cancer patients. However, additional clinical trials are required to validate these findings