Risk and return analysis of tax adjusted versus unadjusted REITS indexes and other financial indexes

This study develops the tax adjusted and unadjusted Malaysian real estate investment trusts (REITs) indexes based on the value weighted approach by using a monthly data of 19 Malaysian REITs from January 1999 to December 2014. It also investigates the performance of the tax adjusted versus unadjusted Malaysian REITs indexes and other financial indicators, and diversification benefit of the Malaysian REITs, Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI), Kuala Lumpur Property Index (KLPI) and Malaysia 3-month Treasury bills based on the Markowitz’s modern portfolio theory. The study finds that the tax adjusted REITs index outperforms the unadjusted REITs index, KLCI and KLPI based on the coefficient of variation (CV). The Malaysia 3-month T-bills provides the lowest CV and it is considered to be the best performing asset for risk averse investors. Furthermore, Malaysian REITs are found to have a lower positive correlation with the KLCI than the KLPI, indicating that it has a higher diversification benefit. Malaysia 3-month Treasury bills are negatively correlated with the other financial indicator

Leader-following identical consensus for Markov jump nonlinear multi-agent systems subjected to attacks with impulse

The issue of leader-following identical consensus for nonlinear Markov jump multiagent systems (NMJMASs) under deception attacks (DAs) or denial-of-service (DoS) attacks is investigated in this paper. The Bernoulli random variable is introduced to describe whether the controller is injected with false data, that is, whether the systems are subjected to DAs. A connectivity recovery mechanism is constructed to maintain the connection among multi-agents when the systems are subjected to DoS attack. The impulsive control strategy is adopted to ensure that the systems can normally work under DAs or DoS attacks. Based on graph theory, Lyapunov stability theory, and impulsive theory, using the Lyapunov direct method and stochastic analysis method, the sufficient conditions of identical consensus for Markov jump multi-agent systems (MJMASs) under DAs or DoS are obtained, respectively. Finally, the correctness of the results and the effectiveness of the method are verified by two numerical examples

Operation parameters multi-objective optimization method of large vertical mill based on CFD-DPM

The association mechanism between the main operation parameters and multi-physical fields of the large-scale vertical mill system is unclear, which leads to the difficulty in optimizing operation parameters to improve the performance of large vertical mill systems. To investigate the mechanism of multi-physical field coupling in the operation of the large vertical mill, the numerical simulation method is constructed by coupled CFD-DPM model to calculate the finished product quality, the simulation results were in good agreement with the actual operation results. Based on the Kriging surrogate model, a multi-objective optimization framework for large vertical mills is proposed. Finally, the multi-objective optimization design of LGM large vertical mills is carried out. Combined with CFD-DPM coupling method is developed, design variables and output responses are determined. The Kriging method is used for correlation analysis. The multi-objective optimization function was established. The NSGA-II. optimization algorithm was used to update the surrogate model and obtain the optimal solution, and the optimized operating parameters increased the vertical mill yield by 5.34% and the specific surface area by 9.07%. The maximum relative error between the simulated value and the optimized value is 2.02% through numerical calculation, which verifies the superiority of the optimization method of large vertical mill for performance improvement

Water–fertilizer coupling effect on the growth traits of winter wheat under conditions of light and small sprinklers

Light and small sprinklers were used to irrigate winter wheat fields. The distribution and migration of water and nitrogen in soil during winter wheat growth period were analyzed. Moreover, the growth traits of winter wheat were monitored. It is demonstrated that water–fertilizer coupling effect had a significant impact on the migration of water and nitrogen in soil and the growth traits of winter wheat under conditions of light and small sprinklers. Under the same condition of irrigation quota, although the content of moisture in soil was slightly reduced with the increase of the amount of fertilizer, the impact of the amount of fertilizer on the content of moisture in soil is much more insignificant than that of irrigation quota. The content of nitrate nitrogen (NO3--N) in soil was increased with an increasing amount of fertilizer, especially when the value of irrigation quota was low. On the other hand, under the same condition of amount of fertilizer, the content of nitrate nitrogen (NO3--N) in soil was decreased with an increasing value of irrigation quota, especially when the value of irrigation quota was high. Hence, an ultra-high value of irrigation quota will aggravate the leach of nitrate nitrogen in soil. The water–fertilizer coupling effect and yield of winter wheat could be optimized by improving irrigation scheme, optimizing irrigation quota, and optimizing the amount of fertilizer

Effects of Carbonaceous Materials with Different Structures on Cadmium Fractions and Microecology in Cadmium-Contaminated Soils

Carbonaceous materials have proved to be effective in cadmium remediation, but their influences on soil microecology have not been studied well. Taking the structural differences and the maintenance of soil health as the entry point, we chose graphene (G), multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), and wetland plant-based biochar (ZBC) as natural and engineered carbonaceous materials to explore their effects on Cd fractions, nutrients, enzyme activities, and microbial communities in soils. The results showed that ZBC had stronger electronegativity and more oxygen-containing functional groups, which were related to its better performance in reducing soil acid-extractable cadmium (EX-Cd) among the three materials, with a reduction rate of 2.83–9.44%. Additionally, ZBC had greater positive effects in terms of improving soil properties, nutrients, and enzyme activities. Redundancy analysis and correlation analysis showed that ZBC could increase the content of organic matter and available potassium, enhance the activity of urease and sucrase, and regulate individual bacterial abundance, thereby reducing soil EX-Cd. Three carbonaceous materials could maintain the diversity of soil microorganisms and the stability of the microbial community structures to a certain extent, except for the high-dose application of ZBC. In conclusion, ZBC could better immobilize Cd and maintain soil health in a short period of time

Better Teacher Better Student: Dynamic Prior Knowledge for Knowledge Distillation

Knowledge distillation (KD) has shown very promising capabilities in transferring learning representations from large models (teachers) to small models (students). However, as the capacity gap between students and teachers becomes larger, existing KD methods fail to achieve better results. Our work shows that the 'prior knowledge' is vital to KD, especially when applying large teachers. Particularly, we propose the dynamic prior knowledge (DPK), which integrates part of the teacher's features as the prior knowledge before the feature distillation. This means that our method also takes the teacher's feature as `input', not just `target'. Besides, we dynamically adjust the ratio of the prior knowledge during the training phase according to the feature gap, thus guiding the student in an appropriate difficulty. To evaluate the proposed method, we conduct extensive experiments on two image classification benchmarks (i.e. CIFAR100 and ImageNet) and an object detection benchmark (i.e. MS COCO). The results demonstrate the superiority of our method in performance under varying settings. More importantly, our DPK makes the performance of the student model is positively correlated with that of the teacher model, which means that we can further boost the accuracy of students by applying larger teachers. Our codes will be publicly available for the reproducibility

Climatic and Topographical Effects on the Spatiotemporal Variations of Vegetation in Hexi Corridor, Northwestern China

Oases, as complex geographical landscapes, are strongly influenced by both natural variation and human activities. However, they have degenerated because of unplanned land use and water resource development. The research of oasis changes has mostly discussed single components, but multiple components, especially spatial changes to oasis vegetation, need further strengthening. Land use and NDVI were extracted based on Landsat 5/8 and Mod13A3, respectively, and a transfer matrix was constructed to analyze changes of land use in the Hexi Corridor during 2000–2020. The significant changes in the area of each land use were also quantified. Combined with regional temperature and precipitation, interpolated from meteorological data, the correlations between regional temperature, precipitation, and vegetation coverage were calculated, especially in the quantized areas with significant associations. The results showed that the area of bare land or desert decreased, while the areas of agricultural and residential land increased. The normalized difference NDVI of the studied oases increased at the rate of 0.021 per decade, which was positively related to precipitation (p < 0.05), rather than temperature; of which, farmland and planted grass land were 55.65% and 33.79% in the significantly increased area. In the area of significant positive relation between NDVI and precipitation, the ratio of grassland, farmland, and forest was 79.21%, 12.82%, and 4.06%, respectively. Additionally, changes in oasis vegetation were determined primarily by agricultural activities, which reflected a combination of natural and anthropic influences

Combining radiation and the ATR inhibitor berzosertib activates STING signaling and enhances immunotherapy via inhibiting SHP1 function in colorectal cancer

Abstract Background Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) targeting programmed cell death protein 1 (PD‐1) and programmed death‐ligand 1 (PD‐L1) have shown a moderate response in colorectal cancer (CRC) with deficient mismatch repair (dMMR) functions and poor response in patients with proficient MMR (pMMR). pMMR tumors are generally immunogenically “cold”, emphasizing combination strategies to turn the “cold” tumor “hot” to enhance the efficacy of ICIs. ATR inhibitors (ATRi) have been proven to cooperate with radiation to promote antitumor immunity, but it is unclear whether ATRi could facilitate the efficacy of IR and ICI combinations in CRCs. This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of combining ATRi, irradiation (IR), and anti‐PD‐L1 antibodies in CRC mouse models with different microsatellite statuses. Methods The efficacy of combining ATRi, IR, and anti‐PD‐L1 antibodies was evaluated in CRC tumors. The tumor microenvironment and transcriptome signatures were investigated under different treatment regimens. The mechanisms were explored via cell viability assay, flow cytometry, immunofluorescence, immunoblotting, co‐immunoprecipitation, and real‐time quantitative PCR in multiple murine and human CRC cell lines. Results Combining ATRi berzosertib and IR enhanced CD8+T cell infiltration and enhanced the efficacy of anti‐PD‐L1 therapy in mouse CRC models with different microsatellite statuses. The mechanistic study demonstrated that IR + ATRi could activate both the canonical cGAS‐STING‐pTBK1/pIRF3 axis by increasing cytosolic double‐stranded DNA levels and the non‐canonical STING signaling by attenuating SHP1‐mediated inhibition of the TRAF6‐STING‐p65 axis, via promoting SUMOylation of SHP1 at lysine 127. By boosting the STING signaling, IR + ATRi induced type I interferon‐related gene expression and strong innate immune activation and reinvigorated the cold tumor microenvironment, thus facilitating immunotherapy. Conclusions The combination of ATRi and IR could facilitate anti‐PD‐L1 therapy by promoting STING signaling in CRC models with different microsatellite statuses. The new combination strategy raised by our study is worth investigating in the management of CRC