Heterosexual Romantic Relationships and Mate Preference in College Students from the U.S. and China: Cross-Cultural and Gender Difference in Beliefs and Attitudes

This study examines how culture influences U.S. and Chinese college students’ mate preferences, and attitudes and beliefs on the following elements of romantic relationships: love as the only basis for marriage, premarital sex, and the influence of family and friends on mate choice. I surveyed 291 American participants and 292 Chinese participants and found that: Overall, American and Chinese participants vary in their mate preferences; Most American participants, especially female participants, would be more likely to “marry for love,” whereas Chinese participants, especially female participants, would be more likely to consider health and financial conditions in a mate; Chinese participants emphasize chastity more than American participants; American participants tend to consult with parents and friends, whereas Chinese participants tend to obey parents’ views about getting married

Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for Device-to-Device Underlay Communication

Device-to-device (D2D) communication underlaying cellular networks is expected to bring significant benefits for utilizing resources, improving user throughput and extending battery life of user equipments. However, the allocation of radio and power resources to D2D communication needs elaborate coordination, as D2D communication can cause interference to cellular communication. In this paper, we study joint channel and power allocation to improve the energy efficiency of user equipments. To solve the problem efficiently, we introduce an iterative combinatorial auction algorithm, where the D2D users are considered as bidders that compete for channel resources, and the cellular network is treated as the auctioneer. We also analyze important properties of D2D underlay communication, and present numerical simulations to verify the proposed algorithm.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

The Value of Marketing Tools in Arts Marketing

Nowadays the arts are becoming more and more recognized as being an intrinsic part of everyday human life. The arts industry has recognized the importance of studying how to market effectively. As commercial marketing cannot be simply transplanted into an arts environment, arts marketing is a specific area. The marketing strategy of various arts organizations has become particularly significant in the increasingly competitive arts environment. The focus on arts marketing is being encouraged to ensure the arts organizations long-term viability, profitability and sustainability. This research will focus on arts festival organizations, as a particular type of arts organization, and will look closely at the approach in which they undertake arts marketing activities. This dissertation aims analyze the value of marketing tools in arts marketing and research whether the scientific marketing methods can reach broader range of consumers and improve the profits of arts organizations. It is necessary to understand the consumer behaviour and the process of how advertising affects arts audiences. The research will also give arts marketing professionals some suggestions and direction that they can reference in the future

Genome-scale modeling of yeast metabolism: retrospectives and perspectives

Yeasts have been widely used for production of bread, beer and wine, as well as for production of bioethanol, but they have also been designed as cell factories to produce various chemicals, advanced biofuels and recombinant proteins. To systematically understand and rationally engineer yeast metabolism, genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs) have been reconstructed for the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and nonconventional yeasts. Here, we review the historical development of yeast GEMs together with their recent applications, including metabolic flux prediction, cell factory design, culture condition optimization and multi-yeast comparative analysis. Furthermore, we present an emerging effort, namely the integration of proteome constraints into yeast GEMs, resulting in models with improved performance. At last, we discuss challenges and perspectives on the development of yeast GEMs and the integration of proteome constraints

The Influences of International Trade on Sustainable Economic Growth: An Economic Policy Perspective

This study uses the Gregory–Hansen cointegration method and the vector error correction model in the vector autoregression system to reveal how international trade contributes to economic sustainability. The Gregory–Hansen test for cointegration method reveals a permanent equilibrium relation among sustainably economic growth, exports, and imports and shows that exports facilitate GDP growth and accelerate improvements in the capability of imports in the long-run. The causality between GDP and exports is unidirectional, indicating that exports area determinant of sustainable economic growth. The bidirectional causality from imports to GDP also sheds light on the important influence of imports on economic sustainability; however, GDP growth also drives import growth. The interaction between imports and exports corresponds to their bidirectional causal relationship, which is indicative of imports contributing to export production and of export growth expanding the capacity for imports. This finding indicates that imports are both exogenous and endogenous factors for exports

Yeast optimizes metal utilization based on metabolic network and enzyme kinetics

Metal ions are vital to metabolism, as they can act as cofactors on enzymes and thus modulate individual enzymatic reactions. Although many enzymes have been reported to interact with metal ions, the quantitative relationships between metal ions and metabolism are lacking. Here, we reconstructed a genome-scale metabolic model of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to account for proteome constraints and enzyme cofactors such as metal ions, named CofactorYeast. The model is able to estimate abundances of metal ions binding on enzymes in cells under various conditions, which are comparable to measured metal ion contents in biomass. In addition, the model predicts distinct metabolic flux distributions in response to reduced levels of various metal ions in the medium. Specifically, the model reproduces changes upon iron deficiency in metabolic and gene expression levels, which could be interpreted by optimization principles (i.e., yeast optimizes iron utilization based on metabolic network and enzyme kinetics rather than preferentially targeting iron to specific enzymes or pathways). At last, we show the potential of using the model for understanding cell factories that harbor heterologous iron-containing enzymes to synthesize high-value compounds such as p-coumaric acid. Overall, the model demonstrates the dependence of enzymes on metal ions and links metal ions to metabolism on a genome scale

GotEnzymes: an extensive database of enzyme parameter predictions

Enzyme parameters are essential for quantitatively understanding, modelling, and engineering cells. However, experimental measurements cover only a small fraction of known enzyme-compound pairs in model organisms, much less in other organisms. Artificial intelligence (Al) techniques have accelerated the pace of exploring enzyme properties by predicting these in a high-throughput manner. Here, we present GotEnzymes, an extensive database with enzyme parameter predictions by Al approaches, which is publicly available at https://metabolicatlas.org/gotenzymes for interactive web exploration and programmatic access. The first release of this data resource contains predicted turnover numbers of over 25.7 million enzyme-compound pairs across 8099 organisms. We believe that GotEnzymes, with the readily-predicted enzyme parameters, would bring a speed boost to biological research covering both experimental and computational fields that involve working with candidate enzymes

Mode Conversion Behavior of Guided Wave in a Pipe Inspection System Based on a Long Waveguide

To make clear the mode conversion behavior of S0-mode lamb wave and SH0-plate wave converting to the longitudinal mode guided wave and torsional mode guided wave in a pipe, respectively, the experiments were performed based on a previous built pipe inspection system. The pipe was wound with an L-shaped plate or a T-shaped plate as the waveguide, and the S0-wave and SH0-wave were excited separately in the waveguide. To carry out the objective, a meander-line coil electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) for S0-wave and a periodic permanent magnet (PPM) EMAT for SH0-wave were developed and optimized. Then, several comparison experiments were conducted to compare the efficiency of mode conversion. Experimental results showed that the T(0,1) mode, L(0,1) mode, and L(0,2) mode guided waves can be successfully detected when converted from the S0-wave or SH0-wave with different shaped waveguides. It can also be inferred that the S0-wave has a better ability to convert to the T(0,1) mode, while the SH0-wave is easier to convert to the L(0,1) mode and L(0,2) mode, and the L-shaped waveguide has a better efficiency than T-shaped waveguide