Why women’s entrepreneurial activities are low in China? The psychological perspective of self-esteem

How to increase women’s entrepreneurial activities and expand the proportion of female entrepreneurs among entire entrepreneurs has been the long-term focus of scholars. For the first time, this article uses the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) and the National Survey on Women’s Social Status of China (NSWSS) to study why women’s entrepreneurial activities are relatively low in China from the psychological perspective of self-esteem. After controlling for related variables, the regression results show that self-esteem has a positive effect on women’s entrepreneurial activities. It indicates that the relatively low entrepreneurial activities of women are partially attributed to their low level of selfesteem. In addition, compared with cognitive ability and ‘The Big Five’ non-cognitive ability, self-esteem plays a greater role in explaining women’s entrepreneurial activities. While using propensity score matching and instrument variable methods to deal with the self-selection bias and endogenous problem of selfesteem, the results corroborate the conclusion. Further analysis indicates that social capital and risk-taking attitudes are two important mechanisms for self-esteem to influence women’s entrepreneurial activities. The attempt to incorporate the unique psychological trait of self-esteem into female entrepreneurship sheds light on the interdisciplinary research, and provides a new path for improving women’s entrepreneurial activities

Mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of physical exercise on multiple sclerosis: focus on immune cells

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a prevalent neuroimmunological illness that leads to neurological disability in young adults. Although the etiology of MS is heterogeneous, it is well established that aberrant activity of adaptive and innate immune cells plays a crucial role in its pathogenesis. Several immune cell abnormalities have been described in MS and its animal models, including T lymphocytes, B lymphocytes, dendritic cells, neutrophils, microglia/macrophages, and astrocytes, among others. Physical exercise offers a valuable alternative or adjunctive disease-modifying therapy for MS. A growing body of evidence indicates that exercise may reduce the autoimmune responses triggered by immune cells in MS. This is partially accomplished by restricting the infiltration of peripheral immune cells into the central nervous system (CNS) parenchyma, curbing hyperactivation of immune cells, and facilitating a transition in the balance of immune cells from a pro-inflammatory to an anti-inflammatory state. This review provides a succinct overview of the correlation between physical exercise, immune cells, and MS pathology, and highlights the potential benefits of exercise as a strategy for the prevention and treatment of MS

Impact of groundwater depth and soil salinity on riparian plant diversity and distribution in an arid area of China

Riparian plant diversity in arid regions is sensitive to changes in groundwater. Although it is well known that groundwater has a significant influence on plant diversity, there have been few studies on how groundwater and soil salinity impact plant community in desert riparian ecosystems. Therefore, we surveyed 77 quadrats (100m x 100m) to examine the relationship between groundwater depth, groundwater salinity, soil salinity and plant community in the upper reaches of the Tarim River. Data were analyzed with two-way indicator species analysis (TWINSPAN), detrended canonical correspondence analysis (DCCA) and principal component analysis (PCA). The results indicated that Populus euphratica, Tamarix ramosissima, and Phragmites australis were the dominant plants among trees, shrubs and herbs, respectively. Five plant community types were classified. There were significant differences in species diversity, soil moisture, soil salinity, groundwater depth and groundwater salinity across the community types. The composition and distribution of plant community are significantly influenced by groundwater depth, groundwater salinity, soil moisture, distances from the river to the quadrats, soil pH, electrical conductivity, total salt, CO32-, Cl-, SO42-, Ca2+, Mg2+, Na+ and K+. Shallow groundwater depth, low groundwater salinity, and high soil moisture and soil salinity were associated with higher plant diversity

Recent Advance in Tumor Microenvironment-Based Stimuli-Responsive Nanoscale Drug Delivery and Imaging Platform

The tumor microenvironment (TME) plays an important role in the development, progression, and metastasis of cancer, and the extremely crucial feature is hypoxic and acidic. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), extracellular matrix (ECM), mesenchymal cells, blood vessels, and interstitial fluid are widely recognized as fundamentally crucial hallmarks for TME. As nanotechnology briskly boomed, the nanoscale drug delivery and imaging platform (NDDIP) emerged and has attracted intensive attention. Based on main characteristics of TME, NDDIP can be classified into pH-sensitive delivery and imaging platforms, enzyme-sensitive delivery and imaging platforms, thermo-sensitive delivery and imaging platforms, redox-sensitive delivery and imaging platforms, and light-sensitive delivery and imaging platforms. Furthermore, imageology is one of the significant procedures for disease detection, image-guided drug delivery, and efficacy assessment, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), ultrasound (US), and fluorescence imaging. Therefore, the stimuli-responsive NDDIP will be a versatile and practicable tumor disease diagnostic procedure and efficacy evaluation tool. In this review article, we mainly introduce the characteristics of TME and summarize the progress of multitudinous NDDIP as well as their applications

Adsorbate-Induced Structural Evolution of Pd Catalyst for Selective Hydrogenation of Acetylene

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (21908002), project funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2019M660416, 2020T130045) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (buctrc201921, JD2004, XK1802-6). We would like to thank the UK catalysis Hub for help collecting the XAS.Peer reviewedPostprin

Test Case Prioritization Based on Artificial Immune Algorithm

Regression testing is an essential and critical part of smart terminal program development. The test case suite is usually preprocessed by test case prioritization technology to improve the efficiency of regression testing. To address the problems of traditional genetic algorithm in solving the test case prioritization problem, this paper proposed a test case prioritization algorithm for intelligent terminal based on artificial immune algorithm. Firstly, different sequences of test case sets were used as the encoding of antibodies to initialize the antibody population; secondly, the Hemming distance was introduced as the concentration index of antibodies to calculate the incentive degree; finally, the antibodies were immunized to find the optimal test case set sequence. The experimental results showed that the algorithm based on the artificial immune algorithm was more capable of global search and less likely to fall into local optimum than the genetic algorithm, which indicated that the artificial immune algorithm was more stable and could better solve the test case prioritization problem

The Immediate Economic Impact of Maternal Deaths on Rural Chinese Households

OBJECTIVE: To identify the immediate economic impact of maternal death on rural Chinese households. METHODS: Results are reported from a study that matched 195 households who had suffered a maternal death to 384 households that experienced a childbirth without maternal death in rural areas of three provinces in China, using quantitative questionnaire to compare differences of direct and indirect costs between two groups. FINDINGS: The direct costs of a maternal death were significantly higher than the costs of a childbirth without a maternal death (US$4,119 vs.$370, p<0.001). More than 40% of the direct costs were attributed to funeral expenses. Hospitalization and emergency care expenses were the largest proportion of non-funeral direct costs and were higher in households with maternal death than the comparison group (US$2,248 vs.$305, p<0.001). To cover most of the high direct costs, 44.1% of affected households utilized compensation from hospitals, and the rest affected households (55.9%) utilized borrowing money or taking loans as major source of money to offset direct costs. The median economic burden of the direct (and non-reimbursed) costs of a maternal death was quite high--37.0% of the household's annual income, which was approximately 4 times as high as the threshold for an expense being considered catastrophic. CONCLUSION: The immediate direct costs of maternal deaths are extremely catastrophic for the rural Chinese households in three provinces studied

FL118, a novel camptothecin derivative, is insensitive to ABCG2 expression and shows improved efficacy in comparison with irinotecan in colon and lung cancer models with ABCG2-induced resistance

International audienceAbstractBackgroundIrinotecan is a camptothecin analogue currently used in clinical practice to treat advanced colorectal cancer. However, acquired resistance mediated by the drug efflux pump ABCG2 is a recognized problem. We reported on a novel camptothecin analogue, FL118, which shows anticancer activity superior to irinotecan. In this study, we sought to investigate the potency of FL118 versus irinotecan or its active metabolite, SN-38, in both in vitro and in vivo models of human cancer with high ABCG2 activity. We also sought to assess the potency and ABCG2 affinity of several FL118 analogues with B-ring substitutions.MethodsColon and lung cancer cells with and without ABCG2 overexpression were treated with FL118 in the presence and absence of Ko143, an ABCG2-selective inhibitor, or alternatively by genetically modulating ABCG2 expression. Using two distinct in vivo human tumor animal models, we further assessed whether FL118 could extend time to progression in comparison with irinotecan. Lastly, we investigated a series of FL118 analogues with B-ring substitutions for ABCG2 sensitivity.ResultsBoth pharmacological inhibition and genetic modulation of ABCG2 demonstrated that, in contrast to SN-38, FL118 was able to bypass ABCG2-mediated drug resistance. FL118 also extended time to progression in both in vivo models by more than 50% compared with irinotecan. Lastly, we observed that FL118 analogues with polar substitutions had higher affinity for ABCG2, suggesting that the nonpolar nature of FL118 plays a role in bypassing ABCG2-mediated resistance.ConclusionsOur results suggest that in contrast to SN-38 and topotecan, FL118 is a poor substrate for ABCG2 and can effectively overcome ABCG2-mediated drug resistance. Our findings expand the uniqueness of FL118 and support continued development of FL118 as an attractive therapeutic option for patients with drug-refractory cancers resulting from high expression of ABCG2

Clinical characteristics and prognosis of 272 postterm choriocarcinoma patients at Peking Union Medical College Hospital: a retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: The objective of our study was to investigate the clinical characteristics and prognosis of postterm choriocarcinoma patients at Peking Union Medical College Hospital within the past 30 years. METHODS: The clinical characteristics and pertinent follow-up data of 272 patients with postterm choriocarcinoma diagnosed from December 1985 through December 2014 in our hospital were reviewed. The clinical characteristics of two cohorts cut off at 2006 were compared using χ(2) tests. Risk factors of prognosis were estimated by multivariate Cox proportional regression analysis. RESULTS: The most common initial symptom was abnormal uterine bleeding. After individualized treatment 239 patients (87.9 %) achieved complete remission, including 140 patients received initial treatment of 5-fluorouracil-based multidrug chemotherapy. There were almost no statistically significant differences in the clinical characteristics and survival rates between the two cohorts. The results of the multivariate analysis showed that history of resistance to multidrug chemotherapy, liver metastasis and FIGO score greater than 12 were independent risk factors of prognosis. CONCLUSIONS: Postterm choriocarcinoma patients were usually accompanied by several high-risk factors that should received combined chemotherapy to prevent delay in adequate treatment. 5-fluorouracil-based multidrug chemotherapy, which has been applied at PUMCH for several decades, can be an effective initial treatment for postterm choriocarcinoma patients. More emphasis should be placed on those who have history of resistance to multidrug chemotherapy, liver metastasis or a FIGO score greater than 12. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12885-016-2383-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users