Restrictions on Migration Create Gender Inequality: The Story of China\u27s Left-Behind Children

About 11% of the Chinese population are rural-urban migrants, and the vast majority of them (124 million people) possess a rural hukou which severely restrict their children’s access to urban public schools. As a result, 61 million children are left behind in rural areas. We use a regression-discontinuity design based on school enrollment age cutoffs to document that migrants are significantly more likely to leave middle-school-aged daughters behind in poor rural areas without either parent present when schooling becomes expensive, compared to middle-school-aged sons. The effect is larger when the daughter has a male sibling. Migrant parents send significantly less remittances back to daughters than sons. Migrants from rural areas adjacent to cities with more restrictive hukou policies are more likely to separate from children as new job opportunities arise in nearby cities due to trade-induced shocks to labor demand. This produces a shift-share IV strategy, when paired with a longitudinal dataset shows that those children complete 3 fewer years of schooling, are 41% more likely to fail high school entrance exams, have worse mental and physical health, and remain poor as adults. Although China’s hukou mobility restrictions are not gender-specific in intent, they have larger adverse effects on girls

Grassland Certification, Grazing Behavior, and Ecological Consequences: Evidence from Pastoral China

This paper investigates the effects of grassland certification reform on grassland quality and livestock output in China. Using remote sensing and household surveyed data, we found that the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) of our research area decreased by 9.37% after the implementation of the certification reform. Two potential mechanisms can be responsible for the tragic ecological consequences. The initial factor is the intensified grassland fragmentation. Contiguous large-scale grasslands were divided into small-scale fragmented grasslands after the certification reform, resulting in increased grazing intensity. The imperfection of grassland use rights could be the second potential mechanism. Herders have transferred their grazing intensity from their personally owned grazing area to the leased grazing field due to the volatility of grassland tenure and the inadequacy of agreements. Conversely, the aggregate output of villages increased by 15.5%, and the grassland rental markets became more efficient. We contend that property rights reforms have increased the vulnerability of grassland ecology and the livelihoods of herders despite the anticipated enhancement in output resulting from the reforms. These findings suggest that the trade-off between grassland sustainability and livestock productivity capacity led by the grassland property rights reform has impeded the development of more comprehensive strategies to withstand grassland degradation

Delayed Postconditioning Protects against Focal Ischemic Brain Injury in Rats

We and others have reported that rapid ischemic postconditioning, interrupting early reperfusion after stroke, reduces infarction in rats. However, its extremely short therapeutic time windows, from a few seconds to minutes after reperfusion, may hinder its clinical translation. Thus, in this study we explored if delayed postconditioning, which is conducted a few hours after reperfusion, offers protection against stroke.Focal ischemia was generated by 30 min occlusion of bilateral common carotid artery (CCA) combined with permanent occlusion of middle cerebral artery (MCA); delayed postconditioning was performed by repetitive, brief occlusion and release of the bilateral CCAs, or of the ipsilateral CCA alone. As a result, delayed postconditioning performed at 3h and 6h after stroke robustly reduced infarct size, with the strongest protection achieved by delayed postconditioning with 6 cycles of 15 min occlusion/15 min release of the ipsilateral CCA executed from 6h. We found that this delayed postconditioning provided long-term protection for up to two months by reducing infarction and improving outcomes of the behavioral tests; it also attenuated reduction in 2-[(18)F]-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG)-uptake therefore improving metabolism, and reduced edema and blood brain barrier leakage. Reperfusion in ischemic stroke patients is usually achieved by tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) application, however, t-PA's side effect may worsen ischemic injury. Thus, we tested whether delayed postconditioning counteracts the exacerbating effect of t-PA. The results showed that delayed postconditioning mitigated the worsening effect of t-PA on infarction.Delayed postconditioning reduced ischemic injury after focal ischemia, which opens a new research avenue for stroke therapy and its underlying protective mechanisms

Targeted proteomics-determined multi-biomarker profiles developed classifier for prognosis and immunotherapy responses of advanced cervical cancer

BackgroundCervical cancer (CC) poses a global health challenge, with a particularly poor prognosis in cases of recurrence, metastasis, or advanced stages. A single biomarker is inadequate to predict CC prognosis or identify CC patients likely to benefit from immunotherapy, presumably owing to tumor complexity and heterogeneity.MethodsUsing advanced Olink proteomics, we analyzed 92 oncology-related proteins in plasma from CC patients receiving immunotherapy, based upon the comparison of protein expression levels of pre-therapy with those of therapy-Cycle 6 in the partial response (PR) group and progressive disease (PD) group, respectively.Results55 proteins were identified to exhibit differential expression trends across pre-therapy and post-therapy in both PR and PD groups. Enriched GO terms and KEGG pathways were associated with vital oncological and immunological processes. A logistic regression model, using 5 proteins (ITGB5, TGF-α, TLR3, WIF-1, and ERBB3) with highest AUC values, demonstrated good predictive performance for prognosis of CC patients undergoing immunotherapy and showed potential across different cancer types. The effectiveness of these proteins in prognosis prediction was further validated using TCGA-CESC datasets. A negative correlation and previously unidentified roles of WIF-1 in CC immunotherapy was also first determined.ConclusionOur findings reveal multi-biomarker profiles effectively predicting CC prognosis and identifying patients benefitting most from immunotherapy, especially for those with limited treatment options and traditionally poor prognosis, paving the way for personalized immunotherapeutic treatments and improved clinical strategies

Isolation and Characterization of 2′-amino-modified RNA Aptamers for Human TNFα

Human tumor necrosis factor α (hTNFα), a pleiotropic cytokine with activities ranging from host defense mechanisms in infection and injury to severe toxicity in septic shock or other related diseases, is a promising target for drug screening. Using the SELEX (systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment) process, we isolated oligonucleotide ligands (aptamers) with high affinities for hTNFα. Aptamers were selected from a starting pool of 40 randomized sequences composed of about 1015 RNA molecules. Representative aptamers were truncated to the minimal length with high affinity for hTNFα and were further modified by replacement of 2′-OH with 2′-F and 2′-NH2 at all ribopurine positions. These modified RNA aptamers were resistant to nuclease. The specificity of these aptamers for hTNFα was confirmed, and their activity to inhibit the cytotoxicity of hTNFα on mouse L929 cells was determined. Results demonstrated that four 2′-NH2-modified aptamers bound to hTNFα with high affinity and blocked the binding of hTNFα to its receptor, thus protecting the L929 cells from the cytotoxicity of hTNFα. Oligonucleotide aptamers described here are potential therapeutics and diagnostics for hTNFα-related diseases

Replication Data for: The Fertility Consequences of Air Pollution in China

Replication Data for: The Fertility Consequences of Air Pollution in Chin

Replication Data for: The Fertility Consequences of Air Pollution in China

Replication Data for: The Fertility Consequences of Air Pollution in Chin