A LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONTENT INDUSTRY IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Developing the digital content industry is ranked as a key part of the Chinese informationisation strategy and an important strategic measure necessary to build a creative nation. The distribution activities related to network cultural products can be grouped into two categories, with one category subject to private laws such as copyright or contract laws, and the other related to public or regulatory laws. Therefore the digital content industry requires two types of order: copyright order and regulatory order. However a favourable industry order is hard to achieve given the many challenges present. Both digital works and network communication challenge the copyright order. Network communication is also a new media and the convergence of networks challenges the regulatory order. This chapter highlights that the focus of the modern copyright regime is to seek a balance between the interests of the copyright owners and the public. A feasible copyright order should rationally assign rights and responsibilities among the stakeholders to construct a trade or market mechanism that is capable of inspiring creators whilst facilitating the distribution and consumption of digital content products. As for the regulatory order, innovations in regime and policies are required to cater for any new particulars of network media. This chapter proposes three principles for regulating the digital content industry: 1) Separating the regulation of content from the network to ensure the openness of networks and communication channels, specifically the openness of industry entrance. 2) Adopting a registerapproval instead of a licence-based system for market entrance. 3) Abandoning or removing the application based preconditions for network content by setting up enforceable standards for content legality. These principles will change subject-orientated regulations on the digital content industry to behaviour-oriented regulations. As the digital content industry is an integrated and inclusive industry, it is necessary to coordinate or merge the current framework of disparate government functions. The Chinese government may find this challenging, because the development of the digital content industry heavily depends on forces operating inside the industry itself. It is not only impractical but also impossible to solely rely on the government to control cyberspace and its social intermediaries - industry self-discipline should come into effect. A dual governance mode combining government regulation with industry self-regulation will have significant consequences for the digital content industry

IMPROVING THE REGULATIVE ENVIRONMENT TO FACILITATE THE EXPLOITATION OF INFORMATION RESOURCES IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

A supportive regulatory environment is necessary to facilitate the development and utilisation of information resources in China. The legal system and its enabling policies for information resources should focus on removing all the macro-level obstacles in order to promote and ensure the positive feedback effect of information cycles. This would include constructing a competitive market, enhancing infrastructure, strengthening taxation and financing the supporting system. The core interest in information exploitation is intellectual property (IP). There are five levels of IP protection: judicial trial, administrative execution, technological measures, collective management and industry discipline as well as private control. While strengthening IP protection ranks as the Government’s priority policy, the free distribution and sharing of information should be strongly advocated to optimise the development and utilisation of information resources. Digital information is playing a more significant role in our society than physical goods in regard to quantity and effects. Digital information is changing the whole world, with for instance, E-government, Ecommerce and E-life. Information resources have become an important asset and key driver for social development. The ‘Developmental Strategy for Informatisation in China 2006-2020’ issued by the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council declares that informatisation is a key strategy for maintaining national competitiveness and sustainability. 1 The key of informatisation is the development and utilization of information resources. While this is rather weak in China, enhancing the development and utilisation of information resources has been ranked as a priority government task because of the value in constructing a flexible and enabling regulatory framework

ISAB-2010 Foreword

AbstractArchimedes Bridge (AB) i.e. submerged floating tunnel (SFT), is a kind of floating transportation passage which is submerged underwater to bridge water banks. As an innovative transportation technology, AB will become attractive in competing with traditional bridges and tunnels due to its economical and environmental advantages. However at the present time, there is still not an actual AB being built in the world.The concept of AB was proposed for more than a century, and the researches and conceptual designs of AB with respect to several strait and lake areas were sporadically reported in the second half of past century. Due to scientific, technological and/or administrative uncertainties, such design projects were ceased or postponed.In the promotion towards the realization of AB in the world, scientifically and technically, there are two essential aspects should be implemented. One is the performance of numerical simulations and experimental investigations in laboratory, which will provide useful premise for the design and the preparation of construction. Another is to build a full-scale AB prototype to show its feasibility for the world.The progresses in such two aspects are deserved to be exchanged and disseminated world wide, such that the First International Symposium on Archimedes Bridge (ISAB-2010) was initiated to be held in Qiandao Lake, China during October 17-20, 2010. The location selection for the Symposium is due to the fact that the first Archimedes Bridge Prototype has been designed to be built in Qiandao Lake area. The initiation process of ISAB-2010 may be described somehow in detail.On December 6, 2004, an agreement was signed between Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMECH) and Ponte di Archimede International S.p.A, Italy (PDA) to establish a Sino — Italian Joint Laboratory of Archimedes Bridge (SIJLAB) with the research teams from IMECH in Beijing and from "Federico II" University in Naples and Polytechnic of Milan. The symbolic output of this cooperation was the completion of the structure design of Archimedes Bridge Prototype (ABP) in Qiandao Lake, which was presented in the two reports by the Chinese team [1] and by the Italian team [2].During the design cooperation and seminar exchanges between the two teams of SIJLAB, it was discussed and considered, from time to time, that to initiate and organize an international symposium on AB issues would be very helpful to promote the advances for the research and design of AB. This idea was reaffirmed by the representatives of the two teams in June last year in Trondheim at the 5th Symposium on Strait Crossings. We tentatively released this initiative at the SFT Workshop of the Symposium and received very positive response.After further consideration and relevant arrangement, the information of ISAB-2010 was formally announced on the website (www.ISAB2010.com), clearly expressing that the aim of ISAB-2010 is to provide a global forum for scientists, engineers and technicians around the world, who are involved or interested in researches and developments on the innovative technologies of AB, to share their research progresses and conceptual design advances, so that to discuss and improve the challenging issues of AB.We notice that, when people are talking about AB, the following questions are frequently asked. What is the history of AB concept and related researches? Why there is still not a real AB being built in the world? Whether an AB solution is competitive? What are the new scientific and/or technologic problems involved in AB research and design? What are the essential factors dominating the stability and reliability of AB?....We are confident that the above questions will be answered, to some extent, from the presentations of ISAB-2010 and from the proceedings of ISAB-2010 as this issue of Procedia Engineering.Finally, we would like to express our sincere appreciation to President Yongxiang Lu (Chinese Academy of Sciences) for his insightful idea of selecting Qiandao Lake as the location of AB and his great promotion towards the ABP project. We are also very grateful to President Elio Matacena (Ponte di Archimede International S.p.A, Italy) for his persistent stimulation towards the ABP project

Cry78Aa, a novel Bacillus thuringiensis insecticidal protein with activity against Laodelphax striatellus and Nilaparvata lugens

Transgenic plants expressing insecticidal proteins originating from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) have successfully been used to control lepidopteran and coleopteran pests with chewing mouthparts. However, only a handful of Bt proteins have been identified that have bioactivity against sap sucking pests (Hemiptera), including aphids, whiteflies, plant bugs and planthoppers. A novel Bt insecticidal protein with significant toxicity against a hemipteran insect pest is described here. The gene encoding the 359 amino acid, 40.7 kDa protein was cloned from strain C9F1. After expression and purification of the toxin, its median lethal concentration (LC) values against Laodelphax striatellus and Nilaparvata lugens were determined as 6.89 μg/mL and 15.78 μg/mL respectively. Analysis of the toxin sequence revealed the presence of both Toxin_10 and Ricin_B_Lectin domains

Mapping and functional characterization of structural variation in 1060 pig genomes

BACKGROUND: Structural variations (SVs) have significant impacts on complex phenotypes by rearranging large amounts of DNA sequence.RESULTS: We present a comprehensive SV catalog based on the whole-genome sequence of 1060 pigs (Sus scrofa) representing 101 breeds, covering 9.6% of the pig genome. This catalog includes 42,487 deletions, 37,913 mobile element insertions, 3308 duplications, 1664 inversions, and 45,184 break ends. Estimates of breed ancestry and hybridization using genotyped SVs align well with those from single nucleotide polymorphisms. Geographically stratified deletions are observed, along with known duplications of the KIT gene, responsible for white coat color in European pigs. Additionally, we identify a recent SINE element insertion in MYO5A transcripts of European pigs, potentially influencing alternative splicing patterns and coat color alterations. Furthermore, a Yorkshire-specific copy number gain within ABCG2 is found, impacting chromatin interactions and gene expression across multiple tissues over a stretch of genomic region of ~200 kb. Preliminary investigations into SV's impact on gene expression and traits using the Pig Genotype-Tissue Expression (PigGTEx) data reveal SV associations with regulatory variants and gene-trait pairs. For instance, a 51-bp deletion is linked to the lead eQTL of the lipid metabolism regulating gene FADS3, whose expression in embryo may affect loin muscle area, as revealed by our transcriptome-wide association studies.CONCLUSIONS: This SV catalog serves as a valuable resource for studying diversity, evolutionary history, and functional shaping of the pig genome by processes like domestication, trait-based breeding, and adaptive evolution.</p

PigBiobank: a valuable resource for understanding genetic and biological mechanisms of diverse complex traits in pigs

© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact [email protected] fully unlock the potential of pigs as both agricultural species for animal-based protein food and biomedical models for human biology and disease, a comprehensive understanding of molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying various complex phenotypes in pigs and how the findings can be translated to other species, especially humans, are urgently needed. Here, within the Farm animal Genotype-Tissue Expression (FarmGTEx) project, we build the PigBiobank (http://pigbiobank.farmgtex.org) to systematically investigate the relationships among genomic variants, regulatory elements, genes, molecular networks, tissues and complex traits in pigs. This first version of the PigBiobank curates 71 885 pigs with both genotypes and phenotypes from over 100 pig breeds worldwide, covering 264 distinct complex traits. The PigBiobank has the following functions: (i) imputed sequence-based genotype-phenotype associations via a standardized and uniform pipeline, (ii) molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying trait-associations via integrating multi-omics data, (iii) cross-species gene mapping of complex traits via transcriptome-wide association studies, and (iv) high-quality results display and visualization. The PigBiobank will be updated timely with the development of the FarmGTEx-PigGTEx project, serving as an open-access and easy-to-use resource for genetically and biologically dissecting complex traits in pigs and translating the findings to other species.National Natural Science Foundation of China [32022078]; National Key R&D Program of China [2022YFF1000900]; Local Innovative and Research Teams Project of Guangdong Province [2019BT02N630]; China Agriculture Research System [CARS-35]. Funding for open access charge: National Natural Science Foundation of China [32022078].Peer reviewe

FLOW-PIPE-SEEPAGE COUPLING ANALYSIS OF SPANNING INITIATION OF A PARTIALLY-EMBEDDED PIPELINE

The initiation of pipeline spanning involves the coupling between the flow over the pipeline and the seepage-flow in the soil underneath the pipeline. The pipeline spanning initiation is experimentally observed and discussed in this article. It is qualitatively indicated that the pressure-drop induced soil seepage failure is the predominant cause for pipeline spanning initiation. A flow-pipe-seepage sequential coupling Finite Element Method (FEM) model is proposed to simulate the coupling between the water flow-field and the soil seepage-field. A critical hydraulic gradient is obtained for oblique seepage failure of the sand in the direction tangent to the pipe. Parametric study is performed to investigate the effects of inflow velocity, pipe embedment on the pressure-drop, and the effects of soil internal friction angle and pipe embedment-to-diameter ratio on the critical flow velocity for pipeline spanning initiation. It is indicated that the dimensionless critical flow velocity changes approximately linearly with the soil internal friction angle for the submarine pipeline partially-embedded in a sandy seabed

A New Design Method for Wave-Induced Pipeline Stability on a Sandy Seabed (No. R860)

The existing DnV Recommended Practice (RP E305) for pipeline on-bottom stability is mainly based on the Pipe-Soil Interaction Model proposed by Wagner et al. (1987) and the Wake Model by Lambrakos et al. (1987) to calculate the soil resistance and the hydrodynamic forces upon pipeline, respectively. Unlike the methods in the DnV Practice, in this paper, an improved analysis method is proposed for the on-bottom stability of a submarine pipeline, which is based on the relationships between and for various restraint conditions obtained by the hydrodynamic loading experiments, taking into account the coupling effects between wave, pipeline and sandy seabed. The analysis procedure is illustrated with a detailed flow chart. A comparison is made between the submerged weights of pipeline predicted with the DnV Practice and those with the new method. The proposed analysis method may provide a helpful tool for the engineering practice of pipeline on-bottom stability design

Breaking-Wave Induced Transient Pore Pressure in a Sandy Seabed: Flume Modeling and Observations

Previous studies on wave-induced pore pressure in a porous seabed mainly focused on non-breaking regular waves, e.g., Airy linear waves or Stokes non-linear waves. In this study, breaking-wave induced pore pressure response in a sandy seabed was physically simulated with a large wave flume. The breaking-wave was generated by superimposing a series of longer waves onto the foregoing shorter waves at a specified location. Water surface elevations and the corresponding pore pressure in the process of wave breaking were measured simultaneously at three typical locations, i.e., at the rear, just at, and in front of the wave breaking location. Based on test results, characterization parameters are proposed for the wave surface elevations and the corresponding pore-pressures. Flume observations indicate that the wave height was greatly diminished during wave breaking, which further affected the pore-pressure responses. Moreover, the measured values of the characteristic time parameters for the breaking-wave induced pore-pressure are larger than those for the free surface elevation of breaking-waves. Under the action of incipient-breaking or broken waves, the measured values of the amplitude of transient pore-pressures are generally smaller than the predicted results with the analytical solution by Yamamoto et al. (1978) for non-breaking regular waves with equivalent values of characteristic wave height and wave period