The impact of water and technology on the stock market in China and Japan based on a new heuristic model

Introduction: Water, as an essential strategic resource, is diminishing; this has been framed as a financial risk. We aim to quantitively investigate the impact of water use and technology on the stock market and compare the differences in China and Japan, which represent emerging and mature markets, respectively.Method: We constructed three models using the difference generalized method of moments. The first and second models focused on how water use could influence stock market volatility and returns; the third model added technology as an interaction to explore its impact on the above mechanism. We used an ARIMA-EGARCH model to predict the trend of marginal stock market return with an increase in industrial water use in the next 5 years.Results and Discussion: The results show that 1) water use increases the stock market volatility in both countries, but Japan shows a greater increase than China; 2) water use has a negative impact on stock market returns in China and a positive impact in Japan; 3) technology plays a positive role in the second model, while the ARIMA-EGARCH results correspond to the first two conclusions, which verifies the reasonability of the models. We conclude that heterogeneity exists in the two different market types because of technology level

A Dual-Bacterial Coupled Fermentation Strategy for Nicotinamide Mononucleotide Synthesis

In this study, a dual-bacterial coupled fermentation system containing nicotinamide nucleoside kinase (NRK) and polyphosphatase (PPK) was constructed, and the application of PPK-based ATP regeneration system in NMN production was achieved. First, engineering strains expressing NRK1 and NRK2 were constructed, and the highly active Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3)-pET28a-NRK1 was selected, with NMN yield and productivity of 5.17 g/L and 77.4%, respectively. Then, the induced expression conditions of NRK1 were optimized, and a low temperature of 16 ℃, an isopropyl-β-D-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG) concentration of 0.7 mmol/L, an inoculation amount of 3% and an induction duration of 22 h were found to be optimal the soluble expression of NRK1 protein. The optimal synthesis conditions of NMN by E. coli BL21 (DE3)-pET28a-NRK1 were explored. It was found that after 12 h culture at 18 ℃ at an initial cell concentration of 100 g/L and a ratio of ATP to NR of 1:1.5, the highest yield of NMN of 5.73 g/L was obtained with a productivity of 85.78%. Finally, the optimal conditions that provided maximal NMN production (11.81 g/L) by coupled fermentation with E. coli BL21 (DE3) pET28a-PPK and E. coli BL21 (DE3)-pET28a-NRK1 were determined as 1:3.5, 1:2 and 16 h for ATP to NR ratio, initial cell concentration and fermentation time, respectively. The high-density dual-bacterial coupled fermentation strategy established in this study opens up a new pathway for high-efficiency, low-cost and large-scale production of NMN

Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis of the Kynurenine Pathway in Mood Disorders: Focus on Gut Microbiota Research

Background: Emerging evidence implicates the dysregulated kynurenine pathway (KP), an immune-inflammatory pathway, in the pathophysiology of mood disorders (MD), including depression and bipolar disorder characterized by a low-grade chronic pro-inflammatory state. The metabolites of the KP, an important part of the microbiota-gut-brain axis, serve as immune system modulators linking the gut microbiota (GM) with the host central nervous system.Aim: This bibliometric analysis aimed to provide a first glimpse into the KP in MD, with a focus on GM research in this field, to guide future research and promote the development of this field.Methods: Publications relating to the KP in MD between the years 2000 and 2020 were retrieved from the Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), and analyzed in CiteSpace (5.7 R5W), biblioshiny (using R-Studio), and VOSviewer (1.6.16).Results: In total, 1,064 and 948 documents were extracted from the Scopus and WoSCC databases, respectively. The publications have shown rapid growth since 2006, partly owing to the largest research hotspot appearing since then, “quinolinic acid.” All the top five most relevant journals were in the neuropsychiatry field, such as Brain Behavior and Immunity. The United States and Innsbruck Medical University were the most influential country and institute, respectively. Journal co-citation analysis showed a strong tendency toward co-citation of research in the psychiatry field. Reference co-citation analysis revealed that the top four most important research focuses were “kynurenine pathway,” “psychoneuroimmunology,” “indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase,” and “proinflammatory cytokines,” and the most recent focus was “gut-brain axis,” thus indicating the role of the KP in bridging the GM and the host immune system, and together reflecting the field’s research foundations. Overlap analysis between the thematic map of keywords and the keyword burst analysis revealed that the topics “Alzheimer’s disease,” “prefrontal cortex,” and “acid,” were research frontiers.Conclusion: This comprehensive bibliometric study provides an updated perspective on research associated with the KP in MD, with a focus on the current status of GM research in this field. This perspective may benefit researchers in choosing suitable journals and collaborators, and aid in the further understanding of the field’s hotspots and frontiers, thus facilitating future research

Could social robots facilitate children with autism spectrum disorders in learning distrust and deception?

Social robots have been increasingly involved in our daily lives and provide a new environment for children\u27s growth. The current study aimed to examine how children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)learned complex social rules from a social robot through distrust and deception games. Twenty children with ASD between the ages of 5–8 and 20 typically-developing (TD)peers whose age and IQ were matched participated in distrust and deception tasks along with an interview about their perception of the human-likeness of the robot. The results demonstrated that: 1)children with ASD were slower to learn to and less likely to distrust and deceive a social robot than TD children and 2)children with ASD who perceived the robot to appear more human-like had more difficulty in learning to distrust the robot. Besides, by comparing to a previous study the results showed that children with ASD appeared to have more difficulty in learning to distrust a human compared to a robot, particularly in the early phase of learning. Overall, our study verified that social robots could facilitate children with ASD\u27s learning of some social rules and showed that children\u27s perception of the robot plays an important role in their social learning, which provides insights on robot design and its clinical applications in ASD intervention

CDCOCA: a statistical method to define complexity dependent co-occurring chromosomal aberrations

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Copy number alterations (CNA) play a key role in cancer development and progression. Since more than one CNA can be detected in most tumors, frequently co-occurring genetic CNA may point to cooperating cancer related genes. Existing methods for co-occurrence evaluation so far have not considered the overall heterogeneity of CNA per tumor, resulting in a preferential detection of frequent changes with limited specificity for each association due to the high genetic instability of many samples.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>We hypothesize that in cancer some linkage-independent CNA may display a non-random co-occurrence, and that these CNA could be of pathogenetic relevance for the respective cancer. We also hypothesize that the statistical relevance of co-occurring CNA may depend on the sample specific CNA complexity. We verify our hypotheses with a simulation based algorithm CDCOCA (complexity dependence of co-occurring chromosomal aberrations).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Application of CDCOCA to example data sets identified co-occurring CNA from low complex background which otherwise went unnoticed. Identification of cancer associated genes in these co-occurring changes can provide insights of cooperative genes involved in oncogenesis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We have developed a method to detect associations of regional copy number abnormalities in cancer data. Along with finding statistically relevant CNA co-occurrences, our algorithm points towards a generally low specificity for co-occurrence of regional imbalances in CNA rich samples, which may have negative impact on pathway modeling approaches relying on frequent CNA events.</p

Effect of geometry on temporal development of quasi-1D jet scour

The phenomenon of jet scouring has been studied extensively over the last 50 years with numerous experiments conducted in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the 3-dimensional (3D) and 2-dimensional (2D) scouring effect. However, the study of a 1-dimensional (1D) scouring effect is still relatively new because in the physical world, a 1D sand scouring effect with scour depth (ds) as the only changing variable does not truly exist. Nevertheless, by restricting the scour width (Ws) and scour length (Ls) to an infinitesimal scale, it is possible to simulate a quasi-1D jet scour scenario using a submerged impinging jet. The objective of this study was to obtain an improved understanding of scouring by conducting a study of the temporal development of a quasi-1D jet scour. Experimental dimensions such as sediment size (d50), impingement height of jet (H), mean jet velocity (U0) and scour bed length (L) were varied in order to examine their effect on scour development. Two different experimental set-ups were built in the hydraulics laboratory so that tests could be conducted to measure and obtain the necessary quasi-1D experimental data. The data were then analyzed in order to deduce the effect of various geometries on quasi-1D scouring. From the results, it was inferred that a quasi-1D scour follows an exponential development curve. This development curve comprises 4 main development phases which are consistent with the conventional 2D and 3D scour development phases (initiation phase, development phase, stabilization phase & equilibrium phase). It was discovered that quasi-1D equilibrium scour depth (dse) generally decreased when impingement height is increased, with the exception of a variation at H = 2.5 cm due to jet diffusion effect. It was also observed that both dse and time to reach equilibrium (te) increase when L was increased due to a larger erodible bed volume which facilitates better vortex formation. A quasi-1D jet scour was also found to achieve the equilibrium phase 90 times faster as compared to a 2D scour. Additionally, past researchers have derived a general form for pier scour equation. This equation was modified to relate changes in scour depth for the quasi-1D situation. Two equations were proposed: the first relating scour depth (ds) to impingement height (H), and the other relating ds to scour bed length (L). This study will allow us to achieve a better understanding of the scouring phenomenon by eventually comparing the nature of quasi-1D scouring with that of 2D and 3D scouring.Bachelor of Engineering (Civil

Application of Blockchain Hierarchical Model in the Realm of Rural Green Credit Investigation

In order to realize the application research of blockchain technology in the field of green credit investigation, the current paper adopts the method of a blockchain hierarchical model to study the rural green credit. With regard to the realm of rural green credit investigation, this paper sorts out the characteristics of credit data in China&rsquo;s countryside by countryside credit investigation and determines the major problems and in rural green credit investigation of financial inclusion. Subsequently, the authors put forward a blockchain hierarchical model, which not only has reinforced the advantages in original blockchain dedicated to agriculture, rural areas and rural residents, such as traceability and immutability, but also has transformed the decentralization into disintermediation and changed the single-layered P2P network into a multilayered structure based on China&rsquo;s rural financial environment. Finally, the authors collect and extract the proper credit investigation data on the rural internet to assess the application value of the model by investigating its practical applicability in reality and problems that may occur during the application of the model. Results show that private credit information has an important impact on the prediction accuracy, and the blockchain hierarchical model is helpful to ensure the reliability and security of rural green credit data

Research on Key Pollutant Reduction Program of Environmental control in a Small River Basin of Guangxi

In order to strengthen the prevention and control of water pollution in rural rivers, it is necessary to analyze the pollution causes in detail, calculate the pollutant reduction amount and put forward the comprehensive treatment measures. Aiming at the small basin of a county in the southwest Guangxi, this paper carried out the comprehensive improvement of water environment, including specifically investigation the water pollution degree of the basin, calculating present pollution load and water environment capacity, and proposing pollutant reduction targets in accordance with the requirements for water quality targets. The basin has poor water quality background and is seriously polluted by rural living pollution sources, livestock and poultry breeding pollution sources and planting pollution sources, in order to solve these problems, the water quality assurance project, rural living sewage governance project and large-scale livestock and poultry breeding pollution governance project are put forward. Through project quantity accounting and pollutant reduction calculation, the water quality target can be achieved

On-chip all-optical multicasting of mode-division multiplexing QPSK signals

The authors propose and experimentally demonstrate an on-chip all-optical multicasting (AOM) for 40 Gbit/s mode-division-multiplexed quadrature phase-shift keying (MDM-QPSK) signals based on a parallel dispersion-engineered multimode non-linear silicon waveguide. Five dual-mode multicast wavelengths are successfully obtained on the generate idlers, and the power penalties of all the multicast channels are less than 1.1 dB at the bit error rate (BER) of 3.8 × 10−3. The dual-mode AOM scheme has the potential to promote the ability of optical cross-connect in practical hybrid multiplexed networks including MDM channels.</p