Decoding University Hierarchy and Prestige in China through Domestic Ph.D. Hiring Network

The academic job market for fresh Ph.D. students to pursue postdoctoral and junior faculty positions plays a crucial role in shaping the future orientations, developments, and status of the global academic system. In this work, we focus on the domestic Ph.D. hiring network among universities in China by exploring the doctoral education and academic employment of nearly 28,000 scientists across all Ph.D.-granting Chinese universities over three decades. We employ the minimum violation rankings algorithm to decode the rankings for universities based on the Ph.D. hiring network, which offers a deep understanding of the structure and dynamics within the network. Our results uncover a consistent, highly structured hierarchy within this hiring network, indicating the imbalances wherein a limited number of universities serve as the main sources of fresh Ph.D. across diverse disciplines. Furthermore, over time, it has become increasingly challenging for Chinese Ph.D. graduates to secure positions at institutions more prestigious than their alma maters. This study quantitatively captures the evolving structure of talent circulation in the domestic environment, providing valuable insights to enhance the organization, diversity, and talent distribution in China's academic enterprise

Talent hat, cross-border mobility, and career development in China

This study aims to investigate the influence of cross-border recruitment program in China, which confers scientists with a 'talent hat' including a startup package comprising significant bonuses, pay, and funding, on their future performance and career development. By curating a unique dataset from China's 10-year talent recruitment program, we employed multiple matching designs to quantify the effects of the cross-border recruitment with 'talent hat' on early career STEM scholars. Our findings indicate that the cross-border talents perform better than their comparable contenders who move without talent hats and those who do not move, given equivalent scientific performance before relocation. Moreover, we observed that scholars in experimental fields derive greater benefits from the talent program than those in non-experimental fields. Finally, we investigated how the changes in scientific environment of scientists affect their future performance. We found that talents who reassembled their collaboration network with new collaborators in new institutions after job replacement experienced significant improvements in their academic performance. However, shifting research directions entails risks, which results in a subsequent decrease of future productivity and citation impact following the relocation. This study has significant implications for young scientists, research institutions, and governments concerning cultivating cross-border talents

Fano resonance assisting plasmonic circular dichroism from nanorice heterodimers for extrinsic chirality

In this work, the circular dichroisms (CD) of nanorice heterodimers consisting of two parallel arranged nanorices with the same size but different materials are investigated theoretically. Symmetry-breaking is introduced by using different materials and oblique incidence to achieve strong CD at the vicinity of Fano resonance peaks. We demonstrate that all Au-Ag heterodimers exhibit multipolar Fano resonances and strong CD effect. A simple quantitative analysis shows that the structure with larger Fano asymmetry factor has stronger CD. The intensity and peak positions of the CD effect can be flexibly tuned in a large range by changing particle size, shape, the inter-particle distance and surroundings. Furthermore, CD spectra exhibit high sensitivity to ambient medium in visible and near infrared regions. Our results here are beneficial for the design and application of high sensitive CD sensors and other related fields

A Semi-Infinite Interval-Stochastic Risk Management Model for River Water Pollution Control under Uncertainty

In this study, a semi-infinite interval-stochastic risk management (SIRM) model is developed for river water pollution control, where various policy scenarios are explored in response to economic penalties due to randomness and functional intervals. SIRM can also control the variability of the recourse cost as well as capture the notion of risk in stochastic programming. Then, the SIRM model is applied to water pollution control of the Xiangxihe watershed. Tradeoffs between risks and benefits are evaluated, indicating any change in the targeted benefit and risk level would yield varied expected benefits. Results disclose that the uncertainty of system components and risk preference of decision makers have significant effects on the watershed's production generation pattern and pollutant control schemes as well as system benefit. Decision makers with risk-aversive attitude would accept a lower system benefit (with lower production level and pollutant discharge); a policy based on risk-neutral attitude would lead to a higher system benefit (with higher production level and pollutant discharge). The findings can facilitate the decision makers in identifying desired product generation plans in association with financial risk minimization and pollution mitigation.National Key Research Development Program of China (2016YFA0601502 and 2016YFC0502800), and the 111 Project (B14008

Uncertainty-weighted Multi-tasking for T1ρT_{1\rho} and T2_2 Mapping in the Liver with Self-supervised Learning

Multi-parametric mapping of MRI relaxations in liver has the potential of revealing pathological information of the liver. A self-supervised learning based multi-parametric mapping method is proposed to map T$T_{1\rho}$ and T$_2$ simultaneously, by utilising the relaxation constraint in the learning process. Data noise of different mapping tasks is utilised to make the model uncertainty-aware, which adaptively weight different mapping tasks during learning. The method was examined on a dataset of 51 patients with non-alcoholic fatter liver disease. Results showed that the proposed method can produce comparable parametric maps to the traditional multi-contrast pixel wise fitting method, with a reduced number of images and less computation time. The uncertainty weighting also improves the model performance. It has the potential of accelerating MRI quantitative imaging

Targeting PPARα for the Treatment and Understanding of Cardiovascular Diseases

Three members of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) family, PPARα, PPARγ, and PPARβ/δ, have been investigated widely over the past few decades. Although the roles of these PPARs and their agonists/antagonists were defined in clinical and basic studies, the conflicting results from these studies indicate that more analysis is needed to understand the roles of PPARs. PPARα is a ligand-activated transcription factor that contributes to the regulation of a variety of processes, ranging from inflammation and immunity to nutrient metabolism and energy homeostasis. In this review, we focus on the function and mechanisms of PPARα in the cardiovascular system under various pathological conditions, including vascular and heart injury, blood pressure regulation, and lipid disorder-related cardiovascular injury, as well as its polymorphisms and pharmacogenetic associations with cardiovascular diseases. The anti-inflammatory effect of PPARα in cardiovascular injury is mainly through inhibition of pro-inflammatory signaling pathways and improvement of the lipid profile. Moreover, PPARα also modulates the activity of endothelial nitric oxide synthase and resets the renin-angiotensin system to regulate vascular tone. PPARα gene variants appear to be associated with some cardiovascular risk factors, such as higher plasma lipid levels, cardiac growth, and increased risk of coronary artery disease. Nowadays, novel PPARα drugs with broad safety margins and therapeutic potential for metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases are being developed and applied in the clinical setting. The insights from the current review shed new light on areas of further study and provide a better understanding of the role of PPARα in cardiovascular diseases

Electromagnetic field redistribution in hybridized plasmonic particle-film system

Combining simulation and experiment, we demonstrate that a metal nanoparticle dimer on a gold film substrate can confine more energy in the particle/film gap because of the hybridization of the dimer resonant lever and the continuous state of the film. The hybridization may even make the electric field enhancement in the dimer/film gap stronger than in the gap between particles. The resonant peak can be tuned by varying the size of the particles and the film thickness. This electromagnetic field redistribution has tremendous applications in sensor, photocatalysis and solar cell, etc., especially considering ultrasensitive detection of tracing molecule on substrates

Electromagnetic field redistribution in coupled plasmonic nanoparticle dimer-dielectric substrate system

Combining simulations and experiments, we demonstrate that the surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) system of a metal nanoparticle dimer on a dielectric substrate shows strong electromagnetic field enhancement in the particle/substrate gap because of the electromagnetic field redistribution. Besides, in some configurations, the presence of the substrate makes the strongest field enhancement in the gap between the two nanoparticles (i.e. the dimer) occur at the quadruple resonance, not the dipole resonance as usual. The result is very instructive in the difference between the ideal theoretical systems and the real experimental configuration