RMB revaluation and speculative capital inflows : policy options

We build a monetary model to show how expected revaluations lead to the instability of a pegged exchange rate regime. This model assumes current account convertibility and some degree of capital control, and fundamentally sound domestic policies and economy, as is the case in China. The model demonstrates that market-oriented interest rates can act as an automatic stabilizer to ease revaluation pressures, but cannot resolve them completely because the nominal interest rate has a zero nominal bound. Therefore, the official parity will eventually collapse and the revaluation expectations can be self-fulfilling, in the absence of external intervention. The empirical results of Granger causality tests are consistent with the main findings of our theoretical model. There are a number of alternative policy intervention measures that can extend the life of pegged exchange rate regime

Money stock, price level and structural changes in the transitional economy of China

The Chinese economy experienced both a historical double-digit inflation in the mid-90s and unprecedented deflation in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The People\u27s Bank of China, which is the Central Bank of China, has been trying to adopt an active monetary policy to reduce inflation and contain deflation. However, there remains an open issue whether its policy is effective. We formally investigate the effectiveness monetary variables in the two regimes of inflation and deflation, respectively, via the vector auto-regressive (VAR) models. One of the biggest challenges to our research is the frequent structural changes in the Chinese monetary system. This implies that both the lags and the parameters of the VAR model are not constant over time. Therefore we apply the surplus lag rolling estimation to conduct our Granger causality tests from money to price. The main findings of this paper are that the monetary variables have become less effective to the price level in the deflation era started from 1998. This conclusion is consistent with the recent development of the neo- Keynesian macroeconomic model which predicts that the monetary expansion is less effective in an environment of deflation. It also provides some empirical evidence to support the Chinese government to adopt alternative policies such as an active fiscal policy for the purpose of demand management in the era of deflation

Hf-Nd Isotopic Variability in Mineral Dust from Chinese and Mongolian Deserts: Implications for Sources and Dispersal

Mineral dust provenances are closely related to the orogenic processes which may have distinct Hf-Nd isotopic signatures. Here we report the clay-sized (\u3c2 μm) Hf-Nd isotope data from Asian dust sources to better constrain the source and transport dynamics of dust deposition in the North Pacific. Our results show that there is a more positive radiogenic Hf isotopic composition with clay-sized fractions than the corresponding bulk sample and a decoupling of the Hf-Nd couplets in the clay formation during the weathering process. The clay-sized Hf-Nd isotopic compositions of the desert samples from the Sino-Korean-Tarim Craton (SKTC) are different from those of the Gobi and deserts from the Central Asian Orogeny Belt (CAOB) due to varying tectonic and weathering controls. The Hf-Nd isotopic compositions of dust in the North Pacific central province (NPC) match closely with those from the Taklimakan, Badain Jaran and adjacent Tengger deserts, implying that the NPC dust was mainly transported from these potential sources by the westerly jet. Our study indicates that dusts from the CAOB Gobi deserts either didn\u27t arrive in NPC or were quantitatively insignificant, but they were likely transported to the North Pacific margin province (NPM) by East Asian winter monsoon

Transcriptome and comparative gene expression analysis of Phyllostachys edulis in response to high light

The values of gene expression in Calvin cycle and photorespiratory metabolism. (XLSX 12 kb

Correlation Between PD-L2 Expression and Clinical Outcome in Solid Cancer Patients: A Meta-Analysis

Background: Immune checkpoint inhibitors targeting the programmed cell death 1 (PD-1)/programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) pathway are a paradigm-shifting cancer therapy. Programmed cell death ligand 2 (PD-L2) is another ligand of PD-1, but its prognostic significance in solid cancer patients after surgery remains controversial. In this study, we aimed to reveal the prognostic implication of PD-L2 in solid tumors through a meta-analysis.Methods: We searched PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane library for studies reporting the relationship between PD-L2 expression and prognosis or clinicopathological features in solid cancer patients after surgery from inception to January 2018, with language restricted to English. Pooled hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were determined to explore the prognostic value of PD-L2 expression. Odds ratios (ORs) were also calculated to investigate the relationship between PD-L2 expression and clinicopathological parameters.Results: Sixteen studies incorporating 3,533 patients were included in our meta-analysis. The pooled results revealed that PD-L2 overexpression was a weak negative predictor for overall survival (OS; HR = 1.38, 95% CI = 1.05–1.81, P = 0.021), as well as a strong predictor for poor disease-free survival (DFS)/progression-free survival (PFS) (HR = 1.44, 95% CI = 1.15–1.81, P = 0.001). In subgroup analyses, high PD-L2 expression revealed an unfavorable prognostic prediction for OS in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) (HR = 1.60, 95% CI = 1.12–2.29, P = 0.011) and for DFS/PFS in HCC (HR = 1.50, 95%CI = 1.04–2.16, P = 0.031) as well as clear cell renal cell carcinoma (HR = 1.45, 95% CI = 1.03–2.03, P = 0.033). Moreover, PD-L2 expression implied a weak trend toward the presence of lymphatic metastasis (presence vs. absence, OR = 1.61, 95% CI = 0.98–2.65, P = 0.061).Conclusion: High PD-L2 expression may promote tumor metastasis and predict unfavorable prognosis in solid cancer patients after surgery, especially in HCC

Smartphone sensing meets transport data: A collaborative framework for transportation service analytics

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under International Research Centres in Singapore Funding Initiativ

Weight-based Channel-model Matrix Framework provides a reasonable solution for EEG-based cross-dataset emotion recognition

Cross-dataset emotion recognition as an extremely challenging task in the field of EEG-based affective computing is influenced by many factors, which makes the universal models yield unsatisfactory results. Facing the situation that lacks EEG information decoding research, we first analyzed the impact of different EEG information(individual, session, emotion and trial) for emotion recognition by sample space visualization, sample aggregation phenomena quantification, and energy pattern analysis on five public datasets. Based on these phenomena and patterns, we provided the processing methods and interpretable work of various EEG differences. Through the analysis of emotional feature distribution patterns, the Individual Emotional Feature Distribution Difference(IEFDD) was found, which was also considered as the main factor of the stability for emotion recognition. After analyzing the limitations of traditional modeling approach suffering from IEFDD, the Weight-based Channel-model Matrix Framework(WCMF) was proposed. To reasonably characterize emotional feature distribution patterns, four weight extraction methods were designed, and the optimal was the correction T-test(CT) weight extraction method. Finally, the performance of WCMF was validated on cross-dataset tasks in two kinds of experiments that simulated different practical scenarios, and the results showed that WCMF had more stable and better emotion recognition ability.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures, 8 table

Good News – Bad News. Proportion between Positive and Negative Headlines in the Global News Feed (Based on the Google News Aggregator)

This article tests the assertion about the dominance of the negative agenda in the media space. To this end, Google News, the world’s largest news aggregator, was taken into account, on the basis of which the ratio of positive and negative news headlines in the information flow was analyzed. Three stages of research were conducted, each one week long with 16 country versions of Google News. In total, it was considered a little less than half a million news headlines. According to the results, 70.54% of the headlines turned out to be positive. This outcome questions the stereotype of the dominance of negative agendas in the global news stream. As it turned out, the ratio of positive and negative news depends on the language (versions of Google News in one language showed very similar results) and the day of the week (the news is a little more positive on Sundays), but does not depend on the level of freedom of speech, cultural and geographical factors