A Study on the Impact of Urban Digitalization on the Urban-rural Income Gap

The empirical research topic for this paper is a panel dataset of 31 provinces and urban areas from my country from 2011 to 2020. On the one hand, it gauges the level of regional digital economic development. On the other side, we’ll talk about the structural impact of the level of digitalization on the urban-rural income difference and further debate whether the digital economy helps close or widen this gap. The findings show that the degree of digitization has a significant impact on reducing the income gap between urban and rural areas, while an increase in the Internet coverage index helps do so. However, the overall impact makes the digital economy unfavorable to reducing the income gap between urban and rural areas

Optimal deployments of defense mechanisms for the internet of things

Internet of Things (IoT) devices can be exploited by the attackers as entry points to break into the IoT networks without early detection. Little work has taken hybrid approaches that combine different defense mechanisms in an optimal way to increase the security of the IoT against sophisticated attacks. In this work, we propose a novel approach to generate the strategic deployment of adaptive deception technology and the patch management solution for the IoT under a budget constraint. We use a graphical security model along with three evaluation metrics to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed defense mechanisms. We apply the multi-objective genetic algorithm (GA) to compute the {\em Pareto optimal} deployments of defense mechanisms to maximize the security and minimize the deployment cost. We present a case study to show the feasibility of the proposed approach and to provide the defenders with various ways to choose optimal deployments of defense mechanisms for the IoT. We compare the GA with the exhaustive search algorithm (ESA) in terms of the runtime complexity and performance accuracy in optimality. Our results show that the GA is much more efficient in computing a good spread of the deployments than the ESA, in proportion to the increase of the IoT devices

Sterilization Process Optimization and Quality Changes of Soft-boiled Marinated Eggs during Storage

In order to develop high quality soft-boiled marinated eggs, water bath was used to simulate pasteurization conditions to optimize the pasteurization process of soft-boiled marinated eggs and made them more conducive to industrial production and sales. The changes of texture, sensory score and total number of colonies were studied under single factor conditions. Based on single factors, response surface was used to optimize sterilization conditions, and the storage quality of soft-boiled marinated eggs was determined under the best sterilization conditions. The results showed that, the best sterilization effect was achieved when the sterilization temperature and time were 65 ℃ and 20 minutes respectively, and the total number of colonies was (0.37±0.025)×103 CFU/g. The results of storage experiment showed that with the extension of storage time, the thiobarbituric acid values and total volatile basic nitrogen content showed an increasing trend. The pH, water content, color and sensory scores all decreased gradually. When the storage period was 16 days, the total number of colonies reached (1.47±0.063)×104 CFU/g, which exceeded the limit value of the acceptable level of microorganisms in the national standard of 1×104 CFU/g, and the storage period within 16 days. In summary, pasteurization technology can be used for the production and processing of soft-boiled marinated eggs

Stable manifolds for non-instantaneous impulsive nonautonomous differential equations

In this paper, we study stable invariant manifolds for a class of nonautonomous non-instantaneous impulsive equations where the homogeneous part has a nonuniform exponential dichotomy. We establish a stable invariant manifold result for sufficiently small perturbations by constructing stable and unstable invariant manifolds and we also show that the stable invariant manifolds are of class $C^{1}$ outside the jumping times using the continuous Fiber contraction principle technique

Dissection of the mechanism of traditional Chinese medical prescription-Yiqihuoxue formula as an effective anti-fibrotic treatment for systemic sclerosis

BACKGROUND: Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a connective tissue fibrotic disease for which there is no effective treatment. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), such as the Yiqihuoxue formula used in Shanghai TCM-integrated Hospital, has shown the efficacy of anti-fibrosis in clinical applications. This study was aiming to dissect the anti-fibrotic mechanism of Yiqihuoxue treatment for SSc. METHODS: Bleomycin-induced mice and SSc dermal fibroblasts were treated with Yiqihuoxue decoction; NIH-3T3 fibroblasts were exposed to exogenous TGF-β1, and then cultured with or without Yiqihuoxue decoction. Luciferase reporter gene assay was used to determine the activity of Smad binding element (SBE). Quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to examine the mRNA levels of extracellular matrix (ECM) genes. The protein levels of type I collagen, Smad3 and phosphorylated-Smad3 (p-Smad3) were detected by western blotting. Student’s t-tests were used to determine the significance of the results. RESULTS: Bleomycin-induced mice, SSc dermal fibroblasts and TGF-β1-induced NIH/3T3 fibroblasts showed higher levels of ECM gene transcriptions and collagen production. In addition, the phosphorylation level of Smad3 and activity of SBE were significantly increased after exogenous TGF-β1 induction. Whereas, Yiqihuoxue treatment could obviously attenuate fibrosis in bleomycin-induced mice, down regulate ECM gene expressions and collagen production in SSc dermal fibroblasts and TGF-β1-induced NIH/3T3 fibroblasts. Furthermore, the aberrantly high phosphorylation level of Smad3 and activity of SBE in the TGF-β1-induced NIH/3T3 fibroblasts were also dramatically decreased by Yiqihuoxue treatment. CONCLUSIONS: Yiqihuoxue treatment could effectively reduce collagen production via down-regulating the phosphorylation of Smad3 and then the activity of SBE, which are involved in the TGF-β pathway and constitutively activated in the progression of SSc

Advances in Studies on Toxicity and Transformation of Zearalenone and Its Derivatives

Zearalenone (ZEN) is a mycotoxin produced by the Fusarium species, which has various toxic effects. The chemical structures of ZEN and its derivatives are similar to that of estrogen. When ingested by animals or humans, ZEN and its derivatives can lead to disturbance of estrogen balance, thereby harming the reproductive system. Moreover, they can alter gene structure and consequently affect gene expression, and can even cause damage to the immune system, thus weakening the immune response. ZEN is transformed and metabolized into ZEN derivatives during food processing or after absorption by animals and plants, and its toxicity is altered due to structural and physicochemical changes. Studying the toxicity of ZEN and its derivatives as well as their transformation and metabolism in various organisms is important for ensuring food security and mycotoxin toxicity risk assessment

The Influence of Self-Control and Social Status on Self-Deception

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of self-control and social status on self-deception. The present study adopted a forward-looking paradigm to investigate how self-control and social status influence self-deception. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to complete 10 questions, after they predicted and completed 40 questions (commonsense judgment materials) either with or without answer hints. The results indicated that the participants had higher predicted scores under conditions with answer hints compared with conditions without answer hints and that the predicted scores were much higher than the actual scores under conditions with answer hints. In Experiment 2, individuals with different self-control traits were chosen to perform the operation and induction of the perception of social status and then complete tests such as Experiment 1. The results showed that differences in the predicted scores between conditions with answer hints and those without answer hints were observed to be greater in individuals with low self-control traits than in individuals with higher self-control traits, however, such differences between individuals with higher and low self-control traits were only observed in conditions with low social status perception, not in the conditions with high social status perception. The findings indicated that compared with individuals with high self-control, low self-control individuals tended to produce more self-deception. In addition, high social status in the individuals’ perception could restrain the influence of low self-control on self-deception, while low social status in the individuals’ perception could increase the self-control’s influence on self-deception