High-speed rail to prosperity? Assessing the role of transportation improvement in the urban economy

Investigate the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) on local economy is of great importance and interest to policy makers and scholars. Though there is a big body of literature in this area, the estimates of such impact are inconsistent or even contradictory. The empirical evidence remains problematic for several reasons: endogenous route placement; omitted variable bias; heterogeneity across different regions; various confounding factors. In this paper, we assess this impact by constructing the appropriate counterfactual in the absence of HSR services with similar GDP level and GDP trend before the debut of HSR services. The control group forms a good fit for the treatment group, and the economic performance of the control group was even slightly stronger than that of the treatment group before 2007. Using the DID method, we find the HSR network promoted local GDP by approximately 3.3 percentage points. The introduction of HSR service helped cities attract more industrial enterprises and achieve more industrial output, but its effect on the service sector was not pronounced. Our results are robust to different sample selection procedures, to the dynamic analyses, to different empirical strategies. Our study thus provides new and solid empirical support to the argument that HSR benefits local economic development

Treatment effects of fibrinogen concentrates vs. cryoprecipitate for correcting hypofibrinogenemia in cardiac surgery patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BackgroundHypofibrinogenemia in cardiac surgery increases bleeding risk, but the efficacy and safety of fibrinogen concentrate vs. cryoprecipitate remain unclear. This meta-analysis compares the patient-important outcomes associated with the use of fibrinogen concentrate vs. cryoprecipitate for the management of acquired hypofibrinogenemia in cardiac surgery.MethodsMedline, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Transfusion Evidence Library were searched from their inception until June 2024. Eligible studies included randomized clinical trials (RCTs). Effect estimates were synthesized using risk ratios (RR) and standardized mean differences (SMD), along with their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs).ResultsWe analyzed 4 RCTs (945 participants: 823 adults, 122 children) comparing fibrinogen concentrate with cryoprecipitate undergoing cardiac surgery. Meta-analysis showed no difference in mortality (RR = 1.25, 95% CI: 0.79–1.96; moderate GRADE), blood loss (SMD = −0.14, 95% CI: −0.46–0.18), transfusion rates (blood cells: RR = 0.98, 0.77–1.26; platelets: RR = 0.17, 0.02–1.40; fresh frozen plasma: RR = 0.48, 0.16–1.45; cryoprecipitate: RR = 1.02, 0.58–1.81), infections (RR = 0.91, 0.64–1.28), volume overload (RR = 1.95, 0.18–21.34), transfusion reactions (RR = 0.98, 0.06–15.54), or postoperative thrombosis (RR = 0.76, 0.47–1.22). No allergic reactions were reported. Subgroup analysis revealed substantial heterogeneity (I2 = 0% to 98%) in most outcome measures between adults and children. Using the GRADE criteria, we assessed the quality of the evidence for mortality as moderate, whereas the quality of evidence for other outcomes was judged to be low.ConclusionsFor patients undergoing cardiac surgery who experience clinically significant bleeding and hypofibrinogenemia, the available trial data provide moderate evidence that fibrinogen concentrate, compared to cryoprecipitate, does not increase the short-term risk of all-cause mortality. However, for the rate of transfusion of allogeneic or individual blood components, and adverse events, the existing evidence is of low certainty. Given the relatively small sample size, the group of children may not be representative of all children.Systematic Review Registration(https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform), identifier CRD42023421670

A longitudinal resource for population neuroscience of school-age children and adolescents in China

During the past decade, cognitive neuroscience has been calling for population diversity to address the challenge of validity and generalizability, ushering in a new era of population neuroscience. The developing Chinese Color Nest Project (devCCNP, 2013–2022), the first ten-year stage of the lifespan CCNP (2013–2032), is a two-stages project focusing on brain-mind development. The project aims to create and share a large-scale, longitudinal and multimodal dataset of typically developing children and adolescents (ages 6.0–17.9 at enrolment) in the Chinese population. The devCCNP houses not only phenotypes measured by demographic, biophysical, psychological and behavioural, cognitive, affective, and ocular-tracking assessments but also neurotypes measured with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of brain morphometry, resting-state function, naturalistic viewing function and diffusion structure. This Data Descriptor introduces the first data release of devCCNP including a total of 864 visits from 479 participants. Herein, we provided details of the experimental design, sampling strategies, and technical validation of the devCCNP resource. We demonstrate and discuss the potential of a multicohort longitudinal design to depict normative brain growth curves from the perspective of developmental population neuroscience. The devCCNP resource is shared as part of the “Chinese Data-sharing Warehouse for In-vivo Imaging Brain” in the Chinese Color Nest Project (CCNP) – Lifespan Brain-Mind Development Data Community (https://ccnp.scidb.cn) at the Science Data Bank

Stochastic programming based multi-arm bandit offloading strategy for internet of things

In order to solve the high latency of traditional cloud computing and the processing capacity limitation of Internet of Things (IoT) users, Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) migrates computing and storage capabilities from the remote data center to the edge of network, providing users with computation services quickly and directly. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the randomness caused by the movement of the IoT user on decision-making for offloading, where the connection between the IoT user and the MEC servers is uncertain. This uncertainty would be the main obstacle to assign the task accurately. Consequently, if the assigned task cannot match well with the real connection time, a migration (connection time is not enough to process) would be caused. In order to address the impact of this uncertainty, we formulate the offloading decision as an optimization problem considering the transmission, computation and migration. With the help of Stochastic Programming(SP), we use the posteriori recourse to compensate for inaccurate predictions. Meanwhile, in heterogeneous networks, considering multiple candidate MEC servers could be selected simultaneously due to overlapping, we also introduce the Multi-Arm Bandit (MAB) theory for MEC selection. The extensive simulations validate the improvement and effectiveness of the proposed SP-based Multi-arm bandit Method (SMM) for offloading in terms of reward, cost, energy consumption and delay. The results show that SMM can achieve about 20% improvement compared with the traditional offloading method that does not consider the randomness, and it also outperforms the existing SP/MAB based method for offloading

Reward and Motivation Systems: A Brain Mapping Study of Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love in Chinese Participants

Early-stage romantic love has been studied previously in the United States and United Kingdom (Aron et al. [2005]: J Neurophysiol 94:327-337; Bartels and Zeki [2000]: Neuroreport 11:3829-3834; Ortigue et al. [2007]: J Cogn Neurosci 19:1218-1230), revealing activation in the reward and motivation systems of the brain. In this study, we asked what systems are activated for early-stage romantic love in Easterners, specifically Chinese participants? Are these activations affected by individual differences within a cultural context of Traditionality and Modernity? Also, are these brain activations correlated with later satisfaction in the relationship? In Beijing, we used the same procedure used by Aron et al. (Aron et al. [2005]: J Neurophysiol 94: 327-337). The stimuli for 18 Chinese participants were a picture of the face of their beloved, the face of a familiar acquaintance, and a countback task. We found significant activations specific to the beloved in the reward and motivation systems, particularly, the ventral tegmental area and the caudate. The mid-orbitofrontal cortex and cerebellum were also activated, whereas amygdala, medial orbitofrontal, and medial accumbens activity were decreased relative to the familiar acquaintance. Self-reported Traditionality and Modernity scores were each positively correlated with activity in the nucleus accumbens, although in different regions and sides of the brain. Activity in the subgenual area and the superior frontal gyrus was associated with higher relationship happiness at 18-month follow-up. Our results show that midbrain dopamine-rich reward/motivation systems were activated by early-stage romantic love in Chinese participants, as found by other studies. Neural activity was associated with Traditionality and Modernity attitudes as well as with later relationship happiness for Chinese participants. Hum Brain Mapp 32:249-257, 2011. (C) 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc

The FLT3-ITD mutation and the expression of its downstream signaling intermediates STAT5 and Pim-1 are positively correlated with CXCR4 expression in patients with acute myeloid leukemia

AbstractChemokine ligand 12(CXCL12) mediates signaling through chemokine receptor 4(CXCR4), which is essential for the homing and maintenance of Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in the bone marrow. FLT3-ITD mutations enhance cell migration toward CXCL12, providing a drug resistance mechanism underlying the poor effects of FLT3-ITD antagonists. However, the mechanism by which FLT3-ITD mutations regulate the CXCL12/CXCR4 axis remains unclear. We analyzed the relationship between CXCR4 expression and the FLT3-ITD mutation in 466 patients with de novo AML to clarify the effect of FLT3-ITD mutations on CXCR4 expression in patients with AML. Our results indicated a positive correlation between the FLT3-ITD mutant-type allelic ratio (FLT3-ITD MR) and the relative fluorescence intensity (RFI) of CXCR4 expression in patients with AML (r = 0.588, P ≤ 0.0001). Moreover, the levels of phospho(p)-STAT5, Pim-1 and CXCR4 proteins were positively correlated with the FLT3-ITD MR, and the mRNA levels of CXCR4 and Pim-1 which has been revealed as one of the first known target genes of STAT5, were upregulated with an increasing FLT3-ITD MR(P &lt; 0.05). Therefore, FLT3-ITD mutations upregulate the expression of CXCR4 in patients with AML, and the downstream signaling intermediates STAT5 and Pim-1 are also involved in this phenomenon and subsequently contribute to chemotherapy resistance and disease relapse in patients with AML. However, the mechanism must be confirmed in further experiments. The combination of CXCR4 antagonists and FLT3 inhibitors may improve the sensitivity of AML cells to chemotherapy and overcome drug resistance.</jats:p