Does signing auditors’ communist party membership shape audit quality? Evidence from China

In this article, we investigate the effect of signing auditors’ communist party membership on audit quality. Relying on a sample of Chinese listed firms from the period 2001 to 2019, we find that firms with signing auditors who have communist party membership conduct less earnings management, indicating that signing auditors with party membership provide high level of audit quality. Moreover, the above relationship is more pronounced in small audit firms. We also find that firms who are audited by signing auditors with party status have lower likelihood of financial statements and loss avoidance. Further analyses suggest that signing auditors with party status can earn audit fee premium. The positive relationship between signing auditors with party membership and audit quality is more pronounced in non-specialists auditors and high client importance

Shareable Driving Style Learning and Analysis with a Hierarchical Latent Model

Driving style is usually used to characterize driving behavior for a driver or a group of drivers. However, it remains unclear how one individual's driving style shares certain common grounds with other drivers. Our insight is that driving behavior is a sequence of responses to the weighted mixture of latent driving styles that are shareable within and between individuals. To this end, this paper develops a hierarchical latent model to learn the relationship between driving behavior and driving styles. We first propose a fragment-based approach to represent complex sequential driving behavior, allowing for sufficiently representing driving behavior in a low-dimension feature space. Then, we provide an analytical formulation for the interaction of driving behavior and shareable driving style with a hierarchical latent model by introducing the mechanism of Dirichlet allocation. Our developed model is finally validated and verified with 100 drivers in naturalistic driving settings with urban and highways. Experimental results reveal that individuals share driving styles within and between them. We also analyzed the influence of personalities (e.g., age, gender, and driving experience) on driving styles and found that a naturally aggressive driver would not always keep driving aggressively (i.e., could behave calmly sometimes) but with a higher proportion of aggressiveness than other types of drivers

PCB 126 and Other Dioxin-Like PCBs Specifically Suppress Hepatic PEPCK Expression via the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor

Dioxins and dioxin-like compounds encompass a group of structurally related heterocyclic compounds that bind to and activate the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR). The prototypical dioxin is 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), a highly toxic industrial byproduct that incites numerous adverse physiological effects. Global commercial production of the structurally similar polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), however, commenced early in the 20th century and continued for decades; dioxin-like PCBs therefore contribute significantly to total dioxin-associated toxicity. In this study, PCB 126, the most potent dioxin-like PCB, was evaluated with respect to its direct effects on hepatic glucose metabolism using primary mouse hepatocytes. Overnight treatment with PCB 126 reduced hepatic glycogen stores in a dose-dependent manner. Additionally, PCB 126 suppressed forskolin-stimulated gluconeogenesis from lactate. These effects were independent of acute toxicity, as PCB 126 did not increase lactate dehydrogenase release nor affect lipid metabolism or total intracellular ATP. Interestingly, provision of cells with glycerol instead of lactate as the carbon source completely restored hepatic glucose production, indicating specific impairment in the distal arm of gluconeogenesis. In concordance with this finding, PCB 126 blunted the forskolin-stimulated increase in phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PEPCK) mRNA levels without affecting glucose-6-phosphatase expression. Myricetin, a putative competitive AhR antagonist, reversed the suppression of PEPCK induction by PCB 126. Furthermore, other dioxin-like PCBs demonstrated similar effects on PEPCK expression in parallel with their ability to activate AhR. It therefore appears that AhR activation mediates the suppression of PEPCK expression by dioxin-like PCBs, suggesting a role for these pollutants as disruptors of energy metabolism

Ultrasound-driven BaTiO3 nanorobots patching immunologic barrier to cure chronic rheumatoid arthritis

The disruption and reconstruction of the TREM2+ tissue resident macrophage (TRM) barrier on the surface of synovial lining play a key role in the activation and "remission" of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), which engender the prediction of this immunologic barrier as a potential driver for the achievement of "cure" in RA. However, strategies to promote the reconstruction of this barrier have not been reported, and the effect of patching this barrier remains unidentified. On the other hand, appropriate piezoelectric stimulation can reprogram macrophages, which has never been exerted on this barrier TRM yet. Herein, we design piezoelectric tetragonal BaTiO3 (BTO) ultrasound-driven nanorobots (USNRs) by the solvothermal synthesis method, which demonstrates satisfactory electro-mechanical conversion effects, paving the way to generate controllable electrical stimulation under ultrasound to reprogram the barrier TRM by minimally invasive injection into joint cavity. It is demonstrated that the immunologic barrier could be patched by this USNR effectively, thereby eliminating the hyperplasia of vessels and nerves (HVN) and synovitis. Additionally, TREM2 deficiency serum-transfected arthritis (STA) mice models are applied and proved the indispensable role of TREM2 in RA curing mediated by USNR. In all, our work is an interesting and important exploration to expand the classical tetragonal BTO nanoparticles in the treatment of autoimmune diseases, providing a new idea and direction for the biomedical application of piezoelectric ceramics

Implantable and Biodegradable Macroporous Iron Oxide Frameworks for Efficient Regeneration and Repair of Infracted Heart

The construction, characterization and surgical application of a multilayered iron oxide-based macroporous composite framework were reported in this study. The framework consisted of a highly porous iron oxide core, a gelatin-based hydrogel intermediary layer and a matrigel outer cover, which conferred a multitude of desirable properties including excellent biocompatibility, improved mechanical strength and controlled biodegradability. The large pore sizes and high extent of pore interconnectivity of the framework stimulated robust neovascularization and resulted in substantially better cell viability and proliferation as a result of improved transport efficiency for oxygen and nutrients. In addition, rat models with myocardial infraction showed sustained heart tissue regeneration over the infract region and significant improvement of cardiac functions following the surgical implantation of the framework. These results demonstrated that the current framework might hold great potential for cardiac repair in patients with myocardial infraction

Calibrating Car-Following Models via Bayesian Dynamic Regression

Car-following behavior modeling is critical for understanding traffic flow dynamics and developing high-fidelity microscopic simulation models. Most existing impulse-response car-following models prioritize computational efficiency and interpretability by using a parsimonious nonlinear function based on immediate preceding state observations. However, this approach disregards historical information, limiting its ability to explain real-world driving data. Consequently, serially correlated residuals are commonly observed when calibrating these models with actual trajectory data, hindering their ability to capture complex and stochastic phenomena. To address this limitation, we propose a dynamic regression framework incorporating time series models, such as autoregressive processes, to capture error dynamics. This statistically rigorous calibration outperforms the simple assumption of independent errors and enables more accurate simulation and prediction by leveraging higher-order historical information. We validate the effectiveness of our framework using HighD and OpenACC data, demonstrating improved probabilistic simulations. In summary, our framework preserves the parsimonious nature of traditional car-following models while offering enhanced probabilistic simulations

An Updated Method for Stability Analysis of Milling Process with Multiple and Distributed Time Delays and Its Application

Predicting and avoiding the onset of milling chatter are desirable to reduce its harm to machine tools, workpieces, and cutters. This paper presents an updated method to complete the stability prediction for the milling process with multiple and distributed time delays. After the dynamic of the combination milling process with variable helix cutter (VHC) and variable spindle speed (VSS) is modeled as linear delay differential equations with multiple and distributed time delays, the presented method is applied to carrying out its stability prediction for the first time. By comparing with the existing researches and time-domain simulations, the effectiveness of the presented method has been validated. The influence and feasibility of the combination process on chatter suppression are explored and investigated for the associated one- and two-degree-of-freedom systems. Results show that the application of the combination process can realize a further suppression of milling chatter in practice. It can result in nearly 2-fold as high as the minimum depth of cut for the traditional milling or VSS milling and about 1.3-fold for VHC milling for some special domain, and can respectively lead to the average increase of stable area by 30.4%, 23.5%, and 1.5% for the adopted simulations. However, consider the contribution, the combination process is actually one process in which VHC plays an absolutely leading role but VSS plays an auxiliary role, in terms of milling stability

A Biomimic Reconstituted High Density Lipoprotein Nanosystem for Enhanced VEGF Gene Therapy of Myocardial Ischemia

A biomimic reconstituted high density lipoprotein (rHDL) based system, rHDL/Stearic-PEI/VEGF complexes, was fabricated as an advanced nanovector for delivering VEGF plasmid. Here, Stearic-PEI was utilized to effectively condense VEGF plasmid and to incorporate the plasmid into rHDL. The rHDL/Stearic-PEI/VEGF complexes with diameter under 100 nm and neutral surface charge demonstrated enhanced stability under the presence of bovine serum albumin. Moreover, in vitro cytotoxicity and transfection assays on H9C2 cells further revealed their superiority, as they displayed lower cytotoxicity with much higher transfection efficiency when compared to PEI 10K/VEGF and Lipos/Stearic-PEI/VEGF complexes. In addition, in vivo investigation on ischemia/reperfusion rat model implied that rHDL/Stearic-PEI/VEGF complexes possessed high transgene capacity and strong therapeutic activity. These findings indicated that rHDL/Stearic-PEI/VEGF complexes could be an ideal gene delivery system for enhanced VEGF gene therapy of myocardial ischemia, which might be a new promising strategy for effective myocardial ischemia treatment