Impacts of Policy Measures on the Development of State-Owned Forests in Northeastern China: Theoretical Results and Empirical Evidence

State-owned forest enterprises (SOFEs) in northeast China and Inner Mongolia play important roles both in timber production and in the maintenance of ecological security. However, since the late 1970s, forest resource and economic crises have seriously restricted these functions. Based on a theoretical and an empirical analysis of the harvest and investment behavior of the SOFEs, we examined the effects of forest policies and the socioeconomic conditions on the behavioral choices of the SOFEs. Both the extent to which SOFE supervising authorities emphasized improvement of forest resources in their annual evaluations and the increases in expenses necessary to manage SOFEs had significant impacts on harvest and investment decisions as well as development of forest resources. Promoting the management and utilization of non-timber resources, as well as reforms to increase the efficiency of forest protection and management, have reduced timber harvests as intended, which in turn has increased investment and improved forest resources. The effects have been relatively small, however. In contrast, reforms aimed at timber harvest and afforestation activities actually contributed to increasing the timber harvest, which affected the development of the forest resources negatively.state-owned forest enterprise, “double crises,” sustainable forest management, forest policy

CAS9 is a genome mutator by directly disrupting DNA-PK dependent DNA repair pathway.

With its high efficiency for site-specific genome editing and easy manipulation, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/ CRISPR associated protein 9 (CAS9) system has become the most widely used gene editing technology in biomedical research. In addition, significant progress has been made for the clinical development of CRISPR/CAS9 based gene therapies of human diseases, several of which are entering clinical trials. Here we report that CAS9 protein can function as a genome mutator independent of any exogenous guide RNA (gRNA) in human cells, promoting genomic DNA double-stranded break (DSB) damage and genomic instability. CAS9 interacts with the KU86 subunit of the DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK) complex and disrupts the interaction between KU86 and its kinase subunit, leading to defective DNA-PK-dependent repair of DNA DSB damage via non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) pathway. XCAS9 is a CAS9 variant with potentially higher fidelity and broader compatibility, and dCAS9 is a CAS9 variant without nuclease activity. We show that XCAS9 and dCAS9 also interact with KU86 and disrupt DNA DSB repair. Considering the critical roles of DNA-PK in maintaining genomic stability and the pleiotropic impact of DNA DSB damage responses on cellular proliferation and survival, our findings caution the interpretation of data involving CRISPR/CAS9-based gene editing and raise serious safety concerns of CRISPR/CAS9 system in clinical application

Emotional intelligence and conflict management styles

Purpose – This paper aims to use a multi-level approach to examine the effects of emotional intelligence (EI) components on conflict management styles of Chinese managers when the respondents were in conflicts with their subordinates, peers or superiors. Design/methodology/approach – The primary research was conducted in Dalian, China, via a personal survey resulting in 885 usable observations for analysis. EI was measured using the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS; Wong and Law, 2002), which is made up of 16 questions measuring four dimensions. The conflict management component was measured via Rahim’s (1983) five conflict management styles, which are avoidance, dominating, collaboration, compromise and integration. Findings – The data analyses suggested that managers at different levels possess different EI and adopt different conflict management styles when dealing with their subordinates, peers and superiors. Specifically, when subordinates were involved in a conflict, junior managers and female managers were more likely to use the dominating style, while when peers were involved in a conflict, male managers were more likely to use the dominating style. When peers were involved in a conflict, managers working in public sectors were more likely to adopt the integrating, avoiding, obliging and compromising style. The Chinese managers were found to regulate their emotions and use of their emotions effectively in conflict with their peers and supervisors and thus they tended to adopt the avoiding, integrating and obliging style. Self-emotions appraisal and others emotions appraisal were significant to the adoption of the obliging style to handle conflict with their peers and supervisors. Use of emotions effectively was significant for the Chinese managers adopting the compromising style in conflicts with their peers, superiors and subordinates. Research limitations/implications – The authors could only reach employees working and living in one city, which affects the generalizability of the paper. Practical implications – Training should be provided tomanagers at different levels on the awareness of the impact of EI on conflict management at workplace. Originality/value – There is little existing research on how employees across different levels within organisations in China moderate their EI according to the party they are interacting with. The objective of this paper is to stimulate further debate on the matter, thereby improving the understanding of EI moderation

Energy Conservation and Heat Transfer Enhancement for Mixed Convection on the Vertical Galvanizing Furnace

The alloying temperature is an important parameter that affects the properties of galvanized products. The objective of this study is to explore the mechanism of conjugate mixed convection in the vertical galvanizing furnace and propose a novel energy conservation method to improve the soaking zone temperature based on the flow pattern and heat transfer characteristics. Herein, the present study applied the k-ε two-equation turbulence model to enclose the Navier-Stokes fluid dynamic and energy conservation equations, and the temperature distributions of the steel plate and air-flow field in the furnace were obtained for six Richardson numbers between 1.91 ⋅ 105 and 6.30 ⋅ 105. In the industrial practice, the side baffles were installed at the lateral opening of the cooling tower to alter the height of vertical flow passage, which affected the Richardson number. The results indicate that the Richardson number of 2.4 ⋅ 105 generated the highest heat absorption and maximal temperature in the steel plate due to the balance between natural and forced convection. Furthermore, the results of the on-line experiments validated the simulation research. The method enhanced the steel plate temperature in the soaking zone without increasing the heat power, thereby characterizing it as energy conservation technology

Nondegeneracy of positive bubble solutions for generalized energy-critical Hartree equations

We show the nondegeneracy of positive bubble solutions for generalized energy-critical Hartree equations (NLH) \begin{equation*} -{\Delta u}\sts{x} -{\bm\alpha}\sts{N,\lambda} \int_{\R^N} { \frac{ u^{p}\sts{y}}{\pabs{\,x-y\,}{\lambda}} }\diff{y}\, u^{p-1}\sts{x} =0,\quad x\in \R^N \end{equation*} where $u(x)$ is a real-valued function, $N\geq 3$, $0<\lambda<N$, $p=\frac{2N-\lambda}{N-2}$ and {\bm\alpha}\sts{N,\lambda} is a constant. It generalizes the results for the whole range $0<\lambda<N$ in \cite{DY2019dcds, GWY2020na, LTX2021, MWX:Hartree} and confirms an open nondegeneracy problem in \cite{GMYZ2022cvpde}. Firstly, by the stereographic projection and sharp Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev inequality on the sphere $\S^N$ in \cite{FL2012}, we give an alternative proof of the existence of the extremizer of sharp Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev inequality in $\R^N$ without use of the rearrangement inequalities in \cite{lieb2001analysis}, which is related to the existence of positive bubble solutions of (NLH). Secondly, by making use of the Green function, we obtain an integral form in $\R^N$ of the corresponding linearized equation around positive bubble solutions under suitable decay condition, and its equivalent integral form on the sphere $\S^N$ via the stereographic projection. Lastly, together with the key spherical harmonic decomposition and the Funk-Hecke formula of the spherical harmonic functions in \cite{AH2012, DX2013book, SteinW:Fourier anal}, we can obtain the nondegeneracy of positive bubble solutions for generalized energy-critical Hartree equation (NLH), which is inspired by Frank and Lieb in \cite{FL2012am,FL2012}.Comment: 26 pages. Any comment is welcom

Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Multistage Serial Manufacturing Systems with Rework Loops and Product Polymorphism

This paper studies multistage serial manufacturing systems with the integrated consideration of machine failures, process defects, multiple rework loops, etc. In particular, multiple rework loops and product polymorphism lead to a more complex conversion of internal material flows, and therefore it's difficult to model and analyse such manufacturing systems. A modular modeling method based on Generalized Stochastic Petri Nets (GSPN) is presented to characterize the material flows, it is capable of representing the processing differences resulting from product polymorphism comparing with traditional Markov model or Queuing network model. By analysing the model, the processing ratio of each workstation is inferred. Using 2M1B (two-machine and one-buffer) Markov cell model as the building blocks, which is obtained based on the GSPN models for their isomorphism, an overlapping decomposition method is then developed for evaluating the performance of the multistage serial systems with rework loops. Numerical experiments and a case study of a powertrain assembly line illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method