Restrictions on Migration Create Gender Inequality: The Story of China\u27s Left-Behind Children

About 11% of the Chinese population are rural-urban migrants, and the vast majority of them (124 million people) possess a rural hukou which severely restrict their children’s access to urban public schools. As a result, 61 million children are left behind in rural areas. We use a regression-discontinuity design based on school enrollment age cutoffs to document that migrants are significantly more likely to leave middle-school-aged daughters behind in poor rural areas without either parent present when schooling becomes expensive, compared to middle-school-aged sons. The effect is larger when the daughter has a male sibling. Migrant parents send significantly less remittances back to daughters than sons. Migrants from rural areas adjacent to cities with more restrictive hukou policies are more likely to separate from children as new job opportunities arise in nearby cities due to trade-induced shocks to labor demand. This produces a shift-share IV strategy, when paired with a longitudinal dataset shows that those children complete 3 fewer years of schooling, are 41% more likely to fail high school entrance exams, have worse mental and physical health, and remain poor as adults. Although China’s hukou mobility restrictions are not gender-specific in intent, they have larger adverse effects on girls

Delayed Postconditioning Protects against Focal Ischemic Brain Injury in Rats

We and others have reported that rapid ischemic postconditioning, interrupting early reperfusion after stroke, reduces infarction in rats. However, its extremely short therapeutic time windows, from a few seconds to minutes after reperfusion, may hinder its clinical translation. Thus, in this study we explored if delayed postconditioning, which is conducted a few hours after reperfusion, offers protection against stroke.Focal ischemia was generated by 30 min occlusion of bilateral common carotid artery (CCA) combined with permanent occlusion of middle cerebral artery (MCA); delayed postconditioning was performed by repetitive, brief occlusion and release of the bilateral CCAs, or of the ipsilateral CCA alone. As a result, delayed postconditioning performed at 3h and 6h after stroke robustly reduced infarct size, with the strongest protection achieved by delayed postconditioning with 6 cycles of 15 min occlusion/15 min release of the ipsilateral CCA executed from 6h. We found that this delayed postconditioning provided long-term protection for up to two months by reducing infarction and improving outcomes of the behavioral tests; it also attenuated reduction in 2-[(18)F]-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG)-uptake therefore improving metabolism, and reduced edema and blood brain barrier leakage. Reperfusion in ischemic stroke patients is usually achieved by tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) application, however, t-PA's side effect may worsen ischemic injury. Thus, we tested whether delayed postconditioning counteracts the exacerbating effect of t-PA. The results showed that delayed postconditioning mitigated the worsening effect of t-PA on infarction.Delayed postconditioning reduced ischemic injury after focal ischemia, which opens a new research avenue for stroke therapy and its underlying protective mechanisms

Targeted proteomics-determined multi-biomarker profiles developed classifier for prognosis and immunotherapy responses of advanced cervical cancer

BackgroundCervical cancer (CC) poses a global health challenge, with a particularly poor prognosis in cases of recurrence, metastasis, or advanced stages. A single biomarker is inadequate to predict CC prognosis or identify CC patients likely to benefit from immunotherapy, presumably owing to tumor complexity and heterogeneity.MethodsUsing advanced Olink proteomics, we analyzed 92 oncology-related proteins in plasma from CC patients receiving immunotherapy, based upon the comparison of protein expression levels of pre-therapy with those of therapy-Cycle 6 in the partial response (PR) group and progressive disease (PD) group, respectively.Results55 proteins were identified to exhibit differential expression trends across pre-therapy and post-therapy in both PR and PD groups. Enriched GO terms and KEGG pathways were associated with vital oncological and immunological processes. A logistic regression model, using 5 proteins (ITGB5, TGF-α, TLR3, WIF-1, and ERBB3) with highest AUC values, demonstrated good predictive performance for prognosis of CC patients undergoing immunotherapy and showed potential across different cancer types. The effectiveness of these proteins in prognosis prediction was further validated using TCGA-CESC datasets. A negative correlation and previously unidentified roles of WIF-1 in CC immunotherapy was also first determined.ConclusionOur findings reveal multi-biomarker profiles effectively predicting CC prognosis and identifying patients benefitting most from immunotherapy, especially for those with limited treatment options and traditionally poor prognosis, paving the way for personalized immunotherapeutic treatments and improved clinical strategies

Land System Reform in Rural China: Path and Mechanism

Changes in land policy not only determine agricultural growth, but also have bearing on issues, such as peasants’ rights and interests, industrial development, and urbanization. On account of China’s singular history and culture, its land systems are somewhat unique. This paper analyzes the institutional changes that took place before and after 1978 to show the journey of land system reform in rural China in the 20th century. We look closely at the policy performance and drawbacks of the reform that occurred after 1978, and analyze a series of “Central First Documents” that concern rural issues. Based on this analysis, some prospective land policy reforms are predicated. We conclude that at present, rural land ownership is unlikely to be completely privatized in the short-term. Creating a new agricultural management system with special functions or a land shareholding system, could be suitable measures to overcome the disorder of the existing land policy system in China

To buy or not buy food online: The impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the adoption of e-commerce in China.

Drawing on a recent online survey combined with city-level data, this paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 on consumers' online food purchase behavior in the short term. To address the potential endogeneity issues, we adopt an instrumental variable (IV) strategy, using the distance from the surveyed city to Wuhan as the instrumental variable. We show that our IV method is effective in minimizing potential bias. It is found that the share of confirmed COVID-19 cases increases the possibility of consumers purchasing food online. This is more likely to be the case for young people having a lower perceived risk of online purchases and living in large cities. Despite some limitations, this paper has policy implications for China and other countries that have been influenced by the COVID-19 epidemic. Specifically, government support and regulation should focus on (i) ensuring the safety of food sold on the internet, (ii) protecting the carrier from becoming infected, and (iii) providing financial support to the poor since they may have difficulties in obtaining access to food living in small cities. Moreover, how to help those who are unable to purchase food online because of their technical skills (e.g., the elderly who are not familiar with smart phones or the internet) also deserves more attention for the government and the public

Restrictions on migration create gender inequality: The story of China's left-behind children

About 11% of the Chinese population are rural-urban migrants, and the vast majority of them (124 million people) possess a rural hukou which severely restrict their children's access to urban public schools. As a result, 61 million children are left behind in rural areas. We use a regression-discontinuity design based on school enrollment age cutoffs to document that migrants are significantly more likely to leave middle-school-aged daughters behind in poor rural areas without either parent present when schooling becomes expensive, compared to middle-school-aged sons. The effect is larger when the daughter has a male sibling. Migrant parents send significantly less remittances back to daughters than sons. Migrants from rural areas adjacent to cities with more restrictive hukou policies are more likely to separate from children as new job opportunities arise in nearby cities due to trade-induced shocks to labor demand. This produces a shift-share IV strategy, when paired with a longitudinal dataset shows that those children complete 3 fewer years of schooling, are 41% more likely to fail high school entrance exams, have worse mental and physical health, and remain poor as adults. Although China's hukou mobility restrictions are not gender-specific in intent, they have larger adverse effects on girls