Migration Research and Policy Consultancy in the People’s Republic of China

This article starts by giving an overview of China’s migration situation during the years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic. In the following, the authors take stock of Chinese scholarship on migration and specialized research institutions that have developed in China. They aim to clarify the involvement of academic and other institutions in migration-related policy consultancy. The article highlights clear gaps in knowledge and public awareness about the possibly existing links between academic research and policymaking, and the extent to which Chinese scholarship may be informing relevant policymaking. Future research is warranted as China’s migration situation, like its society, is experiencing massive change again due to COVID-19. In the summer of 2020, the first groups of selected foreign nationals were allowed to return to China. It remains to be seen how many foreign nationals will opt to return and when. It is also uncertain how many foreign nationals will decide to immigrate and take up employment in China. While there is great uncertainty about the medium- and long-term future of immigration to China and the country’s overall future development, the relevance for migrationrelated research and policy consultancy is likely to grow due to China’s interest in relaunching its economy, in attracting foreign professionals, and in continuing its engagement with other countries. Migrationsforschung und Politikberatung in der Volksrepublik China Dieser Artikel gibt zunächst einen Überblick über die Migrationssituation Chinas in den Jahren vor der COVID-19-Pandemie. Im Folgenden ziehen die Autoren eine Bilanz der chinesischen Migrationsforschung und der spezialisierten Forschungseinrichtungen, die sich in China entwickelt haben. Sie zielen darauf ab, die Beteiligung akademischer und anderer Institutionen an migrationsbezogener Politikberatung zu klären. Der Artikel weist auf wesentliche Lücken öffentlichen Bewusstseins über die möglicherweise bestehenden Verbindungen zwischen akademischer Forschung und politischer Entscheidungsfindung hin. Er zeigt außerdem auf, inwieweit die chinesische Wissenschaft die relevante politische Entscheidungsfindung in Zukunft beeinflussen könnte. Eine Ausweitung der Forschungsarbeit und der Beratung der Politik durch die Wissenschaft ist angezeigt. Chinas Migrationssituation hat sich unter dem Einfluss der COVID-19-Pandemie stark verändert. Im Sommer 2020 wurde bereits ersten Gruppen ausgewählter ausländischer Staatsangehöriger die Rückkehr gestattet. Es bleibt abzuwarten, wie viele von ihnen sich für eine dauerhafte Rückkehr und erneute Beschäftigungsaufnahme in China entscheiden werden und wann eine umfangreichere Remigration einsetzen wird. Während es große Unsicherheit über die mittelund langfristige Zukunft der Einwanderung nach China gibt, dürfte die Relevanz von migrationsbezogener Forschung und Politikberatung dennoch zunehmen, da China stark daran interessiert ist, seine Wirtschaft wieder anzukurbeln, ausländische Fachkräfte anzuziehen und sein eigenes Engagement in anderen Ländern fortzusetzen, unter anderem durch die fortgesetzte Anwerbung von internationalen Studierenden

let-7b-5p suppresses the proliferation and migration of pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells via down-regulating IGF1

Objectives: Some previous studies indicated that the excessive proliferation and migration of Pulmonary Artery Smooth Muscle Cells (PASMCs) could be observed in pulmonary artery intima after Pulmonary Embolism (PE) occurred. In addition, recent studies identified some miRNAs that are differentially expressed in the blood of PE patients, which might be used as a diagnostic biomarker for PE, including let-7a-5p, let-7b-5p, and miR-150-5p. Hence, the authors sought to explore the effects of let-7b-5p in PASMC proliferation and migration and the corresponding regulatory mechanism. Methods: Platelet-Derived Growth Factor (PDGF) was utilized to induce the hyper-proliferation model in PASMCs. The mRNA and protein expression levels were detected by RT-qPCR and western blot, respectively. The proliferation of PASMCs was evaluated by the detection of PCNA expression, as well as CCK-8 and Edu assays. Wound healing and Transwell assays were exploited to assess the migration ability of PASMCs. The targets of let-7b-5p were predicted based on two bioinformatics online tools. Dual-luciferase and Ago2 pull-down assays were applied to confirm the interaction between let-7b-5p and IGF1. Results: 40 ng/mL PDGF was selected as the optimal concentration to induce PASMCs. let-7b-5p mimics suppressed the proliferation and migration of PDGF-induced PASMCs, while let-7b-5p inhibitor led to the opposite result. In further mechanism exploration, IGF1 was predicted and confirmed as the direct target gene of let-7b-5p. The promotion role of IGF1 overexpression on the proliferation and migration of PDGF-induced PASMCs was dramatically countered by let-7b-5p mimics. Conclusion: let-7b-5p prohibits the proliferation and migration of PDGF-induced PASMCs by modulating IGF1

The asymmetric effect of COVID-19 outbreak, commodities prices and policy uncertainty on financial development in China: evidence from QARDL approach

COVID-19 epidemic has brought uncertainty to each sector of the global economy, including the financial sector. The widely spread disease has a drastic effect, which massively created health and financial crisis and virtually pushed the economy to the brink of recession. The study focused on the financial development of China during the COVID-19 pandemic and analyzed the long-term and short-term impact of COVID-19, oil prices, gold prices, and global economic policy uncertainty on the financial development of the country. The QARDL model, Wald test, and Granger causality tests are employed to assess the daily data of variables from January 1, 2020, to March 15, 2021. The study’s empirical results revealed that an increase in the number of COVID-19 registered patients has an unprecedented negative effect on financial development, whereas the oil prices co-moved with the financial performance. On the other hand, gold prices and global economic policy uncertainty are negatively correlated with financial development. This study offers various policy recommendations to help the investors, government, and decision-makers to make better decisions for the improvement of the financial development of China

Secure Decentralized Access Control Policy for Data Sharing in Smart Grid

Smart grid has improved the security, efficiency of the power system and balanced the supply and demand by intelligent management, which enhanced stability and reliability of power grid. The key point to achieve them is real-time data and consume data sharing by using fine-grained policies. But it will bring the leakage of the privacy of the users and losing of control over data for data owners. The reported solutions can not give the best trade-off among the privacy protection, control over the data shared and confidentiality. In addition, they can not solve the problems of large computation overhead and dynamic management such as users’ revocation. This paper aims at these problems and proposes a decentralized attribute-based data sharing scheme. The proposed scheme ensures the secure sharing of data while removing the central authority and hiding user’s identity information. It uses attribute-based signcryption(ABSC) to achieve data confidentiality and authentication. Under this model, attribute-based encryption gives the access policies for users and keeps the data confidentiality, and the attribute-based signature is used for authentication of the primary ciphertextintegrity. It is more efficient than ”encrypt and then sign” or ”sign and then encrypt”. In addition, the proposed scheme enables user’s revocation and public verifiability. Under the random oracle model, the security and the unforgeability against adaptive chosen message attack are demonstrated

Changes in and the association of retinal blood perfusion and retinal nerves in diabetic patients without retinopathy

ObjectiveTo explore intraretinal blood flow perfusion and nerve changes, as well as the correlation between them, in diabetic patients without diabetic retinopathy (NDR).MethodEighty-six NDR patients (86 eyes) who attended the ophthalmology clinic between December 2019 and December 2021 were included. Sixty-four eyes of 64 healthy examined controls in the same period were selected as the control group. The patients underwent routine ophthalmological examination, optical coherence tomography (OCT) and OCT angiography.ResultsThe average thickness, minimum thickness and thickness of each quadrant except for the superior temporal quadrant of the ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer (GCIPL) in the macular area of the affected eyes in the NDR group were lower than that of the tested eyes in the control group (P < 0.05). The average retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) thickness of the NDR group and the superior, inferior and nasal quadrants around the optic disc of the affected eyes in the NDR group were lower compared with the tested eyes in the control group (P < 0.001, P = 0.003, P = 0.001, P = 0.009). The mean vessel length density in the parafoveal and perifoveal areas in the NDR group was positively associated with the mean GCIPL thickness in the macular area (ρ = 0.265, ρ = 0.257 and P < 0.001). No blood flow perfusion parameters in the NDR group were correlated with the RNFL thickness of the corresponding quadrant around the optic disc (P > 0.05).ConclusionIn diabetic patients without diabetic retinopathy, the superficial retinal vessel density in the macular area positively correlated with GCIPL thickness, and the superficial retinal vessel density around the optic disc was not correlated with RNFL thickness

Rutin Protects against Pirarubicin-Induced Cardiotoxicity through TGF- β

We investigated the potential protective effect of rutinum (RUT) against pirarubicin- (THP-) induced cardiotoxicity. THP was used to induce toxicity in rat H9c2 cardiomyoblasts. Positive control cells were pretreated with a cardioprotective agent dexrazoxane (DZR) prior to treatment with THP. Some of the cells were preincubated with RUT and a p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) inhibitor, SB203580, both individually and in combination, prior to THP exposure. At a dose range of 30–70 μM, RUT significantly prevented THP-induced reduction in cell viability; the best cardioprotective effect was observed at a dose of 50 μM. Administration of RUT and SB203580, both individually as well as in combination, suppressed the elevation of intracellular ROS, inhibited cell apoptosis, and reversed the THP-induced upregulation of TGF-β1, p-p38 MAPK, cleaved Caspase-9, Caspase-7, and Caspase-3. A synergistic effect was observed on coadministration of RUT and SB203580. RUT protected against THP-induced cardiotoxicity by inhibition of ROS generation and suppression of cell apoptosis. The cardioprotective effect of RUT appears to be associated with the modulation of the TGF-β1-p38 MAPK signaling pathway

Numerical simulation of cooperative breaking rock by multi-cutter and research on the layout law of disc cutter on cutterhead

The cutterhead was one of the key parts of the Tunneling Boring Machine to achieve tunnel mining. Cutterhead’s continuous breaking rock was the rock destruction process under the cutter group. The cutter of cutterhead was used as a direct tool for rock breaking, and the arrangement of the cutter would directly affect the breaking performance such as the force of cutter and energy consumption. This paper mainly explores the influence of cutter installation parameters on the rock breaking force and specific energy in the multi-cutter collaborative rock breaking mode. Firstly, the characteristics of rock breaking during the cutter excavation and the way of multi-cutter collaborative effects created by the adjacent cutter during the rotation are analyzed. Using the motion characteristics of multi-cutter around the center of the cutterhead rotation and slow penetrating into the rock on the cutterhead, a rock constitutive model including the cutter’s displacement loading method and the form suitable for simulating the damage of rock element in the excavation was established, a finite element model of three cutters rotary rock breaking for techniques such as rock failure separation criteria was introduced. This paper simulates the rock breaking process of multiple cutters spiral intrusion rocks. Then, the single-factor influence of three main cutterhead arrangement parameters, cutter spacing, cutter installation polar angle difference and cutting sequence, on the rock breaking performance indicators such as rock breaking force of cutter and specific energy is analyzed by finite element simulation calculation. Finally, an orthogonal experiment is designed to analyze the influence of the above parameters on the total force of rock breaking under the interaction of multiple factors. The results show that the cutter spacing and installation polar angle difference have the most significant influence on the rock breaking performance of the cutter under the cooperative breaking rock conditions. The cutter spacing affects the penetration of lateral cracks between adjacent cutting paths. With the increase of the tool spacing, the lateral crack penetration between adjacent cutting paths is gradually difficult, and the weaker the effect of adjacent cutter radial collaborative rock breaking. The installation polar angle difference affects the penetration of lateral cracks and inclined free surface. With the increase of the installation polar angle difference, the lateral crack connected to the inclined free surface becomes longer, and the cooperative rock breaking effect of by adjacent cutter in the circumferential direction of the cutterhead has been enhanced.This work analyzes the relationship between the arrangement of the cutter and the rock breaking performance of the cutter in the multi-cutter collaborative breaking rock condition, which provides a reference for the reasonable layout of the cutterhead cutter