Does Capital Account Liberalization Affect the Financial Stability: Evidence from China

This paper seeks to investigate the relationship between capital account liberalization and the financial stability in China. Furthermore, The Finite Distributed Lag Model is employed to quantify relationship between capital account liberalization and monetary crisis. And a general conclusion can be drawn that capital account liberalization is harmful to the stability official market in one year period, while the overall capital account liberalization effect can facilitate China's financial stability in a long run. Moreover, some suggestions are provided on China's capital account liberalization policies

Hemodynamics in the circle of Willis and prognostic factors in subarachnoid hemorrhage

Since stroke is a major cause of death worldwide, understanding its underlying pathology and determining prognostic factors is essential. The circle of Willis (CoW) is a critical arterial relay system located at the base of the brain. Therefore, hemodynamics within the CoW plays an important role in the pathology of stroke. In this thesis, CoW anatomy and internal carotid artery (ICA) stenosis are pointed out to influence cerebrovascular territory perfusion. This is clinically relevant if the ICA-stenosis grade is more than 70%. With a numerical model, hemodynamics in the CoW can be simulated. This thesis introduces a simplified numerical model for personalized CoW hemodynamics. The CoW-model is explained and validated, against the background of a systematic review of the literature. Since there is an extensive heterogeneity between proposed numerical models, in current studies hemodynamic parameters based on CoW-configuration still cannot be associated with the development of anatomical causes for stroke, such as intracranial aneurysm. Additional simulation accuracy is warranted before the numerical model can be applied in clinical practice. Finally, in this thesis, myosteatosis was found to be associated with the clinical severity of a subtype of stroke, the subarachnoid haemorrhage. However, muscle atrophy and myosteatosis were not associated with neurological outcome nor long term survival. In conclusion, this thesis is a next step in the association between hemodynamics in the CoW and several stroke types, and thus in personalizing and optimizing stroke management

How to Set Focal Categories for Brief Implicit Association Test? “Good” Is Good, “Bad” Is Not So Good

Three studies were conducted to examine the validity of the four versions of BIATs that are supposed to measure the same construct but differ in shared focal category. Study 1 investigated the criterion validity of four BIATs measuring attitudes toward flower versus insect. Study 2 examined the experimental sensitivity of four BIATs by considering attitudes toward induced ingroup versus outgroup. Study 3 examined the predictive power of the four BIATs by investigating attitudes toward the commercial beverages Coke versus Sprite. The findings suggested that for the two attributes good and bad, good rather than bad proved to be good as a shared focal category; for two targets, so long as they clearly differed in goodness or valence, the good rather than bad target emerged as good for a shared focal category. Beyond this case, either target worked well. These findings may facilitate the understanding of the BIAT and its future applications

Multilocus association mapping using generalized ridge logistic regression

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In genome-wide association studies, it is widely accepted that multilocus methods are more powerful than testing single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) one at a time. Among statistical approaches considering many predictors simultaneously, scan statistics are an effective tool for detecting susceptibility genomic regions and mapping disease genes. In this study, inspired by the idea of scan statistics, we propose a novel sliding window-based method for identifying a parsimonious subset of contiguous SNPs that best predict disease status.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Within each sliding window, we apply a forward model selection procedure using generalized ridge logistic regression for model fitness in each step. In power simulations, we compare the performance of our method with that of five other methods in current use. Averaging power over all the conditions considered, our method dominates the others. We also present two published datasets where our method is useful in causal SNP identification.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our method can automatically combine genetic information in local genomic regions and allow for linkage disequilibrium between SNPs. It can overcome some defects of the scan statistics approach and will be very promising in genome-wide case-control association studies.</p

Effects of Inhibitors on the Transcriptional Profiling of Gluconobater oxydans NL71 Genes after Biooxidation of Xylose into Xylonate

D-Xylonic acid belongs to the top 30 biomass-based platform chemicals and represents a promising application of xylose. Until today, Gluconobacter oxydans NL71 is the most efficient microbe capable of fermenting xylose into xylonate. However, its growth is seriously inhibited when concentrated lignocellulosic hydrolysates are used as substrates due to the presence of various degraded compounds formed during biomass pretreatment. Three critical lignocellulosic inhibitors were thereby identified, i.e., formic acid, furfural, and 4-hydroxybenzaldehyde. As microbe fermentation is mostly regulated at the genome level, four groups of cell transcriptomes were obtained for a comparative investigation by RNA sequencing of a control sample with samples treated separately with the above-mentioned inhibitors. The digital gene expression profiles screened 572, 714 genes, and 408 DEGs was obtained by the comparisons among four transcriptomes. A number of genes related to the different functional groups showed characteristic expression patterns induced by three inhibitors, in which 19 genes were further tested and confirmed by qRT-PCR. We extrapolated many differentially expressed genes that could explain the cellular responses to the inhibitory effects. We provide results that enable the scientific community to better define the molecular processes involved in the microbes' responses to lignocellulosic inhibitors during the cellular biooxidation of xylose into xylonic acid