The Impact of Corporate ESG Performance on Environmental Investment

As a standard for measuring corporate sustainability and long-term value growth investment, corporate ESG performance is of great significance for evaluating corporate sustainability, guiding investment decisions and promoting corporate improvement. Based on the sample of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen that have obtained SynTao Green Finance’s ESG rating from 2011 to 2021, this paper empirically examines the role of corporate ESG performance on green investment based on the theory of “stakeholders” and the theory of “sustainable development”. The results show that: (1) good ESG performance can significantly improve the level of environmental investment, and this conclusion is still valid under a series of robustness tests; (2) The mechanism test shows that good ESG performance can expand the scale of enterprises and indirectly promote corporate green investment; (3) The intermediary mechanism test shows that there is a partial mediating effect of managerial risk appetite (Mrip) on ESG performance in environmental investment. In the new stage of accelerating the green transformation of China’s industry, Chinese enterprises urgently need to improve the green financial system, accelerate the process of green transformation, and help achieve the goals of “carbon peak” and “carbon neutrality”

Assessing the design of China’s complex health system – Concerns on equity and efficiency

Following the global trend of moving towards Universal Health Coverage, China has implemented a new round of health system reform, to achieve universal “safe, effective and affordable basic healthcare services” by 2020. We review the latest reforms using the World Health Organization framework developed by Murray and Frenk. In particular, we diagrammatically describe the structure of the current Chinese health system using the dimensions of Stewardship, Resource Generation, Financing and Provision, and assess the variability of access, levels of benefits, and quality of service across populations. We identified several areas of inequity and inefficiency. First, the fragmented institutional arrangements, with distinct objectives and responsibilities across agencies, create potential nonalignment of incentives. Second, there is a marked scarcity of qualified general practitioners and infrastructures despite the continuing effort to improve the gatekeeping function of primary care providers. Third, as risks are pooled only at the local level within different insurance schemes, the considerable income heterogeneity across geographic territories and resident types can generate significant inequality in access and funding. Fourth, persistent patient preference for higher quality healthcare at hospitals prevents the integration of care across tiers. We believe our comprehensive analysis will be informative for both health policymakers and researchers, in identifying and investigating the inefficiencies of the health system and the potentials for structural integration to achieve healthcare equity

Status and Factors Associated with Healthcare Choices Among Older Adults and Children in an Urbanized County: A Cross-Sectional Study in Kunshan, China

As important unit for regional health planning, urbanized counties are facing challenges because of internal migrants and aging. This study took urbanized counties in China as cases and two key populations as objects to understand different populations’ intentions of choosing corresponding health service resources and to provide support for resource allocation. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Kunshan, a highly urbanized county in China, in 2016, among older adults aged 60 or over and children aged 0–6. Multinomial logistics models were used to identify the factors associated with healthcare choices. In this study, we found that income, distance of the tertiary provider, and migrant status were not associated with choices of tertiary healthcare outside county for children, while parents’ education level was. The responsiveness of the tertiary provider inside the county was lower than primary and secondary providers inside the county, while respondents were dissatisfied with the medical technology and medical facility for the tertiary inside the county compared to those of the tertiary provider outside the county. Significant differences existed in terms of the perception of different categories of institutions. To conclude, local governments should particularly seek to strengthen pediatric primary health services and improve the responsiveness of healthcare facilities to treat geriatric and pediatric diseases, which also bring significance to the developing countries in the process of urbanization

The Effectiveness of an eHealth Family-Based Intervention Program in Patients With Uncontrolled Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) in the Community Via WeChat: Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: Intervention based on family support and risk perception can enhance type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients’ self-care activities. In addition, eHealth education is considered to improve family members’ support for patients with T2DM. However, there is little evidence from rigorously designed studies on the effectiveness of an intervention combining these approaches. Objective: This randomized controlled trial (RCT) aimed to assess the effectiveness of an eHealth family-based health education intervention for patients with T2DM to improve their glucose control, risk perception, and self-care behaviors. Methods: This single-center, 2-parallel-group RCT was conducted between 2019 and 2020. Overall, 228 patients were recruited from Jiading District, Shanghai, and randomly divided into intervention and control groups. The intervention group received an eHealth family intervention based on community management via WeChat, whereas the control group received usual care. The primary outcome was the glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) level of the patients with T2DM, and the secondary outcomes were self-management behavior (general and specific diet, exercise, blood sugar testing, foot care, and smoking), risk perception (risk knowledge, personal control, worry, optimism bias, and personal risk), and family support (supportive and nonsupportive behaviors). A 2-tailed paired-sample t test was used to compare the participants at baseline and follow-up within the control and intervention groups. An analysis of covariance was used to measure the intervention effect. Results: In total, 225 patients with T2DM were followed up for 1 year. After intervention, they had significantly lower HbA1c values (β=–.69, 95% CI –0.99 to –0.39; PP=.003), special diet (β=.71, 95% CI 0.34 to 1.09; PP=.04), foot care (β=1.82, 95% CI 1.23 to 2.42; PPPP=.001), optimism bias (β=.26, 95% CI 0.09 to 0.43; P=.003), and supportive behaviors (β=5.52, 95% CI 4.03 to 7.01; P\u3c.001). Conclusions: The eHealth family-based intervention improved glucose control and self-care activities among patients with T2DM by aiding the implementation of interventions to improve T2DM risk perceptions among family members. The intervention is generalizable for patients with T2DM using health management systems in community health centers. Trial Registration: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry ChiCTR1900020736; https://www.chictr.org.cn/showprojen.aspx?proj=3121

Human in Events: A Large-Scale Benchmark for Human-centric Video Analysis in Complex Events

Along with the development of modern smart cities, human-centric video analysis has been encountering the challenge of analyzing diverse and complex events in real scenes. A complex event relates to dense crowds, anomalous, or collective behaviors. However, limited by the scale of existing video datasets, few human analysis approaches have reported their performance on such complex events. To this end, we present a new large-scale dataset, named Human-in-Events or HiEve (Human-centric video analysis in complex Events), for the understanding of human motions, poses, and actions in a variety of realistic events, especially in crowd and complex events. It contains a record number of poses (>1M), the largest number of action instances (>56k) under complex events, as well as one of the largest numbers of trajectories lasting for longer time (with an average trajectory length of >480 frames). Based on this dataset, we present an enhanced pose estimation baseline by utilizing the potential of action information to guide the learning of more powerful 2D pose features. We demonstrate that the proposed method is able to boost the performance of existing pose estimation pipelines on our HiEve dataset. Furthermore, we conduct extensive experiments to benchmark recent video analysis approaches together with our baseline methods, demonstrating that HiEve is a challenging dataset for human-centric video analysis. We expect that the dataset will advance the development of cutting-edge techniques in human-centric analysis and the understanding of complex events. The dataset is available at http://humaninevents.orgComment: Dataset for Large-scale Human-centric Video Analysis in Complex Events (http://humaninevents.org

Evaluating the Potential of Leading Large Language Models in Reasoning Biology Questions

Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have presented new opportunities for integrating Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) into biological research and education. This study evaluated the capabilities of leading LLMs, including GPT-4, GPT-3.5, PaLM2, Claude2, and SenseNova, in answering conceptual biology questions. The models were tested on a 108-question multiple-choice exam covering biology topics in molecular biology, biological techniques, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology. Among the models, GPT-4 achieved the highest average score of 90 and demonstrated the greatest consistency across trials with different prompts. The results indicated GPT-4's proficiency in logical reasoning and its potential to aid biology research through capabilities like data analysis, hypothesis generation, and knowledge integration. However, further development and validation are still required before the promise of LLMs in accelerating biological discovery can be realized

Superior energy-storage properties in (Pb,La)(Zr,Sn,Ti)O-3 antiferroelectric ceramics with appropriate La content

Antiferroelectric (AFE) ceramics based on Pb(Zr,Sn,Ti)O3 (PZST) have shown great potential for applications in pulsed power capacitors because of their fast charge-discharge rates (on the order of nanoseconds). However, to date, it has been proven very difficult to simultaneously obtain large recoverable energy densities Wre and high energy efficiencies η in one type of ceramic, which limits the range of applications of these materials. Addressing this problem requires the development of ceramic materials that simultaneously offer a large ferroelectric-antiferroelectric (FE-AFE) phase-switching electric field EA, high electric breakdown strength Eb, and narrow polarization-electric field (P-E) hysteresis loops. In this work, via doping of La3+ into (Pb1-1.5xLax)(Zr0.5Sn0.43Ti0.07)O3 AFE ceramics, large EA and Eb due to respectively enhanced AFE phase stability and reduced electric conductivity, and slimmer hysteresis loops resulting from the appearance of the relaxor AFE state, are successfully obtained, and thus leading to great improvement of the Wre and η. The most superior energy storage properties are obtained in the 3 mol% La3+-doped (Pb1-1.5xLax)(Zr0.5Sn0.43Ti0.07)O3 AFE ceramic, which simultaneously exhibits at room temperature a large Wre of 4.2 J/cm3 and a high η of 78%, being respectively 2.9 and 1.56 times those of (Pb1-1.5xLax)(Zr0.5Sn0.43Ti0.07)O3 AFE ceramics with x = 0 (Wre = 1.45 J/cm3, η = 50%) and also being superior to many previously published results. Besides, both Wre and η change very little in the temperature range of 25–125 °C. The large Wre, high η, and their good temperature stability make the Pb0.955La0.03(Zr0.5Sn0.43Ti0.07)O3 AFE ceramic attractive for preparing high pulsed power capacitors useable in various conditions