Progress on improving Agricultural Nitrogen use efficiency: UK-China viortual joint centers on Nitrogen Agronomy

Two virtual joint centers for nitrogen agronomy were established between the UK and China to facilitate collaborative research aimed at improving nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in agricultural production systems and reducing losses of reactive N to the environment. Major focus areas were improving fertilizer NUE, use of livestock manures, soil health, and policy development and knowledge exchange. Improvements to fertilizer NUE included attention to application rate in the context of yield potential and economic considerations and the potential of improved practices including enhanced efficiency fertilizers, plastic film mulching and cropping design. Improved utilization of livestock manures requires knowledge of the available nutrient content, appropriate manure processing technologies and integrated nutrient management practices. Soil carbon, acidification and biodiversity were considered as important aspects of soil health. Both centers identified a range of potential actions that could be taken to improve N management, and the research conducted has highlighted the importance of developing a systemslevel approach to assessing improvement in the overall efficiency of N management and avoiding unintended secondary effects from individual interventions. Within this context, the management of fertilizer emissions and livestock manure at the farm and regional scales appear to be particularly important targets for mitigation

Consumer and Firm Decision-Making in Consumer Financial Products Market

I study marketing problems in the auto loan market. Focusing on a consumer financial product market has a couple of benefits. First, the auto loan market represents the third largest consumer credit in the U.S., so the market has high economic significance. More importantly, it offers a unique prospective in traditional marketing problems. The first chapter studies consumer demand in the loan market. Different from traditional consumer products, what happens post transaction – loan repayment – is important. Using a large consumer panel data set of both credit and employment profiles, we study the demand for auto loans among consumers in response to receiving bonus payments. While bonus payments represent a one-time income increase, auto loans lead to a significant financial burden in the long term. We find an economically meaningful increase in auto loan demand around the month of receiving a bonus, even for low-income, subprime-credit-score consumers who only receive a small bonus. To explore the underlying mechanism that drives the demand, we test predictions from the permanent income hypothesis. Contrary to the theory prediction, the increase in auto loan demand is significant when the bonus is likely to be anticipated. Furthermore, the effect is robust for individuals who are unlikely to have liquidity constraints. These findings, however, can be explained by the mental accounting theory. Finally, we show that auto loans induced by bonus have a significantly higher delinquency rate than loans that originate at other times. This primarily comes from consumers with low incomes or subprime credit scores. Our findings can help financial institutions identify consumers who have a need for auto loans and those who have a higher delinquency risk in the future. The second chapter studies price bargaining when both parties have digit bias when processing numbers, and shows a positive welfare implication of digit bias in bargaining. The empirical analysis focuses on the auto finance market in the U.S., using a large data set of 35 million auto loans. Incorporating digit bias in bargaining is motivated by several intriguing observations. The scheduled monthly payments of auto loans bunch at $9- and$0-ending digits, especially over $100 marks. In addition,$9-ending loans carry a higher interest rate and $0-ending loans have a lower interest rate than loans ended at other digits. I develop and estimate a Nash bargaining model that allows for digit bias from both consumers and finance managers of auto dealers. Results suggest that both parties perceive a steeper slope for larger ending digits and an extra gap between payments ending at$99 and $00 in their payoff functions. This model can explain the phenomena of payments bunching and differential interest rates for loans with different ending digits. I use counterfactual to show that, counter-intuitively, digit bias is beneficial for the party with the bias in bargaining. Consumers’ payments are reduced by$203 million in total and the aggregate payments of finance managers increased by $102 million because of own digit bias. I also quantify the economic impact of imposing non-discretionary markup compensation policies in indirect auto lending. I find that the payments of African American consumers will be lowered by$452 million and that of Hispanic consumers by $275 million

The Driving Path of China’s Urban Resilience Enhancement in the Digital Economy Era

Promoting the development of China’s digital economy and the level of urban disaster reduction and governance is of great significance for accelerating the improvement of China’s urban resilience and promoting the coordinated development of regional cities. This paper analyzed the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics and driving paths of urban resilience in 31 Chinese provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government and proposed relevant measures to promote urban resilience. First, the urban resilience evaluation system was constructed and the entropy value method was applied to calculate the urban resilience index of each region. Second, the spatial distribution of urban resilience was explored based on the urban resilience index of each region. Finally, a qualitative comparative analysis method was used to explore the driving paths of urban resilience enhancement. The study showed that there were large regional differences in the urban resilience index, with an overall spatial pattern of “good in the east, middle in the center, and low in the west” and an overall trend of gradual increase. There are five configuration paths to generate a high urban resilience index, which can be specifically digital industry-driven path, technology factor-driven path, government input- and talent pool-driven path under market factors, technology factor- and government factor-driven path, and government investment- and infrastructure-driven path under market factors, and it is found that the digital industry-driven path is a more common path of digital economy-driven urban resilience improvement in China. The finding of this study reveals the nature of complex interactions among drivers in the process of urban resilience enhancement in China, which breaks through the limitations of traditional statistical analysis methods and provides a new perspective for the study of urban resilience issues

Combining Mineral Amendments Improves Wheat Yield and Soil Properties in a Coastal Saline Area

Certain minerals possess structures that convey properties which improve soil quality; however, their application in coastal saline areas has been poorly studied. In this study, we explored the effects of combining mineral amendments on the improvement of wheat yield and soil properties in a two-year field experiment in mildly saline coastal soil areas of the Yellow River Delta, China. Five mineral materials were combined into the following four treatments: zeolite + rock phosphate (ZP), zeolite + silica calcium soil conditioner (ZC), vermiculite + rock phosphate (VP), and vermiculite + medical stone (VS). For all treatments, combined mineral amendments increased wheat yield compared to the control, with similar increases in yield following treatment with VP (45.7%), ZP (43.5%), and ZC (43.6%), and a significantly smaller increase following VS treatment (26.3%). These increases in grain yield were attributed to larger dry matter accumulation and higher grain numbers per ha. Compared to the control, ZP and ZC application substantially reduced soluble magnesium (Mg) and sodium (Na) contents, electrical conductivity (EC), and sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), and increased soil organic carbon (SOC) at a soil depth of 0⁻20 cm. VP application increased soil available phosphorus (P) by 34.7% and soluble potassium (K) by 69.3% at a soil depth of 0⁻20 cm. VS application slightly increased the SOC, total nitrogen (N), available P, and soluble K compared to the control. Overall, these results indicate that combining mineral amendments significantly increases wheat yield and improves soil properties in a saline area. Thus, we recommend the use of mineral amendments in saline coastal areas

Properties of nonvolatile and antibacterial bioboard produced from bamboo macromolecules by hot pressing

Employing the antibacterial property of industrial bamboo vinegar (IBV) and the photocatalytic degradation of TiO2, bamboo macromolecules were pretreated and processed into nonvolatile and antibacterial bio board (NVABB). The NVABB was then analyzed by conducting Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis and differential thermal analysis. Results show that NVABB samples had average density of 0.96 g/cm3, which is appropriate for application. In terms of physical and mechanical properties, the best NVABB sample obtained from IBV, TiO2 and bamboo had an IBV pretreatment time of 10 min, 2% TiO2 and 1% bamboo charcoal. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy demonstrated that optimum conditions for hot pressing were a temperature of 170 °C, duration of 15 min and the addition of IBV and TiO2. Thermogravimetric analysis/differential thermal analysis curves suggest that the thermal degradation of NVABB was less than that of bamboo and that hot pressing obviously increased the thermal stability of HDBB samples. Analysis of the antimicrobial effect revealed that IBV pretreatment improves the antibacterial property of NVABB. Keywords: Industrial bamboo vinegar, Nonvolatile and antibacterial bio board, Bamboo macromolecules, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, Thermogravimetric analysis/differential thermal analysi

Controlled Synthesis of Large-Area Oriented ZnO Nanoarrays

Large-area oriented ZnO nanoarrays (including nanowire, nanorod, and nanotube) on ITO glass substrates are synthesized via the simple hydrothermal, electrodeposition, and electrochemical etching approach. The morphology of ZnO nanoarrays is controlled by adjusting the reaction temperature, reaction time, and current density. The scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and TEM) results indicate the successful preparation of large-area oriented ZnO nanoarrays with different types, and the energy-dispersive X-microanalysis spectrum (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) results confirm that the composition of the obtained nanoarrays is ZnO. More importantly, the as-prepared ZnO nanotube arrays are observed with about a 40% increase in ultraviolet absorption intensity compared to the ZnO nanowire/nanorod arrays, due to having larger specific surface areas. The as-prepared different types of ZnO nanoarrays have great potential for applications in low-cost and high-performance optoelectronic devices

Genome-Wide De Novo Prediction of Cis-Regulatory Binding Sites in Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv.

The transcription regulatory system of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb) remains incompletely understood. In this study, we have applied the eGLECLUBS algorithm to a group of related prokaryotic genomes for de novo genome-wide prediction of cis-regulatory binding sites (CRBSs) in M. tb H37Rv. The top 250 clusters from our prediction recovered 83.3% (50/60) of all known CRBSs in extracted inter-operonic sequences of this strain. We further demonstrated that the integration of our prediction results with the ChIP-Seq datasets is very effective in identifying true binding sites of TFs. Using electrophoretic mobility shift assays and real-time RT-PCR, we experimentally verified our prediction of CRBSs for Rv0081, an important transcription factor thought to be involved in regulation of M. tb under hypoxia