The selection of the successors of Chine se family businesses and the conflicts in the process of inheritance

Over the past 40 years of China's reform and opening up, more than 5 million private enterprises emerged. The majority of them, family-owned businesses, or simply family businesses, have become the driving force of China's individual and private economic sector. Nowadays, at the age of retirement, the founders of these enterprises face intergenerational inheritance in which they have to make tough decisions on the successor selection. Under the unique family culture originated from ancient China, it is hard for those entrepreneurs to avoid conflicts of interest, not only between multiple candidates, but also in the case of unwillingness. In this regard, the research propose of this thesis is to examine possible factors that affect successor’s selection and inheritance willingness, and provides a solution to smooth inheritance. However, in relevant studies, such factors are rarely discussed from a comprehensive prospective, making the inheritance process like a black box where the content are unknown to people who fail to deal with conflicts between the two generations. After the literature review, potential factors that related to the process of inheritance are refined in this thesis, and the influence of family relations and family atmosphere are analyzed from aforementioned family culture. In order to support the analysis work through empirical research, the classical family business inheritance models are also summarized. However, by considering traditional culture and social concept on the entrepreneurs, the traditional models are believed not applicable for the research problem, even though they have been verified by the practice in many other countries. Based on above thoughts, the research hypotheses are proposed using Stavrou and Swiercz (1998) four-factor theory, and the questionnaire is thus designed from the angle of individual, family, enterprise and society. Applying the proposed research framework, a questionnaire survey is conducted on family business inheritance to obtain the successors' willingness as children, and the incumbents' willingness as parents, as well as the family relationship and the inheritance plan contained therein. Using acquired data and through reliability analysis, logistic regression analysis and independent sample t-test, the research hypotheses are validated concerning potential factors related to the willingness of the two sides and the conflict in inheritance process. It can be found in the results that the four factors have different importance between the two sides, and enterprise factor does not statistically influence the willingness of the successors. Different viewpoints are shown in most of the factors, and the successors usually tend to disagree more than their parents. In this sense, specific reasons that lead to the conflict are analyzed in item level. Summing up the research results, some suggestions are drawn on the inheritance and development of family business, including a practical and flexible inheritance plan instead of an intuitive decision to improve mutual understanding, which embodies the theoretical value and practical significance.Nos últimos 40 anos de reforma e abertura da China, foram criadas mais de 5 milhões de empresas privadas, a maioria das quais empresas familiares que se tornaram uma importante força motriz do setor económico individual e privado da China. Hoje, com a chegada à idade da reforma, os fundadores destas empresas familiares enfrentam o processo de herança intergeracional e necessitam de tomar decisões importantes no que respeita à seleção dos seus sucessores. Perante o ambiente de cultura familiar único da China é difícil evitar conflitoss, não só entre múltiplos candidatos à sucessão, mas também pela falta de interesse e motivação das duas partes. O principal objetivo desta tese é estudar os fatores que afetam a seleção dos herdeiros, a disponibilidade para a herança e propor uma solução para uma transição sem conflitos. Estes fatores raramente são discutidos de modo compreensivo nos estudos relevantes sobre este assunto, criando como que uma caixa negra no respeitante ao entendimento dos conflitos no processo de herança. Partindo da revisão da literatura existente, esta tese analisa de forma abrangente os fatores que influenciam o processo de herança, assim como a influência das relações familiares e da atmosfera familiar nesse processo. Apresenta também um resumo dos modelos clássicos de herança de empresas familiares de modo a justificar as opções da pesquisa empírica. No entanto, embora tenham sido testados e validados pela prática noutros países, os modelos tradicionais não se mostram adequados quando se pretende tomar em consideração o impacto da cultura tradicional e o conceito social de empreendedor individual. Com base nestas considerações, são avançadas várias hipóteses de pesquisa com base na adaptação de teoria de quatro fatores de Stavrou & Swiercz (1998). O estudo empírico tem por base um questionário desenhado com o objetivo de recolher informação sobre as quatros dimensões em análise: individual, familiar, empresarial e social. Usando o modelo concetual anterior, é realizado um inquérito por questionário sobre o processo de herança da empresa familiar para avaliar a disponibilidade dos herdeiros enquanto filhos, e a disponibilidade dos progenitores como pais, para levar a bom termo o processo de herança, bem como o relacionamento entre ambos neste processo. São aplicados diferentes métodos estatísticos - coeficiente de fiabilidade, modelo de regressão logística e teste t para amostras independentes - à informação recolhida para validar as hipóteses de pesquisa relativamente aos fatores potenciais que afetam a seleção do sucessor e a sua disponibilidade no processo de herança. Os resultados mostram que os quatro fatores têm importância diferente para as duas partes, sendo que a dimensão empresarial não influencia estatisticamente a disponibilidade dos sucessores. Encontram-se diferenças significativas entre os progenitores e os herdeiros no que respeita ao grau de concordância atribuído à maioria dos fatores, sendo que os sucessores apresentam níveis de discordâncias mais elevados que os progenitores. Finalmente, a partir dos resultados da pesquisa, são feitas algumas sugestões sobre o processo de herança e o desenvolvimento das empresas familiares, incluindo um plano de herança prático e flexível, que substitua um processo de decisão meramente intuitivo, que permita melhorar a compreensão entre as partes, integrando o saber teórico e a validade prática

Combining Context and Knowledge Representations for Chemical-Disease Relation Extraction

Automatically extracting the relationships between chemicals and diseases is significantly important to various areas of biomedical research and health care. Biomedical experts have built many large-scale knowledge bases (KBs) to advance the development of biomedical research. KBs contain huge amounts of structured information about entities and relationships, therefore plays a pivotal role in chemical-disease relation (CDR) extraction. However, previous researches pay less attention to the prior knowledge existing in KBs. This paper proposes a neural network-based attention model (NAM) for CDR extraction, which makes full use of context information in documents and prior knowledge in KBs. For a pair of entities in a document, an attention mechanism is employed to select important context words with respect to the relation representations learned from KBs. Experiments on the BioCreative V CDR dataset show that combining context and knowledge representations through the attention mechanism, could significantly improve the CDR extraction performance while achieve comparable results with state-of-the-art systems.Comment: Published on IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, 11 pages, 5 figure

Impact of the National Reimbursement Drug List Negotiation Policy on Accessibility of Anticancer Drugs in China: An Interrupted Time Series Study

Objective: Since 2016, the Chinese government has been regularly implementing the National Reimbursement Drug List Negotiation (NRDLN) to improve the accessibility of drugs. In the second round of NRDLN in July 2017, 18 anticancer drugs were included. This study analyzed the impact of the NRDLN on the accessibility of these 18 anticancer drugs in China. Methods: National hospital procurement data were collected from 2015 to 2019. As measurements of drug accessibility, monthly average of drug availability or defined daily dose cost (DDDc) was calculated. Interrupted time series (ITS) analysis was employed to evaluate the impact of NRDLN on drug accessibility. Multilevel growth curve models were estimated for different drug categories, regions or levels of hospitals. Results: The overall availability of 18 anticancer drugs increased from about 10.5% in 2015 to slightly over 30% in 2019. The average DDDc dropped from 527.93 CNY in 2015 to 401.87 CNY in 2019, with a reduction of 23.88%. The implementation of NRDLN was associated with higher availability and lower costs for all 18 anticancer drugs. We found an increasing level in monthly drug availability (β2 = 2.1126), which ascended more sharply after the implementation of NRDLN (β3 = 0.3656). There was a decreasing level in DDDc before July 2017 (β2 = −108.7213), together with a significant decline in the slope associated with the implementation of NRDLN (β3 = −4.8332). Compared to Traditional Chinese Medicines, the availability of Western Medicines was higher and increased at a higher rate (β3 = 0.4165 vs. 0.1108). Drug availability experienced a larger instant and slope increase in western China compared to other regions, and in secondary hospitals than tertiary hospitals. Nevertheless, regional and hospital-level difference in the effect of NRDLN on DDDc were less evident. Conclusion: The implementation of NRDLN improves the availability and reduces the cost of some anticancer drugs in China. It contributes to promoting accessibility of anticancer drugs, as well as relieving regional or hospital-level disparities. However, there are still challenges to benefit more patients sufficiently and equally. It requires more policy efforts and collaborative policy combination

Plant-based diets and body composition in Chinese omnivorous children aged 6–9 years old: A cross-sectional study

Evidence suggests that plant-based diets are beneficial for alleviating metabolic diseases. Childhood is a crucial period for body growth and development. However, it is unknown whether adherence to a plant-based diet is related to a healthy body composition in children. We aimed to assess the relationship between a plant-based diet and body composition in children. A total of 452 Chinese children aged 6–9 years old participated in this cross-sectional study. Lean mass (LM), fat mass, and fat mass percentage (FMP) were assessed via dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. An age- and sex-specific abdominal FMP ≥85th percentile was defined as abdominal obesity. Handgrip strength was measured using a hydraulic hand dynamometer. A validated 79-item food frequency questionnaire was used to collect dietary information. Overall plant-based diet index (PDI), healthful plant-based diet index (hPDI), and unhealthful plant-based diet index (uPDI) scores were calculated. After adjusting for potential covariates, a higher hPDI score (per 10-score increment) was associated with a higher LM in the android area (0.038 kg, 3.2%), gynoid area (0.048 kg, 1.9%), and trunk (0.102 kg, 1.2%) and with a lower FMP (1.18%) in the android area. In contrast, a higher uPDI score (per 10-score increment) was associated with a lower LM in the trunk (0.091 kg, 1.1%) and android area (0.023 kg, 1.9%) and with a higher FMP (0.74%) in the android area. No significant associations were observed between the overall PDI and body composition or abdominal obesity. After stratifying by sex, higher (vs. lower) hPDI scores was associated with lower abdominal obesity risk in girls and higher handgrip strength in boys. In conclusion, in this cross-sectional study, we found that stronger adherence to a healthful plant-based diet, and less adherence to an unhealthful plant-based diet was associated with better body composition in Chinese omnivorous children aged 6–9 years old. Our results highlight the need to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy plant foods within investigating how to obtain a healthy body composition in children

Application of quantitative real-time PCR to detect Mink Circovirus in minks, foxes and raccoon dogs in northern China

Mink circovirus disease caused by Mink Circovirus (MiCV) is a serious infectious disease of mink that has become prevalent in recent years in China, severely affecting the reproductive performance of mink and causing significant economic losses to farms. To date, there have been few studies on MiCV, its pathogenic mechanism is not clear, and there is no effective vaccine or drug to prevent and control the disease. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a rapid and reliable molecular diagnostic method, which would aid future studies of this novel virus. In our study, we developed a sensitive and specific TaqMan-based quantitative real-time PCR assay targeting the MiCV Cap gene. The assay showed no cross-reaction with other tested animal viruses. The assay is highly sensitive, with a detection limit of as low as 10 plasmid DNA copies and 2.38 × 10−2 pg of viral DNA. The intra and inter--assay coefficients of variation were both low. The positive detection rate of MiCV in clinical samples from minks, foxes, and raccoon dogs were 58.8% (133/226), 50.7% (72/142), and 42.2% (54/128), respectively, giving a total positive detection rate of 52.2% (259/496). Higher contamination levels were observed in samples from the environment in direct or indirect contact with animals, with a total positive detection rate of 75.1% (220/293). These epidemiological results showed that minks, foxes, and raccoon dogs had high infection rates of MiCV. This was also the first study to detect MiCV on the ground and equipment of fur-bearing animal farms. Our assay is highly sensitive and specific for the diagnosis and quantification of MiCV, and should provide a reliable real-time tool for epidemiological and pathogenetic study of MiCV infection

Development of a growth-coupled selection platform for directed evolution of heme biosynthetic enzymes in Corynebacterium glutamicum

Heme is an important tetrapyrrole compound, and has been widely applied in food and medicine industries. Although microbial production of heme has been developed with metabolic engineering strategies during the past 20 years, the production levels are relatively low due to the multistep enzymatic processes and complicated regulatory mechanisms of microbes. Previous studies mainly adopted the strategies of strengthening precursor supply and product transportation to engineer microbes for improving heme biosynthesis. Few studies focused on the engineering and screening of efficient enzymes involved in heme biosynthesis. Herein, a growth-coupled, high-throughput selection platform based on the detoxification of Zinc-protoporphyrin IX (an analogue of heme) was developed and applied to directed evolution of coproporphyrin ferrochelatase, catalyzing the insertion of metal ions into porphyrin ring to generate heme or other tetrapyrrole compounds. A mutant with 3.03-fold increase in kcat/KM was selected. Finally, growth-coupled directed evolution of another three key enzymes involved in heme biosynthesis was tested by using this selection platform. The growth-coupled selection platform developed here can be a simple and effective strategy for directed evolution of the enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of heme or other tetrapyrrole compounds

MCL1 gene co-expression module stratifies multiple myeloma and predicts response to proteasome inhibitor-based therapy

Multiple myeloma (MM) is the second most common hematologic cancer, characterized by abnormal accumulation of plasma cells in the bone marrow. The extensive biological and clinical heterogeneity of MM hinders effective treatment and etiology research. Several molecular classification systems of prognostic impact have been proposed, but they do not predict the response to treatment nor do they correlate to plasma cell development pathways. Here we describe the classification of MM into two distinct subtypes based on the expression levels of a gene module coexpressed with MCL1 (MCL1-M), a regulator of plasma cell survival. The classification system enabled prediction of the prognosis and the response to bortezomib-based therapy. Moreover, the two MM subtypes were associated with two different plasma cell differentiation pathways (enrichment of a preplasmablast signature versus aberrant expression of B cell genes). 1q gain, harboring 63 of the 87 MCL1-M members including MCL1, was found in about 80% of the MM with upregulated MCL1-M expression. Clonal analysis showed that 1q gain tended to occur as an early clonal event. Members of MCL1-M captured both MM cell-intrinsically acting signals and the signals regulating the interaction between MM cells with bone marrow microenvironment. MCL1-M members were co-expressed in mouse germinal center B cells. Together, these findings indicate that MCL1-M may play previously inadequately recognized, initiating role in the pathogenesis of MM. Our findings suggest that MCL1-M signature-based molecular clustering of MM constitutes a solid framework toward understanding the etiology of this disease and establishing personalized care. Article Summary: A pathogenic mechanism-guided molecular classification would facilitate treatment decision and etiology research of multiple myeloma. On the basis of the expression levels of a gene module coexpressed with MCL1, w

Acupuncture Modulates the Cerebello-Thalamo-Cortical Circuit and Cognitive Brain Regions in Patients of Parkinson's Disease With Tremor

Objective: To investigate the effect of acupuncture on Parkinson's disease (PD) patients with tremor and its potential neuromechanism by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).Methods: Forty-one PD patients with tremor were randomly assigned to true acupuncture group (TAG, n = 14), sham acupuncture group (SAG, n = 14) and waiting group (WG, n = 13). All patients received levodopa for 12 weeks. Patients in TAG were acupunctured on DU20, GB20, and the Chorea-Tremor Controlled Zone, and patients in SAG accepted sham acupuncture, while patients in WG received no acupuncture treatment until 12 weeks after the course was ended. The UPDRS II and III subscales, and fMRI scans of the patients' brains were obtained before and after the treatment course. UPDRS II and III scores were analyzed by SPSS, while the degree centrality (DC), regional homogeneity (ReHo) and amplitude low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) were determined by REST.Results: Acupuncture improved the UPDRS II and III scores in PD patients with tremor without placebo effect, only in tremor score. Acupuncture had specific effects on the cerebrocerebellar pathways as shown by the decreased DC and ReHo and increased ALFF values, and nonspecific effects on the spinocerebellar pathways as shown by the increased ReHo and ALFF values (P < 0.05, AlphaSim corrected). Increased ReHo values were observed within the thalamus and motor cortex of the PD patients (P < 0.05, AlphaSim corrected). In addition, the default mode network (DMN), visual areas and insula were activated by the acupuncture with increased DC, ReHo and/or ALFF, while the prefrontal cortex (PFC) presented a significant decrease in ReHo and ALFF values after acupuncture (P < 0.05, AlphaSim corrected).Conclusions: The cerebellum, thalamus and motor cortex, which are connected to the cerebello-thalamo-cortical (CTC) circuit, were modulated by the acupuncture stimulation to alleviate the PD tremor. The regulation of neural activity within the cognitive brain regions (the DMN, visual areas, insula and PFC) together with CTC circuit may contributes to enhancing movement and improving patients' daily life activities