Foreign Direct Investment and Wage Inequality: Evidence from the People\u27s Republic of China

Based on theoretical analysis of effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the wage gap between foreign firms and domestic firms in the host country, we use data from Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database to measure these effects. Theoretical results show that the wage gap between foreign firms and domestic firms in the host country caused by the FDI labor transfer effect and technology spillover effect tends to increase then decrease, which implies an inverted U curve track. The empirical results show that the FDI has significant effects on the wage gap in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) during the observed time period. The contribution of the FDI to change of the wage gap is above 10%, which is in the second position among all observed factors. From the overall point of view, the contribution of the FDI tends to decrease. The reason is that the wage gap caused by the FDI has stepped into the decreasing stage. This means the wage gap between foreign firms and domestic firms currently has been on the latter part of the inverted U curve. The Chinese government should expand fields for FDI so as to decrease the wage gap between foreign firms and domestic firms. This policy implication should be helpful for the PRC to step over the “middle-income trap”

Electroweak Effective Operators and Higgs Physics

We derive bounds from oblique parameters on the dimension-6 operators of an effective field theory of electroweak gauge bosons and the Higgs doublet. The loop- induced contributions to the S, T, and U oblique parameters are sensitive to these contributions and we pay particular attention to the role of renormalization when computing loop corrections in the effective theory. Limits on the coefficients of the effective theory from loop contributions to oblique parameters yield complementary information to direct Higgs production measurements.Comment: 33 pages, 6 figures; additional scalar operator included and references adde

Crystallisation of glycine and dipicolinic acid (DPA) from microemulsions

Crystallisation under confinement conditions can produce nanocrystals with high surface-to-volume ratio, altered intrinsic properties (e.g. melting point depression), preferred orientation, selective polymorphic form and well-controlled morphology. The confinement conditions are normally achieved by nanopores prepared from polymers, which provide physical constraints on the size of the crystal. In this thesis, microemulsions, which have been extensively used for nanoparticle synthesis, are employed to achieve the 3D-nanoconfinement, owing to their spherical morphology to provide volume control and excellent droplet size control (< 50 nm) via the addition of dispersed phase. Thermodynamic control has been achieved during the crystallisation of glycine under the 3D-nanoconfinement generated by microemulsions. These microemulsions were prepared from heptane, Span 80/Brij 30, glycine solution, and methanol antisolvent. Polymorph selection has been obtained by varying the microemulsion compositions. A majority of y-glycine was observed when the microemulsion droplet size was in the range of 3.3-4.2 nm. This is when the microemulsions just had sufficient glycine for crystallization. Below this, no crystallization was observed. The microemulsions comprised of 0.25 g 4% glycine solution and 0.8-1.5 g methanol per sample, with crystallisation yielding visible crystals in 2-3 weeks. Higher concentration of glycine solution (> 4.5%) yielded mostly the α form and excess amount of methanol (> 1.5 g) produced the β form, due to the loss of confinement within the microemulsion and the participation of solvent templating effects introduced by methanol. The polymorph outcome was not affected by the surfactant-continuous phase ratio. Following on from the success of glycine and other organic/pharmaceutical compounds studied within the research group, dipicolinic acid (DPA) was chosen to study the thermodynamic control of hydrates within 3D-nanoconfinement. The hydration or solvation control was demonstrated in the microemulsions. In particular, hydration was only observed when the droplet sizes were greater than 4.3 nm with 15 mg/ml of DPA solution in the AOT system. However unexpected formation of metal salts occurred, i.e. Na+ and K+ ions from impurities participated in the crystal structures, regardless of the surfactants or solvents employed. Upon treatment with 2M HCl solution, metal salt participation in DPA crystallisation could be prevented. From the acidified microemulsions employing Trion X-100/1-hexanol as surfactants, no macroscopic sized crystals were seen. Instead, square plate-shaped nanoaggregates (30–100 nm in dimension) of 2–10 nm nanoparticles were obtained for samples with a droplet size of 4.01 nm, prepared from 18 mg/ml DPA in 2M HCl solution. Despite the strong electron density contrast across the nanocrystal surface, single crystal-like diffraction pattern (DP) was seen from these crystals, which was considered to be consistent with these nanocrystals being iso-oriented crystals/mesocrystals. The size and morphology of these nanoparticles can be controlled by varying the microemulsion composition. Lower DPA concentrations of 10-12 mg/ml and smaller droplet sizes of 2.40-3.15 nm produced much less organised nanoaggregates, with 'arcing' and 'rings' appearing in the DP, indicating the polycrystalline nature, whereas the highest DPA concentration of 18 mg/ml and the largest droplet of 4.01 nm could produce organized nanoaggregates that were barely distinguishable from single crystal structure

Synthesis of Selenium and Tellurium Modified Nucleic Acids For DNA Crystallization, Structure and Function Studies

Nucleic acid X-ray crystallography faces crystallization as well as phasing challenge. The Phasing problem could be rationally solved by incorporation of selenium into the DNA or RNA oligonucleotides, while the crystallization of nucleic acid is still challenging. To address these challenges without structural perturbation, we decided to explore the atom-specific incorporation and place a selenium atom on the 2’-beta position to control B-form DNA formation during crystallization process. Herein we report the first synthesis of the β-2’-MeSe-thymidine (2’SeT) phosphoramidite and Se-DNAs. We found that the Se-DNAs and Se-DNA-protein complexes formed crystals most of time with higher quality and diffraction resolution than the non-modified ones. Surprisingly, the Se-DNA can form crystals up to 600 microns in size, which were frequently hundreds of times larger in volume than the corresponding native. Moreover, we discovered that the high-quality Se-DNA crystals offered the diffraction resolution up to 1.15 Å and the Se-derivatized structure was virtually identical to the native one. In the meanwhile, we synthesized the β-2’-MeSe-cytidine (2’SeC) phosphoramidite and its DNA oligos. To our surprise, the selenium modification greatly facilitate crystallization when the modified cytidine was placed at the terminals of the oligo. The crystal of the Se-DNA formed within a few hours, where the corresponding native crystalized over 1 week. Furthermore, we describe the first synthesis of 2’-MeSe-arabinouridine (2’SeU) phosphoramidite and its DNAs to investigate the structure of DNAs containing the uracil. The Se-derivatized DNA X-ray crystal structure (1.25 Å) was virtually identical to the native one. Interestingly, during the Se incorporation step, we also found that the MeSe group attack the C-4 of the uracil generating a oxazolinyl-selenolester when the N-3 was protected with tert-butyloxycarbonyl (Boc) group which may activate the C-4 position through a n-π* interaction. Besides the structure studies, we also synthesized the 5-phenylselenium and 5-phenyltelenium modified deoxyuridine and incorporated them into DNA oligos to investigate their charge transport properties. The conductance and current-voltage (I-V) characteristics measurement indicates that the Te modification more effectively manipulate the electronic structure of the DNA compared to the Se modification and the corresponding native

Imaging glycogenesis as a novel biomarker of drug-induced senescence/quiescence

Cellular senescence, which is a state of irreversible growth arrest in response to diverse stimuli, has been implicated in many age-related diseases and shown to play complex roles in tumorigenesis. Since the first description of senescence by Hayflick and colleagues in 1961, significant progress has been made in understanding the characteristics and functions of cellular senescence. However, efforts to identify senescence remain limited due to a lack of robust and universal biomarkers for this cell fate. As enhanced glycogenesis has been associated with cell growth arrest, it has been hypothesized in this thesis that PET imaging agents that measure glycogenesis could be a potential tool for assessment of senescence-directed anticancer therapies. The profile of glycogenesis of a panel of cancer cell lines characterised by various genetic backgrounds was first assessed. Cancer cell lines showed distinct patterns of glycogenesis, among which an AKT-GSK3β-dependent regulation of glycogen synthase (GYS1) through PI3K pathway was observed in PTEN-null tumour cells. A cell growth-related regulation of glycogenesis was found in the tested cells, in which cells when cultured under the G0/G1 phase arrest increased glycogen synthesis via a GYS1-dependent manner and thereby led to an increase in glycogen accumulation. Moreover, tumour cells under hypoxic condition were more susceptible to GYS1 knockdown as glycogenesis was more significantly attenuated under hypoxia than normoxic condition. Additionally, one of the four tested anticancer drugs, namely palbociclib, was shown to dose- and time-dependently induce senescence in ER-positive breast cancer cell lines in vitro, as shown by the presence of senescence-like morphology, increased SA-β-gal activity and upregulation of p21 expression. An increase in glycogenesis was found in response to palbociclib treatment via a G6P-dependent elevation in GYS1 activity. Correspondingly, 18F-NFTG, a glycogenesis-based PET radiotracer previously developed by our group, was largely accumulated in palbociclib-induced quiescent/senescent cells. To extend the exploration, the attempts were made to develop and evaluate a novel senescence-specific probe based on detection of lipofuscin formation. Not only did the non-radioactive reference compound [19F]FET-SBB show specific staining of lipofuscin aggregates in palbociclib-treated cell, but also the radiolabelled [18F]FET-SBB was significantly retained, suggesting potential application of [18F]FET-SBB in targeting senescence. In summary, while senescence mechanisms can be varied, drug-induced senescence is detectable in vitro as increased glycogenesis and lipofuscin formation in some contexts. These methods described here have potential for translation in vivo.Open Acces

Spruce Budworm Defoliation Dynamics and its Influence on the Acadian Forest

Spruce budworm (SBW; Choristoneura fumiferana (Clem.)) is the primary forest defoliator in North America. SBW defoliation has affected tens of millions ha of forests during its periodic outbreaks and caused severe growth reduction and mortality of spruce-fir (Picea-Abies) species. Evaluating these damaging effects of SBW defoliation requires understandings of the variation and dynamics of defoliation, as well as trees\u27 variable responses to defoliation in consideration of various tree- stand-, and site-level factors. In this dissertation, we developed statistical models to 1) evaluate influences of SBW defoliation on spruce-fir stand dynamics of annual volume net growth, mortality, and ingrowth, 2) quantify effects of SBW defoliation on annualized diameter and height increment, crown recession, and mortality, and 3) assess patterns and temporal development of SBW defoliation on individual trees. Measurements of individual trees and their defoliation collected from 560 permanent sample plots in Maine and New Brunswick during the last SBW outbreak in the 1970s-1980s, which covered \u3e 40 000 km2 as well as 10 years of varying ranges of defoliation and forest conditions were used in the analyses. Our results strongly demonstrated that 1) even relatively low levels of cumulative defoliation were significantly related to stand-level mortality and ingrowth, while net growth was more competition driven, 2) effects of defoliation on diameter increment, crown recession, and mortality were highly significant but relatively moderate depending on species, and 3) variation in individual tree defoliation was predominantly dependent on species. In addition, defoliation of each host species analyzed developed towards their respective converged trajectories. Based on these findings, we developed annualized modifiers for the Acadian variant of the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS-ACD) to account for effects of SBW defoliation on forest development, which consistently had smaller biases and prediction errors than FVS-ACD refined by STAMAN (a Canadian growth model) SBW modifiers. Overall, our findings highlight the high variability in SBW defoliation and trees\u27 responses to defoliation, which were consistent between Maine and New Brunswick despite varying forest management history and species composition. We believe the developed modeling framework should also be extendable to analyzing other forms of defoliation in broader regions

The general factor of psychopathology : precursors and consequences

Comorbidity among different types of psychopathology is very common whether they are treated as discrete diagnostic categories or continuous dimensions. Empirical methods to describing these dimensions of dysfunction and their high co-occurrence have advanced our understanding and definition of mental disorders. These methods consistently show that different forms of psychopathology are correlated, resulting in the extraction of a general factor of psychopathology known as the p factor. In this thesis, we performed multivariate analyses on the nationwide Swedish registers and the Swedish twin registers to examine how the general psychopathology relates to genetics, cardiometabolic complications and pain and suicidal behavior. In study I, we explored whether psychiatric polygenic risk scores (PRS) could directly predict general and specific psychopathology. We modeled one general and seven specific factors based on childhood psychiatric symptoms, and one general and three specific factors based on adolescent psychiatric symptoms. We then regressed each general and specific factor onto ten psychiatric PRS simultaneously between and within twin pairs, the latter controls for indirect pathways (population stratification, assortative mating and dynastic effects). We found that PRS-general psychopathology associations did not appear attributable to indirect pathways, suggesting that genetics appeared to directly influence symptomatology. In study II, we examined whether the increased risk of cardiometabolic complications for mental health conditions might be attributed to a general liability toward psychopathology or confounded by unmeasured familial factors. We identified general, internalizing, externalizing, and psychotic factors based on the comorbidity among psychiatric diagnoses and criminal convictions in young adulthood. We then regressed the cardiometabolic complications in middle adulthood on the latent general factor and three uncorrelated specific factors within a structural equation modeling framework in individuals and across sibling pairs. BMI and smoking were used as mediators among child-bearing females. We found that associations between individuals with mental disorders in early life and later long-term risk of cardiometabolic complications appeared attributable to a general liability toward psychopathology. Sibling analyses suggested that the elevated risk could not be attributed to confounds shared within families, and the associations could be partly mediated via lifestyle factors. Clinicians may consider lifestyle-based interventions to reduce the risk of cardiometabolic complications for patients with several mental disorders. In study III, we investigated the link between chronic pain comorbidity and later suicidal behaviors. Based on nine self-reported chronic pain conditions, we identified three factors related to pain: one general pain factor, and two specific factors, which measure neck-shoulder pain and pain-related somatic symptoms respectively. And we applied a co-twin control model to control for familial confounding when regressing general and specific pain on suicidal behaviors. We found that general pain factor and somatic pain factor are associated with increased risk for suicidal behavior; but these associations appear to be mainly attributable to familial confounding. Clinicians may find it advantageous to assess pain comorbidity in addition to specific pain types. Nonetheless, addressing pain may not necessarily lead to a reduction in future suicidal tendencies, as the associations may be influenced by familial factors