The Formation Mechanism of House Price Differences in China’s Urban Area in the Same City—Based on Lasso Bayesian Model Averaging Method

With the development of economy and the expansion of urban scale, the variation of housing prices within Chinese cities has gradually become significant. Based on the housing prices of 79 districts in Chengdu, this paper analyzes the reasons for such differences. With an index system of the price difference of locational housing, a semi-log linear regression Lasso Bayesian average model is constructed, which can realize variable selection while estimating coefficients. Empirical evidence shows that the inequality of social-economic resources and the imbalance of housing supply and demand in the area are important internal factors that lead to the difference in housing prices between areas within the city; the related housing prices have an extremely significant positive impact, showing that the mobility of the place of purchase and the contagion of the house price are the main reasons for housing price; in addition, influential factors have strong positive interaction effects

バイリンガル ヒタイショウ モデル ノ ニホンゴ エ テキヨウ カンジ カラ エイゴ エノ ホンヤク ト カナ カラ エイゴ エノ ホンヤク トノ アイダ ノ カイリ

This study addresses two questions: the first question is about whether backward translation (i.e. the second language to the first language or L2-to-L1) exploits a different mental process from forward translation (i.e. the first language to the second language or L1-to-L2). A qualitatively difference has been proposed by Kroll and Stewart\u27s (1994) asymmetry model of bilingual memory representation: forward translation is largely conceptually mediated whereas backward translation is largely lexically mediated. Thus, the model predicts that backward translation will be faster than forward translation and also both L1 and L2 picture naming. We have examined this hypothesis using Japanese learners of English, who have rarely been taken up so far in the research of the bilingual memory. Our results of the backward translation task by Japanese-English bilinguals show that backward translation is conceptually mediated like forward translation, a contradicting result to Kroll and Stewart\u27s model. The second question is how kanji (Japanese logographic script) will be processed in the forward translation, i.e., whether kanji script accesses L1 lexicon (the set of L1 phonological labels) through or without phonological mediation. Our experiments show that kanji in the first encounter is most likely processed via phonological mediation. Thus we have obtained decisive evidence regarding the phonological-mediation controversy in the area of kanji recognition.　Keywords： asymmetry model, forward translation, backward translatio

Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning for Natural Language Understanding Tasks in Finance

Natural language understanding(NLU) is challenging for finance due to the lack of annotated data and the specialized language in that domain. As a result, researchers have proposed to use pre-trained language model and multi-task learning to learn robust representations. However, aggressive fine-tuning often causes over-fitting and multi-task learning may favor tasks with significantly larger amounts data, etc. To address these problems, in this paper, we investigate model-agnostic meta-learning algorithm(MAML) in low-resource financial NLU tasks. Our contribution includes: 1. we explore the performance of MAML method with multiple types of tasks: GLUE datasets, SNLI, Sci-Tail and Financial PhraseBank; 2. we study the performance of MAML method with multiple single-type tasks: a real scenario stock price prediction problem with twitter text data. Our models achieve the state-of-the-art performance according to the experimental results, which demonstrate that our method can adapt fast and well to low-resource situations.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 8 table

Downregulated serum 14, 15-epoxyeicosatrienoic acid is associated with abdominal aortic calcification in patients with primary aldosteronism

Patients with primary aldosteronism (PA) have increased risk of target-organ damage, among which vascular calcification is an important indicator of cardiovascular mortality. 14, 15-Epoxyeicosatrienoic acid (14, 15-EET) has been shown to have beneficial effects in vascular remodeling. However, whether 14, 15-EET associates with vascular calcification in PA is unknown. Thus, we aimed to investigate the association between 14, 15-EET and abdominal aortic calcification (AAC) in patients with PA. Sixty-nine patients with PA and 69 controls with essential hypertension, matched for age, sex, and blood pressure, were studied. 14, 15-Dihydroxyeicosatrienoic acid (14, 15-DHET), the inactive metabolite from 14, 15-EET, was estimated to reflect serum 14, 15-EET levels. AAC was assessed by computed tomographic scanning. Compared with matched controls, the AAC prevalence was almost 1-fold higher in patients with PA (27 [39.1%] versus 14 [20.3%]; P=0.023), accompanied by significantly higher serum 14, 15-DHET levels (7.18±4.98 versus 3.50±2.07 ng/mL; P<0.001). Plasma aldosterone concentration was positively associated with 14, 15-DHET (β=0.444; P<0.001). Multivariable logistic analysis revealed that lower 14, 15-DHET was an independent risk factor for AAC in PA (odds ratio, 1.371; 95% confidence interval, 1.145–1.640; P<0.001), especially in young patients with mild hypertension and normal body mass index. In conclusion, PA patients exibited more severe AAC, accompanied by higher serum 14, 15-DHET levels. On the contrary, decreased 14, 15-EET was significantly associated with AAC prevalence in PA patients, especially in those at low cardiovascular risk

Effectiveness of Mobile Phone Customer Retention Strategies

Using the 419,194 customers of a mobile operator as the sample, this research investigates the effectiveness of the company’s retention strategies. It examines the effect of such strategies on extending customer life cycle. We find that the retention policies and the incremental average revenue per user (ARPU) in the retention period over the month prior are positively correlated. In addition, the correlation between the retention polices and the increments of consumer consumption variables, such as the number of calls, the number of short messages and the value-added services, are also positive. Moreover, the significantly positive interaction terms between the retention bonus and the consumption increments suggest that the bonus affects the relative ARPU through the consumption variables. Finally, the retention strategies demonstrate the different effectiveness according to the three different calling plans. The managerial implications of our findings are discussed

Surface Functionalization of Black Phosphorus via Amine Compounds and Its Impacts on the Flame Retardancy and Thermal Decomposition Behaviors of Epoxy Resin.

Recently, lots of effort has been placed into stabilizing black phosphorus (BP) in the air to improve its compatibility with polymers. Herein, BP was chemically functionalized by aliphatic amine (DETA), aromatic amine (PPDA) and cyclamine (Pid) via a nucleophilic substitution reaction, aiming to develop an intensively reactive BP flame retardant for epoxy resin (EP). The -NH2 group on BP-DETA, BP-PPDA and BP-Pid reacted with the epoxide group at different temperatures. The lowest temperature was about 150 °C for BP-DETA. The impacts of three BP-NH2 were compared on the flame retardancy and thermal decomposition of EP. At 5 wt% loading, EP/BP-NH2 all passed UL 94 V 0 rating. The limiting oxygen index (LOI) of EP/BP-PPDA was as high as 32.3%. The heat release rate (HRR) of EP/BP-DETA greatly decreased by 46% and char residue increased by 73.8%, whereas HRR of EP/BP-Pid decreased by 11.5% and char residue increased by 50.8%, compared with EP. Average effective heat of combustion (av-EHC) of EP/BP-Pid was lower than that of EP/BP-DETA and EP/BP-PPDA. In view of the flame-retardant mechanism, BP nanosheets functionalized with aliphatic amine and aromatic amine played a dominant role in the condensed phase, while BP functionalized with cyclamine was more effective in the gas phase.post-print74881 K

Distribution and metabolism of ascorbic acid in pear fruits (Pyrus pyrifolia Nakai cv. Aikansui)

Ascorbate accumulation levels, distribution and key enzyme activities involved in synthesizing via Smirnoff-Wheeler pathway and recycling in different pear fruit tissues during development were studied. Results show that the ascorbate contents increased with the fruit development, and reached the highest titers in 30 days after anthesis (DAA), then decreased and maintained a level. The higher contents of ascorbate in the peel of pear fruit were observed, which results from a combination of higher activities of L-galactose dehydrogenase (GalDH) and L-galactono-1,4-lactone (GalLDH) involving ascorbate biosynthesis and higher dehydroascorbate reductase (DHAR) and monodehydroascorbate reductase (MDHAR) activities used to recycle ascorbate. Exogenous feeding of ascorbate synthesis precursors demonstrated that the peel had stronger capability of de novo ascorbate biosynthesis via Smirnoff-Wheeler pathway and uronic acid pathway whereas the flesh and core had lower capability for ascorbate synthesis. These results suggest that the pear fruit is able to cause de novo ascorbate biosynthesis and the peel had higher capability for ascorbate biosynthesis than the flesh and core.Keywords: Pyrus pyrifolia, ascorbate, biosynthesisAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(16), pp. 1952-196

Identification of miRNAs involved in pear fruit development and quality

BACKGROUND: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small, endogenous RNAs that take part in regulating genes through mediating gene expressions at the post-transcriptional level in plants. Previous studies have reported miRNA identification in various plants ranging from model plants to perennial fruit trees. However, the role of miRNAs in pear (Pyrus bretschneideri) fruit development is not clear. Here, we investigated the miRNA profiles of pear fruits from different time stages during development with Illumina HiSeq 2000 platform and bioinformatics analysis. Quantitative real-time PCR was used to validate the expression levels of miRNAs. RESULTS: Both conserved and species-specific miRNAs in pear have been identified in this study. Total reads, ranging from 19,030,925 to 25,576,773, were obtained from six small RNA libraries constructed for different stages of fruit development after flowering. Comparative profiling showed that an average of 90 miRNAs was expressed with significant differences between various developmental stages. KEGG pathway analysis on 2,216 target genes of 188 known miRNAs and 1,127 target genes of 184 novel miRNAs showed that miRNAs are widely involved in the regulation of fruit development. Among these, a total of eleven miRNAs putatively participate in the pathway of lignin biosynthesis, nine miRNAs were identified to take part in sugar and acid metabolism, and MiR160 was identified to regulate auxin response factor. CONCLUSION: Comparative analysis of miRNAomes during pear fruit development is presented, and miRNAs were proved to be widely involved in the regulation of fruit development and formation of fruit quality, for example through lignin synthesis, sugar and acid metabolism, and hormone signaling. Combined with computational analysis and experimental confirmation, the research contributes valuable information for further functional research of microRNA in fruit development for pear and other species. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2164-15-953) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

The experience of long-stay patients in a forensic psychiatric hospital in China: a qualitative study

open access articleBackground Long stay in forensic psychiatric hospitals is common in patients who are defined as “not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder”. However, little is known about how these patients experience and perceive the long stay within these settings. The aim of this study is to explore the perception and needs of long-stay patients in forensic psychiatric hospitals in China. Methods In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 participants who had lived in the forensic psychiatry hospital for more than 8 years. We used thematic analysis strategies to analyse the qualitative data. Results Participants’ perceptions clustered seven themes: hopelessness, loneliness, worthlessness, low mood, sleep disturbances, lack of freedom, and lack of mental health intervention. Conclusions The views and opinions expressed by long-stay patients showed that psychological distress is prevailing in forensic psychiatric hospitals. Adequate and effective care and mental health interventions are recommended to be tailored for their special needs