16 research outputs found
Removing the veil for the shadow banking system in China
The paper aims to analyze the development of the shadow banking system in China
and its role in the rapid economic growth in China for the past three decades. The
shadow banking system supports small and medium sized firms and agricultural
development projects. This has an important impact on poverty reduction in China as
farmers largely refer to informal financial channels to get credit support for seeds,
chemicals and animals. The shadow banking system offers credit supplies to lenders
who cannot easily obtain credit from the official banking system. The credit
supplies they offered use different financial instruments, come with higher interest
rates, and were often disguised as financial products landing within the regulatory
framework of the administration. The commercial banks also used the shadow
banking financial instruments to meet capital thresholds from the Peopleâs Bank of
China. As a result, the shadow banking products create longer credit chains, distort
credit flows in the financial system by diverting investments into short-term, high
return, more risky financial markets. The turbulences in the interbank transaction
market, the financial derivative market, the stock exchange markets (including the
main-board, the âsecond tierâ market for SMEs and the âthird tierâ market for
start-ups), and the real estate market are all heavily involved in transactions conducted
by the shadow banking entities. The shadow banking system in China has been
expanding at a pace beyond the current regulatory structure. The internet P2P
investment platforms, for instance, become popular with investors and raise funds up
to RMB 1 billion each platform. There exist over thousands of internet investment
portals, the most popular one being âYu E Baoâ, offered by Alibaba.com. The
traditional regulatory institutions, however, do not cover shadow banking investment
activities made online. Neither are insurance offered to insurance made online; as the
new deposit insurance scheme only cover deposits made in the official banking
system.
With the ambition of boosting the internationalization of the RMB, financial
deepening and economic reforms in China, the financial regulators in China face the
dilemma resulting from the regulatory arbitrage associated with the expanding
shadow bankinBBC system. Individual investors in China purchase the shadow
banking investment products and assume their purchases come with implicit
government guarantees, such as wealth management products sold by commercial
banks for trust companies and local government investment platforms. On the other
hand, it is critical for investors to make rational investments; thus, regulators are
obliged to remind investors of risks related to the shadow banking products, that the
fantasy of governments repaying failing shadow banking investments will be not
realized. It is also the responsibility of the regulators to divert funds collected by the
shadow banking entities to long-term investments to build up industrial bases.
The financial deepening in China required the transformation of the shadow banking
entities and financial products offered into ones with adequate capital cushions and
sufficient liquidity. The internationalization of the RMB necessates the opening up of
the capital, hence financial account in China. However, the 1997 Asian financial crisis,
and the hyperinflation resulting from the dollarization in Latin America has led the
Chinese regulators to be cautious in conducting currency liberalization and financial
reforms. The opening up of the financial account with the liberalization of the
exchange rate regime doubles the financial risks, increases the possibility of financial
crises, and may result in the stagnation of economic growth. The function of the
central bank as the lender of the last resort demands effective and prudential
regulations for SIFIs, and also seeks to functioned to boost market confidence. At this
critical turning point of the Chinese economy, defining the role of the shadow
banking system, bringing them into the regulatory framework, and identifying risks
created should be the priority of the financial regulators in China
Smart Healthcare solutions in China and Europe, an international business perspective
The thesis is part of the Marie Curie Fellowship project addressing health related challenges with IoT solutions. The author tries to address the challenge for the implementation of telehealth solutions by finding out the demand of the telehealth solution in selected European economies and in China (chapter 1), analyzing the emerging business models for telehealth solution ecosystems in China (chapter 2), how to integrate telehealth solutions with institutional stakeholders (chapter 3) and why are elderly users willing to use telehealth solutions in China.
Chapter 1 and chapter 2 form the theoretical background for empirical work in chapter 3 and chapter 4. The thesis addressed four research questions, namely âWhich societal and social-economics unmet needs that Internet of Healthcare Things can help to resolve?â, âWhat are the business model innovation for tech companies in China for the smart health industry?â, âWhat are the facilitators and hurdles for implementing telehealth solutionsâ, âAre elderly users willing to use telehealth solutions in China?â.
Both qualitative study and quantitative analysis has been made based on data collected by in depth interviews with stakeholders, focus group study work with urban and rural residents in China.
The digital platform framework was used in chapter 2 as the theoretical framework where as the stakeholder power mapping framework was used in chapter 3. The discretion choice experiment was used in chapter 4 to design questionnaire study while ordered logit regression was used to analyze the data.
Telehealth solutions have great potential to fill in the gap for lack of community healthcare and ensuring health continuity between home care setting, community healthcare and hospitals. There is strong demand for such solutions if they can prove the medical value in managing chronic disease by raising health awareness and lowering health risks by changing the patientsâ lifestyle. Analyzing how to realize the value for preventive healthcare by proving the health-economic value of digital health solutions (telehealth solutions) is the focus of research.
There remain hurdles to build trust for telehealth solutions and the use of AI in healthcare. Next step of research can also be extended to addressing such challenges by analyzing how to improve the transparency of algorithms by disclosing the data source, and how the algorithms were built. Further research can be done on data interoperability between the EHR systems and telehealth solutions. The medical value of telehealth solutions can improve if doctors could interpret data collected from telehealth solutions; furthermore, if doctors could make diagnosis and provide treatment, adjust healthcare management plans based on such data, telehealth solutions then can be included in insurance packages, making them more accessible
Combinatorial Pure Exploration of Causal Bandits
The combinatorial pure exploration of causal bandits is the following online
learning task: given a causal graph with unknown causal inference
distributions, in each round we choose a subset of variables to intervene or do
no intervention, and observe the random outcomes of all random variables, with
the goal that using as few rounds as possible, we can output an intervention
that gives the best (or almost best) expected outcome on the reward variable
with probability at least , where is a given confidence
level. We provide the first gap-dependent and fully adaptive pure exploration
algorithms on two types of causal models -- the binary generalized linear model
(BGLM) and general graphs. For BGLM, our algorithm is the first to be designed
specifically for this setting and achieves polynomial sample complexity, while
all existing algorithms for general graphs have either sample complexity
exponential to the graph size or some unreasonable assumptions. For general
graphs, our algorithm provides a significant improvement on sample complexity,
and it nearly matches the lower bound we prove. Our algorithms achieve such
improvement by a novel integration of prior causal bandit algorithms and prior
adaptive pure exploration algorithms, the former of which utilize the rich
observational feedback in causal bandits but are not adaptive to reward gaps,
while the latter of which have the issue in reverse
Using Steel Grating Platform as Stabilization for Steel Primary I-Beam
One of the basic steps of steel beam design is to define the effective lateral-torsional buckling length of structural elements. According to different kinds of supports of the beam, the effective buckling length can be calculated sketchily by using Eulerâs formula. However, the stiffness of steel gratings together with secondary beams can resist the lateral-torsional buckling of platform primary beams and affect their effective buckling lengths.
The purpose of this Bachelorâs thesis was to build and analyse various structural models of typical steel platforms to determine the effective buckling lengths of platform narrow flange primary I-beams. The results show that gratings and secondary beams provide significant lateral restraint to narrow flange primary I-beams and reduce their effective buckling lengths. But the restraining effects from grating is limited by the properties of beams, stiffness of beam to beam connection and the size of the grating platform. Some additional tests of wider flange primary I-beams were also calculated as a reference to solve how effective stabilization grating platform can provide for wider flange primary beams
Combinatorial Causal Bandits without Graph Skeleton
In combinatorial causal bandits (CCB), the learning agent chooses a subset of
variables in each round to intervene and collects feedback from the observed
variables to minimize expected regret or sample complexity. Previous works
study this problem in both general causal models and binary generalized linear
models (BGLMs). However, all of them require prior knowledge of causal graph
structure. This paper studies the CCB problem without the graph structure on
binary general causal models and BGLMs. We first provide an exponential lower
bound of cumulative regrets for the CCB problem on general causal models. To
overcome the exponentially large space of parameters, we then consider the CCB
problem on BGLMs. We design a regret minimization algorithm for BGLMs even
without the graph skeleton and show that it still achieves
expected regret. This asymptotic regret is the same as the state-of-art
algorithms relying on the graph structure. Moreover, we sacrifice the regret to
to remove the weight gap covered by the asymptotic
notation. At last, we give some discussions and algorithms for pure exploration
of the CCB problem without the graph structure.Comment: 39 pages, 7 figure
Air pollution weaken your muscle? Evidence from a cross-sectional study on sarcopenia in central China
Background: As the world experiences a demographic shift towards aging populations, there will be a significant surge in the number of sarcopenia patients, along with an unprecedented expansion in the associated economic burden. The multitudinous risk factors for sarcopenia have been reported, but evidence for air pollution remains rare. Methods: This cross-sectional study employed multi-stage random sampling to select 1592 participants over 40 years of age from Hubei Province. Daily mean concentrations of air pollutants were collected ChinaHighAirPollutants dataset. Unconditional logistic regression models were utilized to investigate the associations between air pollution and sarcopenia. Results: For each 1Â ÎŒg/m3 increase in PM2.5, PM10, SO2 and O3, there were corresponding elevations of 11.1% [95% confidence interval (CI): 4.9, 17.7], 4.3% (95% CI: 1.4, 7.2), 22.6% (95% CI: 7.2, 40.1) and 9.3% (95% CI: 0.7, 18.7) in the risk of sarcopenia, respectively. The associations of PM2.5/PM10/O3-sarcopenia were more pronounced in females, with corresponding odds ratios (ORs) and 95% CIs of 1.179 (1.062, 1.310), 1.079 (1.027, 1.135) and 1.180 (1.026, 1.358), separately. Additionally, individuals residing in rural areas were more susceptible to the effects of PM2.5 and PM10. Current/ever smokers or drinkers were also at higher risk of developing sarcopenia caused by PM2.5, PM10 and O3 exposure. Mixture analyses show a surge of 48.4% (95% CI: 3.6%, 112.5%) in the likelihood of suffering from sarcopenia, and the joint impacts of the air pollution were mainly driven by PM2.5. Conclusions: Our results produced evidence for a relationship between air pollution exposure and the increased prevalence of sarcopenia in China. Public health and relevant departments should make efforts to prevent sarcopenia, particularly in China experiencing rapid demographic aging
Graphene Oxide Induces Toll-like Receptor 4 (TLR4)-Dependent Necrosis in Macrophages
Graphene and graphene-based nanomaterials display novel and beneficial chemical, electrical, mechanical, and optical characteristics, which endow these nanomaterials with promising applications in a wide spectrum of areas such as electronics and biomedicine. However, its toxicity on health remains unknown and is of great concern. In the present study, we demonstrated that graphene oxide (GO) induced necrotic cell death to macrophages. This toxicity is mediated by activation of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) signaling and subsequently in part <i>via</i> autocrine TNF-α production. Inhibition of TLR4 signaling with a selective inhibitor prevented cell death nearly completely. Furthermore, <i>TLR4</i>-deficient bone marrow-derived macrophages were resistant to GO-triggered necrosis. Similarly, GO did not induce necrosis of HEK293T/TLR4-null cells. Macrophagic cell death upon GO treatment was partially attributed to RIP1-RIP3 complex-mediated programmed necrosis downstream of TNF-α induction. Additionally, upon uptake into macrophages, GO accumulated primarily in cytoplasm causing dramatic morphologic alterations and a significant reduction of the macrophagic ability in phagocytosis. However, macrophagic uptake of GO may not be required for induction of necrosis. GO exposure also caused a large increase of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS), which contributed to the cause of cell death. The combined data reveal that interaction of GO with TLR4 is the predominant molecular mechanism underlying GO-induced macrophagic necrosis; also, cytoskeletal damage and oxidative stress contribute to decreased viability and function of macrophages upon GO treatment