Engaging Central Banks in Climate Change? The Mix of Monetary and Climate Policy

Given the recent debate on central banks’ role under climate change, this research theoretically investigates the mix of monetary and climate policy and provides some insights for central banks who are considering their engagement in the climate change issue. The “climate-augmented” monetary policy is pioneeringly proposed and studied. We build an extended Environmental Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (E-DSGE) model as the method. By this model, we find the following results. First, the making process of monetary policy should consider the existing climate policy and environmental regulation. Second, the coefficients in traditional monetary policy can be better set to enhance welfare when climate policy is given. This provides a way to optimise the policy mix. Third, if a typical form climate target is augmented into the monetary policy rule, a dilemma could be created. This means that it has some risks for central banks to care for the climate proactively by using the narrow monetary policy. At the current stage, central banks could and should use other measures to help the climate and the financial stability

Debromination of Hexabromocyclododecane by Anaerobic Consortium and Characterization of Functional Bacteria

A microbial consortium which can efficiently remove hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) under anaerobic condition have been successfully enriched over 300 days. Under the optimal conditions, the degradation efficiency was 92.4% removal after treatment of 12 days with original addition of 500 μg/L HBCD, yielding 321.7 μg/L bromide in total as well. A typical debromination product, dibromocyclododecadiene (DBCD), was detected during the degradation process. The debromination profiles of three main HBCD diastereomers fitted well with first-order model (R2: 0.96–0.99), with the rate constants ranging from 1.3 × 10-1 to 1.9 × 10-1. The microbial community analysis by high throughput sequencing showed that the composition of the microbial communities varied dynamically with time and the population of functional bacteria increase sharply after enrichment. The population of Bacteroidetes increased from 5 to 47%. And some bacteria which are relatively minority in population at the beginning, such as Azospira oryzae (OTU2), Microbacterium (OTU13), and Achromobacter insolitus (OTU39) increased more than 22 times after enrichment (from 0.5 to 13%, 12%, and 11%, respectively). However, no reported dehalogenating bacteria were found after enrichment. And the contribution for debromination may come from new dehalogenating bacteria. All in all, the present study provided in-depth information on anaerobic microbial communities for HBCD removal by debromination

Fatigue Crack Propagation Behavior of RC Beams Strengthened with CFRP under High Temperature and High Humidity Environment

Numerical and experimental methods were applied to investigate fatigue crack propagation behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) beams strengthened with a new type carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) named as carbon fiber laminate (CFL) subjected to hot-wet environment. J-integral of a central crack in the strengthened beam under three-point bending load was calculated by ABAQUS. In finite element model, simulation of CFL-concrete interface was based on the bilinear cohesive zone model under hot-wet environment and indoor atmosphere. And, then, fatigue crack propagation tests were carried out under high temperature and high humidity (50°C, 95% R · H) environment pretreatment and indoor atmosphere (23°C, 78% R · H) to obtain a-N curves and crack propagation rate, da/dN, of the strengthened beams. Paris-Erdogan formula was developed based on the numerical analysis and environmental fatigue tests

Security boundaries of an optical power limiter for protecting quantum key distribution systems

Unauthorized light injection has always been a vital threat to the practical security of a quantum key distribution (QKD) system. An optical power limiter (OPL) based on the thermo-optical defocusing effect has been proposed and implemented, limiting the injected hacking light. As a hardware countermeasure, the performance of the OPL under various light-injection attacks shall be tested to clarify the security boundary before being widely deployed. To investigate the OPL's security boundary in quantum cryptography, we comprehensively test and analyse the behavior of OPL under continuous-wave (c.w.) light-injection attacks and pulse illumination attacks with pulses' repetition rate at 0.5-Hz,40-MHz, and 1-GHz. The testing results illuminate the security boundary of the OPL, which allows one to properly employ the OPL in the use cases. The methodology of testing and analysis proposed here is applicable to other power-limitation components in a QKD system.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figure

Effidit: Your AI Writing Assistant

In this technical report, we introduce Effidit (Efficient and Intelligent Editing), a digital writing assistant that facilitates users to write higher-quality text more efficiently by using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Previous writing assistants typically provide the function of error checking (to detect and correct spelling and grammatical errors) and limited text-rewriting functionality. With the emergence of large-scale neural language models, some systems support automatically completing a sentence or a paragraph. In Effidit, we significantly expand the capacities of a writing assistant by providing functions in five categories: text completion, error checking, text polishing, keywords to sentences (K2S), and cloud input methods (cloud IME). In the text completion category, Effidit supports generation-based sentence completion, retrieval-based sentence completion, and phrase completion. In contrast, many other writing assistants so far only provide one or two of the three functions. For text polishing, we have three functions: (context-aware) phrase polishing, sentence paraphrasing, and sentence expansion, whereas many other writing assistants often support one or two functions in this category. The main contents of this report include major modules of Effidit, methods for implementing these modules, and evaluation results of some key methods.Comment: Technical report for Effidit. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2202.0641

Extremely discrepant mutation spectrum of SLC26A4 between Chinese patients with isolated Mondini deformity and enlarged vestibular aqueduct

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mutations in <it>SLC26A4 </it>cause Pendred syndrome (hearing loss with goiter) or DFNB4 (non-syndromic hearing loss with inner ear malformation, such as enlarged vestibular aqueduct or Mondini deformity). The relationship between mutations in <it>SLC26A4 </it>and Mondini deformity without enlarged vestibular aqueduct has not been studied in any Chinese deaf population. The purpose of this study was to assess whether mutations in the <it>SLC26A4 </it>gene cause Mondini deformity without an enlarged vestibular aqueduct (isolated Mondini deformity) in a Chinese population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In total, 144 patients with sensorineural hearing loss were included and subjected to high-resolution temporal bone CT. Among them, 28 patients with isolated Mondini dysplasia (MD group), 50 patients with enlarged vestibular aqueduct with Mondini dysplasia (EVA with MD group), 50 patients with enlarged vestibular aqueduct without Mondini dysplasia (EVA group), and 16 patients with other types of inner ear malformations (IEM group) were identified. The coding exons of <it>SLC26A4 </it>were analyzed in all subjects.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>DNA sequence analysis of <it>SLC26A4 </it>was performed in all 144 patients. In the different groups, the detection rate of the <it>SLC26A4 </it>mutation differed. In the isolated MD group, only one single allelic mutation in <it>SLC26A4 </it>was found in one patient (1/28, 3.6%). In the EVA with MD group, biallelic and monoallelic <it>SLC26A4 </it>mutations were identified in 46 patients (46/50, 92.0%) and three patients (3/50, 6.0%), respectively. Also, in the EVA group, biallelic and monoallelic <it>SLC26A4 </it>mutations were identified in 46 patients (46/50, 92.0%) and three patients (3/50, 6.0%), respectively. These percentages were identical to those in the EVA plus MD group. Only two patients carried monoallelic mutations of the <it>SLC26A4 </it>gene in the IEM group (2/16, 12.5%). There were significant differences in the frequency of <it>SLC26A4 </it>mutation among the groups (P < 0.001). The detection rate of <it>SLC26A4 </it>mutation in the isolated MD group was significantly lower than in the EVA group (with or without MD; P < 0.001), and there was no significant difference in the detection rate of <it>SLC26A4 </it>between the MD group and IEM group (P > 0.5).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Although mutations in the <it>SLC26A4 </it>gene were frequently found in Chinese EVA patients with and without MD, there was no evidence to show a relationship between isolated MD and the <it>SLC26A4 </it>gene in the Chinese population examined. Hearing impairment in patients with isolated MD may be caused by factors other than mutations in the <it>SLC26A4 </it>gene.</p

Volume-regulated Cl- current: contributions of distinct Cl- channel and localized Ca2+ signals.

The swelling-activated chloride current (ICl,swell) is induced when a cell swells and plays a central role in maintaining cell volume in response to osmotic stress. The major contributor of ICl,swell is the volume regulated anion channel (VRAC). LRRC8A (SWELL1) was recently identified as an essential component of VRAC but the mechanisms of VRAC activation are still largely unknown; moreover, other Cl- channels, such as anoctamin 1 (ANO1) were also suggested to contribute to ICl,swell. In this present study, we investigated the roles of LRRC8A and ANO1 in activation of ICl,swell; we also explored the role of intracellular Ca2+ in ICl,swell activation. We used CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing approach, electrophysiology, live fluorescent imaging, selective pharmacology and other approaches to show that both LRRC8A and ANO1 can be activated by cell swelling in HEK293 cells. Yet, both channels contribute biophysically and pharmacologically distinct components to ICl,swell, with LRRC8A being the major component. Cell swelling induced oscillatory Ca2+ transients and these Ca2+ signals were required to activate both, the LRRC8A- and ANO1-dependent components of ICl,swell. Both ICl,swell components required localized rather than global Ca2+ for activation. Interestingly, while intracellular Ca2+ was necessary and sufficient to activate ANO1, it was necessary but not sufficient to activate LRRC8A-mediated currents. Finally, Ca2+ transients linked to the ICl,swell activation were mediated by the GPCR-independent PLC isoforms