Investigating the impact of renewable energy, international trade, tourism, and foreign direct investment on carbon emission in developing as well as developed countries.

Our research examined the renewable energy consumption, foreign direct investment, international trade, and tourism impact on carbon dioxide discharge using system GMM, FMOLS, and DOLS models in selected developed countries of Europe and developing countries of Asia Pacific of the global employment for a period spanning 2000 to 2020. The results indicate that foreign direct investment and tourism comprise a positive affiliation with carbon discharge. Simultaneously, renewable energy utilization with international trade significantly negatively relates to carbon emissions in developed countries.

Capturing urban heat island formation in a subtropical city of China based on Landsat images: implications for sustainable urban development.

Land use/cover change is the main driving force of urban expansion which influences human-environment interactions. Generally, the formation of urban heat islands (UHIs) can be referred to as a negative "by-product" of urbanization. In the context of rapid urbanization, the present paper aims to capture the landscape changes and three patterns of urban expansion (i.

Research on Components Assembly Platform of Biological Sequences Alignment Algorithm.

After years of development, the complexity of the biological sequence alignment algorithm is gradually increasing, and the lack of high abstract level domain research leads to the complexity of its algorithm development and improvement. By applying the idea of software components to the design and development of algorithms, the development efficiency and reliability of biological sequence alignment algorithms can be effectively improved. The component assembly platform applies related assembly technology, which simplifies the operation difficulty of component assembly and facilitates the maintenance and optimization of the algorithm.

Bidirectional relationships between weight stigma and pediatric obesity: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

This study for the first time quantified concurrent and bidirectional relationships between weight stigma and weight status in children, with age and gender as moderators. A literature search was conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycINFO for studies examined associations between weight stigma and weight status among children aged 6-18 years. Twenty-five studies (20 cross-sectional studies and five longitudinal studies) from six countries with 101,036 participants were included in review, and 18 were included in meta-analysis.

A longitudinal study of sleep, weight status, and weight-related behaviors: Childhood Obesity Study in China Mega-cities.

Background: The aim of the study was to examine correlates of sleep and assess its associations with weight status and related behaviors.

Methods: Data were collected in 2015-2017 for 3298 children aged 6-17 years and their parents in 5 Chinese mega-cities. One thousand six hundred and ninety-one children with measured weight, height, and waist circumference in ≥2 surveys were included for longitudinal data analyses.

Pursuing sources of heterogeneity in modeling clustered population.

Researchers often have to deal with heterogeneous population with mixed regression relationships, increasingly so in the era of data explosion. In such problems, when there are many candidate predictors, it is not only of interest to identify the predictors that are associated with the outcome, but also to distinguish the true sources of heterogeneity, that is, to identify the predictors that have different effects among the clusters and thus are the true contributors to the formation of the clusters. We clarify the concepts of the source of heterogeneity that account for potential scale differences of the clusters and propose a regularized finite mixture effects regression to achieve heterogeneity pursuit and feature selection simultaneously.

Current Status and Temporal Trend of Potentially Toxic Elements Pollution in Agricultural Soil in the Yangtze River Delta Region: A Meta-Analysis.

Potentially toxic elements (PTEs) pollution in the agricultural soil of China, especially in developed regions such as the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in eastern China, has received increasing attention. However, there are few studies on the long-term assessment of soil pollution by PTEs over large regions. Therefore, in this study, a meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate the current state and temporal trend of PTEs pollution in the agricultural land of the Yangtze River Delta.

Inhibition of ROS/NLRP3/Caspase-1 mediated pyroptosis attenuates cadmium-induced apoptosis in duck renal tubular epithelial cells.

Cadmium (Cd) is an occupational and environmental pollutant, which mainly causes nephrotoxicity by damaging renal proximal tubular cells. To evaluate the effects of Cd on pyroptosis and the relationship between pyroptosis and apoptosis in duck renal tubular epithelial cells, the cells were cultured with 3CdSO·8HO (0, 2.5, 5.

Cadmium and molybdenum co-induce pyroptosis via ROS/PTEN/PI3K/AKT axis in duck renal tubular epithelial cells.

Cadmium (Cd) and excess molybdenum (Mo) are harmful to animals, but the combined nephrotoxic mechanism of Cd and Mo in duck remains poorly elucidated. To assess joint effects of Cd and Mo on pyroptosis via ROS/PTEN/PI3K/AKT axis in duck renal tubular epithelial cells, cells were cultured with 3CdSO·8HO (4.0 μM), (NH)MoO·4HO (500.

Growing fast food consumption and obesity in Asia: Challenges and implications.

It is widely believed that better access to fast food (FF) outlets increases FF consumption and thus the risk of obesity; yet, thus far, there are limited results to support this conclusion in Asian countries. A recent study by Hall and his colleagues (in press) examined the cross-sectional relationship between FF restaurant density and the likelihood of being overweight or obese among 1388 female Filipino migrant workers living in Macao, China. It found that FF restaurant density within a 0.

Inhibition of autophagy aggravates molybdenum-induced mitochondrial dysfunction by aggravating oxidative stress in duck renal tubular epithelial cells.

Excessive molybdenum (Mo) has adverse effects on animals. To elucidate the effects of autophagy on Mo-induced nephrotoxicity, the duck renal tubular epithelial cells were cultured in medium in absence and presence of (NH)MoO.4HO (0, 480, 720, 960 μM Mo), 3-Methyladenine (3-MA) (2.

Complex Network Construction of Univariate Chaotic Time Series Based on Maximum Mean Discrepancy.

The analysis of chaotic time series is usually a challenging task due to its complexity. In this communication, a method of complex network construction is proposed for univariate chaotic time series, which provides a novel way to analyze time series. In the process of complex network construction, how to measure the similarity between the time series is a key problem to be solved.

Measuring the Efficiency of Fiscal Policies for Environmental Pollution Control and the Spatial Effect of Fiscal Decentralization in China.

This paper uses both fiscal expenditure policy and fiscal revenue policy as input indicators and selects environmental pollution control results reflecting different forms and sources of pollution as output indicators. The efficiency of fiscal policies for environmental pollution control (EFPE) of 30 provincial-level administrative divisions in China from 2007 to 2017 is measured by adopting the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method. Then, the spatial effect of fiscal decentralization on EFPE is empirically analyzed by using the spatial lag model (SLM).

Social Media Activities, Emotion Regulation Strategies, and Their Interactions on People's Mental Health in COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the general population's life worldwide. People may spend more time on social media because of policies like "work at home". Using a cross-sectional dataset collected through an online survey in February 2020, in China, we examined (1) the relationships between social media activities and people's mental health status and (2) the moderation effect of emotional-regulation strategies.

Social Exclusion and Green Consumption: A Costly Signaling Approach.

This article is dedicated to examine the impact of social exclusion (i.e., being rejected, isolated, excluded or ignored by other individuals or groups in society) on consumers' intention of green consumption.

Cadmium and molybdenum co-exposure triggers autophagy via CYP450s/ROS pathway in duck renal tubular epithelial cells.

Cadmium (Cd) and excessive molybdenum (Mo) are detrimental to animals, but the combined nephrotoxic impacts of Cd and Mo on duck are still unclear. To evaluate the combined impacts of Cd and Mo on autophagy via Cytochrome P450s (CYP450s)/reactive oxygen species (ROS) pathway, duck renal tubular epithelial cells were treated with 3CdSO·8HO (4.0 μM Cd), (NH)MoO·4HO (500.

Benefits of environmental information disclosure in managing water pollution: evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China.

Environmental information disclosure (EID) is playing an increasingly important role in water pollution management. However, since EID is hard to measure and other endogeneity problems, it is difficult to capture the causal inference between the two. Using the difference-in-difference method, this paper takes advantage of the Pollution Source Regulatory Information Disclosure Index (PITI) program promulgated by China in 2008 as a quasi-natural experiment to empirically capture the net effect of EID on water pollution management and its impact mechanism.

Inhibition of ROS/NLRP3/Caspase-1 mediated pyroptosis alleviates excess molybdenum-induced apoptosis in duck renal tubular epithelial cells.

Objective: Excess molybdenum (Mo) is harmful to the body, and the kidney is the vital target organ for Mo exposure. This study focused on the impacts of excess Mo on pyroptosis and the relationship between pyroptosis and apoptosis in kidney.

Methods: The duck renal tubular epithelial cells were treated with (NH)MoO·4HO (0, 480, 720 and 960 μM Mo), N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) (100 μM), Z-YVAD-fluoromethylketone (YVAD) (10 μM) and the combination of Mo and NAC or YVAD for 12 h.

TOPSIS-based entropy measure for intuitionistic trapezoidal fuzzy sets and application to multi-attribute decision making.

As an extension of intuitionistic fuzzy numbers, intuitionistic trapezoidal fuzzy numbers (ITrFNs) are useful in expressing complex fuzzy information with an 'interval value'. This study focuses on multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) problems with unknown attribute weights under an ITrFN environment. We initially present an entropy measure for ITrFNs by using the relative closeness of technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution.

The influence of COVID-19 on agricultural economy and emergency mitigation measures in China: A text mining analysis.

Understanding the influence of COVID-19 on China's agricultural economy and the Chinese government's emergency measures to ease the economic impacts of viral spread can offer urgently-needed lessons while this virus continues to spread across the globe. Thus, this study collected over 750,000 words upon the topic of COVID-19 and agriculture from the largest two media channels in China: WeChat and Sina Weibo, and employed web crawler technology and text mining method to explore the influence of COVID-19 on agricultural economy and mitigation measures in China. The results show that: (1) the impact of COVID-19 on China's agricultural economy at the very first phase is mainly reflected in eight aspects as crop production, agricultural products supply, livestock production, farmers' income and employment, economic crop development, agricultural products sales model, leisure agriculture development, and agricultural products trade.

Association between economic development level and tuberculosis registered incidence in Shandong, China.

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the major infectious diseases that seriously endanger people's health. In Shandong province, the relationship between the level of economic development and TB incidence has not been studied. This study aims to provide more research basis for the government to prevent and control TB by exploring the impact of different economic factors on TB incidence.

Foreign investors and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China.

This study examines whether and how foreign investors affect firm-specific crash risk. Based on China's stock market, we show that foreign investors significantly increase stock price crash risk and the positive association is more pronounced in firms with high levels of information asymmetry or efficient internal control. We address endogeneity issue using a quasi-natural experiment, namely, the revision of Foreign Investment Industrial Guidance Catalog in 2011, and results still hold.

Machine learning-based mortality rate prediction using optimized hyper-parameter.

Objective And Background: The current scenario of the Pandemic of COVID-19 demands multi-channel investigations and predictions. A variety of prediction models are available in the literature. The majority of these models are based on extrapolating by the parameters related to the diseases, which are history-oriented.

The effects of heterogeneous environmental regulations on water pollution control: Quasi-natural experimental evidence from China.

The policy effect of environmental regulations on water pollution has been widely discussed, but few studies have empirically tested the relative effectiveness of heterogeneous environmental regulations-command-and-control environmental regulations and market-based environmental regulations-on water pollution control. Using the difference-in-difference method, this paper takes advantage of two Chinese policies-the National Key Ecological Functional Areas Policy (NKEFAP), which can be regarded as a command-and-control environmental regulation, and the Transfer Payment of Ecological Functional Areas Policy (TPEFAP), which can be regarded as a market-based environmental regulation-as quasi-natural experiments to examine the relative effectiveness of different environmental regulations on water pollution control. The results show that both the NKEFAP and TPEFAP can reduce water pollution, but the reduction effect is higher for the TPEFAP than for the NKEFAP.

Inhibition of autophagy enhances cadmium-induced apoptosis in duck renal tubular epithelial cells.

Increasing evidence indicates autophagy and apoptosis are involved in the toxicity mechanism of heavy metals. Our previous studies showed that cadmium (Cd) could induce autophagy and apoptosis in duck kidneys in vivo, nevertheless, the interaction between them has yet to be elucidated. Herein, the cells were either treated with 3CdSO·8HO (0, 1.