State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council

Abstract We implement a Coulomb rate‐and‐state approach to explore the nonlinear relation between stressing rate and seismicity rate in the Groningen gas field. Coulomb stress rates are calculated, taking into account the 3‐D structural complexity of the field and including the poroelastic effect of the differential compaction due to fault offsets. The spatiotemporal evolution of the Groningen seismicity must be attributed to a combination of both (i) spatial variability in the induced stressing rate history and (ii) spatial heterogeneities in the rate‐and‐state model parameters. Focusing on two subareas of the Groningen field where the observed event rates are very contrasted even though the modeled seismicity rates are of similar magnitudes, we show that the rate‐and‐state model parameters are spatially heterogeneous. For these two subareas, the very low background seismicity rate of the Groningen gas field can explain the long delay in the seismicity response relative to the onset of reservoir depletion. The characteristic periods of stress perturbations, due to gas production fluctuations, are much shorter than the inferred intrinsic time delay of the earthquake nucleation process. In this regime the modeled seismicity rate is in phase with the stress changes. However, since the start of production and for two subareas of our analysis, the Groningen fault system is unsteady and it is gradually becoming more sensitive to the stressing rate.

Abstract Research Summary We develop a political path dependence model that integrates the network embeddedness perspective and the literature on corporate political strategy to understand how firms adapt their political connections when anticorruption efforts lead to the turnover of government officials. We posit that although firms that have close associations with ousted corrupt officials can benefit from both removing existing political connections (“cleaning house”) and developing new connections with their successors (“hosting new guests”), political path dependence enables firms to do the former but constrains them from doing the latter. These effects are magnified when firms are highly dependent on the government, and when the ousted corrupt officials have great political power. Evidence from anticorruption campaigns in China between 2012 and 2018 lends support for our theoretical predictions. Managerial Summary It is common for firms to strive to stay connected with government officials. Of interest is, when political power shifts, can firms “update” their connections by severing ties with politicians who fall out of power and building new ones? Our political path dependent model demonstrates that it may not be a symmetric process. After the downfall and replacements of public officials due to corruption indictments, firms that are more closely associated with ousted, corrupt officials will indeed be more motivated and able to remove existing connections. However, the successors of ousted officials will more likely distance themselves from these firms, thereby undermining the firms' abilities to build new connections with them. Empirical evidence from anticorruption campaigns in China between 2012 and 2018 supports our predictions.

This paper examines the impact of national culture on firm investment efficiency using data of listed companies from 18 countries. We measure culture using Hofstede’s four cultural dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity. We follow extant literature to measure firm investment efficiency. Our results indicate that individualism is positively correlated with firm investment bias and that uncertainty avoidance and masculinity are negatively correlated with firm investment bias. In addition, the influence of national culture on firm investment efficiency was more pronounced during the global financial crisis of 2008. Our results show that national cultures have significant influence on firm investment efficiency. This paper enriches the literature on the relationship between national culture and firm investment and has important implications for the investment decisions of firms.

Black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia L. of the family Fabaceae) is an ecologically and economically important deciduous tree. However, few genomic resources are available for this forest species, and few effective expressed sequence tag-derived simple sequence repeat (EST-SSR) markers have been developed to date. In this study, paired-end sequencing was used to sequence transcriptomes of R. pseudoacacia by the Illumina HiSeq TM2000 platform, and EST-SSR loci were identified by de novo assembly. Furthermore, a total of 1697 primer pairs were successfully designed, from which 286 primers met the selection screening criteria; 94 pairs were randomly selected and tested for validation using polymerase chain reaction amplification. Forty-five primers were verified as polymorphic, with clear bands. The polymorphism information content values were 0.033–0.765, the number of alleles per locus ranged from 2 to 10, and the observed and expected heterozygosities were 0.000–0.931 and 0.035–0.810, respectively, indicating a high level of informativeness. Subsequently, 45 polymorphic EST-SSR loci were tested for amplification efficiency, using the verified primers, in an additional nine species of Leguminosae, 23 loci were amplified in more than three species, of which two loci were amplified successfully in all species. These EST-SSR markers provide a valuable tool for investigating the genetic diversity and population structure of R. pseudoacacia, constructing a DNA fingerprint database, performing quantitative trait locus mapping, and preserving genetic information.

As a hot topic in supply chain management, fuzzy method has been widely used in logistics center location selection to improve the reliability and suitability of the logistics center location selection with respect to the impacts of both qualitative and quantitative factors. However, it does not consider the consistency and the historical assessments accuracy of experts in predecisions. So this paper proposes a multicriteria decision making model based on credibility of decision makers by introducing priority of consistency and historical assessments accuracy mechanism into fuzzy multicriteria decision making approach. In this way, only decision makers who pass the credibility check are qualified to perform the further assessment. Finally, a practical example is analyzed to illustrate how to use the model. The result shows that the fuzzy multicriteria decision making model based on credibility mechanism can improve the reliability and suitability of site selection for the logistics center.

Abstract In the Netherlands, seismicity is induced by the reactivation of faults because of the extraction of gas. The Dutch mining law requires a seismic-risk assessment as part of the license application process. For this purpose, a risk-assessment guideline has been developed over the past decade. The guideline contains three assessment levels. At the first level, a screening occurs to assess the potential of inducing seismicity. On the basis of three key parameters and an analysis of the maximum potential magnitude, each field can be classified for induced-seismicity risk prior to the onset of production. For fields with a low seismicity potential, the existing national monitoring network suffices. At the second level, for fields with medium and high seismicity potential, a qualitative assessment of hazard and risk is required based on a risk-matrix approach. The large Groningen gas field is considered a field with high seismic risk requiring a level 3 assessment. For such fields, a probabilistic seismic-risk assessment and risk-management plan are required. The risk assessment requires special attention because most of the seismic risk is associated with low-probability events that can induce large ground accelerations.

Previous research on corporate governance has extensively explored the motives of corporate fraud. However, this research has paid little attention to employees, the real executors of fraud, resulting in the psychological and behavioral decision-making process of employees who commit fraud in enterprises becoming a "black box" that has not yet been opened. Based on the theory of planned behavior, our study integrates the existing research findings on driving factors of employee fraud and anti-fraud practical experience, extracts the key factors of employee fraud motive, and develops a multidimensional scale of employee fraud motive. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) generates three subscales, comprising 14 items, measuring attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control of employee fraud motive. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supports the reliability, discriminant validity and convergent validity of the new scale. The multiple regression results show that the score of employee fraud motive is positively correlated with the amount of employee fraud occurrence, indicating that the predictive validity of the scale holds. Overall, the scale developed in our study displays good reliability and validity, and is worth spreading.

In decision making, similarity measure and distance between two objects are crucial to be able to determine the relationship between those objects. Many researchers have received much attention for their research on this subject. In this study, we propose two novel similarity measures between hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTSs). In addition, two extensions of Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) are proposed in the hesitant fuzzy linguistic environments. Furthermore, an example of an application concerning traditional Chinese medical diagnosis and an MCDM problem have been given to illustrate the applicability and validation of these similarity measures of HFLTSs. Furthermore, the results of examples demonstrate that the Dice and Jaccard similarity measures are more reasonable than the cosine similarity measure with respect to HFLTSs.

Abstract This study contributes to the existing literature on green innovation by examining the impact of Confucianism culture on green innovation. Drawing on a culture perspective, we argue that Confucianism culture is significantly positively associated with green innovation. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms in the industrial sector from 2007 to 2019, we provide strong evidence to show that corporate green innovation projects are significantly more prevalent for firms surrounded by a strong Confucianism atmosphere compared to those in a weak Confucianism atmosphere. Additionally, we investigate the mediating roles of CEO myopia and employee‐related CSR, revealing that Confucianism culture, through both CEO myopia and employee‐related CSR mechanisms, influences green innovation. Our study contributes to the extant literature by shedding light into the black box of the positive role of Confucianism in green behavior.

Promoting the coupling coordinated development between ecological protection and high-quality development is an important path to achieve sustainable regional development around the world. Taking Guizhou, China as a typical case, this study builds a comprehensive evaluation index system for ecological protection and high-quality development, and then uses the coupling coordination degree model to assess the spatiotemporal characteristics of ecological protection and high-quality development. According to the findings, Guizhou’s ecological protection index and high-quality development index both exhibit an upward trend and a center-edge spatial pattern, but they also exhibit a “spatial misalignment relationship”. The coupling coordination between ecological protection and high-quality development in Guizhou has shown a continuous growth trend from near-disorder to a primary coordination, with a spatial pattern of “central > western > eastern”. This study enriches the knowledge body of sustainable development, helps Guizhou make decisions that are best for ecological protection and high-quality development, and is useful as a reference for other regions and countries.

Interactions between plants and phytophagous insects play an important part in shaping the biochemical composition of plants. Reciprocally plant metabolites can influence major life history traits in these insects and largely contribute to their fitness. Plant rhizospheric microorganisms are an important biotic factor modulating plant metabolites and adaptation to stress. While plant-insects or plant-microorganisms interactions and their consequences on the plant metabolite signature are well-documented, the impact of soil microbial communities on plant defenses against phytophagous insects remains poorly known. In this study, we used oilseed rape (Brassica napus) and the cabbage root fly (Delia radicum) as biological models to tackle this question. Even though D. radicum is a belowground herbivore as a larva, its adult life history traits depend on aboveground signals. We therefore tested whether soil microbial diversity influenced emergence rate and fitness but also fly oviposition behavior, and tried to link possible effects to modifications in leaf and root metabolites. Through a removal-recolonization experiment, 3 soil microbial modalities ("high," "medium," "low") were established and assessed through amplicon sequencing of 16S and 18S ribosomal RNA genes. The "medium" modality in the rhizosphere significantly improved insect development traits. Plant-microorganism interactions were marginally associated to modulations of root metabolites profiles, which could partly explain these results. We highlighted the potential role of plant-microbial interaction in plant defenses against Delia radicum. Rhizospheric microbial communities must be taken into account when analyzing plant defenses against herbivores, being either below or aboveground.

• Sedum vegetation could enhance the thermal performance of roofs in hot-humid regions. • A roof integrating PV and vegetation improved both thermal and energy performance. • The thermal effect of PV panels on roofs increased with decreasing panel height. • The efficiency gains of PV panels above Sedum decreased with higher panel heights. The performance of green roofs (GRs), photovoltaic (PV) roofs (pCRs) and their composite roofs (pGRs) is affected by different climatic conditions and construction designs, whereas the actual performance and optimal constructions in hot-humid areas are not well defined. This study thus conducted a 39-day monitoring experiment, including conventional insulated and waterproof concrete roofs (CRs) as the baseline control group and Sedum-covered GRs, pCRs and pGRs with three PV panel heights (0.3, 0.6, and 0.9 m) as the treated groups. The thermal performance of both the GR and the pCR was better than that of the CR, with the former exhibiting a pronounced advantage. The pGR could effectively mitigate the negative thermal effects associated with roofs featuring Sedum vegetation or PV panels, thereby improving both thermal and energy performance. Compared with CRs, the pGR could lower the exterior and the interior surface temperatures by up to 17.7 °C and 0.8 °C, respectively. The damping factor of the pGR increased by an average of 38.1 %, the time lag decreased by an average of 46.2 %, and the thermal performance index decreased by an average of 3.0 %. Furthermore, the daily total heat gain of the pGR was reduced by 51.6 %−70.9 %, 1.4 %−16.3 %, and 13.1 %−37.4 %, respectively, compared with CRs, GRs, and pCRs. The thermal performance increased with higher PV panel heights. However, while the efficiency of PV panels on Sedum rose by 0.1 %−1.0 %, the gain diminished as the panel height increased. The findings could provide valuable references for improving the sustainability of roofs in hot-humid climates.

Rapid detection and classification of cancer cells with label-free and non-destructive methods are helpful for rapid screening of cancer patients in clinical settings. Here, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) was used for rapid, unlabeled, and non-destructive detection of seven different cell types, including human cancer cells and non-tumorous cells. Au nanoparticles were used as enhanced substrates and directly added to cell surfaces. The single cellular SERS signals could be easily and stably collected in several minutes, and the cells maintained structural integrity over one hour. Different types of cells had unique Raman phenotypes. By applying multivariate statistical analysis to the Raman phenotypes, the cancer cells and non-tumorous cells were accurately identified. The high sensitivity enabled this method to discriminate subtle molecular changes in different cell types, and the accuracy reached 81.2% with principal components analysis and linear discriminant analysis. The technique provided a rapid, unlabeled, and non-destructive method for the detection and identification of various cancer types.

In this paper, we performed density functional theory (DFT) calculations to investigate the geometric structures, electronic structures and visible-light absorbance of MoS2/AlN heterostructure based on van der Waals interaction. The calculated formation energy indicated that the designed MoS2/AlN heterostructure could be experimentally prepared. The Mo-N stacked MoS2/AlN heterostructure exhibited more considerable optical absorption in visible-light region than MoS2 and AlN monolayers. More interestingly, the band gaps were sensitive to strain, which led to an obvious shift of optical absorption spectra along the direction of the infrared region. The two most energetically favorable twisted MoS2/AlN heterostructures (Mo-N and Mo-HAl) had similar band structures, which were different from the non-twisted MoS2/AlN heterostructure. With different rotation angles, their band structures all exhibited an indirect band gap and almost had the same values of indirect band gaps, indicating that the indirect band gaps had no clear dependence on rotation angles.

Applying remote sensing techniques to develop the retrieval models and further to obtain the spatiotemporal information of water quality parameters is necessary for understanding, managing, and protecting lake ecosystems. This study aimed to calibrate and validate the retrieval models for estimating the concentrations of chlorophyll a (CCHL), suspended particulate matter (CSPM), and dissolved organic carbon (CDOC) with the in situ hyperspectral measurements in Poyang Lake, China in 2010 and 2011. The model calibration and validation results indicated that: (1) for CCHL retrieval, significantly strong and moderate correlations existed between the measured and estimated values (with the correlation coefficient r = 0.92 and r = 0.76) using the exponential model and the three-band model, respectively, with biased estimation observed for the exponential model; (2) for retrieving CSPM, there was a strong correlation between the measured and estimated values (r = 0.95) using the exponential model; and (3) no significant correlation between measured and estimated CDOC values was found with our developed models. More work is needed to allow the water quality of Poyang Lake to be accurately and steadily estimated, especially for CCHL and CDOC.

Jingpo Lake is the largest mountain barrier lake in China and plays a key role in breeding, power generation, and providing a source of drinking water. Microbes are important participants in the formation of lake resources and energy cycles. However, the ecological protection of Jingpo Lake has faced serious challenges in recent years. In this study, we investigate the responses of the microbial community’s composition of sediments at five locations to an environmental gradient representing water quality and water-depth changes using a metagenomic sequence. We found that the diversity and composition of the microbiota sediments were altered spatially and correlated with the physicochemical factors of water samples. In the microbial community, relatively lower Chao1, alternating conditional expectations, and Shannon and Simpson indices were found at the shallowest location with higher total phosphorus and chlorophyll a. Furthermore, the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analysis revealed that the metabolism function was the most abundant functional classification in Jingpo Lake. The levels of total phosphorus, chlorophyll a and pH were positively correlated with the abundance of Flavobacterium and the bacterial functions of the carbohydrate metabolism and amino acid metabolism. In conclusion, our results reveal the physical and chemical characteristics, as well as the microbial community characteristics, of Jingpo Lake, which provides new insights for studying the relationship between environmental factors and the bacterial community distribution of freshwater ecosystems, in addition to also providing a theoretical basis for the environmental monitoring and protection of the lake.

As in many other sectors, artificial intelligence has an impact on health. Artificial intelligence anxiety may occur because of a lack of knowledge about the effects of artificial intelligence, its outcomes, and how it will be used, as well as potential labor concerns. This study aims to determine the artificial intelligence anxiety levels of nursing students and examine whether there is a relationship with their self-efficacy levels. This cross-sectional study, conducted at a public nursing school in Turkey, involved 317 nursing students. Data were collected using a personal information form, the General Self-efficacy Scale, and the Artificial Intelligence Anxiety Scale. There was a negative, moderately strong correlation between the General Self-efficacy Scale and the learning subdimension ( r = -0.369) and the Artificial Intelligence Anxiety Scale ( r = -0.313) and a weak negative correlation between the job replacement subdimension ( r = -0.215), sociotechnical blindness subdimension ( r = -0.232), and artificial intelligence configuration subdimension ( r = -0.211). The General Self-efficacy Scale has a significant negative effect on the Artificial Intelligence Anxiety Scale ( β = -.313, t = -5.845, P < .05). These findings suggest that higher self-efficacy is associated with lower artificial intelligence anxiety. It is recommended to enhance technical competence and self-efficacy in nursing education.

'Requirements for human haematopoietic stem/progenitor cells' is the first set of guidelines on human haematopoietic stem/progenitor cells in China, jointly drafted and agreed upon by experts from the Chinese Society for Stem Cell Research. This standard specifies the technical requirements, inspection methods, inspection rules, instructions for usage, labelling requirements, packaging requirements, storage requirements and transportation requirements for human haematopoietic stem/progenitor cells, which is applicable to the quality control for human haematopoietic stem/progenitor cells. We hope that publication of these guidelines will promote institutional establishment, acceptance and execution of proper protocols, and accelerate the international standardization of human haematopoietic stem/progenitor cells for applications.

Gene expression programming (GEP), improved genetic programming (GP), has become a popular tool for data mining. However, like other evolutionary algorithms, it tends to suffer from premature convergence and slow convergence rate when solving complex problems. In this paper, we propose an enhanced GEP algorithm, called CTSGEP, which is inspired by the principle of minimal free energy in thermodynamics. In CTSGEP, it employs a component thermodynamical selection (CTS) operator to quantitatively keep a balance between the selective pressure and the population diversity during the evolution process. Experiments are conducted on several benchmark datasets from the UCI machine learning repository. The results show that the performance of CTSGEP is better than the conventional GEP and some GEP variations.

As China is transforming from a planned economy a market‐oriented economy, private enterprise plays a prominent role in China's economy today. This paper introduces the status of private enterprise and focuses on its records management. By explaining the changes in China's policy towards the private sector, it deals mainly with practice in both archive administration and the records management of private companies. Government archives administration changed along with national policy from serving only the public sector to serving both public and private sectors evenly. For the private sector, archival consciousness is the key element in its fledging stage of records management. The paper also analyzes the characteristics of private companies that are different from state‐owned ones and the advantages and disadvantages of records management, and predicts some aspects of its development.