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Based on China’s mandatory requirement for listed firms to implement online voting in their annual general shareholder meetings, we investigate whether and how minority shareholders influence corporate environmental performance (CEP). We use the difference-in-difference approach and find that the implementation of online voting promotes minority shareholders’ participation in shareholder meetings, which, in turn, leads to improved CEP of listed firms. We discover that “local pollution” exposure and “the increasing awareness of listed firms’ environmental risks” are the main motives of minority shareholders concerning listed firms’ environmental performance. Furthermore, we find that the minority shareholders improve CEP of listed firms through influencing groups with greater bargaining power.

This paper explores the mispricing relative to the capital asset pricing model through an equilibrium model. We find that both the strong risk preference dependent on good market states and strong risk aversion dependent on bad market states can produce high mispricing. Choosing the China stock market, the largest emerging market dominated by individual investors and known for its volatile nature in a short history as our sample, the empirical results also support our theoretical findings. Overall, our paper sheds light on the mispricing caused by the investor’s risk preference reference-dependent on market states.

Abstract The new Silk Road provides cross-border-e-commerce firms with an opportunity to widen their markets. Under this circumstance, the preference recognition of countries and inventory allocation among overseas warehouses both become critical issues to solve. Three Chinese smartphone brands, including HTC, Huawei, and MI, are selected in this chapter for their relatively enormous sales. DHgate and AliExpress websites are chosen as platforms to analyze the sales for data availability. This chapter first depicts key features of the sales and then, based on which, divide countries into several groups according to their preference for phones by cluster analysis. Then, based on the results of cluster analysis, this chapter further models the inventory assignment among the seven major overseas warehouses that were built by AliExpress in 2015. The results show that the HTC seems to be pursuing the “high value with high price” strategy, while the other two companies seem to be pursuing a hybrid strategy of “low-price” strategy and “high value with low price” strategy. This chapter also provides an assignment pattern of inventory among the overseas warehouses based on the real data of sales and costs.

The repair of large-area irregular bone defects is one of the complex problems in orthopedic clinical treatment. The bone repair scaffolds currently studied include electrospun membrane, hydrogel, bone cement, 3D printed bone tissue scaffolds, etc., among which 3D printed polymer-based scaffolds Bone scaffolds are the most promising for clinical applications. This is because 3D printing is modeled based on the im-aging results of actual bone defects so that the printed scaffolds can perfectly fit the bone defect, and the printed components can be adjusted to promote Osteogenesis. This review introduces a variety of 3D printing technologies and bone healing processes, reviews previous studies on the characteristics of commonly used natural or synthetic polymers, and clinical applications of 3D printed bone tissue scaffolds, analyzes and elaborates the characteristics of ideal bone tissue scaffolds, from t he progress of 3D printing bone tissue scaffolds were summarized in many aspects. The challenges and potential prospects in this direction were discussed.

The rapid spread of monkeypox in multiple countries has resulted in a global public health threat and has caused international concerns since May 2022. Poxvirus encoded M2 protein is a member of the poxvirus immune evasion family and plays roles in host immunomodulation via the regulation of innate immune response mediated by the NF-κB pathway and adaptive immune response mediated by B7 ligands. However, the interaction of monkeypox virus (MPXV) M2 with B7 ligands and structural insight into poxviral M2 function have remained elusive. Here we reveal that MPXV M2, co-existing as a hexamer and a heptamer, recognizes human B7.1 and B7.2 (hB7.1/2) with high avidities. The binding of oligomeric MPXV M2 interrupts the interactions of hB7.1/2 with CD28 and CTLA4 and subverts T cell activation mediated by B7.1/2 costimulatory signals. Cryo-EM structures of M2 in complex with hB7.1/2 show that M2 binds to the shallow concave face of hB7.1/2 and displays sterically competition with CD28 and CTLA4 for the binding to hB7.1/2. Our findings provide structural mechanisms of poxviral M2 function and immune evasion deployed by poxviruses. The B7 family proteins B7.1 (CD80) and B7.2 (CD86) are two well-studied costimulatory ligands that play critical roles in host T cell immunity against viral infection. In this study, the authors show that oligomeric M2 protein encoded by monkeypox virus serves as a viral decoy receptor and inhibits T cell activation mediated by hB7.1/2 co-stimulation via the blockade of CD28 binding to human B7.1/2, providing molecular mechanisms of poxvirus M2 function and immune evasion.

The axial field flux-switching magnetic gear composite machine (AFFSMGCM) is a new type of magnetic field modulation machine with a dual-rotor. Due to the complicated structure of the AFFSMGCM and the nonlinear characteristic of dual magnetic fields coupling, a divided-layer varying-network magnetic circuit (VNMC) method is developed to optimize the machine to obtain a high calculation accuracy and reduce operation time. First, an accurate VNMC model is established according to the magnetic field distribution of an AFFSMGCM. The magnetic field coupling of the rotor and stator permanent magnets (PMs) is performed by the rotary magnetic modulation ring (RMMR). Thus, the magnetic circuit of the RMMR is divided into two layers to reduce the influence of magnetic saturation and leakage flux on the calculation accuracy of the permeances. Then the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method is used to achieve multi-objective optimization of the AFFSMGCM based on the divided-layer VNMC for achieving a large torque, low torque ripple and high efficiency. Next, a multi-physics field coupling analysis is carried out to verify the optimized AFFSMGCM. Finally, a prototype is built and experiments are carried out to validate the AFFSMGCM.

In this study, we aimed to elucidate the mechanism through which treatment with slight water loss combined with methyl jasmonate (MeJA) regulates gray mold development in Actinidia arguta, focusing on reactive oxygen species (ROS) and phenylpropanoid metabolism. The results showed that water loss alone, MeJA alone, and their combination each reduced the incidence of disease, with the combined treatment showing the greatest efficacy. At the end of the storage period, the combined treatment enhanced the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), polyphenol oxidase (PPO), peroxidase (POD), phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL), cinnamate 4-hydroxylase (C4H), and 4-coumarate-CoA ligase (4CL). It also increased the accumulation of defense-related substances (total phenol and lignin contents) and up-regulated AaPAL, Aa4CL, AaC4H, and AaC3′H gene expression. Furthermore, the combined treatment reduced the disease severity index from 60% to 16% and delayed onset by 2 d. In conclusion, slight water loss combined with MeJA treatment effectively suppressed gray mold. This effect may be attributed to activation of ROS metabolism, induction of phenylpropanoid metabolism, and up-regulation of related genes, which enhanced the resistance of the fruit to gray mold.

The auxin indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) is a type of endogenous plant hormone with a low concentration in plants, but it plays an important role in their growth and development. The gene family was found to be an early sensitive auxin gene with a complicated way of regulating growth and development in plants. The regulation of root growth and development by family genes has been reported in Arabidopsis, rice and maize. In this study, subcellular localization indicated that ZmIAA1-ZmIAA6 primarily played a role in the nucleus. A thermogram analysis showed that genes were highly expressed in the roots, which was also confirmed by the maize tissue expression patterns. In maize overexpressing , the length of the main root, the number of lateral roots, and the stalk height at the seedling stage were significantly increased compared with those of the wild type, while the EMS mutant was significantly reduced. The total number of roots and the dry weight of maize overexpressing at the mature stage were also significantly increased compared with those of the wild type, while those of the mutant was significantly reduced. Yeast one-hybrid experiments showed that could specifically bind to the promoter region. Bimolecular fluorescence complementation and yeast two-hybridization indicated an interaction between ZmIAA5 and ZmARF5. Taken together, the results of this study indicate that regulates maize root growth and development by interacting with under the specific binding of .