Explore the vast range of titles available.

This book offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date assessment of China's domestic and international migration. Restructuring economic development requires large numbers of educated and skilled talents, but this effort comes at a time when the size of China's domestic workforce is shrinking. In response, both national and regional governments in China have been keen to encourage overseas Chinese talents and professionals to return to the country. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has initiated a number of policies to attract international highly-skilled talents and enhance the country's competitiveness, and some Chinese policies have started attracting foreign talents, who are coming to the country to work, and even to stay. Since Chinese policies, mechanisms, and administration efforts to attract and retain skilled domestic or overseas talents are helping to reshape China's economy and are significantly affecting the cooperation on migration and talent mobility, these aspects, in addition to being of scholarly and research interest, hold considerable commercial potential.

This paper examines the effects of time-of-use (TOU) pricing on distributed renewable energy (DRE) investment for a non-power generating firm. We develop an electricity consumption cost-minimization model by considering the intermittent generation as well as the firm’s electricity consumption. It has been found that implementing full retail prices compensation for the surplus renewable electricity is probably not good as it may lead to DRE over-investment. Moreover, we find that the firm’s optimal investment strategy is not necessarily sensitive to the price signal of TOU pricing (i.e., the ratio of peak to off-peak price). Particularly, when the service-level difference in meeting a firm’s electricity consumption between peak and off-peak periods by adopting DRE technology is above a critical threshold in relation to the peak time, a strong price signal will not promote the firm’s optimal DRE capacity investment. This paper yields a policy insight that “getting the time right” may be more important than “getting the price right” in terms of enabling DRE investment for TOU pricing design.

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are responsible for cancer formation, recurrence and drug resistance. c-Myc, one of the core markers for stem cells, has recently been considered to serve as a link between malignancy and 'stemness'. However, the precise function of c-Myc in colon CSCs is still unclear. In the present study, a subpopulation of colon CSCs expressing a CD133 surface phenotype was isolated from the human HT-29 cell line, which possess greater tumor sphere-forming efficiency and have higher expression of 'stemness'-associated genes compared with CD133-negative cells. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that c-Myc was highly expressed in CD133+ colon CSCs. Knockdown of c-Myc expression with small interfering RNA in colon CSCs can significantly inhibit tumor sphere formation, reduce the invasive and migratory capacity of CD133+ cells in vitro, and suppress the tumorigenicity of colon CSCs in vivo. In addition, it was suggested that c-Myc silencing may sensitize colon CSCs to chemotherapy-induced cytotoxicity via the downregulation of ABCG2 and ABCB5. These findings support a central role for c-Myc in maintaining the self-renewing and chemoresistant properties of colon CSCs.

With the acceleration of China’s urbanization process, the urban transportation problem has become increasingly serious. The rapid expansion of private vehicle ownership, in particular, has become one of the barriers to the realization of sustainable urban transition. This paper applied the Gompertz model to analyze the non-linear relationship between private vehicle ownership and per capita GDP in China using provincial data. In addition, we forecasted private vehicle ownership for 31 Chinese provinces for the period of 2019–2030 and predicted the time to reach the upper limit of 1000 people vehicle ownership of each province according to different scenarios. The main findings revealed that the number of private vehicles owned in China’s provinces was in line with “S”-shaped development and was currently in the process of accelerated growth. Under the scenario of an annual per capita GDP growth rate of 6%, China’s private vehicle ownership will reach 246 million, 375 million, and 475 million in 2020, 2025, and 2030, respectively. This indicates that China’s expansion of private vehicle ownership will generate significant challenges, such as on-road vehicle-related fossil fuel consumption, pollutant emissions, traffic congestion, and scrapped vehicle recycling. These issues will become increasingly prominent. In provinces such as Hubei, Hebei, Hunan, and other central provinces that have a 50–60% urbanization rate, the large potential for income promotion will significantly stimulate the increase in private vehicle ownership, and the upper limit of 1000 people vehicle ownership in each province will be reached in 2032, 2037, and 2046 with annual per capita GDP growth rates of 8%, 6%, and 4%, respectively.

We identified the key sectors of water resource use in China from the perspective of the water footprint to improve the use of water resources. The empirical results showed that there were six key sectors (including Crop Cultivation; Forestry; Livestock and Livestock Products; Fishery, Technical Services for Agriculture, Forestry, Livestock and Fishing; Other Food Products, and Scrap and Waste) for water consumption in China in 2015.We analyzed the use of green water, blue water, and grey water. These six sectors accounted for 66.15% of the total impact and 90.76% of the direct impact. Seven key sectors (the six sectors above plus Steel Processing)for the consumption of blue water in China can explain 59.70% of the total impact and 86.94% of the direct effect in 2015. Eight key sectors (Crop cultivation, Other food products, Scrap and Waste, Railway Freight Transport, Highway Freight and Passengers Transport, Water Freight and Passengers Transport, Pipeline Transport, and Health Services) responsible for the consumption of grey water in China in 2015 can explain 81.28% of the total impact and 95.73% of the direct impact. Therefore, the Chinese government should focus on the departments that manage water resources in these sectors when designing water-saving policies and improving water-use efficiency, such as promoting water-saving irrigation technology (including sprinkler irrigation and drip irrigation) in the agricultural sector.

Male breast cancer (MBC) is known to be rare compared with female breast cancer (FBC) and to account for only 1% of all breast cancers. To date, male patients diagnosed with breast cancer are normally treated based on the guidelines for FBC. Specifically, studies have found that diagnosing and treating MBC patients under the guidelines for the treatment of post-menopausal FBC are more favorable than are those of pre/peri-menopausal FBC from a physiological perspective because MBC and post-menopausal FBC patients show high estrogen receptor (ER) expression in the tumor and low estrogen expression in the body. In this medical study, we aimed to examine whether MBC actually has the same prognosis as post-menopausal FBC. We identified MBC patients who were diagnosed as operable and who completed clinical treatment and we used follow-up data that were collected from January 2001 to January 2011. Each MBC patient was paired with four FBC patients who were diagnosed within the same period (two were pre/peri-menopausal, and two were post-menopausal). We compared disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) among three groups, i.e., pre/peri-menopausal FBC (group A), post-menopausal FBC (group B) and MBC (group M), using the Kaplan-Meier method and a Cox proportional hazards regression model. We also evaluated the clinical characteristics of breast cancer patients using t-tests and chi-square tests. We used ten consecutive years of data that were collected at Zhejiang Provincial Cancer Hospital. We identified 91 MBC cases for group M, 182 FBC cases for group A and 182 FBC cases for group B. The median follow-up period was 112 months. MBC cases were much more frequently ER positive than those of group A and group B (p<0.01); a similar trend was also found for progesterone (PR)-positive cases (p<0.01). The MBC group showed much lower human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2) expression than did the other groups (p<0.01). The 10-year OS rates were 79.1% for group M (72/91), 79.1% (144/182) for group A, and 87.9% (160/182) for group B, log-rank test indicated that group M had similar mean OS time as group A and group B (GourpM vs group A: p = 0.709; group M vs group B: p = 0.042). The Cox proportional hazards regression model indicated that pre/peri-menopausal FBC had similar DFS (hazard ratio (HR) = 0.706, p = 0.262) and OS (HR = 1.029, p = 0.941) values compared with MBC, whereas post-menopausal FBC had higher DFS (HR = 0.454, p = 0.004) and OS (HR = 0.353, p = 0.003) values than did MBC. Based on this study, we can conclude that MBC displayed higher ER- and PR-positive expression and lower HER2-positive expression than both post-menopausal and pre/peri-menopausal FBC. However, the DFS and OS values of MBC were similar to those of pre/peri-menopausal FBC and were worse than were those of post-menopausal FBC.

In this study, a BTG–15kW high-frequency induction heater was utilized to fabricate composite coatings of Ni-WC-CeO2 with varying CeO2 content on the surface of ASTM A36 steel substrates via induction cladding. The effects of CeO2 content on the phase composition, microstructure, elemental distribution, cross-sectional microhardness, surface hardness, Rockwell hardness, wear resistance, and wear scar morphology of the composite coatings were systematically examined using XRD, SEM, EDS, microhardness testers, Rockwell hardness testers, friction and wear testing machines, OM, and stylus profilers. The aim was to identify the optimal CeO2 content for enhancing coating performance. The results indicated that the incorporation of CeO2 promotes elemental inter-diffusion both within the coating and between the coating and the substrate, facilitates the dispersion of WC, and enhances the cross-sectional microhardness and wear resistance of the coating. However, excessive CeO2 content did not lead to further improvement, suggesting the presence of an optimal concentration. Among the compositions studied, the coating with 0.5% CeO2 exhibited minimal internal defects, pronounced elemental inter-diffusion, uniform WC, the highest cross-sectional microhardness and surface hardness, and the second-highest wear resistance, identifying this composition as the most effective for achieving superior coating performance.

Previous studies were mostly conducted based on two-dimensional feature space to monitor salinization, while studies on dense long-term salinization monitoring based on three-dimensional feature space have not been reported. Based on Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI images and three-dimensional feature space method, this study introduced six typical salinization surface parameters, including NDVI, salinity index, MSAVI, surface albedo, iron oxide index, wetness index to construct eight different feature space monitoring index. The optimal soil salinization monitoring index model was proposed base on field observed data and then the evolution process of salinization in Yellow River Delta (YRD) were analyzed and revealed during 1984-2022. The salinization monitoring index model of MSAVI-Albedo-I Fe2O3 feature space had the highest accuracy with R 2 = 0.93 and RMSE = 0.678g/kg. The spatial distribution of salinization in YRD showed an increasing trend from inland southwest to coastal northeast and the salinization intensity showed an increasing trend during 1984-2022 due to the implements of agricultural measures such as planting salt-tolerant crops, microbial remediation and fertility improvement. The rate of salinization deterioration in the northeast part was greater than others. Zones of salinization improvement were mainly located in cultivated land of the southwest parts.

The dominant influencing factors of changes in vegetation NPP and the relative roles of climate–human factors on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) differ between historical periods and are unclear. Therefore, there is an urgent need to systematically and quantitatively analyze the evolution process of the QTP’s ecosystem pattern and the driving factors of this process. Based on MOD17A3H and meteorological data, the Miami model, correlation analysis, and the residual coefficient method were used to investigate the spatiotemporal patterns of changes in vegetation NPP on the QTP from 2000 to 2020. We then quantitatively distinguished the relative roles of climate change and human activity in the process of vegetation NPP change during different historical periods. The results show the following: (1) From 2000 to 2020, zones with increasing vegetation NPP (10–30%) were the most widely distributed, and were mainly located in the Three-Rivers Headwater Region and the northern part of the Hengduan Mountains. (2) From 2000 to 2020, zones with a significant positive correlation between vegetation NPP and annual precipitation were mostly distributed in the northeastern QTP and the Three-Rivers Headwater Region, while zones with a positive correlation between vegetation NPP and annual average temperature were mostly located in southern Tibet. Zones with a significant positive correlation between NPP and annual sunshine hours were mainly distributed in the southeastern part of the QTP and the southern part of the Tanggula Mountains. In contrast, zones with a significant positive correlation between NPP and accumulated temperature (>10 °C) were mainly concentrated in the northern and eastern parts of the QTP. (3) During different historical periods, the relative roles of climate–human factors in the process of vegetation NPP change on the QTP had obvious spatiotemporal differences. These results could provide scientific support for the protection and restoration of regional ecosystems on the QTP.

The relationship between sleep duration and frailty remains unclear, particularly regarding their bidirectional nature and temporal dynamics in the Chinese population. This study aimed to investigate the cross-sectional association, developmental trajectories, and interactions between sleep duration and frailty in Chinese middle-aged and older adults. Data were obtained from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), which included 12,942 participants for cross-sectional analysis and 11,192 participants for the longitudinal trajectory study. Latent growth models and cross-lagged panel models were utilized to explore the temporal effects of sleep duration on frailty and vice versa. Participants’ mean age was 59.29 ± 9.48 years, comprising 47.73% men and 52.27% women. Cross-sectional analysis revealed that, compared with participants with normal sleep duration (6–8 h), both Q1 (≤ 5 h, OR = 1.99, 95% CI 1.64–2.41, P  < 0.001) and Q4 (> 8 h, OR = 1.50, 95% CI 1.12–2.02, P  = 0.01) showed increased risks of frailty. The parallel latent growth model demonstrated that the initial level of sleep duration significantly negatively predicted the initial level of frailty (β = − 0.34, P  < 0.001), while the rate of change in sleep duration negatively predicted the rate of change in frailty (β = − 0.61, P  < 0.001). Conversely, the initial level of frailty significantly negatively predicted the initial level of sleep duration (β = − 0.36, P  < 0.001), and the rate of change in frailty negatively predicted the rate of change in sleep duration (β = − 0.71, P  < 0.001). Cross-lagged analysis indicated a bidirectional causal association between sleep duration and frailty, with the negative predictive effect of frailty on sleep duration being relatively stable, while sleep duration had a short-term effect on frailty. Our study revealed a U-shaped correlation between sleep duration and frailty risk in cross-sectional analysis and established a bidirectional relationship through longitudinal investigation. These findings underscore the importance of balanced sleep patterns and early screening for both conditions in middle-aged and older adults.