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Purpose This study aims to explore the relation among US audit partners’ characteristics, their career advancement and audit quality. Design/methodology/approach This study uses data from Public Company Accounting Oversight Board Form AP, Auditor Reporting of Certain Audit Participants, and publicly available online data sources. The hand-collected data on audit partners’ personal characteristics include gender, work experience and educational background. The measures for audit quality include restatements and audit fees. Findings The authors find that audit partner characteristics matter for the time it takes an individual to reach partnership after completing a bachelor’s degree. There are significant differences in work experience and educational background between partners in the largest (Big N) audit firms and smaller (non-Big N) audit firms. Audit partner traits are related to audit quality, and the effects differ between Big N and non-Big N partners. Originality/value The literature has examined audit partners’ career paths using international data. However, little empirical academic research has examined the career advancement of US audit partners. This study provides initial insights on the career advancement of US partners on a large scale and complements the recent research that examines audit partner characteristics and audit quality in the US market.

Background: We conducted a pathogenic analysis in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) samples from refractory Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia (RMPP) children. Methods: The clinical process of 150 BALF samples from 60 RMPP patients were analyzed to investigate the process and tendency of pathogenic changes. The characteristics of M. pneumoniae were analyzed through culture, real-time PCR, genotyping, antimicrobial susceptibility testing and proteomics. The other pathogens were determined using culture, sequencing and nucleic acid detection kit. Results: In 60 RMPP cases, the bacterial co-infection rate was 5%, while that of virus was 33.3%. The poor prognosis rate was 61.7%. The 150 sample DNA positive rate was 98.7%, while the culture positive rate was 56.7% for M. pneumoniae. Significant differences were noticed in the positivity of M. pneumoniae culture obtained from samples with a disease course of at least 3 weeks compared with those within 3 weeks. The genotype 1 M. pneumoniae strains showed a macrolide resistant (MLr) rate of 100%, and that for genotype 2 was 90.1%. Proteomics showed that there were 57 proteins up-regulated in the MLs M. pneumoniae, half of them were membrane-associated protein with adhesion or toxicity. Pediatric RMPP usually presented viral co-infection, but it caused limited effects on the progression and prognosis of RMPP. Conclusion: Persistent presence of viable M. pneumoniae is not necessary in the later stage of RMPP. The expression of virulence factor in the MLr M. pneumoniae was higher than that of the MLs M. pneumoniae, which was more common in the RMPP children. Funding Statement: This study was funded by the Major Infectious Diseases Such as AIDS and Viral Hepatitis Prevention and Control Technology Major Projects (Grant No. 2018ZX10712-001), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 81772154). Declaration of Interests: The authors stated: "None." Ethics Approval Statement: Written informed consent was obtained from the patients. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention.

PCNP is associated with human cancers including neuroblastoma and lung cancer. However, the role and underlying molecular mechanism of PCNP have not been plenty elucidated. Herein, we first investigated the effects of PCNP in ovarian cancer proliferation, apoptosis, migration and invasion and determined the molecular mechanism of PCNP in ovarian cancer progression. The results indicated that PCNP was significantly overexpressed in human ovarian cancer tissues and cells, and related to poor prognosis in ovarian cancer patients. In addition, we also detected that PCNP promoted ovarian cancer cells growth, migration and invasion, as well as inhibited ovarian cancer cells apoptosis. Mechanistically, PCNP bound to β-catenin, promoted β-catenin nuclear translocation and further activated Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. Moreover, PCNP regulated the expression of genes involved in EMT and further triggered EMT occurrence. Together, these results summarized that PCNP/β-catenin axis may promote ovarian cancer progression, supplying a novel and promising targets to improve prognosis and treat ovarian cancer. Funding Statement: The research was supported by two National Natural Science Foundation of China (81670088, 81602708) and Henan Provincial Science and Technology Department International Cooperation Project (172102410019). Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest. Ethics Approval Statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Ethical Board at Henan University. All animal procedures were manipulated with the approval of the Medical and Research Ethics Committee of Henan University Medical School.

China promised to peak its total carbon emissions by 2030. Various actions on both supply and demand sides have been studied to achieve the goal. However, should the consumption be influenced purposefully for environmental purposes is still been hotly debated in the literature. By re-conceptualizing the definition of consumption, this study combines various modeling techniques with input-output analysis and evaluates quantitatively the role of consumption in carbon peak by 2030. We find that, without proper interventions on technology and consumption levels, China’s energy use and carbon emissions will continuously increase without a peak before 2050. To achieve carbon peak by 2030, China would have to achieve higher energy efficiency. Alternatively, China can choose to influence the consumption levels of the domestic consumers. In this case, Chinese people will live a life which is still less wasteful than that in the USA but with the same living standards to those in Japan and European countries. However, the GDP output, in this case, is approximately 11% lower in 2050 than the counterpart when the consumption levels grow without control and ultimately exceed the US consumption levels.

This paper investigates the financial performance difference between seven US Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) indices and their pair-wised corresponding benchmark indices across different stock market regimes. We employ the Markov Switching model to specifically divide the study period into three regimes. We then compare the risk, return and risk-adjusted-return of the SRI indices during each identified regime with their corresponding benchmark indices. We find that SRI has higher returns than non-SRI across three different regimes, but there is no difference in the risk-adjusted-return between SRI and non-SRI over time. Our study results imply that there is no sacrifice for SRI investors when market conditions change. We contribute to the literature by taking into consideration for the first time the effect of the stock market regimes on the financial performance comparison between SRI and non-SRI investments.

We provide empirical evidence regarding the effect of stock market regimes on Social Responsible Investment (SRI). Using the Markov Switching Model, we identify three market regimes for the study period between June 2001 and December 2009 in the US. These regimes are the low, medium, and high volatility states. We find a positive relationship between the idiosyncratic risk (i.e. unsystematic risk) and return during low and medium volatility states. However, this positive relationship tends to disappear during high volatility states. In addition, our analysis suggests that idiosyncratic risk has no forecasting power over SRI future returns. Overall, our findings imply that SRI investors are rewarded for bearing the additional SRI specific risk (idiosyncratic risk) when the market is less volatile. This reward, however, becomes uncertain during periods of high market volatility.