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In0.17Al0.83N/GaN high‐electron‐mobility transistor (HEMT) using GaN‐on‐Insulator (GaNOI) technology via 200 mm wafer bonding technique is developed with good DC and RF performance and high fT/fmax. Measurements obtained from X‐Ray diffraction and micro‐Raman spectroscopy have demonstrated a 5% reduction in “a lattice strain,” which results in the improvement of the sheet resistance (Rsh) from 301 to 284 Ω □−1. A 120 nm gate‐length device achieves a peak fT up to 96 GHz which yields a fT × Lg value of 11.5 GHz μm, which compares favorably with reported GaN‐based HEMTs on Si. These results demonstrate that GaNOI HEMT on Si is an attractive candidate for future mm‐wave applications. The implementation of GaNOI technology facilitates the integration of GaN devices into a chip alongside complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor technology that opens up the potential for integrated high‐power and RF applications, enabling more compact and efficient systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences between the business environment in the home country and the host country are an important factor when enterprises consider their location choice with regard to outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). However, this is ignored by much existing literature. Based on the trade‐off framework of international firms between exporting and participation in OFDI under the condition of heterogeneous enterprises, this paper constructs a theoretical model of the impact of distance of doing business (DDB) on OFDI. We take China's OFDI as an example and use the World Bank Group's Ease of Doing Business Index to construct the DDB indicator, as well as test the impact of the DDB on China's OFDI by combining the macro‐location panel data of China's OFDI between 2004 and 2017. The results showed that increasing DDB significantly reduces the scale of China's OFDI. The effect is robust. The mechanism is that DDB significantly decreases the success rate of OFDI and increases the cost of OFDI, thereby decreasing the scale of OFDI. Further analysis then finds that official acts, such as building partnerships, and folk acts, such as increasing cultural identity, can significantly reduce the negative effect of DDB on OFDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hepatocarcinoma‐intestine‐pancreas/pancreatitis‐associated protein (HIP/PAP), a C‐type lectin, exerts anti‐oxidative, anti‐inflammatory, bactericidal, anti‐apoptotic, and mitogenic functions in several cell types and tissues. In this study, we explored the role of HIP/PAP in pulmonary fibrosis (PF). Expression of HIP/PAP and its murine counterpart, Reg3B, was markedly increased in fibrotic human and mouse lung tissues. Adenovirus‐mediated HIP/PAP expression markedly alleviated bleomycin (BLM)‐induced lung injury, inflammation, and fibrosis in mice. Adenovirus‐mediated HIP/PAP expression alleviated oxidative injury and lessened the decrease in pulmonary superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity in BLM‐treated mice, increased pulmonary SOD expression in normal mice, and HIP/PAP upregulated SOD expression in cultured human alveolar epithelial cells (A549) and human lung fibroblasts (HLF‐1). Moreover, in vitro experiments showed that HIP/PAP suppressed the growth of HLF‐1 and ameliorated the H2O2‐induced apoptosis of human alveolar epithelial cells (A549 and HPAEpiC) and human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells (HPMVEC). In HLF‐1, A549, HPAEpiC, and HPMVEC cells, HIP/PAP did not affect the basal levels, but alleviated the TGF‐β1‐induced down‐regulation of the epithelial/endothelial markers E‐cadherin and vE‐cadherin and the over‐expression of mesenchymal markers, such as α‐SMA and vimentin. In conclusion, HIP/PAP was found to serve as a potent protective factor in lung injury, inflammation, and fibrosis by attenuating oxidative injury, promoting the regeneration of alveolar epithelial cells, and antagonizing the pro‐fibrotic actions of the TGF‐β1/Smad signaling pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: The present study aimed to clarify the effects of thymosin β4 (Tβ4) on CCl4‐induced hepatic fibrosis in mice and to further explore the underlying mechanisms. Methods: Expression of Tβ4 in fibrotic liver tissues was assessed by a quantitative real time‐reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction and immunohistochemistry. The effects of intraperitoneal adeno‐associated virus‐Tβ4 (AAV‐Tβ4) on CCl4‐induced hepatic fibrosis were observed by the evaluation of collagen deposition, hepatic stellate cell (HSC) activation and pro‐fibrotic cytokine expression. In vitro tests with HSCs and hepatocytes were performed to confirm the effects of Tβ4. Results: The expression of Tβ4 was down‐regulated in fibrotic mouse livers but was rapidly up‐regulated by CCl4‐induced acute injury. AAV‐Tβ4 pre‐treatment significantly attenuated liver injury, collagen deposition, HSC activation and pro‐fibrotic cytokine over‐expression, such as transforming growth factor β1 (TGF‐β1), platelet‐derived growth factor B (PDGF‐B), connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) and plasminogen activator inhibitor‐1 (PAI‐1) in CCl4‐intoxicated mouse livers. In vitro experiments showed that Tβ4 suppressed HSC proliferation, blunted TGF‐β1‐induced HSC activation and reduced TGF‐β1‐induced TGF‐β1, PDGF‐B, CTGF and PAI‐1 expression in both HSCs and hepatocytes. Ectopic Tβ4 ameliorated the over‐expression of TGF‐β receptor‐II (TGF‐βRII) in the fibrotic mouse livers. Exogenous Tβ4 down‐regulated TGF‐βRII expression, whereas neutralizing endogenous extracellular Tβ4 with a specific antibody up‐regulated TGF‐βRII expression in cultured HSCs and hepatocytes. Conclusions: Tβ4 possesses anti‐fibrotic activity in the liver, which is attributable, at least partly, to down‐regulating TGF‐βRII and thereby blunting TGF‐β1‐mediated fibrogenetic signaling in both HSCs and hepatocytes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online social networks (OSNs) have become more and more popular and have attracted a great many users. Friend recommendation, which is one of the important services in OSN, can help users discover their interested friends and alleviate the problem of information overload. However, most of existing recommendation methods only consider either user link or content information and hence are not effective enough to provide high quality recommendations. In this paper, we propose a topic community-based method via Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF). This method first applies joint NMF model to mine topic communities existing in OSN by combing link and content information. Then it computes user pairwise similarities and makes friends recommendation based on topic communities. Furthermore, this method can be implemented using the MapReduce distributed computing framework. Extensive experiments show that our proposed method not only has better recommendation performance than state-of-the-art methods but also has good scalability to deal with the problem of friend recommendation in large-sale OSNs. Moreover, the application case demonstrates that it can significantly improve friend recommendation service in the real world OSN. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]