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China accounted for 14.4% of the global exports of goods, ranking first in 2022, followed by the United States at 8.3%. As the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development commented, China has become a global trade titan, and its meteoric rise as perhaps one of the best stories of economic development has been both admired and questioned. This article discusses the reasons behind China becoming a global trade titan from the perspective of transport logistics by applying statistical analysis and case studies. The results show that the meteoric rise of China's trade is inseparable from China's development in transport logistics, especially investments in maritime transport construction and China Railway Express, which hugely promote the interconnectivity of transport infrastructure and reduce transportation duration and waiting time, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the imbalance of types of imports and exports in trade and the differences in infrastructure standards pose some problems. The research manages to give policy implications based on the existing problems of the current trade logistics system through case studies on Sino-US, Sino-EU and Sino-ASEAN trade relations and transport facilitation issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease is caused by mutations in the membrane receptor PKD1 or the cation channel PKD2. TACAN (also termed TMEM120A), recently reported as an ion channel in neurons for mechanosensing and pain sensing, is also distributed in diverse non‐neuronal tissues, such as kidney, heart and intestine, suggesting its involvement in other functions. In this study, we found that TACAN is in a complex with PKD2 in native renal cell lines. Using the two‐electrode voltage clamp in Xenopus oocytes, we found that TACAN inhibits the channel activity of PKD2 gain‐of‐function mutant F604P. TACAN fragments containing the first and last transmembrane domains interacted with the PKD2 C‐ and N‐terminal fragments, respectively. The TACAN N‐terminus acted as a blocking peptide, and TACAN inhibited the function of PKD2 by the binding of PKD2 with TACAN. By patch clamping in mammalian cells, we found that TACAN inhibits both the single‐channel conductance and the open probability of PKD2 and mutant F604P. PKD2 co‐expressed with TACAN, but not PKD2 alone, exhibited pressure sensitivity. Furthermore, we found that TACAN aggravates PKD2‐dependent tail curvature and pronephric cysts in larval zebrafish. In summary, this study revealed that TACAN acts as a PKD2 inhibitor and mediates mechanosensitivity of the PKD2–TACAN channel complex. Key points: TACAN inhibits the function of PKD2 in vitro and in vivo.TACAN N‐terminal S1‐containing fragment T160X interacts with the PKD2 C‐terminal fragment N580–L700, and its C‐terminal S6‐containing fragment L296–D343 interacts with the PKD2 N‐terminal A594X.TACAN inhibits the function of the PKD2 channel by physical interaction.The complex of PKD2 with TACAN, but not PKD2 alone, confers mechanosensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the robotic arm control system based on a brain-computer interface (BCI) has been employed to help the disabilities to improve their interaction abilities without body movement. However, it's the main challenge to implement the desired task by a robotic arm in a three-dimensional (3D) space because of the instability of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals and the interference by the spontaneous EEG activities. Moreover, the free motion control of a manipulator in 3D space is a complicated operation that requires more output commands and higher accuracy for brain activity recognition. Based on the above, a steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based synchronous BCI system with six stimulus targets was designed to realize the motion control function of the seven degrees of freedom (7-DOF) robotic arm. Meanwhile, a novel template-based method, which builds the optimized common templates (OCTs) from various subjects and learns spatial filters from the common templates and the multichannel EEG signal, was applied to enhance the SSVEP recognition accuracy, called OCT-based canonical correlation analysis (OCT-CCA). The comparison results of offline experimental based on a public benchmark dataset indicated that the proposed OCT-CCA method achieved significant improvement of detection accuracy in contrast to CCA and individual template-based CCA (IT-CCA), especially using a short data length. In the end, online experiments with five healthy subjects were implemented for achieving the manipulator real-time control system. The results showed that all five subjects can accomplish the tasks of controlling the manipulator to reach the designated position in the 3D space independently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, billions of household appliances, phones, smart devices, security systems, environment sensors, vehicles, buildings, and other radio-connected devices will transmit data and communicate with each other or people, and it will be possible to constantly measure and track virtually everything. Among the various approaches to measuring what is happening in the surrounding environment, wireless sensing has received increasing attention in recent years because of the ubiquitous deployment of wireless radio devices. In addition, human activities affect wireless signal propagation, so understanding and analyzing how these signals react to human activities can reveal rich information about the activities around us. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we show the existence of human radio biometrics and present a human identification system that can discriminate individuals even through the walls in a non-line-of-sight condition. Using commodity Wi-Fi devices, the proposed system captures the channel state information (CSI) and extracts human radio biometric information from Wi-Fi signals using the time-reversal (TR) technique. By leveraging the fact that broadband wireless CSI has a significant number of multipaths, which can be altered by human body interferences, the proposed system can recognize individuals in the TR domain without line-of-sight radio. We built a prototype of the TR human identification system using standard Wi-Fi chipsets with $3 \times 3$ multi-in multi-out (MIMO) transmission. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated and validated through multiple experiments. In general, the TR human identification system achieves an accuracy of 98.78% for identifying about a dozen of individuals using a single transmitter and receiver pair. Thanks to the ubiquitousness of Wi-Fi, the proposed system shows the promise for future low-cost low-complexity reliable human identification applications based on radio biometrics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a time-reversal (TR) communication system, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is boosted and the inter-user interference (IUI) is suppressed due to the spatial–temporal resonances, commonly known as the focusing effects, of the TR technique when implemented in a rich scattering environment. However, since the spatial–temporal resonances highly depend on the location-specific multipath profile, there exists a strong–weak spatial–temporal resonances effect. In the TR uplink system, different users at different locations enjoy different strengths of spatial–temporal resonances, i.e., the received signal-to-interference-noise ratios (SINRs) for different users vary, and the weak ones can be blocked from correct detection in the presence of strong ones. In this paper, we formulate the strong–weak spatial–temporal resonances in the multiuser TR uplink system as a max–min weighted SINR balancing problem by joint power control and signature design. Then, a novel two-stage adaptive algorithm that can guarantee the convergence is proposed. In stage I, the original nonconvex problem is relaxed into a Perron Frobenius eigenvalue optimization problem and an iterative algorithm is proposed to obtain the optimum efficiently. In stage II, the gradient search method is applied to update the relaxed feasible set until the global optimum for the original optimization problem is obtained. Numerical results show that our algorithm converges quickly, achieves a high energy-efficiency, and provides a performance guarantee to all users. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studying publication volumes at the country level is key to understanding and improving a country’s research system. PubMed is a public search engine of publications in all life sciences areas. Here, we show how this search engine can be used to assess the outputs of life science-related research by country. We have measured the numbers of publications during different time periods based on the country of affiliation of the first authors. Moreover, we have designed scores, which we have named Attraction Scores, to assess the relative focus either toward particular types of studies, such as clinical trials or reviews, or toward specific research areas, such as public health and pharmacogenomics, or toward specific topics, for instance embryonic stem cells; we have also investigated a possible use of these Attraction Scores through a correlation analysis with regulatory policies. We have weighed the statistics against general indicators such as country populations and gross domestic products (GDP). During the 5-year period 2008-2012, the United States was the country with the highest number of publications and Denmark the one with the highest number of publications per capita. Among the 40 countries with the highest GDPs, Israel had the highest publications-to-GDP ratio. Among the 20 countries with the most publications, Japan had the highest Attraction Score for induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells and Italy the highest proportion of review publications. More than 50% of publications in English were from countries in which English is not the primary language. We show an assorted and extensive collection of rankings and charts that will inform scholars and policymakers in studying and improving the research systems both at the national and international level.

Graphical abstract Highlights • Antimycobacterial agent geranylgeranyl acetate was biosynthesized for the first time. • Alcohol acetyltransferase esterify geranylgeraniol and acetyl-CoA to form geranylgeranyl acetate. • This novel approach can be expanded to produce many bioproducts. Abstract Geranylgeranyl acetate have been identified as potent and selective inhibitors against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In this study, the MVA pathway was engineered in Escherichia coli to biosynthesis of the antimycobacterial agent geranylgeranyl acetate from glucose for the first time. Three modules were constructed in E. coli to achieve this objective. AtoB, ERG13 and tHMG1 were overexpressed in the upstream module to accumulate MVA. Then MVA were catalyzed to IPP and DMAPP in the midstream module, which overexpressed Idi, ERG8, MVD1 and ERG12. Finally, in the downstream module, geranylgeranyl acetate were biosynthesized from IPP and DMAPP by overexpressing GGPPS, PgpB and ATF1. The engineered strain DG108 accumulated 57 ± 3.8 mg/L of geranylgeranyl acetate. Further overexpression the Idi, the yield was increased to 119 ± 6.1 mg/L in DG109. The approach described here could be expanded to biosynthesize many antimycobacterial agents and expand the design strategy of metabolic engineering for bioproducts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Guidelines of the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Environmental Information Disclosure for Listed Companies issued in 2008 as a quasi-natural experiment, we employ DID (difference in differences) model to identify the effects of China's mandatory environmental information disclosure (MEID) on a firm's environmental and economic performance. The results show that MEID has a positive impact on the firm's environmental performance, but has a negative impact on the firm's economic performance; MEID affects the firm's environmental and economic performance by increasing environmental management activities and costs; this policy has a more significant impact on the state-owned enterprises and small and medium enterprises than on non-state-owned enterprises and large enterprises. The results remain robust in a series of robustness tests. This study offers guidance for policymakers seeking to improve environmental information disclosure policies. • Explore the effects of MEID on the firm's environmental and economic performance. • Employ DID model to identify the impact of the MEID on firm performance. • MEID has a positive impact on environmental performance, but a negative impact on economic performance. • MEID affects firm's environmental and economic performance by increasing environmental management costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]