Search

The Green Financial Reform and Innovation (GFRI) policy not only serves as a crucial tool for facilitating a comprehensive transition towards sustainable practices in economic and social development but also has a significant influence on the operational activities of companies. However, there is limited research on whether the GFRI policy can affect companies' overcapacity. To address this gap, we use data from the China Stock Market & Accounting Research Database and the Chinese Research Data Services Platform to evaluate the impact of green finance on companies' overcapacity. The results show that the GFRI policy can effectively alleviate companies' overcapacity. Moreover, the GFRI policy can alleviate companies' overcapacity by strengthening market competition, enhancing financing constraints, and promoting innovation. Further, the GFRI policy exerts a more pronounced effect on alleviating overcapacity in non-labor-intensive companies, companies in heavily polluting industries, and companies in regions with weak environmental supervision. This paper not only supplements the relevant literature on alleviating overcapacity but also provides more theoretical support for promoting a national green financial system in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimizing production–living–ecological space (PLES) can benefit territorial space planning and sustainable development in China. Thus, spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and influence factor analyses are vital. Laiwu, China, was selected as the study area due to its complex terrain and development history. A multitemporal land-use and land-cover classification extracted from Landsat remote-sensing images for 2001–2018 and the self-organizing map method were combined to identify the area's multitemporal PLES. The PLES evolution trajectories were extracted based on the multitemporal PLES. The main factors influencing the PLES spatiotemporal evolution differences were revealed using the random-forest-based factor importance evaluation method. The results showed that changes in the PLES trajectories occupied ∼ 18% of the study area. The ecological space recovery type was mainly observed in previously stable ecological space areas. Changes in the production space expansion (PSE) and living space expansion were mainly agglomerated in the fringe areas of previously stable production–ecological and living space lands. Distance from early built-up areas was the main factor influencing PLES expansion. Ecological space was mainly distributed far away from built-up areas, and living and production spaces were mainly distributed near the built-up areas. Additionally, the slope of the terrain affected the spatial distribution of PLES expansion to a certain extent, and the gross domestic product clearly affected the distribution of PSE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pyemotes zhonghuajia Yu, Zhang & He (Acari: Pyemotidae) is an ectoparasitic mite that efficiently controls agricultural and forestry pests in Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and Hymenoptera. A single P. zhonghuajia mite can paralyze and kill a host 680,000 times its own weight within 3 h. Although this mite is an efficient and broad-spectrum natural enemy unique to China, its mitochondrial genome is still unknown. In this study, the complete mitochondrial genome of P. zhonghuajia was sequenced and annotated. The complete mitogenome of P. zhonghuajia was 14,772 bp and comprised 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, two ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes, and one control region. The base composition of the complete mitogenome was 39.6% of A, 13.1% of G, 7.0% of C, and 40.2% of T, with a total A+T content of 79.8%. The length of 13 PCGs was 10,469 bp, with an A+T content of 78.4%. The length of 22 tRNA genes ranged from 45 bp to 67 bp. The secondary structures of 22 tRNA genes were predicted, and 10 tRNAs had the typical cloverleaf secondary structure, whereas 12 tRNAs were truncated without the D-arm. The 16s-rRNA and 12s-rRNA genes were 1,011 bp and 612 bp, respectively. The control region was 692 bp. The mitogenome gene order of P. zhonghuajia was not consistent with the pattern of its ancestor Parasitus wandunqingi. A phylogenetic tree was constructed using 13 PCG sequences from 29 mites, and the results confirmed that P. zhonghuajia is a species in Eleutherengona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pyemotes zhonghuajia Yu, Zhang & He (Prostigmata: Pyemotidae), discovered in China, has been demonstrated as a high-efficient natural enemy in controlling many agricultural and forestry pests. This mite injects toxins into the host (eggs, larvae, pupae, and adults), resulting in its paralyzation and then gets nourishment for reproductive development. These toxins have been approved to be mammal-safe, which have the potential to be used as biocontrol pesticides. Toxin proteins have been identified from many insects, especially those from the orders Scorpions and Araneae, some of which are now widely used as efficient biocontrol pesticides. However, toxin proteins in mites are not yet understood. In this study, we assembled the genome of P. zhonghuajia using PacBio technology and then identified toxin-related genes that are likely to be responsible for the paralytic process of P. zhonghuajia. The genome assembly has a size of 71.943 Mb, including 20 contigs with a N50 length of 21.248 Mb and a BUSCO completeness ratio of 90.6% (n = 1367). These contigs were subsequently assigned to three chromosomes. There were 11,183 protein coding genes annotated, which were assessed with 91.2% BUSCO completeness (n = 1066). Neurotoxin and dermonecrotic toxin gene families were significantly expanded within the genus of Pyemotes and they also formed several gene clusters on the chromosomes. Most of the genes from these two families and all of the three agatoxin genes were shown with higher expression in the one-day-old mites compared to the seven-day-pregnant mites, supporting that the one-day-old mites cause paralyzation and even death of the host. The identification of these toxin proteins may provide insights into how to improve the parasitism efficiency of this mite, and the purification of these proteins may be used to develop new biological pesticides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advances of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the geo-economic interactions between China and countries along the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road counties (MSRCs) continue to increase, and analyzing the geo-economic relations between China and the MSRCs is extremely important for a scientific understanding of bilateral geo-economic cooperation. Differently from the traditional logic of geo-economic competition and cooperation, we constructed a new framework based on the dominant factors of geo-economic relations and used an extreme random forest regression model to classify the geo-economic relation types between China and MSRCs from 2006 to 2017. The results show that the unbalanced development of investment and trade between China and MSRCs hindered the enhancement of the intensity of bilateral geo-economic linkage from 2006 to 2017. The "Matthew effect" of China's geo-economic flow linkage with MSRCs is significant. There are obvious differences in the dominant factors affecting the types of geo-economic relations between China and MSRCs, and the distribution of the importance of the indices of the types of geo-economic relations in each country is disordered. Geopolitics, markets, and resources have played important roles in the geo-economic linkages between China and MSRCs. There are five types of geo-economic relations between China and the MSRCs: market-oriented type, resource-oriented type, market-resource-oriented type, market-geopolitics-oriented type, and resource-geopolitics-oriented type, of which the market-oriented type is the most important type of geo-economic relations. In the future, China should focus on regional powers along the Maritime Silk Road for bilateral geo-economic cooperation, actively promote the balanced development of bilateral geo-economic elements flows, strengthen geopolitical cooperation with MSRCs, and formulate cooperation plans according to the types of geo-economic relations.

Down's syndrome (DS), a common chromosomal disease caused by chromosome 21 trisomy, is the main cause of cognitive impairment in children worldwide. Emerging evidence suggests that the microbiota-gut-brain axis plays a potential role in cognitive impairment. However, data regarding gut microbiota alterations in DS patients remain scarce, especially data from children with DS. This case-control study was conducted to explore the gut microbiota composition in Chinese DS children. Additionally, the potential association between gut microbiota and cognitive function in DS was evaluated. Microbiota communities in the feces of 15 DS subjects and 15 matched controls were investigated using high-throughput Illumina Miseq sequencing targeting the V3-V4 region of 16S rRNA gene. The relationships between gut microbiota composition and DS cognitive function scores were analyzed. The structure and richness of the gut microbiota differed between DS patients and healthy controls. The abundance of Acidaminococcaceae was decreased in DS patients. Moreover, the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analysis showed increased modules related to peptidases and pyrimidine metabolism. Overall, we confirmed that gut microbiota alterations occurred in Chinese patients with DS. Additionally, the fecal microbiota was closely related to DS cognitive impairment. Larger cohorts are needed to confirm these findings and to clarify the mechanisms involved. Elucidating these novel findings in the field of microbiota-gut-brain axis will provide a promising strategy for future studies of DS cognitive impairment., (© 2021. The Author(s).)