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Arsenic exposure produces significant hematotoxicity in vitro and in vivo. Our previous work shows that arsenic (in the form of arsenite, AsIII) interacts with the zinc finger domains of GATA-1, inhibiting the function of this critical transcription factor, and resulting in the suppression of erythropoiesis. In addition to GATA-1, GATA-2 also plays a key role in the regulation of hematopoiesis. GATA-1 and GATA-2 have similar zinc finger domains (C4-type) that are structurally favorable for AsIII interactions. Taking this into consideration, we hypothesized that early stages of hematopoietic differentiation that are dependent on the function of GATA-2 may also be disrupted by AsIII exposure. We found that in vitro AsIII exposures disrupt the erythromegakaryocytic lineage commitment and differentiation of erythropoietin-stimulated primary mouse bone marrow hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs), producing an aberrant accumulation of cells in early stages of hematopoiesis and subsequent reduction of committed erythro-megakaryocyte progenitor cells. Arsenic significantly accumulated in the GATA-2 protein, causing the loss of zinc, and disruption of GATA-2 function, as measured by chromatin immunoprecipitation and the expression of GATA-2 responsive genes. Our results show that the attenuation of GATA-2 function is an important mechanism contributing to the aberrant lineage commitment and differentiation of early HPCs. Collectively, findings from the present study suggest that the AsIII-induced disruption of erythro-megakaryopoiesis may contribute to the onset and/or exacerbation of hematological disorders, such as anemia.

Although China is experiencing a deterioration in wealth distribution where housing is playing a dominant role, this issue has received scant research attention despite its importance. Combining four rounds of the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) data, this paper measures and discusses wealth inequality in China, with a special emphasis on the contribution of housing. Our analysis reveals that housing is the largest contributor to wealth inequality, responsible for around 70 percent of total wealth inequality, and its contribution has been increasing over time. Our research efforts have focused on the housing wealth disparity, exploring its composition from alternative perspectives. The results show that housing wealth inequality has also been rising over time and an absolute majority of housing wealth inequality is due to within‐group gaps. Finally, we employ Wan's (2004) regression‐based decomposition methodology to quantify the contributions of different determinants to housing wealth disparity in China, and to demonstrate serious biases in the conventional approach that is often used to analyze housing wealth inequality.

The main objective of this paper is to disentangle the poverty-growth-inequality triangle for Asia, its sub-regions and individual economies by constructing poverty and inequality profiles, decomposing poverty changes and modelling inequality. Due to a shortage of unit record data, analytical techniques are developed for estimating the poverty headcount ratio and regional inequality with minimum data requirements. Analytical results confirm significant reductions in poverty across the board due to fast growth, although the benign effect of growth on poverty was offset by worsening distributions in many economies. Furthermore, the poverty-reducing effect of growth has been diminishing over time and converging to 0 for many countries. Also, the cost of rising inequality in Asia was found to be surprisingly large in terms of missed poverty reduction. Looking ahead, Asia is expected to eradicate abject poverty soon but likely to continue facing high inequality, particularly income gaps between economies.

The decline in the share of labor income — an indicator of functional income distribution — has contributed to rising income inequality world-wide. Despite a growing literature, little is known about the effects of globalization on the labor share or inequality in Asia where some of the economies are most globalized. Applying fixed-effect regressions to panel data from 29 Asian economies over the period from 1980 to 2014, we focus on the impacts of globalization on the labor share in Asia where globalization is measured by trade openness and FDI. The modeling results show that trade openness is a significant determinant of the labor share. More specifically, the impact of export is significantly negative and the impact of import is positive. In terms of FDI, the coefficient of the inward FDI is significantly positive and that of the outward FDI is significantly negative in developing countries only.

Apolipoprotein L6 (ApoL6) is a pro-death, BH3-only and phospholipid-binding member of the Bcl-2 family. Previously, we showed that ectopic expression of ApoL6 induces mitochondria-mediated apoptosis. In this study, we hypothesized that ApoL6 plays a dichotomous role in regulated cell death (RCD) pathways that involves both apoptosis and necroptosis. Necroptosis, or programmed necrosis, can occur simultaneously or alternatively to apoptosis as a caspase-independent pathway, and is characterized by the formation of intracellular necrosomes and plasma membrane pores. The pseudokinase mixed lineage kinase domain-like protein (MLKL) interacts with the necrosome to become phosphorylated and activated. Phosphorylated (p-) MLKL molecules migrate to the plasma membrane to form pores, disrupt membrane integrity, and selectively release intracellular components. The proinflammatory cytokine IL-1β is amongst a number of molecules released in this process. To investigate the role of ApoL6 in RCD, ApoL6 was overexpressed via a Tet-Off gene inducible system in a p53 null colorectal cancer cell line DLD-1. Necroptotic cell death was marked by an increased level of intracellular and plasma membrane p-MLKL and extracellular release of IL-1β along with the disruption of the plasma membrane. We found that in the presence of apoptotic inhibitors, levels of necroptotic cell death increased, indicating an enhanced push away from apoptosis. We also showed that ApoL6 preferentially binds with phosphatidylinositol phosphate species (PIPs), which include PI (4,5) P2, PI4P and PI5P. Thus, we expand on the role of ApoL6 in RCD to induce a mixed cell-death phenotype that includes both apoptosis and necroptosis.

This paper attempts to explain why China performed better than India in reducing poverty. As two of the most populous countries in the world, China and India have both experienced fast economic growth and high inequality in the past four decades. Conversely, China adopted a more export-oriented development strategy, resulting in faster industrialization or urbanization and deeper globalization, than India. Consequently, to conduct the comparative study, we first decompose poverty changes into a growth and an inequality components, assessing the relative importance of growth versus distributional changes on poverty in China and India. Then, Chinese data are used to estimate the impacts of industrialization, urbanization and globalization on poverty reduction in rural China. The major conclusion of this comparative study is that developing countries must prioritize employment generation in secondary and tertiary industries through industrialization and globalization in order to absorb surplus agricultural labor, helping reduce poverty in the rural areas.

This paper represents an early attempt to investigate the growth and distributional effects of Fintech development, using household survey data from China. China’s rapid expansion of Fintech in the past decade has significantly improved the accessibility and affordability of financial services, particularly for formerly financially excluded population groups. Linking the index of digital financial inclusion with China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data, we find that Fintech development is positively correlated with household income, and the positive effect is larger for rural households than the urban counterpart, suggesting that Fintech development has helped narrow the urban–rural income gap. Moreover, the poor gain more than the rich from Fintech development in rural China, indicating its benign distributive impacts within rural China.

This paper examines the evolution of inequality, poverty and welfare in the South Caucasian Asian states, using an aggregate index based on consumer durables available to the households. Instead of using principal components analysis to aggregate asset indicators into an overall asset index, we propose an ordinal approach to using data on assets, when estimating the wealth of a household (or individual). Using three different approaches (the concept of order of acquisition of durable goods, item response theory and correspondence analysis), we first derive the order of importance of the different assets. Then, we compute indices introduced recently to measure inequality, poverty and achievement, when only ordinal variables are available. Our empirical analysis, based on data collected by the Caucasus Barometer and covering the three states in South Caucasus shows that there exists such an order, that it does not really depend on the statistical approach adopted and that it was very similar in 2009 and 2013. Our results show that among the three countries analyzed, Armenia had the lowest degree of inequality in asset ownership and Georgia the highest. Whatever the approach or index used, ordinal inequality, increased in Armenia and Azerbaijan between 2009 and 2013, but slightly decreased during that period in Georgia. It also appears that poverty decreased in all three countries during this period. There was also important growth, when measuring the latter via the welfare index recently introduced by Apouey et al. ( 2019 ), assuming their parameter [Formula: see text].

The emergence of a digital divide or a lack of internet access may hinder urbanization and adversely affect growth. However, fintech development can help to improve the accessibility and affordability of financial services, particularly for sections of the population formerly excluded from such services. Improved access is expected to stimulate the growth essential for promoting urbanization, possibly alleviating the negative impacts of a digital divide and creating a trickle‐down effect. This paper is among the first to investigate the effect of fintech development on urbanization, as indicated by labor transfer from agricultural to non‐agricultural sectors in China. It is found that: (i) the digital divide hindered, while fintech development contributed to urbanization; (ii) the positive effect of fintech development on urbanization affects individuals both with and without access to the internet, yielding the so‐called trickle‐down effect and thus helping to alleviate the negative consequences of a digital divide; and (iii) regarding transmission mechanisms, fintech development helps to generate additional jobs and raise income in non‐agricultural sectors, stimulating urbanization even for those without access to the internet.

Arsenic exposure poses numerous threats to human health. Our previous work in mice has shown that arsenic causes anemia by inhibiting erythropoiesis. However, the impacts of arsenic exposure on human erythropoiesis remain largely unclear. We report here that low-dose arsenic exposure inhibits the erythroid differentiation of human hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs). The impacts of arsenic (in the form of arsenite; As3+) on red blood cell (RBC) development was evaluated using a long-term culture of normal human bone marrow CD34+-HPCs stimulated in vitro to undergo erythropoiesis. Over the time course studied, we analyzed the expression of the cell surface antigens CD34, CD71 and CD235a, which are markers commonly used to monitor the progression of HPCs through the stages of erythropoiesis. Simultaneously, we measured hemoglobin content, which is an important criterion used clinically for diagnosing anemia. As compared to control, low-dose As3+ exposure (100 nM and 500 nM) inhibited the expansion of CD34+-HPCs over the time course investigated; decreased the number of committed erythroid progenitors (BFU-E and CFU-E) and erythroblast differentiation in the subsequent stages; and caused a reduction of hemoglobin content. These findings demonstrate that low-dose arsenic exposure impairs human erythropoiesis, likely by combined effects on various stages of RBC formation.

Neither clear theoretical interpretation nor empirical validation of public educational investment to urban-rural migration or urbanization exists comprehensively. This paper comprehensively analyz...

Income distribution is perceived to affect crime (Becker 1968; Thurow 1971; Merlo 2003). Consequently, economists have been modeling crime employing inequality indicators as one of the explanatory variables, yielding mixed results. This paper argues that income polarization rather than inequality indicators should be used instead. Technically, in addition to income gaps that are measured by inequality indicators, the recently developed polarization index of Duclos, Esteban, and Ray (2004) also captures clustering, which implies social segregation and immobility, both potentially causing social tensions and conflicts. Thus, this polarization index is expected to be a better variable in explaining crime. To substantiate our arguments, provincial panel data from China are used to model the crime–income distribution relationship. Income polarization is found to be positively and significantly associated with crime. When both income polarization and inequality indicators are included in the models, the former remains a positive and significant determinant while the latter becomes insignificant.

Two sources of economic interaction are knowledge spillover and technical diffusion. This paper proposes a structural model with spatial effect in knowledge spillover and technical diffusio...

Using a unique and original linked firm-level panel data on Chinese coal-fired power generating firms over the period 1998–2009, this study investigates the impact of foreign ownership on firm's cleaner production choice of desulfurization. Our baseline and differences-in-differences (DID) results show that foreign ownership largely increases the usage of cleaner production in the coal-fired power generating sector, implying that foreign direct investment (FDI) plays an important role in promoting the technologies upgrading of this sector and helps curb the largest air pollution sources in China. These results are robust after controlling potential endogeneity and to different specifications. Further tests are conducted in the two zones implemented pollutant controls in China. We find that if foreign investment is located in the “Two Control Zones”, the investment-receiving firms are more likely to conduct the cleaner production.

This paper aims at investigating the role of road infrastructure in implementing the “dual circulation” strategy recently launched by China, where increasing domestic consumption is the core. Although earlier studies examined the road-trade cost nexus, few analyzed the effects of road on the costs of output delivery and input sourcing. We first develop a theoretical model, predicting that road development can help reduce both of these costs. The predictions are then confirmed via model estimations using data from China. In turn, cost reduction in output delivery is found to help firms expand market and cost reduction in input sourcing helps firms lower product prices, leading to rises in domestic consumption. Particularly, road development is more beneficial to Non-SOEs, firms with lower export intensity, higher weight-to-value ratio, or higher transportation inputs, and areas with less market distortion. Thus, it can be concluded that road development is conducive to China's “dual circulation” strategy.

Utilizing data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) from 1991 to 2011, we aim to analyze the effects of income distribution on two risks for chronic diseases: body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure. Unlike the previous studies, we consider two different kinds of indicators of income distribution: inequality and polarization. Different from relative inequality indicators such as the Gini index, which measure income gaps only, the recently developed polarization indicator captures group clustering and social alienation, in addition to income gaps. Our empirical results demonstrate that both BMI and blood pressure are positively correlated with income polarization, while inequality is a weaker predictor of these health outcomes. Thus, polarization, rather than inequality, should be used when analyzing the relationship between health outcomes and income distribution. We also examine the polarization-to-health transmission mechanism using mediation and moderation analytic frameworks. The results suggest that social networks mediate the effect of polarization on BMI and neutralize the effect on blood pressure.

Strong epidemiological evidence demonstrates an association between chronic arsenic exposure and anemia. We recently found that As(+3) impairs erythropoiesis by disrupting the function of GATA-1; however the downstream pathways impacted by the loss of GATA-1 function have not been evaluated. Additionally, our previous findings indicate that the predominant arsenical in the bone marrow of mice exposed to As(+3) in their drinking water for 30 days was MMA(+3), but the impacts of this arsenical on erythorpoisis also remain largely unknown. The goal of this study was to address these critical knowledge gaps by evaluating the comparative effects of arsenite (As(+3)) and the As(+3) metabolite, monomethyarsonous acid (MMA(+3)) on two critical regulatory pathways that control the differentiation and survival of early erythroid progenitor cells. We found that 500 nM As(+3) and 100 and 500 nM MMA(+3) suppress erythropoiesis by impairing the differentiation of early stage erythroid progenitors. The suppression of early erythroid progenitor cell development was attributed to combined effects on differentiation and survival pathways mediated by disruption of GATA-1 and STAT5. Our results show that As(+3) primarily disrupted GATA-1 function; whereas, MMA(+3) suppressed both GATA-1 and STAT5 activity. Collectively, these findings provide novel mechanistic insights into arsenic-induced dyserythropoiesis and suggest that MMA(+3) may be more toxic than As(+3) to early developing erythroid cells.

With the introduction of the new college entrance examination evaluation system, great changes have taken place in the function, purpose and significance of the college entrance examination. In addition to evaluating students' learning achievements, it also undertakes the important function of educating people and morality, which also urges high school teachers to take educating people as the main teaching direction. As far as the ideological and political education in senior high school is concerned, there are many disadvantages in the traditional teaching mode, which leads to the students' low learning enthusiasm, and the inability to deeply understand the connotation of Ideological and political education, so that the discipline which should have the most educational function can not fully play its due role. Therefore, the ideological and political education in senior high school should make bold innovation, so as to quickly adapt to the new evaluation system. This paper makes an in-depth study on how to innovate the ideological and political education in Senior High School under the background of one core, four layers and four wings, and provides some specific measures.

Anemia is a hematological disorder that adversely affects the health of millions of people worldwide. Although many variables influence the development and exacerbation of anemia, one major contributing factor is the impairment of erythropoiesis. Normal erythropoiesis is highly regulated by the zinc finger transcription factor GATA-1. Disruption of the zinc finger motifs in GATA-1, such as produced by germline mutations, compromises the function of this critical transcription factor and causes dyserythropoietic anemia. Herein, we utilize a combination of in vitro and in vivo studies to provide evidence that arsenic, a widespread environmental toxicant, inhibits erythropoiesis likely through replacing zinc within the zinc fingers of the critical transcription factor GATA-1. We found that arsenic interacts with the N- and C-terminal zinc finger motifs of GATA-1, causing zinc loss and inhibition of DNA and protein binding activities, leading to dyserythropoiesis and an imbalance of hematopoietic differentiation. For the first time, we show that exposures to a prevalent environmental contaminant compromises the function of a key regulatory factor in erythropoiesis, producing effects functionally similar to inherited GATA-1 mutations. These findings highlight a novel molecular mechanism by which arsenic exposure may cause anemia and provide critical insights into potential prevention and intervention for arsenic-related anemias.

This paper shows that the trend of worsening income distribution in China has been reversed. We ascertain the robustness of this decline using five nationwide household survey and different inequality indicators. Attempts are then made to uncover the underlying reasons. Major findings include: (1) The decline is largely due to improvement in the distribution of transfer income although its share in the total income is small and diminishing; (2) Occupational income, particularly its component of wage income, plays an important role; and (3) Other drivers include the expansion of the middle-income group, rapid urbanization, and the shrinking disparity within Eastern China.

Urban road infrastructure is crucial in affecting air pollution. Yet, little is known about the roles played by road width vs road length. This paper attempts to fill this gap by estimating the effects of road infrastructure on PM10 using city-level data from China. Our robust modeling results show that the road density index, defined as the ratio of road surface area to city territory size, is negatively correlated with PM10. More importantly, when the road width and length components of the road density variable are separately included in the regression models, the width is found to be significantly and negatively correlated with PM10, whereas the correlation with the length variable is insignificant. This is expected as increases in road width can help mitigate congestion, improve fuel efficiency, and thus reduce emissions. On the contrary, extending roads to new or unconnected areas is likely to bring more vehicles onto the roads and extend average driving time. Our findings appeal for careful consideration of the trade-off between road width (lane numbers) and road length when planning and constructing urban road infrastructure.

This paper attempts to distinguish and estimate the direct and indirect effects of infrastructure on firm productivity. The latter arises from the infrastructure-agglomeration link and has been largely overlooked in the literature on infrastructure. An analytical framework is then proposed to estimate both effects. Finally, empirical results are obtained using large-scale firm-level survey data from China. Major findings include: (1) all the three kinds of infrastructure–road, telecommunication servers and cable–are found to directly promote firm productivity; (2) they also exert a positive indirect effect on firm productivity through the agglomeration channel; and (3) the empirical results are robust to different agglomeration indicators and different subsamples.