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Aim: To evaluate the regulatory landscape underlying the active enhancer marked by H3K27ac in high-fat diet (HFD)-induced nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in rats. Materials & methods: H3K27ac chromatin immunoprecipitation and high-throughput RNA sequencing to construct regulatory profiles and transcriptome of liver from NAFLD rat model induced by HFD. De novo motif analysis for differential H3K27ac peaks. Functional enrichment, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway and protein–protein interaction network were examined for differential peak–genes. The mechanism was further verified by western blot, chromatin immunoprecipitation-quantitative PCR and real-time PCR. Results: A total of 1831 differential H3K27ac peaks were identified significantly correlating with transcription factors and target genes ( CYP8B1, PLA2G12B, SLC27A5, CYP7A1 and APOC3) involved in lipid and energy homeostasis. Conclusion: Altered acetylation induced by HFD leads to the dysregulation of gene expression, further elucidating the epigenetic mechanism in the etiology of NAFLD.

In the face of the increasingly severe water environment, establishing an effective water environment management mechanism is a major concern of governments around the world. The River Chief System attempts to match water environment management to the performance of the main leaders of the local party and government and represents an institutional innovation to solve the problem of river and lake management in China. However, there is still a lack of systematic research on the performance of the River Chief System and how to promote its overall effectiveness. This paper took Chaohu Lake Basin, with a concentrated and complicated water environment, as the research object and divided it into eastern and western halves. The water ecological security before and after the implementation of the River Chief System was comprehensively evaluated, and the obstacles to ecological security were diagnosed. The implementation effect of the River Chief System and the weak links of the corresponding river chiefs' work performance were analyzed. The results show the following: (1) Since the implementation of the River Chief System in 2013, the overall water ecological security of Chaohu Lake Basin has been raised from the lower limit to the upper limit of the generally healthy category, initially reflecting the effect of the River Chief System. (2) For the eastern half of the lake, the threat to water ecological security mainly comes from the development of industry. Industrial water use intensity is the primary obstacle to the ecological security of the eastern half of the lake in recent years. (3) For the western half of the lake, the threat to water ecological security mainly comes from the process of urbanization. The wetland area, urban domestic water use intensity, and artificial afforestation area are the main factors hindering the ecological security of the western half of the lake. The above analysis results can be used as the basis for future work to improve the performance of the relevant river chiefs in Chaohu Lake Basin.

In response to severe energy and environmental challenges, electric vehicles (EVs) have been thoroughly considered by governments. Although China has become the largest EV market, currently the limitations of EVs and decreasing subsidies have led to a challenging future. To promote EV diffusion, we use a complex network evolutionary game method to explore the dynamic impacts of government policies on EV diffusion in different scale networks. The results show that with the increase in manufacturers in the network, the degree of EV diffusion increases accordingly at the same government policy level. In the present network scale of manufacturers, on the supply side, the effects of tax and subsidy policies can respectively promote EV diffusion to 0.82 and 0.86. Fuel vehicle (FV) license plate restrictions and consumer purchase subsidies are effective policies on the demand side, which both can promote EV diffusion to 0.84. Compared with consumer purchase subsidies, production subsidies for manufacturers have better effects on EV diffusion. Neither the tax and subsidy policies nor the FV license plate restriction and EV purchase subsidy policies can realize full EV diffusion. Finally, combined with the current status of China's automobile industry, the corresponding policy recommendations for different periods are given.

In 2019, the Chinese central government adopted the "double-drop" policy (to reduce both the rate and the base of employers' contributions to employees' basic pension plan) as an attempt to increase overall employment and plan coverage in the national labor market and, in turn, achieve a balance in the plan's annual contributions and benefits at the provincial level. Accordingly, we utilize the cohort element method and actuarial models to explore the policy's effects on the plan's financial sustainability in both the short and long term based on data from Heilongjiang and Liaoning provinces in northeastern China. We further examine the policy's indirect effects (through changes in the compliance rate, enterprises' overall employment rate, coverage rates, or economic growth rates) on the plan's sustainability using the circulation substitution method. We find that, although the policy directly reduces employer contributions, it indirectly improves the plan's balance between contributions and benefits through changes in employment, coverage, compliance, or economic growth rates. Nevertheless, the overall effect of the policy is far weaker than its negative effect. Hence, we provide a portfolio of solutions that includes increases in provincial governments' subsidies (to approximately 8% of total fiscal expenditures), increases in the central government's adjustment proportion (to 11%-15%), and delays in the retirement age (progressively to age 65).

Under the open economy, whereas the manufacturing industry has realized transformation and upgrading by the embedding global value chain (GVC) division system, the problems of energy consumption and environmental damage caused by the industry have attracted increasing attention from society. In this paper, the industry classification standard of Trade in Value Added (TiVA) database is used to integrate China’s manufacturing industry during 2006–2015. Based on the indicator measurement, corresponding panel data models are constructed to study the impacts of the GVC position on green technology innovation efficiency (GTIE) in the context of environmental regulation. The empirical results show that: (1) The rise of the GVC embedding position significantly promotes the GTIE, and there is industry heterogeneity characterized by pollution intensity and factor density. (2) There is a positive moderating effect and a double threshold effect of environmental regulation on the relationship between the GVC position and the GTIE. The above research findings offer a certain managerial enlightenment for the manufacturing industry of developing countries to guide adjustment of environmental regulation policies, alleviate the pressure on resources and the environment, and even cultivate a new momentum of sustainable economic growth.

In the context of promoting the construction of the national innovation system with enterprises as the main body, research on factors that influence enterprise technology innovation (ETI) is of great practical significance. This paper considers the integration of product and information flow in enterprise Global Value Chain (GVC) and aims to test whether integration is meaningful for ETI by comparing the impact of GVC on ETI through three different paths using the Probit and Poisson models. Additionally, situations in different regions and industries are further analyzed. The results show that integration is meaningful overall but not for all regions or industries; enterprises should start from product and management innovation to improve ETI based on integration; GVC-embedded-enterprise in the eastern region and high-tech industry should focus more on their relationship with consumers, improve product innovation, further enhance enterprise innovation participation breadth.

Water scarcity has become a common problem worldwide. To realize the sustainable development of water resources, exploring the compilation of the water resources balance sheet and implementing outgoing audits of water resource assets for leading cadres is of great significance. To evaluate regional water security, this study took the water resources balance sheet as the data carrier of outgoing audits and organically combined the results with the evaluation of leading cadres’ water ecological achievements. The water ecological achievements of the three provincial governors in Anhui province from 2013 to 2017, including those who have left office (leading cadres A and B) and who is currently in office (leading cadre C), were evaluated. The results indicate the following. (1) Both A and B’s water ecological achievements were “good,” and the water security level changed from “relatively unsafe” to “proximity safe” during A’s tenure, while it improved from “proximity safety” to “relatively safe” during B’s tenure. (2) The water security level in 2017 was stable at “relatively safe,” and the current leading cadre C’s water ecological achievement was “good,” but the performance in improving the state of water resources still needs to be strengthened. The results of this research have some implications for water resource management in other regions, especially countries where the governance system is similar to that of China.

This paper puts the population, economy and pension into a unified framework, analyzes the interactive feedback mechanism between them, and builds a system dynamics model to explore the moderate scale of China’s pension strategic reserve from the following three perspectives: whether it can resist the pension payment crisis in future according to the current growth rate; if the pension gap is completely filled by the reserve, what size of the reserve needs to reach; a moderate range of the reserve when local governments are jointly responsible for filling the gap. The empirical research shows: the reserve cannot resist the pension payment crisis; the reserve needs to reach 54.21 trillion RMB before the gap appears, under the condition of fully filling the gap; the reserve needs to reach the range of 19.96 trillion to 39.51 trillion RMB before the gap appears with the participation of local governments.