Using a sample consisting of China's listed manufacturing companies which issue A-shares on the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges from 2008-2014, this study empirically tests the relationship between board chairman's political connections and the amount of energy conservation and emission reduction investment. The results show that the existence of politically-connected board chairmen positively affects green investment. In addition, marketization degrees negatively moderate the relationship between political connection and green investment, which supports an institutional logic perspective. The amount of redundant resources also has the same moderating effect, which is consistent with the resource exchange perspective.

This study aims to examine the contribution of morphological awareness to second language (L2) Chinese reading comprehension through potential mediating factors. Adult L2 Chinese learners (n = 447) participated in the study and completed two morphological awareness tasks (segmentation and discrimination), two vocabulary knowledge tasks (character knowledge and word-meaning knowledge), one lexical inference task, and one reading comprehension task. By testing alternative path models, this study identified the preferred model assuming the covariates of morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge jointly contributed to L2 Chinese reading comprehension through lexical inference. The written modality of morphological awareness induced the activation of both morphological and orthographic information in print. The result suggests that morphological awareness (in the form of grapho-morphological knowledge) and vocabulary knowledge seem to be two parallel components under the same construct predicting Chinese reading comprehension. More importantly, this study underscores the intermediary effect of lexical inference in associating morphological awareness and reading comprehension in L2 Chinese learners.

Considering the central challenge of the simple and efficient strategy to generate sensitive analysis technology, herein, we proposed a novel electrochemiluminescence (ECL) strategy based on target-induced self-enrichment via hydrophobic interaction to generate significant ECL enhancement for untrasensitive detection of clinical biomarkers with cardiac troponin I (cTnI) for early diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) as a model. Typically, the first antibody of cTnI (fAb) was immobilized onto the as-prepared electrode surface with the titanium dioxide nanoflower and gold nanoclusters When there was target cTnI, it could be captured onto the electrode surface based on the specific antigen–antibody interaction to furtherly capture cholesterol-modified second antibody of cTnI to increase the hydrophobicity of the electrode surface, which could be employed for the self-enrichment of hydrophobic ECL luminophore, tris­(2,2′-bipyridyl-4,4′-dicarboxylato) ruthenium­(II), and coreactant, tripropylamine in the detection solution. Thus, an increased ECL emission could be achieved due to the increased concentration of ECL luminophore and coreactant, which was quantitatively related with the concentration of target cTnI. As expected, a higher sensitivity was obtained with a detection limit of 0.04 pg/mL based on simplest operations of the proposed strategy with target-induced self-enrichment via hydrophobic interaction. Importantly, this hydrophobic interaction-based ECL strategy could be easily expanded to the bioassay of various biomarkers, providing an efficient tool for early clinical diagnosis of AMI and some other diseases.

Both CTCs and tumor stem cells (TSCs) could be detected in the PBMC of breast cancer patients; besides, positive expression rate of CTCs might be obviously associated with the clinical stage and metastasis. Positive relationship of TSCs and the clinical stage of breast cancer was also proved in this study.

Expression of Bmi-1 in gallbladder carcinoma and its clinicopathology and mechanisms of regulation of human gallbladder carcinoma cell proliferation were investigated. Fifty cases of gallbladder carcinoma specimens and 15 normal gallbladder tissues were subjected to immunohistochemical staining to detect the expression of Bmi-1 gene in gallbladder carcinoma and normal gallbladder tissues. Clinicopathological features were compared and analyzed. Bmi1-si RNA and Bmi1-NC vectors were transfected into GBC-SD gallbladder cancer cell lines. Expression of Bmi-1 in GBC-SD-Bmi1-si RNA, GBC-SD-Bmi1-NC and GBC-SD cells was detected by RT-qPCR. Cell proliferation was detected by CCK-8 assay. Flow cytometry was used to detect cell apoptosis. Protein expression was detected by western blot analysis. The positive expression rate of Bmi-1 protein in gallbladder carcinoma tissues was significantly higher than that in normal gallbladder tissues (P<0.05). Expression of Bmi-1 protein in gallbladder carcinoma was correlated with tumor differentiation and stage (P<0.05). Expression level of Bmi-1 in GBC-SD-Bmi1-si RNA was significantly lower than that in GBC-SD-Bmi1-NC and GBC-SD cells. The apoptosis rate of GBC-SD-Bmi1-si RNA cells was significantly higher than that of the two control groups. Compared with the control groups, the expression of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 in GBC-SD-Bmi1-si RNA cells decreased, while the expression of proapoptotic protein Bax and caspase 3 increased, and the expression levels of cyclin D1 and CDK2 decreased. Positive expression rate of Bmi-1 protein in gallbladder carcinoma tissues was significantly higher than that in normal gallbladder tissue. Following inhibition of the expression of Bmi-1 in gallbladder cancer cell line GBC-SD, the growth cycle of cancer cells was prolonged and apoptotic rate increased. The results showed that a decreased expression of cyclin D1 and CDK2 may lead to delayed cell proliferation, decreased expression of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2, increased expression of pro-apoptotic protein Bax and caspase 3, leading to increased apoptosis.