Evaluating the energy efficiency-enhancing potential of the digital economy: Evidence from China.

Improving energy efficiency can go a long way in helping China address environmental problems it currently faces and help deliver on its pledge of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. At the same time, innovative production technologies based on digital solutions continue to attract significant attention, owing to their potential to provide environmentally sustainable development opportunities. This study explores whether the digital economy can improve energy efficiency by facilitating input reallocation and promoting better information flows. We rely on a panel of 285 Chinese cities for the period 2010-2019 and a so-called slacks-based efficiency measure incorporating socially undesirable outputs to obtain energy efficiency from the decomposition of a productivity index. Our estimation results demonstrate that the digital economy can promote better energy use efficiency. More specifically, a 1-percentage point increase in the size of the digital economy leads to an average increase of around 14.65 percentage points in energy efficiency. This conclusion still holds under a two-stage least-squares procedure used to mitigate endogeneity. The efficiency-enhancing impact of digitalization is heterogeneous and depends on factors such as resource endowment, city size, and geographical location. Additionally, our results suggest that digital transformation within a particular region has an adverse effect on energy efficiency in that region's neighboring areas due to negative spatial spillover effects. These negative spillovers outweigh the positive direct effect on energy efficiency that can be attributed to a growing digital economy.

Molecular cloning, characterization and functional analysis of a heat shock protein 70 gene in Cyclina sinensis.

Heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) is an important member of the heat shock protein superfamily and is involved in protecting organisms against various stressors. In the present study, we used RACE to clone a full-length Cyclina sinensis HSP70 cDNA termed CsHSP70. The full length of the CsHSP70 cDNA was 2308 bp, with a 5' untranslated region (UTR) of 42 bp, a 3' UTR of 268 bp, and an open reading frame (ORF) of 1998 bp encoding a polypeptide of 655 amino acids with an estimated molecular mass of 72.75 kDa and an estimated isoelectric point of 5.48. Quantitative real-time PCR was employed to analyze the tissue distribution and temporal expression of the CsHSP70 gene after bacterial challenge and cadmium (Cd) exposure. The CsHSP70 mRNA transcript was expressed ubiquitously in five examined tissues, with the highest expression in hemocytes (P < 0.05) and with the lowest expression in the hepatopancreas. Furthermore, the expression level of CsHSP70 in hemocytes at 3 h after Vibrio anguillarum challenge was extremely significantly up-regulated (P < 0.01). Moreover, the CsHSP70 transcript was up-regulated significantly following exposure to a safe Cd concentration (0.1 mg/L). Finally, after the CsHSP70 gene was silenced by RNA interference, the expression of the CsTLR13 and CsMyD88 genes were extremely significantly decreased (P < 0.01). The results indicated that CsHSP70 could play an important role in mediating the environmental stress and immune responses, and regulating TLR signaling pathway in C. sinensis.

Mixed-ligand copper(ii) Schiff base complexes: the role of the co-ligand in DNA binding, DNA cleavage, protein binding and cytotoxicity.

Four novel mononuclear Schiff base copper(ii) complexes, namely, [Cu(L)(OAc)]·H2O (), [Cu(HL)(C2O4)(EtOH)]·EtOH (), [Cu(L)(Bza)] () and [Cu(L)(Sal)] () (HL = 1-(((2-((2-hydroxypropyl)amino)ethyl)imino)methyl)naphthalene-2-ol), Bza = benzoic acid, Sal = salicylic acid), were synthesized and characterized by X-ray crystallography, elemental analysis and infrared spectroscopy. Single-crystal diffraction analysis revealed that all the complexes were mononuclear molecules, in which the Schiff base ligand exhibited different coordination modes and conformations. The N-HO and O-HO inter- and intramolecular hydrogen bonding interactions linked these molecules into multidimensional networks. Their interactions with calf thymus DNA (CT-DNA) were investigated by UV-visible and fluorescence spectrometry, as well as by viscosity measurements. The magnitude of the Kapp values of the four complexes was 10(5), indicating a moderate intercalative binding mode between the complexes and DNA. Electrophoresis results showed that all these complexes induced double strand breaks of pUC19 plasmid DNA in the presence of H2O2 through an oxidative pathway. In addition, the fluorescence spectrum of human serum albumin (HSA) with the complexes suggested that the quenching mechanism of HSA by the complexes was a static process. Moreover, the antiproliferative activity of the four complexes against HeLa (human cervical carcinoma) and HepG-2 (human liver hepatocellular carcinoma) cells evaluated by colorimetric cell proliferation assay and clonogenic assay revealed that all four complexes had improved cytotoxicity against cancer cells. Inspiringly, complex , with salicylic acid as the auxiliary ligand, displayed a stronger anticancer activity, suggesting that a synergistic effect of the Schiff base complex and the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug may be involved in the cell killing process. The biological features of mixed-ligand copper(ii) Schiff base complexes and how acetic auxiliary ligands manipulate these features are also discussed.

Identification and functional characterization of three TLR signaling pathway genes in Cyclina sinensis.

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are an ancient family of pattern recognition receptors that play a critical role in initiating and activating the innate immune system. In this study, we identified two TLR genes (CsTLR4 and CsTLR13) and the MyD88 (CsMyD88) gene using a transcriptome library from Cyclina sinensis. The sequence features and mRNA expression profiles of the genes were characterized, and their functions in the immune response were investigated to validate the TLR signaling pathway and its potential role in immune defense. The expression patterns of CsTLR4, CsTLR13 and CsMyD88 were detected in all the tissues examined from healthy clams and were primarily expressed in the hemocytes (P < 0.05), as shown by real-time PCR. Upon challenge with Vibrio anguillarum and Micrococcus luteus, they were significantly increased in hemocytes (P < 0.01), whereas only CsTLR13 and CsMyD88 were up-regulated (P < 0.01) by poly (I:C) challenge. In addition, the mRNA expression level of CsC-LYZ and CsAMP was down-regulated at 72 h (P < 0.01) after injection with CsMyD88 RNAi. These findings might be valuable for understanding the innate immune signaling pathways of C. sinensis and enabling future studies on host-pathogen interactions.