Yankun Li

Vietnam is considered an important emerging economy in Southeast Asia. After its domestic reform in 1986 (Doi Moi), it continuously deepened its integration into the world economy and achieved great economic development. This paper takes neoliberalism and neorealism as theoretical approaches to analyze two international organizations, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Specifically, the analysis focuses on how International Organizations (IOs) affect the course of development in Vietnam. This study aims to provide some references for Vietnam's future economic development and how to seek further development in international organizations. This study finds that by joining WTO, Vietnam achieved remarkable economic growth through trade liberalization. Most importantly, Vietnam gained the ability to negotiate problems on an equal basis with developed countries through the dispute settlement mechanism provided by WTO. The AIIB, on the other hand, gives Vietnam good access to infrastructure loans, but it also raises concerns about Vietnam's balance of power and security in the region. Due to the complexity of the impact of IOs on Vietnam's development, Vietnam needs to optimize its economic structure and relevant institutions rationally and make decisions to balance diverse interests to achieve long-term development and better face possible external crises. Further studies could be conducted on how Vietnam and other developing countries could balance their interests and promote development within IOs.

The blood–brain barrier (BBB) is a highly specialized neurovascular unit that protects the brain from potentially harmful substances. In addition, the BBB also engages in the exchange of essential nutrients between the vasculature and brain parenchyma, which is critical for brain homeostasis. Brain diseases, including neurological disorders and cerebrovascular diseases, are often associated with disrupted BBB integrity, evidenced by increased permeability. Therefore, defining the mechanisms underlying the regulation of BBB integrity is crucial for the development of novel therapeutics targeting brain diseases. MicroRNAs (miRNA), a type of small non-coding RNAs, are emerging as an important regulator of BBB integrity. Here we review recent developments related to the role of miRNAs in regulating BBB integrity.

Ensemble modeling has gained increasing attention for improving the performance of quantitative models in near infrared (NIR) spectral analysis. Based on Monte Carlo (MC) resampling, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and partial least squares (PLS), a new ensemble strategy named MC-LASSO-PLS is proposed for NIR spectral multivariate calibration. In this method, the training subsets for building the sub-models are generated by sampling from both samples and variables to ensure the diversity of the models. In detail, a certain number of samples as sample subsets are randomly selected from training set. Then, LASSO is used to shrink the variables of the sample subset to form the training subset, which is used to build the PLS sub-model. This process is repeated N times and N sub-models are obtained. Finally, the predictions of these sub-models are used to produce the final prediction by simple average. The prediction ability of the proposed method was compared with those of LASSO-PLS, MC-PLS and PLS models on the NIR spectra of corn, blend oil and orange juice samples. The superiority of MC-LASSO-PLS in prediction ability is demonstrated.

Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VIP) and Pituitary Adenylyl Cyclase Activating Peptide (PACAP) are regeneration-associated neuropeptides, which are up-regulated by neurons following peripheral nerve injury. So far, they have only been studied for their roles as autocrine signals for both neuronal survival and axon outgrowth during peripheral nerve regeneration. In this report, we examined VIP and PACAP’s paracrine effects on Schwann cells and macrophages in the distal nerve stump during peripheral nerve regeneration. We show that VPAC1, VPAC2, and PAC1 are all up-regulated in the mouse distal nerve following peripheral nerve injury and are highly expressed in Schwann cells and macrophages within the distal sciatic nerve. We further investigated the effect of VIP and PACAP on cultured rat Schwann cells, and found that VIP and PACAP can not only promote myelin gene expression in Schwann cells but can also inhibit the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines by Schwann cells. Furthermore, we show that VIP and PACAP inhibit the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines and enhance anti-inflammatory cytokine expression in sciatic nerve explants. Our results provide evidence that VIP and PACAP could have important functions in the distal nerve stump following injury to promote remyelination and regulate the inflammatory response. Thus, VIP and PACAP receptors appear as important targets to promote peripheral nerve repair following injury.

The influence of flue gas composition on the specific resistance of coal-fired fly ash is studied in this paper. We conclude that the negative electrons of NO₂ and SO₂ gases are strong. The probabilities of electron desorption on SO₂ and NO₂ negative ions are lower than that in air atmosphere at high temperature. Therefore, the introduction of SO₂ causes NO₂ to reduce the specific resistance value of coal-fired fly ash. When the pores on the surface of fly ash particles are filled with SO₂, no change will occur in NO₂, average pore size, pore volume, and specific surface area of fly ash particles, thereby resulting in fly ash that remains unchanged from the resistance value. When humidity increases, the surface conduction effect is greatly enhanced, and the specific resistance value is lowered considerably. Therefore, the specific resistance of dust can be reduced by humidification.