Optimized Extraction of Polysaccharides from Bergenia emeiensis Rhizome, Their Antioxidant Ability and Protection of Cells from Acrylamide-induced Cell Death

Bergeniaemeiensis is a traditional herb in Chinese folk medicine. Most related studies are focused on the bioactivity of bergenin, neglecting other bioactive compounds. In our previous work, polysaccharides were identified in B. emeiensis rhizome. To evaluate the extraction process and the antioxidant ability of these polysaccharides, a response surface method and antioxidant assays were applied. The results showed that the yield of polysaccharides was highly affected by extraction time, followed by temperature and solvent-to-sample ratio. Under the optimal conditions (43 °C, 30 min and 21 mL/g), the yield was 158.34 ± 0.98 mg/g. After removing other impurities, the purity of the polysaccharides from B. emeiensis (PBE) was 95.97 ± 0.92%. The infrared spectrum showed that PBE had a typical polysaccharide structure. Further investigations exhibited the PBE could scavenge well DPPH and ABTS free radicals and chelate Fe2+, showing an excellent antioxidant capacity. In addition, PBE also enhanced the cell viability of HEK 239T and Hep G2 cells under acrylamide-exposure conditions, exhibiting great protection against the damage induced by acrylamide. Therefore, PBE can be considered a potential natural antioxidant candidate for use in the pharmaceutical industry as a health product.

TRIP Steel for Automobile Industry in Vietnam

When Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), we made a non-discriminatory commitment between home-made goods and imported goods, so the great protection of domestic manufacturing enterprises is not can exist. Special consumption tax is only a historical period and will have to be adjusted, as this time transport infrastructure is still poor, people's living standards are not high. Particularly for domestically produced cars, it is not much affected by import tax, but still subject to SCT by the number of seats and cylinder capacity in accordance with the Law on Special Consumption Tax. As for value added tax (VAT), we should not mention much because most consumer products in Vietnam apply a VAT rate of 10%. The application of tariffs aims to encourage businesses to increase localization rates, and at the same time develop the automobile industry, aiming at export. Therefore, businesses need to try to save production and business costs, properly account market price. Vietnamese consumers are still "expecting" after 2018 to buy cheap cars because the import tax on complete cars will be reduced to 0%. However, in contrast, some comments also suggest that at that time most of the domestic car manufacturers and assemblers will turn into importers.

Moral Hazard Assessment in State-subsidized: Renewable Energy Investments

This paper presents the impact of state subsidy programs on moral hazard in renewable energy investments. The purpose of the research is to build a theoretical model which is able to handle the borrower’s behavior under asymmetric information circumstances, thus creating a new aspect in the debate about the choice of the financially ideal incentive structure. The general conclusion of the article is that technology based subsidy mechanisms which provide great protection to the investing companies (ceteris paribus), increase information asymmetry and agency costs. While these systems improve predictability of revenues, they block effective lending or otherwise, the market dependent subsidies moderate the moral hazard, which reduce the risk of fluctuating market prices.

Trade, Traders and the State in Eighteenth-Century Erzurum

In the present paper, we deal with traders who crossed the border between the Ottoman Empire and Iran during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These merchants are at once a topic of much scholarly debate and virtually unknown. Little trace has survived of their everyday activities, but they are repeatedly mentioned in Niels Steensgaard's well-known work on pedlars and European companies, in which he has analyzed the activities of merchants who confronted two great “protection-producing” and “redistributive” empires, namely the Ottoman and the Safavid, and who also needed to cope with competition from the European regulated companies (Steensgaard, 1974, pp. 22-59). Larger capital resources, advance knowledge of markets, and a commercial organization which enabled traders to take advantage of seasonally low prices were the companies’ advantages, while peddling merchants had but limited resources and were therefore vulnerable.