PFAS assessment in fish - Samples from Illinois waters.

Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been widely used in various industries, including pesticide production, electroplating, packaging, paper making, and the manufacturing of water-resistant clothes. This study investigates the levels of PFAS in fish tissues collected from four target waterways (15 sampling points) in the northwestern part of Illinois during 2021-2022. To assess accumulation, concentrations of 17 PFAS compounds were evaluated in nine fish species to potentially inform on exposure risks to local sport fishing population via fish consumption. At least four PFAS (PFHxA, PFHxS, PFOS, and PFBS) were detected at each sampling site. The highest concentrations of PFAS were consistently found in samples from the Rock River, particularly in areas near urban and industrial activities. PFHxA emerged as the most accumulated PFAS in the year 2022, while PFBS and PFOS dominated in 2021. Channel Catfish exhibited the highest PFAS content across different fish species, indicating its bioaccumulation potential across the food chain. Elevated levels of PFOS were observed in nearly all fish, indicating the need for careful consideration of fish consumption. Additional bioaccumulation data in the future years is needed to shed light on the sources and PFAS accumulation potential in aquatic wildlife in relation to exposures for potential health risk assessment.

Auxiliary two-filter particle smoothing for one generalized hidden Markov model.

This paper develops two-filter particle smoothing (TFPS) algorithms for the nonlinear fixed-interval smoothing problem of one generalized hidden Markov model (GHMM), where the current observation depends not only on the current state, but also on one-step previous state. Firstly, by Bayesian approach, the two-filter smoothing (TFS) formula for GHMM is established to calculate smoothing densities. In this TFS formula, the backward information prediction density is generally not a density of the state. This results in a difficulty that the normal sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) sampling technique cannot be directly applied to design corresponding TFPS algorithms based on the TFS formula. To solve this difficulty, a generalized TFS formula for GHMM is then proposed by introducing a sequence of artificial densities. By combining this generalized TFS formula, SMC, and the auxiliary variable sampling technique, a basic auxiliary TFPS (ATFPS) algorithm with quadratic computational complexity is proposed, and a simplified ATFPS algorithm with linear computational complexity is further developed. Finally, the effectiveness and superiority of the two proposed ATFPS algorithms for GHMM are verified via simulation examples and real experimental data.

MH6D: Multi-Hypothesis Consistency Learning for Category-Level 6-D Object Pose Estimation.

Six-degree-of-freedom (6DoF) object pose estimation is a crucial task for virtual reality and accurate robotic manipulation. Category-level 6DoF pose estimation has recently become popular as it improves generalization to a complete category of objects. However, current methods focus on data-driven differential learning, which makes them highly dependent on the quality of the real-world labeled data and limits their ability to generalize to unseen objects. To address this problem, we propose multi-hypothesis (MH) consistency learning (MH6D) for category-level 6-D object pose estimation without using real-world training data. MH6D uses a parallel consistency learning structure, alleviating the uncertainty problem of single-shot feature extraction and promoting self-adaptation of domain to reduce the synthetic-to-real domain gap. Specifically, three randomly sampled pose transformations are first performed in parallel on the input point cloud. An attention-guided category-level 6-D pose estimation network with channel attention (CA) and global feature cross-attention (GFCA) modules is then proposed to estimate the three hypothesized 6-D object poses by extracting and fusing the global and local features effectively. Finally, we propose a novel loss function that considers both the process and the final result information allowing MH6D to perform robust consistency learning. We conduct experiments under two different training data settings (i.e., only synthetic data and synthetic and real-world data) to verify the generalization ability of MH6D. Extensive experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate that MH6D achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance, outperforming most data-driven methods even without using any real-world data. The code is available at https://github.com/CNJianLiu/MH6D.

Monte Carlo study of X-ray grazing incidence microscopy using Geant4.

X-ray grazing incidence microscopy has extensive applications in the fields of laser inertial confinement fusion and synchrotron radiation. Monte Carlo methods can be used to determine the optical performance of X-ray grazing incidence microscopes and predict the experimental results, which is of great significance for studying physical experiments and diagnostics. In this paper, we proposed a Monte Carlo method based on Geant4 for studying X-ray grazing incidence microscopy. We introduced the G4MultilayerReflection class to describe the physical processes of X-ray multilayer mirrors. We designed a dual-energy Kirkpatrick-Baez microscope that can operate at 6.4 and 9.67 keV simultaneously. Monte Carlo simulations of the spatial resolution and throughput efficiency of the microscope were performed using Geant4, which was assembled and characterized. The spatial resolution results obtained by the Geant4 laboratory simulations, the theoretical model, and the experiments were in good agreement. Additionally, we conducted throughput efficiency calibration experiments for the 6.4 keV imaging channel. The difference between the experimental and Geant4-simulated throughput efficiency was evaluated and resulted in root mean square error values of 8.7% and 9.5% along the Y- and Z-axes, respectively.

Assessment of atherectomy treatment for Thromboangiitis Obliterans: A single center experience.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Endovascular recanalizaiton (ER) has been proven to be a feasible method for Thromboangiitis Obliterans (TAO). The aims of this study were to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of atherectomy for TAO compared to nonatherectomy ER in our center. METHODS: Patients diagnosed as TAO were reviewed from January 2016 to June 2021 in our center. Basic characteristics of patients before ER and perioperative data were collected and compared between the atherectomy and nonatherectomy groups. The vascular event-free survival and limb salvage were calculated to evaluate the prognosis of TAO patients after ERs. Logistic Regression and Cox Regression were used to identify the risk factors for technical failure and prognosis, respectively. RESULTS: Seventy-two TAO patients with 79 lower limbs who met the criteria were included in this report. Compared with the nonatherectomy group, no significant improvement was identified in ER technical success, vascular event-free survival, or limb salvage in the atherectomy group. The total technical success rate was 91.1% (atherectomy group, 95.2%; nonatherectomy group, 89.7%), and the multiple limb involvement (p = 0.005; odds ratio [OR], 28.16; confidence interval [CI], 3.28-241.55) was the independent risk factor for technical failure. The total vascular event-free survival proportion was 66.05% and 58.40% at 1 and 3 years, respectively. Technical failure (OR, 5.61; 95% CI, 1.57-20.04; p = 0.008), and runoff grade 0 (OR, 3.28; 95% CI, 1.09-9.85; p = 0.034) were independent risk factors for vascular events. The total limb salvage proportion at 1 and 3 years was 95.84% and 92.53%, respectively. Technical failure (OR, 8.54; 95% CI, 1.71-40.73; p = 0.02) was identified as an independent risk factor for above ankle amputation. CONCLUSIONS: No significant difference in prognosis was found between the atherectomy group and the nonatherectomy group during a midterm follow-up. The technical success of ER was crucial for TAO prognosis.

Megacity's pathway toward sustainable food waste management and its environmental performance in a developing country: Evidence from Shanghai, China.

Due to the far distance impact on resident, aquatic and soil ecosystem health, food waste disposal becomes the focus of municipal waste strategy in developing countries. Shanghai is a leading city in China, its evolution of food waste management can indicate the coming future of the nation. In this city, from 1986 to 2020, the open dumping, landfill and incineration of food waste had been gradually banned, replaced by centralized compost and anaerobic digestion and other recovery ways. This study selected ten scenarios, ever used for food/mixed waste disposal in Shanghai, and analyzed the environmental impact change during the period 1986-2020. Life cycle assessment showed that although the generation of food waste raised rapidly, the total environmental impact, which was dominated by Freshwater Aquatic Ecotoxicity Potential, displayed a sharp decrease as 96.09 %, and Global Warming Potential decreased by 28.14 %. Substantial efforts should be made to improve the collection rate of biogas and landfill gas to reduce environmental impact, and quality of residues from anaerobic digestion and compost plants should be improved and utilized in its legal ways. Driving forces for the goal of sustainable food waste management in Shanghai involved economic development, environmental regulations and the supporting national/local standards.

Quantifying the effect of socio-economic-geo drivers on the change of municipal waste disposal in China by an integrated TWFE-PRF-SDM methodology.

Municipal solid waste management and disposal in China have significantly evolved since 2000. Due to China's vast land area and significant socioeconomic and geographic disparities, nationwide waste management strategies need to be further evaluated. This study quantified the effect of social, economic, and geographic drivers on municipal waste disposal activities in 31 provincial-level administrative regions from 2003 to 2020, by establishing a methodology integrated by two-way fixed effects regression model, panel random forest, and spatial Durbin model. The results showed, in the past two decades, socio-economic-geo indicators significantly co-decided the landfill and incineration activities. In particular, the explanatory ability of GDP per capita was above 45%, while land resources and city size also showed great significance. Spatial autocorrelation analysis showed that the relationship between landfill/incineration rates and socio-economic-geo drivers changed notably from unobvious to significant with economic growth. Furthermore, the local economy and land resources displayed more impact than those of the neighboring regions, while sci-tech and education showed clear spatial spillover effects. Chinese government would carefully assess the full-scale promotion policy of incineration plants, landfill is still hold as a reasonable option for regions with specific socio-economic-geo conditions.

Pollution status and risk assessment of heavy metals in the sediment of a historically contaminated lake treated by oxidation pond in China.

Sediment plays an important role in controlling biogeochemical cycling of heavy metals in aquatic environment. The Ya-Er Lake is a typical lake which was historically contaminated by heavy metals in Hubei province, China. After industries surrounding the Ya-Er Lake being shut down, oxidation pond treatment and dredging program were conducted for pollution management since 1970s. To date, the Ya-Er Lake has been used for aquaculture for several decades. However, the status of heavy metal levels and ecological risks in this lake remains unclear. Herein, concentrations, chemical fractions, and risk assessment of heavy metals were investigated in the Ya-Er Lake sediment. Results showed that concentrations of heavy metals in the Ya-Er Lake sediment were higher than other reported lake systems, suggesting that heavy metal pollution in the Ya-Er Lake is still serious. Relatively higher proportions of carbonates bound form of Cd and Ni indicated high-risk potential of these two heavy metals, and Cd and Ni should be listed as the primary heavy metal pollutants in the Ya-Er Lake according to the results of potential ecological risk index (PERI) and sediment quality guidelines (SQGs). The risk assessment code (RAC) analysis showed that Ni and Cd poses higher bioavailability and mitigation potential, and may affect the Ya-Er Lake ecosystem and downstream aquatic environment. These findings reflected that oxidation pond treatment and dredging sediment to near place are not effective to control heavy metal pollution, and a long-term ecological risk is still posed to surrounding aquatic environment. Our study provides scientific basis on pollution control and management in aquatic system contaminated by heavy metals.

Global and Regional Trends and Projections of Infective Endocarditis-Associated Disease Burden and Attributable Risk Factors from 1990 to 2030.

Objective To forecast the future burden and its attributable risk factors of infective endocarditis (IE). Method We analyzed the disease burden of IE and its risk factors from 1990 to 2019 using the Global Burden of Disease 2019 database and projected the disease burden from 2020 to 2030 using a Bayesian age-period-cohort model. Results By 2030, the incidence of IE will increase uncontrollably on a global scale, with developed countries having the largest number of cases and developing countries experiencing the fastest growth. The affected population will be predominantly males, but the gender gap will narrow. The elderly in high-income countries will bear the greatest burden, with a gradual shift to middle-income countries. The incidence of IE in countries with middle/high-middle social-demographic indicators (SDI) will surpass that of high SDI countries. In China, the incidence rate and the number of IE will reach 18.07 per 100,000 and 451,596 in 2030, respectively. IE-associated deaths and heart failure will continue to impose a significant burden on society, the burden on women will increase and surpass that on men, and the elderly in high-SDI countries will bear the heaviest burden. High systolic blood pressure has become the primary risk factor for IE-related death. Conclusions This study provides comprehensive analyses of the disease burden and risk factors of IE worldwide over the next decade. The IE-associated incidence will increase in the future and the death and heart failure burden will not be appropriately controlled. Gender, age, regional, and country heterogeneity should be taken seriously to facilitate in making effective strategies for lowering the IE disease burden.

The complete mitochondrial genome of an ancient cattle (Bos taurus) from Taosi site, China, and its phylogenetic assessment.

The complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of one 4000-years-old cattle from Taosi site was determined by high throughput sequencing. The mitogenome was 16,336 bp in length and contained 13 protein-coding genes, two rRNA genes, and 22 tRNA genes. The protein-coding genes had two types of start codons (ATG and ATA) and three types of stop codons (TAA, TAG, and AGA). The overall base composition of the genome was 33%-A, 27%-T, 26%-C, 14%-G. The matrilineal genealogical analysis based on mitogenome revealed that the 4000-years-old cattle from Taosi site was domestic taurine cattle. In this study, we not only reported a complete mitogenome for a 4000-years-old bovine remain from the middle Yellow River region but also provided the mitogenomic evidence for the close phylogenetic relationship between the early taurine cattle in Northern China and modern domestic cattle.

Food insecurity and adverse childhood experiences: a systematic review.

CONTEXT: Food insecurity (FI) and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) disproportionally affect vulnerable populations and are key social determinants of health that predict nutrition-related outcomes. It is critical to understand how FI and ACEs are interrelated so prevention studies can be designed to better promote health equity. OBJECTIVE: A systematic literature review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses to determine the association between FI and ACEs. DATA SOURCES: Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scopus databases were used to find articles relevant to the study. Inclusion criteria included quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods studies of humans, using an experimental or observational research design to examine the relationship between FI and ACEs using the validated ACEs measure in its entirety. DATA EXTRACTION: Studies were assessed for study design, data set, population descriptions, and results of the association between FI and ACEs. Additionally, all included studies were assessed for bias and validity. DATA ANALYSIS: A total of 10 articles were included in the systematic review. Of those articles, 9 were reports on cross-sectional studies, and 1 reported on a longitudinal study; however, all 10 studies used a retrospective approach. Six studies were conducted using secondary data. Results reported in all 10 articles indicated a significant positive association between FI and ACEs. Evidence indicated greater odds of FI among individuals with high ACE scores, with most studies indicating a dose-response or a threshold effect of higher ACEs being associated with more severe FI. CONCLUSIONS: FI and ACEs are consistently related. Prevention study interventions should be designed to address FI and problems stemming from ACEs. Filling knowledge gaps regarding the relationship between ACEs and FI is critical for designing nutrition interventions that promote food security, prevent the occurrence of ACEs, and improve health outcomes among vulnerable populations with high ACEs. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION: PROSPERO registration no.: CRD42020210106.

Linkages between share pledging, stock price risk and profitability: Evidence from the P.R. China.

Share pledging has become popular as a method of loan collateral among Chinese shareholders. Our research used a sample of Chinese listed firms between 2008-2018 and produced two main findings. Firstly, we found a negative association between stock price risk and firm profitability. Our second finding was that the interaction effect of share pledging and stock price risk is greater on firm profitability than the effect of stock price risk itself. We examined the role of share pledging by modeling pooled OLS and fixed effects using share pledging behavior, controlling shareholders' share pledging and the share pledging ratio to reinforce the robustness of our results. Furthermore, we investigated the Davis Double Play effect of share pledging to analyze how share pledging affects stock price risk. We found that higher EPS and investor expectations cannot mitigate the positive impact of share pledging on stock price risk. That is, the reduction of EPS and the deterioration of investor expectations caused by share pledging risk will not further aggravate the stock price risk, as shareholders may have taken some managerial actions to affect the transmission mechanism.

Theory and empiricism: A comment on "Interrogating the environmental affordances model" by Pamplin and colleagues.

We strongly support efforts to generate, rigorously test, and falsify hypotheses derived from the Environmental Affordances (EA) Model of Health Disparities, as originated by the late Dr. James S. Jackson (1940-2020). Such efforts are critical to establishing robust, theoretically grounded scientific frameworks that explain the fundamental causes of racial disparities in health and wellbeing. Pamplin et al. (2021) fundamentally misrepresents the EA Model as a framework that (falsely) reifies the role of race as a determinant of health behaviors and health outcomes. Further, both their study design and analytic approach are inappropriate for testing predictions of this framework. We address these issues with the goal of recentering the scholarly conversation about how stress contributes to health, and disparities in health, over the life course.

Investor attention and cryptocurrency: Evidence from the Bitcoin market.

This paper adds to the growing literature of cryptocurrency and behavioral finance. Specifically, we investigate the relationships between the novel investor attention and financial characteristics of Bitcoin, i.e., return and realized volatility, which are the two most important characteristics of one certain asset. Our empirical results show supports in the behavior finance area and argue that investor attention is the granger cause to changes in Bitcoin market both in return and realized volatility. Moreover, we make in-depth investigations by exploring the linear and non-linear connections of investor attention on Bitcoin. The results indeed demonstrate that investor attention shows sophisticated impacts on return and realized volatility of Bitcoin. Furthermore, we conduct one basic and several long horizons out-of-sample forecasts to explore the predictive ability of investor attention. The results show that compared with the traditional historical average benchmark model in forecasting technologies, investor attention improves prediction accuracy in Bitcoin return. Finally, we build economic portfolios based on investor attention and argue that investor attention can further generate significant economic values. To sum up, investor attention is a non-negligible pricing factor for Bitcoin asset.

Business Cycle and Public Health: The Moderating Role of Health Education and Digital Economy.

The cyclicality of public health in the emerging market is underexplored in existing literature. In this study, we used a fixed effect model and provincial data to document how public health varies with the business cycle in China over the period of 2010-2019. The estimated results showed that the business cycle is negatively correlated with the mortality of infectious disease, a proxy variable of public health, thus indicating that public health exhibits a countercyclical pattern in China. Furthermore, we investigated the potential moderating role of public health education and digital economy development in the relationship between business cycle and public health. Our findings suggested that public health education and digital economy development can mitigate the damage of economic conditions on public health in China. Health education helps the public obtain more professional knowledge about diseases and then induces effective preventions. Compared with traditional economic growth, digital economy development can avoid environmental pollution which affects public health. Also, it ensures that state-of-the-art medical services are available for the public through e-health. In addition, digitalization assures that remote working is practicable and reduces close contact during epidemics such as COVID-19. The conclusions stand when subjected to several endogeneity and robustness checks. Therefore, the paper implies that these improvements in public health education and digitalization can help the government in promoting public health.

To Float or Not to Float? Internal Migration of Skilled Laborers in China.

This paper uses data from job-recruiting platforms to study the distribution patterns and migration destination choices of a skilled internal migrant population. We find that, in most first-tier cities and most emerging second-tier cities, more than half of the skilled jobseekers do not hold local household registration. The most important finding of this paper is the heterogeneity of attributes prioritizations between intra- and inter- provincial migrants. Intra-provincial skilled migrants put more value on employment opportunities than on amenity attributes, while their inter-provincial counterparts prioritize amenity over employment aspects.

Comparison of the efficacy of Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 and Mini Nutritional Assessment Short Form in recognizing sarcopenia and predicting its mortality.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to examine the efficacy of Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS2002) and Mini Nutritional Assessment Short Form (MNA-SF) in recognizing sarcopenia and predicting its mortality in Chinese geriatric hospitalized patients. METHODS: A prospective analysis was performed in 430 hospitalized geriatric patients. Nutrition status was assessed using the NRS2002 and MNA-SF scales. Anthropometric measures and biochemical parameters were carried out for each patient. Sarcopenia was defined according to the revised consensus definition of the European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People (EWGSOP2). Patients were follow-up for up to 26 months. RESULTS: The overall prevalence of sarcopenia was 35.3% in this population. In the sarcopenic patients, 53 (34.9%) were malnutrition/nutritional risk according to NRS2002 assessment and 101 (66.4%) patients were malnutrition/nutritional risk according to MNA-SF assessment. NRS2002 vs MNA-SF showed moderate agreement (κ = 0.460, P < 0.001). Receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that the area under the curve of MNA-SF was larger than NRS2002 in recognizing sarcopenia (0.763 vs 0.649, P = 0.001). During a median follow-up time of 20.22 months, 48 (31.6%) sarcopenic patients died. The Kaplan-Meier curve demonstrated that malnutrition/nutritional risk patients according to whether NRS2002 or MNA-SF assessment had a higher risk of death than the normal nutrition patients (χ2 = 15.728, P < 0.001; χ2 = 7.039, P = 0.008, respectively). Age, serum albumin levels, and NRS2002 score were independent factors influencing the mortality. CONCLUSION: MNA-SF score may be better than the NRS2002 score to recognize sarcopenia in Chinese geriatric population. Both NRS2002 and MNA-SF scores could predict mortality, but NRS2002 score was the independent predict factor.

SINE Retrotransposon variation drives Ecotypic disparity in natural populations of Coilia nasus.

BACKGROUND: SINEs are a type of nonautonomous retrotransposon that can transpose from one site to be integrated elsewhere in an organism genome. SINE insertion can give rise to genetic variants and regulate gene expression, allowing organisms to acquire new adaptive capacity. Studies on this subject have focused on the impacts of SINEs on genes. However, ecological disparities in fish have not yet been explained by SINEs. RESULTS: New SINEs were isolated from Coilia nasus, which has two ecotypes-migratory and resident-that differ in their spawning and migration behaviors. The SINEs possess two structures that resemble a tRNA gene and a LINE retrotransposon tail. Comparison of olfactory tissue transcriptomes, intact SINE transcript copies were detected in only the migratory fish at the initial retrotransposition stage. The SINE DNA copy numbers were higher in the resident type than in the migratory type, while the frequency of SINE insertion was higher in the migratory type than in the resident type. Furthermore, SINE insertions can lead to new repeats of short DNA fragments in the genome, along with target site duplications. SINEs in the resident type have undergone excision via a mechanism in which predicted cleavage sites are formed by mutations, resulting in gaps that are then filled by microsatellites via microhomology-induced replication. CONCLUSIONS: Notably, SINEs in the resident type have undergone strong natural selection, causing genomic heteroplasmy and driving ecological diversity of C. nasus. Our results reveal possible evolutionary mechanisms underlying the ecological diversity at the interface between SINE mobilization and organism defense.

A novel methodology for rat aortic pulse wave velocity assessment by Doppler ultrasound: validation against invasive measurements.

There is still lack of a simple, accurate, and noninvasive method for rat aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV) measurement, especially the transit distance cannot be accurately measured. Thus, we aimed to derive an equation for aortic transit distance as a function of the nose-to-rump length (L) and to test the hypothesis that aortic PWV measured by new equation combined with Doppler ultrasound (the "equation method") may have stronger correlation with invasive measurements than traditional "body surface method." Two-hundred male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats (age ranged 5-24 wk) were included in protocol 1, and the aortic transit distances were measured postmortem. In protocol 2, heart-femoral PWV and carotid-femoral PWV were measured by equation method (hfPWVE, cfPWVE) and also by traditional body surface method (hfPWVS, cfPWVS) in another 30 young and 28 old rats. These measurements were then validated against invasively measured hfPWVI and cfPWVI from the same animal. Protocol 1 showed that the heart-femoral transit distance could be calculated by 0.6086 × L - 1.6523, and the carotid-femoral transit distance by 0.4614 × L + 1.8335. In protocol 2, in young rats, the Pearson r between hfPWVE, cfPWVE, hfPWVS, and cfPWVS and their corresponding invasive measurement were 0.8962, 0.8509, 0.8387, and 0.7828, respectively (all P < 0.0001). In the old group, the results were 0.8718, 0.7999, 0.8330, and 0.7112, respectively (all P < 0.0001). The hfPWVE and cfPWVE showed better agreement with hfPWVI and cfPWVI and lower intra- and interobserver variability compared with hfPWVS and cfPWVS in both groups. These findings demonstrate that this novel methodology provides a simple and reliable method for rat noninvasive aortic PWV measurement.NEW & NOTEWORTHY First, when measuring aortic PWV in SD rat models, the heart-femoral transit distance can be estimated by 0.6086 × L - 1.6523, and the carotid-femoral distance transit distance can be estimated by 0.4614 × L + 1.8335, where L (in mm) is nose-to-rump length. Second, this novel methodology for aortic PWV measurement was validated with a closer correlation with the invasive measurements than traditional approach in young and old rats. Third, this study provides a simple and reliable method for rat noninvasive aortic PWV measurement.

Why are Chinese workers so unhappy? A comparative cross-national analysis of job satisfaction, job expectations, and job attributes.

Using data from the 2015 International Social Survey Program (ISSP), this study conducts a multinational comparison of job satisfaction determinants and their drivers in 36 countries and regions, with particular attention to the reasons for relatively low job satisfaction among Chinese workers. Based on our results from a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis, we attribute a substantial portion of the job satisfaction differences between China and the other countries to different job attributes and expectations; in particular, to unmet job expectations for interesting work, high pay, and opportunities for advancement. We also note that, contrary to common belief, Chinese workers value similar attributes as Western workers but perceive their work conditions as very different from those in the West.