A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t Highlights  Chinese firms' leverage ratios decrease when the economic policy uncertainty increases.  This effect is heterogeneous across firms in terms of regional marketization, ownership and bank-firm relationship.  This effect is sourced from the deterioration of the external financing environment imposed by economic policy uncertainty  Firms adjust their financing structures by using more trade credit when economic policy uncertainty increases. relationships, mitigate the negative effect of policy uncertainty. Moreover, we provide consistent evidence that this negative effect is sourced from the deterioration of the external financing environment. We also find that firms adjust their financing structures by using more trade credit when economic policy uncertainty increases. Our results are robust to sample selection, data frequency, model specification and endogeneity. *Highlights (for review)

Using data on monthly community-level confirmed COVID-19 cases and housing price in China, we investigate the impact of COVID-19 on housing price. With the difference-in-difference method, we find that the housing price of the communities with confirmed COVID-19 cases would reduce by 2.47%. The impact persists three months and the extent of the impact basically becomes greater as time goes on. The results are robust after the parallel pre-trend test and the placebo test. Moreover, the impact of COVID-19 on housing price only exists in regions with a higher infection level of COVID-19 or worse medical treatment conditions.

Spindle sizes are different in diverse species and cell types. In frogs, the meiotic spindle size is positively correlated with the egg cell volume. Across species, relatively small mouse oocytes (70–80 μm) have a relatively large spindle while larger pig oocytes (about 120 μm) have a considerably smaller spindle. In this study we investigated whether species-specific oocyte spindle size was determined by cytoplasmic or nuclear factors. By exchanging the germinal vesicle between mouse and pig oocytes, we obtained two kinds of reconstructed oocytes: one with mouse ooplasm and pig GV (mCy-pGV oocyte), and the other with pig ooplasm and mouse GV (pCy-mGV oocyte). We show that the MII spindle size of the mCy-pGV oocyte is similar to that of the mouse meiotic spindle and significantly larger than that of the pig meiotic spindle. The timing of oocyte maturation also followed that of the species from which the oocyte cytoplasm arose, although some impact of the origin of the GV was observed. These data suggest that spindle size and the timing of meiotic progression are governed by cytoplasmic components rather than cytoplasmic volume and GV materials.

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