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Microplastics are an emerging and persistent pollutant due to their threat to global ecological systems and human health. Recent studies showed that microplastics have infiltrated the remote Third Pole - the Tibetan Plateau. Here, we summarize the current evidence for microplastic pollution in the different environments (rivers/lakes, sediment, soil, ice/snow and atmosphere) of the Tibetan Plateau. We assess the spatial distribution, source, fate, and potential ecological effects of microplastics in this broad plateau. The integrated results show that microplastics were pervasive in biotic and abiotic components of the Tibetan Plateau, even at the global highest-altitude, Mt. Everest. Although the concentration of microplastics in the Tibetan Plateau was far below that found in the densely populated lowlands, it showed a higher concentration than that in the ocean system. Tourist populations are identified as a substantial source of anthropogenic plastic input rather than local residents due to the rapid development of the tourism industry. In the sparsely inhabited remote area of the Tibetan Plateau, long-range atmospheric transport facilitates allochthonous microplastic diffusion. Robust solar radiation in the Tibetan Plateau might enhanced production of secondary microplastics by weathering (UV-photooxidation) of abandoned plastic waste. A rough estimation showed that the microplastic export flux from melting glaciers was higher than that measured in most of the world's largest rivers, which affects local and downstream areas. Since the Tibetan Plateau is vital for Asian water supply and numerous endangered wildlife, the potential human and ecological risk of microplastics to these fragile ecosystems needs to be fully evaluated within the context of climate-change impacts.

ObjectiveTo determine the optimal timing of thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) for patients with uncomplicated type B dissections who have a smoking history.MethodsData from 308 consecutive patients with uncomplicated type B dissections, who have a smoking history and onset-to-TEVAR time within 90 days, were analyzed. The patients were divided into two groups: Acute and subacute phases. Univariate and multivariate regression analyses were performed. Smooth curve fitting and threshold analysis were performed to characterize the relationship between the onset-to-TEVAR time and follow-up deaths.ResultsThere were no significant differences between the two groups. Smooth curve fitting and threshold effect analysis showed that if early TEVAR was performed within 9.4 days from onset, there was better long-term survival and there was no significant difference after 9.4 days.ConclusionBy studying the relationship between onset-to-TEVAR time and all-cause mortality, we found that early TEVAR may have a lower all-cause mortality rate during follow-up in uncomplicated type B dissection patients who have a smoking history and within 90 days from onset.

Lysine acetylation is a common post-translational modification of proteins within all organisms. However, quantitative acetylome characterization in wheat seed during aging in storage has not been reported. This study reports the first large-scale acetylome analysis of wheat seeds after artificial aging treatment, using the quantitative proteomic approach. In total, 11,002 acetylation sites, corresponding to 4262 acetylated proteins were identified, of which 1207 acetylated sites, representing 783 acetylated proteins, were significantly more or less acetylated after artificial aging. Functional analysis demonstrated that the majority of the acetylated proteins are closely involved with cellular and metabolic functions. In particular, key enzymes in the oxidative stress response and energy metabolism were significantly differentially acetylated and appear to be heavily involved in wheat seed aging. The acetylome analysis was verified by quantitative real-time PCR and enzyme activity determination. Lysine-acetylation results in a weaker oxidative stress response and lower energy production efficiency, resulting in the apoptosis of wheat seed cells, insufficient energy supply at the germination stage, and consequently, marked loss of seed vigor. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: It is known that the loss of protein function is an important reason for the decrease of seed vigor. Therefore, the change of protein function in the process of wheat seed aging was studied by proteome and lysine acetylome analysis technology. The results showed that the oxidation-reduction imbalance and the decrease of energy production efficiency of seeds were the important reasons for the decrease of their vigor. This will provide a new idea for green and safe storage of grain.

Road damage brings serious threats and inconvenience to traffic safety travel. Road damage detection and recognition can assist in eliminating the potential safety hazards in time and reduce traffic accidents. The majority of the existing road damage detection methods require significant computing resources and are difficult to deploy on resource-constrained edge devices. Therefore, the road surface data collected during the driving process of the vehicle are usually transmitted to the cloud service for analysis. However, during the driving process of the vehicle, due to problems, such as network coverage, connection, and response, it is difficult to meet the needs of real-time detection and identification of road damage. Therefore, this paper proposes a road damage classification and identification method based on edge computing. This method adds edge services. First, deep learning models are deployed on edge and cloud servers; then, a standardized entropy is set by information entropy to find the appropriate threshold as well as the best point of edge and cloud that work together to ensure high accuracy and fast response of road damage identification; finally, the cloud uses the data uploaded by the edge to assist the edge in updating the edge model. In comparison with the two cases of uploading data to the cloud server for analysis and uploading data to the edge server for analysis, the results show that the accuracy of the method is 16.21% higher than the method only executed at the edge end, and the average recognition time is 38.82% lower than the method only executed at the cloud end. While ensuring a certain accuracy, it also improves the efficiency of classification and recognition, and can meet the needs of fast and accurate road damage classification and recognition.

As cities are the main source of carbon emissions for human-social systems, clarifying the characteristics of carbon emission structure and distribution in urban areas is an important foundation for achieving carbon neutrality of cities and also an important challenge for human-social systems to achieve global carbon balance goals. The spatial utilization of cities is often characterized by the agglomeration of construction land, population concentration, and industrial production, with high carbon emission intensity and large total amount. The current research on the quantification of regional carbon emissions is mainly in two categories, namely, bottom-up calculation method system based on emission inventory and top-down method system based on energy balance and input-output model. However, how to clarify both the total regional carbon emissions and their spatial distribution has been a difficult problem in the field of carbon emission quantification. Based on the comprehensive consideration of these two aspects, this study tries to construct an approach that combines the top-down carbon emission measurement method with the bottom-up spatialization process. The total carbon emissions of the human-society system are specified to each land patch and, thereby, the carbon emission pattern of each emission sector in the city could be determined. In this study, we quantified the carbon emissions of Nanjing in 2020 and obtained the spatial pattern of carbon emissions in this city based on land use. The results showed that the carbon emission intensity of the main urban area of Nanjing was much higher than that of other districts, while energy consumption of the industrial production system was the main source of carbon emissions in the human-social system there. The method of this study has a relatively wide applicability and can help researchers and governments to clarify the quantity and location of their carbon emissions clearly, which is meaningful for the implementation of urban carbon reduction strategies.

With the continuous development of intelligent transportation system technology, vehicle users have higher and higher requirements for low latency and high service quality of task computing. The computing offloading technology of mobile edge computing (MEC) has received extensive attention in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) architecture. However, due to the limited resources of the MEC server, it cannot meet the task requests from multiple vehicle users simultaneously. For this reason, making correct and fast offloading decisions to provide users with a service with low latency, low energy consumption, and low cost is still a considerable challenge. Regarding the issue above, in the IoV environment where vehicle users race, this paper designs a three-layer system task offloading overhead model based on the Edge-Cloud collaboration of multiple vehicle users and multiple MEC servers. To solve the problem of minimizing the total cost of the system performing tasks, an Edge-Cloud collaborative, dynamic computation offloading method (ECDDPG) based on a deep deterministic policy gradient is designed. This method is deployed at the edge service layer to make fast offloading decisions for tasks generated by vehicle users. The simulation results show that the performance is better than the Deep Q-network (DQN) method and the Actor-Critic method regarding reward value and convergence. In the face of the change in wireless channel bandwidth and the number of vehicle users, compared with the basic method strategy, the proposed method has better performance in reducing the total computational cost, computing delay, and energy consumption. At the same time, the computational complexity of the system execution tasks is significantly reduced.

The detector-free feature matching approaches are currently attracting great attention thanks to their excellent performance. However, these methods still struggle at large-scale and viewpoint variations, due to the geometric inconsistency resulting from the application of the mutual nearest neighbour criterion (\ie, one-to-one assignment) in patch-level matching.Accordingly, we introduce AdaMatcher, which first accomplishes the feature correlation and co-visible area estimation through an elaborate feature interaction module, then performs adaptive assignment on patch-level matching while estimating the scales between images, and finally refines the co-visible matches through scale alignment and sub-pixel regression module.Extensive experiments show that AdaMatcher outperforms solid baselines and achieves state-of-the-art results on many downstream tasks. Additionally, the adaptive assignment and sub-pixel refinement module can be used as a refinement network for other matching methods, such as SuperGlue, to boost their performance further. The code will be publicly available at https://github.com/AbyssGaze/AdaMatcher., Accepted by CVPR2023

Identifying the sources and transformations of riverine nitrate plays a critical role in mitigating nitrogen enrichment of river networks. Several previous studies have used δ18O-NO3− to quantitatively assess riverine nitrate contributed by atmospheric nitrate and terrestrial sources, but their results have great uncertainty due to the wide range of δ18O-NO3− values and isotopic fractionation during nitrogen-cycling processes in terrestrial environment. The nitrate 17O anomaly (△17O-NO3−), as an unambiguous tracer of atmospheric nitrate, is a promising tool to effectively separate atmospheric nitrate from microbially produced nitrate. However, to our knowledge, △17O-NO3− approach has not been previously applied to identify nitrate pollution sources in plain river networks of eastern China. In this study, we used a multiple isotope approach (δD/δ18O-H2O and δ15N/δ18O/△17O-NO3−) for the first time to quantitatively identify sources and transformations of riverine nitrate in a hypereutrophic coastal plain river network namely Wen-Rui Tang River located in eastern China, which is a region receiving high inputs of atmospheric nitrogen deposition. The △17O-NO3− values in precipitation and river water during the study period (April–June of 2021) varied from 14.83‰ to 31.39‰ and from − 2.82‰ to 9.66‰, respectively. The δD/δ18O-H2O values revealed that river water mainly originated from recent precipitation with little evaporation. Moreover, the δ15N/δ18O-NO3− values indicated that microbial nitrification, not denitrification, was the predominant nitrogen-cycling process in the watershed. Based on a Bayesian mixing model (Stable Isotope Analysis in R, SIAR) using δ15N/△17O-NO3−, municipal sewage was identified as the dominant nitrate source (50.5 ± 11.7%), followed by soil nitrogen (23.8 ± 13.7%), atmospheric nitrate deposition (14.3 ± 2.9%), and nitrogen fertilizer (11.4 ± 8.7%). Finally, an uncertainty analysis for nitrate source apportionment demonstrated that the greatest uncertainty was associated with soil nitrogen, followed by municipal sewage, nitrogen fertilizer, and atmospheric nitrate deposition. This study provides important scientific information on riverine nitrate source apportionment to guide pollution control/remediation strategies and highlights the benefits of utilizing △17O-NO3− to enhance nitrate source apportionment.

Sinking of microplastics (MPs) after biofouling is considered an important mechanisms responsible for the downward transport/sedimentation of MPs in the ocean and freshwaters. Previous studies demonstrated MP sinking caused by an increase in the composite density of MPs after biofouling, while MPs with smaller size or shapes with higher surface area to volume ratios (SA:V), such as films, are speculated to sink faster. In this study, we designed an in situ microcosm to simulate the ambient environmental conditions experienced by floating MPs to elucidate the biofouling and sinking of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and expanded-polystyrene (EPS) MPs of various sizes and shapes. Our results showed smaller PE and PP MP granules sank faster than large ones. Even EPS granules of 100μm diameter, having a much lower density (0.02mg/mm3) than water, started to sink after 2 weeks of biofouling. Moreover, PE film and fiber MPs with higher SA:V did not sink faster than PE MP granules of the same mass, implying that mechanisms other than SA:V, such as fouling contact area and drag coefficient, play a role in the regulation of biofouling and sinking of MPs.

Ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury is a serious clinical pathology associated with acute kidney injury (AKI). Ferroptosis is non-apoptotic cell death that is known to contribute to renal I/R injury. Dexmedetomidine (Dex) has been shown to exert anti-inflammatory and organ protective effects. This study aimed to investigate the detailed molecular mechanism of Dex protects kidneys against I/R injury through inhibiting ferroptosis. We established the I/R-induced renal injury model in mice, and OGD/R induced HEK293T cells damage in vitro. RNA-seq analysis was performed for identifying the potential therapeutic targets. RNA-seq analysis for differentially expressed genes (DEGs) reported Acyl-CoA synthetase long-chain family member 4 (ACSL4) related to ferroptosis and inflammation in I/R mice renal, which was validated in rodent renal. Liproxstatin-1, the specific small-molecule inhibitor of ferroptosis, significantly attenuated ferroptosis-mediated renal I/R injury with decreased LPO, MDA, and LDH levels, and increased GSH level. Inhibiting the activity of ACSL4 by the Rosiglitazone (ROSI) resulted in the decreased ferroptosis and inflammation, as well as reduced renal tissue damage, with decreasing LPO, MDA and LDH level, increasing GSH level, reducing COX2 and increasing GPx4 protein expression, and suppressing the TNF-α mRNA and IL-6 mRNA levels. Dex as a α2-adrenergic receptor (α2-AR) agonist performed renal protective effects against I/R-induced injury. Our results also revealed that Dex administration mitigated tissue damage, inhibited ferroptosis, and downregulated inflammation response following renal I/R injury, which were associated with the suppression of ACSL4. In addition, ACSL4 overexpression abolishes Dex-mediated protective effects on OGD/R induced ferroptosis and inflammation in HEK293T cells, and promotion of ACSL4 expression by α2-AR inhibitor significantly reversed the effects on the protective role of Dex. This present study indicated that the Dex attenuates ferroptosis-mediated renal I/R injury and inflammation by inhibiting ACSL4 via α2-AR.

Human-health risks from microplastics have attracted considerable attention, but little is known about human-exposure pathways and intensities. Recent studies posited that inhalation of atmospheric microplastics was the dominant human-exposure pathway. Herein, our study identified that atmospheric microplastics ingested from deposition during routine dining/drinking activities represent another important exposure pathway. We measured abundances of atmospheric-deposited microplastics of up to 105 items m-2 d-1 in dining/drinking venues, with 90% smaller than 100µm and a dominance of amorphous fragments rather than fibers. Typical work-life scenarios projected an annual ingestion of 1.9×105 to 1.3×106 microplastics through atmospheric deposition on diet, with higher exposure rates for indoor versus outdoor dining/drinking settings. Ingestion of atmospheric-deposited microplastics through diet was similar in magnitude to presumed inhalation exposure, but 2-3 orders of magnitude greater than direct ingestion from food sources. Simple mitigation strategies (e.g., covering and rinsing dishware) can substantially reduce the exposure of atmospheric deposition microplastics through diet.

To improve regional ecosystem services and ecological management feedback, insights should be gained into the driving mechanisms of ecological service. As reported by existing studies in ecosystem drivers, ecological and socioeconomic factors at different spatial scales internally can drive the structure, process and service of the ecosystem, whereas the intrinsic multi-scale mechanism of the drivers above remain unclear. This study attempts to clarify the drivers of soil conservation service and investigate the multi-scale driving mechanism by employing an optimized Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression model (MGWR) in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. As indicated by the result, (1) the analysis of the bandwidth size and spatial characteristics of the driving factors revealed that the dominant drivers of soil conservation service exerted a wide-changed scale effect, in which four scales were presented (i.e., region, city clusters, urban and county scale) from an administrative spatial perspective. (2) At a spatial scale, the contribution of natural factors exceeded landscape index and socioeco-nomic factors at the region spatial scale in accordance with the significance test value. However, with the decrease in the spatial scale range, the driving force of landscape index and socioeconomic factors tended to increase. (3) At a time scale, the drivers of soil conservation service are changed over time as impacted by regional land use, economic and social, ecological restoration project, etc. As suggested by the analytical results, coordinated regional eco-socio-economic management and regional sustainable development with ecosystem service enhancement as the goal orientation can be scientifically and effectively guided through the assessment of multi-scale spatial and temporal variation patterns of ecosystem service drivers.

Local image feature matching under large appearance, viewpoint, and distance changes is challenging yet important. Conventional methods detect and match tentative local features across the whole images, with heuristic consistency checks to guarantee reliable matches. In this paper, we introduce a novel Overlap Estimation method conditioned on image pairs with TRansformer, named OETR, to constrain local feature matching in the commonly visible region. OETR performs overlap estimation in a two-step process of feature correlation and then overlap regression. As a preprocessing module, OETR can be plugged into any existing local feature detection and matching pipeline, to mitigate potential view angle or scale variance. Intensive experiments show that OETR can boost state-of-the-art local feature matching performance substantially, especially for image pairs with small shared regions. The code will be publicly available at https://github.com/AbyssGaze/OETR., Comment: Accepted by AAAI2022

3D object detection from monocular image(s) is a challenging and long-standing problem of computer vision. To combine information from different perspectives without troublesome 2D instance tracking, recent methods tend to aggregate multiview feature by sampling regular 3D grid densely in space, which is inefficient. In this paper, we attempt to improve multi-view feature aggregation by proposing a learnable keypoints sampling method, which scatters pseudo surface points in 3D space, in order to keep data sparsity. The scattered points augmented by multi-view geometric constraints and visual features are then employed to infer objects location and shape in the scene. To make up the limitations of single frame and model multi-view geometry explicitly, we further propose a surface filter module for noise suppression. Experimental results show that our method achieves significantly better performance than previous works in terms of 3D detection (more than 0.1 AP improvement on some categories of ScanNet). The code will be publicly available.

Author(s): Huang, H; Ji, X; Xia, F; Huang, S; Shang, X; Chen, H; Zhang, M; Dahlgren, RA; Mei, K | Abstract: Regression-based methods are commonly used for riverine constituent concentration/flux estimation, which is essential for guiding water quality protection practices and environmental decision making. This paper developed a multivariate adaptive regression splines model for estimating riverine constituent concentrations (MARS-EC). The process, interpretability and flexibility of the MARS-EC modelling approach, was demonstrated for total nitrogen in the Patuxent River, a major river input to Chesapeake Bay. Model accuracy and uncertainty of the MARS-EC approach was further analysed using nitrate plus nitrite datasets from eight tributary rivers to Chesapeake Bay. Results showed that the MARS-EC approach integrated the advantages of both parametric and nonparametric regression methods, and model accuracy was demonstrated to be superior to the traditionally used ESTIMATOR model. MARS-EC is flexible and allows consideration of auxiliary variables; the variables and interactions can be selected automatically. MARS-EC does not constrain concentration-predictor curves to be constant but rather is able to identify shifts in these curves from mathematical expressions and visual graphics. The MARS-EC approach provides an effective and complementary tool along with existing approaches for estimating riverine constituent concentrations.

Microplastics (MPs) in marine and terrestrial environments have been intensively studied, but the dynamics of airborne MPs remains limited. Existing studies on atmospheric MPs are mostly derived from collection of atmospheric deposition, whereas direct measurements of airborne MPs are scarce. However, the abundance of airborne MPs is more relevant for evaluating human inhalation exposure risk. Herein, airborne MPs in indoor and outdoor environments from urban and rural areas of a coastal city in eastern China were investigated. MP concentrations (mean±SD) in indoor air (1583±1180n/m3) were an order of magnitude higher than outdoor air (189±85n/m3), and airborne MP concentrations in urban areas (224±70n/m3) were higher than rural areas (101±47n/m3). MPs smaller than 100µm dominated airborne MPs, and the predominant shape of airborne MPs was fragments, as opposed to fibers. The larger MP size fractions contained a higher proportion of fibers, whereas the smaller size fractions were nearly exclusively composed of fragments. The health risk caused by ubiquitous airborne MPs should not be discounted as the maximum annual outdoor exposure of airborne MPs can reach 1 million/year, while indoor exposure may be even higher due to higher indoor airborne MP concentrations.

The decrease in periodic scouring of pulsed flows in regulated rivers can result in algal communities dominated by filamentous algae, not available as food sources for fish and macroinvertebrates. To study the pulsed flow velocity required to scour benthic algae from natural river beds, the removal effects on the algal biomass and resistances of different species were tested in a laboratory flume at different velocities of 0.8, 1.1, 1.4, 1.7, and 2.0 m/s. The removal of total algal biomass showed a significant positive relationship with increasing velocities, which reached 22% at 2.0 m/s. The biomass removal of green algae and diatoms was higher than that of blue–green algae. The flow velocity at 1.4 m/s had a clear removal effect on filamentous algae. The velocity higher than 1.7 m/s caused a significant increase in the removal percentage of total biomass dominated by diatoms and blue–green algae. To reduce the filamentous algae and retain the diatoms and blue–green algae, a range of near bed flow velocity was suggested to be 1.4–1.7 m/s. This range could serve as a reference for required pulsed flow velocity to reduce the growth of excessive or nuisance periphyton.

Nitrate is a prominent pollutant in surface and groundwater bodies worldwide. Isotopes in nitrate provide a powerful approach for tracing nitrate sources and transformations in waters. Given that analytical techniques for determining isotopic compositions are generally time-consuming, laborious and expensive, alternative methods are warranted to supplement and enhance existing approaches. Hence, we developed a support vector regression (SVR) model and explored its feasibility to predict nitrogen isotopic composition of nitrate (δ15N-NO3-) in a rural-urban river system in Southeastern China. A total of 16 easily obtained hydro-chemical variables were measured in the wet season (September 2019) and dry season (January 2020) and used to develop the SVR prediction model. The grading method utilized ~75% (35) of the samples for model building while the remaining 11 samples assessed model performance. Principal component analysis (PCA) extracted 7 principal components for SVR model inputs as PCA reduces superfluous variables. We optimized tuning parameters in the SVR model using a grid search technique coupled with V-fold cross-validation. The optimized SVR model provided accurate δ15N-NO3- predictions with a determination coefficient (R2) of 0.88, Nash-Sutcliffe (NS) of 0.87, and mean square error (MSE) of 0.53‰ in the testing step, and performed much better than the corresponding multivariate linear regression model (R2=0.60, NS=0.58 and MSE=1.76‰) and general regression neural network model (R2=0.66, NS=0.65 and MSE=1.45‰). Overall, the SVR model provides a potential indirect method to predict environmental isotope values for water quality management that will complement and enhance the interpretation of direct measurements of δ15N-NO3-.

Semiconducting minerals are ubiquitous in soil and their association with microbes often affects the environment. In this study, the impacts of zinc sulfide (ZnS, used as a model compound for semiconducting sphalerite) on As/Fe mobility of flooded tailing soils under dark and intermittent illumination conditions were elucidated for the first time. Microbial reductive dissolution of As(V) and Fe(III) was more pronounced under intermittent illumination than under dark conditions. In ZnS-amended soils, release of As(III) and Fe(II) was 1.3 and 1.7 times higher, respectively, under intermittent illumination than the highest concentrations released from soils amended with acetate alone under dark conditions (12741.1 ± 714.3 μg/L and 37.9 ± 2.3 mg/L, respectively). However, under dark conditions in ZnS-amended soil, the release of As(III) and Fe(II) was 0.8 and 0.7 times that of the highest concentrations released from soils amended with acetate under dark conditions, respectively. Treatment with ZnS potentially decreased the abundance of several metal-reducing bacteria (e.g., Bacillus, Geobacter, Clostridium, and Desulfitobacterium), which resulted in lower As/Fe reduction than for the acetate alone treatment under dark conditions. However, under intermittent illumination, the excited mineral photoholes were scavenged by humic/fulvic acids, and photoelectrons were synchronously separated and participated in the microbial electron chain. The fortification provided by the photoelectrons subsequently boosted As/Fe reduction, even though there was a lower abundance of metal-reducing bacteria. Hence, this study provides an in-depth understanding of the impacts of semiconducting minerals on the fates of metal pollutants, microbial diversity, and the bioavailability of dissolved organic matter in flooded soils.

Nanosized titanium dioxide (TiO2) is a naturally existing nanoscale semiconducting mineral, and its co-occurrence with microbes may elicit differential environmental effects. In this study, the imp...

Background: The use of thrombolysis with tissue-plasminogen activator (t-PA) in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) is limited by increased levels of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) and by the increased risk of hemorrhagic transformation (HT). In this study, we investigated the effects of simvastatin pretreatment on t-PA-induced MMP-9/tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1 (TIMP-1) imbalance and HT aggravation in a rat AIS model. Methods: The rat AIS model was established by autologous blood emboli. Two weeks before surgery, rats were pretreated with simvastatin (60 mg/kg/d), and three hours after surgery, t-PA (10 mg/kg) was administered. MMP-9 and TIMP-1 levels in the infarcted zone and plasma were evaluated by Western blot analysis and ELISA; the level of HT was quantified by determining the hemoglobin content. RhoA activation was determined to clarify the potential effect. Results: The results suggested that pretreatment with simvastatin suppressed the increase in t-PA-induced MMP-9 levels and neutralized the elevated MMP-9/TIMP-1 ratio, but had no effect on TIMP-1 levels. Thrombolysis with t-PA after ischemia improved neurological outcome, but increased intracranial hemorrhage. Moreover, t-PA-induced HT aggravation was reduced by simvastatin pretreatment. In addition, we showed that t-PA-induced activation of RhoA was suppressed by simvastatin, and that t-PA-induced MMP-9/TIMP-1 imbalance and hemorrhage was reduced by Rho kinases (ROCK) inhibitor Y-27632. Conclusion: In this study, we showed that simvastatin pretreatment ameliorated t-PA-induced HT and MMP-9/TIMP-1 imbalance, and demonstrated that the RhoA/ROCK pathway was implicated.

The commercial exoskeletons are often heavy and bulky, thus reducing the weight and simplifying the form factor becomes a critical task. This thesis details the process of designing and making a low-profile, cable-driven arm exoskeleton. Many advanced methods are explored: 3D scanning, generative design, soft material, compliant joint, additive manufacturing, and 3D latticing. The experiments on TPU kerf cut found that the stress-strain curve of the sample can be modified by changing the cut pattern, it is even possible to control the linear region. The TPU TPMS test showed that given the same volume, changing the lattice parameters can result in different bending stress-strain curves. This thesis also provides many prototypes, test data, and samples for future reference. Master of Science Wearing an exoskeleton should be easy and stress-free, but many of the available models are not ergonomic nor user-friendly. To make an exoskeleton that is inviting and comfortable to wear, various nontraditional methods are used. The arm exoskeleton prototype has a lightweight and ergonomic frame, the joints are soft and compact, the cable-driven system is safe and low-profile. This design also brings aesthetics to the exoskeleton which closes the gap between engineering and design.

Nitrate (NO 3 − ) pollution is of considerable concern because its threat to human health and ecosystems. Herein, we chose the Wen-Rui Tang River watershed, one of typical rural-urban watersheds in Southeast China, as a case study. According to the analyses based on hydro-chemical ions, land-use classification, dual nitrate isotopes ( δ 15 N-NO 3 − and δ 18 O-NO 3 − ), and a Markov Chain Monte Carlo mixing model, the knowledge of contributions of potential NO 3 − pollution sources was obtained. Results showed that the study river was highly polluted by nitrogen, especially the increased riverine NO 3 − . Variations in δ 15 N-NO 3 − and δ 18 O-NO 3 − revealed that microbial nitrification was the main transformation process of nitrogen in surface water of the watershed, while bacterial denitrification was unlikely to be an important process at the specific sampling period. The δ 15 N-NO 3 − vs. δ 18 O-NO 3 − diagram incorporating chloride content qualitatively identified the main contribution of riverine NO 3 − was from municipal sewage discharges. On the basis of land-use characteristics, we applied hierarchical cluster method for subgrouping 44 sampling sites into four classes, namely, classes I (ecological), II (industrial), III (agricultural), and IV (urban). The Markov Chain Monte Carlo mixing model was employed to calculate proportional contributions of NO 3 − sources and articulated predominantly municipal sewage (23.5 – 42.2%) sourced nitrate in all classes. In addition, river sediments (13.8 – 20.8%) and atmospheric deposition (12.7 – 19.6%) were identified as important pollution sources. This study demonstrated that the comprehensive isotope tracing approach can effectively quantify the nitrate pollution source contributions for surface waters across the rural-urban interface.

Aptamers (small single strand DNA/RNAs) such as SYL3C are considered as ideal alternatives to antibodies in cancer related research studies. However, 3D structure predictions for aptamers and aptamer-protein complexes are scarce due to the high cost of experimental measurements and unreliable computer-based methods. Thus aptamers' diagnostic and therapeutic applications are severely restricted. To meet the challenge, we proposed a Martini-based aptamer-protein complex prediction protocol. By combining the base-base contact map from simulation and secondary structure prediction from various tools, improved secondary structure predictions can be obtained. This method reduced the risk of providing incorrect or incomplete base pairs in secondary structure prediction. Thus 3D structure modeling based on the secondary structure can be more reliable. We introduced the soft elastic network to the hairpin folded regions of the Martini ssDNAs to preserve their canonical structure. Using our protocol, we predicted the first 3D structure of the aptamer SYL3C and the SYL3C-EpCAM complex. We believe that our work could contribute to the future aptamer-related research studies and medical implications.

Background and Aim: Zuotai (mainly β-HgS)-containing 70 Wei-Zhen-Zhu-Wan (70W, Rannasangpei) is a famous Tibetan medicine for cardiovascular and gastrointestinal diseases. We have shown that 70W protected against CCl4 hepatotoxicity. CCl4 is metabolized via cytochrome P450 (CYP) to produce reactive metabolites. Whether 70W has any effect on CYPs is unknown and such effects should be compared with mercury compounds for safety evaluation. Experimental procedures: Mice were given clinical doses of 70W (0.15-1.5 g/kg, po), Zuotai (30 mg/kg, po), and compared to HgCl2 (33.6 mg/kg, po) and MeHg (3.1 mg/kg, po) for 7 days. Liver RNA and protein were isolated for qPCR and Western-blot analysis. Results: 70W and Zuotai had no effects on hepatic mRNA expression of Cyp1a2, Cyp2b10, Cyp3a11, Cyp4a10 and Cyp7a1, and corresponding nuclear receptors [aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), constitutive androstane receptor (CAR), pregnane X receptor (PXR), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-α (PPARα); farnesoid X receptor (FXR)]. In comparison, HgCl2 and MeHg increased mRNA expression of Cyp1a2, Cyp2b10, Cyp4a10 and Cyp7a1 except for Cyp3a11, and corresponding nuclear receptors except for PXR. Western-blot confirmed mRNA results, showing increases in CYP1A2, CYP2B1, CYP2E1, CYP4A and CYP7A1 by HgCl2 and MeHg only, and all treatments had no effects on CYP3A. Conclusion: Zuotai and Zuotai-containing 70W at clinical doses had minimal influence on hepatic CYPs and corresponding nuclear receptors, while HgCl2 and MeHg produced significant effects. Thus, the use of total Hg content to evaluate the safety of HgS-containing 70W is inappropriate.

Owing to the advantages of cost‐effectiveness, environmental‐friendliness and high desalination capacity, capacitive deionization (CDI) has emerged as an advanced desalination technique. Recently, the ions intercalation materials inspired by sodium ion batteries have been widely implemented in CDI due to their exceptional salt removal capacity. They are able to extract sodium ions from the brine through intercalation or redox reactions, instead of electrostatic forces associated with the carbonaceous electrode. As a result, the ions intercalation materials have caught the attention of the CDI research community. In this article, the recent progress in various sodium ion intercalation materials as highly‐efficient CDI electrodes is summarized and reviewed. Further, an outlook on the future development of ion intercalation electrodes is proposed., At present, intercalation materials have received extensive attention in the field of capacitive deionization (CDI). Herein, the recent progress in sodium ions intercalation materials for CDI‐related applications is discussed and a general summary of their performance and advantages brought by their characteristics is provided.

The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) model was applied to investigate the relationship between economic growth and water environment quality based on panel data of Taicang during 2010–2017. The typical inversed-U shaped relationship has been obtained between GDP (gross domestic product) and indicators of ammonia, total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP), respectively. The EKC turning point appeared when the GDP per capita was around US$2270, which was much lower than those in some developed countries (US$11,200). However, the decoupling between chemical oxygen demand (COD) and GDP per capita occurred even before this period, which should be attributed to the strict COD emission regulation being implemented since 2010. Further, analysis based on the Tapio decoupling coefficient elasticity model analyzed the ammonia nitrogen and economic development of each industry. We found that the agriculture no-point was strong decoupling in 2011–2014, then came to Recessive decoupling. The domestic wastewater had been in a strong decoupling state; Both urban non-point and industry experienced expansive negative decoupling, due to strict policy that prioritizes the environment over development and the investment in improvement of environment and techniques, both of them gradually came to strong decoupling. The result demonstrated that the EKC turning point could be appear in earlier economic stage and the decoupling coefficient elasticity could be improved through taking strong regulation measures.

Microplastics (MPs) are an environmental problem of growing concern. Aquatic sediments are considered as a final sink for MPs, but dredging can remobilize sedimentary MPs into both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Although dredging is globally used for waterway deepening and ecological restoration, the environmental impacts of dredging on MP pollutants has not been previously assessed. In this study, Nile Red staining combined with micro-FTIR methods showed sediments containing high MP concentrations (6060-37610 n/kg·DW) from urban/suburban segments of a plain river network in Southeast China. The dredged sediments were stored in piles on farmlands, whereby MPs were subsequently dispersed to surrounding soils and surface waters while awaiting a permanent disposal option. MP concentrations in the soils surrounding the pile were higher in the dry season (wind dispersion), while MP concentrations in waters downstream of the piles were higher in the wet season (rainfall/runoff erosion). Whether dredge sediments are finally used to fertilize farmland, as fill material for coastal land reclamation or dumped into the ocean, MPs have the potential for remobilization into the environment causing concerns with aquatic food webs, agricultural production and human health. Therefore, disposal of dredge sediments containing MPs requires careful assessment to minimize potential environmental impacts.

This study examined the role of intermittent illumination/dark conditions coupled with MnO

As an emerging environmental pollutant, microplastics (MPs) are increasingly viewed as a serious health concern to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. However, previous toxicological studies examining MPs on freshwater and terrestrial organisms provide contradictory results, possibly due to few investigations at environmentally relevant concentrations. Here, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), a model organisms with both aquatic and terrestrial free-living forms, was employed to investigate the effects of 1 and 5 μm MPs (107-1010 particles/m2) on the intake, lifespan, defecation rhythm, defecation-related neurons and transcriptional expression of related genes (skn-1, mkk-4, pmk-1, cpr-1 and itr-1). We demonstrated that the percentage of MP-contaminated nematodes increased with increasing exposure concentrations and duration. The lifespan of nematodes in the lower concentration exposure groups (2.4 × 107 and 2.4 × 108 particles/m2) decreased more prominently than that of higher concentration groups (2.4 × 109 and 2.4 × 1010 particles/m2) after a 72-h exposure period. Concomitantly, expression of the skn-1 gene, involved in detoxification and lifespan regulation, was significantly altered at lower MP concentrations. Physiologically, the defecation rhythm after a 72-h exposure period was most strongly affected by 1 μm MPs at 2.4 × 108 particles/m2. The significant up-regulation of related genes by 1 μm MPs appears responsible for the shortened defecation interval. Results of this study identified a potential toxicity threat to C. elegans from exposure to MPs at environmentally relevant concentrations and provide novel evidence for MP risks to freshwater and terrestrial organisms. Capsule. After exposure to 1 and 5 μm MPs (107-1010 particles/m2), the lifespan of C. elegans decreased more rapidly at lower concentrations.

Additional file 1: Supplementary Fig. 1. Example of cultured bone marrow MSCs and the expression of Smad7-EGFP. (A) Example of MSCs isolated from rat bone marrow and cultured at passage 1. (B) MSCs infected with a lentiviral vector carrying Smad7-EGFP gene. Supplementary Fig. 2. Examples of western blotting. The cropped box areas are presented in Fig. 5. Lane 1: Cirrhosis+MSC-Smad7 (21 day); Lane 2: Cirrhosis+BMSCs (21 day); Lane 3 Cirrhosis (21 day); Lane 4: Conrol (21 day); Lane 5: Cirrhosis+MSC-Smad7 (7 day); Lane 6: Cirrhosis+BMSCs (7 day); Lane 7: Cirrhosis (7 day); Lane 8: Control (7 day). Supplementary Table 1. Primer sequences for RT-PCR.

A Hilbert space frame on $R^n$ is {\it scalable} if we can scale the vectors to make them a tight frame. There are known classifications of scalable frames. There are two basic questions here which have never been answered in any $R^n$: Given a frame in $R^n$, how do we scale the vectors to minimize the condition number of the frame? I.e. How do we scale the frame to make it as tight as possible? If we are only allowed to use scaling numbers from the interval $[1-\epsilon,1+\epsilon]$, how do we scale the frame to minimize the condition number? We will answer these two questions in $R^2$ to begin the process towards a solution in $R^n$.

This study explores the effect of environmental contamination level on mode-I failure and fracture surface evolution of adhesively bonded composite joints. We examined a common adhesive/adherend material system (Hysol EA9394/Hexcel IM7-G/8552) exposed to a typical aviation hydraulic fluid (MIL-PRF-87257) at varying contaminant concentrations . The macroscopic bond line fracture toughness measurement by double cantilever beam test exhibited a progressive deterioration with increasing contaminant concentration. Even a trace level (3 µg/cm 2 ) resulted in a 15% reduction of average bond line strength and 30% drop in bond line toughness. An Arrhenius-type correlation between interface toughness and contaminant concentration was observed, with potential to predict the bond line toughness deterioration level. Increasing the contaminant concentration changed the fracture surface morphology from ductile-to-brittle failure mode, driven by diminished plasticity within the adhesive layer . Finite element method employing cohesive surfaces was also utilized to rationalize the experimentally observed trends. The combined experimental and numerical results suggest that the bond line contamination deteriorates the interfacial toughness through two mechanisms: (i) weakening the interfacial bonding strength, and thereby reducing the intrinsic interfacial toughness, and (ii) shielding the plastic energy dissipation within the adhesive layer, and leading to a reduction in the overall effective bond line toughness.

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Microplastics are a global concern for their threat to marine ecosystems. Recent studies report a lack of smaller microplastics (

Conservation tillage has been widely adopted in agricultural lands worldwide and is considered a potential strategy for climate change mitigation through enhanced carbon sequestration. However, conservation tillage may alter soil N2O emissions, which may diminish the potential climate change mitigation benefits. Based on 212 observations from 40 publications, a meta-analysis was conducted to quantitatively assess the effects of climate regimes, initial soil properties, and type/duration of agricultural practices on soil N2O emission following application of conservation tillage. Overall, conservation tillage significantly increased soil N2O emission by 17.8% compared to conventional tillage. The greatest increase in N2O emission was observed from soils in tropical climates (70.1%) experiencing short-term (29.3%) application of conservation tillage. Soil pH and clay content significantly influenced N2O emission, while overall soil texture and soil organic carbon (SOC) were not effective predictors of soil N2O emission following conservation tillage. According to the categorical meta-analysis, agricultural practices, including water, residue, and rotation managements and crop types, significantly affected soil N2O emission following conservation tillage. Conservation tillage induced N2O emissions were mitigated with rain-fed cropping systems, residue removal, crop rotation and cultivation of beans and some vegetables. Significant categorical variables affecting N2O emission were mainly attributed to soil aeration and substrate availability, which were important factors affecting nitrification and denitrification processes. Overall, the conservation tillage induced N2O emission factor (EFad) increased by 0.40%, suggesting an attenuation of climate change benefits from increased N2O emission. Our meta-analysis provides a scientific basis for assessing the effects of conservation tillage on N2O emissions and provides site-specific information to mitigate N2O emissions associated with conservation tillage practices.

The calanoid copepod Pseudodiaptomus marinus Sato, 1913 is native to the coasts of East Asia, but has occurred in the San Francisco Estuary (SFE) as a non-indigenous species since 1986. Genetic analysis of the mitochondrial cytochrome b locus (400 bp) was used to infer the possible origin(s) of the introduced SFE population by comparison between the SFE population and populations from potential donor areas in Japan, Korea, and China. We detected 39 haplotypes from 131 individuals from 7 localities. The SFE population showed a high haplotype diversity and significant F-st values among the localities, suggesting that multiple introductions from several localities in Japan may have occurred, although introductions from Korea could not be ruled out. However, based on the morphological and molecular data the population from Xiamen, China, previously identified as P. marinus, was found to be a separate species. Possible vectors for P. marinus include ship ballast water or aquaculture. Our results also suggest the origin of P. marinus in the Asian continent and subsequent isolation and expansion of populations in Japan.

Author(s): Huang, H; Wang, Z; Chen, D; Xia, F; Shang, X; Liu, YY; Dahlgren, RA; Mei, K | Abstract: The persistence effect contribution of legacy nutrients is often cited as a reason for little or no improvement in water quality following extensive implementation of watershed nutrient mitigation actions, yet there is limited knowledge concerning factors influencing this response, often called the “persistence effect.” Here, we adopted detrended fluctuation analysis and Spearman analysis methods to assess the influence of land use on the watershed phosphorus (P) persistence effect, using monthly water quality records during 2010–2016 in 13 catchments within a drinking water reservoir watershed in eastern China. Detrended fluctuation analysis was used to calculate the Hurst exponent α to assess watershed legacy P characteristics (αn≈n0.5, αngn0.5, and αnln0.5 indicate white noise, persistence, and anti-persistence, respectively). Results showed weak to strong P persistence (0.60–0.81) in the time series of riverine P in the 13 catchments. The Hurst exponent α had negative relationships with agricultural land (Rn=n−.47, pn=.11) and developed land (Rn=n−.67, pn=.01) and a positive relationship with forest land cover (Rn=.48, pn=.10). The persistence effect of riverine P was mainly determined by retention ability (biogeochemical legacy) and migration efficiency (hydrological legacy). A catchment with strong retention capacity (e.g., biomass uptake/storage and soil PO4 sorption) and low migration efficiency results in a stronger persistence effect for riverine P. In practice, source control is more effective in catchments with weak persistence, whereas sink control (e.g., riparian buffers and wetlands) is preferred in catchments with strong persistence effects.

Accurate quantification of dissolved oxygen (DO) is critically important for managing water resources and controlling pollution. Artificial intelligence (AI) models have been successfully applied for modeling DO content in aquatic ecosystems with limited data. However, the efficacy of these AI models in predicting DO levels in the hypoxic river systems having multiple pollution sources and complicated pollutants behaviors is unclear. Given this dilemma, we developed a promising AI model, known as support vector machine (SVM), to predict the DO concentration in a hypoxic river in southeastern China. Four different calibration models, specifically, multiple linear regression, back propagation neural network, general regression neural network, and SVM, were established, and their prediction accuracy was systemically investigated and compared. A total of 11 hydro-chemical variables were used as model inputs. These variables were measured bimonthly at eight sampling sites along the rural-suburban-urban portion of Wen-Rui Tang River from 2004 to 2008. The performances of the established models were assessed through the mean square error (MSE), determination coefficient (R 2), and Nash-Sutcliffe (NS) model efficiency. The results indicated that the SVM model was superior to other models in predicting DO concentration in Wen-Rui Tang River. For SVM, the MSE, R 2, and NS values for the testing subset were 0.9416 mg/L, 0.8646, and 0.8763, respectively. Sensitivity analysis showed that ammonium-nitrogen was the most significant input variable of the proposal SVM model. Overall, these results demonstrated that the proposed SVM model can efficiently predict water quality, especially for highly impaired and hypoxic river systems.

Bo Yin,*,1Dan-Dong Li,*,2,3 Shang-Yu Xu,3 Huan Huang,4 Jian Lin,3 Han-Song Sheng,3 Jun-Hao Fang,3 Jin-Ning Song,2 Ming Zhang11Department of Medical Imaging, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Neurosurgery, The First Affiliated Hospital, Medical School of Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Neurosurgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Radiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workBackground: The use of thrombolysis with tissue-plasminogen activator (t-PA) in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) is limited by increased levels of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) and by the increased risk of hemorrhagic transformation (HT). In this study, we investigated the effects of simvastatin pretreatment on t-PA-induced MMP-9/tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1 (TIMP-1) imbalance and HT aggravation in a rat AIS model.Methods: The rat AIS model was established by autologous blood emboli. Two weeks before surgery, rats were pretreated with simvastatin (60 mg/kg/d), and three hours after surgery, t-PA (10 mg/kg) was administered. MMP-9 and TIMP-1 levels in the infarcted zone and plasma were evaluated by Western blot analysis and ELISA; the level of HT was quantified by determining the hemoglobin content. RhoA activation was determined to clarify the potential effect.Results: The results suggested that pretreatment with simvastatin suppressed the increase in t-PA-induced MMP-9 levels and neutralized the elevated MMP-9/TIMP-1 ratio, but had no effect on TIMP-1 levels. Thrombolysis with t-PA after ischemia improved neurological outcome, but increased intracranial hemorrhage. Moreover, t-PA-induced HT aggravation was reduced by simvastatin pretreatment. In addition, we showed that t-PA-induced activation of RhoA was suppressed by simvastatin, and that t-PA-induced MMP-9/TIMP-1 imbalance and hemorrhage was reduced by Rho kinases (ROCK) inhibitor Y-27632.Conclusion: In this study, we showed that simvastatin pretreatment ameliorated t-PA-induced HT and MMP-9/TIMP-1 imbalance, and demonstrated that the RhoA/ROCK pathway was implicated.Keywords: simvastatin, acute ischemic stroke, t-PA, MMP-9/TIMP-1, RhoA/ROCK pathway, hemorrhagic transformation

Capacitive deionization (CDI) is proposed to be one of the most promising techniques for removal of charged species from brackish water. In this work, a robust CDI electrode is designed by synthesizing Li3VO4 on reduced graphene oxide (LVO/rGO) to extract Li+ with enhanced capacity. The LVO/rGO exhibits the orthorhombic-phase crystal structure. Further, as compared to pure LVO, the optimized LVO/rGO composite realizes the improved specific surface area (SSA) and electrochemical performance. It is suggested that the aggregation of rGO can be alleviated by coupling with LVO, resulting in high SSA. Meanwhile, the LVO provides a large number of active sites to intercalate Li+. Benefiting from this structure, the LVO/rGO ‖ Activated carbon (AC) device demonstrates high Li+ extraction capacity of ~39.53 mg/g in LiCl solution with an initial concentration of 610.42 mg/L under the cell voltage of 1.2 V, which is the highest among the reported data. Moreover, the Li+ extraction behavior of LVO/rGO ‖ AC in various electrolytes containing OH– and Cl− is explored, illustrating that the AC electrode has priority in Cl− and thus leading to high Li+ removal capacity. Beyond that, the Li+ removal capacity of the LVO/rGO-20 electrode after 20 cycles is measured as ~30.84 mg/g, which is 78.02% of the initial value.

This study explores the probable correlation between degradation in bond line fracture toughness and the changes in the measurable mechanical properties of the adhesive layer due to environmental contamination in adhesively bonded composite structures. Nanoindentation technique is utilized to measure the adhesive Young’s modulus and hardness. The proposed framework utilizes the large scale bridging of interfacial fracture proposed by Tvergaard and Hutchinson (Philos Mag A 70(4):641–656, 1994), for considering the significant contribution of plasticity on the macroscopic bond line fracture toughness. A typical adhesive-adherend material system (EA9394/Hexcel IM7-G/8552) exposed to different contaminants at the same concentration is examined. Hardness measurements showed two distinct effects of contamination on the adhesive material; namely (1) softening and (2) hardening depending on the class of contaminants. In addition, macroscopic mode-I fracture toughness is independently measured by double cantilever beam test. Finite element method employing cohesive zone method is used to rationalize the experimental results and the prospective scaling-laws. The combined experimental results of macroscopic properties and the numerical results of the interfacial properties showed the role of contamination in reducing the plastic dissipation within the bond line and the macroscopic deterioration of the bond line effective fracture toughness. The results showed the existence of a correlation similar to Tvergaard and Hutchinson’s results. However, the results suggest a scaling between the interfacial cohesive fracture toughness and the measurable flow stress. The scaling correlation has the potential to be utilized in assessing the relative trend between different contaminants. While the proposed scaling is verified for a common adhesive-adherend system in aerospace industry, with additional examination of other systems, the proposed scaling law might facilitate the utilization of the perceived non-destructively evaluated indentation hardness to serve as an indicator for the bond line macroscopic fracture toughness.

Intimate coupling of microbial extracellular electron transfer (EET) and photoelectrochemical processes is an emerging research area with great potential to circumvent many disadvantages associated with traditional techniques that depend on independent microbial or photocatalysis treatment. Microbial EET processes involve microorganism oxidation of extracellular electron donors for respiration and synchronous reduction of extracellular electron acceptors to form an integrated respiratory chain. Coupled microbial EET-photoelectrochemical technologies greatly improve energy conversion efficiency providing both economic and environmental benefits. Among substitutes for semiconductor photocatalysts, cadmium sulfide nanoparticles (CdS NPs) possess several attractive properties. Specifically, CdS NPs have suitable electrical conductivity, large specific surface area, visible light-driven photocatalysis capability and robust biocompatibility, enabling them to promote hybrid microbial-photoelectrochemical processes. This review highlights recent advances in intimately coupled CdS NPs-microbial extracellular electron transfer systems and examines the mechanistic pathways involved in photoelectrochemical transformations. Finally, the prospects for emerging applications utilizing hybrid CdS NPs-based microbial-photoelectrochemical technologies are assessed. As such, this review provides a rigorous fundamental analysis of electron transport dynamics for hybrid CdS NPs-microbial photoelectrochemical processes and explores the applicability of engineered CdS NPs-biohybrids for future applications, such as in environmental remediation and clean-energy production.