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Waste polypropylene (PP) presents a significant environmental challenge, owing to its refractory nature and inert C–C backbone. In this study, we introduce a practical chemical recovery strategy from PP waste using a mild catalyst-free hydrothermal treatment (HT). The treatment converts 64.1% of the processed PP into dissolved organic products within 2 h in an air atmosphere at 160 °C. Higher temperatures increase the PP conversion efficiency. Distinct electron absorption and emission characteristics of the products are identified by spectral analysis. Fourier transform-ion cyclotron resonance-mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS) reveals the oxidative cracking of PP into shorter-chain homologues (10–50 carbon atoms) containing carboxylic and carbonyl groups. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations support a reaction pathway involving thermal C–H oxidation at the tertiary carbon sites in the polymer chain. The addition of 1% H2O2further enhances the oxidation reaction to produce valuable short-chain acetic acids, enabling gram-scale recycling of both pure PP and disposable surgical masks from the real world. Techno-economic analysis (TEA) and environmental life cycle costing (E-LCC) analysis suggest that this hydrothermal oxidation recovery technology is financially viable, which shows significant potential in tackling the ongoing plastic pollution crisis and advancing plastic treatment methodologies toward a circular economy paradigm.

Deficiency in cognitive control has been proposed as a core issue in addictive behavior, and recent advancements in cognitive neuroscience have suggested that frontal midline theta is a mechanism for cognitive control. This study examined frontal midline theta deficits in patients with heroin dependence during a Go/No-go task which explicitly involved cognitive control. Electroencephalography readings were collected from 15 male heroin addicts and 17 demographically matched healthy controls during an equal probability Go/No-go task. The findings revealed that heroin addicts responded significantly slower to the Go stimulus as compared to the healthy control. Heroin addicts also showed less frontal midline theta modulations between the Go and No-go conditions. These findings provided further evidence toward understanding the nature of drug addiction-related cognitive dysfunction.

This study investigated gender differences in health-risk behaviour patterns among young adults and assessed the associations of anxiety and depression with these patterns. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 1740 young Chinese adults aged 18–24 years. Latent class analysis (LCA) and multinomial logistic regression were conducted to identify the clusters of health-risk behaviours and their associations with anxiety and depression. Three common patterns were found for both genders: physical inactivity, substance use, and insufficient fruit intake (5.7% for males [M] and 11.6% for females [F]); a sedentary lifestyle only (48.4% for M and 48.9% for F); and a sedentary lifestyle, substance use, and an unhealthy diet (7.6% for M and 20.0% for F). Additionally, two additional unique patterns were found: physical inactivity and unhealthy diet in males (38.3%) and physical inactivity and insufficient fruit intake in females (19.6%). Sociodemographic variables exert different effects on health-risk behaviour patterns as a function of gender. Lower anxiety levels (odds ratio [OR]: 0.892; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.823–0.966) and greater depression levels (OR: 1.074; 95% CI: 1.008–1.143) were associated with a sedentary lifestyle, substance use, and unhealthy diet class only in female young adults compared with a sedentary-only class. These findings underscore the need for the implementation of targeted interventions based on gender differences.

The present study investigated how positive bias in self-appraisals is differentially modulated when taking a friend’s versus a stranger’s perspective. Reaction time and event-related potentials were recorded while the participants performed a self-descriptiveness task with positive and negative trait adjectives from one’s own perspective, a friend’s perspective, or a stranger’s perspective. The results showed that faster reaction times and reduced N400 amplitudes were induced by positive relative to negative words both in the self-perspective and friend-perspective conditions, but not in the stranger-perspective condition. This suggests that the perceived closeness between oneself and the other may modulate the neural basis of positive bias in self-appraisals during perspective taking.

Response inhibition has been a core issue in addictive behavior. Many previous studies have found that response inhibition abilities are damaged in those with drug dependence. However, whether heroin addicts who are treated with methadone maintenance have an abnormal response inhibition ability is not clear. In order to investigate the response inhibition functions in heroin addicts who were treated with methadone maintenance, electroencephalography (EEG) was used to examine 14 heroin addicts treated with methadone maintenance (HDM), 17 heroin addicts (HD), and 18 healthy controls (HC) in an equiprobability Go∖NoGo task. The reaction times (RTs) for the Go stimuli in the HD group were slower than those in the HDM and HC groups. Event-related potential (ERP) measurements showed that NoGo stimuli elicited larger N2 amplitudes than Go stimuli in the HDM and HC groups. However, for the HD group, the N2 amplitudes were similar for the two conditions. In addition, the HDM and HD groups were associated with longer P3 latencies. Our results demonstrated that methadone maintenance treatment might ease the deficits in response inhibition that result from long-term drug abuse. However, compared to normal people, HDM patients have serious problems evaluating and inhibiting inappropriate behaviors.