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Crystal plane regulation, defect engineering, and element doping can effectively solve the problems of large band gaps, poor light absorption, and fast recombination of BiOCl. In this work, iodine-doped BiOCl (I/BiOCl) nanowafers with abundant (110) crystal planes and oxygen vacancies (OV) were prepared by a simple hydrothermal method and assessed for pollutant photodegradation. I/BiOCl with a molar ratio of I to Cl of 0.6 (I

Background: Transvaginal mesh can increase the durability of surgery for pelvic organ prolapse. However, commercial mesh kits can be expensive. We assessed the efficacy of a much cheaper self-cut titanium-coated polypropylene mesh with a mesh-kit for treating symptomatic pelvic organ prolapse. Methods: We conducted a multicenter, randomized, non-inferiority trial. Patients were randomized to either self-cut mesh or commercial mesh-kit. Patients with symptomatic stage III-IV pelvic organ prolapse were enrolled at 11 centers between January 2018 and November 2019. The primary outcome measure was composite success at one year defined by absence of vaginal bulge symptoms, and no additional re-treatment for POP, and no vaginal prolapse at or beyond the hymen. Secondary outcomes included symptom-specific pelvic floor function and quality of life measures, complications and costs. Findings: A total of 336 participants were randomized. In the intention-to-treat analysis, 95∙9% (162/169) met the definition of surgical success in the self-cut group, which was noninferior to the 87∙4% (146/167) surgical success in the mesh-kit group (risk difference, 8∙5 [95%CI 2∙2 to 14∙3]). The frequency of Clavien-Dindo grade I-III complications were not significant between groups (12 [7∙2%] vs 20 [12∙4%], P=0∙14). Vaginal mesh exposure rates in women examined within 1 year [self-cut group 4/169 (2∙4%) vs mesh-kit group 8/167 (4∙8%)] were similar (P=0∙23). Interpretation: This trial demonstrated that composite surgical success of a self-cut mesh procedure was non-inferior to a commercial mesh-kit procedure using the same mesh. The use of self-cut mesh was effective and safe, while reducing the hospitalization expense by approximately 40%. Clinical Trial Registration Details: Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT03283124. Funding Information: Chinese Academy of Medical Science Initiative for Innovative Medicine(CAMS-2017-12M-1-002). Medstron Medical(shanghai) Co. Ltd, the agent of Tiloop® products in China, provided monetary support for this research including interim meeting and third party (LinkDoc Beijing company) EDC system. Declaration of Interests: We declare no competing interests. Ethics Approval Statement: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Peking Union Medical College Hospital (JS-1278).

Indoor thermal environment significantly affects human health and comfort. Although several studies have investigated this aspect in numerous buildings, a gap exists with regard to the hospital waiting areas and the thermal comfort of pregnant women. Therefore, this study assessed the ambient conditions in the waiting areas of obstetric departments in four Guangzhou hospitals during summer and winter and conducted a questionnaire survey on pregnant women and males & non-pregnant female patients in the waiting areas to analyze the differences in their thermal sensation. A total of 2594 questionnaire responses were collected during the survey period, including 1477 and 1117 responses during summer and winter, respectively. Further, the predicted mean vote (PMV) model was applied to evaluate the thermal comfort and differences in the thermal sensation between pregnant women and escorts. The results indicated that the PMV model could not accurately predict the thermal comfort of the subjects and overestimated their thermal sensation. Additionally, the acceptable operative temperature ranges in the obstetric waiting areas were 23.8–28.6 °C and 18.5–23.5 °C, and acceptable standard effective temperature ranges were 21.0–27.9 °C and 19.0–25.8 °C during summer and winter, respectively. Further, the neutral temperature of pregnant women was lower than that of the males & non-pregnant female patients. The results of this study can guide the indoor thermal environments in the hospitals for the improved comfort of pregnant women, which in turn, will benefit their health as well as that of their babies.

The human microbiota is an aggregate of microorganisms residing in the human body, mostly in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT). Our gut microbiota evolves with us and plays a pivotal role in human health and disease. In recent years, the microbiota has gained increasing attention due to its impact on host metabolism, physiology, and immune system development, but also because the perturbation of the microbiota may result in a number of diseases. The gut microbiota may be linked to malignancies such as gastric cancer and colorectal cancer. It may also be linked to disorders such as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD); obesity and diabetes, which are characterized as “lifestyle diseases” of the industrialized world; coronary heart disease; and neurological disorders. Although the revolution in molecular technologies has provided us with the necessary tools to study the gut microbiota more accurately, we need to elucidate the relationships between the gut microbiota and several human pathologies more precisely, as understanding the impact that the microbiota plays in various diseases is fundamental for the development of novel therapeutic strategies. Therefore, the aim of this review is to provide the reader with an updated overview of the importance of the gut microbiota for human health and the potential to manipulate gut microbial composition for purposes such as the treatment of antibiotic-resistant Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infections. The concept of altering the gut community by microbial intervention in an effort to improve health is currently in its infancy. However, the therapeutic implications appear to be very great. Thus, the removal of harmful organisms and the enrichment of beneficial microbes may protect our health, and such efforts will pave the way for the development of more rational treatment options in the future.

Buildings now incorporate increasing levels of renewable energy to the point where net zero energy buildings (NetZEBs) and net zero energy clusters (NetZECs) have the potential to become widely used. Information exchange among stakeholders is essential to enable energy sharing among buildings that form a NetZECs. However, traditional, centralised energy management usually places emphasis on the supply side and does not address data exchange among individual stakeholders. This paper proposes an information sharing strategy based on linked data for improved management of NetZEBs and NetZECs. This strategy systematically integrates stakeholders' engagement by using energy performance indicators as information carriers and linked data as engagement channels. A case study proves the advantages of the developed strategy for improving the energy balance at individual building level, building cluster level, and community level. It is found that the strategy could help achieve NetZEBs and NetZECs through empowering stakeholders' interaction and information sharing.

The prediction of energy consumption is important for the efficient operation of building air-conditioning systems. Most predicted models are based on historical energy consumption data and the factors influencing air conditioning systems, including weather, time of day, and previous consumption. However, the traditional prediction models, such as the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) time series model and back propagation (BP) neural network model, show large errors in their prediction of the energy consumption of air-conditioning systems. To achieve better prediction, the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model of deep learning is adopted in this study based on an air-conditioning system of a University Library in Guangzhou. The results demonstrate that the LSTM model can produce more reliable predictions. The daily energy consumption forecast reduced by 11.2 % compared to that of the Autoregressive Moving Average model (MAPE). The hourly energy consumption forecast reduced by 16.31 %. In addition, compared with the BP neural network model, the MAPE’s daily energy consumption prediction reduced by 49 % and the hourly energy consumption prediction reduced by 36.61 %.

In this study, a new two-dimensional model of CPRF was developed in TRNSYS. Its accuracy was validated by a full-scale experiment. The effects of key parameters of CPRF coupled with solar water heating system on indoor temperature was analyzed. The single factor analysis revealed that reducing tube pitch and solidification temperature, increasing PCM layer thickness and solar collector area could increase indoor temperature. The orthogonal test analysis indicated that tube pitch has the greatest impact on the average indoor temperature. The CPRF heating system coupled to solar energy and an electric boiler operating on valley electricity (CSSEBV) was proposed to ensure stable heating. It was optimized by GENOPT. The optimal parameters are that the tube pitch is 0.28 m, the PCM layer thickness is 0.02 m, the solar collector area is 12.5 m2 and the operating time of the electric boiler is 2h. The economy, energy saving property and environmental benefits of four systems were also compared and analyzed.

Due to energy crisis and phenomenon of global warming, green buildings have been undergoing vigorous development in China, and people are paying increasing attention to the actual operational effect of green buildings rather than the design. In this paper, 12 high-star green buildings (3 LEED Gold buildings, 1 operation Two-Star building, 1 operation Three-Star building, 1 design Two-Star building, and 6 design Three-Star buildings) in the cold region and hot summer and warm winter region (HSWW region) were taken as the research objects to evaluate their indoor thermal comfort. First, from December 2016 to March 2018, this paper conducted a continuous collection of indoor objective thermal environment data of green buildings to obtain the actual thermal environment distribution, and proposed new indexes to evaluate indoor thermal environment of green buildings, namely, OTCD (Over Thermal Comfort Distance) and OTCP (Over Thermal Comfort Percentage). It was found that indoor temperature and humidity of most buildings didn't reach the standard. The new evaluation indexes clearly showed the percentage of the indoor temperature and humidity of each green building away from the comfort zone under different standards in mathematical form, which is convenient for comparison. Second, a questionnaire survey on people's subjective satisfaction of indoor thermal comfort in green buildings was carried out at the same time, wherein 1400 valid questionnaires were recovered. Based on the different evaluation results of subjective and objective thermal comfort, the operative comfort temperature/humidity and thermal/humid comfort zone of different building climate zones were obtained by cluster and linear regression analysis. The results showed that there are differences between thermal/humid comfort zone of different building climate zones and it is helpful for the research on thermal comfort of green buildings in China and the development of relevant codes.

A cascade of two slabs of dissimilar structurally chiral materials can function as a spectral hole filter for normally incident, circularly polarized light, provided (i) both have the same structural handedness and (ii) their constitutive parameters and thickness satisfy two matching conditions. When the total thickness of the cascade is relatively small, a narrow spectral hole is found in the reflection spectrum of co-handed light. Conversely, an ultranarrow spectral hole is found in the transmission spectrum of cross-handed light, when the total thickness of the cascade is relatively large.

Fully amorphous Al85Ni5Y10 alloy powder was produced with a rapid solidification device developed by the present authors. Its characteristics and thermal stability were studied. By means of explosive compaction, vacuum hot pressing or hot extrusion, bulk amorphous, amorphous + microcrystalline and microcrystalline Al85Ni5Y10 alloys were obtained. Their properties are reported in this paper.