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Despite the remarkable progression in colon cancer treatment in recent years, the pathological mechanism underlying this disease remains unclear. This study aimed to discuss the potential of luteolin in the treatment of colon cancer, from the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, with a particular focus on the tumor microenvironment.Reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction and western blot were used to analyze the effects of luteolin on interleukin (IL)-6/signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3)/Phospho-STAT3. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to analyze the protein secretion of IL-6. Proliferation and transwell assays were used to analyze the growth and migration of luteolin and IL-6 in colon cancer cells, respectively.Stimulation with lipopolysaccharides (LPS) promoted the M1 polarization of macrophages and increased the expression and secretion of IL-6. However, the presence of luteolin inhibited the effects of LPS. M1 polarization increased the proliferation rate, migration and invasion ability, and phosphorylation of STAT3 in colon cancer cells (SW620 and SW480). Luteolin inhibited these effects by reducing M1 polarization. To confirm that the action of luteolin is mediated by IL-6/STAT3 signaling, we treated SW620 and SW480 cells with recombinant IL-6 protein and anti-IL-6 antibody. IL-6 was observed to promote cell proliferation, enhance migration and invasion, and increase STAT3 phosphorylation. The opposite effect was observed with the anti-IL-6 antibody. In addition, IL-6 promoted LPS-induced M1 polarization, while the anti-IL-6 antibody enhanced the decrease in luteolin-induced M1 polarization.Luteolin suppressed the growth and migration/invasion potential of colon cancer cells by inhibiting the IL-6/STAT3 signaling pathway.

Purpose: To investigate the effect of curcumin on spinal cord injury (SCI) in a rat model. Methods: SCI was induced in the rats using mid thoracic spinal cord compression, after which curcumin was injected intraperitoneally. Western blotting was used for assay of expressions of apoptotic proteins, viz, IL-1β, NF-κB p65, TLR4, TNF-α, LC3, Bax and Bcl-2. Malondialdehyde (MDA) and myeloperoxidase were measured using standard methods. Neuronal loss in spinal cord tissues was determined with TUNEL staining and NeuN labelling. Results: Curcumin treatment significantly (p < 0.05) suppressed SCI-mediated upregulation of myeloperoxidase activity and increase in MDA level in rat spinal cord. The reduction of glutathione (GSH) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activities in the spinal cord of SCI rats were suppressed by curcumin treatment. Curcumin treatment also led to a significant (p < 0.02) increase in the proportion of NeuN positive cells and marked reduction in TUNEL positive cells, but it decreased caspase-3 in the spinal cord tissues of SCI rats. Moreover, curcumin reversed the effect of SCI on protein expressions of Bax and Bcl 2 in a dose-based manner. There was marked curcumin-induced decline in CD11b and GFAP levels in the spinal cord tissues of the SCI rats. Conclusion: These results demonstrate that curcumin protects rats against SCI via inhibition of oxidative stress-mediated neuronal apoptosis. Therefore, curcumin may be useful for the development of an effective treatment for spinal cord injury.

Dockless bike-sharing (DBS) is a novel and prevalent bike-sharing system without stations or docks. DBS has the advantages of convenience and real-time positioning, whereas it brings about some problems such as bike over-supply, disordered parking, and inefficient rebalancing. Forecasting usage and bike distribution are critical in the rebalancing operation for maintaining DBS inventory. By dividing the virtual stations through K-means clustering and processing the four-week Mobike journey data of Nanjing, China, the data of usage and bike count in the 4000 virtual stations are identified. Random forest (RF) is developed to predict the real-time passenger departure, passenger arrival and bike count in the virtual stations. The operation analyses indicate that there is a positive correlation between bike count and usage. RF provides accurate predictions of usage and bike distribution, and almost outperforms five benchmark methods. Forecasting bike distribution is more challenging than forecasting usage because of the volatility of many factors. The results also suggest that bike distribution forecasting based on the usage gap prediction is better than that based on the departure and arrival prediction. This study can help DBS companies in dynamically rebalancing bikes from over-supply regions to over-demand regions in a better way.

Osteosarcoma (OS) is a common primary malignant bone tumor around the world. It has been reported that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) take part in diverse pathological processes of OS; however, the mechanism remains unknown. This study aimed to uncover the profile of lncRNA small nucleolar RNA host gene 15 (SNHG15), its biological function, and its potential involvement in the mechanism of OS progression in vitro and in vivo. The expression of SNHG15 and TRAF4 was promoted in OS tissues opposite for that of miR-346. The silencing of SNHG15 limited the proliferation, invasion, and enhanced apoptosis of SaoS2 and HOS cells. Moreover, the putative binding sites between miR-346 and SNHG15 or TRAF4 were predicted by starBase and Targetscan software online, individually. Also, miR-346 deletion reversed the positive effects of SNHG15 elimination on proliferation, apoptosis, and invasion in cells. In addition, the upregulation of TRAF4 disrupted the biofunctional results from miR-346 promotion subsequently. Finally, SNHG15 knockdown repressed OS tumor growth in a xenograft tumor model. SNHG15 enhanced the progression of OS by regulating the miR-346/TRAF4 axis in vitro and in vivo.

In recent years, there has been a remarkable rebirth of the streetcar in China, with dozens of projects under consideration, in planning and construction, or already completed in cities throughout the country. The development of such a relatively mega-project often raises the question of “why Chinese cities develop their streetcar projects”. Building on insights into streetcar projects materials and in-depth interviews with elite figures, and together with relevant socioeconomic data comparisons, the paper sets out to reveal how the resurgence of the streetcar was facilitated and motivated, and why such urban mega-projects are so attractive to cities, and to further derive lessons to better inform policymakers, planners, and researchers in proposing, planning and implementing streetcars in China. Our findings revealed five major themes to motivate streetcars development in China, which unpacked the answer to the question into five aspects: rapid urbanization, supportive policy environment, less-restrictive approval mechanisms, goal-seeking for streetcar development, and potential inter-city competition. A discussion of these themes in the Chinese context leads us to the conclusion that the process of proposing, promoting, and approving streetcar projects is not only dependent on its expected achievements bring to the region but very much on the economic–political reasons and inter-city competition.

Study Design.In vitro laboratory studies.Objectives.To explore the effect of chondrocell-derived exosomes on intervertebral disc degeneration, and provide a new idea for IDD treatment.Summary of Background Data.The research of exosomes and their regenerative effects have been verified in the research of repair in other tissues and organs at our country and abroad, including osteoarthritis, cardiovascular disease, lung injury, fracture healing, central nervous system disease, cancer and other diseases treatment [1] . The aim of this study was to investigate whether exosomes derived from endplate cells could inhibit the degeneration of endplate and play an important role in the prevention and treatment of disc degeneration.Methods.EPCs-Exos derived from endplate chondrocytes were prepared and identified by Nanoparticle tracking analyzer, transmission electron microscope, and immunoblotting to detect surface markers, it was confirmed by immunofluorescence assay that it could be ingested by nucleus pulposus cells. The degeneration of cartilage endplates was evaluated by detecting the contents of Aggrecan, COL 1A, COL 2A and RNA by RT-PCR and WB.Results.EPCs-Exos can be ingested by nucleus pulposus cells and up-regulate the expression of Aggrecan, COL 2A and their mRNA, down-regulate the expression of COL 1A and their mRNA. Conclusion.EPCS-Exo can further inhibit the degeneration of intervertebral disc by acting on nucleus pulposus cells and thus the degeneration of cartilage endplate.

Objective. The safety and efficacy of Tripterygium glycosides (TG) were assessed for ankylosing spondylitis (AS) in accordance with the existing literatures. Materials and Methods. Electronic literature was searched from Chinese VIP databases, Cochrane Library, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, Wanfang Web of Science, EMBASE, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, and the PubMed for the studies with the publication from the beginning to December 2021. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were included only. The major variables of result comprised erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP), Spinal Pain Visual Analog Score (SP-VAS), Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Functional Index (BASFI), and Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI). Moreover, the secondary variables of result covered the overall clinical effective rate following the adverse drug reaction (ADR). We carried out the meta-analysis with the use of STATA 12.0 and RevMan 5.3. We used GRADE pro3.6.1 software to assess the quality of evidence. Results. In general, we covered 15 randomized controlled trials with the focus of 1186 patients. As proven by our meta-analysis, TG as adjuvant therapy or monotherapy decreased the BASDAI, BASFI, SP-VAS, serum CRP, and ESR than control in patients suffering from AS. Additionally, TG treatment visibly improved the overall effective rate in AS. Nevertheless, TG was not found to significantly increase the rate of ADR in contrast to the control. Conclusion. As indicated by our result, TG may be an option to treat AS. In this paper, we recommended strict trials with high quality and large samples sizes for confirming the finding here.

Background Osteosarcoma (OS) is a very aggressive cancer. Nevertheless, how circular RNA (circRNA) contributes to OS progression remains unclear. Here, we aimed to research the functions of circMMP9 in OS progression. Methods Gene expression was determined via qRT-PCR. siRNA was used to knock down circMMP9. Proliferation was analyzed using CCK8 and colony formation assays. Migration and invasion were measured using Transwell assay. Results circMMP9 was overexpressed in cancer tissues. Overexpressed circMMP9 was correlated with advanced tumor stage and predicted poor prognosis. circMMP9 knockdown exhibited a tumor-suppressive phenotype via suppressing proliferation, migration and invasion. Besides, decreased circMMP9 level promoted OS cellular apoptosis. Mechanistically, circMMP9 was shown to be located in the cytoplasm and sponge miR-1265. Furthermore, miR-1265 directly targeted CHI3L1. CHI3L1 levels were modulated by circMMP9/miR-1265 axis. Rescue experiments indicated that circMMP9 contributes to OS development through the miR-1265/CHI3L1 pathway. Conclusion Our findings provide a novel insight about how circRNA regulates OS progression.

Health care accessibility is a vital indicator for evaluating areas where there are medical shortages. However, due to the lack of population data with a satisfactory spatial resolution, efforts to accurately measure health care accessibility among older individuals have been hampered to some extent. To address this issue, we attempt to measure accessibility to health care services for older bus passengers in Nanjing, China, using a finer spatial resolution. More specifically, based on one month's worth of bus smart card data, a framework for identifying the home stations (i.e., a passenger's preferred station near their residence) of older passengers is developed to measure the aggregate demand at the bus stop scale. On this basis, a measurement that integrates the Gaussian two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) and the adjusted 2SFCA methods (referred to as the adjusted Gaussian 2SFCA method) is proposed to measure accessibility to health care services for older people. The results show that: (1) almost all home stations experience inflated demand, especially those located in the suburbs; (2) despite abundant health care resources, home stations in urban districts are rarely identified as high accessibility stations, due to high demand densities among the older population; and (3) more attention should be paid to two types of home stations – those with a medical institution and those with bed shortages, respectively. The first type is predominantly distributed in the periphery of the city, in the suburbs where the travel time required to access the nearest health care service by bus is longer. The second type is mostly located in the outskirts of urban districts and in the central area of one suburb. These findings could help policy makers to implement more appropriate measures to design and reallocate health care resources.

Introduction Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has triggered a worldwide outbreak of pandemic, and transportation services have played a key role in coronavirus transmission. Although not crowded in a confined space like a bus or a metro car, bike-sharing users are exposed to the bike surface and take the transmission risk. During the COVID-19 pandemic, how to meet user demand and avoid virus spreading has become an important issue for bike-sharing. Methods Based on the trip data of bike-sharing in Nanjing, China, this study analyzes the travel demand and operation management before and after the pandemic outbreak from the perspectives of stations, users, and bikes. Semi-logarithmic difference-in-differences model, visualization methods, and statistic indexes are applied to explore the transportation service and risk prevention of bike-sharing during the pandemic. Results Pandemic control strategies sharply reduced user demand, and commuting trips decreased more significantly. Some stations around health and religious places become more important. Men and older adults may be more dependent on bike-sharing systems. The declined trips reduce user contacts and transmission risk. Central urban areas have more user close contacts and higher transmission risk than suburban areas. Besides, a new concept of user distancing is proposed to decrease transmission risk and the number of idle bikes. Conclusions This paper is the first research focusing on both user demand and transmission risk of bike-sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study evaluates the mobility role of bike-sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic, and also provides insights into curbing the viral transmission within the city.

Schizophrenic patients tend to have reduced incidence of some cancers due to the treatment of antipsychotic drugs with antitumor effects, such as chlorpromazine and trifluoperazine (TFP). Forkhead Box O1 (FOXO1) as tumor suppressor in many malignancies is often inactivated by nuclear export, which could be inhibited by TFP. However, the antitumor efficiency of TFP and related role of FOXO1 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are unclear. Thus, two HCC cell lines SMMC-7721 and Bel-7402 were treated with different concentrations of TFP and the IC50 was determined. We found that TFP could inhibit the vitality of two cell lines and induce cell cycle arrest at G0/G1. Meanwhile, the apoptosis was also increased and the ability of migration or invasion was found to be impaired by TFP. Interestingly, TFP reversed the cytoplasmic localization of FOXO1 to nuclear and increased its expression in nuclear, and increased the ratio of Bax/Bcl-2. However, knockdown of FOXO1 significantly abrogated the TFP-induced apoptosis by decreasing the Bcl-2 expression [corrected]. Furthermore, we found that TFP in vivo could effectively restrict the angiogenesis and tumor growth with reduced expression of VEGF, Bcl-2, and PCNA, and increased the nuclear localization of FOXO1, which indicated its antitumor role in HCC.

Osteosarcoma (OS) is a common primary malignant bone tumor around the world. It has been reported that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) take part in diverse pathological processes of OS; however, the mechanism remains unknown. This study aimed to uncover the profile of lncRNA small nucleolar RNA host gene 15 (SNHG15), its biological function, and its potential involvement in the mechanism of OS progression in vitro and in vivo. The expression of SNHG15 and TRAF4 was promoted in OS tissues opposite for that of miR-346. The silencing of SNHG15 limited the proliferation, invasion, and enhanced apoptosis of SaoS2 and HOS cells. Moreover, the putative binding sites between miR-346 and SNHG15 or TRAF4 were predicted by starBase and Targetscan software online, individually. Also, miR-346 deletion reversed the positive effects of SNHG15 elimination on proliferation, apoptosis, and invasion in cells. In addition, the upregulation of TRAF4 disrupted the biofunctional results from miR-346 promotion subsequently. Finally, SNHG15 knockdown repressed OS tumor growth in a xenograft tumor model. SNHG15 enhanced the progression of OS by regulating the miR-346/TRAF4 axis in vitro and in vivo.

Background Osteosarcoma (OS) is a very aggressive cancer. Nevertheless, how circular RNA (circRNA) contributes to OS progression remains unclear. Here, we aimed to research the functions of circMMP9 in OS progression. Methods Gene expression was determined via qRT-PCR. siRNA was used to knock down circMMP9. Proliferation was analyzed using CCK8 and colony formation assays. Migration and invasion were measured using Transwell assay. Results circMMP9 was overexpressed in cancer tissues. Overexpressed circMMP9 was correlated with advanced tumor stage and predicted poor prognosis. circMMP9 knockdown exhibited a tumor-suppressive phenotype via suppressing proliferation, migration and invasion. Besides, decreased circMMP9 level promoted OS cellular apoptosis. Mechanistically, circMMP9 was shown to be located in the cytoplasm and sponge miR-1265. Furthermore, miR-1265 directly targeted CHI3L1. CHI3L1 levels were modulated by circMMP9/miR-1265 axis. Rescue experiments indicated that circMMP9 contributes to OS development through the miR-1265/CHI3L1 pathway. Conclusion Our findings provide a novel insight about how circRNA regulates OS progression.

The built environment affects individuals’ travel behavior in a variety of dimensions, such as trip generation, mode choice, and travel duration. However, it is not well understood how these effects differ across different socioeconomic groups (e.g. the elderly versus younger adults) and how residential self-selection contributes to these differences. Using the 2013 Nanjing (China) Travel Survey data, this study estimates the differential responsiveness to the variation in residential location for different age groups. The two-step clustering method is applied to characterize two types of residential locations and the propensity score matching approach is utilized to address self-selection effects. We find that, after control for self-selection, residential location effects on travel behavior differ significantly between the elderly (60+ years old) and younger respondents (18–59 years old). Changes in the living environment play a more important role in influencing the elderly’s travel frequency and travel duration than those of younger adults. When we compare the observed effects of residential location, self-selection effects are modest for the elderly while they matter to a great extent for younger adults. In addition, due to differences in residential self-selection, there is an underestimation of residential location effects on the elderly’s travel behavior versus an overestimation of those for younger adults. These findings indicate that overlooking the variation of built environment effects between different age groups may lead to ineffective housing and transportation policy implications.

As the government pays more attention to energy conservation and emission reduction in the energy industry, the contradiction between economic cost and carbon emission reduction in the electric-coal supply chain becomes more and more serious, which needs to be solved urgently. Therefore, based on the theory of green supply chain, this research constructs a dynamic multi-objective model under the uncertain decision-making environment with the realization of the equilibrium of the total economic cost and carbon emission of electric-coal supply chain as the decision goal, and taking the coal supply capacity and and other practical requirements as the constraints. The following equilibrium model is applied to a electric-coal supply chain in the southwestern region of Y Province. With full consideration of different carbon emission reduction scenarios, the total economic cost and carbon emission balance plan of electric-coal supply chain under five different emission reduction scenarios were obtained, which verified the practicability and effectiveness of the equilibrium model. The results show that the equilibrium model can effectively alleviate the conflict between the economic cost and carbon emission reduction. Finally, based on data analysis, we put forward management suggestions from macro, meso and micro levels to better realize the greenization of electric-coal supply chain.

The steel industry occupies an important position in China's economic development, but it also consumes a lot of energy and produces CO2. Iron and steel remanufacturing can recycle scrap iron as raw materials for crude steel smelting and reduce energy consumption. However, different raw materials in the supply chain will result in different steel plants’ choice of supplier, purchase volume, and production volume. These choices will affect the economic cost and carbon emissions of the entire system. This paper establishes a model to simulate the economic cost and carbon emissions of the supply chain system. Under various constraints, the carbon emissions are set at 95% and 90% of the previous year's carbon emissions as constraints to solve the system’s impact on suppliers selection and processing distribution of steel plants. The results show that as carbon emission constraints become more stringent, steel plants will choose suppliers with better quality raw materials, and processing production will shift to steel plants with lower carbon emission factors. It is worth noting that with the strict carbon emission restrictions, at 90%, the economic cost will rise rapidly, so too strict carbon emission restrictions should be carefully considered.

The station-based bike sharing system (SBBSS) and the free-floating bike sharing system (FFBSS) have been adopted on a large scale in China. However, the overlap between the services provided by these two systems often makes bike sharing inefficient. By comparing the factors that affect the usage of the two systems, this paper aims to propose appropriate strategies to promote their coordinated development. Using data collected in Nanjing, a predictive model is built to determine which system is more suitable at a given location. The influences of infrastructure, demand distribution, and land use attributes at the station level are examined via the support vector machine (SVM) approach. Our results show that the SBBSS tends to be favored in areas where there is a high concentration of travel demand, and close proximity to metro stations and commercial properties, whereas locations with a higher density of major roads and residential properties are associated with more frequent use of the FFBSS. With regard to the methods used, a comparison of several machine learning approaches shows that the SVM has the best predictive performance. Our findings could be used to help policy makers and transportation planners to optimize the deployment and redistribution of docked and dockless bikes.

In recent years, free-floating bike sharing (FFBS) has been rapidly promoted in China, attracting numerous users and consuming many resources. The extensive supply and inefficient repositioning of FFBS are challenges for sustainable development, and put forward higher requirements for parking planning. This paper estimates the parking demand of all three FFBS companies by combining the journey data of Mobike in Nanjing and the Nanjing FFBS bike survey. Three clustering methods were applied to determine the virtual stations of bike aggregation. The maximum number of bikes in a day is recognized as the parking demand in each virtual station. The results show that more than half of bikes are in low turnover rate, and the management of FFBS should be improved. The K-means method turns out to observe the best clustering result for determining virtual stations. The demand for parking spaces of all FFBS companies in Nanjing is estimated accordingly. In addition, the relations of bicycle supply, repositioning and parking are discussed, showing the impact of parking demand on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The research could help to propose an appropriate plan for meeting FFBS parking demand, and have enlightening sight of emissions reduction and sustainable development in the FFBS services.

Regional bus scheduling is necessary to urban public transport that is complicated by the necessity of assigning trips that belong to several routes to buses located at different depots while reducing fleet size and operating costs. Considering the reality of emergencies that may interfere with the ability of vehicles to complete trips on time, it is reasonable to use fuzzy numbers to express uncertain delay times. Based on this idea, this paper proposes a chance-constrained programming model of regional bus scheduling that will reflect additional constraints such as the capacities of related depots and fueling needs. The objective of this paper is to maximize utilization of fleet vehicles. To overcome the defect of premature convergence in the particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO), an improved PSO is proposed by using an organic fusion with group search optimization. Finally, an example demonstrates the correctness and effectiveness of the model and algorithm.

Public bicycle acts as a seamless feeder mode in combination with the citywide public transit, as well as a competitor for the inner-city short trips. The primary objective of this study is to address the layout planning of public bicycle system within the attracted scope of a metro station. Based on the land use function, population, and bicycle mode share, bicycle rental stations are divided into three types, namely, the metro station, district station, and resident station, and later the quantity of bicycle facilities in each rental station is estimated. Then, the service stations are selected from these bicycle rental stations to provide the service of periodical bicycle redistribution. An improved immune algorithm is proposed to determine the number and locations of service stations and the optimal route options for the implement of redistributing strategy. Finally, a case study of Nanjing Tianyin Road metro station is conducted to illustrate the proposed model and clarify some of its implementation details.

Research on travel behavior of the urban low-income citizens in China is minimal. The main objective of this study is to examine the travel characteristics and trip chain characteristics of China's urban low-income. Using the travel data collected in the city of Huzhou (a prefecture-level city in east China), Two-Step Clustering Analysis is conducted to identify low- income people from the dataset. It is found that urban low-income people have lower mobility than the non-low-income. They tend to make fewer trips and of shorter distance. However, average trip duration of the low-income is longer than that of the non-low-income. Results show that the low-income individual makes most of their trips for subsistence activities, such as going to work or school. In addition, large proportions of all trips made by the low-income are undertaken by walking, electric motorcycle, and bicycle. The number of trip chain of low-income people is generally small, and the length of said trip chain is short. Finally policy implications are recommended in the context of providing transportation equity service to improve the mobility of urban low-income.

Cleidocranial dysplasia (CCD) is an autosomal dominant bone disease in humans caused by haploinsufficiency of the RUNX2 gene. The RUNX2 has two major isoforms derived from P1 and P2 promoters. Over 90 mutations of RUNX2 have been reported associated with CCD. In our study, DNA samples of nine individuals from three unrelated CCD families were collected and screened for all exons of RUNX2 and 2 kb of P1 and P2 promoters. We identified two point mutations in the RUNX2 gene in Case 1, including a nonsense mutation (c.577C>T) that has been reported previously and a silent substitution (c.240G>A). In vitro studies demonstrated that c.577C>T mutation led to truncated RUNX2 protein production and diminished stimulating effects on mouse osteocalcin promoter activity when compared with full-length Runx2-II and Runx2-I isoforms. These results confirm that loss of function RUNX2 mutation (c.577C>T) in Case 1 family is responsible for its CCD phenotype.

Most traditional mode choice models are based on the principle of random utility maximization derived from econometric theory. Alternatively, mode choice modeling can be regarded as a pattern recognition problem reflected from the explanatory variables of determining the choices between alternatives. The paper applies the knowledge discovery technique of rough sets theory to model travel mode choices incorporating household and individual sociodemographics and travel information, and to identify the significance of each attribute. The study uses the detailed travel diary survey data of Changxing county which contains information on both household and individual travel behaviors for model estimation and evaluation. The knowledge is presented in the form of easily understood IF-THEN statements or rules which reveal how each attribute influences mode choice behavior. These rules are then used to predict travel mode choices from information held about previously unseen individuals and the classification performance is assessed. The rough sets model shows high robustness and good predictive ability. The most significant condition attributes identified to determine travel mode choices are gender, distance, household annual income, and occupation. Comparative evaluation with the MNL model also proves that the rough sets model gives superior prediction accuracy and coverage on travel mode choice modeling.

Large-scale uniform ternary ZnIn2S4 nanosheet array films have been grown on indium-tin oxide (ITO) glass substrates effectively by a simple direct elemental reaction route. Inorganic–organic bulk heterojunction photovoltaic devices were fabricated with ZnIn2S4 film as an electron acceptor and poly (2-methoxy-5-(2/-ethylhexoxy)-1,4-phenylene vinylene (MEH-PPV) polymer as electron donor. The formation of the ZnIn2S4 nanosheet film was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and UV-VIS-NIR spectroscopy. The as-prepared ZnIn2S4 nanosheet film was demonstrated as an n-type semiconductor exhibiting an apparent photocurrent response and good photostability. The photovoltaic performance of the constructed solar cell device with the active structure of ITO/ZnIn2S4:MEH-PPV/Au was evaluated at room temperature under AM1.5G (100 mW cm−2) simulated globe sun illumination from a filtered Xenon lamp.

Activity-travel behavior differs between women and men. Previous researches dealing with gender differences mainly focus on travel in itself rather than the interaction between time-use pattern and travel mode choice. Based on the activity-travel survey data of Suzhou, China, multigroup structural equation modeling is adopted to explore the reason for gender-based differences in mode choice through comparing the interactions among sociodemographics, time-use pattern, and mode choice. The results indicate that gender-based differences do exist in mode choice. Women prefer traveling by bicycle while men prefer traveling by car in Suzhou. And compared to women, men's mode choice is not so easy to be affected by other travel modes. Besides, gender-based differences exist in the magnitude or the sign of the interrelations among socio-demographics, time-use pattern, and mode choice. It is better to explain gender-based differences in mode choice by including time-use pattern endogenously than through socio-demographics alone. Furthermore, the study shows that by examining the direct, indirect, and total effects in the model system simultaneously, we are able to better capture the differences in mode choice across genders and further able to understand the reason for those differences. Finally, some dedicated suggestions are presented for planners and government to ensure a healthy transportation system.

Through researching the special nozzles, we shoot fan-shape water jet and shoot each other to crush microbe cells and achieve control of particle size. In the test of crushing microbe cells, we find that density of water jet and the size of the nano-particle is in proportion, for the expression of its function: y = f (x). We create the expansion distance between water molecules formulation: r = r0×η and other mathematical models. When the expansion of multiples ηn = 1, the distance between water molecules r0 = 0.4 nm, the size of particle is less than nano-grade, when ηn = 2.6~250, r n = 1~100 nm, get the broken nano-particles; when ηn> 250, rn> 100 nm, the size of broken particle is greater than nano-grade. Accordingly we developed a water jet microbe cells crusher. We get the Chinese invention patents with No.ZL03143321.9.