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Abstract Background Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) hold a great promise for cell-based therapy in the field of regenerative medicine. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of intravenous infusion of human umbilical cord-derived MSCs (HUC-MSCs) in patients with aging frailty. Methods In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, participants diagnosed with aging frailty were randomly assigned to receive intravenous administrations of HUC-MSCs or placebo. All of serious adverse events and AEs were monitored to evaluate the safety of treatment during the 6-month follow-up. The primary efficacy endpoint was alteration of physical component scores (PCS) of SF-36 qualities of life at 6 months. The secondary outcomes including physical performance tests and pro-inflammatory cytokines, were also observed and compared at each follow-up visits. All evaluations were performed at 1 week, 1, 2, 3 and 6 months following the first intravenous infusion of HUC-MSCs. Results In the MSCs group, significant improvements in PCS of SF-36 were observed from first post-treatment visit and sustained throughout the follow-up period, with greater changes compared to the placebo group (p = 0.042). EQ-VAS scores of MSCs group improved significantly at 2 month (p = 0.023) and continued until the end of the 6-month visit (p = 0.002) in comparison to the placebo group. The timed up and go (TUG) physical performance test revealed significant group difference and showed continual enhancements over 6 months (p

Abstract This study introduces an innovative outdoor nephelometer system designed to monitor the dynamic hygroscopic behavior of aerosols in ambient air. Field measurements conducted in the Pearl River Delta region of China unveil significant roles of relative humidity (RH) swings on aerosol phase states. Highlighting the occurrence of aerosol crystallization in the afternoon followed by gradual deliquescence as RH increases, particularly when minimum afternoon RH drops below 35%, with no such behavior observed when it exceeds 40%. Emphasizing that aerosol phase states are shaped not only by RH and chemical composition but also by their RH history, illustrating that RH levels of 70% in the morning or evening may correspond to fully dissolved metastable or partially dissolved metastable states of ambient aerosols. These findings underscore the need to account for RH history when predicting aerosol phase states and have broader implications for comprehending aerosol behavior and its atmospheric impacts.

Abstract Activation of biomass burning aerosols (BBA) and fossil fuel combustion aerosols (FFA) in fogs and clouds significantly impact regional air quality through aqueous chemistry and climate by affecting cloud microphysics. However, we lack direct observations of how these aerosols behave in fogs and clouds. Using a newly developed aerosol‐cloud sampling system, we conducted observations during fog events and found that BBA, despite their high organic content, effectively contributed to super‐micron interstitial aerosols and fog droplets in low supersaturation fogs. In contrast, FFA, predominantly externally mixed organic, did not grow beyond the super‐micron size in fogs due to their near‐hydrophobic nature. Measurements conducted under supersaturations relevant for cloud formation revealed that portions of FFA could serve as cloud condensation nuclei, but only when supersaturation exceeded ∼0.14%. These findings have broad implications for future investigations into the influence of BBA and FFA on fog and cloud chemistry and their interactions with clouds.

Abstract The commercial continuous‐flow streamwise thermal‐gradient cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) counter is widely used in aerosol CCN activity measurements which are critical for investigating aerosol‐cloud interactions. In CCN measurements, a critical threshold is needed for distinguishing interstitial aerosols and activated droplets, and a default threshold of 0.75 μm was set in CCN counter. Theoretically, interstitial aerosols could also grow larger than 0.75 μm in CCN counter at low supersaturations, thus theoretical thresholds derived from the Köhler theory were suggested. Here, we report that droplet growth in the CCN counter is kinetically limited and CCN‐active droplets does not reach their theoretical diameters under low supersaturations. Neglecting the kinetic growth limitation in CCN identification would count less CCN and underestimate the aerosol hygroscopicity parameter κ by up to 50% for supersaturations lower than 0.1%. We recommend that thresholds considering kinetic limitations should be used as new criteria for CCN identification under low supersaturations.

Both the size and mixing state of black carbon (BC)-containing aerosols are crucial in estimating the environmental, health and climate impacts of BC. Traffic emissions are a major global source of BC, however, parameterization of BC mass size distributions and mixing states associated with traffic remains lacking due to its dependence on vehicle types and driving conditions. To investigate BC mass size distributions and mixing states associated with traffic emissions, a field campaign was conducted in Guangzhou urban area during winter, which used a system coupling a differential mobility analyzer (DMA) and single-particle soot photometer (SP2) to measure BC mass size distributions in the range of 100 to 700 nm. The resolved primary organic aerosols were hydrocarbon-like organic aerosols (HOA) and cooking-like organic aerosols (COA), refractory BC (rBC) which was detected by the DMA-SP2 and correlated highly with HOA (R²=0.88), confirming that traffic emissions are the dominant source of atmospheric BC during the observations. The BC mass size distribution was found to be best fitted by a lognormal distribution, with a geometric mean (Dg,BC) of 258±16 nm, varying between 200 and 300 nm. During daytime, active formation of secondary nitrate and organic aerosols was observed, but it had little effect on the variations of BC mass size distributions. Further analyses revealed that Dg,BC was highly correlated with rBC/HOA (R=0.66) in a linear form of Dg,BC= 34xrBC/HOA+177, demonstrating that the BC content of traffic emissions significantly impacts the BC mass size distributions. In addition, the size-dependent fractions of BC-containing aerosols in all types of aerosols (fBCc) and the fraction of identified externally mixed (bare/thinly coated) BC particles in all BC-containing aerosols (fext) were also characterized. It was found that the daytime secondary aerosol formation reduced both fBCc and fext, with the decrease of fext being more pronounced for larger particles, possibly due to the higher relative coating thickness. Variations in fext during nighttime were mainly controlled by the emission conditions. For example, fext for 600 nm particles decreased from 0.82 to 0.46 as rBC/HOA increased from 1 to 3.5 while the mass ratios of secondary aerosols to rBC varied little, demonstrating that the BC content also significantly affects the mixing states of freshly emitted BC from traffic emissions. This study suggests that BC content likely plays a key role in parameterizing both mass size distributions and mixing states of BC from traffic emissions and hence has significant implications for accurate representation of BC from different sources when modeling the impacts of BC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aerosol mixing state is a crucial physical-chemical property that affects their optical properties and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) activity. Multiple techniques are commonly employed to determine aerosol mixing states for various applications, and comparisons between these techniques provide insights of the variations in aerosol chemical and physical properties. These techniques include size-resolved CCN activity measurements using a system with CCN counter (CCNC) coupled with differential mobility analyzer (DMA), a Humidified/Volatility Tandem differential mobility analyzer (H/V-TDMA) which measures aerosol hygroscopicity/volatility distributions, and a single particle soot photometer (SP2) which directly quantifies black carbon (BC) mixing states. This study provides a first time intercomparisons of aerosol mixing state parameters obtained through simultaneous measurements of a DMA-CCNC, a H/VTDMA and a DMA-SP2. The impact of primary aerosols emissions and secondary aerosol formations on the aerosol mixing states and intercomparison results were analyzed. The results showed that differences in mixing state parameters measured by different techniques varied greatly under different conditions. The V-TDMA and DMA-SP2 measurements showed that the non-volatile population identified by the V-TDMA was mainly contributed by BC containing aerosols. The HTDMA and DMA-SP2 measurements indicated that a substantial proportion of nearly hydrophobic aerosols were not contributed from BC-containing aerosols, but likely originated from fossil fuel combustion and biomass burning emissions. Synthesized comparison results between DMA-CCNC, HTDMA and DMA-SP2 measurements revealed that some of the nearly hydrophobic BC-free particles were CCN-inactive under supersaturated conditions, likely from fossil combustion emissions, while others were CCN-active under supersaturated conditions linked to biomass burning emissions. Fossil fuel combustion-emitted BC-containing aerosols tended to be more externally mixed with other aerosol compositions compared to those emitted from biomass burning activities. These results highlight significant disparities in the mixing states as well as physiochemical properties between aerosol originated from fossil fuel combustion and biomass burning. The formation of secondary nitrate and organic aerosols exerted significant impacts on variations in aerosol mixing states, generally enhancing aerosol hygroscopicity and volatility, while reducing differences in mixing state parameters derived from different techniques, resulting in a reduction in aerosol heterogeneity. The variations in BC-free particle number fractions showed that secondary aerosols tended to form more quickly on BC-free particles than on BC-containing particles. Further comparison of mixing state parameters revealed that the two resolved SOA factors in this study exhibited remarkably different physical properties, indicating that they were likely formed through different pathways. These findings suggest that intercomparisons among aerosol mixing states derived from different techniques can provide deeper insight into aerosol physical properties and how they are impacted by secondary aerosol formation, aiding the investigation of secondary aerosol formation pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emission controls have substantially brought down aerosol pollution in China, however, aerosol mass reductions have slowed down in recent years in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region, where secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation poses a major challenge for air quality improvement. In this study, we characterized the roles of SOA in haze formation in urban Guangzhou City of the PRD using year-long aerosol mass spectrometer measurements for the first time and discussed possible pathways of SOA formations. On average, organic aerosols (OA) contribute dominantly (50%) to non45 refractory submicron aerosol mass (NR-PM1). The average mass concentration of SOA (including by less and more oxidized OA, LOOA and MOOA) contributed most to NR-PM1, reaching about 1.7 times that of primary organic aerosols (POA, including hydrocarbon-like and cooking-related OA) and accounting for 32% of NR-PM1, even more than sulfate (22%) and nitrate (16%). Seasonal variations of NR-PM1 revealed that haze formation mechanisms differed much among distinct seasons. Sulfate mattered more than nitrate in fall, while nitrate was more important than sulfate in spring and winter, with SOA contributing significantly to haze formations in all seasons. Daytime SOA formation was weak in winter under low oxidant level and air relative humidity, whereas prominent daytime SOA formation was observed in fall, spring and summer almost on daily basis, suggesting for important roles of photochemistry in SOA formations. Further analysis showed that the coordination of gas-phase photochemistry and subsequent aqueous-phase reactions likely played significant roles in quick daytime SOA formations. Obvious nighttime SOA formations were also frequently observed in spring, fall and winter, and it was found that daytime and nighttime SOA formations together had resulted in the highest SOA concentrations in these seasons and contributed substantially to severe haze formations. Simultaneous increases of nitrate with SOA after sunset suggested the important roles of NO3 radical chemistry in nighttime SOA formations, and confirmed by continuous increase of NO+/NO2 + fragment ratio that related to measured particulate nitrate after sunset. Findings of this study have promoted our understanding in haze pollution characteristics of the PRD and laid down future directions on investigations of SOA formation mechanisms in urban areas of southern China that share similar emission sources and meteorological conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secondary organic aerosols (SOA) account for a large fraction of atmospheric aerosol mass and play significant roles in visibility impairment by scattering solar radiation. However, comprehensive evaluations of SOA scattering abilities under ambient relative humidity (RH) conditions on the basis of field measurements are still lacking due to the difficulty of simultaneously direct quantifications of SOA scattering efficiency in dry state and SOA water uptake abilities. In this study, field measurements of aerosol chemical and physical properties were conducted in Guangzhou winter (lasted about three months) using a humidified nephelometer system and aerosol chemical speciation monitor. A modified multilinear regression model was proposed to retrieve dry state mass scattering efficiencies (MSE, defined as scattering coefficient per unit aerosol mass) of aerosol components. The more oxidized oxygenated organic aerosol (MOOA) with O/C ratio of 1.17 was identified as the most efficient light scattering aerosol component. On average, 34% mass contribution of MOOA to total submicron organic aerosol mass contributed 51% of dry state organic aerosol scattering. Organic aerosol hygroscopicity parameter was quantified through hygroscopicity closure. he highest water uptake ability of MOO among organic aerosol factors was revealed with reaching 0.23, thus further enhanced the fractional contribution of MOO in ambient organic aerosol scattering. Especially, scattering abilities of MOOA was found to be even higher than that of ammonium nitrate under RH of <70% which was identified as the most efficient inorganic scattering aerosol component, demonstrating that MOOA had the strongest scattering abilities in ambient air (average RH of 57%) during Guangzhou winter. During the observation period, secondary aerosols contributed dominantly to visibility degradation (-70%) with substantial contributions from MOOA (16% on average), demonstrating significant impacts of MOOA on visibility degradations. Findings of this study demonstrate that more attentions need to be paid to SOA property changes in future visibility improvement investigations. Also, more comprehensive studies on MOOA physical properties and chemical formation are needed to better parameterize its radiative effects in models and implement targeted control strategies on MOOA precursors for visibility improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]