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Multidimensional (coupled land use, soil properties, and topography) landscape effects on stream water nitrogen (N) are complex and scale-dependent. However, studies that identify critical buffer zones that explain large variations in riverine N, and estimate specific thresholds of multidimensional landscape patterns at the class level, result in a sudden changes in riverine N pollution, are still limited. Here, a new multidimensional landscape metric that combined land use, soil properties, and topography effects was applied to various riparian buffer zones and sub-watershed scales, and their relationships to riverine N levels were investigated. We used stream water ammonium-N, nitrate-N, and total-N concentrations datasets, from 2010 to 2017, in the nine subtropical sub-watersheds in China. The results of model selection and model averaging in ordinary least squares regressions, indicated that the riparian buffer zone with widths of 400 m, had more pronounced influence on water NH

SUMMARYIn this paper, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) were used to distinguish between tectonic and non-tectonic seismicity. The proposed CNNs consisted of seven convolutional layers with small kernels and one fully connected layer, which only relied on the acoustic waveform without extracting features manually. For a single station, the accuracy of the model was 0.90, and the event accuracy could reach 0.93. The proposed model was tested using data from January 2019 to August 2019 in China. The event accuracy could reach 0.92, showing that the proposed model could distinguish between tectonic and non-tectonic seismicity.

To evaluate the association between race/ethnicity and insurance status on the access to early cochlear implantation.Population-based retrospective analysis of pediatric cochlear implantation procedures.State Ambulatory Surgery and Services Databases of Florida from 2005 to 2017.All children aged 18 years or younger in the state of Florida undergoing cochlear implantation were identified. The outcome measures were access to early cochlear implantation (before 1 and 2 years of age). Descriptive and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted.Among 1511 pediatric cochlear implantation procedures with complete data, 65 (4.3%) procedures were performed by 1 year of age and 348 (23.0%) by 2 years of age. Black children (odds ratio [OR], 0.44; 95% CI, 0.28-0.70), Hispanic children (OR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.52-0.94), and children with Medicaid (OR, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.48-0.84) were significantly less likely to be implanted before 2 years of age. Even when insured by private insurance, black and Hispanic children were still less likely to be implanted before 2 years of age compared to white children with private insurance. Greater racial and insurance disparities existed in access to cochlear implantation before 1 year of age compared to implantation before 2 years of age.Racial/ethnic and insurance disparities in pediatric cochlear implantation can be observed at the population level. To address these racial and insurance inequalities, a multidisciplinary care team is needed and priorities should be given to research endeavors and policy interventions that target these disparities.

Nanocellulose has wide application prospects due to its abundant availability, low price, and biodegradability. In addition, it can address a number of environmental issues. For example, nanocellulose can be used as an alternative to petroleum to reduce environmental pollution. Moreover, nanocellulose has been used as a reinforcing material for food packaging. Improved barrier properties can be obtained when nanocellulose is combined with biopolymers and synthetic polymers. This review briefly introduces three types of nanocellulose and presents the recent advances in barrier property improvement using these three kinds of nanocellulose and their application in food packaging.

Landscape composition and configuration determine the generation and exchange of water flows among different landscape patches and may affect catchment hydrological flows and variations. However, the poor understanding on the effects of landscape patterns on hydrological processes limits the implementation of landscape planning and management practices for regulating catchment water resources at the practical level. The aims are to determine the relationship between the landscape pattern and hydrological flows and variations, and to compare the contributions of landscape composition and configuration to the hydrological flows and variations. Landscape patterns were quantified and hydrological flows and variations were observed in a Chinese subtropical catchment with ten sub-catchments during 2011–2017. The relationship among landscape composition, configuration, and hydrological flows and variations was analysed by Pearson correlation, and their relative contributions were determined by the variance partitioning analysis. Landscape composition and configuration were significantly correlated with catchment stream, direct, and base flows and variations, of which high fragmentation degree increased stream and base flows, great shape complexity aggravated the volatility of stream flow, high patch aggregation adversely impacted stream, direct, and base flows, and high patch evenness and lower richness increased stream and base flows. Landscape composition and configuration indices could be employed to effectively predict hydrological flows and variations. Landscape configuration had greater contribution than landscape composition to subtropical catchment hydrological flows and variations, and optimizing landscape configuration could improve our regulatory capacity and ability of catchment water resources management and utilization in the subtropical catchments at the practical level.

Steel slag (SS) waste was microencapsulated by a 9, 10-dihydro-9-oxa-10-phosphaphenanthrene-10-oxide (DOPO)-derived silane via sol–gel reaction to improve its compatibility with polymer as well as to enhance flame retardant efficiency. The modified steel slag (mSS) was combined with expanded graphite (EG) as flame retardant system for rigid polyurethane foams (RPUFs). The RPUF-3 sample with 10 wt% mSS and 10 wt% EG showed an optimal comprehensive performance including a compressive strength of 206.9 kPa, a thermal conductivity of 0.0304 W/(m·K), a limiting oxygen index (LOI) value of 24.0% and UL-94 V-0 classification. The peak heat release rate (pHRR) and total heat release (THR) of the RPUF-3 dropped by 55% and 47%, respectively. By comparison, the RPUF-6 sample with 10 wt% SS and 10 wt% EG exhibited poorer flame-retardant behaviors. The superior flame retardancy of RPUF-3 over RPUF-6 could be ascribed to phosphorus-silicon complex in mSS promoted charring that provided better barrier effect during combustion.

Background Nurses frequently are caught between the demands of work and family. While studies have explored this issue among staff nurses, none have compared nurse leaders to staff nurses. This study compares work–family conflict (WFC) and family–work conflict (FWC) among staff, managerial, and executive nurses. Methods In this survey design, 20% of registered nurses were randomly sampled across Florida with a 9% response rate. Survey questions included personal, professional, and work environment characteristics and perceptions of WFC/FWC. Analyses of variance tested the differences between- and within-group scores for WFC/FWC for staff, managerial, and executive nurses. Ordinary Least Squares regressions tested the relationships between personal, professional and work environment measures, focusing on the three different nursing roles, and WFC/FWC scores. Findings Nurses experienced more WFC than FWC. Staff nurses experienced significantly less WFC than nurse managers and nurse executives (analysis of variance mean difference −0.881 and −2.693, respectively). Nonwhite nurses experienced more WFC and FWC than white nurses. Longer shift length predicted greater WFC. FWC was lower with paid leave for childbirth. Discussion Higher WFC among nurse managers and executives may discourage nurses from taking on or staying in leadership roles. Efforts must be taken to decrease WFC/FWC among nurses in these roles.

OBJECTIVES Previous research suggests black nursing home (NH) residents are more likely to receive inappropriate antipsychotics. Our aim was to examine how NH characteristics, particularly the racial and socioeconomic composition of residents, are associated with the inappropriate use of antipsychotics. DESIGN This study used a longitudinal approach to examine national data from Long-Term Care: Facts on Care in the US (LTCFocUS.org) between 2000 and 2015. We used a multivariate linear regression model with year and state fixed effects to estimate the prevalence of inappropriate antipsychotic use at the NH level. SETTING Free-standing NHs in the United States. PARTICIPANTS The sample consisted of 12 964 NHs. MEASUREMENTS The outcome variable was inappropriate antipsychotic use at the facility level. The primary indicator variables were whether a facility had high proportions of black residents and the percentage of residents with Medicaid as their primary payer. RESULTS NHs with high and low proportions of blacks had similar rates of antipsychotic use in the unadjusted analyses. NHs with high proportions of black residents had significantly lower rates of inappropriate antipsychotic use (β = -2; P

Compressible carbon materials have promising applications in various wearable devices. However, it is still difficult to prepare a carbon material with superior mechanical properties, stable strain-electrical signal response, and high linear sensitivity. In this study, a compressible and conductive carbon aerogel with excellent properties is obtained by designing an ordered wavy layered structure with enhanced interactions between carbon layers. Bidirectional freezing is used to produce a wavy layered structure. Cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) and lignin play important roles in enhancing the interactions between reduced graphene oxide (rGO) layers. Due to the design of the carbon aerogel structure and interlayer interactions, the prepared carbon aerogel exhibits supercompressibility (up to 99% ultimate strain), excellent elasticity and fatigue resistance (91.3% height retention after 10 000 cycles at a strain of 30%), and stable strain-current response. Moreover, the carbon aerogel demonstrated an ultrahigh sensitivity of 190.94 kPa−1, a wide linear range (within strain of 0–80%), and a low detection limit for pressure (0.875 Pa). These advantages suggest that this carbon aerogel has great application potential in wearable devices.

To explore the potential application of industrial waste, steel slag powder in combination with melamine pyrophosphate (MPP) was adopted to improve the flame retardancy of rigid polyurethane foam (RPUF). The incorporation of steel slag slightly reduced the thermal conductivity of the resulting flame-retardant RPUF samples. The addition of MPP and/or steel slag did not significantly alter the thermal stability in terms of T-10% and Tmax but did obviously increase the T-50% value, suggesting the improved thermal resistance of the residues. The coaddition of MPP and steel slag into RPUF resulted in higher LOI values and lower peak heat release rates than the samples incorporating either MPP or steel slag alone. The superior flame retardancy could be attributed to MPP promoting char formation, which then acted as a barrier at the beginning of RPUF thermal decomposition; simultaneously, the thermally stable inorganics in the steel slag powder strengthened the thermal resistance of this char layer.

Native chemical ligation (NCL) provides a powerful solution to assemble proteins with precise chemical features, which enables a detailed investigation of the protein structure-function relationship. As an extension to NCL, the discovery of desulfurization and expressed protein ligation (EPL) techniques has greatly expanded the efficient access to large or challenging protein sequences via chemical ligations. Despite its superior reliability, the NCL-desulfurization protocol requires orthogonal protection strategies to allow selective desulfurization in the presence of native Cys, which is crucial to its synthetic application. In contrast to traditional thiol protecting groups, photolabile protecting groups (PPGs), which are removed upon irradiation, simplify protein assembly and therefore provide minimal perturbation to the peptide scaffold. However, current PPG strategies are mainly limited to nitro-benzyl derivatives, which are incompatible with NCL-desulfurization. Herein, we present for the first time that quinoline-based PPG for cysteine can facilitate various ligation strategies, including iterative NCL and EPL-desulfurization methods. 7-(Piperazin-1-yl)-2-(methyl)quinolinyl (PPZQ) caging of multiple cysteine residues within the protein sequence can be readily introduced via late-stage modification, while the traceless removal of PPZQ is highly efficient via photolysis in an aqueous buffer. In addition, the PPZQ group is compatible with radical desulfurization. The efficiency of this strategy has been highlighted by the synthesis of γ-synuclein and phosphorylated cystatin-S via one-pot iterative ligation and EPL-desulfurization methods. Besides, successful sextuple protection and deprotection of the expressed Interleukin-34 fragment demonstrate the great potential of this strategy in protein caging/uncaging investigations.

BackgroundAs a chronic communicable disease, tuberculosis (TB) is acknowledged as a global public health issue. A comprehensive analysis of risk factors on HAIs among TB hospitalized patients in Chinese hospitals is vacant. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to investigate the risk factors associated with healthcare-associated TB in Chinese hospitals.MethodsMedline, EMBASE and Chinese Journals Online databases were searched. The search was limited to studies published from January 1st 2001 and December 31st 2020. Meta-analyses of ORs in the prevalence were estimated. Heterogeneity between studies was assessed based on the 𝝉2 and I2 statistics to select the meta-analysis model. Review Manager 5.3 was employed and PResultsThe databases searched 418 records, of which 11 published articles were included in the quantitative meta-analysis. A total of 11,922 TB hospitalized patients were included in the systematic review and meta-analysis, of which 1,133 were diagnosed as having HAIs. Older than 65 years (OR: 2.89[2.01-4.15]), presence of complication (OR: 3.28[2.10-5.13]), presence of diabetes mellitus (OR: 1.63[1.22-2.19]), invasive procedure (OR: 3.80[2.25-6.42]), longer than 15 days of hospitalization stay (OR: 2.09[1.64-2.64]), secondary tuberculosis (OR: 2.25[1.48-3.42]), smoking (OR: 1.40[1.02-1.93]), presence of underlying disease (OR: 2.66[1.53-4.62]), and use of antibiotics (OR: 2.77[2.35-3.27])were the main risk factors associated with higher HAIs prevalence among TB hospitalized patients with a statistical significance (PConclusionsolder than 65 years, presence of complication, presence of diabetes mellitus, invasive procedure, longer than 15 days of hospitalization stay, secondary tuberculosis, smoking, presence of underlying disease, and use of antibiotics were the main risk factors which had a negative impact on HAIs among TB hospitalized patients in Chinese hospitals. These findings provided evidence for the policy makers and hospital managers to make effective infection prevention and control measures to constrain the rising of HAIs. It is also required that more cost-effective infection prevention and control measures should be widely applied in routinely medical treatment and clinical management to healthcare-associated TB.

Background China has been still suffering from high burden attributable to tuberculosis (TB) and healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). TB patients are at high risk to get HAIs. Evidence-based guidelines or regulations to constrain the rising HAIs among TB hospitalized patients are needed in China. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to investigate the risk factors associated with HAIs among TB hospitalized patients in Chinese hospitals. Methods Medline, EMBASE and Chinese Journals Online databases were searched. The search was limited to studies published from January 1st 2001 to December 31st 2020. Meta-analyses of ORs of the risk factors between patients with HAIs and patients without HAIs among TB hospitalized patients were estimated. Heterogeneity among studies was assessed based on the $$\widehat{{\uptau }}$$ τ ^ 2 and I2 statistics to select the meta-analysis model. Review Manager 5.3 was employed and P Results 851 records were filtered from the databases, of which 11 studies were included in the quantitative meta-analysis. A total of 11,922 TB patients were included in the systematic review and meta-analysis, of which 1133 were diagnosed as having HAIs. Age older than 60 years (OR: 2.89 [2.01–4.15]), complications (OR: 3.28 [2.10–5.13]), diabetes mellitus (OR: 1.63 [1.22–2.19]), invasive procedure (OR: 3.80 [2.25–6.42]), longer than 15 hospitalization days (OR: 2.09 [1.64–2.64]), secondary tuberculosis (OR: 2.25 [1.48–3.42]), smoking (OR: 1.40[1.02–1.93]), underlying disease (OR: 2.66 [1.53–4.62]), and use of antibiotics (OR: 2.77 [2.35–3.27]) were the main risk factors associated with HAIs among TB hospitalized patients with a statistical significance (P Conclusions Age older than 60 years, presence of complications, presence of diabetes mellitus, invasive procedure, longer than 15 hospitalization days, secondary tuberculosis, smoking, presence of underlying disease, and use of antibiotics were the main risk factors which had a negative impact on HAIs among TB hospitalized patients in Chinese hospitals. These findings provided evidence for policy makers and hospital managers to make effective infection prevention and control measures to constrain the rising HAIs. It is also required that more cost-effective infection prevention and control measures should be widely applied in routinely medical treatment and clinical management to reduce the occurrence of HAIs among TB hospitalized patients.

Background: Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) have been an increasing global public health threat to the globe. Paediatric hospitalized patients are particularly to HAIs and the identification of risk factors is essential to help policy-makers and hospital managers to develop prevention and control strategies. This study aims to determine the risk factors associated with HAIs among paediatric hospitalized patients in Chinese general hospitals.Methods: Medline, EMBASE and Chinese Journals Online databases were searched. The search was limited to studies published from January 1st 2001 and December 31st 2020. Meta-analyses of OR in the prevalence were estimated. Heterogeneity between studies was assessed based on the B2 and I2 statistics to select the meta-analysis model. Reviewer Manager 5.3 was employed and PResults: 205 published articled were searched from the databases, in which 25 studies were included in the quantitative synthesis and meta-analysis for the risk factors of HAIs among paediatric hospitalized patients in Chinese general hospitals. 61,773 paediatric patients were incorporated in the included studies, which covered 13 regions in 10 provinces in China. Of them, 2,438 paediatric patients had HAIs. The meta-analyses showed that the ORs of younger age(2.25[1.32-3.85]), hormone(3.66[1.73-7.74]), invasive procedures(5.62[4.27-7.40]), longer hospitalization stay (7.79[6.38-9.50]), malnutrition(3.72,[1.80-7.70]), over 3 kinds of antibiotics (3.25,[2.66-3.96]), over 3 kinds of underlying disease (4.24[1.84-9.78]), large room (2.22[1.28-3.85)), and autumns and winter (1.56[1.04-2.35)) were the independent risk factors that had a negative impact on HAIs with a statistical significance (PConclusions: Under the age of 1 year, application of hormone, experiencing invasive procedure, hospitalization stay more than 7 days, malnutrition, using more than 3 kinds of antibiotics, beyond 3 kinds of underlying disease, large room, and autumn and winter were the main risk factors associated with the higher prevalence of HAIs among paediatric hospitalized patients in Chinese general hospitals. This provided the evidence base to inform the policy-makers and hospital managers. The confirmed successful and cost-effective prevention and control measures need to be adopted to reduce the occurrence of HAIs.

Background: The ERAS program has been widely used in thoracic surgery, but its effectiveness and safety in patients undergoing minimally invasive pneumonectomy remains uncertain.Methods: We searched PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, and Science Direct for studies published through April 5, 2021, that compared the Safety and Efficacy of ERAS versus conventional care after minimally invasive pneumonectomy. Outcome data, including length of stay, overall morbidity, and pulmonary complications, were extracted by two independent investigators and analyzed using STATA 15.1 software.Results: 9 studies representing 2,332 patients were eligible for our analysis. Compared to conventional care, patients receiving an ERAS program had a shorter hospital stay (SMD=-0.51, 95％CI: -0.77to-0.24), particularly postoperative hospital stay (SMD=-0.76, 95％CI: -1.07to-0.46), and lower incidence rates of overall complications (OR= 0.79, 95% CI: 0.64-0.97) and pulmonary complications (OR= 0.51, 95%CI: 0.34-0.77), and bore less hospitalization costs (SMD=-0.39, 95％CI：-0.52 to -0.25). But there was no difference in the frequency of readmission (OR=0.91, 95%CI: 0.57-1.45) and 30-day mortality (OR=0.50, 95％CI: 0.13-2.00) between patients accepting ERAS versus conventional care. In subgroup analysis, the incidence of overall complications in ERAS patients only undergoing minimally invasive lobectomy or segmentectomy was significantly lower versus non-ERAS individuals (OR=0.66, 95%CI: 0.50-0.89). But this difference was not statistically significant when compared to all ERAS patients (OR=0.93, 95%CI: 0.69-1.25).Conclusion: ERAS is safe and effective in patients receiving minimally invasive pneumonectomy. Stronger evidence from large-sample, multicenter RCTs of ERAS following pneumonectomy is needed for better efficacy assessment.

The massive production and accumulation of industrial solid waste-iron tailings not only occupy valuable land resources but also easily cause environmental pollution and personnel injury. Based on this, the thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU)/modified iron tailings (MIT) composites were prepared by surface modification of iron tailings (MIT) and adding it as flame retardant to TPU. The combustion performance and smoke toxicity of TPU/MIT composites were analyzed by thermogravimetric analysis (TG), thermogravimetric-spectroscopy (TG-IR) and cone calorimetry (CCT). The morphology and structure of the carbon slag of the composites were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy(SEM) and Raman spectroscopy. The results showed that the initial thermal decomposition temperature (T-5%) of TPU/MIT30 composite increased at about 7oC, and the residual carbon content at 700oC increased from 3.13 wt% to 32.17 wt%. The peak heat release rate(PHRR), total heat release(THR) and total smoke release(TSR) of TPU/MIT30 composite decreased from 800.6 kW/m2, 83.1 MJ/m2 and 827.6 m2/m2 of pure TPU to 488.0 kW/m2, 63.6 MJ/m2 and 517.4 m2/m2, respectively. The SEM and Raman1 spectroscopy of char residue showed that the compactness and graphitization degree of char residue for TPU/MIT30 composite was the highest, indicating that the MIT could effectively improve the fire safety of TPU composites. This study provided some ideas for the high-value utilization of iron tailings.

The automatic topic labeling model aims at generating a sound, interpretable, and meaningful topic label that is used to interpret an LDA-style discovered topic, intending to reduce the cognitive load of end-users while browsing or investigating the topics. In this study, we first introduced the pre-trained language model BERT to topic labeling tasks. It exploits the contextual embedding of the pre-trained language model to improve the quality of encoding sentences. To generate a topic label with higher Relevance, Coverage, and Discrimination, we propose a novel summarization neural framework. Specifically, it exploits the paired-attention to model the relationship between the candidate sentences first and then decides which sentences should be included in the final summarization topic label. Moreover, we expected that high-quality sentence encoding representation could improve our model's performance. So, for each discovered topic, we trained a specific layer to extract the important topic-related features from the sentence embeddings as well as filter the noise information. The experimental results showed that our model significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art and classic topic labeling models.

A liquid-liquid extraction combined with derivatization and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method was developed for the determination of C4-C9 alkylphenols (APs, included 4-tert-butylphenol, 4-n-butylphenol, 4-n-pentylphenol, 4-n-hexylphenol, 4-n-heptylphenol, 4-n-octylphenol, 4-tert-octylphenol, 4-n-nonylphenol and 4-nonylphenol) and bisphenol A (BPA) in environmental water. The extraction solvent, extraction number, extraction time, extraction solvent volume, pH value, salt content, concentration degree and derivatization time were optimized. The target compounds were quantified by internal standard method. Results showed that the optimal extraction number, time, solvent volume, pH value and salt content were 2, 5 min, 30 ml, about 2 and 5 g, respectively, and derivatization time was 1 h at room temperature. Dichloromethane was selected as the extraction solvent and was concentrated to 0.5 mL in the process of concentration. The developed method was validated and showed good linearity (R2 > 0.995), low limit of detection (LOD, 0.002 µg/L–0.006 µg/L), and excellent recovery (68.0 %–122 %) and low relative standard deviation (0.67 %–13.7 %). The developed method was finally applied to groundwater, surface water, seawater and sewage samples in Dongying City located at Yellow River Estuary and some of these target compounds were detected. The measured values of 4-nonylphenol and BPA in these water samples were below their restrictive values of relevant directives at home and abroad.

Purpose Kinesiology taping is a common intervention used to treat individuals with shoulder pain. While there have been several studies published to date evaluating the effectiveness of this intervention, a systematic review with meta-analysis synthesizing the collective effectiveness of kinesiology taping is not available. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to perform a systematic review with meta-analysis investigating the efficacy and treatment fidelity of kinesiology taping (KT) in combination with conservative interventions for shoulder pain. # Methods Databases (PubMed, EMBASE, SportDiscus, CINAHL) of studies published in English meeting criteria were searched to October 2019. Methodologic quality was assessed utilizing the Modified Downs and Black checklist. Treatment fidelity was evaluated using a modified fidelity tool. Random effects meta-analyses were performed when an outcome (disability, pain, range of motion (ROM)) was reported by two or more studies. Overall effect size (pooled random effects) was estimated for studies with acceptable clinical homogeneity. # Results When KT was used with conservative treatments, meta-analysis revealed large effect sizes for improvements in disability (standard mean difference (SMD) = -1.35; 95% CI, -2.09 to -0.60) and ROM (SMD = 0.96; 95% CI, 0.60-1.33) with no significant effects for pain. The average Modified Downs & Black score for bias was 11.5 ± 3.9. Of 10 retained studies, only two had good treatment fidelity. # Conclusions Adding KT to interventions performed in clinical settings appears to demonstrate efficacy regarding disability and ROM when compared to conservative interventions alone. However, despite reasonably good methodologic quality, fidelity was lacking in a majority of studies. Because of its impact on the implementation of evidence-based practice, lower fidelity should be considered when interpreting results.

With the increasing application of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) films in the field of food packaging, it is important to improve its mechanical and antibacterial properties. This paper focuses on the preparation of PVA nanocomposite films and how their properties are affected by a silver-loaded nanocellulose solution. Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) were used as both the carrier and the dispersant of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) prepared using glucose as the reducing agent. Ag+ was stabilized by the many hydroxyl groups located in the CNCs, and then the Ag+ was reduced to AgNPs in situ. After addition of silver-loaded nanocellulose, the tensile strength of the CNC-PVA-AgNP films increased from 47 MPa to 73 MPa, and the nanocomposite films displayed reduced moisture absorption and good antibacterial properties.

Anthropogenic activities have a significant contribution to groundwater nitrate contamination at multiple spatial scales in urbanizing agricultural catchments, while how to derive the optimal researching scale and explore the relative importance among anthropogenic activities for groundwater nitrate contamination still remains challenging. In this study, 165 perched groundwater and 120 shallow groundwater samples were collected in two urbanizing agricultural catchments, to explore anthropogenic activity effects on groundwater nitrate contamination crossing multiple spatial scales, integrating the probability kriging, multi-scale comparison at spatial scales of 100 to 1900 m with an increment of 200 m at the block scales, and variance partitioning analysis. Probability of perched and shallow groundwater nitrate concentration > 3 mg L-1 exhibited strong spatial autocorrelation, with effective ranges of 1091 m and 3743 m from semivariogram, respectively. Relationships between perched and shallow groundwater nitrate concentrations were more significant and robust (r = 0.30-0.52, p < 0.001) at the block scale from 300 to 1100 m, indicating that perched groundwater nitrate closely related to shallow groundwater nitrate. The responses of groundwater nitrate contamination on anthropogenic drivers presented strongly scaling correlation and had the highest correlation at the spatial scale of 1100 m, suggesting the optimal scale for exploring anthropogenic activity effects on groundwater nitrate contamination. The three categories of anthropogenic drivers (urbanization, agriculture intensification, and demographic driver) contributed to 31.0-84.0% part of the total variations in groundwater nitrate contamination at the spatial scale of 1100 m. Particularly, agriculture intensification was the most influential driver for groundwater nitrate contamination, while the urbanizing process and population growth played important roles surrounding urban cores. Our findings highlighted the importance of incorporating multi-scale comparisons on regional groundwater quality evaluation, and provided technical support to the groundwater resource management strategy development in urbanizing agricultural regions.

Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) is an exciting class of sustainable and carbohydrate material, which has great potential applications in molecular adsorption. However, the complex preparation process and limited adsorption capacity of CNCs hinder its commercial application. In this study, we design a novel functional cellulose nanocrystals-based adsorbent by an ingenious mixing of lignin-containing cellulose nanocrystals (LCNCs), sodium alginate (SA), and calcium chloride solution. Benefiting from the sulfonate groups of lignin, carboxyl groups of SA, the maximum adsorptive capability of LCNCs/SA beads for methylene blue was found to be 1181 mg g−1, which was significantly higher than previously reported biomass-based adsorbents. More importantly, LCNCs/SA beads can be reused several times. This strategy can not only improve the adsorption performance of CNCs-based materials, but also simplify the production technology of CNCs, which greatly promote the commercial application of CNCs materials.

This work investigated the effects of harvest season and post harvest storage time on the oil yield and the linalool and camphor proportions of the linalool chemotype of Cinnamomum camphora...

In order to predict and control the CPAM induced flocculation process for lignin recovery and subsequent dissolved hemicelluloses utilization from pre-hydrolysis liquor (PHL), quantitative population balance model which can describe aggregation, breakage and restructure phenomenon in the flocculation process was developed to describe the process. The simulation results showed, in general, high charge CPAM resulted in lower collision efficiency, lower restructure rate and stronger flocs than the lower charged CPAM. The increase of CPAM dosage had positive effect on collision efficiency and restructure rate and negative effect on energy dissipation rate. With the increase of temperature, low charge density CPAM flocculation system experienced more significant change regarding energy dissipation rate and restructure rate. The collision efficiency was not significantly affected by the temperature change for both CPAMs. Shear rate had negative effect on collision efficiency, positive effect on energy dissipation rate and restructure rate. The addition of salt slightly increased the collision efficiency, decreased the energy dissipation rate for both CPAMs system. More negative effect is observed for high charge density flocculation system.

Great variation exists in the prevalence rates of diabetes across different geographic regions in China. The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of type 2 diabetes among a Chinese population in Western China and to explore associated risk factors. Adult residents in Luzhou City in Sichuan Province, China, were selected using a multistage area probability design. A validated questionnaire, physical examination, and lab tests were administered to the participants. Bivariate analysis and multivariate analysis using logistic regression were performed to determine factors that may affect the risk of diabetes. The final study sample included 3513 participants with complete questionnaires (response rate was 97.58%). The prevalence rate of diabetes was 17.76%. Multivariate logistic regression analysis demonstrated that residents who fit within the following categories were associated with higher risk for diabetes after controlling for participant demographic factors and other covariates: age groups 50–59, 60–69, and 70 or above; a monthly income of less than ¥1999; family history of diabetes; using mainly animal fat as cooking oil; having a white collar job; BMI above 28; and hypertriglyceridemia. In addition to identifying risk factors previously reported, this study indicates that dietary intake factors may be important to the development of diabetes. This study contributes to the literature of prevalence and risk factors of diabetes in Western China. Future research is needed to further evaluate these risk factors.

Although many computing algorithms have been developed to analyze the relationship between land use pattern and driving forces (RLPDF), little has been done to assess and reduce the uncertainty of predictions. In this study, we investigated RLPDF based on 1990, 2005 and 2012 datasets at two spatial scales using eight state-of-the-art single computing algorithms and four consensus methods in Jinjing rive catchment in Hunan Province, China. At the entire catchment scale, the mean AUC values were between 0.715 (ANN) and 0.948 (RF) for the single-algorithms, and from 0.764 to 0.962 for the consensus methods. At the subcatchment scale, the mean AUC values between 0.624 (CTA) and 0.972 (RF) for the single-algorithms, and from 0.758 to 0.979 for the consensus methods. At the subcatchment scale, the mean AUC values were between 0.624 (CTA) and 0.972 (RF) for the single-algorithms, and from 0.758 to 0.979 for the consensus methods. The result suggested that among the eight single computing algorithms, RF performed the best overall for woodland and paddy field; consensus method showed higher predictive performance for woodland and paddy field models than the single computing algorithms. We compared the simulation results of the best - and worst-performing algorithms for the entire catchment in 2012, and found that approximately 72.5% of woodland and 72.4% of paddy field had probabilities of occurrence of less than 0.1, and 3.6% of woodland and 14.5% of paddy field had probabilities of occurrence of more than 0.5. In other words, the simulation errors associated with using different computing algorithms can be up to 14.5% if a probability level of 0.5 is set as the threshold. The results of this study showed that the choice of modeling approaches can greatly affect the accuracy of RLPDF prediction. The computing algorithms for specific RLPDF tasks in specific regions have to be localized and optimized.

Cash-based physical therapy, a model in which the clinicians do not accept insurance payments and accept only direct payment, is quickly becoming an enticing option for clinicians who own their own practice. The purpose of this study was to describe service utilization for a single cash-based physical therapy clinic. Forty-eight charts of patients who had been discharged between 2013 and 2016 were randomly selected. The data were deidentified prior to the researchers gaining access. Chronic diagnoses were predominately prevalent (n = 28). The lumbo/pelvic region of diagnoses (39.6%) and knee/leg region of diagnoses (29.2%) encompassed the majority of the diagnoses. The mean physical therapy utilization for the cohort per episode of care was 8.0 ± 8.1 visits per episode of care, total cost of $780.19 ± 530.30 per episode of care, and $97.52 per visit. This study is the first to present data regarding costs, utilization, and patient demographics for a cash-based physical therapy clinic.

Naturally abundant quinones are important molecules, which play essential roles in various biological processes due to their reduction potential. In contrast to their universality, the investigation of reactions between quinones and proteins remains sparse. Herein, we report the development of a convenient strategy to protein modification via a biomimetic quinone-mediated oxidation at the N-terminus. By exploiting unique reactivity of an ortho-quinone reagent, the α-amine of protein N-terminus is oxidized to generate aldo or keto handle for orthogonal conjugation. The applications have been demonstrated using a range of proteins, including myoglobin, ubiquitin and small ubiquitin-related modifier 2 (SUMO2). The effect of this method is further highlighted via the preparation of a series of 17 macrophage inflammatory protein 1β (MIP-1β) analogs, followed by preliminary anti-HIV activity and cell viability assays, respectively. This method offers an efficient and complementary approach to existing strategies for N-terminal modification of proteins., Methods for selective modification of the N-terminus of proteins are of high interest, but mostly require specific amino acid residues. Here, the authors report a selective and fast method for N-terminal modification of proteins based on quinone-mediated oxidation of the alpha-amine to aldehyde or ketone, and apply it to diverse proteins.

A liquid-liquid extraction combined with derivatization and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method was developed for the rapid determination of C4-C9 alkylphenols (4-tert-butylphenol, 4-n-butylphenol, 4-n-pentylphenol, 4-n-hexylphenol, 4-n-heptylphenol, 4-n-octylphenol, 4-tert-octylphenol, 4-n-nonylphenol and 4-nonylphenol) and bisphenol A in the environmental water. The extraction solvent, extraction time, solvent volume, acidity, salt content and the distillation degree were optimized. After drying and dehydration, the extract was derivatized, detected by GC-MS and quantified by internal standard method. After the dehydration, the extract was derivatized with BSTFA, detected by GC-MS and quantified by internal standard method. The results showed that the relative standard deviations of the relative response factors of the target compounds were less than 20%, the method detection limits were 0.002 µg/Lཞ0.006 µg/L, the relative standard deviations of the three spiked levels were 0.67%ཞ13.7%, and the average recoveries of the actual water samples were 68.0%ཞ122%. The method precision and accuracy were good. The method is simple, rapid, accurate, stable and reliable, which is suitable for the detection of target in water. The contents of C4-C9 alkylphenols and bisphenol A in groundwater, surface water, sewage, waste water and sea water samples in Dongying City located at the Yellow River Estuary were determined by this method. The results showed that the contents of 4-nonylphenol and bisphenol A in these samples were lower than the home and abroad requirements.

With the development of agricultural science, agricultural science knowledge overload widespread. In order to allow agricultural workers to discover new agricultural science and technology knowledge that suits their preferences, and to enable the agricultural science popularization service system to locate agricultural knowledge to appropriate users. The recommended scheme applied to agricultural science popularization needs to be solved urgently. In this paper, we propose a content-based recommendation algorithm for agricultural science popularization based on convolutional neural network (CNN). Considering the structure and professional fields of agricultural science information, a language model based on labeled latent Dirichlet allocation and a latent factor model with inherent features are constructed in the CNN model. The experimental results on the public database show that compared with the classical methods, it has a better improvement in recommendation evaluation, and it performs well in solving the problem of cold start and data sparsity.

Background: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Hospitals are the dominant agents to provide TCM services in China. How to improve the productivity and efficiency of TCM hospitals is quite pivotal for the hospital managers and policy-makers to realize the optimal use of TCM resources. The purpose of this study was to estimate the productivity and efficiency of TCM hospitals with the Bootstrap-Malmquist-Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) from 2009 to 2016 to provide empirical evidence for hospital managers and policy-makers to improve the management and quality of TCM service.Methods: The data of the individual tertiary public TCM hospitals were collected from official Yearbooks of Traditional Chinese Medicine of China (2010-2017). Bootstrap-Malmquist-DEA was employed to measure the productivity and efficiency of the TCM hospitals from 2009 to 2016. SPSS 23.0 version statistical software was used to conduct the descriptive analysis of the input and output indicators. R 3.2.1 version statistical software was applied to calculate the productivity and efficiency of the TCM hospitals with FEAR package. The statistical significant was set at P < 0.05.Results: The annual average growth rates for each input and output indicator were 6.61% (health professionals), 8.15% (actual open beds), 7.08% (outpatients and inpatients) and 12.50% (discharged patients) respectively from 2009 to 2016. Except the TFPC between 2014 and 2015, more than half of the TCM hospitals had TFPC scores over 1.000, indicating increased productivity. The overall annual geo-means of the scores of the TFPC and its decomposition index were 1.0379 (TFPC), 1.0167 (TEC), 1.0209 (TC), 1.0212 (PTEC), and 0.9955 (SEC) respectively from 2009 to 2016.Conclusions: The overall annual rate of the total factor productivity of the tertiary public TCM hospitals was slightly increased. The technological progress was the main driver to improve the total factor productivity. The decreased TE was more affected by the decreased SE. The TCM hospitals need to pay attention to the development and innovation of the TCM technology, thereby improving the competitiveness. The TCM hospitals managers should pursuit the high quality, high efficiency and low cost of the TCM medical services.

Recent research on video human action has progressed with the development of 3-demensional deep convolutional networks (3-D ConNets). In particular, spatiotemporal features exhibited improved performance. However, the temporal information, which commonly exists in video, has not been fully exploited in existing 3-D ConNets. In this paper, we propose a novel Residual Non-degenerate Temporal Network (RNTN) for human action recognition, which can exploit sufficiently temporal information from frames. Specially, RNTN mainly consists of residual nondegenerate temporal blocks (RNTB) and 3-D effective channel attention blocks (3D-ECA). In RNTB, the expression of temporal features is enhanced effectively. In 3D-ECA, the potential connection between features was strengthened by channel feature interactive with the adjacent channel features. Our approach provides the state-of-the-art performance on the datasets of UCF-101(98.33%) and HMDB-51(80.04%).

Background The National Comprehensive Cancer Network Breast Cancer Guidelines Committee suggests that the omission of adjuvant radiation therapy (RT) after breast-conserving surgery can be a reasonable option among older women with low-risk breast cancer (early-stage, estrogen receptor-positive, and node-negative) if they are treated with endocrine therapy. However, RT usage in this group of women still exceeds 50%. Conversely, older women tend to forego RT (even when necessary) due to cost, inconvenience, and potential adverse responses associated with RT. Understanding health-related quality of life (HRQOL) change with receipt of RT among older women in the modern era is limited due to the under-representation of this population in clinical trials. Objective The proposed study aims to examine the associations of RT with HRQOL trajectories as well as survival outcomes among older women with 5-10 years of follow-up. We will also assess whether prediagnosis comorbidity burden influences receipt of RT and whether the associations between RT and HRQOL trajectory and survival outcomes are modified by the comorbidity burden. Methods We will use a retrospective cohort study design with the population-based Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End-Results database linked to the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (SEER-MHOS). Older women (≥65 years) who were diagnosed with low-risk breast cancer in 1998-2014, received breast-conserving surgery, and participated in MHOS 1998-2016 are eligible for this analysis. The latent class analysis clustering method will be used to identify each patient’s prediagnosis comorbidity burden, and HRQOL will be evaluated using the Short Form 36/Veterans RAND 12-Item Health Survey scales. The inverse-weighted estimates of the probability of treatment will be included to control for treatment selection bias and confounding effects in subsequent analysis. The association of RT with HRQOL trajectory will be evaluated using inverse-weighted multilevel growth mixture models. The inverse-weighted Cox regression model will be used to obtain hazard ratios with 95% CIs for the association of RT with survival outcomes. Differential effects of RT on both outcomes according to comorbidity burden class will also be evaluated. Results As of October 2020, the study was approved by the institutional review board, and SEER-MHOS data were obtained from the National Cancer Institute. Women with low-risk breast cancer who met inclusion and exclusion criteria have been identified, and prediagnosis comorbidity burden class has been characterized using latent class analysis. Further data analysis will begin in November 2020, and the first manuscript will be submitted in a peer-reviewed journal in February 2021. Conclusions This research can potentially improve clinical outcomes of older women with low-risk breast cancer by providing them additional information on the HRQOL trajectories when they make RT treatment decisions. It will facilitate informed, shared treatment decision making and cancer care planning to ultimately improve the HRQOL of older women with breast cancer. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) DERR1-10.2196/18056

In order to overcome the problems of dispersion and lack of information exchange among greenhouse, an intelligent greenhouse sensing system combining edge computing with LPWAN LoRa technology is proposed. The system uses LoRa technology to monitor and manage the ecological factors such as greenhouse temperature and humidity, soil moisture, light intensity, CO 2 concentration and soil nitroge, phosphorus and potassiumn. The system is composed of terminal node, gateway node and server, and the gateway node is connected to the Internet. EdgeX-Foundry edge computing framework is deployed in the gateway node. The gateway node based on edge computing not only realizes the anomaly detection of data, but also shares part of the computing task for the server. A complete server is built by using B/S architecture. The interaction between app end and user is developed to realize remote real-time monitoring. The experiment results show that the system can effectively solve the problems existing in greenhouse monitoring and management, and has great potential value.

Examination of the mechanisms of the plant community assembly at a geographical scale is an interesting topic in ecology and biogeography, which are of great significance for the understanding of species coexistence and biodiversity conservation. But so far, only a few studies have simultaneously assessed the relative roles of multiple-scale factors in shaping the phylogenetic and functional structure of plant communities at a macroecological scale. In this study, we linked modern climate, glacial-interglacial climate change, and soil properties with the phylogenetic and functional structure of shrub and herbaceous plant communities in Inner Mongolia, China, an arid and semi-arid region. Our results showed that the functional structure of plant communities was more associated with modern climate and soil properties than the phylogenetic structure, especially for the soil properties. Modern precipitation was found in all the combinations of variables that were most closely related to the community structure in this arid and semi-arid region. These findings suggest that the phylogenetic and functional structure of biotic communities may be affected by processes at divergent spatial-temporal scales. That is, the functional structure is better linked with the modern and local factors while the phylogenetic structure is more associated with the historical and regional processes. This study highlights the importance of the associations between the different biodiversity dimensions and divergent drivers.

Study design Retrospective cross-sectional study. Objectives The aim of this study was to examine whether there are racial and ethnic disparities in opioid use for back pain treatment. In addition, we examine whether physical therapy reduces opioid use. Summary of background data Back pain is a common health problem that affects most adults in their lifetime. Opioid and physical therapy are commonly used to treat back pain. While evidence indicates that there are substantial disparities in the receipt of opioids by race and ethnicity in opioid use in the United States, it remains unclear whether these disparities in opioid use exist in the treatment of back pain. Methods Cross-sectional analysis of the 2010-2012 Medical Expenditures Panel Survey and logistic regression of a sample of about 4,000 adults with back pain. Results Logistic regression models showed statistically significant differences in opioids receipt by race among adult patients with back pain. Compared to White patients, Asian and Hispanic patients are less likely to be prescribed opioids. On the other hand, Black patients and patients of other race are more likely to receive an opioid prescription to treat their back pain even after accounting for socioeconomic status, health insurance status, and general health status. Additionally, patients who receive physical therapy treatment are less likely to be prescribed opioids. Conclusions These findings suggest that there are racial disparities in the use of opioids and physical therapy may reduce opioid prescription use to treat back pain. These disparities may be contributing to disparities in back pain recovery and long-term health disparities in general. Level of evidence 2.

The periodic defected ground structure (PDGS) has been proposed in this work to diminish high mutual coupling of antenna components. The PDGS is always periodically etched on the bottom ground plane along x-axis, placed at the center of the two neighboring patches with side-by-side distance of 0.025λ (λ free space wavelength). Both PDGS and antenna elements are not coplanar, working at the center frequency 5.8 GHz. By inserting a compact PDGS structure at the ground plane facing the center of the two patches, over 50 dB of coupling between adjacent antennas is suppressed within the effective operating frequency range of 5.7–5.9 GHz, achieving low coupling and compact type in the antenna arrays.

Wear particle analysis is one of the main indicators for the detection of wear condition. Traditional computer-aided wear particle analysis employs a unidirectional linear process, i.e. image preprocessing → wear particle segmentation → feature extraction → wear particle recognition → wear condition detection. It has disadvantages such as inaccurate segmentation of wear particles, numerous steps in the “artificial design feature method”, accumulation and transmission of errors, and difficulty in overall optimization of the algorithms. In this study, a framework from overall determination to a detailed recognition is proposed to realize intelligent ferrography analysis. Furthermore, a convolutional neural network (CNN) is developed to classify seven types of ferrograph images, which can be used to directly determine wear conditions including initial wear, normal wear, abnormal wear, and severe wear. Compared with the traditional methods, the proposed CNN can automatically extract features layer by layer, yielding accurate end-to-end classification of the ferrograph images. The average accuracy of the CNN model on the test set is 90%. This research provides an effective solution for the automatic identification of wear conditions.