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In this paper, a two-stage dynamic game model of China's iron and steel industry is constructed. Carbon tax levy, product subsidy, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and other factors are included in the emission reduction mechanism. The effects of emissions reduction and the economic impact of China's overall steel industry (and that of its six main regions) are investigated for the first time under different scenarios. As new findings, we report the following: (1) Not all factors declined. The overall social welfare, consumer surplus, output and emissions decrease with a gradual increase in the reduction target, whereas the carbon tax value, unit value of product subsidies and total subsidies show a rising trend; (2) A combination of multiple emissions reduction policies is more effective than a single policy. With the implementation of a combined policy, regional output polarization has eased; (3) Steel output does not exceed 950 million tons, far below the current peak. These results will help the industry to formulate reasonable emissions reduction and output targets. In short, in effort to eliminate industry poverty and to alleviate overcapacity, the industry should not only adopt the various coordinated reduction policies, but also fully consider regional differences and reduction needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (IPCC 2006) and based on the production technology and products, this paper has calculated CO2 emissions from industrial processes and product use (IPPU), which involves the individual and the summation of five major IPUU CO2 emissions industrial departments. As there is a classic environmental Kuznets curve between IPPU CO2 emissions and the economy, this paper discusses the relationship based on the calculation results and the actual situation. The results show that the overall emission level is indeed rising yearly, and that steel and iron alloy manufacturing and nonmetal manufacturing occupy about 80% of the total emissions. The IPPU CO2 emissions and the corresponding gross industrial output value do not present a classic Kuznets curve in most industrial sectors due to the increasing industrial employed population. The year 2002 appears to be the boundary instead, where prior to 2002, there is a relatively stable function-type growth curve and after 2002, gross industrial output value (GIOV) per employed person remained within a certain interval while IPPU CO2 emissions per employed dipped slightly then increased again. Some, but not all, industrial departments and the combined emissions of per employed person reached maximum values in 2012. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The WRKY transcription factor family has more than 70 members in the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) genome, and some of them are involved in plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. This study evaluated the role of WRKY45 in regulating phosphate (Pi) uptake in Arabidopsis. WRKY45 was localized in the nucleus and mainly expressed in roots. During Pi starvation, WRKY45 expression was markedly induced, typically in roots. WRKY45 overexpression in Arabidopsis increased Pi content and uptake, while RNA interference suppression of WRKY45 decreased Pi content and uptake. Furthermore, the WRKY45-overexpressing lines were more sensitive to arsenate, the analog of Pi, compared with wild-type seedlings. These results indicate that WRKY45 positively regulates Arabidopsis Pi uptake. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and β-glucuronidase staining assays showed that PHOSPHATE TRANSPORTER1;1 (PHT1;1) expression was enhanced in the WRKY45-overexpressing lines and slightly repressed in the WRKY45 RNA interference line. Chromatin immunoprecipitation and eclectrophoretic mobility shift assay results indicated that WRKY45 can bind to two W-boxes within the PHT1;1 promoter, confirming the role of WRKY45 in directly up-regulating PHT1;1 expression. The pht1;1 mutant showed decreased Pi content and uptake, and overexpression of PHT1;1 resulted in enhanced Pi content and uptake. Furthermore, the PHT2;2-overexpressing line was much more sensitive to arsenate than WRXY45-overexpressing and wild-type seedlings, indicating that PHT1;1 overexpression can enhance Arabidopsis Pi uptake. Moreover, the enhanced Pi uptake and the increased arsenate sensitivity of the WRKY45-overexpressing line was impaired by pht1;1 (35S:WRKY45-18::pht1;1), demonstrating an epistatic genetic regulation between WRKY45 and PHT1;1. Together, our results demonstrate that WRKY45 is involved in Arabidopsis response to Pi starvation by direct up-regulation of PHT1;1 expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observing the weld pool and measuring its geometrical parameters are important issues for automated and robotic welding, wherein the visual detection and localization of weld pool are critical steps. Previous methods of visual measurement of weld pool usually assume that the weld pool exists in a predefined area, and its contour should be a specific geometric shape and size. Furthermore, previous methods were only suited for the pool images with complete boundary information and with small disturbing/noise edge. When part of the pool boundary is seriously spoiled (for example, by reflection) or confused by pileup area, it is very difficult if not impossible to conduct the geometric measurement of weld pool. In this paper, we propose a robust visual detection and localization method for the pool of gas tungsten arc weld based on part-based modeling and recognition of objects. It provides an elegant framework for representing the outline of a weld pool and is especially efficient for weld pool detection and localization in cluttered scenes, when it is partially occluded or when similar-looking pileup area can act as additional distracters. Experiments on real images verified the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's coastal areas are crucial to the country's socio-economic development, population employment, and other aspects, but the economic development will put pressure on the demand for resources in the cities, and the regional ecological environment faces serious challenges. The research integrates the SBM-DEA model with non-expected output and convergence analysis to study the spatialtemporal divergence, convergence, and influencing factors of environmental efficiency in coastal areas from 2010-2020. The results show: The overall environmental efficiency of the coastal areas rose from 0.5380 in 2010 to 0.6456 in 2020, showing a gentle escalating tendency; the environmental efficiency of the northern, eastern, and southern areas all exhibited a fluctuating upward tendency, and the spatial differences in environmental efficiency were large, but the spatial differences in environmental efficiency were shrinking. There are σ convergence, absolute β convergence, and conditional β convergence of environmental efficiency differences in the coastal areas as a whole, the northern, eastern, and southern regions. The economic development level, energy intensity, industrial structure, foreign investment, and governmental actions have different degrees of effect on the convergence of coastal cities as a whole and in three regions. The findings of the research are informative for the sustainable development of coastal areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To investigate the efficiency of amniotic membrane transplantation (AMT) combined with conjunctival flap covering surgery (CFCS) for patients with corneal perforations in fungal keratitis (FK). Methods: In this non-comparative, retrospective case series, 16 participants of corneal perforation in FK were successfully treated by a combination of multilayer AMT and bipedicle conjunctival flap with partial tenon's capsule. Corneal healing, recurrence of FK, visual acuity, and relevant complications were reported as outcome measures. Results: Sixteen patients (13 male, 3 female) had a mean age of 58.8 ± 10.3 (range 29–72) years. The mean diameter of corneal perforation was 1.9 ± 0.7 (range 0.5–2.8) mm. Corneal perforations healed and all the patients preserved their eyeballs. During the 11.0 ± 4.4 (range 6–18) months of follow-up, there was no recurrence of FK in any of these cases. Visual acuity improved in 15 eyes (93.8 %) and remained unchanged in 1 patient (6.3 %) who had no light perception when first admitted. All 6 patients who accepted secondary keratoplasty showed improved best corrected visual acuity of more than 4 lines. The most frequently found fungi were Aspergillus species (6 of 16, 37.5 %) and Fusarium species (4 of 16, 25.0 %), followed by 1 Scedosporium apiospermum (1 of 16, 6.3 %). Conclusions: Combination AMT with CFCS is a safe and effective surgery for patients with corneal perforations in FK, particularly where eye banks and fresh corneas are not available. This surgery could preserve the integrity of the eyeball and avoid the recurrence of FK. Besides, it provides a greater opportunity for further optical keratoplasty.

Abstract Background Cultivated oral mucosal epithelial cells (OMECs) are widely used in the treatment of limbal stem cell deficiency (LSCD) for their ocular reconstruction capability. As the most important component of the limbal microenvironment, limbal niche cells (LNCs) play a key role in the direction of stem cell differentiation. In this study, we investigated whether LNCs can induce the transdifferentiation of rat OMECs to corneal epithelial-like cells. Methods We isolated OMECs and LNCs from rats by dispase and collagenase, respectively, to establish a three-dimensional or Transwell coculturing system. NIH-3T3 cells and renewed LNCs were also used as feeder layers in the Transwell system to compare their ability to support the OMECs. The airlift method was used for the culture of OMECs to obtain a stratified epithelial sheet. Cocultured OMECs were characterized by reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction, Western blotting, hematoxylin and eosin staining, and immunohistochemistry. Results The cocultured OMECs showed corneal epithelial-like morphology and expressed the corneal epithelial markers CK12 and Pax6 in most cocultured systems. Furthermore, we found that the expression level of CK12, Pax6, and proliferation marker Ki67 was upregulated when compared with that of other groups by renewing the LNCs in the Transwell system (p

To study the social consensus system under the spread of negative emotions, the nonlinear emergence model of frangibility of social consensus system is established based on Multiagent method, and effects of emotions spread frequency, opinion leaders, and shielding behavior of government on the frangibility of social consensus system are revealed. The simulation results show that the low-frequency negative emotions spread is better than the high-frequency one for reducing the frangibility of social consensus system. Low-frequency negative emotions spread will lead to the group polarization, while high frequency will lead to the collapse of system. The joining of opinion leaders who are with negative emotions can promote the frangibility of social consensus system, and collapse speed of social consensus system tends to increase with the influence of opinion leaders. Shielding behavior of government cannot effectively block the spread of negative emotions. On the contrary, it will enhance the frangibility of social consensus system.

ZHENG, Traditional Chinese Medicine syndrome, is an integral and essential part of Traditional Chinese Medicine theory. It defines the theoretical abstraction of the symptom profiles of individual patients and thus, used as a guideline in disease classification in Chinese medicine. For example, patients suffering from gastritismay be classified as Cold or Hot ZHENG, whereas patients with different diseases may be classified under the same ZHENG. Tongue appearance is a valuable diagnostic tool for determining ZHENG in patients. In this paper, we explore new modalities for the clinical characterization of ZHENG using various supervised machine learning algorithms. We propose a novel-color-space-based feature set, which can be extracted from tongue images of clinical patients to build an automated ZHENG classification system. Given that Chinese medical practitioners usually observe the tongue color and coating to determine a ZHENG type and to diagnose different stomach disorders including gastritis, we propose using machine-learning techniques to establish the relationship between the tongue image features and ZHENG by learning through examples. The experimental results obtained over a set of 263 gastritis patients, most of whom suffering Cold Zheng or Hot ZHENG, and a control group of 48 healthy volunteers demonstrate an excellent performance of our proposed system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly efficient electrochemical catalysts for oxygen reduction reactions (ORRs) are urgently needed for various energy conversion and storage devices to overcome sluggish ORR kinetics. Here, N,O-codoped carbon spheres with uniform mesopores and a high specific surface area were used as supports for decorating Co 3 O 4 nanoparticles via a facile immersion route. In addition to the benefit of ions and gas mass transfer, the abundant mesopores present in the three-dimensional (3D) carbon spheres also confine and isolate the Co 3 O 4 nanoparticles growing in it, which help to provide rich Co 3 O 4 active sites. The resulting hybrid material exhibits superior ORR activity in terms of even-better half-wave potential and stability than that of commercial Pt/C (40 wt%) in 0.1 M KOH electrolyte. To verify its catalytic activity, the hybrid material was employed as the cathode catalyst in a flexible solid-state zinc-air battery, which achieves a high power density of 227 mW cm -2 ; this power density is much higher than that of a Pt/C catalytic zinc-air battery (133 mW cm -2 ) under identical conditions. The improvement in catalytic activity in both aqueous and nonaqueous electrolytes can be attributed to the abundant active sites of the entangled Co 3 O 4 nanoparticles, as well as the novel N,O-codoped carbon structure., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

In this paper, we introduce REDN: A Recursive Encoder-Decoder Network with Skip-Connections for edge detection in natural images. The proposed network is a novel integration of a Recursive Neural Network with an Encoder-Decoder architecture. The recursive network enables iterative refinement of the edges using a single network model. Adding skip-connections between encoder and decoder helps the gradients reach all the layers of a network more easily and allows information related to finer details in the early stage of the encoder to be fully utilized in the decoder. Based on our extensive experiments on popular boundary detection datasets including BSDS500 [1], NYUD [2] and Pascal Context [3], REDN significantly advances the state-of-the-art on edge detection regarding standard evaluation metrics such as Optimal Dataset Scale (ODS) F-measure, Optimal Image Scale (OIS) F-measure, and Average Precision (AP).

Objective: To compare therapeutic effects and adverse effects between catgut implantation of point plus Wenlafaxin and simple Wenlafaxin on child extensive anxiety disorder., Methods: Seventy cases were randomly divided into a treatment group and a control group, 35 cases in each group. The treatment group were treated with catgut implantation of points, once 2 weeks, 3 sessions constituting one course, with the 3 groups of points, (1) Ganshu (BL 18) and Danzhong (CV 17), (2) Dazhui (CV 14) and Zhongwan (CV 12), (3) Shenshu (BL 23) and Zhangmen (LR 13) alternated, in combination with oral administration of Wenlafaxin. The control group were treated with simple oral administration of Wenlafax-cin. All of them were treated for 6 weeks., Results: The cured and markedly effective rate was 74.3% in the treatment group and 60.0% in the control group, with a significant difference between the two groups (P < 0.05). After treatment for 6 weeks, the HAMD score was significantly lower than that before treatment in the two groups. The following survey showed that the long-term therapeutic effect in the treatment group was better, with smaller dose and less adverse effects., Conclusion: Catgut implantation of point plus small dose of Wenlafaxin is a more ideal therapy for child extensive anxiety disorder.