The response of daytime nitrate formation to source emissions reduction based on chemical kinetic and thermodynamic model.

Particulate nitrate is an important component of particulate matter and poses a significant threat to the ecosystem and human health. The gas-phase formation pathway of nitrate is extremely important, which mainly comprises the NO oxidation process triggered by OH radicals and the nitrate partitioning process. The response of nitrate to source emission reduction during different pollution periods remains unclear.

Disparities in Guideline Adherence for Febrile Infants in a National Quality Improvement Project.

Background: Interventions aimed to standardize care may impact racial and ethnic disparities. We evaluated the association of race and ethnicity with adherence to recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics' clinical practice guideline for febrile infants after a quality improvement (QI) intervention.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study of infants aged 8 to 60 days enrolled in a QI collaborative of 99 hospitals.

Analysis and recognition of a novel experimental paradigm for musical emotion brain-computer interface.

Musical emotions have received increasing attention over the years. To better recognize the emotions by brain-computer interface (BCI), the random music-playing and sequential music-playing experimental paradigms are proposed and compared in this paper. Two experimental paradigms consist of three positive pieces, three neutral pieces and three negative pieces of music.

Assessing emission-driven changes in health risk of source-specific PM-bound heavy metals by adjusting meteorological covariates.

Heavy metals (HMs) in PM gain much attention for their toxicity and carcinogenic risk. This study evaluates the health risks of PM-bound HMs, focusing on how meteorological conditions affect these risks against the backdrop of PM reduction trends in China. By applying a receptor model with a meteorological normalization technique, followed by health risk assessment, this work reveals emission-driven changes in health risk of source-specific HMs in the outskirt of Tianjin during the implementation of China' second Clean Air Action (2018-2020).

Atmospheric environment characteristic of severe dust storms and its impact on sulfate formation in downstream city.

This study comprehensively investigated the impact of dust storms (DSs) on downstream cities, by selecting representative DS events. In this paper, we discussed the characteristics of meteorological conditions, air pollutants, PM components, and their influence on sulfate formation mechanisms. During DSs, strong winds, reaching speeds of up to 10 m/s, led to significant increases in PM and PM, with maximum concentrations of 2684.

Incidence of Pediatric Urinary Tract Infections Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Importance: Urinary tract infection (UTI) is common in children, but the population incidence is largely unknown. Controversy surrounds the optimal diagnostic criteria and how to balance the risks of undertreatment and overtreatment. Changes in health care use during the COVID-19 pandemic created a natural experiment to examine health care use and UTI diagnosis and outcomes.

Source apportionment of fine particulate matter at a megacity in China, using an improved regularization supervised PMF model.

The source apportionment of particulate matter plays an important role in solving the atmospheric particulate pollution. Positive matrix factorization (PMF) is a widely used source apportionment model. At present, high resolution online datasets are increasingly rich, but acquiring accurate and timely source apportionment results is still challenging.

Seed endophytic ammonia oxidizing bacteria in transmit to offspring plants and contribute to nitrification in the root zone.

Background: Ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) in soil are of great biological importance as they regulate the cycling of N in agroecosystems. Plants are known to harbor AOB but how they occupy the plant is an unresolved question.

Methods: Metabarcoding studies were carried out using Illumina MiSeq sequencing to test the potential of seed vectored AOB exchange between plants and soil.

The role of source emissions in sulfate formation pathways based on chemical thermodynamics and kinetics model.

Sulfate is a major PM constituent and poses a significant threat to ecosystems and human health, which has attracted lots of attention to the sulfate formation mechanism. In recent years, there has been great scientific interest in the multiphase oxidation of SO in aqueous aerosol particles. Many factors are involved in the reaction process, including precursor SO, oxidants/catalysts, and aerosol acidity, which are three channels closely related to the source emission.

Impact of sand and dust storms on the atmospheric environment and its source in Tianjin-China.

Sand and dust storms (SDS) frequently hit northern China and adversely impact both environment and health. The carbonaceous components, inorganic elements, water-soluble ions, and meteorological parameters of several severe SDS episodes have been measured in a supersite in Tianjin, which is a big and representative city located in SDS transmission pathway in northern China. Six SDS episodes were identified in Spring, 2021.

[Responses of soil extracellular enzyme activities to the anthropogenic transition from desert grassland to shrubland in eastern Ningxia, China].

To understand the responses of soil extracellular enzyme activities to the desert grassland-shrubland anthropogenic transition, we examined soil properties and six extracellular enzyme activities, in soil under vegetation patches and bare interspaces in desert grassland, grassland edge, shrubland edge, shrubland in a typical anthropogenic desert grassland-shrubland mosaic in desert steppe of eastern Ningxia, China. The six measured enzymes included cellobiohydrolase, β-1,4-xylosidase, β-1,4-glucosidase, β-1,4-N-acetylglucosaminidase, leucine aminopeptidase and alkaline phosphatase. We found that soil moisture, soil organic carbon, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, microbial biomass carbon and microbial biomass nitrogen decreased significantly by 26.

Quantitative Evaluation of Aerosol Generation from Non-contact Tonometry and its Correlation with Tear Film Characteristics.

Introduction: Ophthalmologists are inevitably exposed to tears and ocular discharge during ophthalmologic examinations and are at high risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection. To understand the role of aerosols in disease transmission, we adopted a prospective cross-sectional study design and investigated the count and size distribution of aerosols generated by a non-contact tonometer and its correlation with individual tear film characteristics.

Methods: This study constituted two parts.

High level of conservation and diversity among the endophytic seed bacteriome in eight alpine grassland species growing at the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau.

Seed borne microorganisms play an important role in plant biology. Concerns have recently been raised about loss of seed microbial diversity by seed treatments, crop domestication and plant breeding. Information on the seed microbiomes of native plants growing in natural ecosystems is beneficial as they provide the best settings to detect indigenous plant microbe interactions.

[Characteristics of Ozone and Source Apportionment of the Precursor VOCs in Tianjin Suburbs in Summer].

From June to August 2018, a 1-hr resolution concentration dataset of ozone and its gaseous precursors (volatile organic compounds(VOCs) and NO), and meteorological parameters were synchronously monitored by online instruments of the Nankai University Air Quality Research Supersite. The relationships and variation characteristics between ozone and its precursors were analyzed. According to the photochemical age, the initial concentrations of VOCs were calculated, and the photochemical loss of the concentration of VOCs during the daytime (06:00-24:00) was corrected.