Suspect Screening of Pharmaceuticals and Their Transformation Products (TPs) in Wastewater during COVID-19 Infection Peak: Identification of New TPs and Elevated Risks.

Pharmaceuticals and their transformation products (TPs) in wastewater are emerging contaminants that pose risks to ecosystems and human health. Here, a typical period marked by the easing of the "zero-COVID" policy in December 2022, resulting in unprecedented infections in China, was chosen to illustrate the environmental impact of pharmaceutical usage during the COVID-19 pandemic. A suspect screening workflow was developed to identify pharmaceuticals and transformation products (TPs) in wastewater influent and effluent from a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) during the peak and postpeak periods of COVID-19, integrating medication recommendations and TPs' prediction.

Long-term effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection on metal homeostasis.

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has caused substantial health loss worldwide, and the long-term sequelae of COVID, resulting from repeated coronavirus infection, have emerged as a new public health concern. We report the widespread presence of abnormal metallomic profiles in the sera of patients who have recovered from SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection, even after 6 months post-discharge from hospital. We measured the concentrations of Fe, Cu, Zn, Se, Cr, Mn, Ba, Ni, Pb, Ag, As, Cd, Co, and V in the sera of 25 recovered participants and 38 healthy controls in the cross-sectional study.

Certifying Quantum Temporal Correlation via Randomized Measurements: Theory and Experiment.

We consider the certification of temporal quantum correlations using the pseudo-density operator (PDO), an extension of the density matrix to the time domain, where negative eigenvalues are key indicators of temporal correlations. Conventional methods for detecting these correlations rely on PDO tomography, which often involves excessive redundant information and requires exponential resources. In this work, we develop an efficient protocol for temporal correlation detection by virtually preparing the PDO within a single time slice and estimating its second-order moments using randomized measurements.

Unveiling the Origin of Copper Accumulation in Plasma with Aging.

Aging is intricately linked to various diseases including cancers, neurodegenerative disorders, and metabolic irregularities. Copper (Cu) overexposure has been found to be linked to many diseases during aging, particularly neurodegenerative diseases. Meanwhile, as an essential element, Cu has been implicated in key processes associated with aging, raising questions about its role in age-related health issues.

Atmospheric Hg(0) dry deposition over environmental surfaces: Insights from mercury isotope fractionation.

Atmospheric Hg(0) dry deposition is a vital process that significantly affects the global distribution and cycling of Hg. However, significant knowledge gaps and challenges remain in understanding atmospheric Hg(0) deposition and its subsequent post-deposition processes. Hg isotope fractionation has emerged as the most powerful tool for evaluating the impact of atmospheric Hg(0) deposition and unraveling key processes associated with it.

Velocity Scanning Tomography for Room-Temperature Quantum Simulation.

Quantum simulation offers an analog approach for exploring exotic quantum phenomena using controllable platforms, typically necessitating ultracold temperatures to maintain the quantum coherence. Superradiance lattices (SLs) have been harnessed to simulate coherent topological physics at room temperature, but the thermal motion of atoms remains a notable challenge in accurately measuring the physical quantities. To overcome this obstacle, we implement a velocity scanning tomography technique to discern the responses of atoms with different velocities, allowing cold-atom spectroscopic resolution within room-temperature SLs.

Self-Consistent Determination of Single-Impurity Anderson Model Using Hybrid Quantum-Classical Approach on a Spin Quantum Simulator.

The accurate determination of the electronic structure of strongly correlated materials using first principle methods is of paramount importance in condensed matter physics, computational chemistry, and material science. However, due to the exponential scaling of computational resources, incorporating such materials into classical computation frameworks becomes prohibitively expensive. In 2016, Bauer et al.

Sources and formation characteristics of particulate nitrate in the Pearl River Delta region of China: Insights from three-year online observations.

Nitrate (NO) has been identified as a key component of particulate matter (PM) in China. However, there is still a lack of understanding regarding its sources and how it forms, especially in the context of high-frequency and long-term data. In this study, NO levels were observed on an hourly basis over an almost three-year period at an urban site in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region, China, from January 2019 to December 2021.

Experimental Realization of Self-Contained Quantum Refrigeration.

A fundamental challenge in quantum thermodynamics is the exploration of inherent dimensional constraints in thermodynamic machines. In the context of two-level systems, the most compact refrigerator necessitates the involvement of three entities, operating under self-contained conditions that preclude the use of external work sources. Here, we build such a smallest refrigerator using a nuclear spin system, where three distinct two-level carbon-13 nuclei in the same molecule are involved to facilitate the refrigeration process.

Enoxaparin sodium combined with magnesium sulfate in the treatment of severe preeclampsia.

Objective: To observe the treatment of severe preeclampsia in newborns with enoxaparin sodium combined with magnesium sulfate.

Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted on the clinical data of 80 patients with severe preeclampsia admitted to Hefei Second People's Hospital, China from January 2019 to December 2020. Treatment records showed that 40 cases received magnesium sulfate treatment (single group), and 40 cases received enoxaparin sodium combined with magnesium sulfate treatment (combination group).

Precisely Identifying the Sources of Magnetic Particles by Hierarchical Classification-Aided Isotopic Fingerprinting.

Magnetic particles (MPs), with magnetite (FeO) and maghemite (γ-FeO) as the most abundant species, are ubiquitously present in the natural environment. MPs are among the most applied engineered particles and can be produced incidentally by various human activities. Identification of the sources of MPs is crucial for their risk assessment and regulation, which, however, is still an unsolved problem.

A new ChatGPT-empowered, easy-to-use machine learning paradigm for environmental science.

The quantity and complexity of environmental data show exponential growth in recent years. High-quality big data analysis is critical for performing a sophisticated characterization of the complex network of environmental pollution. Machine learning (ML) has been employed as a powerful tool for decoupling the complexities of environmental big data based on its remarkable fitting ability.

Lithium Superionic Conductive Nanofiber-Reinforcing High-Performance Polymer Electrolytes for Solid-State Batteries.

Although composite solid-state electrolytes (CSEs) are considered promising ionic conductors for high-energy lithium metal batteries, their unsatisfactory ionic conductivity, low mechanical strength, poor thermal stability, and narrow voltage window limit their practical applications. We have prepared a new lithium superionic conductor (Li-HA-F) with an ultralong nanofiber structure and ultrahigh room-temperature ionic conductivity (12.6 mS cm).

Probing the stability of metal-organic frameworks by structure-responsive mass spectrometry imaging.

The widespread application of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) is seriously hindered by their structural instability and it is still very challenging to probe the stability of MOFs during application by current techniques. Here, we report a novel structure-responsive mass spectrometry (SRMS) imaging technique to probe the stability of MOFs. We discovered that intact CuBTC (as a model of MOFs) could generate the characteristic peaks of organic ligands and carbon cluster anions in laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry, but these peaks were significantly changed when the structure of CuBTC was dissociated, thus enabling a label-free probing of the stability.

Electronic structure and optical properties of In- and Vacancy-doped 6H-SiC: a first-principles study.

Purposes: The paper aims to investigative the cacuses and impacts of In- and Vacancy-doped to 6H-SiC, expecting that improving optical properties of materials. Design-Using the first-principles calculations, we discuss the electronic structure and optical properties of different doped 6H-SiC systems.

Findings: The results show that In-doped 6H-SiC becomes a direct bandgap p-type semiconductor and the energy bandgap is reduced from the intrinsic 2.

Demonstrating Path-Independent Anyonic Braiding on a Modular Superconducting Quantum Processor.

Anyons, exotic quasiparticles in two-dimensional space exhibiting nontrivial exchange statistics, play a crucial role in universal topological quantum computing. One notable proposal to manifest the fractional statistics of anyons is the toric code model; however, scaling up its size through quantum simulation poses a serious challenge because of its highly entangled ground state. In this Letter, we demonstrate that a modular superconducting quantum processor enables hardware-pragmatic implementation of the toric code model.

Chronic Ambient Ozone Exposure Aggravates Autism-Like Symptoms in a Susceptible Mouse Model.

Although there is evidence that exposure to ground-level ozone (O) may cause an increased risk of neurological disorders (e.g., autistic spectrum disorder), low-dose chronic ozone exposure and its adverse effects on the nervous system have not been fully understood.

Experimental quantum simulation of a topologically protected Hadamard gate via braiding Fibonacci anyons.

Topological quantum computation (TQC) is one of the most striking architectures that can realize fault-tolerant quantum computers. In TQC, the logical space and the quantum gates are topologically protected, i.e.

Machine learning-aided metallomic profiling in serum and urine of thyroid cancer patients and its environmental implications.

The incidence rate of thyroid cancer has been growing worldwide. Thyroid health is closely related with multiple trace metals, and the nutrients are essential in maintaining thyroid function while the contaminants can disturb thyroid morphology and homeostasis. In this study, we conducted metallomic analysis in thyroid cancer patients (n = 40) and control subjects (n = 40) recruited in Shenzhen, China with a high incidence of thyroid cancer.

PM-bound polyhalogenated carbazoles (PHCZs) in urban Beijing, China: Occurrence and the source implication.

Polyhalogenated carbazoles (PHCZs) are recently raising much attention due to their toxicity and ubiquitous environmental distribution. However, little knowledge is known about their ambient occurrences and the potential source. In this study, we developed an analytical method based on GC-MS/MS to simultaneously determine 11 PHCZs in PM from urban Beijing, China.