Publications by authors named "Xubing Cao"

Cities in Northeast China, e.g., Harbin, were brought to the forefront of air pollution control by a national-level policy promulgated in 2021, i.

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Fine particulate matter (PM) in Northeast China was targeted by national-level clean air policy for the first time in 2022, with the release of Action Plan to eliminate heavy air pollution events. In this study, we investigated sources of PM during three successive winters in Harbin, a megacity in Northeast China, based on observational results from several recent campaigns in 2018-2021. During the 2020-2021 campaign, daytime and nighttime samples were collected in specific months in addition to 24-h integrated measurements, and the two sets of samples were combined in different ways to run a positive matrix factorization model.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Field observations from a cold megacity in Northeast China show that agricultural fires, despite a burning ban, increase BrC's mass absorption efficiency, especially during the fall 2020 fires.
  • * The study reveals a connection between BrC's optical properties and combustion efficiency, indicating that both agricultural fires and coal combustion significantly impact BrC's characteristics, even when burning is not prominent.
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Dehydration tolerance is a vital factor for land plant evolution and world agricultural production. Numerous studies enlightened that the plant-specific C2H2-type zinc-finger proteins (C2H2-ZFPs) as master regulators played pivotal roles in the abiotic stress responses of plants. However, a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of C2H2-ZFPs in terrestrial plants and its regulatory mechanism in dehydration and rehydration response remains a mystery.

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COVID-19 rebounded in China in January 2021, with Heilongjiang as one of the worst-affected provinces. This resulted in a new round of lockdown in Harbin, the capital city of Heilongjiang, from 20 January to 22 February of 2021. A field campaign was conducted to explore the responses of haze pollution in Harbin to the lockdown.

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The massive agricultural sector in the Northeast Plain, which is of great importance for the food security in China, results in a huge amount of crop residues and thus substantial concern on haze pollution due to biomass burning (BB). To seek for effective control measures on BB emissions, a dramatic transition of open burning policy occurred in Heilongjiang Province, from the "legitimate burning" policy released in 2018 to the "strict prohibition" policy implemented in 2019 and beyond. Here we explored the BB aerosols during 2020-2021 in Harbin, the capital city of Heilongjiang.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Severe haze in Harbin during the 2019-2020 heating season made it one of the top ten most polluted cities in China as of January 2020, prompting a closer examination of brown carbon (BrC) properties and sources during this period of extreme pollution.
  • - Higher relative humidity (RH) led to increased formation of secondary BrC, paralleled by decreased ozone levels and rising aerosol water content, suggesting that interactions between water and aerosols played a crucial role in BrC formation despite low temperatures.
  • - While BrC comprised a significant portion of the total brown carbon mass, its contribution to absorption was lower than expected, highlighting a discrepancy between mass and absorption efficiencies that has implications for understanding brC's impact on
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This study compared the efficiency of nutrient removal and lipid accumulation by a monoculture of Scenedesmus obliquus and mixed cultures of microalgae. The highest removal efficiencies of ammonium (99.2%), phosphate (91.

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