Evidence for sustainably reducing secondary pollutants in a typical industrial city in China: Co-benefit from controlling sources with high reduction potential beyond industrial process.

Under China's strict industrial control measures, the reduction of secondary pollutants (O and secondary organic aerosols [SOA]) and precursors (volatile organic compounds [VOCs] and NOx) caused by industrial processes has encountered bottlenecks. In this study, the net O formation rate (Net [O]) in summer and the self-reaction rate between peroxy radicals (Self-Rnxs) in winter are used to characterize the formation potentials of O and SOA, respectively. Assuming that the precursor reduction ratio based on emission inventories is approximately equal to that based on observed concentrations, this study combines emission inventory and observation-based model (OBM) methods to indicate the potential source of secondary pollutants reduction.

Spatial heterogeneity of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances caused by glacial melting in Tibetan Lake Nam Co due to global warming.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) in high-latitude polar regions and the Tibetan Plateau have received widespread international attention. Here, we measured 18 PFASs and 11 major isomers in the lake water, sediment, and surrounding runoff of Lake Nam Co in 2020. The concentrations of ultrashort-chain trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) and perfluoropropanoic acid (PFPrA) and major isomers of perfluoooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluoooctane sulfonate acid (PFOS) in water bodies in high-latitude polar regions and the Tibetan Plateau are reported for the first time.

Analyzing ozone formation sensitivity in a typical industrial city in China: Implications for effective source control in the chemical transition regime.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) play a major role in O formation in urban environments. However, the complexity in the emissions of VOCs and nitrogen oxides (NOx) in industrial cities has made it challenging to identify the key factors influencing O formation. This study used observation-based-model (OBM) to analyze O sensitivities to VOCs and NOx during summer in a typical industrial city in China.

Technological progress and coupling renewables enable substantial environmental and economic benefits from coal-to-olefins.

China's growing demand for bulk chemicals and concerns regarding energy security are scaling up coal-to-olefins (CTO) production. Three generations of independent dimethyl ether/methanol-to-olefins technologies have been successively launched with greatly improved production efficiencies. However, to date, widespread concerns regarding the intensive environmental impacts and potential economic risks have not been addressed in the context of this industrialization.

Multifactor configurations of coal power technology in China substantially differ in life-cycle environmental impacts.

The expansion of coal power in China has led to a coexistence of multiple technologies, whereas differences in environmental impacts of each other remain hitherto unclear. This gap is largely a result of the difficulty of fully covering the factors that significantly affect environmental performances and the lack of fine data inventory. The limitation welcomes an approach that can go well beyond characterizing coal power technology with a single factor.

ART2Dose: A comprehensive dose verification platform for online adaptive radiotherapy.

Background: Online adaptive radiotherapy (ART) involves the development of adaptable treatment plans that consider patient anatomical data obtained right prior to treatment administration, facilitated by cone-beam computed tomography guided adaptive radiotherapy (CTgART) and magnetic resonance image-guided adaptive radiotherapy (MRgART). To ensure accuracy of these adaptive plans, it is crucial to conduct calculation-based checks and independent verification of volumetric dose distribution, as measurement-based checks are not practical within online workflows. However, the absence of comprehensive, efficient, and highly integrated commercial software for secondary dose verification can impede the time-sensitive nature of online ART procedures.

Modeling gamma knife radiosurgical toxicity for multiple brain metastases.

Background And Purpose: Radiation oncology protocols for single fraction radiosurgery recommend setting dosing criteria based on assumed risk of radionecrosis, which can be predicted by the 12 Gy normal brain volume (V12). In this study, we show that tumor surface area (SA) and a simple power-law model using only preplan variables can estimate and minimize radiosurgical toxicity.

Materials And Methods: A 245-patient cohort with 1217 brain metastases treated with single or distributed Gamma Knife sessions was reviewed retrospectively.

[Revealing Driving Factors of Urban O Based on Explainable Machine Learning].

Driven by precursor emissions, meteorological conditions, and other factors, atmospheric ozone (O) has become the main pollutant affecting urban air quality in summer. The current deductive models driven by physical and chemical mechanisms require a large number of parameters for the analysis of O pollution, and the calculation timeliness is poor. The data-driven inductive models are efficient but have problems such as poor explanation.

Effect of Hollow 304 Stainless Steel Fiber on Corrosion Resistance and Mechanical Properties of Ultra-High Performance Concrete (UHPC).

This study investigated the effect of hollow 304 stainless-steel fiber on the corrosion resistance and mechanical properties of ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC), and prepared copper-coated-fiber-reinforced UHPC as the control group. The electrochemical performance of the prepared UHPC was compared with the results of X-ray computed tomography (X-CT). The results reveal that cavitation can improve the distribution of steel fibers in the UHPC.

Comparison of the Mechanical Properties and Crack Expansion Mechanism of Different Content and Shapes of Brass-Coated Steel Fiber-Reinforced Ultra-High-Performance Concrete.

Steel fiber-reinforced ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) is becoming an important type of concrete reinforcement. After mixing with the reinforced steel fibers, the UHPC has perfect flex resistance, shear strength, crack resistance, shock resistance, and anti-seepage. In this study, the influence of straight, corrugated, and hooked brass-coated steel fibers (BCSFs) on the microstructure, mechanical properties, and crack expansion mechanism of ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) with varying content of 1-6 wt.

Impact of primary emission variations on secondary inorganic aerosol formation: Prospective from COVID-19 lockdown in a typical northern China city.

Hourly observations in northern China city of Taiyuan were performed to compare secondary inorganic aerosol (SIA) reaction mechanisms, and emission effects on SIA during the pre-lock and COVID-19 lock days. Emission control implemented and meteorological conditions during lock days both caused beneficial impact on air quality. NO showed the highest decrease ratio of -49.

Decomposition and humification process of domestic biodegradable waste by black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens L.) larvae from the perspective of dissolved organic matter.

Black soldier fly larvae (Hermitia illucens L.) (BSFL) bioconversion is a promising technology for domestic biodegradable waste (DBW) management and resource recovery. However, little is known about the DBW biodegradation during the BSFL bioconversion from the perspective of dissolved organic matter (DOM).

Comparing the Corrosion Resistance of 5083 Al and AlO3D/5083 Al Composite in a Chloride Environment.

In this study, an AlO3D/5083 Al composite was fabricated by infiltrating a molten 5083 Al alloy into a three-dimensional alumina reticulated porosity ceramics skeleton preform (AlO3D) using a pressureless infiltration method. The corrosion resistance of 5083 Al alloy and AlO3D/5083 Al in NaCl solution were compared via electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), dynamic polarization potential (PDP), and neutral salt spray (NSS) tests. The microstructure of the two materials were investigated by 3D X-ray microscope and scanning electron microscopy aiming at understanding the corrosion mechanisms.

Machine characterization and central axis depth dose data of a superficial x-ray radiotherapy unit.

. The purpose of this study is to present data from the clinical commissioning of an Xstrahl 150 x-ray unit used for superficial radiotherapy,. Commissioning tasks included vendor acceptance tests, timer reproducibility, linearity and end-effect measurements, half-value layer (HVL) measurements, inverse square law verification, head-leakage measurements, and beam output calibration.

Preliminary Evaluation of PTV Margins for Online Adaptive Radiation Therapy of the Prostatic Fossa.

Purpose: In modern trials, traditional planning target volume (PTV) margins for postoperative prostate radiation therapy have been large (7-10 mm) to account for both daily changes in patient positioning and target deformation. With daily adaptive radiation therapy, these interfractional changes could be minimized, potentially reducing the margins required for treatment and improving adjacent normal-tissue dosimetry.

Methods And Materials: A single-center retrospective study was conducted from March 2021 to November 2021.

Ensemble learning and personalized training for the improvement of unsupervised deep learning-based synthetic CT reconstruction.

Background: The growing adoption of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided radiation therapy (RT) platforms and a focus on MRI-only RT workflows have brought the technical challenge of synthetic computed tomography (sCT) reconstruction to the forefront. Unpaired-data deep learning-based approaches to the problem offer the attractive characteristic of not requiring paired training data, but the gap between paired- and unpaired-data results can be limiting.

Purpose: We present two distinct approaches aimed at improving unpaired-data sCT reconstruction results: a cascade ensemble that combines multiple models and a personalized training strategy originally designed for the paired-data setting.

Effects of water levels on plant traits and nitrogen use efficiency in monoculture and intercropped artificial grasslands.

Water availability is the main factor affecting the forage productivity of artificial grasslands, particularly in semi-arid regions. Generally, intercropping of gramineous grass and leguminous grass can achieve high productivity. However, how different water availability levels affect the productivity of intercropping system remains unclear.

A Neuromorphic Processing System With Spike-Driven SNN Processor for Wearable ECG Classification.

This paper presents a neuromorphic processing system with a spike-driven spiking neural network (SNN) processor design for always-on wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) classification. In the proposed system, the ECG signal is captured by level crossing (LC) sampling, achieving native temporal coding with single-bit data representation, which is directly fed into an SNN in an event-driven manner. A hardware-aware spatio-temporal backpropagation (STBP) is suggested as the training scheme to adapt to the LC-based data representation and to generate lightweight SNN models.

Nitrogen Addition Affects Ecosystem Carbon Exchange by Regulating Plant Community Assembly and Altering Soil Properties in an Alpine Meadow on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

Nitrogen (N) deposition can affect the global ecosystem carbon balance. However, how plant community assembly regulates the ecosystem carbon exchange in response to the N deposition remains largely unclear, especially in alpine meadows. In this study, we conducted a manipulative experiment to examine the impacts of N (ammonium nitrate) addition on ecosystem carbon dioxide (CO) exchange by changing the plant community assembly and soil properties at an alpine meadow site on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau from 2014 to 2018.

Warming and spring precipitation addition change plant growth pattern but have minor effects on growing season mean gross ecosystem productivity in an alpine meadow.

Gross ecosystem productivity (GEP) plays an important role in global carbon cycling. However, how plant phenology and growth rate regulate GEP under climate change is unclear. Based on an in situ manipulative experiment using open top chambers from 2015 to 2018, we measured whole year warming and spring precipitation addition effects on plant phenology, plant growth rate and GEP.

Grazing Changed Plant Community Composition and Reduced Stochasticity of Soil Microbial Community Assembly of Alpine Grasslands on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

Grazing is a substantial threat to the sustainability of grassland ecosystems, while it is uncertain about the variety of plant and soil microbial community and the linkages between them limit the comprehensive understanding of grazing ecology. We conducted an experiment on the effects of the grazing regimes rotational grazing (RG), continuous grazing (CG), and grazing exclusion (GE) on an alpine meadow in Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. The differences of plant community composition, soil microbial community assembly mechanism, and taxonomic and functional composition between grazing regimes were examined, and the relationship between plant species and the soil microbes was assessed by constructing a co-occurrence network.

Effects of regional transport from different potential pollution areas on volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in Northern Beijing during non-heating and heating periods.

Despite the adoption of air quality control measures, the influence of regional transport on volatile organic compounds (VOCs) pollution has gradually increased in Beijing. In this study, the whole observation period (September 24 to December 12, 2020) was divided into heating period and non-heating period to explore the impact of changing VOCs sources in different observation periods, and also classified into "Type-N" and "Type-S" periods both in non-heating period and heating period to explore the impact of regional transport from the northern and southern regions of sampling site, respectively. The average VOCs concentrations in northern Beijing during observation period were 22.

Backpropagation With Sparsity Regularization for Spiking Neural Network Learning.

The spiking neural network (SNN) is a possible pathway for low-power and energy-efficient processing and computing exploiting spiking-driven and sparsity features of biological systems. This article proposes a sparsity-driven SNN learning algorithm, namely backpropagation with sparsity regularization (BPSR), aiming to achieve improved spiking and synaptic sparsity. Backpropagation incorporating spiking regularization is utilized to minimize the spiking firing rate with guaranteed accuracy.

Combining Serial and Parallel Functionality in Functional Lung Avoidance Radiation Therapy.

Purpose: Functional lung avoidance (FLA) radiation therapy (RT) aims to minimize post-RT pulmonary toxicity by preferentially avoiding dose to high-functioning lung (HFL) regions. A common limitation is that FLA approaches do not consider the conducting architecture for gas exchange. We previously proposed the functionally weighted airway sparing (FWAS) method to spare airways connected to HFL regions, showing that it is possible to substantially reduce risk of radiation-induced airway injury.