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Urban green spaces (UGS) are vital in modern cities, offering extensive health, social, and environmental benefits. However, traditional research methods primarily focus on UGS distribution and aggregation through 2D mapping, often neglecting the quality and vitality of urban natural environments. This limited approach hampers our full understanding of the complex issues and opportunities surrounding UGS. This study proposes a novel concept of Implied Urban Nature Vitality (IUNV) and evaluation framework that offers a comprehensive lens to understand better and evaluate the manifold human-urban-nature interactions in modern cityscapes. Based on our IUNV framework, an interdisciplinary investigation is conducted to show the distribution and population-level perceived IUNV in San Francisco by leveraging a triad of data sources: census, street-built environment, and social media data. Utilizing census data, we analyze socio-economic influences on UGS distribution and IUNV, including factors such as education, age demographics, income, and ethnicity. Street view imagery (SVI), analyzed with advanced image recognition algorithms, serves as a proxy for visual and physical aspects of IUNV, highlighting features like trees, sky, buildings, and roads. This analysis paints a granular picture of UGS's spatial distribution and physical attributes, facilitating an objective measure of IUNV. Subsequently, we analyze Flickr photos related to urban natural areas, examining their distribution and identifying thematic clusters that illuminate various aspects of UGS vitality. Lastly, we combine computer vision and manual review to define 12 IUNV themes from architecture and nature, eco-friendly gatherings, to cultural performance, exploring the relationship between the vitality clusters and the independent variables. The main findings are: (1) Macro-level factors (e.g., accessibility level, land use mix level, road density, population density, etc.) are the dominant variables influencing IUNV.; (2) Street view factors play key roles in IUNV. Through this holistic IUNV analysis, the study shed light on the complexities of urban green space planning and management, informing future urban development strategies towards greater vitality and, by extension, environmental and social sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We proposed a passively Q-switched fiber laser with switchable wavelength based on two parallel fiber Bragg gratings. By increasing the input power, a single wavelength with a center wavelength of 1545.63 nm and dual wavelengths with a center wavelength of 1545.63 nm and 1553.60 nm can be obtained respectively. The wavelength spacing of the dual wavelengths is 8.17 nm, and the maximum repetition frequency of Q-switching is 24.27 kHz, and the narrowest pulse width is 5.48 ms. The combination of parallel fiber grating and erbium-ytterbium co-doped fiber (EYDF) saturable absorber provides a simple and feasible method to obtain stable (single and double wavelength switching) passively Q-switched pulses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Circ_0000518 promotes multiple sclerosis. • FUS promotes multiple sclerosis. • FUS activates the CaMKKβ/AMPK pathway. Evidence has shown that circ_0000518 is upregulated in peripheral of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, suggesting that it may play an important role in the progression of MS. However, its specific mechanism in MS progression is unclear. In this study, the human microglial clone 3 (HMC3) cells were treated with 100 ng/mL of LPS for 24 h, then the short hairpin RNA against hsa_circ_0000518 (sh-hsa_circ_0000518) was transfected into cells and incubated for 48 h. We found increased circ_0000518 expressions, increased apoptosis and oxidative stress, increased M1 phenotype marker expression, and decreased M2 phenotype marker expression in cells, and that interfering with circ_0000518 expression reversed the effect of LPS on HMC3 cells. Online bioinformatics database analysis indicated that FUS is an RNA binding protein of circ_0000518. Next, we observed increased FUS expression in LPS treated HMC3 cells, and interfering with FUS expression reduced LPS triggered apoptosis and oxidative stress, decreased M1 phenotype marker expression, and promoted M2 phenotype marker expression. Mechanistic studies revealed that interfering with FUS promoted the polarization of HMC3 cells from the M1 phenotype to the M2 phenotype via activation of CaMKKβ/AMPK-PGC-1α pathway, whereas this promoting effect was counteracted by STO-609. In an experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) mouse model, we observed that circ_0000518 knockdown reduced circ_0000518 and FUS expression in brain and spinal cord tissues, reduced neurological scores in mice, and alleviated inflammatory cell infiltration in the CNS. Summarily, our study identified that circ_0000518 promotes macrophage/microglial M1 polarization through the FUS/CaMKKβ/AMPK pathway and aggravates MS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Water conservancy projects are commonly constructed with different purposes. This usually results in improved flooding control, but may lead as well to environmental problems, such as river dry up, river morphology change, and reduction in biodiversity. The present study considers water conservancy projects in the Haihe river basin, following the major flood in 1963. It maps the water projects as well as the surface water bodies in 1964, 1980 and 2004, by using an integrated method of remote sensing and field surveys. The impact of the water conservancy projects on the hydro-ecological processes and the ecological environment is analyzed. Construction of the controlled reservoir resulted in a sharp drop of the river discharge and sediment. It also resulted in a reduction of river infiltration, an increase of evaporation and a change in regional water balance characteristics. Furthermore, the projects separated the hydraulic connection between upstream and downstream areas, weakened the river’s natural connectivity, and changed the dynamic conditions of the river water. On the basis of the study, we propose changing the operation mode of the existing controllable water conservancy projects and removing the projects with degraded and unreasonable functions as two optional ways to resolve the hydro-ecological problems of the basin. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]