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Human manure and straw production is huge, and the lack of effective treatment and disposal methods would cause pollution to the environment. In order to further study the effect of carbon to nitrogen ratio on the anaerobic co-digestion experiment by mixing human manure with straw in rural Hebei Province, the anaerobic co-digestion experiment of corn straw and wheat straw soaked in human manure and biogas slurry was carried out under three gradients of carbon to nitrogen ratio of 20/1, 25/1 and 30/1, respectively. The changes of gas content and pH, NH4+-N, VFAs and COD of biogas slurry during the experiment were analyzed. In terms of gas production performance, the experimental group with a carbon to nitrogen ratio of 20/1 had better gas production. The fermentation of human manure with corn straw was better than that of human manure with wheat straw. In terms of fermentation feed and liquid characteristics, the experimental group with a carbon to nitrogen ratio of 20/1 had moderate changes in fermentation feed and liquid indexes, more stable fermentation process and higher buffering capacity. The experimental group with human manure and wheat straw mixed anaerobic co-digestion had more buffering capacity and more stable fermentation process than the experimental group with human manure and corn straw mixed anaerobic co-digestion. Therefore, the carbon to nitrogen ratio of 20/1 is more suitable for human manure and straw mixed anaerobic co-digestion experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The carbonylation of alkynes using CO2 to generate aurones is to date unknown. In this study, a palladium‐catalyzed carbonylation of terminal aromatic alkynes and the waste hydrosilane, poly(methylhydrosiloxane) (PMHS), is carried out with 2‐iodophenol using CO2 to produce aurones. A variety of terminal alkynes and substituted 2‐iodophenols are transformed into aurones in good yields. Preliminary mechanistic studies indicate that silyl formate, generated from CO2 and PMHS, plays a crucial role in the carbonylation reaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-discrimination is an increasingly important task in data science. In this paper, we investigate the problem of discovering both direct and indirect discrimination from the historical data, and removing the discriminatory effects before the data are used for predictive analysis (e.g., building classifiers). The main drawback of existing methods is that they cannot distinguish the part of influence that is really caused by discrimination from all correlated influences. In our approach, we make use of the causal graph to capture the causal structure of the data. Then, we model direct and indirect discrimination as the path-specific effects, which accurately identify the two types of discrimination as the causal effects transmitted along different paths in the graph. For certain situations where indirect discrimination cannot be exactly measured due to the unidentifiability of some path-specific effects, we develop an upper bound and a lower bound to the effect of indirect discrimination. Based on the theoretical results, we propose effective algorithms for discovering direct and indirect discrimination, as well as algorithms for precisely removing both types of discrimination while retaining good data utility. Experiments using the real dataset show the effectiveness of our approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and objective Decorin is a protein component of the extracellular matrix. It has been proven that decorin plaid an important role in matrix assembly. The protein is also capable of suppressing tumor cell growth. The aim of this study is to examine the protein levels of decorin in tissue samples of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients and evaluate its potential clinical value. Methods Decorin protein levels in tumor tissues and corresponding normal tissues from 16 cases of lung squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) were determined by Western blot analysis. Fifty-one NSCLC samples, including both tumor and normal lung tissues, were examined by immunohistochemical (IHC) staining. Results Western blot results showed that decorin protein levels in 75.0% (12/16) of the SCC tumor tissues were lower than those of the corresponding normal lung tissues. IHC results showed that positively stained decorin was detected in only 11.8% of the tumor tissues, significantly lower than that observed in normal alveoli tissues (53.1%, P<0.001). In lung adenocarcinoma (ADC), almost no expression of decorin was observed, in contrast to squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) (P=0.006). Conclusion Decreased levels of decorin in NSCLC tissue samples, particularly ADC cases, indicate that decorin could play a role in lung cancer carcinogenesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]