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Pinggu Peach Orchard is one of the largest orchards in Beijing, China, providing consumers with high-quality peaches. However, a large number of discarded peach branch waste was produced along with the peach production every year, which can cause environmental pollution and have potential safety hazards since they can only be burned or stacked on the roadside or in the field. Therefore, it is important and urgent to develop recycling techniques of discarded peach branches. In this study, peach branches-cellulose nanofiber (PB-CNF) was prepared by high-pressure homogeneous (HPH) from discarded peach branches and used as a reinforcing agent to enhance mechanical performance and adsorption capacity of the gelatin hydrogel. The variations on morphological, physic-chemical, and thermal characteristics of the PB-CNF were closely related to the cycles of HPH. Rheological properties of gelatin and PB-CNF were studied to understand the viscoelastic properties as well as gelling and melting temperature of the hydrogel. The results suggested that the HPH treatment was applied to produce PB-CNF with 5 nm in diameter, low crystallinity, and uniform dispersion. PB-CNF under HPH mixed with gelatin in an appropriate ratio of 1/4 can easily obtain a stable hydrogel system, which contributed to improving the mechanical performance and adsorption capacity of the hydrogel. Therefore, the waste peach wood can be used as raw material to extract and prepare a reinforcing agent (PB-CNF).

Seasonal prediction of extreme precipitation has long been a challenge especially for the East Asian Summer Monsoon region, where extreme rains are often disastrous for the human society and economy. This paper introduces a decision‐tree (DT) method for predicting extreme precipitation in the rainy season over South China in April–June (SC‐AMJ) and the North China Plain in July–August (NCP‐JA). A number of preceding climate indices are adopted as predictors. In both cases, the DT models involving ENSO and NAO indices exhibit the best performance with significant skills among those with other combinations of predictors and are superior to their linear counterpart, the binary logistic regression model. The physical mechanisms for the DT results are demonstrated by composite analyses of the same DT path samples. For SC‐AMJ, an extreme season can be determined mainly via two paths: the first follows a persistent negative NAO phase in February–March; the second goes with decaying El Niño. For NCP‐JA, an extreme season can also be traced via two paths: the first is featured by “non El Niño” and an extremely negative NAO phase in the preceding winter; the second follows a shift from El Niño in the preceding winter to La Niña in the early summer. Most of the mechanisms underlying the decision rules have been documented in previous studies, while some need further studies. The present results suggest that the decision‐tree approach takes advantage of discovering and incorporating various nonlinear relationships in the climate system, hence is of great potential for improving the prediction of seasonal extreme precipitation for given regions with increasing sample observations.

Combination cancer therapy has attracted considerable attention due to its enhanced antitumor efficacy and reduced toxicity granted by synergistic effects over monotherapy. The application of nanotechnology is expected to achieve coencapsulation of multiple anticancer agents with enhanced therapeutic efficacy. Herein, a unique nanomicelle based on amphiphilic dendrimer (AmD) consisting of a hydrophilic polyamidoamine dendritic shell and a hydrophobic polylactide core is developed for effectively loading and shuttling 5-fluorouracil (5-Fu) and doxorubicin (Dox). The yielded drug-encapsulated dendritic nanomicelle (5-Fu/Dox-DNM) has a modest average size of 68.6 ± 3.3 nm and shows pH-sensitive drug release manner. The parallel activity of 5-Fu and Dox show synergistic anticancer efficacy. The IC50 value of 5-Fu/Dox-DNM toward human breast cancer (MDA-MB-231) cells was 0.25 μg/mL, presenting an 11.2-fold and 6.1-fold increase in cytotoxicity compared to Dox-DNM and 5-Fu-DNM, respectively. Furthermore...