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Arsenic and antimony are common toxic metalloids found in associated minerals. These metalloids generally cause high-concentration pollution in non-ferrous metal smelting soils; however, few studies have investigated the pollution characteristics of these two metalloids at non-ferrous smelting sites using varying soil particle sizes. In this study, the valency distributions and geochemical fractions were investigated with varying soil particle sizes (≤ 0.05, 0.05–0.25, 0.25–1, and 1–2 mm). Soils were mainly concentrated in ≤ 0.05 and 0.05–0.25 mm with mass percentages of 32.97% and 29.02%, respectively. The highest total As and Sb concentrations in ≤ 0.05 mm were found to be 20,350 and 3655 mg/kg, respectively. In addition, As(Ⅲ), As(Ⅴ), Sb(Ⅲ), and Sb(Ⅴ) concentrations in this soil particle size were found to be 224, 19,813, 1036, and 24 mg/kg, respectively. The geochemical fractions of As and Sb in varying soil particle sizes were mainly residual, accounting for 50% and 90% in the ≤ 0.05 mm. Soil may bind ≤ 0.25 mm due to the disparity found in the geochemical compositions and valency distributions of arsenic and antimony. X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive system analysis confirmed that arsenolite accumulated in particle sizes of ≤ 0.05 and 0.05–0.25 mm. The results of this study may provide a scientific reference for risk assessment and restoration strategies for non-ferrous metal smelting soils.

Booming aspiration of advanced energy storage equipment elevates lithium-ion batteries vastly. Whereas separator with inferior porous structure and compatibility mismatches battery internal medium and raises ion transference rampart. Herein, fumed SiO2 compound separator is designed via ingenious bidirectional drawing technique to optimize the porous structure and realize fumed SiO2 coating online construction during the pore formation process of β-crystal polypropylene (β-iPP) synchronously. Crystal structure measurement, pore construction diagnosis, and physical properties tests disclose that the fumed SiO2 thins coarse fibril structure and homogenizes porous construction of separator. The de-bonding of fumed SiO2/β-iPP interfaces also remains SiO2 on the top-surface and pore internal wall of separator and thus realizes the SiO2 coating online construction, which eliminate the steps required by coating after fabrication of the separator and greatly reduce the production difficulty and cost. Also, the prepared composite separators present reinforced thermal dimensional stability and electrolyte wettability benefited by the SiO2 coating. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and cycle tests further uncover that hydrophilic SiO2 nanoparticles lower lithium-ion migration rampart within separator and enhance compatibility with electrodes, which stifles cell resistances and gives LIBs superior high ratio discharge property and cycling durability.

Despite progress toward gender equality in the labor market over the past few decades, gender segregation in labor force composition and labor market outcomes persists. Evidence has shown that job advertisements may express gender preferences, which may selectively attract potential job candidates to apply for a given post and thus reinforce gendered labor force composition and outcomes. Removing gender-explicit words from job advertisements does not fully solve the problem as certain implicit traits are more closely associated with men, such as ambitiousness, while others are more closely associated with women, such as considerateness. However, it is not always possible to find neutral alternatives for these traits, making it hard to search for candidates with desired characteristics without entailing gender discrimination. Existing algorithms mainly focus on the detection of the presence of gender biases in job advertisements without providing a solution to how the text should be (re)worded. To address this problem, we propose an algorithm that evaluates gender bias in the input text and provides guidance on how the text should be debiased by offering alternative wording that is closely related to the original input. Our proposed method promises broad application in the human resources process, ranging from the development of job advertisements to algorithm-assisted screening of job applications.

Chemotherapy is often used for female malignancies, but it can increase the risk of premature ovarian failure in women of reproductive age through different mechanisms. Therefore, how to protect ovarian function and preserve fertility has attracted great attention of oncologists and gynecologists. Recently, umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (UCMSCs) have been extensively studied in the field of regenerative medicine. Compared with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) from other sources, UCMSCs have a broader application potential due to their properties of lower immunogenicity, fewer ethical issues, and non-invasive collection. Paracrine is one of the most important therapeutic mechanisms of UCMSCs, which can exert anti-inflammatory, anti-fibrosis, anti-oxidative stress, immune regulation, and other therapeutic effects. Studies in animal models have shown that UCMSCs can restore ovarian function after chemotherapy injury. However, most of the relevant researches are still in the preclinical stage. In this article, the mechanism of chemotherapy-induced ovarian failure will be overviewed, and the clinical application potential of UCMSCs in chemotherapeutic ovarian injury will be discussed.

In landmark-based way-finding, determining the most salient landmark from several candidates at decision points is challenging. To overcome this problem, current approaches usually rely on a linear model to measure the salience of landmarks. However, linear models are not always able to establish an accurate quantitative relationship between the attributes of a landmark and its perceived salience. Furthermore, the numbers of evaluated scenes and of volunteers participating in the testing of these models are often limited. With the aim of overcoming these gaps, we propose learning a non-linear salience model by means of genetic programming. We compared our proposed approach with conventional algorithms by using photographs of two hundred test scenes collected from two shopping malls. Two hundred volunteers who were not in these environments were asked to answer questionnaires about the collected photographs. The results from this experiment showed that in 76% of the cases, the most salient landmark (according to the volunteers' perception) was correctly predicted by our proposed approach. This accuracy rate is considerably higher than the ones achieved by conventional linear models.

Aim: Chromosome 14 open reading frame 166 (C14orf166) acts as a transcriptional repressor and is correlated with centrosome architecture manipulation. Nevertheless, the function of C14orf166 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) progression remains unclear. We aimed to investigate the role C14orf166 plays in HCC and further compared the prognostic value of C14orf166 with that of clinicopathological features. Methods: C14orf166 expression was evaluated in a human liver cell line, HCC cell lines, HCC tissues and adjacent noncancerous liver tissues with qRT-PCR, western blot and immunohistochemistry. Patients were divided into two different groups according to C14orf166 level. The relationship between C14orf166 expression and clinicopathological features was assessed by Pearson chi-squared test and receiver operating characteristic curves. Cumulative disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) curves were evaluated using the Kaplan–Meier method. Results: C14orf166 mRNA and protein expression is upregulated in HCC cell lines and tissues. The level of C14orf166 was correlated with serum alpha-fetoprotein level, lymph node metastasis, tumor size and recurrence, with high C14orf166 expression correlating with high HCC recurrence risk. The poor OS and DFS of HCC patients are partly due to the persistently high HCC recurrence risk. When combined with serum alpha-fetoprotein level, the predictive accuracy of C14orf166 for HCC recurrence was enhanced (AUC = 0.712, 95% CI 0.603–0.821; p = 0.001). Conclusions: This study demonstrated that C14orf166 is a high-risk biomarker and predictive factor for HCC recurrence, providing information for the selection of appropriate treatment strategies.

Abstract Background The ratio of CO2 mesophyll conductance (g m) to Ribulose-1, 5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) content has been suggested to positively affect photosynthetic nitrogen use efficiency (PNUE). The anatomical basis of g m has been quantified, but information on the relationship between cell-level anatomies and PNUE is less advanced. Here, hydroponic experiments were conducted in rice plants supplied with ammonium (NH4 +) and nitrate (NO3 −) under three N levels (low, 0.71 mM; intermediate, 2.86 mM; high, 7.14 mM) to investigate the gas exchange parameters, leaf anatomical structure and PNUE. Results The results showed a lower PNUE in plants supplied with high nitrogen and NH4 +, which was positively correlated with the g m/Rubisco ratio. A one-dimensional within-leaf model revealed that the resistance to CO2 diffusion in the liquid phase (r liq) dominated the overall mesophyll resistance (r m), in which CO2 transfer resistance in the cell wall, cytoplasm and stroma were significantly affected by nitrogen supply. The chloroplast surface area exposed to intercellular space (S c) per Rubisco rather than the g m/S c ratio was positively correlated with PNUE and was thus considered a key component influencing PNUE. Conclusion In conclusion, our study emphasized that S c was the most important anatomical trait in coordinating g m and PNUE with contrasting N supply.

Abstract Background High tibial osteotomy (HTO) has a history of nearly 60 years and has been widely used in clinical practice. Biplanar open wedge high tibial osteotomy (BOWHTO), which evolved from HTO, is an important therapy for the knee osteoarthritis. In our previous research, we found that the decrease of hemoglobin levels after high tibial osteotomy ranges from between 17 to 41 g/L, but this is highly inconsistent with the intraoperative bleeding and postoperative drainage observed in clinical practice. The purpose of this study was to investigate the perioperative hidden blood loss (HBL) after biplanar open wedge high tibial osteotomy (BOWHTO), as well as to study the effect of the actual correction angle on blood loss. Methods A retrospective analysis was performed on 21 patients who underwent BOWHTO for osteoarthritis of the knee due to proximal tibia deformity. Gross equation was used to calculate the perioperative total blood loss (TBL) and HBL. The actual correction angle was measured by postoperative anteroposterior radiograph. The correlation between HBL and correction angle was determined through correlation analysis. Results The TBL was 823.5 ± 348.7 mL and the HBL was 601.6 ± 297.3 mL, total hemoglobin loss was 25.0 ± 10.7 g/L, and the mean HBL/patient’s blood volume (H/P) was 13.19 ± 5.56% for 21 patients. The correlation coefficient of correction angle and H/P is statistically significant (|r| = 0.678, P = 0.001). Conclusions The actual total blood loss after BOWHTO was significantly higher than the observed, and the HBL was objective existent after BOWHTO. The proportion of H/P is positively correlated with the correction angle.

To implement Prognostics Health Management (PHM) for hydraulic pumps, it is very important to study the faults of hydraulic pumps to ensure the stability and reliability of the whole life cycle. The research on fault diagnosis has been very active, but there is a lack of systematic analysis and summary of the developed methods. To make up for this gap, this paper systematically summarizes the relevant methods from the two aspects of fault diagnosis and health management. In addition, in order to further facilitate researchers and practitioners, statistical and comparative analysis of the reviewed methods is carried out, and a future development direction is prospected.

Local feature matching is a part of many large vision tasks. Local feature matching usually consists of three parts: feature detection, description, and matching. The matching task usually serves a downstream task, such as camera pose estimation, so geometric information is crucial for the matching task. We propose the geometric feature embedding matching method (GFM) for local feature matching. We propose the adaptive keypoint geometric embedding module dynamic adjust keypoint position information and the orientation geometric embedding displayed modeling of geometric information about rotation. Subsequently, we interleave the use of self-attention and cross-attention for local feature enhancement. The predicted correspondences are multiplied by the local features. The correspondences are solved by computing dual-softmax. An intuitive human extraction and matching scheme is implemented. In order to verify the effectiveness of our proposed method, we performed validation on three datasets (MegaDepth, Hpatches, Aachen Day-Night v1.1) according to their respective metrics, and the results showed that our method achieved satisfactory results in all scenes.

Background: The vein of Marshall (VOM) ethanol infusion improves sinus rhythm maintenance in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). Distal collateral circulation of VOM can be a challenge to effective ethanol infusion. Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of ethanol infusion in VOM with distal collateral circulation. Methods: Patients with AF scheduled for catheter ablation and VOM ethanol infusion were consecutively enrolled. During the procedure, non-occluded coronary sinus angiography was first performed for VOM identification. After VOM identification, an over-the-wire angioplasty balloon was used for cannulation and occluded angiography of the VOM. Those with distal VOM collateral circulation were included in this study. A method of slower ethanol injection (2 mL over 5 min) plus additional balloon occlusion time for 3 min after each injection was used. Results: Of 162 patients scheduled for VOM ethanol infusion, apparent distal VOM collateral circulation was revealed in seven (4.3%) patients. Five patients had collateral circulation to the left atrium, one to the right superior vena cava, and one to the great cardiac vein. Two patients did not undergo further ethanol infusion because of our inadequate experience during the early stage of the project. Five patients had successful VOM ethanol infusion with manifest localized myocardium staining. Conclusions: Ethanol infusion in VOM with distal collateral circulation can be solved by slow injection of ethanol and enough balloon occlusion time between multiple injections.

The next-generation FengYun-3H satellite carrying a greenhouse gas absorption spectrometer (GAS) is planned for launch by 2024 with a strengthened ability to help researchers understand the global carbon cycle. However, assessments of the atmospheric CO2-detection capabilities of GAS are still incomplete, mainly in the following aspects: previous studies on the spectral range of GAS instruments often used the weak absorption band of CO2 molecules (1.61 μm); research on the measurement accuracies of different atmospheric environments above oceans is lacking; and most studies considered land surfaces as the bottom boundaries. Here, we simulated high spectral CO2 absorption spectra in both the strong and weak bands (2.06 and 1.61 μm) while considering the effects of different instrumental (spectral resolution and sampling rate) and environmental (wind speed, visibility, and rough sea surface) parameters. This is the first atmospheric CO2 absorption spectrum study to consider rough-sea-surface effects. The preliminary results show that the root mean squared error (RMSE) and mean absolute difference (MAD) values of the atmospheric CO2 transmittance spectra of GAS are 0.031 and 0.011, respectively, in the 1.61 μm band and 0.05 and 0.033 in the 2.06 μm band, revealing that GAS is competitive among similar CO2 instruments. This study provides a design reference for next-generation GAS instruments and contributes to spectral data CO2 processing in the above-sea atmosphere.