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Abstract This study focuses on exploring the acoustic differences between synthesized Guzheng pieces and real Guzheng performances, with the aim of improving the quality of synthesized Guzheng music. A dataset with consideration of generalizability with multiple sources and genres is constructed as the basis of analysis. Classification accuracy up to 93.30% with a single feature put forward the fact that although the synthesized Guzheng pieces in subjective perception evaluation are recognized by human listeners, there is a very significant difference to the performed Guzheng music. With features compensating to each other, a combination of only three features can achieve a nearly perfect classification accuracy of 99.73%, with the essential two features related to spectral flux and an auxiliary feature related to MFCC. The conclusion of this work points out a potential future improvement direction in Guzheng synthesized algorithms with spectral flux properties.

IntroductionThe number of chronic respiratory disease (CRD) individuals worldwide has been continuously increasing. Numerous studies have shown that greenness can improve chronic respiratory health issues through different mechanisms, with inconsistent evidence. By quantitatively summarizing existing studies, our purpose is to determine the connection between greenness exposure and various chronic respiratory health.MethodsWe conducted a comprehensive search on PubMed, EMBASE, and Web of Science core databases to identify relevant studies on the correlation between greenness exposure and chronic respiratory health issues. Studies published up to January 2023 were included in the search. The study used the most frequent indicator (normalized difference vegetation index [NDVI]) as the definition of greenness exposure.ResultsWe finally identified 35 studies for meta-analysis. We calculated pooled effects across studies using a random-effects model and conducted a subgroup analysis by age and buffer zones to discuss the effects on chronic respiratory health issues. This study showed that 0.1 increments in NDVI were significantly related to lower rates of asthma incidence, lung cancer incidence, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) mortality risk; the pooled RRs were 0.92 (95% CI: 0.85–0.98), 0.62 (95% CI: 0.40–0.95), and 0.95 (95% CI: 0.92– 0.99), respectively. For the age subgroup, the higher greenness exposure level was related to the incidence rate of asthma among teenagers aged 13–18years (RR: 0.91; 95% CI: 0.83–0.99). For the buffer subgroup, a positive relationship with greenness exposure and asthma incidence/prevalence at 200–300m and 800– 1000m buffers, as well as the COPD mortality at 800–1000m buffer, the pooled RRs were 0.92 (95% CI: 0.86–0.98), 0.87 (95% CI: 0.81–0.93), and 0.93 (95% CI: 0.88– 0.98), respectively. Evidence of publication bias was not detected in this study.DiscussionOur study is the first global meta-analysis between greenness and various CRDs to report an inverse association. Further research is needed in order to determine the effect of greenness exposure on different CRDs. Therefore, when planning for green development, more consideration must be given to public health and green management as intervention measures.https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPEROFILES/384029_STRATEGY_20230116.pdf

Pancreatitis is one of the most common inflammatory diseases of the pancreas caused by autodigestion induced by excessive premature protease activation. However, recognition of novel pathophysiological mechanisms remains a still challenge. Both genetic and environmental factors contribute to the pathogenesis of pancreatitis, and the gut microbiota is a potential source of an environmental effect. In recent years, several new frontiers in gut microbiota and genetic risk assessment research have emerged and improved the understanding of the disease. These investigations showed that the disease progression of pancreatitis could be regulated by the gut microbiome, either through a translocation influence or in a host immune response manner. Meanwhile, the onset of the disease is also associated with the heritage of a pathogenic mutation, and the disease progression could be modified by genetic risk factors. In this review, we focused on the recent advances in the role of gut microbiota in the pathogenesis of pancreatitis, and the genetic susceptibility in pancreatitis.

Engineering and technological breakthroughs in sustainability play a crucial role in reducing carbon emissions. An important aspect of this is the active participation of enterprises in addressing carbon reduction as a systemic approach. In response to government incentives in the People’s Republic of China, Chinese enterprises have developed carbon reduction systems to align their organizational goals with national long-term plans. This paper evaluates the carbon reduction schemes employed by six companies as a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. To this end, we propose a new hybrid MCDM method called the grey-MEREC-MAIRCA method. This method combines the recently developed method based on the removal effects of criteria (MEREC) for weighting and multi-attribute ideal-real comparative analysis (MAIRCA) based on the grey system theory. The proposed hybrid method provides the additional benefit of accounting for uncertainty in decision making. Notable findings of this research, based on the decision-maker scores, are that the control of direct carbon emissions and energy-saving efficiency are top priorities. In contrast, committing to corporate social responsibility through carbon public welfare and information disclosure are considered lesser priorities. Furthermore, the ranking results obtained using this method are compared with those from the classical weighted sum model and the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), confirming the selection of the best company. Despite the limitation of the proposed method and the additional steps needed in the evaluation, it opens up opportunities for future research to develop simpler MCDM methods under uncertainty.