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The use of waste apple-wood as a source of sawdust to cultivate the mushrooms Pleurotus ostreatus and Lentinula edodes is a common practice, but it is imperative to ensure that the wood does not contain unsafe amounts of heavy-metals or pesticide residues. In this study, we sampled and investigated the pollution of heavy metals and pesticide residues in apple-wood from Yantai, Shandong, China and cultivated P. ostreatus and L. edodes using apple-wood as substrate. Heavy metals, pesticide residues, mineral elements, and biological efficiency were measured. Heavy metals were more commonly detected in the 73 apple-wood samples, but serious pollution was only an isolated phenomenon. No Pb was detected in P. ostreatus and L. edodes. The contents of Hg, As, Cd, and Cr were at safe levels. The contents of Ni were equivalent to those of wild mushrooms. Most notably, chlorpyrifos was detected in all the apple-wood tested. However, chlorpyrifos was only detected in L. edodes cultivated with apple sawdust. No other pesticide residues were detected in the other mushroom samples. The biological efficiency of P. ostreatus cultivated by apple sawdust was 89%, which was 80% of the control. The biological efficiency of L. edodes cultivated with apple sawdust was 81%, which did not differ significantly from the control. Apple-wood can replace wild oak as the material for L. edodes cultivation, but producers should ensure that the raw materials are safe. The main materials chosen to cultivate P. ostreatus should balance the two factors of raw material price and biological efficiency.

Assessing students’ productive performance is challenging in China because large class sizes inevitably lead to heavy workloads for teachers. To address this problem, a new method of assessment, teacher-student collaborative assessment (TSCA)—was proposed in 2016 to organize and balance different modes of teacher assessment, self-assessment, peer assessment, and computer-mediated assessment. The present study took one intact class as a case, aiming to explore how TSCA could be carried out efficiently and systematically in the classroom and how students perceived TSCA. Qualitative data obtained include students’ writing drafts and revision, interview, and reflective journals of the students and the teacher. Interview data indicated that the students responded to this type of assessment positively and thought they benefited greatly from the teacher’s instruction and peer discussion. This was triangulated by the students’ reflections in which all the students spoke highly of TSCA and agreed that this method was a good way to pinpoint their weaknesses and help them learn how to revise their essay better. The students reported that they formed a new perception of self-assessment and self-revision and felt that a lot was gained.

Aiming at the problem of electrical life prediction of AC contactor individual, considering that characteristic information and degradation trend of different life stages are different, a comprehensive electrical life analysis method is proposed. First, based on uncertainty reasoning, initial electrical life is qualitatively evaluated to realize an early warning for contactor with poor performance. Secondly, real‐time monitoring of performance degradation inflection point is used to realize the determination of degradation stage. With degradation stage matching mechanism, the quantitative prediction of remaining useful electrical life is realized based on performance inflection point and Elman neural network, thus forming an effective monitoring of the operation state in full life cycle. It is verified by experiment that the proposed method can accurately evaluate initial life grade and predict remaining useful life after performance inflection point. Compared with other methods, the information of electrical life for contactor individual can be accurately and comprehensively obtained. © 2024 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan and Wiley Periodicals LLC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radio Determination Satellite Service (RDSS) is a characteristic service of BeiDou, which can provide users with short message communication services. Since the working frequency of an RDSS system is close to that of a 5G system, the RDSS system is very susceptible to interference from 5G out-of-band radiation. This paper analyzes the compatibility of 5G interference with an RDSS system from the perspective of the signal and the system. Firstly, the compatibility assessment is carried out from the perspective of the signal, the impact of interference on the capture and tracking performance of BeiDou is illustrated, and the safe coexistence distance of the two systems from the perspective of capture probability is obtained from the perspective of the signal. Subsequently, based on the link budget criterion, the interference of 5G base stations and 5G terminals to RDSS receivers under different frequency isolation and the required distance isolation for safe coexistence are analyzed from the system perspective. Finally, from the perspective of civil aviation safety, the aggregate interference is used as an evaluation index to evaluate the interference suffered by the aircraft during takeoff and landing and to obtain the interference suffered by the ground-based 5G base station during the takeoff and landing of the aircraft on different routes and in different 5G propagation environments. The simulation results show that when the airplane is closer to the ground, the ground 5G base stations will cause harmful interference to the RDSS receiver. In this study, the real flight data are combined with the simulation model to obtain the exact influence range of 5G interference on the RDSS system under different viewpoints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To evaluate the status quo of type 1 diabetes (T1D) management and characteristics of hospitalised patients with T1D in China through a nationwide multicentre registry study, the China Diabetes Type 1 Study (CD1S). Materials and Methods: Clinical data from the electronic hospital records of all people with T1D were retrospectively collected in 13 tertiary hospitals across 7 regions of China from January 2016 to December 2021. Patients were defined as newly diagnosed who received a diagnosis of diabetes for less than 3 months. Results: Among the 4993 people with T1D, the median age (range) at diagnosis was 23.0 (1.0‐87.0) years and the median disease duration was 2.0 years. The median haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) level was 10.7%. The prevalence of obesity, overweight, dyslipidemia, and hypertension were 2.5%, 10.8%, 62.5% and 25.9%, respectively. The incidence rate of diabetic ketoacidosis at disease onset was 41.1%, with the highest in children <10 years of age (50.6%). In patients not newly diagnosed, 60.7% were diagnosed with at least one chronic diabetic complication, with the highest proportion (45.3%) of diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Chronic complications were detected in 79.2% of people with T1D duration ≥10 years. Conclusions: In the most recent years, there were still unsatisfactory metabolic control and high incidence of diabetic ketoacidosis as well as chronic diabetic complications among inpatients with T1D in China. The ongoing CD1S prospective study aims to improve the quality of T1D management nationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A homogalacturonan pectin (HG, designated as WJP-F80) was extracted from the peel of winter jujube (Zizyphus jujuba Mill. Cv. Dongzao) and separated via ethanol-graded precipitation. The structural and conformational features were elucidated through HPAEC-PAD, GC-MS, 2D NMR, and HPSEC-MALLS studies. In vivo assessments were carried out to evaluate the hepatoprotective effects of WJP-F80 against CCl4-induced injury of mice. Results showed that WJP-F80 was a linear 1,4-α-galacturonan with partially methyl-esterified at O-6 of GalpA and occasionally acetylation. The Mw of WJP-F80 was determined as 45.3 kDa, the polydispersity was calculated as 1.56, and the Rg was measured as 22.7 nm in 0.1 M NaNO3. The conformational analysis revealed that WJP-F80 exhibited as rigid stiff chain in low Mw range, while aggregation by self-assembly of HG chains lead to high Mw and random coil conformation. In vivo studies indicated that WJP-F80 can protect the livers of mice from acute injury induced via CCl4 by decreasing the serum biochemical markers of alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) to normal levels. This work provides a theoretical basis for the value-added deep processing of winter jujube. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]