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With the rapid economic development, potentially toxic elements (PTEs) are continuously migrating, transforming, and enriching in farmland through atmospheric deposition and other media, posing threats to food security and human health. At present, there are few quantitative studies on the health risks of PTEs sources in farmland. In this study, absolute principal component score-multiple linear regression (APCS-MLR) receptor model was used to quantify the pollution sources of PTEs in farmland in Suzhou of Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone, China. Combined with geoaccumulation index (I

Objective: Chloral Hydrate is the most commonly used sedative for Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) test. The aim of this study was to retrospectively analyze the safety and effectiveness of Chloral Hydrate in patients undergoing ABR tests through a single-center and large sample size cross-sectional study. Methods: Data were collected from December 2015 to March 2022, which included 7,176 ABR tests (6,106 patients). Basic information was collected, then telephone follow-up was conducted for patients with two or more consecutive tests less than 60 days, and administration method, failure performance, and adverse events were collected. Total sedation failure rate, sedation failure rates in different age groups (≤0.5 years, 0.5-3 years, 3-12 years, ≥12 years) and incidence of adverse events were calculated. Results: A total of 4,967(69.21%) ABR tests were younger than 3 years of age. The sedation failure rate was 3.11% with a Chloral Hydrate dose of 30 mg/kg of weight, which ranged from 1.44% to 4.31% in different age groups. In the sedation failure tests, insufficient sedation was found in 74.44% of the tests. The incidence of adverse events was 0.35%, with most commonly vomiting. Conclusion: The sedation failure rate and the incidence of adverse events in this study are relatively low compared with other previous studies, and Chloral Hydrate can be considered a safe and effective sedative with the permissible dose. However, there were still many patients who failed to complete the test due to insufficient sedation (mostly infants and children), which imply that alternative sedatives with easier preparation process are needed.

The study aimed to synthesize novel zeolite substrates modified with four types of ZnAl-LDHs including Cl-LDHs(1:1), Cl-LDHs(3:1), CO

Textbooks are essential components in the learning process. They assist in achieving educational learning outcomes and developing social and cultural values. However, limited studies provide comprehensive frameworks for comparing textbooks. Most have focused on a specific textbook perspective within a particular discipline. Therefore, this study used a triangulation method to develop a comprehensive framework for textbook comparison. Through a systematic literature review and a two-round Fuzzy Delphi method with 155 textbook experts, a textbook comparison framework with four indicators (structure, content, expectations, and language) was developed. Additionally, some of the developed framework indicators and sub-indicators could be relevant for comparing textbooks in a particular discipline. For example, the page count sub-indicator was proven to be useful for comparing humanities and social science textbooks but not natural science textbooks. The findings of this study could facilitate the process of comparing textbooks, hence promoting the understanding of knowledge design and acquisition in different contexts, such as when comparing textbooks from different countries.

This study aimed at gaining an in-depth understanding of how teaching thinking was adopted and diffused as an instructional innovation in primary schools from principals’ perspectives. Using Rogers...

To investigate the mechanism of nitrogen removal by anthracites and enhance the nitrogen removal efficiency in constructed wetland, three kinds of layered double hydroxides (MgFe-LDHs, MgCo-LDHs, MgAl-LDHs) were prepared by co-precipitation under alkaline conditions and coated in situ on the surface of anthracites to synthesize core-shell anthracites/Mg-LDHs composites. Experiments with different treatments (columns loaded with original anthracites and anthracite/Mg-LDH composites) were conducted to study the nitrogen removal efficiency of domestic wastewater in constructed wetlands. The results of nitrogen removal experiments showed that the anthracite/MgAl-LDH composite had the best performance with average removal rates of 53.69%, 72.91%, and 47.43% for TN, NH4+-N, and organic nitrogen, respectively. Modification changed the denitrification mode of the anthracites. The data of adsorption isothermal experiments were fitted better with the Freundlich model. The amount of ammonifier, nitrosobacteria, nitrobacter, and denitrifier on the surface of the Mg-LDH-modified anthracite was higher than that of the original anthracite. The performance of the anthracite in removing nitrogen was attributed to physical interception, chemical adsorption, and biological degradation. Moreover, the modified anthracites were superior to the original anthracite in the chemical adsorption and biodegradation, which indicated that coating the Mg-LDHs on the surface of common anthracite was a potential method to improve the nitrogen removal efficiency of domestic wastewater and to restore the eutrophic water body.

The widely used SiO

The number of disabled students is rapidly increasing worldwide, but many schools and universities have failed to keep up with their learning needs. Consequently, large numbers of disabled students are dropping out of school or university. Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) contain several relevant features, including the possibility of reusing and remixing, which have led researchers to consider using OER and OEP to facilitate meeting the needs of disabled and functional-diverse students in order to increase their accessibility and e-inclusion capabilities in educational settings. The very limited research to date, however, has provided a limited holistic understanding of accessibility within OER and OEP in order to aid researchers in pursuing future directions in this field. Therefore, this paper systematically reviewed 31 papers to provide insights about functional diversity within OER and OEP. The results obtained highlighted that accessibility is still in its infancy within OER and that researchers should focus more on considering the four accessibility principles — perceivable, operable, understandable and robust — when providing OER. Additionally, while several researchers have focused on several issues related to accessibility within OER, limited focus has been given to assistive technologies using OER. Finally, this paper provides several recommendations to increase accessibility within OER and help design more accessible OER for students with functional diversity.

Inoculation with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and additional aeration (AA), as two approaches to improve the functioning of treatment wetlands, can further promote the capacity of wetlands to purify pollutants. The extent to which, and mechanisms by which, AMF and AA purify wetlands polluted by combined heavy metals (HMs) are not well understood. In this study, the effects and mechanisms of AMF and/or AA on combined HMs removal in vertical flow constructed wetlands (VFCWs) with the Phragmites australis (reeds) were investigated at different HMs concentrations. The results showed that (1) AA improved the AMF colonization in VFCWs and AMF accumulated the combined HMs in their structures; (2) AMF inoculation and/or AA significantly promoted the reeds growth and antioxidant enzymes activities, thereby alleviating oxidative stress; (3) AMF inoculation and AA significantly enhanced the removal rates of Pb, Zn, Cu, and Cd under the stress of high combined HMs concentrations comparing to the control check (CK) treatment (autoclaved AMF inoculation and no aeration), which increased by 22.72%, 30.31%, 12.64%, and 50.22%, respectively; (4) AMF inoculation and/or AA significantly promoted the combined HMs accumulation in plant roots and substrates and altered the distribution of HMs at the subcellular level. We therefore conclude that AMF inoculation and/or AA in VFCWs improves the purification of combined HM-polluted water, and the VFCWs-reeds-AMF/AA associations exhibit great potential for application in remediation of combined HM-polluted wastewater.

The robust optimization of logistics networks can improve the ability to provide sustainable service and business sustainability after uncertain disruptions. The existing works on the robust design of logistics networks insisted that it is very difficult to build a robust network topology, and this kind of optimization problem is an NP-hard problem that cannot be easily solved. In nature, Physarum often needs to build a robust and efficient topological network to complete the foraging process. Recently, some researchers used Physarum to build a robust transportation network in professional biological laboratories and received a good performance. Inspired by the foraging behavior of natural Physarum, we proposed a novel artificial Physarum swarm system to optimize the logistics network robustness just on a personal computer. In our study, first, the robustness optimization problem of a logistics network is described as a topology optimization model based on graph theory, and four robustness indicators are proposed to build a multi-objective robustness function of logistics network topology, including the relative robustness, the betweenness robustness, the edge robustness and the closeness robustness. Second, an artificial Physarum swarm system is developed to simulate the foraging behavior of a natural Physarum swarm to solve this kind of complex robust optimization problem. The proposed artificial Physarum swarm system can search for optimal solutions by expansion and contraction operations and the exchange of information with each other through a self-learning experience and neighbor-learning experiences. The plasmodium of Physarum forms the edges, and the external food sources simulate the logistics nodes. Third, an experimental example is designed on the basis of Mexico City to verify the proposed method, and the results reveal that the artificial Physarum swarm system can help us effectively improve the logistics network robustness under disruptions and receive a better performance than natural Physarum. The article may be helpful for both theory and practice to explore the robust optimization in logistics operation and provide engineers with an opportunity to resist logistics disruptions and risk loss by a novel artificial intelligence tool.

The comprehensive quality assessment of farmland soil is critical for agricultural production and soil ecological protection. Currently, there is no systematic method for conducting a comprehensive quality assessment of farmland soil; subsequently, as the most developed economic area in China, the comprehensive quality assessment of farmland soil in the Yangtze River Delta is lacking. We chose the farmland soil of Suzhou city as the research object. The soil fertility index (SFI) and soil environment index (SEI) were calculated with the membership function and Nemerow index. Finally, the comprehensive assessment of soil quality was achieved with the TOPSIS model. The results showed that the average values of soil pH, SOM, TN, AHN, AP, and AK were 6.44 (slightly acidic), 28.17 g/kg (medium), 1.63 g/kg (rich), 118.16 mg/kg (medium), 38.31 mg/kg (rich), and 160.63 mg/kg (rich), respectively. For the concentrations of heavy metals, including Cr, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb, in 122 soil samples, the percentages exceeding the background values of Jiangsu province were 5.74%, 8.20%, 8.20%, 10.66%, 86.07%, and 84.43%, respectively. Cd and Pb were the main heavy metal pollutants on farmlands. The soil samples with SFI values below the medium level (SFI < 0.6) accounted for 44.26%, and samples with SEI values below the medium level (SEI < 0.6) accounted for 13.12%. The values of the soil quality index (SQI) ranged from 0.171 to 0.996, with an average SQI value of 0.586 (very poor—V), and approximately half of the farmland soil quality in Suzhou city needed to be further improved. In a word, this study provides a theoretical basis and scientific support for the quality assessment and rational utilization of farmland soil.

In this study, the fluctuating profiles of physicochemical and microbial characterizations along different filling heights of continuously up-flow solid-phase denitrification (SPD) columns packed with polycaprolactone (PCL) were investigated. It was found both the PCL filling area and non-filling area made significant contributions to treatment performance and denitrification mainly occurred near the bottom of the filling column. Nitrate displayed a high proportional removal (≥98.7%) among all the cases except the one with the lowest filling ratio (FR30) and highest NLR (3.99 ± 0.12 gN/(L·d)), while nitrite and ammonium displayed a weak accumulation in final effluents (nitrite ≤ 0.40 mg/L; ammonium ≤ 0.98 mg/L). The intensity of PCL hydrolysis in the top substrate was stronger than those in the middle or bottom. Both dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA) and microbial lysis contributed to ammonium accumulation, and nitrate was mainly removed via traditional denitrification and DNRA. JGI_0000069-P22_unclassified and Gracilibacteria_unclassified might contribute to denitrification.

To improve the adsorption performance of Cd(II) by maifanite in constructed rapid infiltration systems (CRIS), Mg-layered double hydroxides (MgAl-LDHs, MgFe-LDHs) are prepared by a co-precipitation method and in-situ coated on the surface of original maifanite. Characterization of the successful LDHs-coating modification is realized by the following: scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and Brunauer Emmett Teller (BET). In the purification experiments, the average removal rates of Cd(II) were 97.66% for maifanite/MgAl-LDHs and 97.54% for maifanite/MgFe-LDHs, approximately 11% greater than for the original maifanite. Isothermal adsorption experiments and adsorption kinetic experiments were conducted to explore the Cd(II) adsorption mechanism. The modified maifanite demonstrated a higher Langmuir adsorption capacity and stronger surface bond energies compared to the original maifanite. The adsorption type of Cd(II) by maifanite/Mg-LDHs and original maifanite was monolayer adsorption based mainly on chemical adsorption. Furthermore, the extracellular polymeric substances and dehydrogenase activities of the microorganisms were measured and analyzed to study the effect of microorganisms on the removal of Cd(II) in the test columns. High-throughput sequencing technology was also applied to analyze the composition and diversity of bacterial communities. Based on a simple estimation, the synthesis cost of maifanite/MgAl-LDHs was only ¥ 0.33/Kg. In brief, maifanite/Mg-LDHs is an efficient and economical substrate for a CRIS for Cd(II) removal.

In this study, MgAl-LDHs and MgFe-LDHs were synthesized via co-precipitation method and in situ coated on pre-washed zeolites through dipping process in beaker. The obtained modified zeolites and original zeolites were utilized as substrates of constructed rapid infiltration systems (CRIS) to remove hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) in wastewater. Micro-morphology features and chemical composition of zeolites before and after modification were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (XRF). The SEM, XRD, and XRF results demonstrated the feasibility of LDHs coated on the surface of the original zeolites. Purification experiments in simulated CRIS showed that the Cr(VI) removal rates of zeolites/MgAl-LDHs increased by 110.03% on average every concentration (0.5-16 mg L-1) compared with the original zeolites under 24-h HRT. The adsorption capacity of zeolites/MgAl-LDHs reached 66.98 mg kg-1 at 32 mg L-1 initial Cr(VI) concentration, which is nearly twice that of the original zeolites (33.24 mg kg-1) and 1.5 times higher than that of zeolites/MgFe-LDHs (42.01 mg kg-1). Isothermal adsorption tests showed that the Freundlich isotherm equations gave better fitting to the adsorption process. And zeolites/MgAl-LDHs showed a best fit with pseudo-second-order model which meant that the adsorption of Cr(VI) by zeolites/MgAl-LDHs was dominated by chemisorption. Thermodynamic parameters showed that the process of adsorption for the three substrates was spontaneous and endothermic intrinsically. Zeolites/MgAl-LDHs also displayed nearly 60% desorption rate with low concentration eluent (0.01 mol L-1 NaCl). Therefore, zeolites/MgAl-LDHs were chosen out as an optimal substrate for removing Cr(VI) from wastewater in CRIS. Graphical Abstract.

With the highly increasing demands, multi-label classification task has attracted more attention in recent years. However, most of traditional methods usually need tedious handcrafted features. Motivated by the remarkably strong performance of deep neural networks on the practically important tasks of natural language processing, we adopted various popular models, such as CNN, RNN and RCNN, to perform multi-label classification tasks for Chinese recipes. Based on the real Chinese recipe data extracted from websites, we compared the performance of deep neural networks in multi-label classification. We also compared them with the baseline models, such as Naive Bayes, MLKNN and fastText. In order to improve the performance of the these models, we adopted the data augmentation method and then conducted extensive experiments to compare different models in our task. The results showed that RCNN model performs the best and can get the highest score. The models based on deep neural networks all performed better than the baseline models. The results also showed that the data augmentation method is a practical method to improve the performance of all models.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face teaching was banned, and more than one billion students did not return to school. While both teachers and students found themselves in a very challenging situation as they both need to quickly adapt to remote teaching and learning respectively, students with disabilities found themselves in even more difficult situations. This might be because they lack several assistive technologies at home that facilitate the learning process. The World Health Organization (WHO) pointed out that special attention should be paid to people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study investigates the applied remote teaching methods of students with disabilities, as well as the faced challenges. In this context, a survey was created and sent out to several stakeholders (pedagogues, teachers, school directors, etc.) that are directly involved in special education to collect their inputs. Finally, based on the collected experiences, this study presents recommendations and best practices to facilitate remote teaching in crisis for students with disabilities.

The Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) has received great attention and achieved great successes in many applications. It is still being intensively developed and get many different variants of GAN. GAN was proposed to generate similar-looking samples to those in the training data sets. The emergence of GAN and its variants also provide new ideas for food pairing. In this paper, we have tried to invent a novel technique for food pairing using GAN and its variants. Specifically, we adopted the Long Short Term-Memory (LSTM) as the generator and the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) as the discriminator. The sequences of recipes as the input will be encoded by LSTM into target sequences, which were finally identified by CNN to compute the differences between the generated recipes and their original input. The CNN will give a feedback to LSTM to optimize its parameters until the end of training process. As different customers have different food tastes, we have improved our method and invented new model using Conditional GAN (CGAN) to incorporate the personal demands in food pairing. We have conducted extensive experiments on real data sets to evaluate the efficiency of our proposed methods. The experimental results proved that our methods can generate better food pairings.

Establish the prokaryotic expression system of Amuc_1100 protein from Akkermansia muciniphila, and analyze the effects of this protein on the body weight, blood glucose, intestinal barrier function and Akkermansia muciniphila abundance in rats fed with high-fat diet combined streptozotocin(STZ)injection.PCR product of Amuc_1100 Gene(Gene ID: 34174504) was linked to the double enzyme-digested pET-26 b plasmid vector. The recombinant expression plasmid pET-26 b-Amuc_1100 then transformed into E. Coli BL21. The verified clones through sequence analysis were induced by the addition of IPTG. High-fat diet rats were interfered with the purified protein at high and low doses. The changes of body weight, blood glucose, intestinal barrier function and Akkermansia muciniphila abundance were analyzed.The recombinant expression plasmid pET-26 b-Amuc_1100 was successfully constructed. The sequencing result showed 100% similarity to the Amuc_1100 gene in GenBank. The molecular weight of the protein obtained was 42 kDa. The intervention of Amuc_1100 protein can reduce the weight of rats fed with high-fat diet combined STZ injection to some extent, improve barrier function and increase the abundance of Akkermansia muciniphila in intestine.The prokaryotic expression system of Amuc_1100 protein was successfully constructed, which has a certain regulatory effect on rats fed with high-fat diet combined STZ injection.

To enhance the hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) removal performance of simulated constructed rapid infiltration systems (CRIS) with quartz sand (QS) substrate, QS coated with Al-layered double hydroxides (Al-LDHs@QS) was prepared by the co-precipitation method under alkaline conditions. A scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) and X-ray diffractometer (XRD) were used to characterize QS before and after modification. The result showed that the Al-LDHs were successfully coated on the surface of the QS. The isotherm adsorption experiment indicated that compared with the original QS, the adsorption property of the modified QS changed from monolayered chemical adsorption to multilayered physical adsorption, perhaps because of different types of adsorption forces. Moreover, the adsorption capacity of modified QS was significantly enhanced and ZnAl-LDHs@QS had a maximum adsorption capacity (1428.57 mg·kg−1) nearly 6 times greater than that of the original QS (232.56 mg·kg−1). Adsorption experiments at different pH showed that the adsorption capacity of ZnAl-LDHs@QS gradually increased as acidity decreased. High-throughput sequencing revealed that the relative abundance of chrome-tolerant microorganisms at the phylum and family levels were increased in modified QS compared with original QS. Hemocytometer counting revealed enhanced microbial quantity on the surface of QS after modification. The content of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) and the enzymatic activity of the microorganisms adhered to the surface of modified and original QS were detected, results showed that Al-LDHs had an obvious influence on the promotion of EPS secretion and enhanced the enzymatic activity of microorganisms. These changes indicated that the modified QS created better conditions for microorganism growth, and the improved microbial effect caused strong biosorption, resulting in greatly enhanced Cr(VI) removal. Thus, ZnAl-LDHs@QS is a better choice for CRIS to remove Cr(VI).

With the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in China, the Chinese government decided to ban any type of face-to-face teaching, disrupting classes and resulting in over 270 million students being unable to return to their universities/schools. Therefore, the Ministry of Education (MoE) launched an initiative titled ‘Ensuring learning undisrupted when classes are disrupted’ by reforming the entire educational system and including an online education component. However, this quick reform in this unexpected critical situation of widespread COVID-19 cases harbours several challenges, such as the lack of time and teacher/student isolation. This paper discusses the possibility of using open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) as an effective educational solution to overcome these challenges. Particularly, this study presents a generic OEP framework built on existing open-practice definitions. It then presents, based on this framework and based on the challenges reported by several Chinese education specialists during two national online seminars, a set of guidelines for the effective use of OER and OEP for both teaching and learning. Finally, this study presents some recommendations for the better adoption of OER and OEP in the future. The findings of this study can help researchers and educators apply OER and OEP for better learning experiences and outcomes during the COVID-19 outbreak.