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In response to water scarcity in the Bashang area of northwest Hebei Province, a cold and arid region in north China, and to address the diminishing groundwater levels caused by pumping irrigation, this study investigated the impact of rainwater tank size and water supply on kidney beans production in greenhouses under various precipitation scenarios to determine the production potential and development strategies for regional precipitation resources. Under the background of average annual precipitation, kidney bean yield increased with increasing reservoir volume and shorter irrigation cycles. Under a 4-day irrigation cycle, the water demand satisfaction rate of kidney beans reached 100% water demand when the rainwater tank size was 15.7 m3. Against the wide variation in multi-year regional precipitation from 1992 to 2023, the annual effect of rainwater harvest was simulated using precipitation data collected 20 years with an 80% precipitation guarantee rate. The average minimum yield reduction rate obtained was 9.4%, and the corresponding minimum rainwater tank size was 29.5 m3. By superimposing the rainwater harvested in the shed and nonshed areas, the volume of the reservoir without yield reduction could be reduced to 20.0 m3. The sum of discharged and inventory water was much greater than the water scarcity in each water supply situation. Simulating and analyzing the effect of the relationship between rainwater tank size and water supply on rainwater harvesting in regional farmland by year provides important data affecting the construction of regional rainwater storage facilities and water supply efficiency. To achieve a high, stable yield of kidney beans grown in a greenhouse with shed film and shed area rainwater harvesting in north China, 2.6 m3 supplementary groundwater irrigation is still needed during the annual growing season. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abnormal glycemia is frequently along with nephritis, whose pathogenesis is unexplicit. Here, we investigated the effects of abnormal glucose on the renal glomerulus epithelial cells by stimulating immortalized bovine renal glomerulus epithelial (MDBK) cells with five different levels of glucose, including low glucose (2.5 mM for 48 h, LG), normal glucose (5 mM for 48 h, NG), high glucose (25 mM for 48 h, HG), increasing glucose (24 h of 2.5 mM glucose followed by 24 h of 25 mM, IG), and reducing glucose (24 h of 25 mM glucose followed by 24 h of 2.5 mM, RG). The results showed that LG and RG treatments had nonsignificant effects (p > 0.05) on the viability of MDBK cells. HG treatment decreased the viabilities of cells (p < 0.01) without triggering an apparent inflammatory response by activating the nox4/ROS/p53/caspase-3-mediated apoptosis pathway. IG treatment decreased the viabilities of cells significantly (p < 0.01) with high levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-1β and IL-18 in the supernatant (p < 0.05) by triggering the txnip/nlrp3/gsdmd-mediated pyroptosis pathway. These results indicated that the process of glucose increase rather than the constant high glucose was the main cause of abnormal glucose-induced MDBK cell inflammatory death, prompting that the process of glycemia increases might be mainly responsible for the nephritis in diabetic nephropathy, underlining the importance of glycemic control in diabetes patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lean electrolyte usage in lithium–sulfur battery (LSB) meets the demand of the high energy density. However, lean condition makes the electrolyte‐related interface discrete, leading to retardation of ion transfer that depends on interfaces. Consequently, electrochemical reactions face restraint. Herein, lithium polyacrylate acid (LiPAA) with short‐chain anions (molecular weight of 2000) is introduced into the cathode. Because of the polysulfide (PS)‐philic instinct of the short‐chain PAA anions, short‐chain PS is captured inside of the cathode. In addition, LiPAA supplies Li+ to the short‐chain PS captured. The strong interaction between Li2S4 and LiPAA effectively decreases Li2S4 migration to the anode during discharging. In a sense, the ion mass transfer pattern is thus changed comparing to traditional long‐way mode between cathode and anode. Galvanostatic intermittent titration technique (GITT) proves that the interfacial reaction resistance is greatly decreased in the region where Li2Sx (x ≤ 4) reduction contributes most. In the same time, the reversibility of electrochemical reduction/oxidation is improved. Owing to the accelerated Li2Sx (x ≤ 4) reduction, Li implanting of only 0.3 wt.% plus O introduction up to 1.4 wt.% enables the LSB perform well even with 1/4 of regular electrolyte dosage (5 μL mg−1) and high‐sulfur loading (4.2 mg cm−2), increasing its rate capacity C0.8/0.5 from 52.6% (without the LiPAA) to 92.3% (with the LiPAA) as well as a capacity of 518.7 mAh g−1 after 400 cycles at 0.8 mA cm−2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In present work, mulberry‐like core‐shell structured C@MnO2 was synthesized as electrodes for Li‐ion batteries and pseudo‐capacitors. Benefiting from the nanoporous shell and conductive carbon core that improve the ion transference and conductivity, the C@MnO2 delivers excellent electrochemical performance in terms of a stable lithium storage capacity of 553 mAh g−1 after 250 cycles under 0.5 A g−1 and a high capacitance up to 274.44F g−1 under 1 A g−1 in 6 M KOH and the capacity retention is 90.2% after 5000 cycles. Such electrochemical properties combined with the facile synthesis route make C@MnO2 promising electrode materials for energy storage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]