The water quality of Hong Kong’s four water control zones (Tolo Harbour and Channel, Port Shelter, Victoria Harbour, and Junk Bay) is of vital importance and has attracted much attention. This study ...aims to more objectively and comprehensively assess the water quality and its health impact based on the four-year monitoring data of 21 parameters collected from four zones. First, physicochemical characteristics of the water system were investigated based on multivariate statistical approaches, including Kruskal-Wallis test, hierarchical cluster analysis, and Mann-Kendall test. Then, water quality levels over space and time and the element sources were analyzed using adaptive-weight water quality index (AWQI) method, and factor analysis, respectively. Finally, the potential harm of trace elements for humankind was identified based on the health risk assessment model. The results revealed that (1) the values of more than half of the water quality parameters exhibited significant interannual changes, and the values of all parameters distinctly varied over space; (2) The water quality status in four water control zones showed a steady and long-term improvement trend from 2016 to 2019; (3) The sources of pollution elements impacting water quality status were related to the comprehensive influence of human activities and natural processes; (4) The carcinogenic risks of all trace elements were negligible or acceptable, while Mn and As may cause noncarcinogenic harm to humankind.
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CEKLJ, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Porphyromonas gingivalis (P. gingivalis) is a key pathogen of periodontitis. Increasing evidence shows that P. gingivalis signals to mitochondria in periodontal cells, including gingival epithelial ...cells, gingival fibroblast cells, immune cells, etc. Mitochondrial dysfunction affects the cellular state and participates in periodontal inflammatory response through the aberrant release of mitochondrial contents. In the current review, it was summarized that P. gingivalis induced mitochondrial dysfunction by altering the mitochondrial metabolic state, unbalancing mitochondrial quality control, prompting mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, and regulating mitochondria-mediated apoptosis. This review outlines the impacts of P. gingivalis and its virulence factors on the mitochondrial function of periodontal cells and their role in periodontitis.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Incomplete reporting has been identified as a major source of avoidable waste in biomedical research. Essential information is often not provided in study reports, impeding the identification, ...critical appraisal, and replication of studies. To improve the quality of reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies, the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (STARD) statement was developed. Here we present STARD 2015, an updated list of 30 essential items that should be included in every report of a diagnostic accuracy study. This update incorporates recent evidence about sources of bias and variability in diagnostic accuracy and is intended to facilitate the use of STARD. As such, STARD 2015 may help to improve completeness and transparency in reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies.
Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) has been widely used for navigation and positioning in many areas, from professional applications to the mass market. However, in the real-time kinematic ...(RTK) positioning, the ambiguities usually cannot be fixed in natural and urban canyon environments due to the high occlusion, strong reflection, and frequent maneuvering. In this paper, the best integer equivariant (BIE) estimation with quality control is proposed. Specifically, the quality control issues based on the observation and state domains are added to the BIE estimator. First, an improved multipath processing approach is used to mitigate the effects of multipath and diffraction, and a modified detection, identification, and adaptation procedure is adopted for processing the outliers and non-line-of-sight reception. For state-domain quality control, a two-step selection and segment estimation are used to refine the ambiguity candidates. Finally, the BIE estimator is obtained. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, two experiments, including natural and urban canyon environments, are conducted. Compared with the float, fixed, and traditional BIE solutions, the BIE solution with quality control has the best positioning performance, including precision and reliability. Moreover, the problem of ambiguity resolution is also alleviated to a great extent. Specifically, in real-time monitoring, the real-time single-epoch positioning accuracy in east, north, and up directions are approximately 0.023, 0.014, and 0.044 m, respectively. For the low-cost urban vehicle data, the proposed method performs best regarding availability, precision, and reliability.
The Indian national capital, Delhi, routinely experiences some of the world's highest urban particulate matter concentrations. While fine particulate matter (PM2.5) mass concentrations in Delhi are ...at least an order of magnitude higher than in many western cities, the particle number (PN) concentrations are not similarly elevated. Here we report on 1.25 years of highly time-resolved particle size distribution (PSD) data in the size range of 12–560 nm. We observed that the large number of accumulation mode particles – that constitute most of the PM2.5 mass – also contributed substantially to the PN concentrations. The ultrafine particle (UFP; Dp<100 nm) fraction of PNs was higher during the traffic rush hours and for daytimes of warmer seasons, which is consistent with traffic and nucleation events being major sources of urban UFPs. UFP concentrations were found to be relatively lower during periods with some of the highest mass concentrations. Calculations based on measured PSDs and coagulation theory suggest UFP concentrations are suppressed by a rapid coagulation sink during polluted periods when large concentrations of particles in the accumulation mode result in high surface area concentrations. A smaller accumulation mode for warmer months results in an increased UFP fraction, likely owing to a comparatively smaller coagulation sink. We also see evidence suggestive of nucleation which may also contribute to the increased UFP proportions during the warmer seasons. Even though coagulation does not affect mass concentrations, it can significantly govern PN levels with important health and policy implications. Implications of a strong accumulation mode coagulation sink for future air quality control efforts in Delhi are that a reduction in mass concentration, especially in winter, may not produce a proportional reduction in PN concentrations. Strategies that only target accumulation mode particles (which constitute much of the fine PM2.5 mass) may even lead to an increase in the UFP concentrations as the coagulation sink decreases.
NR-CBZ was prepared from a ternary mixture in which Naringenin (NR), carbamazepine (CBZ), and NR-CBZ all exist. In order to control the quality of NR-CBZ, vibrational spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR and Raman ...spectroscopy) in conjunction with PLS and PCR has been successfully applied to the simultaneous quantitation of NR, CBZ, and NR-CBZ in ternary mixtures. Finally, from a comparison of the predictive performance and error analysis, it was found that Raman spectroscopy performs with higher accuracy at the whole spectral range. The PLS model with Savitzky-Golay filter algorithms at the whole spectral range resulted in a better result which predicted the concentration of Naringenin, carbamazepine, and NR-CBZ.
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•The first quantitative method of naringenin-carbamazepine cocrystal by spectrums.•The PLS and PCR were applied to cocrystal’s quantitative, firstly.•Several pre-processing algorithms were evaluated systematically.
Naringenin, commonly found in citrus fruits, is one of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) in naringenin-carbamazepine drug-drug cocrystal (NR-CBZ). In the preparation of cocrystal, quantitative determination of NR-CBZ is essential for the quality control. In this paper, ATR-FTIR and Raman spectroscopies combined with partial least squares (PLS) and principal component regression (PCR) were used to quantify NR-CBZ in the mixtures. To improve the accuracy of the prediction models, median, denoising, multiple scattering correction (MSC), first and second order derivatives, Savitzky-Golay filter and SNV were used and their performance was evaluated using prediction errors in combination with different spectral ranges. Raman spectra, PLS combined with Savitzky-Golay filter over the entire spectral range were found to determine the best content prediction result for NR-CBZ. The root mean square error of cross-validation (RMSECV), root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) and squared correlation coefficient (R2) of the model were 0.101, 0.132 and 0.870, respectively.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
High-throughput sequencing has revolutionized microbial ecology, but read quality remains a considerable barrier to accurate taxonomy assignment and α-diversity assessment for microbial communities. ...We demonstrate that high-quality read length and abundance are the primary factors differentiating correct from erroneous reads produced by Illumina GAIIx, HiSeq and MiSeq instruments. We present guidelines for user-defined quality-filtering strategies, enabling efficient extraction of high-quality data and facilitating interpretation of Illumina sequencing results.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Spatially explicit urban air quality information is important for developing effective air quality control measures. Traditionally, urban air quality is measured by networks of stationary monitors ...that are not universally available and sparsely sited. Mobile air quality monitoring using equipped vehicles is a promising alternative but has focused on vehicle-level experiments and lacks fleet-level demonstration. Here, we equipped 260 electric vehicles in a ride-hailing fleet in Beijing, China with low-cost sensors to collect real-time, spatial-resolved data on fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations. Using this data, we developed a decision tree model to infer the distribution of PM2.5 concentrations in Beijing at 1 km by 1 km and 1 h resolution. Our results are able to show both short- and long-term variations of urban PM2.5 concentrations and identify local air pollution hotspots. Compared with a benchmark model that only uses data from stationary monitoring sits, our model has shown significant improvement with the coefficient of determination increased from 0.56 to 0.80 and root mean square error decreased from 12.6 to 8.1 μg/m3. To the best of our knowledge, this study collects the largest mobile sensor data for urban air quality monitoring, which are augmented by state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to derive high-quality urban air pollution mapping. Our results demonstrate the potential and necessity of using fleet vehicles as routine mobile sensors combined with advanced data science methods to provide high-resolution urban air quality monitoring.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM
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