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•Bottom ash from municipal solid waste incinerators was a source of microplastics.•Abundance of microplastics ranged from 1.9–565 n/kg-bottom ash.•Polypropylene was the predominant ...polymer types.•Per metric ton waste will produce 360 to 102,000 MPs in bottom ash.
It is widely accepted that incineration can permanently eliminate plastic waste. However, unburned material still exists in the bottom ash that is a solid residue from incinerators. In this study, microplastics exacted from bottom ash in 12 mass burn incinerators, one bottom ash disposal center and four fluidized bed incinerators were identified by micro-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The results showed that bottom ash was a neglected microplastics source with an abundance of 1.9–565 n/kg, which indicated that per metric ton waste produce 360 to 102,000 microplastic particles after incineration. Nine types of plastics were identified, of which polypropylene and polystyrene were the predominant types. Microplastics sized between 50 μm and 1 mm accounted for 74 %. Granules, fragments, film, and fibers accounted for 43 %, 34 %, 18 %, and 5 % of the microplastics, respectively. The abundance of microplastics differed significantly with whether the local waste was source-separated, the local gross domestic product per capita, and the types of furnace. The global microplastics emission from incineration bottom ash was then estimated. Our observations provide empirical evidence proving that incineration is not the terminator of plastic waste, and bottom ash is a potential source of microplastics released into the environment.
Caesarean section (CS) rates continue to evoke worldwide concern because of their steady increase, lack of consensus on the appropriate CS rate and the associated additional short- and long-term ...risks and costs. We present the latest CS rates and trends over the last 24 years.
We collected nationally-representative data on CS rates between 1990 to 2014 and calculated regional and subregional weighted averages. We conducted a longitudinal analysis calculating differences in CS rates as absolute change and as the average annual rate of increase (AARI).
According to the latest data from 150 countries, currently 18.6% of all births occur by CS, ranging from 6% to 27.2% in the least and most developed regions, respectively. Latin America and the Caribbean region has the highest CS rates (40.5%), followed by Northern America (32.3%), Oceania (31.1%), Europe (25%), Asia (19.2%) and Africa (7.3%). Based on the data from 121 countries, the trend analysis showed that between 1990 and 2014, the global average CS rate increased 12.4% (from 6.7% to 19.1%) with an average annual rate of increase of 4.4%. The largest absolute increases occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean (19.4%, from 22.8% to 42.2%), followed by Asia (15.1%, from 4.4% to 19.5%), Oceania (14.1%, from 18.5% to 32.6%), Europe (13.8%, from 11.2% to 25%), Northern America (10%, from 22.3% to 32.3%) and Africa (4.5%, from 2.9% to 7.4%). Asia and Northern America were the regions with the highest and lowest average annual rate of increase (6.4% and 1.6%, respectively).
The use of CS worldwide has increased to unprecedented levels although the gap between higher- and lower-resource settings remains. The information presented is essential to inform policy and global and regional strategies aimed at optimizing the use of CS.
In this paper, pulse laser cleaning and angle grinder polishing were used to clean the surface rust of carbon steel, and the cleaning effects of different cleaning methods for carbon steel surface ...rust were studied. The change of the micro-region morphology and element composition of the cleaned surface was analyzed. Comparative experiments were conducted on the corrosion resistance and paint anticorrosion ability of cleaned metal surfaces. Through comparison and analysis, the use of laser cleaning technology can improve the surface cleanliness and corrosion resistance of metals, reduce maintenance times, and extend service life. Laser cleaning machines with a power of 100 W or above can effectively perform precision cleaning and can be widely promoted in the field of power systems.
Polydopamine (PD) coating and PD-graft-poly(ethylene glycol) (PD-g-PEG) surface modification can be used to improve the anti-fouling properties of membrane surface. This work studies the features of ...polyethersulfone (PES) membranes with different molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) modified by PD coating and PD-g-PEG modification on their morphology, stability, and adsorbability. The stability of modified membranes was evaluated by immersion tests. Bovine serum albumin (BSA) was used as a model foulant to investigate the anti-biofouling performance of modified membranes. The results of stability tests showed that both modified membranes had a fine mechanical stability, and the PD-g-PEG modified membrane had a better chemical stability. The images of FESEM and AFM indicate the modifications of PD coating and PD-g-PEG changes the morphology of the PES ultrafiltration (UF) membrane apparently. The modified membranes had less flux reduction in filtration and lower adsorptive amount of BSA in isothermal adsorption tests. The PD-g-PEG modification improves the stability of the PES membrane and the adsorbability for BSA more significantly.
•Roughness of the membrane surface increases after the modifications.•The layer stability of coated PD and grafting PD-g-PEG was evaluated.•The modifications of coating and grafting reduce the adsorptive fouling of BSA.
Hospital wastewater contains a variety of human antibiotics and pathogens, which makes the treatment of hospital wastewater essential. However, there is a lack of research on these pollutants at ...hospital wastewater treatment plants. In this study, the characteristics and removal of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the independent treatment processes of hospitals of different scales (primary hospital, H1; secondary hospital, H2; and tertiary hospital, H3) were investigated. The occurrence of antibiotics and ARGs in wastewater from three hospitals varied greatly. The first-generation cephalosporin cefradine was detected at a concentration of 2.38 μg/L in untreated wastewater from H1, while the fourth-generation cephalosporin cefepime had the highest concentration, 540.39 μg/L, at H3. Ofloxacin was detected at a frequency of 100% and had removal efficiencies of 44.2%, 51.5%, and 81.6% at H1, H2, and H3, respectively. The highest relative abundances of the β-lactam resistance gene
bla
GES-1
(1.77×10
−3
copies/16S rRNA), the quinolone resistance gene
qnrA
(8.81×10
−6
copies/16S rRNA), and the integron
intI1
(1.86×10
−4
copies/16S rRNA) were detected in the treated wastewater. The concentrations of several ARGs were increased in the treated wastewater (e.g.
bla
OXA-1
,
bla
OXA-10
, and
bla
TEM-1
). Several pathogenic or opportunistic bacteria (e.g.
Acinetobacter
,
Klebsiella
,
Aeromonas
, and
Pseudomonas
) were observed at high relative abundances in the treated wastewater. These results suggested the co-occurrence of antibiotics, ARGs, and antibiotic-resistant pathogens in hospital wastewater, and these factors may spread into the receiving aquatic environment.
Evaluating the accuracy of the satellite and reanalysis precipitation products is very important for understanding their uncertainties and potential applications. However, because of underestimation ...existing in commonly used evaluation benchmark, gauge precipitation data, it is necessary to investigate the influence of systematic errors in gauge data on the performance evaluation of satellite and reanalysis precipitation datasets. Daily satellite-based IMERG and model-based ERA5-Land, together with gauge precipitation data, were collected with the period from 2005 to 2016 over China in this study. Daily corrections for precipitation biases from wind-induced undercatch, wetting loss, and trace error were made for gauge measurements. A set of metrics, including relative bias, Kling-Gupta efficiency, frequency bias, and critical success index, were used to evaluate and intercompare the performances of IMERG and ERA5-Land against original and bias-corrected gauge data in different locations, years, seasons, climatic zones, classes of precipitation events, and precipitation phases. The results have shown that: After removing the bias in gauge data, the relative biases of IMERG and ERA5-Land both significantly decline. The noticeable changes of their accuracy occur and vary with different locations, years, seasons, climatic zones, and precipitation phases. Furthermore, the frequency biases of IMERG and ERA5-Land rise in no precipitation events and decline in light, moderate, heavy, and extreme precipitation events. The detection capability of IMERG and ERA5-Land in no and light precipitation events is also obviously affected. Therefore, this study has demonstrated the significant influence of systematic gauge precipitation errors on the assessment of IMERG and ERA5-Land and reinforces the necessity to remove negative bias in gauge data before using it as the benchmark.
PD-1 signaling on T cells is the major pathway that limits T cell immunity, but the efficacy of anti-PD-1 therapy has been limited to a small proportion of patients with advanced cancers. We ...fortuitously observed that anti-PD-1 therapy depends on IL-2 signaling, which raises the possibility that a lack of IL-2 limits anti-PD-1-induced effector T cell expansion. To selectively deliver IL-2 to PD-1+CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we engineered a low-affinity IL-2 paired with anti-PD-1 (PD-1-laIL-2), which reduced affinity to peripheral Treg cells but enhanced avidity to PD-1+CD8+ TILs. PD-1-laIL-2 exerted better tumor control and lower toxicity than single or mixed treatments. Mechanistically, PD-1-laIL-2 could effectively expand dysfunctional and tumor-specific CD8+ T cells. Furthermore, we discovered that presumably dysfunctional PD-1+TIM3+ TILs are the dominant tumor-specific T cells responding to PD-1-laIL-2. Collectively, these results highlight that PD-1-laIL-2 can target and reactivate tumor-specific TILs for tumor regression as a unique strategy with stronger efficacy and lower toxicity.
Objectives
To evaluate the ability of CT radiomic features extracted from peritumoral parenchyma of 2 mm and 5 mm distinguishing invasive adenocarcinoma (IAC) from adenocarcinoma in situ ...(AIS)/minimally invasive adenocarcinoma (MIA).
Methods
For this retrospective study, 121 lung adenocarcinomas appearing as ground-glass nodules on thin-section CT were evaluated. Quantitative radiomic features were extracted from the peritumoral parenchymal region of 2 mm and 5 mm on CT imaging, and the radiomic models of External2 and External5 were constructed. The ROC curves were used to evaluate the performance of different models. Differences between the AUCs were evaluated using DeLong’s method.
Results
The radiomic scores of IAC were statistically higher than those of MIA/AIS in both the External2 and External5 models. The AUCs of the External2 and External5 models were 0.882, 0.778 in the training cohort and 0.888, 0.804 in the validation cohort, respectively. The AUC of the External2 model was not statistically different from the External5 model both in the training cohort (
p
= 0.116) and validation cohort (
p
= 0.423).
Conclusions
The radiomic features extracted from the peritumoral region of 2 mm and 5 mm at thin-section CT showed good predictive values to differentiate the IAC from AIS/MIA. The radiomic features from the peritumoral region of 5 mm provide no additional benefit in distinguishing IAC from MIA/AIS than that of the 2 mm region.
Key Points
•
The radiomic models from various peritumoral lung parenchyma were developed and validated to predict invasiveness of adenocarcinoma
.
•
The peritumoral parenchyma of lung adenocarcinoma may contain useful information
.
•
Radiomics from peritumoral lung parenchyma of 5 mm provides no added efficiency of the prediction for invasiveness of lung adenocarcinoma
.
Uniform anatase TiO2 nanocuboids enclosed by active {100} and {001} facets over a wide size range (60–830 nm in length) with controllable aspect ratios were solvothermally synthesized through ...hydrolysis of titanium tetraisopropoxide (TTIP) using acetic acid (HAc) as the solvent and the ionic liquid 1‐butyl‐3‐methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (bmimBF4) as the capping agent. The size and aspect ratio of the anatase TiO2 nanocuboids can be readily adjusted by changing the composition parameters including the contents of bmimBF4, water, and HAc in the quaternary solution system. It was revealed that bmimBF4 played an important role in stabilizing both the {100} and {001} facets of the anatase TiO2 nanocuboids. On the one hand, bmimBF4 acted as a fluoride source to release F− ions for stabilizing the {001} facets; on the other hand, the bmim+ ions acted as effective capping ions to preferentially stabilize the {100} facets. The obtained near‐monodisperse anatase TiO2 nanocuboids exhibited an interesting self‐assembly behavior during deposition. These single‐crystalline anatase nanocuboids showed extremely high crystalline phase stability, retaining the pure phase of anatase as well as the morphology even after being calcined at 900 °C. Moreover, the anatase nanocuboids exhibited considerably enhanced photocatalytic activity owing the wholly exposed active {100} and {001} facets.
Uniform, well‐defined, tetragonal nanocuboids of anatase TiO2 enclosed by active {100} and {001} facets over a wide size range with controllable aspect ratios are solvothermally synthesized through hydrolysis of titanium tetraisopropoxide, using acetic acid as the solvent and 1‐butyl‐3‐methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate as the capping agent. The obtained anatase TiO2 nanocuboids exhibit interesting self‐assembly behavior, remarkable crystalline phase stability, and enhanced photocatalytic activity.
•Glycine-functionalized PVA was synthesized and grafted on PD-coated UF membranes.•The modification of PD-g-PVA reduced the surface roughness of membranes significantly.•The grafted PVA layer was ...fairly stable in acid and alkaline conditions.•The modification of PD-g-PVA improved the antifouling ability of UF membranes.
Due to the ease of processing and stability during filtration, polydopamine (PD) coatings with grafted hydrophilic polymers have recently received significant attention. In this study, glycine-functionalized PVA was synthesized and grafted to a PD-coated ultrafiltration (UF) membrane to improve its performance during wastewater filtration. The membranes were modified by grafting PD with glycine-functionalized PVA (PD-g-PVA), and the resultant materials were characterized using surface morphology analyses, contact angle measurements, flux, oil/water emulsion separation tests, and grafted layer stability tests. The performance of the PD-g-PVA membrane was compared to that of the membrane modified with PD-g-polyethylene glycol (PEG). After grafting the PD-g-PVA, the surface roughness of the membranes decreased significantly. The grafted PVA layer, which was stable under acidic and alkaline conditions, protected the PD layer. The filtration experiments with an oil/water emulsion indicated that modifying the glycine-functionalized PVA by grafting can significantly improve the antifouling ability of membranes.
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