Introduction: Recent studies have shown that inflammatory patterns of nasal polyps from patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) in East Asia have changed over time. ...However, to date there is a marked lack of similar data for CRSwNP in Northern China. This study thus aimed to assess the changes in the clinical and histological characteristics of CRSwNP patients from Northern China over the past 2–3 decades. Methods: This was a retrospective study, which examined data from 2 groups of 150 CRSwNP patients each, who had undergone endoscopic sinus surgery in Beijing Tongren Hospital from 1993 to 1995 (group A) and from 2015 to 2019 (group B). All relevant data for demographic, clinical, and histological parameters were collected for each patient from the 2 groups and compared for overall changes between the 2 groups. Results: The comorbidity of CRSwNP and asthma increased over time and the cellular phenotype of CRSwNPchanged significantly; in particular, the proportion of eosinophil-dominant CRSwNP increased, lymphocyte-dominant and plasma-dominant CRSwNP decreased significantly, and the proportions of neutrophil-dominant and mixed CRSwNP were not altered. The rate of polyp recurrence increased in CRSwNP but did not in eosinophilic CRSwNP. Smoking and age did not significantly impact the inflammatory patterns of CRSwNP. Conclusions: The inflammatory patterns of CRSwNP patients have changed and comorbidity of asthma significantly increased in CRSwNP patients in Northern China over the past 2–3 decades.
Effective treatment of Cr(VI)-containing wastewater is a great challenge faced by many industries with this situation further complicated by the coexistence of other ions such as Cl−. This study ...demonstrated the suitability and effectiveness of utilizing flow-electrode capacitive deionization (FCDI) for effective and continuous removal of Cr(VI) from brackish wastewaters. The effects of various influencing factors were systematically investigated, including applied current density, feed concentration of coexisting Cl−, hydraulic residence time (HRT), activated carbon loading, initial solution pH and other common coexisting anions. Results indicated that Cr(VI) was preferentially removed compared to Cl− with a high ion selectivity achievable, and Cr(VI) and Cl− had significantly different removal behaviors in many cases. The steady-state effluent Cl− concentration dropped almost linearly with the increase of current density, while the steady-state effluent Cr(VI) concentration dropped to a value under a small current density and decreased insignificantly in spite of the increase in current density. A larger HRT or activated carbon loading favorably contributed to a lower steady-state effluent concentrations of Cr(VI) and Cl−. Initial pH of feed water around 5–6 without pH adjustment was the most advantageous to the removal of Cr(VI). Different coexisting anions had inhibitory effects on the Cr(VI) removal to varying degrees and the carbonate species was found to have the greatest inhibitory effect. This study is of value in promoting FCDI as a viable technology for treatment of Cr(VI)-containing brackish wastewater.
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•Effective continuous removal of Cr(VI) from brackish wastewaters is realized by FCDI.•Cr(VI) was preferentially removed compared to Cl− with a high ion selectivity.•Cr(VI) and Cl− had significantly different removal behaviors in many cases.•Different coexisting anions had different inhibitory effects on the Cr(VI) removal.
Chain-spherical V2O5/C composites were prepared by using dandelion fibers as bio-templates through a simple vacuum-assisted immersion method, and their microstructure and electromagnetic wave (EMW) ...absorption properties were investigated. Results indicated that the EMW absorption performance of dandelion fibers is effectively improved by introducing V2O5 and constructing chain-spherical structure. Notably, the minimum reflection loss (RLmin) of V2O5/C composites with a thickness of 2.35 mm is reached −34.05 dB at 17.52 GHz, and the maximum effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) of the composites is up to 7.52 GHz at 2.85 mm. The improvement in EMW absorption performance is mainly ascribed to the synergistic effects of the increased multiple reflections and scattering, enhanced polarization loss and conduction loss, and impedance matching characteristics. The chain-spherical V2O5/C composites exhibit great potential as promising candidates for high-performance EMW absorbers.
•The V2O5/C composites with a chain-spherical structure are facilely prepared.•The synergy effect of multiple loss mechanisms enhances microwave absorption.•The RLmin of −34.05 dB and the widest EAB of 7.52 GHz are achieved.
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•Novel 3D interconnected network architectures were assembled from W18O49 and MXene.•W18O49/Ti3C2 MXene composite was used as HCDI electrode materials for the first time.•W18O49/Ti3C2 ...electrode achieved a high salt adsorption capacity of 29.25 mg g−1.•Insights for rational design of 3D electrode architectures were provided.
W18O49 has been demonstrated to be a promising candidate for efficient electrochemical applications. To further improve the electrical conductivity of W18O49 and make it suitable for hybrid capacitive deionization (HCDI), highly stable three-dimensional (3D) interconnected network architectures assembled from W18O49 and Ti3C2 MXene composites with different Ti3C2 contents have been synthesized via a facile and effective electrostatic attraction self-assembly strategy and used as a novel HCDI electrode material. Compared to single-component electrodes, the synergistic effect between W18O49 and Ti3C2 enabled high specific surface area (SSA), fast ion diffusion, and dual pseudocapacitance effect. These multiple advantages of the W18O49/Ti3C2 electrode achieved a preponderant salt adsorption capacity (SAC) as high as 29.25 mg g−1 in 500 mg L−1 NaCl solution at an applied voltage of 1.2 V. An excellent capacitance (153F g−1 at 2 mV s−1) and high cycling stability (maintaining 98.3% of the initial capacity after 10 cycles) were also observed. This work could provide some insights for rational design of 3D electrode architectures for electrochemical applications and water desalination.
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•Porous few-layer g-C3N4 was prepared by a facile bottom-up method.•Ultrathin TFC composite exhibits excellent uranium extraction performance.•Schottky junction and built-in electric ...field promoted charge carriers separation.•Plausible synergistic uranium extraction mechanism was suggested.
Photocatalytic reduction towards hexavalent uranium has been considered as one of the most promising strategies for uranium extraction from seawater because of its good selectivity, high efficiency and environment friendliness. Of metal-free photocatalysts, graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) is an attractive candidate. However, its practical application has been limited due to the low photogenerated electron-hole pair separation efficiency and poor electronic conductivity. In this respect, porous few-layer C3N4 (PFC) was prepared by a simple bottom-up method, and its combination with Ti3C2 via electrostatic assembly constructed a 2D/2D heterojunction structure, marked as TFC. The TFC composite exhibit remarkable uranium extraction performance, which is 4.9 times higher than bulk C3N4. Moreover, the sample bears good selectivity and stability. The simple preparation process and excellent uranium extraction capability make TFC-3 composite has a promising application prospect for uranium extraction from seawater.
While self-attention has been successfully applied in a variety of natural language processing and computer vision tasks, its application in Monte Carlo (MC) image denoising has not yet been well ...explored. This paper presents a self-attention based MC denoising deep learning network based on the fact that self-attention is essentially non-local means filtering in the embedding space which makes it inherently very suitable for the denoising task. Particularly, we modify the standard self-attention mechanism to an auxiliary feature guided self-attention that considers the by-products (e.g., auxiliary feature buffers) of the MC rendering process. As a critical prerequisite to fully exploit the performance of self-attention, we design a multi-scale feature extraction stage, which provides a rich set of raw features for the later self-attention module. As self-attention poses a high computational complexity, we describe several ways that accelerate it. Ablation experiments validate the necessity and effectiveness of the above design choices. Comparison experiments show that the proposed self-attention based MC denoising method outperforms the current state-of-the-art methods.
Evacuation in university gymnasiums is a critical issue for campus safety. Human factors play an important role in the evacuation process. In order to explore the human factors that influence ...evacuation performance in university gymnasiums, this study conducted a questionnaire survey to 1287 participants. The data from the questionnaire survey were analysed by factor analysis, multiple linear regression analysis and T-test. The results showed that there were four human factors that affected evacuation performance in university gymnasiums: crowdedness, familiarity, attention and subjective physical condition. Among which familiarity and subjective physical condition had positive effects, while crowdedness and attention had negative impacts. Gender differences in participants’ evacuation performance were observed as well. The findings will help researchers to understand the evacuation in university gymnasiums comprehensively, and provide instructions for the prevention of evacuation accidents.
•A questionnaire survey is conducted to study human factors in university gymnasium evacuation.•Crowdedness, familiarity, attention and subjective physical condition have major impacts on evacuation performance.•Familiarity and subjective physical condition have positive effects, while crowdedness and attention have negative effects.•Gender differences also play a role in participants’ evacuation performance.
The preparation of powder adsorbent into microsphere adsorbent is one of the effective methods for the industrialization of uranium extraction from seawater. Herein, a MOF-derived Co-Ni layered ...double hydroxides/polyethyleneimine modified chitosan micro-nanoreactor (DNPM) was prepared by a simple method in this work. The microstructure and chemical structure of DNPM were comprehensively characterized. The pH value, adsorption time, initial solution concentration, temperature, competitive ions, regeneration performance, and bed column heights were investigated for the adsorption performance of DNPM by batch adsorption and fixed-bed column continuous adsorption experiments. When the contact time was 8 h, the initial concentration was 150 mg/L, and the pH value was 6, the adsorption capacity of DNPM was 334.67 mg/g. The uranium adsorption by DNPM fits with the pseudo-second-order kinetic and Langmuir models, which was a spontaneous and endothermic process. In addition, DNPM has good adsorption selectivity and reusability. The fixed-bed column continuous adsorption experiment shows that the adsorption capacity increased with the increase of bed column height. The adsorption mechanism can be attributed to coordination chelation and electrostatic interaction. In general, this work provides an effective strategy for developing environmentally friendly uranium adsorbent that can be industrially used.
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This work aimed to evaluate the relative inhalation parameters that affect the deposition of inhaled aerosols, including mouth-throat morphology, airflow rate, and initial condition of emitted ...particles.
In vitro
experiments were conducted using the US Pharmacopeia (USP) throat and a realistic mouth-throat (RMT) with Handihaler®. Then,
in silico
study of the gas-solid flow was performed by computational fluid dynamics and discrete phase method. Results indicated that aerosol deposition in RMT was higher compared to that in USP throat at an airflow rate of 30 L/min, with 33.16 ± 7.84% and 21.11 ± 7.1% lung deposition in USP throat and RMT models, respectively, which showed a better correlation with
in vivo
data from the literature. Increasing airflow rate resulted in better drug aerosolization, while the fine particle dose trend ascended before declining, with the peak value obtained at a flow rate of 40 L/min. Overall, the effect of geometrical variation was more significant. Additionally,
in silico
results demonstrated clearly that the initial conditions of the emitted particles from inhalers affected the subsequent deposition. Larger momentum possessed by the central aerosol jet entering the mouth directly led to stronger impaction, which resulted in the deposition in the front region of mouth-throat models. This study is beneficial to develop an
in silico
method to understand the underlying mechanisms of
in vivo
mouth-throat deposition.
A mild and efficient visible-light-mediated diarylation of N-arylacrylamides with aryl diazonium salts under mild conditions has been developed. This method provides convenient access to a variety of ...useful 3,3-disubstituted oxindoles by constructing two C–C bonds in one step.
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