•Developed a mobile sensing system for collecting detailed data on E-Scooter riding.•A first study quantitatively investigating E-Scooter riding risk on different facilities.•Proposed surrogate ...safety metrics to depict safety challenges during E-Scooter riding.•Assessed obstacles and vibration impact experienced when riding E-Scooters.•Sensed data can be analyzed for assessing the quality of riding facilities.
The emergence of shared electric scooter (E-Scooter) systems offers a new micro-mobility mode in many urban areas worldwide. These systems have rapidly attracted numerous trips on various types of facilities such as sidewalks and bike lanes. After their burst of popularity, there are also growing safety concerns about E-Scooter riding. Consequently, a few cities have banned or temporarily suspended E-Scooters as severe crashes occurred. As an emerging micro-mobility mode, its safety performance is significantly understudied as compared to other travel modes such as cars and bicycles. The lack of crash records further prevents it from understanding the underlying mechanisms that drive the occurrences of E-Scooter crashes. The overarching goal of this paper is to probe the safety risk when riding E-Scooters. Specifically, it aims to study the interactions between e-scooter riding and the environment settings through naturalistic riding experiments. Rather than focusing on the analysis of individual riders’ heterogeneous behavior (e.g., swinging, hard braking, etc.) and rider characteristics (e.g., age, gender, etc.), the naturalistic riding study examines the riding process in different riding circumstances. A mobile sensing system has been developed to collect data for quantifying the surrogate safety metrics in terms of experienced vibrations, speed changes, and proximity to surrounding objects. The results from naturalistic riding experiments show that E-Scooters can experience notable impacts from different riding facilities. Specifically, compared to bicycle riding, more severe vibration events were associated with E-Scooter riding, regardless of the pavement types. Riding on concrete pavements was found to experience a multiple times higher frequency of vibration events when compared to riding on asphalt pavements of the same length. Riding on both sidewalks and vehicle lanes can both encounter high-frequency close contacts in terms of proximity with other objects. These experimental results suggest that E-Scooters are subject to increased safety challenges due to the increased vibrations, speed variations, and constrained riding environments.
This article presents a resistor-array-tuning-based hybrid adaptive digital delay compensated rectifier for wireless power transfer systems. A no-crossing problem and nonlinearity problem for ...conventional delay-compensations are analyzed. In order to enhance the robustness of digital control, the on -delay and off -delay are compensated with different compensation schemes. The on -delay is compensated with a comparator-offset-adjusted technique, while the off -delay is compensated with a pulsewidth modulation (PWM)-based technique to guarantee falling zero-voltage crossing and adjust off -delay time linearly. Compared with the previous works, the delay time is adjusted by tuning the voltage drop across resistor arrays instead of changing the injected offset current of push-pull comparator so as to improve the power conversion efficiency (PCE) and loop stability. Implemented in a 0.18-<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mu</tex-math></inline-formula>m BCD process with a total area of 0.446 mm<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">^{2}</tex-math></inline-formula>, the rectifier delivered a maximum output power of 54.5 mW. With a 13.56 MHz ac input voltage in the range of 2.5 and 3.3 V, the measurement results show the peak VCR of 96.1<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">\%</tex-math></inline-formula> and peak PCE of 93.1<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">\%</tex-math></inline-formula> for the load resistance of 2 k<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">\Omega</tex-math></inline-formula> and 500 <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">\Omega</tex-math></inline-formula>, respectively.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the major malignancies in humans. This study was designed to evaluate the effects of fucoidan on gut flora and tumor prevention in 1,2-dimethylhydrazine-induced ...colorectal carcinogenesis in rats. We found that dietary fucoidan treatment decreased the tumor incidence and mean tumor weight and increased cell apoptosis. Fucoidan treatment decreased the expression of β-catenin C-Myc, CyclinD1 and Survivin, while the Hippo pathway was activated with increased phosphorylation levels of mammalian sterile 20-like kinase 1 and 2, large tumor suppressor 1 and 2, and Yes-associated protein. Compared with the model group, the levels of interleukin (IL)-17 and IL-23 were decreased, but the levels of interferon-γ, IL-4 and IL-10 were increased, in the fucoidan group. Fucoidan treatment increased natural killer cells in peripheral blood and the proportion of CD4+ T cells. Immunofluorescence detection of colorectal tumor tissues showed decreased expression of Foxp3 and up-regulated expression of CD68 in the fucoidan group. Moreover, fucoidan treatment decreased the levels of diamine oxidase and lipopolysaccharides and up-regulated the levels of tight junction proteins. 16S rDNA high-throughput sequencing revealed that fucoidan treatment decreased the abundance of Prevotella and increased the abundance of Alloprevotella. Fucoidan increased the levels of butyric acid and valeric acid compared to the model group. This study provides experimental evidence that dietary fucoidan may prevent colorectal tumorigenesis by regulating gut microecology and body immunity. Meanwhile, fucoidan activated the Hippo pathway and down-regulated the β-catenin pathway to induce tumor cell apoptosis and suppress tumor growth.
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Pyramid architecture is a useful strategy to fuse multi-scale features in deep monocular depth estimation approaches. However, most pyramid networks fuse features only within the adjacent stages in a ...pyramid structure. To take full advantage of the pyramid structure, inspired by the success of DenseNet, this paper presents DCPNet, a densely connected pyramid network that fuses multi-scale features from multiple stages of the pyramid structure. DCPNet not only performs feature fusion between the adjacent stages, but also non-adjacent stages. To fuse these features, we design a simple and effective dense connection module (DCM). In addition, we offer a new consideration of the common upscale operation in our approach. We believe DCPNet offers a more efficient way to fuse features from multiple scales in a pyramid-like network. We perform extensive experiments using both outdoor and indoor benchmark datasets (i.e., the KITTI and the NYU Depth V2 datasets) and DCPNet achieves the state-of-the-art results.
This study aimed to develop quantitative feature-based models from histopathological images to assess aurora kinase A (AURKA) expression and predict the prognosis of patients with lung adenocarcinoma ...(LUAD).
A dataset of patients with LUAD was derived from the cancer genome atlas (TCGA) with information on clinical characteristics, RNA sequencing and histopathological images. The TCGA-LUAD cohort was randomly divided into training (n = 229) and testing (n = 98) sets. We extracted quantitative image features from histopathological slides of patients with LUAD using computational approaches, constructed a predictive model for AURKA expression in the training set, and estimated their predictive performance in the test set. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to assess whether the pathomic scores (PS) generated by the model independently predicted LUAD survival.
High AURKA expression was an independent risk factor for overall survival (OS) in patients with LUAD (hazard ratio = 1.816, 95 % confidence intervals = 1.257–2.623, P = 0.001). The model based on histopathological image features had significant predictive value for AURKA expression: the area under the curve of the receiver operating characteristic curve in the training set and validation set was 0.809 and 0.739, respectively. Decision curve analysis showed that the model had clinical utility. Patients with high PS and low PS had different survival rates (P = 0.019). Multivariate analysis suggested that PS was an independent prognostic factor for LUAD (hazard ratio = 1.615, 95 % confidence intervals = 1.071–2.438, P = 0.022).
Pathomics models based on machine learning can accurately predict AURKA expression and the PS generated by the model can predict LUAD prognosis.
As an emerging contaminant, 1-H-benzotriazole (1H-BTR) has been detected in the engineered and natural aquatic environments, which usually coexists with heavy metals and causes combined pollution. In ...the present study, wild-type and transgenic zebrafish Danio rerio were used to explore the acute toxicity as well as the single and joint hepatotoxicity of cadmium (Cd) and 1H-BTR. Although the acute toxicity of 1H-BTR to zebrafish was low, increased expression of liver-specific fatty acid binding protein was observed in transgenic zebrafish when the embryos were exposed to 5.0 μM of 1H-BTR for 30 days. Besides, co-exposure to 1H-BTR not only reduced the acute toxic effects induced by Cd, but also alleviated the Cd-induced liver atrophy in transgenic fish. Correspondingly, effects of combined exposure to 1H-BTR on the Cd-induced expressions of several signal pathway-related genes and superoxide dismutase and glutathione-s-transferase proteins were studied. Based on the determination of Cd bioaccumulation in fish and the complexing stability constant (β) of Cd-BTR complex in solution, the detoxification mechanism of co-existing 1H-BTR on Cd to the zebrafish was discussed.
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•5.0μM of 1H-BTR induced no acute physiology toxic effects on zebrafish embryo.•1H-BTR induced increasing expression of liver-specific fatty acid binding protein.•Co-exposure to 1H-BTR could decrease the toxicity of Cd in zebrafish.•Cd bioaccumulation increased significantly in zebrafish pre-exposed to 1H-BTR.
As a common artificial ligand water pollutant, benzotriazole can cause the fish hepatomegaly, but decrease the toxicity of cadmium.
Inappropriate antibiotic prescribing causes widespread serious health problems. To reduce prescribing of antibiotics in Chinese primary care to children with upper respiratory tract infections ...(URTIs), we developed an intervention comprising clinical guidelines, monthly prescribing review meetings, doctor-patient communication skills training, and education materials for caregivers. We previously evaluated our intervention using an unblinded cluster-randomised controlled trial (cRCT) in 25 primary care facilities across two rural counties. When our trial ended at the 6-month follow-up period, we found that the intervention had reduced antibiotic prescribing for childhood URTIs by 29 percentage points (pp) (95% CI -42 to -16).
In this long-term follow-up study, we collected our trial outcomes from the one county (14 facilities and 1:1 cluster randomisation ratio) that had electronic records available 12 months after the trial ended, at the 18-month follow-up period. Our primary outcome was the antibiotic prescription rate (APR)-the percentage of outpatient prescriptions containing any antibiotic(s) for children aged 2 to 14 years who had a primary diagnosis of a URTI and had no other illness requiring antibiotics. We also conducted 15 in-depth interviews to understand how interventions were sustained. In intervention facilities, the APR was 84% (1,171 out of 1,400) at baseline, 37% (515 out of 1,380) at 6 months, and 54% (2,748 out of 5,084) at 18 months, and in control facilities, it was 76% (1,063 out of 1,400), 77% (1,084 out of 1,400), and 75% (2,772 out of 3,685), respectively. After adjusting for patient and prescribing doctor covariates, compared to the baseline intervention-control difference, the difference at 6 months represented a 6-month intervention-arm reduction in the APR of -49 pp (95% CI -63 to -35; P < 0.0001), and compared to the baseline difference, the difference at 18 months represented an 18-month intervention-arm reduction in the APR of -36 pp (95% CI -55 to -17; P < 0.0001). Compared to the 6-month intervention-control difference, the difference at 18 months represented no change in the APR: 13 pp (95% CI -7 to 33; P = 0.21). Factors reported to sustain reductions in antibiotic prescribing included doctors' improved knowledge and communication skills and focused prescription review meetings, whereas lack of supervision and monitoring may be associated with relapse. Key limitations were not including all clusters from the trial and not collecting returned visits or sepsis cases.
Our intervention was associated with sustained and substantial reductions in antibiotic prescribing at the end of the intervention period and 12 months later. Our intervention may be adapted to similar resource-poor settings.
ISRCTN registry ISRCTN14340536.
Many phenomena remain to be investigated regarding the micro adsorption kinetics of hydrogen storage in different carbon nanomaterials. The hydrogen adsorption behaviour on the wall surface of the ...conical graphene layers (CGL) of three kinds of different cup-stacked carbon nanotubes (CSCNTs) is investigated using density functional theory (DFT). Furthermore, Pt decoration of the CGL wall was also investigated. The hydrogen adsorption result of the Pt-CGL is examined through the charge transfer and electron density difference approach. The optimisation results show that as the cone angle increases, the hydrogen adsorption capacity on the outside of the CGL wall increases gradually. In contrast, the hydrogen adsorption capacity on the inside of the wall decreases as the cone angle increases. The adsorption energy (Eads) of intrinsic CGL can only reach 5 kJ/mol, and the Eads of defective CGL can reach 10 kJ/mol. In contrast, the Eads of Pt-CGL can reach more than 30 kJ/mol, indicating that the hydrogen adsorption capacity of the CGL can be effectively increased by the Pt atom decoration, which can meet the adsorption energy target of hydrogen storage material formulated by the United States Department of Energy (DOE).
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•The hydrogen adsorption behaviour on the cup-stacked carbon nanotube wall surface was investigated.•The conical graphene layer wall has weak physical adsorption on hydrogen.•With the cone angle increase, the inside of the conical graphene layer wall adsorption capacity decreases.•The adsorption energy of the C–Pt–H2 unit can meet the United States Department of Energy targets.•The adsorption behaviour of the C–Pt–H2 unit belongs to Kubas coordination.
The conventional production of platform compounds from biomass suffers from low yield, long residence time, and waste of cellulose and lignin components. To achieve the separation of three components ...in sugarcane bagasse with a high yield of furfural (FF), this study investigated various factors such as reaction temperature and time, pressure, acid concentration within the pressurized phosphoric acid/acetone/water (PPAWS) system. The results indicated that under the optimized conditions of external pressure (1.5 Mpa N2), solid/liquid ratio (1:52.8 g ml−1), acid concentration (8.3 wt% H3PO4) and dose of metal chloride salt (25 % AlCl3), a high yield (72.7 %) of FF and high content of cellulose (92.63 %) in the hydrolysis residue were obtained in only 5 min. The lignin was retained in the hydrolysate and its content in the hydrolysis residue was only 4.4 %, with a removal rate of 93.4 %. The interaction experiments demonstrated the synergistic effect among these factors. Furthermore, this study pioneered the online visualization of catalytic hydrolysis of sugarcane bagasse using a high-pressure differential scanning calorimeter to monitor heat absorption and exothermic reactions. It implied that the acetone present emerged as a solvent that promoted FF production by inhibiting the condensation reactions under high pressure.
•High yield of FF and high purity cellulose residue was produced in PPAWS system.•External and internal factors as well as their interaction on FF yield was studied.•DSC was used to monitor heat absorption and exothermic reactions in hydrolysis.
With the development of new energy devices, the demand for electrode materials with high energy density (> 400 Wh/kg) is increasing day by day. Lithium-rich manganese-based cathode materials (LRMC) ...which meet the requirements are considered one of the most promising materials for the next generation of lithium-ion batteries, and have attracted wide attention. However, LRMC still faces some key scientific problems that need to be addressed, such as interface side reactions, poor rate performance, rapid voltage and capacity attenuation, and low first coulomb efficiency. The continuous Na2SO4-coated lithium-rich manganese-based cathode material Li1.2Ni0.13Co0.13Mn0.54O2 (S-LRMC) was synthesized using sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). SDS is composed of hydrophobic aliphatic hydrocarbon groups and hydrophilic sulfate carboxyl groups, so it can form a micelle-like coating on the surface of LRMC materials in aqueous solution. The uniform Na2SO4 coating formed after calcination can effectively inhibit the side reaction between electrode material and electrolyte and reduce the dissolution of transition metal ions. As a result, capacity retention, rate performance and discharge specific capacity are improved. After 100 cycles at 1 C, the specific discharge capacity of 4% S-LRMC is 187.8 mAh g−1 (LRMC is 138.3 mAh g−1), and the capacity retention is 87.35%. Even at a high current density of 5 C, the material still has a specific discharge capacity of 143.6 mAh g−1, which proves that the electrochemical performance of the material is excellent. Therefore, this study provides a new solution for improving the structural stability and electrochemical performance of lithium ion batteries.
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•Sodium dodecyl sulfate was used as surface coating reagent for the first time.•An extremely homogeneous coating layer is produced by sodium dodecyl sulfate.•The existence of Na2SO4 coating layer suppresses the interfacial side reaction.
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