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•We adopts a perspective of equity and efficiency and constructing a framework to assess the improvement of ESV in China.•We reveals the regional unfairness between China’s ESV and ...economic growth.•We evaluates the ESV improvement in China, considering both static and dynamic efficiency.•We provides policy suggestions for ecological environmental governance.
Ecosystems provide the material and energy resources necessary for human development, improving people’s quality of life and well-being. Thus, enhancing the effectiveness of ecosystem services valuation has become a focal point of concern. Here, we adopt a perspective of equality and efficiency and construct a framework based on the ecological Gini coefficient (E-Gini coefficient) and the three-stage Data Envelopment Analysis-Malmquist (DEA-Malmquist) model, by evaluating the input of financial investments and human resources and the output of ecosystem service value (ESV) production, to assess the improvement of ESV in China from 2008 to 2020. The research findings reveal that the E-Gini during the study period remained consistently above 0.54, which is categorized as “high inequality”. ESV equality across different regions follows the order of northwest > south > north concerning economic and social development. Furthermore, through efficiency analysis, we find that there is room to improve the improvement efficiency of China’s ESV. Static efficiency analysis indicates that the average improvement efficiency of China’s ESV is low (0.331). This indicates that the input resources did not achieve the optimal ESV production. Dynamic efficiency analysis reveals that there is a 3.2 % decline in ESV improvement efficiency over the entire study period. Encouragingly, ESV improvement efficiency has been increasing annually since 2017. Moreover, there exists spatial heterogeneity in ESV improvement efficiency, with the northwest region showing significantly higher than the north and south. The research results can provide policy recommendations for ecological environmental governance, production efficiency, and ecological compensation.
Fluorescence immunochromatographic assay (FICA) is a rapid immunoassay technique that has the characteristics of high precision and sensitivity. Although image FICA strip readers have the advantages ...of high portability and easy operation, the use of high-precision complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors leads to an increase in overall cost. Considering the popularity of CMOS image sensors in smartphones and their powerful processing functions, this work developed a smartphone-based FICA strip reader. An optical module suitable for the test strips with different fluorescent markers was designed by replacing the excitation light source and the light filter. An android smartphone was used for image acquisition and image denoising. Then, the test and control lines of the test strip image were recognized by the sliding window algorithm. Finally, the characteristic value of the strip image was calculated. A linear detection range from 10 to 5000 mIU/mL (
= 0.95) was obtained for human chorionic gonadotrophin with the maximum relative error less than 9.41%, and a linear detection range from 5 to 4000 pg/mL (
= 0.99) was obtained for aflatoxin B1, with the maximum relative error less than 12.71%. Therefore, the smartphone-based FICA strip reader had high portability, versatility, and accuracy.
Conductive intracardiac communication (CIC) has become one of the most promising technologies in multisite leadless pacemakers for cardiac resynchronization therapy. Existing studies have shown that ...cardiac pulsation has a significant impact on the attenuation of intracardiac communication channels. In this study, a novel variable-volume circuit-coupled electrical field heart model, which contains blood and myocardium, is proposed to verify the phenomenon. The influence of measurements was combined with the model as the equivalent circuit. Dynamic intracardiac channel characteristics were obtained by simulating models with varying volumes of the four chambers according to the actual cardiac cycle. Subsequently, in vitro experiments were carried out to verify the model’s correctness. Among the dependences of intracardiac communication channels, the distance between pacemakers exerted the most substantial influence on attenuation. In the simulation and measurement, the relationship between channel attenuation and pulsation was found through the variable-volume heart model and a porcine heart. The CIC channel attenuation had a variation of less than 3 dB.
Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) plays an important role in the neuro-endocrine-immune system. Mast cells (MCs) are important immune effector cells. This study was conducted to investigate the ...protective effect of
ATCC 393 on Enterotoxigenic
(ETEC) K88-induced intestinal mucosal immune barrier injury and its association with VIP/MC signaling by
experiments in cultures of porcine mucosal mast cells (PMMCs) and
experiments using VIP receptor antagonist (aVIP) drug. The results showed that compared with the ETEC K88 and lipopolysaccharides (LPS)-induced model groups, VIP pretreatment significantly inhibited the activation of MCs and the release of β-hexosaminidase (β-hex), histamine and tryptase. Pretreatment with aVIP abolished the protective effect of
ATCC 393 on ETEC K88-induced intestinal mucosal immune barrier dysfunction in C57BL/6 mice. Also, with the blocking of VIP signal transduction, the ETEC K88 infection increased serum inflammatory cytokines, and the numbers of degranulated MCs in ileum, which were decreased by administration of
ATCC 393. In addition, VIP mediated the regulatory effect of
ATCC 393 on intestinal microbiota in mice. These findings suggested that VIP may mediate the protective effect of
ATCC 393 on intestinal mucosal immune barrier dysfunction
MCs.
Introduction: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) remains a major cause of end-stage renal disease. The development of novel biomarkers and early diagnosis of DN are of great clinical importance. The goal of ...this study was to identify hub genes with diagnostic potential for DN by weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA). Methods: Gene Expression Omnibus database was searched for microarray data including distinct types of CKD. Gene co-expression network was constructed, and modules specific for DN were identified by WGCNA. Gene ontology (GO) analysis was performed, and the hub genes were screened out within the selected gene modules. In addition, cross-validation was performed in an independent dataset and in samples of renal biopsies with DN and other types of glomerular diseases. Results: Dataset GSE99339 was selected, and a total of 179 microdissected glomeruli samples were analyzed, including DN, normal control, and 7 groups of other glomerular diseases. Twenty-three modules of the total 10,947 genes were grouped by WGCNA, and a module was specifically correlated with DN (r = 0.54, p = 9e−15). GO analysis showed that module genes were mainly enriched in the accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM). LUM, ELN, FBLN1, MMP2, FBLN5, and FMOD were identified as hub genes. Cross verification showed LUM and FMOD were higher in the DN group and were negatively correlated with estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). In renal biopsies, expression levels of LUM and FMOD were higher in DN than IgA nephropathy, membranous nephropathy, and normal controls. Conclusion: By using WGCNA approach, we identified LUM and FMOD related to ECM accumulation and were specific for DN. These 2 genes may represent potential candidate diagnostic biomarkers of DN.
Intrabody communication (IBC) can achieve better power efficiency and higher levels of security than other traditional wireless communication technologies. Currently, the majority of research on the ...body channel characteristics of galvanic coupling IBC are motionless and have only been evaluated in the frequency domain. Given the long measuring times of traditional methods, the access to dynamic variations and the simultaneous evaluation of the time-frequency domain remains a challenge for dynamic body channels such as the cardiac channel. To address this challenge, we proposed a parallel measurement methodology with a multi-tone strategy and a time-parameter processing approach to obtain a time-frequency evaluation for dynamic body channels. A group search algorithm has been performed to optimize the crest factor of multitone excitation in the time domain. To validate the proposed methods, in vivo experiments, with both dynamic and motionless conditions were measured using the traditional method and the proposed method. The results indicate that the proposed method is more time efficient (
= 1 ms) with a consistent performance (
> 98%). Most importantly, it is capable of capturing dynamic variations in the body channel and provides a more comprehensive evaluation and richer information for the study of IBC.
The respiratory rate is one of the crucial indicators for monitoring human physiological health. The purpose of this paper was to introduce a head-mounted respiratory monitoring solution based on ...electrical impedance sensing. Firstly, we constructed a finite element model to analyze the feasibility of using head impedance for respiratory sensing based on the physiological changes in the pharynx. After that, we developed a circuit module that could be integrated into a head-mounted respiratory monitoring device using a bioelectrical impedance sensor. Furthermore, we combined adaptive filtering and respiratory tracking algorithms to develop an app for a mobile phone. Finally, we conducted controlled experiments to verify the effectiveness of this electrical impedance sensing system for extracting respiratory rate. We found that the respiration rates measured by the head-mounted electrical impedance respiratory monitoring system were not significantly different from those of commercial respiratory monitoring devices by a paired t-test (p > 0.05). The results showed that the respiratory rates of all subjects were within the 95% confidence interval. Therefore, the head-mounted respiratory monitoring scheme proposed in this paper was able to accurately measure respiratory rate, indicating the feasibility of this solution. In addition, this respiratory monitoring scheme helps to achieve real-time continuous respiratory monitoring, which can provide new insights for personalized health monitoring.
As an emerging technology, fluorescence immunochromatographic assay (FICA) has the advantages of high sensitivity, strong stability and specificity, which is widely used in the fields of medical ...testing, food safety and environmental monitoring. The FICA reader based on image processing meets the needs of point-of-care testing because of its simple operation, portability and fast detection speed. However, the image gray level of common image sensors limits the detection range of the FICA reader, and high-precision image sensors are expensive, which is not conducive to the popularization of the instrument. In this paper, FICA strips' image was collected using a common complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor and a range adjustment mechanism was established to automatically adjust the exposure time of the CMOS image sensor to achieve the effect of range expansion. The detection sensitivity showed a onefold increase, and the upper detection limit showed a twofold increase after the proposed method was implemented. In addition, in the experiments of linearity and accuracy, the fitting degree (
) of the fitted curves both reached 0.999. Therefore, the automatic range adjustment method can obviously improve the detection range of the FICA reader based on image processing.
Fluorescence immunochromatographic assay (FICA) is a quantitative detection technique widely used in clinical diagnosis, environmental monitoring, and food safety. To deal with the limited ...applications caused by insufficient detection range, this paper proposes a photoelectric adjustment system suitable for FICA strip readers to expand its detection range. The photoelectric adjustment system is proposed based on the relationship between the excitation light intensity and the fluorescence intensity, which provides the optimal excitation light intensity and a stable baseline amplitude for the FICA strip reader. To verify the proposed system, it was applied to the strip reader we had previously developed. The results show that the linear detection range of the FICA strip reader was extended from 1.95-256 μg/mL to 1-1024 μg/mL after using the proposed method. At the same time, the accuracy of the FICA strip reader does not deteriorate and is in good comparisons with the conventional ESEQuant Lateral Flow Reader (with R 2 > 0.9987). Therefore, the proposed photoelectric adjustment method and system can improve the detection range of the strip reader or other similar devices.
The trade-off and synergy relationship of ecosystem services is an important topic in the current assessment. The value of each service provided by the ecosystem is substantially affected by human ...activities, and conversely, its changes will also affect the relevant human decisions. Due to varying trade-offs among ecosystem services and synergies between them that can either increase or decrease, it is difficult to optimize multiple ecosystem services simultaneously, making it a huge challenge for ecosystem management. This study firstly develops a global Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) accounting framework. It uses remote sensing data with a spatial resolution of 1 km to estimate the ecosystem services of forests, wetlands, grasslands, deserts, and farmlands in 179 major countries in 2018. The results show that the range of global GEP values is USD 112–197 trillion, with an average value of USD 155 trillion (the constant price), and the ratio of GEP to gross domestic product (GDP) is 1.85. The trade-offs and the synergies among different ecosystem services in each continent and income group have been further explored. We found a correspondence between the income levels and the synergy among ecosystem services within each nation. Among specific ecosystem services, there are strong synergies between oxygen release, climate regulation, and carbon sequestration services. A trade-off relationship has been observed between flood regulation and other services, such as water conservation and soil retention services in low-income countries. The results will help clarify the roles and the feedback mechanisms between different stakeholders and provide a scientific basis for optimizing ecosystem management and implementing ecological compensation schemes to enhance human well-being.
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•Analyze composition and distribution of Gross Ecosystem Product in 179 countries.•Quantifying trade-offs and synergistic interactions among ecosystem services.•Reveal relationship between Gross Ecosystem Product and natural-social factors.•Open publication of the datasets also makes it possible for further exploration.
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