Study on the influence of industrial intelligence on carbon emission efficiency-empirical analysis of China's Yangtze River Economic Belt.

How to achieve the goal of "carbon peak and carbon neutrality" and explore the compatibility of industrial and ecological civilization is a major challenge for China today. This study analyzes the impact of industrial intelligence on industrial carbon emissions efficiency in 11 provinces of China's Yangtze River Economic Belt, measuring the efficiency of industrial carbon emissions through the non-expected output slacks-based measure (SBM) model, selecting industrial robot penetration to measure the level of industrial intelligence, establishing a two-way fixed model to verify the impact of industrial intelligence on carbon emission efficiency, and testing for intermediary effects and regional heterogeneity. The results show that: (1) the industrial carbon emission efficiency of the 11 provinces shows year-over-year improvement, with significant differences between upstream, midstream, and downstream, where downstream is the highest and upstream is the lowest. (2) The development of industrial intelligence is highly uneven, with the upstream level being the weakest. (3) Industrial intelligence can improve the efficiency of industrial carbon emissions by enhancing green technological innovation and energy use efficiency. (4) The effect of industrial intelligence on industrial carbon emission efficiency also shows regional heterogeneity. Finally, we present policy recommendations. This research provides mathematical and scientific support for achieving carbon reduction targets at an early stage and helps accelerate the construction of a modern, low-carbon China.

Clinical and economic burden of anxiety/depression among older adult COPD patients: evidence from the COPD-AD China Registry study.

Background: Anxiety and depression are common in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), especially older adult patients. This can complicate the disease progression and lead to increased clinical and economic burden. We sought to investigate the clinical and economic burdens associated with the presence of anxious and/or depressive symptoms among older adult COPD patients. Methods: We screened 579 patients aged over 60 years and diagnosed with COPD via a lung function test following the 2017 Global Initiative Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) guidelines. Anxiety and depression were measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) through face-to-face interviews at admission. Follow-up was conducted by telephone calls at 6, 12, 18, 24, and 36 months after discharge to assess clinical and economic burden. COPD-anxiety and/or depression patients were matched to patients without anxiety and depression (COPD-only) using propensity scores. Multivariate regression models were used to compare clinical and economic burden between COPD-anxiety and/or depression and COPD-only groups. Results: Compared with COPD-only patients, COPD patients complicated with anxiety and/or depression had increased clinical burden, including higher COPD-related outpatient visits, COPD-related hospitalizations, and length of COPD-related hospitalizations (p < 0.001). Moreover, they also had an increased economic burden, including higher annual total healthcare costs, medical costs, and pharmacy costs (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Older adult COPD patients with anxiety or depression had significantly higher clinical and economic burdens than patients without these comorbidities. These findings deserve further exploration and may be useful for the formulation of relevant healthcare policies.

Spatial analysis of carbon dioxide emissions from producer services: an empirical analysis based on panel data from China.

This study focuses on producer services based on data from 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2018. The spatial panel STIRPAT-Durbin model was used to analyze the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and spatial effects of CO2 emissions. The empirical results reveal four key findings. First, there are significant differences in CO2 emissions between eastern and western China, and the agglomeration areas gradually evolved from east to central and south China. Second, the increase in industrial agglomeration level leads to increased carbon emissions from producer services and produces negative spatial spillover effects. Third, urbanization, employment scale, and per capita wealth significantly increase the provinces' carbon emissions and produce positive spatial spillover effects. Fourth, technology can significantly reduce CO2 emissions, but the positive spatial spillover effect is not significant.

Assessment of the Association between Genetic Polymorphisms in the CHI3L1 Gene and Asthma Risk.

BACKGROUND: Chitinase 3-like 1 (CHI3L1) is an important factor involved in the development of asthma. This meta-analysis assessed the association of the CHI3L1 polymorphisms rs4950928, rs10399931, rs883125, rs880633, and rs10399805 with asthma risk. METHODS: The literature searches were conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, Wanfang, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure up until September 4, 2021, for relevant studies. Sixteen publications with 18 studies involving 5,005 asthma patients and 9,725 controls were included in this meta-analysis. RESULTS: The meta-analyses showed that among East-Asian subjects, increased asthma risk was associated with CHI3L1 rs4950928 (GG + CG vs. CC: odds ratio [OR] = 1.43, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.09-1.88, p = 0.011; GG vs. CG + CC: OR = 1.64, 95% CI: 1.20-2.26, p = 0.002; GG vs. CC: OR = 1.97, 95% CI: 1.41-2.75, p = 0.000; and G vs. C: OR = 1.36, 95% CI: 1.12-1.66, p = 0.002) and rs883125 (G vs. C: OR = 1.42, 95% CI: 1.01-1.99, p = 0.043), whereas CHI3L1 rs10399931 was associated with reduced asthma risk (TT vs. CT + CC: OR = 0.79, 95% CI: 0.64-0.99, p = 0.038; TT vs. CC: OR = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.61-0.98, p = 0.030). In addition, we found an association between CHI3L1 rs4950928 and asthma risk in adult subjects but not children, while CHI3L1 rs883125 was associated with asthma risk in children. CONCLUSION: The CHI3L1 polymorphisms rs4950928, rs10399931, and rs883125 are important genetic factors for asthma among East-Asian subjects.

Measuring embodied carbon dioxide of the logistics industry in China: based on industry stripping method and input-output model.

Due to the lack of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission data on China's logistics industry, this study uses the industry stripping method to calculate the embodied energy consumption CO2 emissions based on input-output tables for China's logistics industry from 1997 to 2017. And then the Log-Mean Divisia Index method is used to decompose the influencing factors of carbon emission from five aspects. The empirical study mainly focused on the application of carbon emission tools and approaches in China, and this resulted in four key findings. First, the use of transportation, warehousing, and postal industries as a proxy for the logistics is simply not in line with reality and could result in greatly underestimating the CO2 emissions of logistics. Second, the annual direct CO2 accounts for roughly 40% in the embodied CO2 emissions in the logistics industry. Third, construction industry makes a greater contribution to the embodied CO2 of the logistics industry, followed by manufacturing. Fourth, economic output, population size, industrial structure, and energy structure are factors that contributed to the increase of logistics CO2 emissions, while the restraining factors included energy intensity. There is immense scope for adjustment in the energy and industrial structures.

A 2.3-ps RMS Resolution Time-to-Digital Converter Implemented in a Low-Cost Cyclone V FPGA.

We present a nonuniform multiphase (NUMP) method to construct a high-resolution time-to-digital converter (TDC) for low-cost field-programmable gate array (FPGA) devices. The NUMP method involves a system clock being passed through a series of delay elements to generate multiple clocks with different phase shifts. The phases of the rising and falling edges of all the clocks are sorted in order and the states of all the clocks are latched when a hit signal arrives. The sizes of the time bins (and precision) of the NUMP method are not limited by the uniformity and minimum value of the time delays of the delay lines. In theory, any delay sources with small jitters in an FPGA, not just very fine carry chains, can be used in the NUMP method to delay and randomize the clocks. Thus, the NUMP method can achieve excellent TDC timing resolutions in low-cost FPGAs without very fine delay lines. We implemented four NUMP TDC channels in a low-cost FPGA device (an Altera Cyclone V 5CEBA4F23C7N). The performance of the four NUMP TDCs was evaluated using both internal and external pulses. The root mean square (rms) for the timing resolution measured using the internal and the external pulses with short-time intervals (less than 1 ns) was 2.3 and 5.2 ps, respectively. A 14.1-ps rms timing resolution was measured at a time interval of 517 ns. The NUMP method is suitable for applications that require a number of high-performance TDC channels in a low-cost FPGA.

Developing a 'multiPatchPET' system in GATE for a PET system design with irregular geometries.

This work modified the commonly used Monte Carlo tool package GATE by developing a new 'multiPatchPET' system so that GATE users can easily simulate PET systems with irregular geometries. The motivation was to design a brain PET scanner with high sensitivity. It is known that compact PET scanners with a large solid coverage angle can achieve high sensitivity with fewer scintillation detectors, and thus have the potential to provide better image quality in brain PET imaging than conventional ring PET scanners. However, considering a straightforward example with the largest possible solid angle, a spherical PET scanner is hard to manufacture. A more practical alternative would be a sphere-like polyhedral PET scanner with flat detector patches. Moreover, when monolithic scintillators are chosen to construct these flat detector modules, detection efficiency is further improved. Thus, we plan to design a sphere-like polyhedral PET scanner made up of monolithic scintillators. Unfortunately, in our design study, we found that simulating such a scanner with the latest GATE version (8.0) was not trivial, since no predefined systems could be used. In this work we introduced a 'multiPatchPET' system to GATE, which we and other GATE users will be able to use to develop PET scanners with any irregular geometry and any shape of patch. To validate our modification, a single block detector and an mCT scanner were simulated via both the original 'ecat' system and the new 'multiPatchPET' system. The results show no difference in terms of the detecting efficiency and reconstruction image. Then we used the 'multiPatchPET' system to simulate an 86 surface polyhedral brain PET scanner. Compared with two cylindrical brain scanners, the polyhedral brain scanner shows a higher sensitivity and has fewer noisy images. Thus, it was proved that our modification, which is accessible to the nuclear imaging research community, equipped GATE with a powerful and user-friendly tool to simulate complex scanners with irregular patches easily.

Simulation study of a high-performance brain PET system with dodecahedral geometry.

PURPOSE: In brain imaging, the spherical PET system achieves the highest sensitivity when the solid angle is concerned. However, it is not practical. In this work, we designed an alternative sphere-like scanner, the dodecahedral scanner, which has a high sensitivity in imaging and a high feasibility to manufacture. We simulated this system and compared the performance with a few other dedicated brain PET systems. METHODS: Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to generate data of the dedicated brain PET system with the dodecahedral geometry (11 regular pentagon detectors). The data were then reconstructed using the in-house developed software with the fully three-dimensional maximum-likelihood expectation maximization (3D-MLEM) algorithm. RESULTS: Results show that the proposed system has a high-sensitivity distribution for the whole field of view (FOV). With a depth-of-interaction (DOI) resolution around 6.67 mm, the proposed system achieves the spatial resolution of 1.98 mm. Our simulation study also shows that the proposed system improves the image contrast and reduces noise compared with a few other dedicated brain PET systems. Finally, simulations with the Hoffman phantom show the potential application of the proposed system in clinical applications. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, the proposed dodecahedral PET system is potential for widespread applications in high-sensitivity, high-resolution PET imaging, to lower the injected dose.

Comprehensive assessment of cavernosography with 320-row dynamic volume CT versus conventional cavernosography in erectile dysfunction patients caused by venous leakage.

The present study aims to investigate and compare the diagnostic and prognostic value of cavernosography with 320-row dynamic volume computed tomography (DVCT) versus conventional cavernosography in men with erectile dysfunction (ED) caused by venous leakage. A total of 174 patients diagnosed with ED were enrolled and received cavernosography with 320-row DVCT (DVCT group) and conventional cavernosography scans (control group) respectively. The diagnosis, complications, and prognosis of patients were evaluated. The DVCT group provided high-resolution images with less processing and testing time, as well as lowered radiological agent and contrast agent compared with the control group. In the DVCT group, 89 patients who were diagnosed with venous ED had six various venous leakage, namely superficial venous leakage, profundus venous leakage, the mixed type, cavernosal venous leakage, crural venous leakage, and also venous leakage between the penis and urethra cavernosum (9, 21, 32, 6, 18, and 3 cases respectively). Similarly, 74 patients out of the 81 who suffered from venous ED were classified to have superficial venous leakage (11), profundus venous leakage (14), the mixed type venous leakage (26), and middle venous leakage (23). Six out of 25 patients in the DVCT group, had improvements in ED while the remaining 19 achieved full erectile function recovery with no penile fibrosis and erectile pain. Cavernosography with 320-row DVCT is a reliable system that can be used to diagnose ED caused by venous leakage. This is especially useful in accurately determining the type of venous and allows for a better prognosis and direction of treatment.

[Predictive value of three preoperative nutritional assessment methods in postoperative complications of gastrointestinal cancers].

OBJECTIVE: To compare the value of three preoperative nutritional assessment methods, European nutrition risk screening 2002(NRS 2002), mini-nutrition assessment(MNA) and subjective global assessment(SGA), in predicting postoperative complications of gastrointestinal cancer patients. METHODS: A total of 235 patients with gastrointestinal cancers, including 31 esophageal cancers, 82 gastric cancers, and 122 colorectal cancers, in our hospital from January 2012 to June 2013 were prospectively enrolled. Preoperative nutritional status was evaluated with above 3 methods respectively. Postoperative complication rates were compared among different preoperative nutritional status. RESULTS: According to SGA score, the morbidity of severe-moderate, mild and no malnourished patients was 40.5%(17/42), 25.3%(22/87) and 14.2%(15/106) respectively(P<0.01). According to MNA score, the morbidity of patients with malnutrition, at risk of malnutrition and without malnutrition was 32.9%(23/70), 24.7%(18/73) and 14.1%(13/92) respectively(P<0.05). According to NRS 2002, the morbidity of patients at malnutrition risk and without malnutrition risk was 27.6%(27/98) and 19.7%(27/137) respectively(P>0.05). Multiple regression analysis revealed that both SGA and MNA scores were predictive factors for the development of postoperative complications(both P<0.01). The sensitivity of SGA score for predicting complications was higher compared to MNA score (90.7% vs. 79.6%), while the specificity was similar(49.7% vs. 50.8%). CONCLUSIONS: Both SGA and MNA scores can effectively predict the development of postoperative complications in gastrointestinal cancer patients, and SGA score has better sensitivity. SGA score is recommended for decision-making regarding preoperative nutrition support.