Health risk assessment of soil heavy metals in a typical mining town in north China based on Monte Carlo simulation coupled with Positive matrix factorization model.

The accumulation of heavy metals (HMs) in soil caused by mineral resource exploitation and its ancillary industrial processes poses a threat to ecology and public health. Effective risk control measures require a quantification of the impacts and contributions to health risks from individual sources of soil HMs. Based on high-density sampling, soil contamination risk indexes, positive matrix factorization (PMF) model, Monte Carlo simulation and human health risk analysis model were applied to investigate the risk of HMs in a typical mining town in North China. The results showed that As was the most dominant soil pollutant factor, Cd and Hg were the most dominant soil ecological risk factors, and Cr and Ni were the most dominant health risk factors in the study area. Overall, both pollution and ecological risks were at low levels, while there were still some higher hazard areas located in the central and south-central part of the region. According to the probabilistic health risk assessment (HRA), children suffered greater health risks than adults, with 21.63% of non-carcinogenic risks and 53.24% of carcinogenic risks exceeding the prescribed thresholds (HI > 1 and TCR>1E-4). The PMF model identified five potential sources: fuel combustion (FC), processing of building materials with limestone as raw materials (PBML), industry source (IS), iron ore mining combined with garbage (IOG), and agriculture source (AS). PBML is the primary source of soil HM contamination, as well as the major anthropogenic source of carcinogenic risk for all populations. Agricultural inputs associated with As are the major source of non-carcinogenic risk. This study offers a good example of probabilistic HRA using specific sources, which can provide a valuable reference for strategy establishment of pollution remediation and risk prevention and control.

Quality assessment and prediction of municipal drinking water using water quality index and artificial neural network: A case study of Wuhan, central China, from 2013 to 2019.

The sanitary security of drinking water is closely related to human health, but its quality assessment mainly focused on limited types of indicators and relatively restricted time span. The current study was aimed to evaluate the long-term spatial-temporal distribution of municipal drinking water quality and explore the origin of water contamination based on multiple water indicators of 137 finished water samples and 863 tap water samples from Wuhan city, China. Water quality indexes (WQIs) were calculated to integrate the measured indicators. WQIs of the finished water samples ranged from 0.24 to 0.92, with the qualification rate and excellent rate of 100 % and 96.4 %, respectively, while those of the tap water samples ranged from 0.09 to 3.20, with the qualification rate of 99.9 %, and excellent rate of 95.5 %. Artificial neural network model was constructed based on the time series of WQIs from 2013 to 2019 to predict the water quality thereafter. The predicted WQIs of finished and tap water in 2020 and 2021 qualified on the whole, with the excellent rate of 87.5 % and 92.9 %, respectively. Except for three samples exceeding the limits of free chlorine residual, chloroform and fluoride, respectively, the majority of indicators reached the threshold values for drinking. Our study suggested that municipal drinking water quality in Wuhan was generally stable and in line with the national hygiene standards. Moreover, principal component analysis illustrated that the main potential sources of drinking water contamination were inorganic salts and organic matters, followed by pollution from distribution systems, the use of aluminum-containing coagulants and turbidity involved in water treatment, which need more attention.

Incorporating Near-Pseudocapacitance Insertion Ni/Co-Based Hexacyanoferrate and Low-Cost Metallic Zn for Aqueous K-Ion Batteries.

The limited availability of cathode materials with high specific capacity and significant cycling stability for aqueous K-ion batteries (AKIBs) hinder their further development owing to the large radius of K+ (1.38 Å). Prussian blue and its analogs with a three-dimensional frame structure possessing special energy storage mechanism are promising candidates as cathode materials for AKIBs. In this study, K0.2 Ni0.68 Co0.77 Fe(CN)6 ⋅ 1.8H2 O (KNCHCF) was prepared as a cathode material for AKIBs. Both the electrochemical activity of Co ions and the near-pseudocapacitance intercalation of KNCHCF enhance K+ storage. Therefore, KNCHCF exhibits a superior capacity maintenance rate of 86 % after 1000 cycles at a high current density of 3.0 A g-1 . The storage mechanism of K+ in AKIBs was revealed through ex situ X-ray diffraction, ex situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and ex situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements. Moreover, the assembled K-Zn hybrid battery showed good cycling stability with 93.1 % capacity maintenance at 0.1 A g-1 after 50 cycles and a high energy density of 96.81 W h kg-1 . Hence, KNCHCF may be a potential material for the development of AKIBs.

Early assessment of chemotherapeutic response in hepatocellular carcinoma based on serum surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

In clinical practice, the transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) has been widely accepted as the first option for non-surgical hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treatment. However, patients with HCC often suffer from poor response to TACE therapy. This can be prevented if the chemotherapeutic response can be early and accurately assessed, which is essential to guide timely and rational management. In this study, the serum SERS technique was for the first time investigated as a potential prognostic tool for early assessment of HCC chemotherapeutic response. According to the SERS spectral analysis results, it is newly found that not only the absolute circulating nucleic acids and collagen levels in pre-therapeutic serum but also the changes in circulating nucleic acids and amino acids between pre-therapeutic and post-therapeutic serum are expected to be potential serum markers for HCC prognosis. By further applying chemometrics methods to establish prognostic models, excellent prognostic accuracies were achieved within only 3 days after TACE therapy. Thus, the proposed method is expected to provide guidance on timely and rational management of HCC to improve its survival rate.

Assessment of hemagglutination activity of porcine deltacoronavirus.

Porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) is an emerging swine enteric coronavirus that causes diarrhea in piglets. However, the biological characteristics of PDCoV are unclear. In this study, the hemagglutination (HA) abilities of two PDCoV strains (CH-01 and HNZK-04) were investigated. Our results showed that PDCoV has the ability to agglutinate rabbit erythrocytes after virion pretreatment with trypsin or neuraminidase. Additionally, the HA assay results showed a significant positive correlation with the infectious viral titer. Our results suggest that assessing the HA activity of PDCoV may be a useful diagnostic method for investigating and surveilling PDCoV infections.

The profile inter-unit reliability.

To assess the quality of health care, patient outcomes associated with medical providers (eg, dialysis facilities) are routinely monitored in order to identify poor (or excellent) provider performance. Given the high stakes of such evaluations for payment as well as public reporting of quality, it is important to assess the reliability of quality measures. A commonly used metric is the inter-unit reliability (IUR), which is the proportion of variation in the measure that comes from inter-provider differences. Despite its wide use, however, the size of the IUR has little to do with the usefulness of the measure for profiling extreme outcomes. A large IUR can signal the need for further risk adjustment to account for differences between patients treated by different providers, while even measures with an IUR close to zero can be useful for identifying extreme providers. To address these limitations, we propose an alternative measure of reliability, which assesses more directly the value of a quality measure in identifying (or profiling) providers with extreme outcomes. The resulting metric reflects the extent to which the profiling status is consistent over repeated measurements. We use national dialysis data to examine this approach on various measures of dialysis facilities.

Highly Efficient and Low Cost SPEEK/TiO2 Nanocomposite Membrane for Vanadium Redox Flow Battery.

In this work, a sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone)/titanium oxide composite membrane (SPEEK/TiO2) was prepared by solution casting method. The TiO2 nanoparticles in the polymer matrix not only improved the vanadium ion selectivity of SPEEK/TiO2, but also enhanced the mechanical stability of this membrane by forming hydrogen bonds with SPEEK. Based on the SPEEK/TiO2 composite membrane, vanadium redox flow battery (VRB) exhibited ultrahigh coulombic efficiency (over 99.3%) and excellent energy efficiency (over 84.8%) under current density of 120 mA cm-2 for 200 cycles. More importantly, the device also presented excellent discharge capacity retention performance of about 95.4% and 86.9% after 100 and 200 cycles under this current density, respectively. The good performance and low cost of this membrane indicate that it is a promising candidate in VRB applications and an excellent substitute for Nafion membranes.

Risk Factors During Pregnancy and Early Childhood in Rural West Bengal, India: A Feasibility Study Implemented via Trained Community Health Workers Using Mobile Data Collection Devices.

Objectives This study measures the prevalence of risk factors among pregnant women and young children aged 12-24 months in a rural community in West Bengal, India. Methods Community health workers (CHWs) enrolled women and children into this 2015 cross-sectional study. Pregnant women were evaluated for underweight, anemia, and abnormal blood pressure. Children were evaluated for underweight, abnormal head and upper arm circumferences, and low scores from the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ). Data were collected on smartphones and tablets or by paper. Results More than half of the 279 women (59.9%) had a risk factor during pregnancy: 48.7% were anemic, 35.1% had low blood pressure, and 7.5% were underweight. Among the 366 children, 59.3% had a risk factor, including 24.0% with low ASQ scores and 49.7% who had abnormal anthropometric measures. Conclusions for Practice Vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women and young children, needed a greater connection to doctors in this rural community. This study demonstrated the feasibility of CHWs to listen to health concerns and connect underserved populations with health care services.