[Spatiotemporal Occurrence of Organophosphate Esters in the Surface Water and Sediment of Taihu Lake and Relevant Risk Assessment].

Aiming to explore the spatiotemporal occurrence of organophosphate esters (OPEs) in the aquatic environment of Taihu Lake and to assess the relevant ecological risk, monomeric and oligomeric OPEs in the surface water and sediment of Taihu Lake were determined using solid phase extraction and ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The target monomeric OPEs included chlorinated OPEs, alkyl OPEs, and aryl OPEs. There was no significant difference in the spatial distribution of OPEs in water and sediment between the pollutant-impacted and less-impacted zones. The average concentrations of OPEs in summer and winter were, respectively, 752.7 and 498.5 ng·L-1 in water and 124.0 and 54.5 ng·g-1 in sediment, indicating an obvious seasonal difference, especially for the monomeric OPEs. The OPEs levels in both the water and sediment were ranked in the order of chlorinated OPEs > alkyl OPEs > aryl OPEs≈oligomeric OPEs. The pseudo-partitioning coefficients (Kd) of OPEs between the sediment and surface water of Taihu Lake were much higher in summer (0.05-4.17 L·g-1) compared to those in winter (0.02-3.47 L·g-1) and were significantly positively correlated with the lg Kow values of OPEs. Based on the median concentrations of OPEs in the water of Taihu Lake, the ecological risk of OPEs was assessed by risk quotient (RQ) values, which indicated a medium risk at an RQ level of 0.34 during winter and 0.35 during summer. The assessment results showed that the risk ranking of OPEs was consistent with that of their concentrations, and the monomeric OPEs posed a higher ecological risk in summer compared to that in winter. Although the ecological risk of oligomeric OPEs in this study was not serious and was lower than that of monomeric OPEs, it is an urgent requirement to conduct ecotoxicology studies on oligomeric OPEs in the future since available data is highly limited at present.

Quantitative Assessment of Myocardial Edema by MR T2 Mapping in Children With Kawasaki Disease.

BACKGROUND: Few studies assessed myocardial inflammation using Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Kawasaki disease (KD) patients. PURPOSE: To quantify myocardial edema in KD patients using T2 mapping and explore the independent predictors of T2 values. STUDY TYPE: Prospective. SUBJECTS: Ninety KD patients including 40 in acute phase (26 males, 65.0%) and 50 in chronic phase (34 males, 68.0%). Thirty-one healthy volunteers (21 males, 70.0%). FIELD STRENGTH/SEQUENCE: 3.0 T T2-weighted Turbo Spin Echo-Short Time of Inversion Recovery sequence, True fast imaging with steady precession flash sequence and fast low-angle shot 3D spoiled gradient echo sequence. ASSESSMENT: T2 values were compared among KD groups and controls. STATISTICAL TEST: Student's t test and Fisher's exact test; One-way analysis of variance; Pearson correlation analysis; Receiver operating curve analysis; Multivariable linear regression. RESULTS: Global T2 value of KD patients in acute phase was the highest, followed by those of chronic-phase patients and controls (38.83 ± 2.41 msec vs. 37.55 ± 2.28 msec vs. 36.05 ± 1.64 msec). Regional T2 values showed a same trend. There were no significant differences in global and regional T2 values between KD patients with and without coronary artery (CA) dilation, no matter in acute or chronic phase (all KD patients: P = 0.51, 0.51, 0.53, 0.72; acute KD: P = 0.61, 0.37, 0.33, 0.83; chronic KD: P = 0.65, 0.79, 0.62, 0.79). No significant difference was observed in global T2 values between KD patients with Z score > 5.0 and 2.0 < Z score ≤ 5.0 (P = 0.65). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that stage of disease (ß = -0.123) and heart rate (ß = 0.280) were independently associated with global T2 values. DATA CONCLUSION: The degree of myocardial edema was more severe in acute-phase than in chronic-phase KD patients. Myocardial edema persists in patients regardless of the existence or degree of CA dilation. EVIDENCE LEVEL: 2 TECHNICAL EFFICACY: Stage 2.

Research on the Anti-Risk Mechanism of Mask Green Supply Chain from the Perspective of Cooperation between Retailers, Suppliers, and Financial Institutions.

Against the background of the pandemic, the mask supply chain faces the risk of pollution caused by discarded masks, the risk of insufficient funds of retailers, and the risk of mask overstock. To better guard against the above risks, this study constructed a two-party game model and a cusp catastrophe model from the perspective of the mask green supply chain, and studied the strategic choices of retailers and suppliers in the supply chain affected by the risk of capital constraints and overstock. The result shows that the risk shocks will lead to the disruption of the mask green supply chain, and the main factors affecting the strategy choice of mask suppliers and retailers are mask recycling rate, deposit ratio, risk occurrence time, etc. In further research, this study involved a mechanism for financial institutions, mask retailers, and the government to jointly deal with the risk of mask overstock, the risk of retailers' insufficient funds, and the risk of environmental pollution from discarded masks. The research path and conclusion of this study reveal the risks in the circulation area of mask supplies during the pandemic, and provide recommendations for planning for future crises and risk prevention.

Integrated medical resource consumption stratification in hospitalized patients: an Auto Triage Management model based on accurate risk, cost and length of stay prediction.

Triage management plays important roles in hospitalized patients for disease severity stratification and medical burden analysis. Although progression risks have been extensively researched for numbers of diseases, other crucial indicators that reflect patients' economic and time costs have not been systematically studied. To address the problems, we developed an automatic deep learning based Auto Triage Management (ATM) Framework capable of accurately modelling patients' disease progression risk and health economic evaluation. Based on them, we can first discover the relationship between disease progression and medical system cost, find potential features that can more precisely aid patient triage in resource allocation, and allow treatment plan searching that has cured patients. Applying ATM in COVID-19, we built a joint model to predict patients' risk, the total length of stay (LoS) and cost when at-admission, and remaining LoS and cost at a given hospitalized time point, with C-index 0.930 and 0.869 for risk prediction, mean absolute error (MAE) of 5.61 and 5.90 days for total LoS prediction in internal and external validation data.

Association of left ventricular systolic dysfunction with coronary artery dilation in Kawasaki disease patients: Assessment with cardiovascular magnetic resonance.

PURPOSE: To quantify global and regional left ventricular (LV) strain parameters in patients with Kawasaki disease (KD) using cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) tissue tracking and assess the association of coronary artery dilation (CA dilation) with LV systolic dysfunction. METHODS: Thirty-one KD patients with CA dilation, 22 patients without CA dilation and 27 age- and sex-matched normal controls underwent 3.0 T CMR examination. Z score of >2 was defined as CA dilation. Global LV strain parameters and regional LV strain parameters in 16 American Heart Association segmentation, including radial, circumferential and longitudinal peak strain (PS) and LV function were measured and compared among groups. RESULTS: No significant difference in LV ejection fraction has been observed among controls, KD patients with CA dilation and without CA dilation (all p > 0.05). However, global longitudinal PS (GLPS) was lower in groups with CA dilation than those without CA dilation (-12.6 ± 4.1% vs -14.9 ± 2.6%, p < 0.05). For regional strain parameters, the segments with CA dilation (n = 301) were lower than those in both normal controls (n = 416) and segments without CA dilation (n = 547) in regional radial, circumferential and longitudinal PS (all p < 0.05). The severity of CA dilation was positively correlated to GLPS and regional longitudinal PS (r = 0.388 and r = 0.222; both p < 0.05) in KD patients. After adjusting for clinical characteristics, the multivariate analysis demonstrated that Z score was independently associated with GLPS in KD patients (ß = 0.469, p = 0.000, model R2 = 0.355). CONCLUSIONS: CMR tissue tracking could sensitively identify subclinical LV dysfunction in KD patients with CA dilation. LV systolic dysfunction occurs particularly in the myocardium dominated by the dilated coronary artery. CA dilation is an independent predictor of LV systolic dysfunction.

Preparation of low-cost perovskite solar cells with high-quality perovskite films in an ambient atmosphere.

High-quality perovskite films are extremely crucial to obtain perovskite solar cells with excellent photovoltaic performance, especially for carbon-based hole transport materials (HTM)-free perovskite solar cells. In this work, a facile and low-cost double two-step method (DT-method) is developed to prepare uniform and pinhole-free CH3NH3PbI3perovskite films in an ambient atmosphere by utilizing the dissolution-recrystallization of PbI2in DMF. That is to spin-coat PbI2and CH3NH3I solution sequentially onto pristine perovskite films prepared by the conventional two-step method. The solar cells fabricated by the DT-method show a dramatic performance improvement, includingVoc,Jsc, and fill factor reach 0.85 V, 15.56 mA cm-2, and 0.58 respectively, which increase power conversion efficiency from 3.93% to 7.58% compared with the conventional two-step method. The improvement in performance and stability of solar cells is mainly due to the higher coverage of perovskite films onto the underlying mesoporous TiO2layer and a negligible amount of PbI2residue, which can effectively reduce charge recombination and promote the rapid transfer of charge carriers. In summary, this work presents a process for preparing carbon-based HTM-free perovskite solar cells (PSCs) in a high-humidity atmospheric environment (60%-85%). This simple device structure and preparation condition can greatly reduce the production threshold and cost of PSCs.

A study on the NH3-SCR performance and reaction mechanism of a cost-effective and environment-friendly black TiO2 catalyst.

In this paper, black TiO2 without adding active components was developed for NH3-SCR-DeNOx. The catalytic activity tests showed that the NO removal efficiency of black TiO2 was always greater than 90% at 330-390 °C, which almost reached that of the commercial NH3-SCR-DeNOx catalyst. XRD, UV-vis, TG, EPR, XPS, H2-TPR, DFT and NH3-TPD analyses were carried out to study the structure-effectiveness relationship. We found that a large number of oxygen vacancies were formed over the black TiO2 surface. It was not only promoted the adsorption of NH3via direct (oxygen vacancies as Lewis acid sites for NH3 adsorption) and indirect (oxygen vacancies promote the formation of surface hydroxyl groups, which are Brønsted acid sites for NH3 adsorption) forms, but also improved the redox properties by promoting the reduction of Ti4+ to Ti3+. These changes lead to the superior catalytic activity of black TiO2 for NH3-SCR-DeNOx. Additionally, an in situ DRIFT study demonstrated that the NH3-SCR-DeNOx reaction over black TiO2 occurred via the Eley-Rideal (E-R) mechanism. Finally, the catalytic stability and resistance to H2O and SO2 of the black TiO2 catalyst were studied, and it showed good performances. This study offered new and important insights into the understanding of the role of oxygen vacancies in determining the physical and chemical properties of catalysts.

Low-cost CoFe2O4/biomass carbon hybrid from metal-enriched sulfate reducing bacteria as an electrocatalyst for water oxidation.

The development of electrocatalysts for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction (OER) requires extensive and challenging research for the water splitting and fuel cell applications. Herein, we report a low-cost CoFe2O4/biomass carbon (CFO@BC/Zn) hybrid from Co-enriched Sulfate Reducing Bacteria (Co-SRB) as an electrocatalyst for OER. The electrocatalyst exhibits a low potential of 1.53 V at a current density 10 mA cm-2 and Tafel slope of 86 mV dec-1. This method does not require high-cost or long periods of preparation. The density-functional theory (DFT) calculations show a small barrier for oxygen conversion on Fe3+ of CFO (100) surface. The synthesis of CFO@BC/Zn may be a new approach for obtaining low-priced electrocatalysts for OER.