Association between the location of social medical insurance and social integration among China's elderly rural migrants: a nationwide cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Universal social medical insurance coverage is viewed as a major factor in promoting social integration, but insufficient evidence exists on the integration of elderly rural migrants (ERM), generally aged 60 years and above, in low- and middle-income countries. To address this problem, we explore the relationship between the location of social medical insurance (SMI), such as a host city, and social integration in the context of Chinese ERM. METHODS: This study is based on data from the 2017 National Internal Migrant Dynamic Monitoring Survey in China. The study participants were Chinese ERM. An integration index was constructed to measure the degree of social integration in a multi-dimensional manner using a factor analysis method. This study used descriptive statistics and one-way analysis of variance to explore the differences in social integration between ERM with SMI from host cities and hometowns. Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis was used to test the correlation between SMI location and social integration level in the overall sample. Finally, the results were verified by propensity score matching. RESULTS: It was found that 606 (18.2%) of the insured ERM chose host city SMI, while 2727 (81.8%) chose hometown SMI. The level of social integration was lower among ERM with hometown SMI (-1.438 ± 32.795, F = 28.311, p ≤ 0.01) than those with host city SMI (6.649 ± 34.383). Among the dimensions of social integration, social participation contributed more than other factors, with a contribution rate of 45.42%. Host city SMI increased the probability of the social integration index by 647% among ERM (k-nearest neighbor caliper matched (n = 4, caliper = 0.02), with a full sample ATT value of 6.47 (T = 5.32, SE = 1.48, p < 0.05)). CONCLUSIONS: ERM with host city SMI have a higher social integration level than those with hometowns SMI. That is, host city SMI positively affects social integration. Policymakers should focus on the access of host city SMI for ERM. Removing the threshold of host city SMI coverage for ERM can promote social integration.

Enhanced lasing properties of BUBD-1 film with multifunctional buffer layers doped with silver nanoparticles.

The organic semiconductor lasers (OSLs) have been seen as a promising light source for future applications. Achieving organic semiconductors with low amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) threshold is a key progress toward the electrically pumped OSLs. In this paper, the ASE properties of CBP: 2wt% BUBD-1 blend films were optimized using buffer layers containing silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) with different ratios. Both photoluminescence intensity and ASE properties of blend films were optimized when the buffer layer with 25 vol% Ag NPs was introduced. The lowest ASE threshold is 0.47 µJ/Pulse (6.71 µJ/cm2), which reduces 67.6%, and the highest gain factor is 20.14 cm-1, which enhances 47.8% compared with that without buffer layers. The enhancement of ASE properties of blend films was ascribed to the four functions of the Ag NPs doped buffer layers, including the low refractive index of PMMA and the triple localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) effects of Ag NPs in buffer layers. The results show that the buffer layer modified by metal nanoparticles has great application potential in improving the lasing performance of organic small molecules.

Economic recovery forecasts under impacts of COVID-19.

This paper proposes a joint model by combining the time-varying coefficient susceptible-infected-removal model with the hierarchical Bayesian vector autoregression model. This model establishes the relationship between several critical macroeconomic variables and pandemic transmission states and performs economic predictions under two predefined pandemic scenarios. The empirical part of the model predicts the economic recovery of several countries severely affected by COVID-19 (e.g., the United States and India, among others). Under the proposed pandemic scenarios, economies tend to recover rather than fall into prolonged recessions. The economy recovers faster in the scenario where the COVID-19 pandemic is controlled.

Face-based age estimation using improved Swin Transformer with attention-based convolution.

Recently Transformer models is new direction in the computer vision field, which is based on self multihead attention mechanism. Compared with the convolutional neural network, this Transformer uses the self-attention mechanism to capture global contextual information and extract more strong features by learning the association relationship between different features, which has achieved good results in many vision tasks. In face-based age estimation, some facial patches that contain rich age-specific information are critical in the age estimation task. The present study proposed an attention-based convolution (ABC) age estimation framework, called improved Swin Transformer with ABC, in which two separate regions were implemented, namely ABC and Swin Transformer. ABC extracted facial patches containing rich age-specific information using a shallow convolutional network and a multiheaded attention mechanism. Subsequently, the features obtained by ABC were spliced with the flattened image in the Swin Transformer, which were then input to the Swin Transformer to predict the age of the image. The ABC framework spliced the important regions that contained rich age-specific information into the original image, which could fully mobilize the long-dependency of the Swin Transformer, that is, extracting stronger features by learning the dependency relationship between different features. ABC also introduced loss of diversity to guide the training of self-attention mechanism, reducing overlap between patches so that the diverse and important patches were discovered. Through extensive experiments, this study showed that the proposed framework outperformed several state-of-the-art methods on age estimation benchmark datasets.

Enhanced performance of organic light-emitting diodes by integrating quasi-periodic micro-nano structures.

To integrate a quasi-periodic micro-nano structure (PMS) to the organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) is an efficient way to enhance the performance of OLEDs. In this paper, the PMS prepared by the phase separation of Polystyrene and Poly (methyl methacrylate) was integrated to the OLEDs with the structures of Glass/PMS/Ag (30 nm)/MoO3 (5 nm)/(NPB) (40 nm)/(Alq3) (60 nm)/LiF (0.5 nm)/Al (150 nm). The maximum luminance intensity and external quantum efficiency increased to 10700 cd/m2 and 1.11 %, which is 48 % and 44 % higher than that of 7209 cd/m2 and 0.77 % of the planar reference device. The enhanced performance of OLEDs was ascribed to the attenuation of surface plasmon polariton loss caused by the PMS, which was testified by the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) simulation. The PMS was also transferred to the hole transfer layer (PEDOT: PSS) of OLEDs by nano-imprinting lithography with the structure of Glass/(ITO) (100 nm)/PEDOT: PSS (100 nm) (with PMS)/NPB (10 nm)/Alq3 (50 nm)/LiF (0.5 nm)/Al (100 nm). The performance was also improved by the optimized PMS and the light out-coupling efficiency increased to about 49.5 %, which is much higher than that of 28.8 % in the OLEDs with PMS Ag anode and 20 % in the planar reference devices. This suggests that the PMS can improve the OLED device performance regardless of the functional layer in which the PMS is integrated.

Enhanced performance of solution-processed OLEDs by altering the molecular transition dipole moment orientation of emission layers.

Transition dipole moment orientation is one of the crucial factors, which can enhance the performance of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). In this work, the transition dipole moment orientation of the host-guest emission layers (EMLs) prepared by solution method annealed at different temperatures were systematically studied by analyzing the angle-dependent PL spectrum. When the EMLs of 2DPAc-MPM (20 wt%): DPEPO was annealed at the temperature of 115 °C, the photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) was enhanced to 78%±3.5%, and the vertical dipole ratio was reduced to 0.34. The lower vertical orientation of transition dipoles is conducted to improve the electron and hole mobility, which was testified by the hole and electron only devices. The lower vertical dipole ratio, higher PLQY and carrier mobility together enhanced the performance of solution processed OLEDs.

Refined method for predicting electrochemical windows of ionic liquids and experimental validation studies.

A combined classical molecular dynamics (MD) and ab initio MD (AIMD) method was developed for the calculation of electrochemical windows (ECWs) of ionic liquids. In the method, the liquid phase of ionic liquid is explicitly sampled using classical MD. The electrochemical window, estimated by the energy difference between the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO), is calculated at the density functional theory (DFT) level based on snapshots obtained from classical MD trajectories. The snapshots were relaxed using AIMD and quenched to their local energy minima, which assures that the HOMO/LUMO calculations are based on stable configurations on the same potential energy surface. The new procedure was applied to a group of ionic liquids for which the ECWs were also experimentally measured in a self-consistent manner. It was found that the predicted ECWs not only agree with the experimental trend very well but also the values are quantitatively accurate. The proposed method provides an efficient way to compare ECWs of ionic liquids in the same context, which has been difficult in experiments or simulation due to the fact that ECW values sensitively depend on experimental setup and conditions.