Material flow analysis and statistical entropy evaluation of plastic packaging for express delivery in China.

Encouraging the recycling of plastic packaging materials in express delivery is a necessary step toward environmentally friendly industrial development. In this study, we present a framework for analyzing the flow of materials in express plastic packaging, from production and manufacturing to consumption and recycling. In examining the use of recycled materials in post-consumer express plastic packaging and the destination of consumer packaging waste in 2020 and 2021, we found that 44.4% (1613.6 Gg) of the studied express plastic packaging was incinerated. Additionally, approximately 1296.6 Gg of express plastic packaging flowed into rural areas. Our calculations showed that the ΔRSE in 2020 was 15.1%, and on the condition that 25% separated collection with 80% recycling, ΔRSE would be - 0.5%. Results verified that separated collection is an important step in the recycling strategy for packaging materials. Survey data from universities in Beijing indicate that currently, 26% of college students are participating in the separate collection of packaging.

Gesture Classification in Electromyography Signals for Real-Time Prosthetic Hand Control Using a Convolutional Neural Network-Enhanced Channel Attention Model.

Accurate and real-time gesture recognition is required for the autonomous operation of prosthetic hand devices. This study employs a convolutional neural network-enhanced channel attention (CNN-ECA) model to provide a unique approach for surface electromyography (sEMG) gesture recognition. The introduction of the ECA module improves the model's capacity to extract features and focus on critical information in the sEMG data, thus simultaneously equipping the sEMG-controlled prosthetic hand systems with the characteristics of accurate gesture detection and real-time control. Furthermore, we suggest a preprocessing strategy for extracting envelope signals that incorporates Butterworth low-pass filtering and the fast Hilbert transform (FHT), which can successfully reduce noise interference and capture essential physiological information. Finally, the majority voting window technique is adopted to enhance the prediction results, further improving the accuracy and stability of the model. Overall, our multi-layered convolutional neural network model, in conjunction with envelope signal extraction and attention mechanisms, offers a promising and innovative approach for real-time control systems in prosthetic hands, allowing for precise fine motor actions.

Analysis of the coupled flows of aluminum and copper in household air conditioning system.

The global "copper-poor and aluminum-rich" situation has made the possibility of "copper saving with aluminum" an important topic. This study established a framework for analyzing multiple substances' coupled flows at the product level based on material flow analysis (MFA), and took the household air conditioning system of the Chinese mainland in 2020 as an example to characterize the coupled flows of aluminum and copper. The results showed that the system consumed 0.69 million tons of aluminum and 2.10 million tons of copper, and discharged 0.17 million tons of aluminum and 0.43 million tons of copper to the environment cumulatively to achieve 13.2 million terajoules of final heat exchanged and serve 1.24 billion square meters during lifetime in mainland China alone, secondary aluminum and copper accounted for only 22.61% and 24.83% of the total consumption, and the in-use stocks increased by 0.19 million tons of aluminum and 0.70 million tons of copper. The external dependency of copper ore was 92.83%, which was significantly higher than the 44.29% of bauxite. The comprehensive utilization efficiency of copper reached 77.88%, which was slightly higher than the 70.80% of aluminum. The conclusion indicates that under the premise of meeting use requirements, promoting "replacing copper with aluminum" can improve the stability and safety of China's material supply chain, but there is a need to further boost the production efficiency of aluminum in primary production.

Expansion of KRAS hotspot mutations reactive T cells from human pancreatic tumors using autologous T cells as the antigen-presenting cells.

Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) with expanded tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) or TCR gene-modified T cells (TCR-T) that recognize mutant KRAS neo-antigens can mediate tumor regression in patients with advanced pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) (Tran et al in N Engl J Med, 375:2255-2262, 2016; Leidner et al in N Engl J Med, 386:2112-2119, 2022). The mutant KRAS-targeted ACT holds great potential to achieve durable clinical responses for PDAC, which has had no meaningful improvement over 40 years. However, the wide application of mutant KRAS-centric ACT is currently limited by the rarity of TIL that recognize the mutant KRAS. In addition, PDAC is generally recognized as a poorly immunogenic tumor, and TILs in PDAC are less abundant than in immunogenic tumors such as melanoma. To increase the success rate of TIL production, we adopted a well-utilized K562-based artificial APC (aAPC) that expresses 4-1BBL as the costimulatory molecules to enhance the TIL production from PDCA. However, stimulation with K562-based aAPC led to a rapid loss of specificity to mutant KRAS. To selectively expand neo-antigen-specific T cells, particularly mKRAS, from the TILs, we used tandem mini gene-modified autologous T cells (TMG-T) as the novel aAPC. Using this modified IVS protocol, we successfully generated TIL cultures specifically reactive to mKRAS (G12V). We believe that autologous TMG-T cells provide a reliable source of autologous APC to expand a rare population of neoantigen-specific T cells in TILs.

Analysis of iron composite flow in China.

Iron is an important metal material that is crucial to social and national economic development. In order to understand iron's material flow, energy flow, and value flow in China, a composite flow framework is here established. Based on this framework, the concept of price is introduced, and China is taken as an example to study the composite flow of iron in 2018. The results showed the following. First, as iron moved down the industrial chain, its material flow decreased gradually, while the price continued to rise. Second, the annual loss of raw materials from iron processing was 150-200 million tons, and scrap iron had great potential for secondary utilization. Third, China had a trade deficit in terms of importing raw materials and exporting products, but it also had a trade surplus in trade volume. Finally, China imported iron-containing goods at high prices but exported iron-containing goods at low prices. This was due to the lack of high-end science and technology, which made China less competitive in the international market.

Ubiquitinated Proteins Isolated From Tumor Cells Are Efficient Substrates for Antigen Cross-Presentation.

We have previously shown that inhibition of the proteasome causes defective ribosomal products to be shunted into autophagosomes and subsequently released from tumor cells as defective ribosomal products in Blebs (DRibbles). These DRibbles serve as an excellent source of antigens for cross-priming of tumor-specific T cells. Here, we examine the role of ubiquitinated proteins (Ub-proteins) in this pathway. Using purified Ub-proteins from tumor cells that express endogenous tumor-associated antigen or exogenous viral antigen, we tested the ability of these proteins to stimulate antigen-specific T-cell responses, by activation of monocyte-derived dendritic cells generated from human peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Compared with total cell lysates, we found that purified Ub-proteins from both a gp100-specific melanoma cell line and from a lung cancer cell line expressing cytomegalovirus pp65 antigen produced a significantly higher level of IFN-γ in gp100- or pp65-specific T cells, respectively. In addition, Ub-proteins from an allogeneic tumor cell line could be used to stimulate tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes isolated and expanded from non-small cell lung cancer patients. These results establish that Ub-proteins provide a relevant source of antigens for cross-priming of antitumor immune responses in a variety of settings, including endogenous melanoma and exogenous viral antigen presentation, as well as antigen-specific tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes. Thus, ubiquitin can be used as an affinity tag to enrich for unknown tumor-specific antigens from tumor cell lysates to stimulate tumor-specific T cells ex vivo or to be used as vaccines to target short-lived proteins.

The Effect of Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticle Surface Charge on Antigen Cross-Presentation.

Magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) of superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) have been explored for different kinds of applications in biomedicine, mechanics, and information. Here, we explored the synthetic SPIO NPs as an adjuvant on antigen cross-presentation ability by enhancing the intracellular delivery of antigens into antigen presenting cells (APCs). Particles with different chemical modifications and surface charges were used to study the mechanism of action of antigen delivery. Specifically, two types of magnetic NPs, γFe2O3/APTS (3-aminopropyltrimethoxysilane) NPs and γFe2O3/DMSA (meso-2, 3-Dimercaptosuccinic acid) NPs, with the same crystal structure, magnetic properties, and size distribution were prepared. Then, the promotion of T-cell activation via dendritic cells (DCs) was compared among different charged antigen coated NPs. Moreover, the activation of the autophagy, cytosolic delivery of the antigens, and antigen degradation mediated by the proteasome and lysosome were measured. Our results indicated that positive charged γFe2O3/APTS NPs, but not negative charged γFe2O3/DMSA NPs, enhanced the cross-presentation ability of DCs. Increased cross-presentation ability induced by γFe2O3/APTS NPs was associated with increased cytosolic antigen delivery. On the contrary, γFe2O3/DMSA NPs was associated with rapid autophagy. Overall, our results suggest that antigen delivered in cytoplasm induced by positive charged particles is beneficial for antigen cross-presentation and T-cell activation. NPs modified with different chemistries exhibit diverse biological properties and differ greatly in their adjuvant potentials. Thus, it should be carefully considered many different effects of NPs to design effective and safe adjuvants.

[Pollution Characteristics, Source Analysis and Potential Ecological Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals in Soils Surrounding a Municipal Solid Waste Incineration Plant in Shanghai].

The contents of ten heavy metals (As, Cu, Cd, Cr, Pb, Ni, Zn, Ti, Mn, and Hg) were determined in the surface soils surrounding a municipal solid waste incineration plant in Shanghai using atomic spectroscopy. The spatial distribution and sources of the detected heavy metals were studied by enrichment factor and multivariate statistical and spatial interpolation analyses. In addition, their potential ecological risk was assessed. The results showed that all heavy metals, except Hg and As, were detected with mean contents ranging from 0.399 to 4220 mg·kg-1. The mean contents of Cu, Cd, Cr, Pb, Ni, Zn, and Mn were higher than their respective background values in Shanghai. In particular, the mean content of Cd was 2.9 times its background value. The results of the Pearson's correlation, principle component, enrichment factor, and spatial distribution analyses of these heavy metals indicated that Ti, Mn, and Ni primarily originated from natural sources, while Cd, Cr, Cu, Pb, and Zn originated from industrial manufacturing, combustion, and traffic emissions. The potential ecological risk assessment showed that soils surrounding the municipal solid waste incineration plant suffered from a moderate-level risk. The mean value of the potential ecological risk index of these detected heavy metals was 108.92, of which Cd contributed as high as 79.63%, deserving much attention.

Combinational Immunotherapy with Allo-DRibble Vaccines and Anti-OX40 Co-Stimulation Leads to Generation of Cross-Reactive Effector T Cells and Tumor Regression.

It is well-known that vaccines comprising of irradiated whole tumor cells or tumor-derived heat shock proteins can generate tumor-specific immune responses. In contrast, we showed recently that vaccines composed of autophagosomes (DRibbles) derived from syngeneic sarcomas could induce cross-reactive T-cell responses and cross-protection against the tumor. This unusual property of DRibbles was related to the selective recruitment of defective ribosomal products (DRiPs) and other short-lived proteins (SLiPs) into autophagosomes via sequestosome (SQSTM1, p62) mediated association of ubiquitinated SLiPs to the autophagy gene product LC3. Here, we extend our observations to mammary carcinomas from mice of different genetic background. We demonstrated that combined of intranodal administration of autologous or allogeneic DRibbles together with anti-OX40 antibody led to robust proliferation, expansion, and differentiation of memory and effector T cells. We also showed that SLiPs is an excellent source of antigen for cross-priming of CD8+ T-cells that recognize shared tumor antigens in the context of host MHC class I molecules. Thus, our results provide a strong basis for novel clinical trials that combine allogeneic "off-the-shelf" DRibble vaccines together with antibodies against co-stimulatory molecules.