Development and verification of a novel bone collector with automatic size separating function for orthopedics surgery.

BACKGROUND: Autologous bone dust can be filled in bone defects to promote effective bone healing but typically it is lost when using suction during surgery. The aim of this study was to develop a novel bone collector that can be used to collect bone chips/dust of varying sizes without changing current surgical procedures. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: This collector was designed to connect to a surgical continuous suction system and comprised a plate filter with a 3 mm hole and featured a taper filter with a mesh size of 0.27 mm for the separation and collection of both coarse and fine bone chips/dust. The bone collector was manufactured using nylon 3D printing and plastic injection with biocompatible materials. RESULTS: The bone collector functional test revealed high bone chip collection efficiency (93%) with automatic size separation function. Low (3.42%) filtration errors showed that most of the water can be drained smoothly from the bone collector. In clinical usability testing, bone collectors can provide functions demonstrated in in vivo spinal fusion and femoral fracture surgeries with different bone grafting size requirements. CONCLUSIONS: The novel bone collector has been validated as a viable and effective surgical device, offering surgeons an additional option to enhance patient outcomes.

Study on the spatial correlation effects and influencing factors of carbon emissions from the electricity industry: a fresh evidence from China.

Carbon emissions from the electricity industry (CEEI) account for a large proportion of China's total carbon emissions, and it is important to study the spatial correlation between CEEI and the influencing factors to promote cross-regional synergistic emission reduction and low-carbon development of the power system. In this paper, the quasi-input-output (QIO) model is applied to assess the transfer of carbon emissions generated by electricity trading based on the consideration of electricity carbon transfer, and the exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) method is applied to analyze the spatial correlation effect of carbon emissions from China's electric power sector from 2001 to 2020, analyzes its distribution pattern in both spatial and temporal dimensions, and applies the improved logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) two-stage decomposition model to decompose the changes in CEEI into 11 influencing factors from the perspective of the whole industrial chain of power production, transmission, trade, and consumption. The research results show that (1) the spatial distribution of CEEI has obvious unevenness and aggregation characteristics, with high-high aggregation areas and hot spot aggregation areas generally concentrated in the North China Power Grid and the East China Power Grid, but the aggregation trend is gradually decreasing, while low-low aggregation areas and cold spot aggregation areas are concentrated in the Northwest China Power Grid and the Central China Power Grid, but the area is very limited. (2) The direction of carbon emission diffusion in China's electricity industry is gradually transitioning from southwest-northeast to northwest-southeast, and the east-west diffusion trend is stronger than the north-south diffusion trend and carbon emissions are gradually shifting to the northwest grid. (3) The total amount of electricity production is the most influential factor in the change of CEEI, driving the cumulative growth of CEEI by 4495.34 Mt, followed by GDP per capita and electricity consumption intensity. Coal consumption for power generation, the share of thermal power, and net electricity exports were the main factors inhibiting the increase in carbon emissions from the power sector, with cumulative contributions of -797.74 Mt, -619.99 Mt, and -47.76 Mt, respectively.

Development of a Novel Hybrid Suture Anchor for Osteoporosis by Integrating Titanium 3D Printing and Traditional Machining.

The aim of this study is to develop a titanium three-dimensional (3D) printing novel hybrid suture anchor (HSA) with wing structure mechanism which can be opened to provide better holding power for surrounding osteoporotic bone. A screw-type anchor (5.5-mm diameter and 16-mm length) was designed with wing mechanism as well as micro dual-thread in the outer cortex bone contact area and macro single-thread in the anchor body. Both side wings can be opened by an internal screw to provide better bone holding power. The suture anchor and internal screw were manufactured using Ti6Al4V 3D printing and traditional machining, respectively. Static pullout and after dynamic 300-cyclic load (150 N) pullout tests for HSA with or without the wing open and commercial solid anchor (CSA) were performed (n = 5) in severely osteoporotic bone and osteoporotic bone to evaluate failure strengths. Comparison of histomorphometrical evaluation was performed through in vivo pig implantation of HSAs with the wing open and CSAs. The failure strengths of HSA with or without the wing open were 2.50/1.95- and 2.46/2.17-fold higher than those of CSA for static and after dynamic load pullout tests in severely osteoporotic bone, respectively. Corresponding values for static and after dynamic load pullout tests were 1.81/1.54- and 1.77/1.62-fold in osteoporotic bone, respectively. Histomorphometrical evaluation revealed that the effects of new bone ingrowth along the anchor contour for CSA and HSA were both approximately 20% with no significant difference. A novel HSA with wing mechanism was developed using 3D printing and the opened wing mechanism can be used to increase bone holding power for osteoporosis when necessary. Better failure strength of HSA than CSA under static and after dynamic load pullout tests and equivalence of bone ingrowth along the anchor contours confirmed the feasibility of the novel HSA.

Structure characteristics and influencing factors of China's carbon emission spatial correlation network: A study based on the dimension of urban agglomerations.

China faces enormous pressure to reduce carbon emissions. Since the agglomeration and driving effect of urban agglomerations have continued to increase, relying on the network relationship within urban agglomerations to coordinate emission reduction becomes an effective way. This paper combines the modified Gravity model and Social Network Analysis method to measure the structure characteristics of carbon emission spatial correlation network of the seven urban agglomerations as a whole and each urban agglomeration in China, analyzes the interaction mechanism between cities and between urban agglomerations, and finally explores the influencing factors of carbon emission spatial correlation through the QAP analysis method. The results are as follows: (1) As for the overall network, overall scale was increasing, but the hierarchical structure had a certain firmness. YRD and PRD urban agglomerations were at the center of the network and received the spillover relationship of MRYR, CC, CP, and HC urban agglomerations. (2) As for the networks of urban agglomerations, the allocation of low-carbon resource elements still needed to be optimized, especially BTH urban agglomeration. Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuxi, etc. were at the center of the network. The influencing factors and degree of carbon emission spatial correlation in each urban agglomeration were different.

An evolutionary analysis of new energy and industry policy tools in China based on large-scale policy topic modeling.

This study investigates the evolution of provincial new energy policies and industries of China using a topic modeling approach. To this end, six out of 31 provinces in China are first selected as research samples, central and provincial new energy policies in the period of 2010 to 2019 are collected to establish a text corpus with 23, 674 documents. Then, the policy corpus is fed to two different topic models, one is the Latent Dirichlet Allocation for modeling static policy topics, another is the Dynamic Topic Model for extracting topics over time. Finally, the obtained topics are mapped into policy tools for comparisons. The dynamic policy topics are further analyzed with the panel data from provincial new energy industries. The results show that the provincial new energy policies moved to different tracks after about 2014 due to the regional conditions such as the economy and CO2 emission intensity. Underdeveloped provinces tend to use environment-oriented tools to regulate and control CO2 emissions, while developed regions employ the more balanced policy mix for improving new energy vehicles and other industries. Widespread hysteretic effects are revealed during the correlation analysis of the policy topics and new energy capacity.

Study on clean heating based on air pollution and energy consumption.

Air pollution in northern China is relatively serious during the winter heating period, which attracts the attention of the state and government, especially in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region. To further explore the issue of air pollutant emission and energy utilization in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei during the heating season, this paper establishes a panel data model which describes the long-term relationship between air pollutant emission, heating capacity, coal, and power consumption with the data from 2004 to 2017. Based on this, we draw the following conclusions: there is a positive relationship between winter heating capacity and air pollutant emissions, which indicates that the energy consumed by heating will produce atmospheric pollutants. However, the increase of electricity consumption does not necessarily reduce pollution, which means that replacing coal with electricity is not the best way to solve air pollution in heating season, but requires the coordination of multiple energy sources. In addition, there are obvious differences in the analysis results in Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei. For example, the impact of coal and electricity consumption on pollutant emissions in Beijing is quite different from that in Tianjin and Hebei. The local economic development and energy conditions should be fully taken into account when formulating policies.