Improving anaerobic digestion performance after severe acidification: Unveiling the impacts of Fe3O4-bentonite composites in co-digestion of waste activated sludge and food waste.

Acidification recovery in anaerobic digestion of food waste is challenging. This study explored its in-situ recovery using a co-substrate of food waste and waste activated sludge. Fe3O4 and bentonite were used as conductor and carrier, respectively, to enhance AD performance under severe acidification. The application of Fe3O4-bentonite resulted in a 152% increase in cumulative methane in the Fe3O4-bentonite 10 digester, demonstrating its effectiveness in restoring the acidified AD system. In acidified systems, bentonite enhanced the diversity and richness of microbial communities due to its buffering capacity. The excessive non-conductive polysaccharides excreted by bacteria in extracellular polymeric substances reduced the possibility of electron transfer by Fe3O4. However, in the synergistic application of Fe3O4 and bentonite, this resistance was alleviated, increasing the possibility of direct interspecies electron transfer, and accelerating the consumption of volatile fatty acids. This approach of integrating carrier and conductive materials is significant for in-situ restoration of acidified systems.

Effect of Different Edible Trichosanthes Germplasm on Its Seed Oil to Enhance Antioxidant and Anti-Aging Activity in Caenorhabditis elegans.

The seeds of various Trichosanthes L. plants have been frequently used as snacks instead of for traditional medicinal purposes in China. However, there is still a need to identify the species based on seeds from Trichosanthes germplasm for the potential biological activities of their seed oil. In this study, 18 edible Trichosanthes germplasm from three species were identified and distinguished at a species level using a combination of seed morphological and microscopic characteristics and nrDNA-ITS sequences. Seed oil from the edible Trichosanthes germplasm significantly enhanced oxidative stress tolerance, extended lifespan, delayed aging, and improved healthspan in Caenorhabditis elegans. The antioxidant activity of the seed oil exhibits a significant positive correlation with its total unsaturated fatty acid content among the 18 edible Trichosanthes germplasm, suggesting a genetic basis for this trait. The biological activities of seed oil varied among species, with T. kirilowii Maxim. and T. rosthornii Harms showing stronger effects than T. laceribractea Hayata.

Decreased retinal vascular density is associated with cognitive impairment in CADASIL: an optical coherence tomography angiography study.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to assess alterations in retinal vascular density in cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) patients using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) and investigate their association with MRI and cognitive features. METHODS: Twenty-five patients with CADASIL and forty healthy controls were evaluated by Cirrus HD-OCT 5000 with AngioPlex OCTA to determine changes in macular retinal vasculature. Retinal vasculature parameters between two groups were compared. The MRI lesion burden and neuropsychological scales were also examined in patients. The association between OCTA parameters and MRI/cognitive features was evaluated using partial Spearman rank correlation. RESULTS: The vessel density and perfusion density of whole image in macular region (vessel density: t = - 2.834, p = 0.005; perfusion density: t = - 2.691, p = 0.007) were significantly decreased in patients with CADASIL. Moreover, vessel density of whole image in macular region was negatively associated with Fazekas scores (ρ = - 0.457; p = 0.025) and the number of lacunar infractions (ρ = - 0.425, p = 0.038) after adjustment for age. Decreased macular vessel density and perfusion density of whole image were also associated with MoCA scores (vessel density: ρ = 0.542, p = 0.006; perfusion density: ρ = 0.478, p = 0.018) and other domain-specific neuropsychological tests (p < 0.05) after adjustment for age. CONCLUSION: Decreased retinal vascular density was associated with increased MRI lesion burden and cognitive impairment in patients with CADASIL. Our findings suggest that the degree of retinal vascular involvement, as demonstrated by OCTA, may be consistent with the severity of MRI lesions and the degree of cognitive impairment in patients.

Enhancement of sewer sediment control and disruption of adhesive gelatinous sediment structure using low-dose calcium peroxide.

Large quantities of sediments in urban sewer systems pose significant risk of pipe clogging and corrosion. Owing to their gel-like structure, sewer sediments have strong resistance to hydraulic shear stress. This study proposed a novel approach to weaken the erosion resistance of sewer sediments by destroying viscous gel-like biopolymers in sediments with low doses of calcium peroxide (CaO2). After treatment with 10-50 mg g-1 TS of CaO2, the critical erosion shear stress was significantly reduced by 25.7%-59.9%. The sediment aggregates gradually disintegrated into small diameter particles with increasing CaO2 dosage. Further analysis showed that the strong oxidizing and alkaline environment induced by CaO2 treatment led to cell lysis and changes in the composition and property of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS). After CaO2 treatment, aromatic proteins and humic acid-like substances associated with adhesion translocated from the inner EPS layers to outer layers while being disintegrated into small organic molecules. Concomitantly, CaO2 treatment disrupted the main functional groups (-OH, COO-, C-N, CO, and CN) in inner EPS layers, thus weakening EPS adhesion. Analysis of protein secondary structure and zeta potential reflected the reduced aggregation capacity of sediment microorganisms and loosening of sediment structure after CaO2 treatment. Thus, CaO2 treatment facilitated fragmentation and disaggregation of the gelatinous structure of sewer sediments. Such green strategy decreased the cost of sewer sediment disposal by 42.10-68.95% when compared to water flushing, and it would improve the self-cleaning capacity of sewer system and efficiency of dredging equipment.

The influence of educational and emotional support on e-learning acceptance: An integration of social support theory and TAM.

Flexible education is considered the primary function of e-learning, however, empirical evidence during the COVID-19 pandemic has also demonstrated that students may seek emotional comforts in e-learning to alleviate their negative emotions. This study aims to provide a holistic view of the antecedents of college students' e-learning acceptance by integrating social support theory with the technology acceptance model. Specifically, drawing upon social support theory, this study adopted perceived educational support and perceived emotional support as two driving factors and examined their influences on students' continuous intention in e-learning. The model was empirically validated using survey data from 512 college respondents in China during the first wave of the pandemic. Our results suggested that while perceived educational support exerts a major influence on e-learning acceptance, perceived emotional support also has an important role to play. Besides, the analytics results suggested that the two facets of support had different influencing patterns: perceived educational support has a positive and significant relationship with both perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, whereas perceived emotional support solely has a significant relationship with perceived ease of use. Additionally, compared with the prior studies, the effect size ( ß ) between perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness is larger in the present study (COVID-19 context). These findings stress the need to better understand the mechanism by which social support influences college students' e-learning acceptance and to make use of various kinds of social supports to enhance perceived ease of use (e.g. human-computer interface), promote perceived usefulness, and ultimately motivate more students' continuance intention in e-learning.

The public needs more: The informational and emotional support of public communication amidst the Covid-19 in China.

Public communication is critical for responding to disasters. However, most research on public communication is largely focused on its informational support function, overlooking the emotional support that could equally offer. This study takes the lead to investigate their separate impacts. In particular, the variable public engagement, which is a function of the number of Shares, Likes, and Comments in a particular post, is introduced to benchmark the effect of public communication. Besides, considering the evolving nature of the crisis, their dynamic impacts across different COVID-19 pandemic stages are examined. Data from Dec 2019 to Jul 2020 were collected from 17 provincial government-owned social media (Weibo) accounts across COVID-19 in China with a Natural Language Processing-based method to compute the strengths of informational support and emotional support strength. An econometric model is then proposed to explore the impacts of two supports. The findings are twofold: the impact of emotional support on public engagement is empirically confirmed in the study, which is not in lockstep with the informational support; and their impacts on public communication are dynamic rather than static across stages throughout the crisis. We highlighted the importance of emotional support in public engagement by deriving its impact separately from informational support. The findings suggest incorporating both social supports to create stronger public communication tactics during crises.

Electrostatic control of photoluminescence from A and B excitons in monolayer molybdenum disulfide.

Tailoring excitonic photoluminescence (PL) in molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) is critical for its various applications. Although significant efforts have been devoted to enhancing the PL intensity of monolayer MoS2, simultaneous tailoring of emission from both A excitons and B excitons remains largely unexplored. Here, we demonstrate that both A-excitonic and B-excitonic PL of chemical vapor deposition (CVD)-grown monolayer MoS2 can be tuned by electrostatic doping in air. Our results indicate that the B-excitonic PL changed in the opposite direction compared to A-excitonic PL when a gate voltage (V g) was applied, both in S-rich and Mo-rich monolayer MoS2. Through the combination of gas adsorption and electrostatic doping, a 12-fold enhancement of the PL intensity for A excitons in Mo-rich monolayer MoS2 was achieved at V g = -40 V, and a 26-fold enhancement for the ratio of B/A excitonic PL was observed at V g = +40 V. Our results demonstrate not only the control of the conversion between A0 and A-, but also the modulation of intravalley and intervalley conversion between A excitons and B excitons. With electrostatic electron doping, the population of B excitons can be promoted due to the enhanced intravalley and intervalley transition process through electron-phonon coupling. The electrostatic control of excitonic PL has potential applications in exciton physics and valleytronics involving the B excitons.

Bouncing from the Covid-19 Pandemic: Response of an Online Medical Tourism Facilitator Platform.

People have increasingly engaged in medical tourism to find effective medical treatments but more economical overseas. These travellers use the service of online Medical Tourism Facilitators (MTFs) in choosing and arranging medical trips. However, the Covid-19 pandemic and the ban on international travelling disrupted travel and thus seriously affected the tourism businesses, including MTFs. Businesses need to be resilient and pivot their business models to survive and bounce back from the crisis. However, it is less clear how MTFs navigate this Covid-19 pandemic. This paper adopts a case study to explain how an online MTF platform (Dental Departures) responds to the opportunities and challenges and examines how it pivots business models.

Comparison of hyperreflective foci in macular edema secondary to multiple etiologies with spectral-domain optical coherence tomography: An observational study.

BACKGROUND: Hyperreflective foci (HRF) features in macular edema associated with different etiologies may indicate the disease pathogenesis and help to choose proper treatment. The goal of this study is to investigate the retinal microstructural features of macular edema (ME) secondary to multiple etiologies with spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) and analyze the origin of HRF in ME. METHODS: This was a retrospective study. SD-OCT images were reviewed to investigate macular microstructural features such as the number and distribution of HRF and hard exudates and the internal reflectivity of the cysts. The differences in microstructural features between groups and the correlations between the number of HRF and other parameters were analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 101 eyes with ME from 86 diabetic (diabetic macular edema, DME) patients, 51 eyes from 51 patients with ME secondary to branch retinal vein occlusion (branch retinal vein occlusion-macular edema, BRVO-ME), 59 eyes from 58 central retinal vein occlusion (central retinal vein occlusion-macular edema, CRVO-ME) patients, and 26 eyes from 22 uveitis (uveitic macular edema, UME) patients were included in this study. The number of HRF, the frequency of hard exudates and the enhanced internal reflectivity of the cysts were significantly different among the groups. The number of HRF in the DME group was significantly higher than that in the other groups (all P < 0.05). The frequency of hard exudates and enhanced internal reflectivity of the cysts in the DME group were significantly higher than ME secondary to other etiologies (all P < 0.001). Within the DME group, the number of HRF in the patients with hard exudates was significantly higher than that in the patients without hard exudates (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: HRF detected with SD-OCT were more frequent in DME patients than in BRVO-ME, CRVO-ME, or UME patients. The occurrence of HRF was correlated with the frequency of hard exudates. HRF may result from the deposition of macromolecular exudates in the retina, which is speculated to be a precursor of hard exudates.

Association of maternal diabetes during pregnancy with visual acuity development in offspring: a prospective cohort study.

AIMS: We aimed to investigate the association between maternal diabetes before or during pregnancy and visual acuity development in offspring at 1 and 4 years old. METHODS: This prospective cohort study comprised 301 individuals born in 2015-2017. Those who had maternal diabetes during or before pregnancy (type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes) were investigated. Two visual examinations were routinely performed on children relatively at the age of 1 at physical examination and at the age of 4 at admission to school to assess the possible effects of gestational exposure to diabetes on the visual system of the offspring. RESULTS: Data were collected on children aged 1 and 4, which consisted of 173 children of mothers exposed to diabetes and 128 children of mothers without diabetes). We found no significant association between maternal diabetes during pregnancy and visual acuity development in 1-year-old offspring. At 4 years old, the incidence of amblyopia and strabismus was similar in both groups. Prenatal exposure to maternal diabetes was associated with a 171% increased risk of high RE: OR 2.71 (95% CI 1.08, 6.81), p < 0.05. Astigmatism (13.3% vs 5.5%) was found to be significantly more prevalent in children born to mothers with GD than in the controls (p = 0.025 in both groups). Moreover, offspring exposed to PGDM had a higher overall risk of high RE than those exposed to GDM during pregnancy (25.0% vs 17.4%). We further found that in the offspring of diabetic mothers, the risk of high RE was significantly increased among children who were female or who spent more time using electronic devices daily. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that maternal diabetes during pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of high RE in offspring. Regular ophthalmological screening should be advised to offspring of mothers with diabetes diagnosed before or during pregnancy.

Temporal retinal thinning might be an early diagnostic indicator in male pediatric X-linked Alport syndrome.

AIM: To evaluate temporal retinal thinning changes in retinal layers using spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) in pediatric X-linked Alport syndrome (XLAS) patients. METHODS: A retrospective case-control study. SD-OCT scans of pediatric patients diagnosed with XLAS and age- and sex-matched healthy control participants were reviewed. Automated segmentation of SD-OCT scans was induced to analyze the retinal thickness (RT) of different layers. The temporal thinning index (TTI) was calculated for each layer and compared between the patients and the control group. RESULTS: Forty-three pediatric XLAS patients and 60 healthy controls were included. Temporal retinal thinning was present in 33 patients (76.74%), while 28 patients (65.11%) had severe pathological temporal retinal thinning and 5 patients (11.63%) had moderate thinning. The temporal inner sector RT (P<0.0001), the temporal outer sector RT (P<0.0001), and the nasal outer sector RT (P=0.0211) were significantly thinner in the XLAS male patients. The TTI of the total retina was significantly higher in the XLAS group than in the control group (P<0.0001). The TTI of the inner retina layers (P<0.0001), ganglion cell layer (P<0.0001), inner plexiform layer (P<0.0001), inner nuclear layer (P<0.0001), and outer nuclear layer (P<0.0001) were significantly higher in the XLAS group. The central RT of the XLAS group was significantly thinner than that of the control group (P<0.0001). CONCLUSION: Temporal retinal thinning appears early in XLAS patients, especially in male patients. The thinning is mainly caused by structural abnormalities of the inner retina. This suggests that temporal retinal thinning could be helpful for the early diagnosis and follow-up of XLAS with noninvasive SD-OCT examination.

Blue Light Induces RPE Cell Necroptosis, Which Can Be Inhibited by Minocycline.

Purpose: Damage to and death of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) are closely related to retinal degeneration. Blue light is a high-energy light that causes RPE damage and triggers inflammatory responses. This study investigates whether blue light induces RPE necroptosis, explores pharmacologic therapy and specific mechanisms, and provides hints for research on retinal degeneration. Methods: The human RPE cell line ARPE-19 was cultured and subjected to blue light insult in vitro. Annexin V/PI was used to evaluate RPE survival. Minocycline was applied to inhibit the death of RPE. Proteomic measurement was used to analyze protein expression. Inhibitors of necroptosis and apoptosis were applied to assess the death mode. Immunofluorescence of protein markers was detected to analyze the mechanism of cell death. Subcellular structural changes were detected by transmission electron microscopy. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) was tested by DCFH-DA. Mitochondrial membrane potential (Δψm) was detected by JC-1. BALB/c mice received bule light exposure, and RPE flatmounts were stained for verification in vivo. Results: Blue light illumination induced RPE death, and minocycline significantly diminished RPE death. Proteomic measurement showed that minocycline effectively mitigated protein hydrolysis and protein synthesis disorders. Necroptosis inhibitors (Nec-1s, GSK-872) increased the survival of RPE cells, but apoptosis inhibitors (Z-VAD-FMK) did not. After blue light illumination, high-mobility group box-1 (HMGB1) was released from the nucleus, receptor-interacting protein kinase 3 (RIPK3) aggregated, and mixed-lineage kinase domain-like protein (MLKL) increased in the RPE. The application of minocycline alleviated the above phenomena. After blue light illumination, RPE cells exhibited necrotic characteristics accompanied by destruction of cell membranes and vacuole formation, but nuclear membranes remained intact. Minocycline improved the morphology of RPE. Blue light increased ROS and decreased Δψm of RPE, minocycline did not reduce ROS but kept Δψm stable. In vivo, HMGB1 release and RIPK3 aggregation appeared in the RPE of BALB/c mice after blue light illumination, and minocycline alleviated this effect. Conclusions: Blue light exposure causes RPE necroptosis. Minocycline reduces the death of RPE by keeping Δψm stable, inhibiting necroptosis, and preventing HMGB1 release. These results provide new ideas for the pathogenesis and treatment of retinal degeneration.

Impact of Hospital Characteristics and Governance Structure on the Adoption of Tracking Technologies for Clinical and Supply Chain Use: Longitudinal Study of US Hospitals.

BACKGROUND: Despite the increasing adoption rate of tracking technologies in hospitals in the United States, few empirical studies have examined the factors involved in such adoption within different use contexts (eg, clinical and supply chain use contexts). To date, no study has systematically examined how governance structures impact technology adoption in different use contexts in hospitals. Given that the hospital governance structure fundamentally governs health care workflows and operations, understanding its critical role provides a solid foundation from which to explore factors involved in the adoption of tracking technologies in hospitals. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to compare critical factors associated with the adoption of tracking technologies for clinical and supply chain uses and examine how governance structure types affect the adoption of tracking technologies in hospitals. METHODS: This study was conducted based on a comprehensive and longitudinal national census data set comprising 3623 unique hospitals across 50 states in the United States from 2012 to 2015. Using mixed effects population logistic regression models to account for the effects within and between hospitals, we captured and examined the effects of hospital characteristics, locations, and governance structure on adjustments to the innate development of tracking technology over time. RESULTS: From 2012 to 2015, we discovered that the proportion of hospitals in which tracking technologies were fully implemented for clinical use increased from 36.34% (782/2152) to 54.63% (1316/2409), and that for supply chain use increased from 28.58% (615/2152) to 41.3% (995/2409). We also discovered that adoption factors impact the clinical and supply chain use contexts differently. In the clinical use context, compared with hospitals located in urban areas, hospitals in rural areas (odds ratio [OR] 0.68, 95% CI 0.56-0.80) are less likely to fully adopt tracking technologies. In the context of supply chain use, the type of governance structure influences tracking technology adoption. Compared with hospitals not affiliated with a health system, implementation rates increased as hospitals affiliated with a more centralized health system-1.9-fold increase (OR 1.87, 95% CI 1.60-2.13) for decentralized or independent hospitals, 2.4-fold increase (OR 2.40, 95% CI 2.07-2.80) for moderately centralized health systems, and 3.1-fold increase for centralized health systems (OR 3.07, 95% CI 2.67-3.53). CONCLUSIONS: As the first of such type of studies, we provided a longitudinal overview of how hospital characteristics and governance structure jointly affect adoption rates of tracking technology in both clinical and supply chain use contexts, which is essential for developing intelligent infrastructure for smart hospital systems. This study informs researchers, health care providers, and policy makers that hospital characteristics, locations, and governance structures have different impacts on the adoption of tracking technologies for clinical and supply chain use and on health resource disparities among hospitals of different sizes, locations, and governance structures.

Understanding the impact of emotional support on mental health resilience of the community in the social media in Covid-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: Emotional support in social media can act as a buffer against the negative impact of affective disorders. However, empirical evidence relating to emotional support in social media and how it influences the wider public remains scanty. The objective of this study is therefore to conduct a prototype investigation into the translation mechanism of emotional support in social media, providing empirical evidence for practitioners to use to tackle mental health issues for the wider public. METHODS: A regression model is proposed to examine the relationship between perceived and received emotional support. Received emotional support is set as the dependent variable and measured using public activity. Perceived emotional support is derived using Natural Language Processing (NLP)-based content analysis. The model is then analyzed using a panel date with a total number of 61,297 posts from 17 Weibo accounts in 17 provincial administrative units in China. RESULTS: The relationship between perceived and received emotional support is not linear but complex, suggesting that translation of emotional support is not automatic. Further, our empirical evidence suggests that the translation of emotional support in social media is affected by frequency and pandemic stage. LIMITATIONS: The study does not examine the direct relationship between perceived and received emotional support, instead adopting public activity as a proxy for the latter construct. In addition, the relationship between perceived and received emotional support is more complex than linear, requiring further model and theory development.

E-learning intention of students with anxiety: Evidence from the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic in China.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the need to address the mental health issues for the future adoption of e-learning among massive students in higher education. This study takes a lead to investigate whether and how general anxiety will influence college students' e-learning intention to provide knowledge to better improve the e-learning technology. METHODS: We adopted the Technology acceptance model (TAM) to examine the difference between students with and without general anxiety in the e-learning intention where the students are classified based on the General Anxiety Disorder-2 scale. The model is empirically analyzed based on a survey of 512 college students in China regarding their e-learning experience in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. RESULTS: Results demonstrate that the TAM is powerful in explaining the e-learning intention among college students with general anxiety. Besides, all effects associated with perceived usefulness (PU) are reinforced while those associated with perceived ease of use (PEOU) are attenuated in the anxiety group. The results suggest that instructors and higher education institutions should take advantage of the significant PU-intention relationship by providing quality e-learning, which is paramount to coping with the general anxiety among students. LIMITATIONS: This study provides a prototype attempt to investigate the influence of anxiety on e-learning where the different types of anxiety sources are synthesized. However, anxiety can stem from internal sources (computer anxiety, academic stress) and external sources (fear of the virus, lack of social interaction), which requires further investigations.

Synergistically segmenting choroidal layer and vessel using deep learning for choroid structure analysis.

Objective. The choroid is the most vascularized structure in the human eye, whose layer structure and vessel distribution are both critical for the physiology of the retina, and disease pathogenesis of the eye. Although some works have used graph-based methods or convolutional neural networks to separate the choroid layer from the outer-choroid structure, few works focused on further distinguishing the inner-choroid structure, such as the choroid vessel and choroid stroma.Approach.Inspired by the multi-task learning strategy, in this paper, we propose a segmentation pipeline for choroid analysis which can separate the choroid layer from other structures and segment the choroid vessel synergistically. The key component of this pipeline is the proposed choroidal U-shape network (CUNet), which catches both correlation features and specific features between the choroid layer and the choroid vessel. Then pixel-wise classification is generated based on these two types of features to obtain choroid layer segmentation and vessel segmentation. Besides, the training process of CUNet is supervised by a proposed adaptive multi-task segmentation loss which adds a regularization term that is used to balance the performance of the two tasks.Main results.Experiments show the high performance (4% higher dice score) and less computational complexity (18.85 M lower size) of our proposed strategy.Significance.The high performance and generalization on both choroid layer and vessel segmentation indicate the clinical potential of our proposed pipeline.

Diffusion Path Identification of Public Opinion Involving Enterprise Green Technology Adoption: An Interpretive-Structural-Modeling-Based Approach.

With the increasing information transparency of business operations' environmental influences, public opinion plays an important role in the green technology adoption of enterprises. Identifying the diffusion path of public opinion involving the process of enterprise green technology adoption is a significant task to verify the triggering mechanisms among the external factors and internal ones. An appropriate framework may help to clarify how the sustainability elements of public opinion are introduced to green technology adoption. Therefore, an interpretive structural-modeling (ISM)-based approach was applied to explore the basic transmission process and path of public opinion involving green technology adoption in enterprise practices. From the pressure of public opinion to the stakeholders involved, as well as the corresponding operational environmental activities, this study explored the psychological behavior of internal and external stakeholders and tried to clarify what the driving elements of green technology adoption are and how they relate to each other. Based on the field data collected from practitioners with Chinese contextual experience, the driving elements of the enablers of green technology adoption by enterprises were identified, and the fundamental triggering mechanisms of the public opinion pressure among them were analyzed. Thereafter, the influence of internal and external stakeholders involving green technology adoption and their corresponding behaviors under the pressure of public opinion were determined and expounded comprehensively, which illustrates the diffusion path of how public opinion influences the operational green technology adoption. This may narrow the gap between public environmental expectation and business operations. Finally, the managerial implications and the limitations of this study were concluded. The explanatory corresponding ISM model established in this study enriches the literature on the theoretical research of the mechanisms of green technology adoption.

Apple-Net: A Model Based on Improved YOLOv5 to Detect the Apple Leaf Diseases.

Effective identification of apple leaf diseases can reduce pesticide spraying and improve apple fruit yield, which is significant to agriculture. However, the existing apple leaf disease detection models lack consideration of disease diversity and accuracy, which hinders the application of intelligent agriculture in the apple industry. In this paper, we explore an accurate and robust detection model for apple leaf disease called Apple-Net, improving the conventional YOLOv5 network by adding the Feature Enhancement Module (FEM) and Coordinate Attention (CA) methods. The combination of the feature pyramid and pan in YOLOv5 can obtain richer semantic information and enhance the semantic information of low-level feature maps but lacks the output of multi-scale information. Thus, the FEM was adopted to improve the output of multi-scale information, and the CA was used to improve the detection efficiency. The experimental results show that Apple-Net achieves a higher mAP@0.5 (95.9%) and precision (93.1%) than four classic target detection models, thus proving that Apple-Net achieves more competitive results on apple leaf disease identification.