Big data-driven spatio-temporal heterogeneity analysis of Beijing's catering service industry during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Catering Service Industry (CSI) experienced profound impacts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the long-term and multi-timepoint analysis using big data remained limited, influencing governmental decision-making. We applied Kernel Density Estimation, Shannon Diversity Index, and the Geographic detector to explore the spatial heterogeneity and determinants of the CSI in Beijing during the pandemic, with monthly granularity. The temporal-spatial dynamics of the CSI presented a "W"-shaped trend from 2018 to 2023, with pivotal shifts aligning with key pandemic stages. Spatial characteristics exhibited heterogeneity, with greater stability in the city center and more pronounced shifts in peripheral urban zones. Districts facing intricate outbreaks showed lower catering income, and Chinese eateries exhibited heightened resilience compared to others. The CSI displayed strong interconnections with living service sectors. Development in each district was influenced by economic level, population distribution, service facilities convenience, and the risk of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dominant factors included total retail sales of consumer goods, permanent population, average Baidu Heat Index, density of transportation and catering service facilities, infection cases and the consecutive days with confirmed cases existing. Consequently, we suggested seizing post-pandemic recovery as an avenue to unlock the CSI's substantial potential, ushering a fresh phase of growth.

Modeling and exploring the coordination relationship between green infrastructure and land use eco-efficiency: an urban agglomeration perspective.

In limited land space, improving the construction of infrastructure with ecological services can help to achieve the goal of promoting land use eco-efficiency (LUEE). In view of this, this study constructed interactive coordination relationship model of green infrastructure (GI) and LUEE that involves entropy method model, super-efficiency slack-based measure (SBM) model with undesirable outputs, and coupling coordination degree model. The interactive coordination relationship model can help to study and reveal the mechanisms of interaction and the coordination relationship between GI and LUEE from a land benefit and ecological perspective. We took the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration as the study area. The results showed that the assessment results of GI showed a decreasing trend from 2000 to 2020. LUEE in different cities displayed obvious variability with efficiency values ranging from 0.5666 to 2.4437. The relationship between GI and LUEE is in the stage of uncoordinated development in 53.8% of cities, mainly concentrated in the eastern and southern parts of the study area. The unnatural human activities are the critical factors affecting interactive coupling coordination degree of LUEE and GI. It is clarified that the level of coordination relationship of the two can be used as an important indicator to judge the sustainable development of urban agglomerations. Intensive use of land, optimal connection of geographic information, and localization of policies would help improve the balance and coordination between the two. This study provides interesting research ideas and novel modeling approaches for the study of green and sustainable development of urban agglomerations.

Identification and prediction of mixed-use functional areas supported by POI data in Jinan City of China.

The urban development of China is changing from incremental expansion to stock renewal mode. The study of urban functional areas has become one of the important fundamental works in current urban renewal and high-quality urban development. In recent years, big spatiotemporal data has been well applied in the urban function field. However, the study of spatial-temporal evolution characteristics and forecasting optimization for mixed-use urban functional areas has not been examined well. Thus, in this study, we proposed a new approach that applies a revised information entropy method to analyze the degrees of mixing for urban functional areas. We applied our approach in Jinan City, Shandong Province as the study area. We used Point-of-Interest, OpenStreetMap and other datasets to identify the mixed-use urban functional areas in Jinan. Then, the CA-Markov model simulated the urban layout in 2025. The results showed that: (1) the combination of road network and kernel density method has the highest accuracy of identifying urban functional areas. (2)The mixing degree model is constructed by using the improved information entropy, which makes up for the shortcoming of identifying the mixed functional areas simply by the frequency ratio of POI data. (3) The "residence and business" functional area has the highest proportion in the central area of Jinan from 2015 to 2020, and the total area of mixed-use unban functional areas continuously increased during this period. (4) The total area of the central area in Jinan has significantly increased in 2025. The optimization of urban functions should expand mixed-use functional areas and increase the proportion of infrastructure. Also, Jinan should improve the efficiency of space development.

[Scraping needling technique combined with western medication for neurogenic tinnitus of kidney essence deficiency：a randomized controlled trial].

OBJECTIVE: To compare the clinical efficacy of scraping needling technique combined with western medication and simple western medication for neurogenic tinnitus of kidney essence deficiency. METHODS: A total of 68 patients with neurogenic tinnitus of kidney essence deficiency were randomly divided into an observation group and a control group, 34 cases in each group. In the control group, oral methylcobalamin tablets were given, 0.5 mg each time, 3 times a day; oral flunarizine hydrochloride capsules were given before bed, 5 mg each time, once a day, 4 weeks in total. On the basis of the treatment as the control group, scraping needling technique was applied at Tinghui (GB 2), Yifeng (TE 17), Yangchi (TE 4) on the affected side and Shenshu (BL 23), Lieque (LU 7), 5 min each acupoint, once a day, 5 times a week for 4 weeks. Before treatment, 2, 4 weeks into treatment and 4 weeks after treatment (follow-up), the tinnitus severity score, tinnitus visual analogue scale (VAS) score and pure tone average (PTA) were observed, and the clinical efficacy was evaluated in the two groups. RESULTS: The tinnitus severity scores, VAS scores and PTA of each time point after treatment in the two groups were lower than those before treatment (P<0.05), and those in the observation group were lower than the control group (P<0.05). The total effective rates of each time point after treatment in the observation group were 50.0% (17/34), 79.4% (27/34), 79.4% (27/34), which were higher than 26.5% (9/34), 64.7% (22/34), 61.8% (21/34) in the control group (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: Scraping needling technique combined with western medication could improve tinnitus severity, tinnitus volume and hearing in patients with neurogenic tinnitus of kidney essence deficiency, and its curative effect is better than simple western medication.

Effects of Meteorological Factors and Air Pollutants on COVID-19 Transmission under the Action of Control Measures.

At present, COVID-19 is still spreading, and its transmission patterns and the main factors that affect transmission behavior still need to be thoroughly explored. To this end, this study collected the cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19 in China by 8 April 2020. Firstly, the spatial characteristics of the COVID-19 transmission were investigated by the spatial autocorrelation method. Then, the factors affecting the COVID-19 incidence rates were analyzed by the generalized linear mixed effect model (GLMMs) and geographically weighted regression model (GWR). Finally, the geological detector (GeoDetector) was introduced to explore the influence of interactive effects between factors on the COVID-19 incidence rates. The results showed that: (1) COVID-19 had obvious spatial aggregation. (2) The control measures had the largest impact on the COVID-19 incidence rates, which can explain the difference of 34.2% in the COVID-19 incidence rates, while meteorological factors and pollutant factors can only explain the difference of 1% in the COVID-19 incidence rates. It explains that some of the literature overestimates the impact of meteorological factors on the spread of the epidemic. (3) The influence of meteorological factors was stronger than that of air pollution factors, and the interactive effects between factors were stronger than their individual effects. The interaction between relative humidity and NO2 was stronger. The results of this study will provide a reference for further prevention and control of COVID-19.

Modification of thermal transport in few-layer MoS2 by atomic-level defect engineering.

Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) has attracted significant attention due to its good charge carrier mobility, high on/off ratio in field-effect transistors and novel layer-dependent band structure, with potential applications in modern electronic, photovoltaic and valleytronic devices. Despite these advantages, its thermal transport property has often been neglected until recently. In this work, we probe phonon transport in few-layer MoS2 flakes with various point defect concentrations enabled by helium ion (He+) irradiation. For the first time, we experimentally show that Mo-vacancies greatly impede phonon transport compared to S-vacancies, resulting in a larger reduction of thermal conductivity. Furthermore, Raman characterization shows that the in-plane Raman-sensitive peak E2g1 was red-shifted with increasing defect concentration, corresponding to the gradual damage of the in-plane crystalline networks and the gradual reduction in the measured thermal conductivity. Our work provides a practical approach for atomic-level engineering of phonon transport in two-dimensional (2D) layered materials by selectively removing elements, thus holding potential applications in designing thermal devices based on various emerging 2D materials.

Thermoelectric Properties of Substoichiometric Electron Beam Patterned Bismuth Sulfide.

Direct patterning of thermoelectric metal chalcogenides can be challenging and is normally constrained to certain geometries and sizes. Here we report the synthesis, characterization, and direct writing of sub-10 nm wide bismuth sulfide (Bi2S3) using a single-source, spin-coatable, and electron-beam-sensitive bismuth(III) ethylxanthate precursor. In order to increase the intrinsically low carrier concentration of pristine Bi2S3, we developed a self-doping methodology in which sulfur vacancies are manipulated by tuning the temperature during vacuum annealing, to produce an electron-rich thermoelectric material. We report a room-temperature electrical conductivity of 6 S m-1 and a Seebeck coefficient of -21.41 µV K-1 for a directly patterned, substoichiometric Bi2S3 thin film. We expect that our demonstration of directly writable thermoelectric films, with further optimization of structure and morphology, can be useful for on-chip applications.

Studying thermal transport in suspended monolayer molybdenum disulfide prepared by a nano-manipulator-assisted transfer method.

The thermal transport of monolayer MoS2, grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method, was studied in this work. A novel approach was developed to transfer monolayer MoS2 onto suspended microelectrothermal system device, where a nano-manipulator in a scanning electron microscope was employed to accomplish the feat. This nano-manipulator-assisted transferring gives a high sample yield with relatively good sample quality compared to the traditional wet/dry transfer methods. Temperature-dependent thermal conductivity of monolayer MoS2 was measured by suspended-pads thermal bridge technique, with thermal conductivity value slightly lower than the exfoliated samples due to the phonon-defects scattering for CVD grown samples. Further extension of the current transfer method was demonstrated on few-layer graphite, where suspended graphite flakes that were free of surface ripples and with high thermal conductance were shown.

Atomic Layer Deposition of High-Quality Al2O3 Thin Films on MoS2 with Water Plasma Treatment.

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) of ultrathin dielectric films on two-dimensional (2D) materials for electronic device applications remains one of the key challenges because of the lack of dangling bonds on the 2D material surface. In this work, a new technique to deposit uniform and high-quality Al2O3 films with thickness down to 1.5 nm on MoS2 is introduced. By treating the surface using water plasma prior to the ALD process, hydroxyl groups are introduced to the MoS2 surface, facilitating the chemisorption of trimethylaluminum in a conventional water-based ALD system. Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements show that the water plasma treatment does not induce noticeable material degradation. The deposited Al2O3 films show excellent device-related electrical performance characteristics, including low interface trap density and outstanding gate controllability.

Selective Engineering of Chalcogen Defects in MoS2 by Low-Energy Helium Plasma.

Structural defects in two-dimensional transition-metal dichalcogenides can significantly modify the material properties. Previous studies have shown that chalcogen defects can be created by physical sputtering, but the energetic ions can potentially displace transition-metal atoms at the same time, leading to ambiguous results and in some cases, degradation of material quality. In this work, selective sputtering of S atoms in monolayer MoS2 without damaging the Mo sublattice is demonstrated with low-energy helium plasma treatment. Based on X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis, wide-range tuning of S defect concentration is achieved by controlling the ion energy and sputtering time. Furthermore, characterization with scanning transmission electron microscopy confirms that by keeping the ion energy low, the Mo sublattice remains intact. The properties of MoS2 at different defect concentrations are also characterized. In situ device measurement shows that the flake can be tuned from a semiconducting to metallic-like behavior by introducing S defects due to the creation of mid-gap states. When the defective MoS2 is exposed to air, the S defects are soon passivated, with oxygen atoms filling the defect sites.

Do urban planning policies meet sustainable urbanization goals? A scenario-based study in Beijing, China.

The global urbanization process has been a concern in recent years, and it is a serious challenge to sustainable development and effective urban governance. Rapid changes in urban land use have caused serious damage to the global ecological environment and ecosystem services (ESs). To help city planners and decision-makers in the process of city planning, it is vital to assess the impacts of urban land use changes on ESs. In this study, urban development under trend continuation and policy planning scenarios were assessed to determine whether the policy planning scenario meets the needs of sustainable urbanization. The two scenarios of future urban expansion in Beijing in 2035 were simulated by the FUTURES (FUTure Urban-Regional Environment Simulation) model, and the spatio-temporal changes of ESs in the two scenarios were explored through the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Environmental Services and Tradeoffs) model. The results show that the major losses of ESs came from the conversion of cropland land to urban land, which accounts for 79.70% and 69.62% of the total carbon storage loss, 67.88% and 43.94% of the total water yield loss, and 79.94% and 77.72% of the total habitat quality loss, under the Status Quo (SQ) and urban planning development (UPD) scenarios, respectively. Our results emphasize that the policies proposed by the UPD scenario appear to greatly reduce the negative impacts of urban land use change on ESs. However, the government cannot neglect the protection of forest and needs to intensify the implementation of policies implementation in the shallow mountainous areas of the western margins and northeastern and northern regions of Beijing. By understanding the trade-off between future urban structure and ESs, city planners and decision-makers can adjust and optimize suggestions for urban planning policies to achieve sustainable development.

ZnO Nano-Rod Devices for Intradermal Delivery and Immunization.

Intradermal delivery of antigens for vaccination is a very attractive approach since the skin provides a rich network of antigen presenting cells, which aid in stimulating an immune response. Numerous intradermal techniques have been developed to enhance penetration across the skin. However, these methods are invasive and/or affect the skin integrity. Hence, our group has devised zinc oxide (ZnO) nano-rods for non-destructive drug delivery. Chemical vapour deposition was used to fabricate aligned nano-rods on ZnO pre-coated silicon chips. The nano-rods' length and diameter were found to depend on the temperature, time, quality of sputtered silicon chips, etc. Vertically aligned ZnO nano-rods with lengths of 30-35 µm and diameters of 200-300 nm were selected for in vitro human skin permeation studies using Franz cells with Albumin-fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) absorbed on the nano-rods. Fluorescence and confocal studies on the skin samples showed FITC penetration through the skin along the channels formed by the nano-rods. Bradford protein assay on the collected fluid samples indicated a significant quantity of Albumin-FITC in the first 12 h. Low antibody titres were observed with immunisation on Balb/c mice with ovalbumin (OVA) antigen coated on the nano-rod chips. Nonetheless, due to the reduced dimensions of the nano-rods, our device offers the additional advantage of excluding the simultaneous entrance of microbial pathogens. Taken together, these results showed that ZnO nano-rods hold the potential for a safe, non-invasive, and painless intradermal drug delivery.

Surface-Charge-Mediated Formation of H-TiO2 @Ni(OH)2 Heterostructures for High-Performance Supercapacitors.

An electrochemically favorable Ni(OH)2 with porously hierarchical structure and ultrathin nanosheets in a core-shell structure H-TiO2 @Ni(OH)2 is achieved through modulating the surface chemical activity of TiO2 by hydrogenation, which creates a defect-rich surface of TiO2 , thereby facilitating the subsequent nucleation and growth of Ni(OH)2 . These configuration-tailored H-TiO2 @Ni(OH)2 core-shell nanowires exhibit a superior electrochemical performance and good flexibility.

3D TiO2@Ni(OH)2 Core-shell Arrays with Tunable Nanostructure for Hybrid Supercapacitor Application.

Three dimensional hierarchical nanostructures have attracted great attention for electrochemical energy storage applications. In this work, self-supported TiO2@Ni(OH)2 core-shell nanowire arrays are prepared on carbon fiber paper via the combination of hydrothermal synthesis and chemical bath deposition. In this core-shell hybrid, the morphology and wall size of the interconnected nanoflake shell of Ni(OH)2 can be tuned through adjusting the concentration of ammonia solution. Heterogeneous nucleation and subsequent oriented crystal growth are identified to be the synthesis mechanism affecting the nanostructure of the shell material, which consequently determines the electrochemical performance in both energy storage and charge transfer. Superior capabilities of 264 mAh g(-1) at 1 A g(-1) and 178 mAh g(-1) at 10 A g(-1) are achieved with the core-shell hybrids of the optimized structure. The asymmetric supercapacitor prototype, comprising of TiO2@Ni(OH)2 as the anode and mesoporous carbons (MCs) as the cathode, is shown to exhibit superior electrochemical performance with high energy and power densities. The present work provides a clear illustration of the structure-property relationship in nanocrystal synthesis and offers a potential strategy to enhance the battery type Ni(OH)2 electrode in a hybrid supercapacitor device.

Tuning the electronic properties of ZnO nanowire field effect transistors via surface functionalization.

Using in situ field effect transistor (FET) characterization combined with the molecular beam epitaxy technique, we demonstrate a significant depletion of electron charge carriers in single zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowire through the surface modification with molybdenum trioxide (MoO3) and 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11-hexaazatriphenylene hexacarbonitrile (HATCN) layers. The electron mobility of ZnO nanowire was found to sharply decrease after the surface modification with MoO3; in contrast, the electron mobility significantly increased after functionalization with HATCN layers. Such depletion of n-type conduction originates from the interfacial charge transfer, corroborated by in situ photoelectron spectroscopy studies. The air exposure effect on MoO(3-) and HATCN-coated ZnO nanowire devices was also investigated.

Laser modified ZnO/CdSSe core-shell nanowire arrays for Micro-Steganography and improved photoconduction.

Arrays of ZnO/CdSSe core/shell nanowires with shells of tunable band gaps represent a class of interesting hybrid nanomaterials with unique optical and photoelectrical properties due to their type II heterojunctions and chemical compositions. In this work, we demonstrate that direct focused laser beam irradiation is able to achieve localized modification of the hybrid structure and chemical composition of the nanowire arrays. As a result, the photoresponsivity of the laser modified hybrid is improved by a factor of ~3. A 3D photodetector with improved performance is demonstrated using laser modified nanowire arrays overlaid with monolayer graphene as the top electrode. Finally, by controlling the power of the scanning focused laser beam, micropatterns with different fluorescence emissions are created on a substrate covered with nanowire arrays. Such a pattern is not apparent when imaged under normal optical microscopy but the pattern becomes readily revealed under fluorescence microscopy i.e. a form of Micro-Steganography is achieved.

Highly sensitive and multispectral responsive phototransistor using tungsten-doped VO2 nanowires.

In this work, we report a novel and feasible strategy for the practical applications of one-dimensional ultrasensitive phototransistors made of tungsten-doped VO2 single nanowires. The photoconductive response of the single nanowire device was investigated under different visible light excitations (405 nm, 532 nm, and 660 nm). The phototransistor device exhibited ultrafast photoresponse, high responsivity, broad multispectral response, and rapid saturation characteristic curves. These promising results help to promote the applications of this material in nano-scale optoelectronic devices such as efficient multispectral phototransistors and optical switches.

Laser-induced greenish-blue photoluminescence of mesoporous silicon nanowires.

Solid silicon nanowires and their luminescent properties have been widely studied, but lesser is known about the optical properties of mesoporous silicon nanowires (mp-SiNWs). In this work, we present a facile method to generate greenish-blue photoluminescence (GB-PL) by fast scanning a focused green laser beam (wavelength of 532 nm) on a close-packed array of mp-SiNWs to carry out photo-induced chemical modification. The threshold of laser power is 5 mW to excite the GB-PL, whose intensity increases with laser power in the range of 5-105 mW. The quenching of GB-PL comes to occur beyond 105 mW. The in-vacuum annealing effectively excites the GB-PL in the pristine mp-SiNWs and enhances the GB-PL of the laser-modified mp-SiNWs. A complex model of the laser-induced surface modification is proposed to account for the laser-power and post-annealing effect. Moreover, the fast scanning of focused laser beam enables us to locally tailor mp-SiNWs en route to a wide variety of micropatterns with different optical functionality, and we demonstrate the feasibility in the application of creating hidden images.

Zn2SnO4 nanowires versus nanoplates: electrochemical performance and morphological evolution during Li-cycling.

Zn2SnO4 nanowires have been synthesized directly on stainless steel substrate without any buffer layers by the vapor transport method. The structural and morphological properties are investigated by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The electrochemical performance of Zn2SnO4 nanowires is examined by galvanostatic cycling and cyclic voltammetry (CV) measurements in two different voltage windows, 0.005-3 and 0.005-1.5 V vs Li and compared to that of Zn2SnO4 nanoplates prepared by hydrothermal method. Galvanostatic cycling studies of Zn2SnO4 nanowires in the voltage range 0.005-3 V, at a current of 120 mA g(-1), show a reversible capacity of 1000 (±5) mAh g(-1) with almost stable capacity for first 10 cycles, which thereafter fades to 695 mAh g(-1) by 60 cycles. Upon cycling in the voltage range 0.005-1.5 V vs Li, a stable, reversible capacity of 680 (±5) mAh g(-1) is observed for first 10 cycles with a capacity retention of 58% between 10-50 cycles. On the other hand, Zn2SnO4 nanoplates show drastic capacity fading up to 10 cycles and then showed a capacity retention of 80% and 70% between 10 and 50 cycles when cycled in the voltage range 0.005-1.5 and 0.005-3 V, respectively. The structural and morphological evolutions during cycling and their implications on the Li-cycling behavior of Zn2SnO4 nanowires are examined. The effect of the choice of voltage range and initial morphology of the active material on the Li-cycleabilty is also elucidated.

Iron oxide filled magnetic carbon nanotube-enzyme conjugates for recycling of amyloglucosidase: toward useful applications in biofuel production process.

Biofuels are fast advancing as a new research area to provide alternative sources of sustainable and clean energy. Recent advances in nanotechnology have sought to improve the efficiency of biofuel production, enhancing energy security. In this study, we have incorporated iron oxide nanoparticles into single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) to produce magnetic single-walled carbon nanotubes (mSWCNTs). Our objective is to bridge both nanotechnology and biofuel production by immobilizing the enzyme, Amyloglucosidase (AMG), onto mSWCNTs using physical adsorption and covalent immobilization, with the aim of recycling the immobilized enzyme, toward useful applications in biofuel production processes. We have demonstrated that the enzyme retains a certain percentage of its catalytic efficiency (up to 40%) in starch prototype biomass hydrolysis when used repeatedly (up to ten cycles) after immobilization on mSWCNTs, since the nanotubes can be easily separated from the reaction mixture using a simple magnet. The enzyme loading, activity, and structural changes after immobilization onto mSWCNTs were also studied. In addition, we have demonstrated that the immobilized enzyme retains its activity when stored at 4 °C for at least one month. These results, combined with the unique intrinsic properties of the nanotubes, pave the way for greater efficiency in carbon nanotube-enzyme bioreactors and reduced capital costs in industrial enzyme systems.