Newborn hearing screening program in China: a narrative review of the issues in screening and management

Hearing loss is one of the most common sensory disorders in humans. The purpose of this review is to summarize the history and current status of newborn hearing screening in China and to investigate future developmental trends in newborn hearing screening with the intention of sharing experiences and providing a reference for other populations. In the 1980s, the research on hearing monitoring for high-risk infants led to the gradual development of newborn hearing screening in China. With the continuous improvement of screening technology, the newborn hearing screening program was gradually extended to the whole country and became a government-led multidisciplinary public health program. Genetic screening for deafness has been incorporated into newborn hearing screening in many regions of China to help screen for potential and late-onset deafness in newborns. In the future, it is necessary to further establish and improve whole life-cycle hearing screening and healthcare, conduct screening for congenital cytomegalovirus infection, and create a full-coverage, whole life course hearing screening and intervention system. Screening for deafness in China has been marked by 40 years of achievements, which have been a source of pride for entrepreneurs and comfort for patients and their families. Managing hearing screening data information more efficiently and establishing a quality control index system throughout the whole screening process are of paramount importance. The genetic screening for concurrent newborn hearing and deafness has a great clinical importance for the management of congenital deafness and prevention of ototoxicity. A hearing screening and intervention system across the whole life course should be developed

The influence of the Pinyin and Zhuyin writing systems on the acquisition of Mandarin word forms by native English speakers

journal articleThe role of written input in second language (L2) phonological and lexical acquisition has received increased attention in recent years. Here we investigated the influence of two factors that may moderate the influence of orthography on L2 word form learning: (i) whether the writing system is shared by the native language and the L2, and (ii) if the writing system is shared, whether the relevant grapheme-phoneme correspondences are also shared. The acquisition of Mandarin via the Pinyin and Zhuyin writing systems provides an ecologically valid opportunity to explore these factors

Optical Excitation of a Nanoparticle Cu/p-NiO Photocathode Improves Reaction Selectivity for CO₂ Reduction in Aqueous Electrolytes

We report the light-induced modification of catalytic selectivity for photoelectrochemical CO₂ reduction in aqueous media using copper (Cu) nanoparticles dispersed onto p-type nickel oxide (p-NiO) photocathodes. Optical excitation of Cu nanoparticles generates hot electrons available for driving CO₂ reduction on the Cu surface, while charge separation is accomplished by hot-hole injection from the Cu nanoparticles into the underlying p-NiO support. Photoelectrochemical studies demonstrate that optical excitation of plasmonic Cu/p-NiO photocathodes imparts increased selectivity for CO₂ reduction over hydrogen evolution in aqueous electrolytes. Specifically, we observed that plasmon-driven CO₂ reduction increased the production of carbon monoxide and formate, while simultaneously reducing the evolution of hydrogen. Our results demonstrate an optical route toward steering the selectivity of artificial photosynthetic systems with plasmon-driven photocathodes for photoelectrochemical CO₂ reduction in aqueous media

The Multi-shadow Analysis of LED Secondary Optics

AbstractDue to these advantages, small size, low heat radiation, long life time, and high luminous efficiency, the light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have been used widely to the varied lighting in recent years. However, the LEDs have the higher intensity of light in central region and the scattering in the surrounding during lighting, so it is necessary to modify the LED projection by the secondary optical lens. The extra secondary optical lens can enhance the light collection efficiency of LED, but it will readily induce the multi-shadow phenomenon during lighting, which has a significant impact on the human vision. In this study, the LED illumination module with/without secondary optical lens, total internal reflected (TIR) lens or reflection mirror cup, can be simulated by the Apilux(R) optical software. The result indicates that the approach can identify the level of multi-shadow images according to the deviations in light intensity, and will be new performance criteria of LEDs for users

The impact of stock market policy announcement on commodity prices and share prices

It has been an important issue to analyze the possible impact of macroeconomic effects, such as: exchange rate or interest rate, on the commodity prices since 1970s because of the tremendous volatility of commodity prices on the US. Thereafter, there are a lot of literature in agricultural economics relative to the empirical study. But the results of these literature are ambiguous. On the other hand, Blandchard (1981) incorporated the stock market into the traditional IS-LM model and discussed the interaction between stock market and economy. The financial sector plays an important role to affect the time path of commodity prices it cannot be ignored since agricultural industry is just one of sector among the whole economy. The main purpose of this article is to add the stock market into the two-goods economy. One is commodity product and the other is nonagricultural product. According the model including commodity market, nonagricultural product market, monetary market and stock market and under the assumptions of perfect substitutes between stock and bond and perfect foresight expectation, the effect of stock market policies, such as financing interest rate, financing ratio, on dynamics of commodity and share prices will be analyzed. The result shows that in the long run the impact of stock policies on commodity prices depends on the relative magnitudes of price effect of commodity and interest rate effect. While in the short run, whether share price overshooting or not it depends on the length of time between announcement and implement of policies.commodity prices, share prices, financing interest rate, financing ratio, dynamics

Towards High Solar to Fuel Efficiency: From Photonic Design, Interface Study, to Device Integration

Efficient unassisted solar fuel generation, a pathway to storable renewable energy in the form of chemical bonds, requires optimization of a photoelectrochemical device based on photonic design and interface study. We first focused on enhancing absorption via nanophotonic design of light absorbers. Near-unity, broadband absorption in sparse InP nanowire arrays with multi-radii and tapered nanowire array designs are simulated and experimentally demonstrated. Later, a few strategies are introduced to achieved high solar-to-fuel efficiency. Optically, photoelectrochemical device would require the catalyst ensembles to be highly transparent. We report a record solar-to-hydrogen efficiency by integrating Rh nanoparticle catalysts onto photocathodes with minimal parasitic absorption and reflection losses in the visible range. The other two light management strategies have been developed and experimentally verified to create highly active and effectively transparent catalyst structures: i) arrays of mesophotonic dielectric cone structures that serve as tapered waveguide light couplers to efficiently guide incident light through apertures in an opaque catalyst into the light absorber, and ii) an effectively transparent catalyst consisting of arrays of micron-scale triangular cross-sectional metal grid fingers, which are capable of redirecting the incoming light to the open areas of the PEC cell without shadow loss. The electronic properties of the surface films exposed to the electrolyte are also critical. The anatase TiO₂ protection layer on the photocathode creates a favorable internal band alignment for hydrogen evolution, promoting the transport of the excess electrons and inhibiting voltage drops. The interfacial conduction mechanism between the defected TiO₂ and metal catalysts is investigated. A combinatorial approach of electrochemistry, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and resonant X-ray spectroscopy reveals the correlation between the interfacial quasi-metal phase with TiO₂ properties. By careful control of gas diffusion electrode assembling to maintain appropriate wetted catalyst interface, another record solar-to-CO efficiency with extended stability can be realized.</p

Extracting energy via magnetic reconnection from Kerr-de Sitter black holes

It has been recently shown that magnetic reconnection can provide us a novel mechanism to extract black hole rotational energy from a Kerr black holes. In some certain values of parameters, such mechanism is found to be more efficient than the Blandford-Znajek mechanism. In this paper, we study the energy extraction from the Kerr-de Sitter black hole via this magnetic reconnection process. With the increase of the cosmological constant, a slowly spinning Kerr-de Sitter black hole can implement the energy extraction than its Kerr counterpart. Of particular interest is that although the numerical calculation shows that the maximum values of the power and efficiency decrease with the cosmological constant, Kerr-de Sitter black hole still has advantages when the black hole spin $a/M>1$ and the dominant reconnection $X$-point is far away from the event horizon. These results uncover the significant effects of cosmological constant on the energy extraction via the magnetic reconnection process.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figure

The Warming Acupuncture for Treatment of Sciatica in 30 Cases

ObjectiveTo observe the relation between the pain threshold and the therapeutic effects of acupuncture for sciatica.Methods90 sciatica patients were equally divided at random into the following 3 groups: a warming acupuncture group treated with the needles warmed by burning moxa, a western medicine group administered Nimesulide tablets and a point-injection group with Anisodamine injected. The pain threshold was tested before treatment and after the first, second and third treatment courses.ResultsThe warming acupuncture therapy showed better therapeutic effects than the other two groups with significant differences in the change of pain threshold and the improvement of clinical symptoms and signs (P < 0.01).ConclusionAcupuncture can relieve the symptoms of sciatica with the increase of pain threshold