Synthesis of natural porous minerals supported TiO2 nanoparticles and their photocatalytic performance towards Rhodamine B degradation

Natural porous mineral supported (TiO/diatomite) photocatalyst was prepared via a modified sol-gel method using titanium (IV) butoxide (TBOT) and diatomite. The effect of TBOT dosage on adsorption capacity and photocatalytic activity for Rhodamine B (RhB) solution was investigated. The morphology and elemental distribution were determined by scanning electron microscopy with attached energy-dispersive X-ray detector. The porous and crystalline structures were characterized using nitrogen adsorption-desorption and X-ray diffraction techniques, respectively. The prepared TiO/diatomite hybrid catalyst has shown relatively even porous structure and dispersion of TiO over the surface. This suggests that the diatomite matrix prevented the agglomeration of TiO particles. Initially, the surface area and pore volume of the hybrid catalyst were increased by adding TBOT then decreased for dosages higher than 1.0ml. The crystalline size of TiO immobilized on diatomite matrix by sol-gel method was around 20nm. When the experiments were carried out in the absence of diatomite, this value was increased to 33.73nm. The use of diatomite also promoted an increase of the transformation temperature of the crystalline phase anatase to rutile for the TiO. The as-prepared TiO/diatomite composite exhibited high photocatalytic activity (96.0% for 0.5h UV-light irradiation) for the degradation of RhB from wastewater as a result of its unique porous structure and optimum TiO loading. In addition, it can be easily separated from suspension and possess a good durability. This hybrid material holds great promise in the engineering field for the environmental remediation

Studies on the Population Dynamics and Control Stage of Soybean Aphid in Jining, China

Soybean aphids were widespread and caused serious harm in the Jining area in recent years. About 800 aphids were found on a single soybean plant at peak time in general and even over 3,000 were found on typical individual plants. From 1988 to 1990 the aphid population was systematically investigated in soybean fields for scientific and efficient control. The relationship between population dynamics of soybean aphid and meteorological information was analyzed.Originating text in Chinese.Citation: Lin, Cunluan, Xin, Zhenshan, Li, Lintang, Zhang, Huikong, Zhang, Guangxin, Wang, Yanpeng. (1994). Studies on the Population Dynamics and Control Stage of Soybean Aphid in Jining, China. Shandong Agricultural Sciencese, 4, 44-44

A157: The Effect of Whole-Body Vibration Therapy on the Motor Abilities of Patients with Sarcopenia

Purpose: The highly morbid condition known as sarcopenia affects middle-aged and elderly people and is characterized by a progressive loss of whole-body muscle mass accelerated by aging. It is also accompanied by a decline in muscle strength and physiological function. These weakening functions manifest as impaired physical movement, increased risk of falls, disability, lower quality of life, and even death. Sarcopenia is progressively emerging as a new public health issue in China with a quickly aging population, making it vital to investigate effective exercise therapies for sarcopenic patients. Methods: Sixty sarcopenic patients (aged 60-75) from a local hospital in northeast China participated in the study. They were randomly divided into a test group and a control group, with 30 patients in each. The test group underwent a 40-minute whole-body vibration training session for 12 weeks, five times a week, while the control group kept regular routines. Data were collected at the end of the experiment, including muscle strength, muscle mass, muscle function, gait speed, berg balance scale (BBS), five sit-to-stand test (FTSST), activities of daily living (ADL), fall risk assessment scale (FRA), and Sarcopenia Quality of Life Scale (SarQoL) scores. Results: The 12-week whole-body vibration training intervention resulted in a significantly higher value of muscular strength, muscle mass, and muscle function among the test group compared to the control group. The former achieved substantially higher SPPB, ADL, FTSST, and BBS scores than the latter (p \u3c 0.01). With much lower FRA scores and significantly better SarQoL ratings compared to baseline, the test group also significantly outperformed the control group in terms of fall risk and quality of life (p \u3c 0.01). Conclusion: With whole-body vibration training, people with sarcopenia can increase their skeletal muscle strength, considerably enhance their motor function, lower their risk of falls and accidents, and generally improve their quality of life. Whole-body vibration training is worthy of therapeutic use since it is both feasible and practical

Photomolecular Effect: Visible Light Interaction with Air-Water Interface

Although water is almost transparent to visible light, we demonstrate that the air-water interface interacts strongly with visible light via what we hypothesize as the photomolecular effect. In this effect, transverse-magnetic polarized photons cleave off water clusters from the air-water interface. We use over 10 different experiments to demonstrate the existence of this effect and its dependence on the wavelength, incident angle and polarization of visible light. We further demonstrate that visible light heats up thin fogs, suggesting that this process can impact weather, climate, and the earth's water cycle. Our study suggests that the photomolecular effect should happen widely in nature, from clouds to fogs, ocean to soil surfaces, and plant transpiration, and can also lead to new applications in energy and clear water

Control Threshold of Soybean Aphids

Relationship between aphid density during flowering season and soybean yield was surveyed in 1998-1990. Based on the 3-year study, we proposed the control thresholds of soybean aphids for different levels of soybean yield.Originating text in Chinese.Citation: Lin, Cunluan, Xun, Zhenshan, Li, Lingtang, Wang, Yanpeng, Zhang, Guangxin. (1992). Control Threshold of Soybean Aphids. Soybean Science, 11(4), 318-321

The Role of Paragus quadri-fasciatus Meigen on Aphid Control and the Observations of its Biological Characteristics

Four-strip small syrphid fly, Paragus quadri-fasciatus Meigen is the important natural enemy of aphids in our region. A fly can eat about 800 aphids during its whole life. There are more than 10 kinds of aphids can be food of this fly, such as soybean aphid, Chinese sorghum aphid and radish aphid etc. The fly has 3~4 generations each year in Tonghua county, Jilin province. The adult of the first generation appears after the last ten-day period of April each year. It takes 30~35 days to complete one generation. The fly can oviposit 84~124 eggs in its whole life. Major natural enemies of the fly are ichneumon wasps, spiders, lacewings and etc.Originating text in Chinese.Citation: Gao, Junfeng, Jiang, Lianfeng, Zhang, Guangxin, Li, Chunshan, Zhao, Guangquan. (1996). The Role of Paragus quadri-fasciatus Meigen on Aphid Control and the Observations of its Biological Characteristics. Journal of Jilin Agricultural Sciences, 5(2), 60-61

Survey on the Overwintering of Syrphids in Changbai Mountains and Experiments on Artificial Protection of the Overwintering Syrphid Flies

Originating text in Chinese.Citation: Gao, Junfeng, Zhang, Guangxin, Qin, Yongchun, Yu, Kai, Li, Minghai, Qin, Yi. (1993). Survey on the Overwintering of Syrphids in Changbai Mountains and Experiments on Artificial Protection of the Overwintering Syrphid Flies. Chinese Journal of Biological Control, 9(3), 142-144

Effects of Aphid Population on the Major Economic Parameters of Soybean

During the growing period of soybeans, aphids are harmful to several economic parameters of soybean. The aphid population density has a significant positive correlation with the rate of soybean shriveling and significant negative correlation with the 100-kernel weight and individual kernel weight of soybean.Originating text in Chinese.Citation: Lin, Cunluan, Li, Lingtang, Wang, Yanpeng, Xun, Zhenshan, Zhang, Guangxin, Li, Suzhen. (1993). Effects of Aphid Population on the Major Economic Parameters of Soybean. Soybean Science, 12(3), 252-254

Hybrid-SORT: Weak Cues Matter for Online Multi-Object Tracking

Multi-Object Tracking (MOT) aims to detect and associate all desired objects across frames. Most methods accomplish the task by explicitly or implicitly leveraging strong cues (i.e., spatial and appearance information), which exhibit powerful instance-level discrimination. However, when object occlusion and clustering occur, both spatial and appearance information will become ambiguous simultaneously due to the high overlap between objects. In this paper, we demonstrate that this long-standing challenge in MOT can be efficiently and effectively resolved by incorporating weak cues to compensate for strong cues. Along with velocity direction, we introduce the confidence state and height state as potential weak cues. With superior performance, our method still maintains Simple, Online and Real-Time (SORT) characteristics. Furthermore, our method shows strong generalization for diverse trackers and scenarios in a plug-and-play and training-free manner. Significant and consistent improvements are observed when applying our method to 5 different representative trackers. Further, by leveraging both strong and weak cues, our method Hybrid-SORT achieves superior performance on diverse benchmarks, including MOT17, MOT20, and especially DanceTrack where interaction and occlusion are frequent and severe. The code and models are available at https://github.com/ymzis69/HybirdSORT