Developing risk indicator system of non-compliance for organic crop farms based on China organic regulations

Abstract Farming management and certification are essential for organic agriculture development to make sure that farming practices are compliant with organic regulations. To improve the efficiency of organic certification and farm management, a risk-based indicator system of organic crop production was established according to literature review and Chinese organic regulations. Three dimensions, 11 themes, and 25 indicators were selected and the weights of which were determined through Analytic Hierarchy Process. The highest weight was assigned to the production dimension (0.59), followed by management (0.24) and environment (0.17). The three highest risk themes in the sequence were plant protection, detection and soil fertility management with a weight of 0.17, 0.15 and 0.12, respectively. At the indicator level, pesticide detection rate, nutrient satisfaction rate, the proportion of non-chemical treatment, the severity of crop diseases, pests and weeds, and the quality of soil environment ranked top five according to the weight of their risk. Chemicals application including pesticides and fertilizers was the main concern in organic production and certification. The results will provide producers, inspectors, and certifiers useful references to reduce the risk of non-compliance, and increase the integrity and credibility during organic production and certification

GPT4Video: A Unified Multimodal Large Language Model for lnstruction-Followed Understanding and Safety-Aware Generation

While the recent advances in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) constitute a significant leap forward in the field, these models are predominantly confined to the realm of input-side multimodal comprehension, lacking the capacity for multimodal content generation. To fill this gap, we present GPT4Video, a unified multi-model framework that empowers Large Language Models (LLMs) with the capability of both video understanding and generation. Specifically, we develop an instruction-following-based approach integrated with the stable diffusion generative model, which has demonstrated to effectively and securely handle video generation scenarios. GPT4Video offers the following benefits: 1) It exhibits impressive capabilities in both video understanding and generation scenarios. For example, GPT4Video outperforms Valley by 11.8\% on the Video Question Answering task, and surpasses NExt-GPT by 2.3\% on the Text to Video generation task. 2) it endows the LLM/MLLM with video generation capabilities without requiring additional training parameters and can flexibly interface with a wide range of models to perform video generation. 3) it maintains a safe and healthy conversation not only in output-side but also the input side in an end-to-end manner. Qualitative and qualitative experiments demonstrate that GPT4Video holds the potential to function as a effective, safe and Humanoid-like video assistant that can handle both video understanding and generation scenarios

Quantitative Analysis of the Blending Degree of Virgin and RAP Binders in Recycled Asphalt Mixtures with a High RAP Content

Recycled asphalt mixtures (RAM), which are prepared by blending reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), virgin bitumen and mineral additives, provide a variety of advantages, including resource recycling, reductions in costs, and reduced negative environmental impacts. However, multiple agencies have expressed concerns about the utilization ratio of RAP; thus, a comprehensive understanding of the blending degree of virgin and RAP binders in RAM would be significantly helpful for promoting the application of RAP. This study aims to quantitatively analyze the blending degree of virgin and RAP binders in RAM with high RAP contents. Carboxyl-terminated butadiene acrylonitrile (CTBN) was utilized as a tracer to mark the virgin bitumen; in addition, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was used to develop the structural index of CTBN (ICTBN). By establishing the standard curve between ICTBN and the CTBN content, the blending degree of virgin and RAP binders at different locations within RAM can be determined quantitatively. The study results indicate that the RAP binder was completely blended with the virgin bitumen in the outer RAP layer. However, the blending degree decreased with an increase in the RAP depth, and the blending degree in the inner RAP layer was only approximately half that which was found in the case of complete blending

Fabrication of a drug delivery system that enhances antifungal drug corneal penetration

Fungal keratitis (FK) remains a severe eye disease, and effective therapies are limited by drug shortages and critical ocular barriers. Despite the high antifungal potency and broad spectrum of econazole, its strong irritant and insolubility in water hinder its ocular application. We designed and fabricated a new drug delivery system based on a polymeric vector for the ocular antifungal application of econazole. This novel system integrates the advantages of its constituent units and exhibits superior comprehensive performance. Using the new system, drug content was significantly increased more than 600 folds. The results of in vivo and in vitro experiments demonstrated that the econazole-loaded formulation exhibited significantly enhanced corneal penetration after a single topical ocular administration, excellent antifungal activity, and good tolerance in rabbits. Drug concentrations and ocular relative bioavailability in the cornea were 59- and 29-time greater than those in the control group, respectively. Following the topical administration of one eye drop (50 μL of 0.3% w/v econazole) in fungus-infected rabbits, a high concentration of antimycotic drugs in the cornea and aqueous humor was sustained and effective for 4 h. The mechanism of corneal penetration was also explored using dual fluorescent labeling. This novel drug delivery system is a promising therapeutic approach for oculomycosis and could serve as a candidate strategy for use with various hydrophobic drugs to overcome barriers in the treatment of many other ocular diseases