Microplastics Reduce the Negative Effects of Litter-Derived Plant Secondary Metabolites on Nematodes in Soil

Microplastics and plant litter are ubiquitous in the soil environment, and both materials can influence soil properties and biota. Plant litter releases secondary metabolites (e.g., phenolic compounds) during the decomposition process, including chemical compounds active in plant defense. Effects of microplastics and plant litter on soil biota have been studied independently but we have limited information about the combined effects of both sources of chemicals. Here, we specifically focused on the interaction between plant litter and microplastics, as well as their potential effects on soil biota (i.e., nematodes). We used soils from a previous experiment that included three different types of microplastic fibers (MFs) and four different types of plant litter, which were incubated in the soil in all combinations of materials. After soil incubation (42 days) in the previous experiment, we here tested for effects on nematodes (Caenorhabditis elegans). Plant litter treatments negatively affected the reproduction of nematodes, but these effects were reduced when the soils were incubated along with MFs. We measured the phenolic concentrations in plant litter extracts in a kinetic experiment and found that phenolic concentrations significantly decreased with some of the MF additions. Our results suggest that microplastics can affect the potential effects of natural chemicals such as plant phenolic compounds. We urge future studies to consider this possibility as a key explanatory process underpinning effects of microplastic in the soil environment

Is the Right to Vote Equal to Democracy? — An Analysis of Substantive and Procedural Democracy in the United States

In modern political society, democracy remains a universal concept. However, different ideologies still have their own views on the concrete realization form of democracy. Nowadays, the understandings of the concept of democracy in the United States and its democratic values have become the mainstream of Western society, and their historical value and role should not be ignored. However, the practice of this democratic system has differed from true democracy and has gradually manifested political confusion. Firstly, this paper introduces the development of democracy and electoral system, and explains that the initial meaning of Western democracy is institutional democracy, namely procedural democracy, which is not the same as what we think of popular sovereignty today, and that the development course of Western democracy is also the expansion process of procedural justice. Then, constructivism theory is used to discuss the proceduralized process of substantive democracy and to explain the relationship between procedural justice and substantive democracy. Finally, through a specific analysis of the evolution and practice of the democratic electoral system in the United States, it concludes that the development of American democracy focuses only on expanding the scope of procedural democracy, but neglects the development of substantive democracy. For this reason, it explores the problems existing in American democracy

MMSD2.0: Towards a Reliable Multi-modal Sarcasm Detection System

Multi-modal sarcasm detection has attracted much recent attention. Nevertheless, the existing benchmark (MMSD) has some shortcomings that hinder the development of reliable multi-modal sarcasm detection system: (1) There are some spurious cues in MMSD, leading to the model bias learning; (2) The negative samples in MMSD are not always reasonable. To solve the aforementioned issues, we introduce MMSD2.0, a correction dataset that fixes the shortcomings of MMSD, by removing the spurious cues and re-annotating the unreasonable samples. Meanwhile, we present a novel framework called multi-view CLIP that is capable of leveraging multi-grained cues from multiple perspectives (i.e., text, image, and text-image interaction view) for multi-modal sarcasm detection. Extensive experiments show that MMSD2.0 is a valuable benchmark for building reliable multi-modal sarcasm detection systems and multi-view CLIP can significantly outperform the previous best baselines.Comment: Accepted by ACL2023 Finding

Construction and validation of a deterioration model for elderly COVID-19 Sub-variant BA.2 patients

RationaleCOVID-19 pandemic has imposed tremendous stress and burden on the economy and society worldwide. There is an urgent demand to find a new model to estimate the deterioration of patients inflicted by Omicron variants.ObjectiveThis study aims to develop a model to predict the deterioration of elderly patients inflicted by Omicron Sub-variant BA.2.MethodsCOVID-19 patients were randomly divided into the training and the validation cohorts. Both Lasso and Logistic regression analyses were performed to identify prediction factors, which were then selected to build a deterioration model in the training cohort. This model was validated in the validation cohort.Measurements and main resultsThe deterioration model of COVID-19 was constructed with five indices, including C-reactive protein, neutrophil count/lymphocyte count (NLR), albumin/globulin ratio (A/G), international normalized ratio (INR), and blood urea nitrogen (BUN). The area under the ROC curve (AUC) showed that this model displayed a high accuracy in predicting deterioration, which was 0.85 in the training cohort and 0.85 in the validation cohort. The nomogram provided an easy way to calculate the possibility of deterioration, and the decision curve analysis (DCA) and clinical impact curve analysis (CICA)showed good clinical net profit using this model.ConclusionThe model we constructed can identify and predict the risk of deterioration (requirement for ventilatory support or death) in elderly patients and it is clinically practical, which will facilitate medical decision making and allocating medical resources to those with critical conditions

C-reactive protein to lymphocyte ratio is a significant predictive factor for poor short-term clinical outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 BA.2.2 patients

ObjectiveThe aim of the present study is to assess the utility of C-reactive protein to Lymphocyte Ratio (CLR) in predicting short-term clinical outcomes of patients infected by SARS-CoV-2 BA.2.2.MethodsThis retrospective study was performed on 1,219 patients with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 BA.2.2 to determine the association of CLR with short-term clinical outcomes. Independent Chi square test, Rank sum test, and binary logistic regression analysis were performed to calculate mean differences and adjusted odds ratios (aORs) with their 95% CI, respectively.ResultsOver 8% of patients admitted due to SARS-CoV-2 BA.2.2. were critically ill. The best cut-off value of CLR was 21.25 in the ROC with a sensitivity of 72.3% and a specificity of 86%. After adjusting age, gender, and comorbidities, binary logistic regression analysis showed that elevated CLR was an independent risk factor for poor short-term clinical outcomes of COVID-19 patients.ConclusionC-reactive protein to Lymphocyte Ratio is a significant predictive factor for poor short-term clinical outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 BA.2.2 inflicted patients

Myristate and the ecology of AM fungi : significance, opportunities, applications and challenges

A recent study by Sugiura and coworkers reported the nonsymbiotic growth and spore production of an arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungus, Rhizophagus irregularis, when the fungus received an external supply of certain fatty acids, myristates (C:14). This discovery follows the insight that AM fungi receive fatty acids from their hosts when in symbiosis. If this result holds up and can be repeated under nonsterile conditions and with a broader range of fungi, it has numerous consequences for our understanding of AM fungal ecology, from the level of the fungus, at the plant community level, and to functional consequences in ecosystems. In addition, myristate may open up several avenues from a more applied perspective, including improved fungal culture and supplementation of AM fungi or inoculum in the field. We here map these potential opportunities, and additionally offer thoughts on potential risks of this potentially new technology. Lastly, we discuss the specific research challenges that need to be overcome to come to an understanding of the potential role of myristate in AM ecology

Low energy consumption flow capacitive deionization with a combination of redox couples and carbon slurry

Flow-electrode capacitive deionization (FCDI) is a new sustainable desalination technology where continuous desalination can be achieved by the electrodialysis coupling method. However, its development is hindered owing to high energy consumption and low salt removal rate. Herein, by combining ferri-/ferrocyanide redox couple with flow activated carbon (AC)/carbon black (CB) slurry, continuous desalination process is achieved with a high salt removal rate of 1.31 μg cm-2 s-1 and low energy consumption of 102.68 kJ mol-1 at the current density 2.38 mA cm-2 (50 mA current for a 21 cm2 active area). The operating voltage plateau can be reduced to 0.69 V when 10 wt% AC/CB (mass ratio of 9:1) is mixed with 20 mM/20 mM ferri-/ferrocyanide as the flow electrodes, compared with more than 3 V for only carbon flow or redox medium alone. The influences of carbon content and current densities are further investigated to so that the performances can be controlled. This work enables the development of energy-saving desalination systems by coupling FCDI with redox desalination technique

Is the Right to Vote Equal to Democracy? — An Analysis of Substantive and Procedural Democracy in the United States

In modern political society, democracy remains a universal concept. However, different ideologies still have their own views on the concrete realization form of democracy. Nowadays, the understandings of the concept of democracy in the United States and its democratic values have become the mainstream of Western society, and their historical value and role should not be ignored. However, the practice of this democratic system has differed from true democracy and has gradually manifested political confusion. Firstly, this paper introduces the development of democracy and electoral system, and explains that the initial meaning of Western democracy is institutional democracy, namely procedural democracy, which is not the same as what we think of popular sovereignty today, and that the development course of Western democracy is also the expansion process of procedural justice. Then, constructivism theory is used to discuss the proceduralized process of substantive democracy and to explain the relationship between procedural justice and substantive democracy. Finally, through a specific analysis of the evolution and practice of the democratic electoral system in the United States, it concludes that the development of American democracy focuses only on expanding the scope of procedural democracy, but neglects the development of substantive democracy. For this reason, it explores the problems existing in American democracy

Modeling and analysis of the chip formation and transient cutting force during elliptical vibration cutting process

In traditional diamond cutting, the cutting force is usually large and it will affect tool life and machining quality. Elliptical vibration cutting (EVC) as one of the ultra-precision machining technologies has a lot of advantages, such as reduces cutting force, extend tool life and so on. It’s difficult to predict the transient cutting force of EVC due to its unique elliptical motion trajectory. Study on chip formation will helpfully to predict cutting force. The geometric feature of chip has important effects on cutting force, however, few scholars have studied the chip formation. In order to investigate the time-varying cutting force of EVC, the geometric feature model of chip is established based on analysis of chip formation, and the effects of cutting parameters on the geometric feature of chip are analyzed. To predict transient force quickly and effectively, the geometric feature of chip is introduced into the cutting force model. The calculated results show that the error between the predicted cutting force in this paper and that in the literature is less than 2%, which proves its feasibility

Ecosystem Services Research in Green Sustainable Science and Technology Field: Trends, Issues, and Future Directions

Ecosystem services (ES) has an important place in sustainability science research as a powerful bridge between society and nature. Based on 513 papers correlated with ES in the field of green sustainable science and technology (GSST) indexed in ISI Web of Science database, we employ the bibliometric methods to analyze the disciplinary co-occurrence, keyword co-occurrence, partnerships, publication characteristics, co-citation, research themes, and transformative potential of these papers. The results show that innovation in research themes of the ES research in the GSST field is increasing rapidly in 2015–2018, while innovation in research themes is decreasing in 2018–2021. Moreover, keyword co-occurrence analysis indicates that the hot topics of previous research with respect to “environmental service”, “capacity”, “perception”, “landscape”, “forest management”, “carbon sequestration”, “contingent valuation”, and “sustainable development”. Recent hotspots include “blue carbon”, “environmental impact”, “coastal”, “ecosystem services mapping”, and “use/land cover change”. Finally, the cluster analysis of co-cited references abstract thirteen largest clusters. The top six clusters are “mapping ecosystem service”, “spatial gradient difference”, “ecosystem service value”, “water-related ecosystem service”, “linking forest landscape model”, and “culture ecosystem service”. Moreover, the integration of spatial, value, environmental, and sociocultural dimensions may help to develop supportive policies, which is a future direction of ES research in the GSST field