Global land surface temperature influenced by vegetation cover and PM2.5 from 2001 to 2016

Land surface temperature (LST) is an important parameter to evaluate environmental changes. In this paper, time series analysis was conducted to estimate the interannual variations in global LST from 2001 to 2016 based on moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) LST, and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) products and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) data from the Atmospheric Composition Analysis Group. The results showed that LST, seasonally integrated normalized difference vegetation index (SINDVI), and PM2.5 increased by 0.17 K, 0.04, and 1.02 �g/m3 in the period of 2001–2016, respectively. During the past 16 years, LST showed an increasing trend in most areas, with two peaks of 1.58 K and 1.85 K at 72�N and 48�S, respectively. Marked warming also appeared in the Arctic. On the contrary, remarkable decrease in LST occurred in Antarctic. In most parts of the world, LST was affected by the variation in vegetation cover and air pollutant, which can be detected by the satellite. In the Northern Hemisphere, positive relations between SINDVI and LST were found; however, in the Southern Hemisphere, negative correlations were detected. The impact of PM2.5 on LST was more complex. On the whole, LST increased with a small increase in PM2.5 concentrations but decreased with a marked increase in PM2.5. The study provides insights on the complex relationship between vegetation cover, air pollution, and land surface temperature

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People living outside conventional families have to grapple with the concept of ordinariness. If their lives are not seen as ordinary intimate lives, what life choices and narrative choices do they have in claiming and responding to this extraordinariness? The article explores ordinariness as a theoretical and cultural concept, and shows how both theoretical approaches and self-narratives can have very different as well as ambivalent attitudes towards ordinariness

Adsorptive Selectivity and Mechanism of Three Different Adsorbents for Nitrogenous Compounds Removal from Microalgae Bio-Oil

10.1021/acs.iecr.8b04934INDUSTRIAL & ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY RESEARCH58103959-396

Mining Discriminative Food Regions for Accurate Food Recognition

Automatic food recognition is the very first step towards passive dietary monitoring. In this paper, we address the problem of food recognition by mining discriminative food regions. Taking inspiration from Adversarial Erasing, a strategy that progressively discovers discriminative object regions for weakly supervised semantic segmentation, we propose a novel network architecture in which a primary network maintains the base accuracy of classifying an input image, an auxiliary network adversarially mines discriminative food regions, and a region network classifies the resulting mined regions. The global (the original input image) and the local (the mined regions) representations are then integrated for the final prediction. The proposed architecture denoted as PAR-Net is end-to-end trainable, and highlights discriminative regions in an online fashion. In addition, we introduce a new fine-grained food dataset named as Sushi-50, which consists of 50 different sushi categories. Extensive experiments have been conducted to evaluate the proposed approach. On three food datasets chosen (Food-101, Vireo-172, and Sushi-50), our approach performs consistently and achieves state-of-the-art results (top-1 testing accuracy of $90.4\%$, $90.2\%$, $92.0\%$, respectively) compared with other existing approaches. Dataset and code are available at https://github.com/Jianing-Qiu/PARNetComment: Accepted in BMVC 2019 as a spotlight pape

Blue hydrogenated lithium titanate as a high-rate anode material for lithium-ion batteries

Blue hydrogenated lithium titanate (LTO) was prepared by treating industrial grade white LTO at 500 °C under a 40 bar H2 atmosphere. This process improves the Li-ion diffusivity and electronic conductivity, leading to enhanced specific capacity and rate capability in lithium-ion batteries. This journal i

The temporal trend and distribution characteristics in mortality of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia in China: Based on the National Mortality Surveillance System (NMS) from 2009 to 2015.

BACKGROUND:China is experiencing rapid age, which will lead to increasing burden of age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer disease and other forms of dementia. OBJECTIVES:The aim of this study was to 1) Explore the temporal trend of mortality of Alzheimer disease (AD) and other forms of dementia in China and 2) Analyze its geographic variations and urban-rural differences and calculate the years of life lost (YLLs) from AD and other forms of dementia. DATA AND METHODS:Data were extracted from the National Mortality Surveillance System (NMS). Age-standardized mortalities were calculated with the Western Grade 26 Standard Life List, and the YLLs were calculated using the DALY template provided by the WHO / World Bank global burden of disease (GBD) Working Group. The trends in crude and age-standardized mortality of AD and other forms of dementia were examined using Cochran-Armitage trend test. RESULTS:In China, the crude mortality from AD and other forms of dementia increased from 2009 to 2015, but the age-standardized mortality decreased. The YLLs of AD and other forms of dementia increased during the study period. The age-standardized mortality in the east was higher than those in the west and middle regions, and the age-standardized mortality in rural areas was higher than that in urban areas. CONCLUSION:In China, the age-standardized mortality of AD and other forms of dementia decreased from 2009 to 2015. However, the disease burden from AD and other forms of dementia is becoming heavier due to increasing elderly population. Moreover, there were geographic variations and urban-rural differences in mortality of AD and other forms of dementia in China

Unraveling the Role of Ligands in the Hydrogen Evolution Mechanism Catalyzed by [NiFe] Hydrogenases

DFT investigations have been carried out on the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) mechanism followed by [NiFe] hydrogenases. Calculations on the active site of the [NiFe] hydrogenase from Desulfovibrio vulgaris str. “Miyazaki F” reveal that H₂ is formed as the final product through the “singlet multiplicity” pathway. Nonspontaneous reaction energies can be seen for both H⁺/e^– additions to the reactive sulfur atom from the truncated cysteine residues, being the limiting steps of the whole reaction. In contrast, transfers toward the metal environment to produce the bridging hydride and the bonded H₂ molecule at the <b>Ni-C</b> and <b>I2</b> steps, respectively, are spontaneous processes. Our DFT results highlight the role of the ligands attached to both the Ni and Fe centers. When the protein ligand environment is spatially confined, reaction energies for the HER are lower than those when the ligand carbons are able to freely adjust. In addition, larger changes can be seen on interchanging the [CN]⁻ and CO ligands on the Fe center; in particular, the energy profile dramatically changes as [CN]⁻ ligands are replaced by CO. These results may guide materials synthesis efforts toward optimized HER catalysts

Melatonin Delays Arthritis Inflammation and Reduces Cartilage Matrix Degradation through the SIRT1-Mediated NF-κB/Nrf2/TGF-β/BMPs Pathway

Cartilage, a flexible and smooth connective tissue that envelops the surfaces of synovial joints, relies on chondrocytes for extracellular matrix (ECM) production and the maintenance of its structural and functional integrity. Melatonin (MT), renowned for its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, holds the potential to modulate cartilage regeneration and degradation. Therefore, the present study was devoted to elucidating the mechanism of MT on chondrocytes. The in vivo experiment consisted of three groups: Sham (only the skin tissue was incised), Model (using the anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT) method), and MT (30 mg/kg), with sample extraction following 12 weeks of administration. Pathological alterations in articular cartilage, synovium, and subchondral bone were evaluated using Safranin O-fast green staining. Immunohistochemistry (ICH) analysis was employed to assess the expression of matrix degradation-related markers. The levels of serum cytokines were quantified via Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) assays. In in vitro experiments, primary chondrocytes were divided into Control, Model, MT, negative control, and inhibitor groups. Western blotting (WB) and Quantitative RT-PCR (q-PCR) were used to detect Silent information regulator transcript-1 (SIRT1)/Nuclear factor kappa-B (NF-κB)/Nuclear factor erythroid-2-related factor 2 (Nrf2)/Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β)/Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs)-related indicators. Immunofluorescence (IF) analysis was employed to examine the status of type II collagen (COL2A1), SIRT1, phosphorylated NF-κB p65 (p-p65), and phosphorylated mothers against decapentaplegic homolog 2 (p-Smad2). In vivo results revealed that the MT group exhibited a relatively smooth cartilage surface, modest chondrocyte loss, mild synovial hyperplasia, and increased subchondral bone thickness. ICH results showed that MT downregulated the expression of components related to matrix degradation. ELISA results showed that MT reduced serum inflammatory cytokine levels. In vitro experiments confirmed that MT upregulated the expression of SIRT1/Nrf2/TGF-β/BMPs while inhibiting the NF-κB pathway and matrix degradation-related components. The introduction of the SIRT1 inhibitor Selisistat (EX527) reversed the effects of MT. Together, these findings suggest that MT has the potential to ameliorate inflammation, inhibit the release of matrix-degrading enzymes, and improve the cartilage condition. This study provides a new theoretical basis for understanding the role of MT in decelerating cartilage degradation and promoting chondrocyte repair in in vivo and in vitro cultured chondrocytes