Unveiling the green path:How urban openness reduces pollution and paves the way to sustainability

This study investigates the relationship between openness and pollutant emission intensity across 286 Chinese cities from 1990 to 2019, aiming to evaluate the potential environmental benefits of open economy strategies. The findings indicate that enhanced urban openness significantly lowers pollutant emission intensity. To ensure the robustness of our findings, we make an innovative attempt to employ high-speed rail connection and motorway density as instrumental variables to address potential endogeneity issues, corroborating the reliability of the results through various robustness tests. Moreover, we also find the heterogeneous effects of urban openness on pollution emissions, highlighting the moderating influences of trade complexity, urbanization level, and environmental regulatory intensity. Lastly, the study elucidates the mechanisms through which urban openness diminishes pollution emissions, namely fostering green innovation capacity and enhancing public environmental awareness. This research makes theoretical contributions on understanding the nexus between open economies and environmental protection while offering practical insights to inform governmental environmental policy formulation.</p

Excellent Absorption of LaCoxO3 Over Full Solar Spectrum and Direct Photothermal Energy Storage of Ca(OH)2–LaCoxO3

Abstract: Photothermal conversion is a vital way for solar energy applications. The strong absorption of near Infrared light is essential for excellent photothermal performance. In this study, we demonstrated that nano LaCoxO3 is able to harvest light intensely across the full solar spectrum with high photothermal temperature. A core-shell-like structure of LaCoxO3-coated Ca(OH)2 particles was fabricated and shows excellent photothermal conversion, high kinetics of dehydration and remarkable cycle stability of heat storage and release. The photothermal dehydration-conversion of Ca(OH)2 increases 8.4-fold. Results demonstrate the multifunctionality of LaCoxO3, intensifying light harvesting, high photothermal conversion, good stability, considerable strength, and porous framework favouring the performance of photothermal storage and release cycles. LaCoxO3–Ca(OH)2 composite can simultaneously harvest light and store thermal energy

Integration of Self-Adaptive Physical-Layer Key Distribution and Encryption in Optical Coherent Communication

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a compatible physical-layer secure optical communication (PLSOC) system that integrates self-adaptive physical-layer key distribution (PLKD) and encryption (PLE) in optical coherent communication. Based on bit error rate difference of QAM signals mapped by asymmetric basis state Y-00 protocol, the secret key can be secretly exchanged over public fiber links without the pre-shared keys. Moreover, we perform a parameter self-adaptive strategy for practical and dynamic PLKD. The security of the key is evaluated in the case of a fiber-tapping attack. A secure hash algorithm, SHA3-512, is used to perform privacy amplification to obtain the virtually secure key. An error-free PLKD rate reaches 39.3 Kbits/s over 300km ultra-low loss fiber. We experimentally enable the integration of the proposed PLKD scheme and quantum noise stream cipher (QNSC) with a single wavelength, same system. Q factor penalty of the integration system compared to the QNSC system is 3.7dB (optical back-to-back) and 4.8dB (300km) respectively. By exploiting a common hardware platform, with the same wavelength, the proposed PLSOC system addresses the problem that PLKD and PLE are separately performed through independent optical fiber links or wavelengths. Since only digital signal processing is used, the scheme does not require extra hardware

Ethanol exposure leads to disorder of blood island formation in early chick embryo

Ethanol’s effect on embryonic vasculogenesis and its underlying mechanism is obscure. Using VE-cadherin in situ hybridization, we found blood islands formation was inhibited in area opaca, but abnormal VE-cadherin+ cells were seen in area pellucida. We hypothesise ethanol may affect blood island progenitor cell migration and differentiation. DiI and in vitro experiments revealed ethanol inhibited cell migration, Quantitative PCR analysis revealed that ethanol exposure enhanced cell differentiation in area pellucida of HH5 chick embryos and repressed cell differentiation in area pellucida of HH8 chick embryos. By exposing to 2,2′-azobis-amidinopropane dihydrochloride, a ROS inducer, which gave a similar anti-vasculogenesis effect as ethanol and this anti-vasculogenesis effect could be reversed by vitamin C. Overall, exposing early chick embryos to ethanol represses blood island progenitor cell migration but disturbed differentiation at a different stage, so that the disorder of blood island formation occurs through excess ROS production and altered vascular-associated gene expression

Gut microbiota-derived endotoxin enhanced the incidence of cardia bifida during cardiogenesis

Background: Cytotoxicity and inflammation-associated toxic responses could be induced by bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS) in vitro and in vivo respectively. However, the mechanism involved in LPS-induced cardiac malformation in prenatal fetus is still unknown. Methods and results: In this study, we demonstrated that LPS was induced in gut microbiota imbalance mice, and next, LPS exposure during gastrulation in the chick embryo increased the incidence of cardia bifida. Gene transfection and tissue transplantation trajectory indicated that LPS exposure restricted the cell migration of cardiac progenitors to primary heart field in gastrula chick embryos. In vitro explant allograft of GFP-labeled anterior primitive streak demonstrated that LPS treatments could inhibit cell migration. A similar observation was also obtained from the cell migration assay of scratch wounds using primary culture of cardiomyocytes or H9c2 cells. In the embryos exposed to LPS, expressions of Nkx2.5 and GATA5 were disturbed. These genes are associated with cardiomyocyte differentiation when heart tube fusion occurs. Furthermore, pHIS3, C-caspase3 immunohistological staining indicated that cell proliferation decreased, cell apoptosis increased in the heart tube of chick embryo. Meanwhile, in vivo, pHIS3 immunohistological staining and Hochest/PI staining also draw the similar conclusions. The LPS exposure also caused the production of excess ROS, which might damage the cardiac precursor cells of developing embryos. At last, we showed that LPS-induced cardia bifida could be partially rescued through the addition of antioxidants. Conclusions: Together, these results reveal that excess ROS generation is involved in the LPS-induced defects in heart tube during chick embryo development. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserve