The Unearthed Literature and the Culture of Health Preservation Teaching

The unearthed literature provided rich and precious materials to the culture of health preservation teaching. The thinking of  “correspondence between man and nature” and opposition and mutual basement of Yinyang and imitation combined with performance were the dominant ideas and important component parts of the culture of health preservation teaching. Students can have a better understanding of the Chinese traditional culture and inheritance on traditional culture in order to go into it by learning the culture of health preservation

Design of Thermally Comfortable and UVR-Healthy Schoolyards for Children in Low Latitude Urban Areas in North America (College Station, Tx)

Designing a thermal comfortable and ultraviolet radiation (UVR)-safety outdoor environment is essential to children to spend more time outdoor avoiding childhood obesity and the prospect of a range of other diseases in adulthood. This dissertation consists of three articles. The first article modified the validated thermal comfort model, COMFA to consider the heat exchange of a child. Results shows that the actual thermal sensation responses from children and the predicted thermal sensation using the model is positively significantly related. The accuracy of the model is 93.26%. The second article develops a method of integral calculation using field measured six- directional UVR data and the estimated body exposure ratio (ER) in the open area. This method shows high agreement when comparing with a validated formula using the ambient UVR and estimated ER data, with a high r-square (90.25%), and a low mean squared error (2.4%). Besides, this study confirms the conclusions from previous studies that using a personal dosimeter would underestimate the real individual UVR exposure. The third article conducted an overview to assess the thermal and UVR healthy condition of eight schoolyards in College Station, Texas during different seasons. Based on the results, only the center points of artificial canopies, and the clustered trees in summer were found to provide effective shade. Test days in different seasons, canopy shade characteristics, ground material, protection factor, and the fraction of free sky from the southern direction were correlated with personal UV receipt. In summer in College Station, the heat condition is more severe than is the issue of too much UVR; in winter, more attention needs to be paid on insufficient UVR instead of being cold. This paper provides a set of methods to evaluate children’s thermal comfort and individual UVR exposure in the landscape. It renders the microclimatic and UVR data on a wide temporal and geographical scale possible and opens broad perspectives for children’s thermal and UVR healthy study. Its application contributes to the children’s outdoor play areas design for landscape architectures and urban designers

The Nature of Heat Release in Gasoline PPCI Engines

The heat release characteristics in terms of the maximum pressure rise rate (MPRR) and combustion phasing in a partially premixed compression ignition (PPCI) engine are studied using a calibration gasoline. Early port fuel injection provides a nearly homogeneous charge, into which a secondary fuel pulse is added via direct injection (DI) to provide stratification which is affected by the timing of the start of injection (SOI). As the SOI the DI fuel is retarded from early compression, MPRR first decreases, then increases substantially, and decreases again. The MPRR correlates mostly with the combustion phasing. The SOI timing plays an indirect role. The observation is explained by a bulk heat release process of which the rate increases with temperature rather than by a sequential ignition process. Observations from compression ignition of representative homogeneous charges in a Rapid Compression Machine support this explanation

Meme Theory and Chinese-Writing Teaching in TCFL

Meme theory is a new theory in the field of pragmatics, which applied to the study of Chinese-Writing Teaching in TCFL. The transmitting of meme has four stages, namely the assimilation, the retention, the expression, the transmission. Because of the different context, Language memes mainly produce memetic genotype and memetic phenotype in the process of reproduction and transmission. This paper takes International students studying Chinese writing teaching as an example, and discusses the relationship between meme theory and Chinese-writing teaching in TCFL. If teachers taught Chinese writing according to the law of reproduction and transmission of the language memes, do help improve the learners’ Chinesewriting

CRISPR-Cas- and Aptamer-based Systems for Diagnosing Pathogens: A Review

Pathogenic infections cause severe clinical illnesses in humans and animals. Increased encounters between humans and animals and constant environmental changes exacerbate the transmission of zoonotic infectious diseases. Recently, the World Health Organization has declared some zoonotic epidemics as public health emergencies of international concern. Hence, rapid and accurate detection of the causative pathogen is particularly essential in combating emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Traditional pathogen detection tools are time-consuming, costly, and require skilled personnel, which greatly hinder the development of rapid diagnostic tests, particularly in resource-constrained regions. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR-)-Cas- and aptamer-based platforms have replaced traditional pathogen detection methods. Herein we review two novel next-generation core pathogen detection platforms that are utilized for clinical and foodborne pathogenic microorganisms: CRISPR-Cas-based systems, including dCas9, Cas12a/b, Cas13, and Cas14; and aptamer-based biosensor detection tools. We highlight CRISPR-Cas- and aptamer-based techniques and compare the strengths and weaknesses. CRISPR-Cas-based tools require cumbersome procedures, such as nucleic acid amplification and extraction, while aptamer-based tools require improved sensitivity. We review the combination of CRISPR-Cas- and aptamer-based techniques as a promising approach to overcome these deficiencies. Finally, we discuss Cas14-based tools as functionally stronger platforms for the detection of non-nucleic acid targets

What influences people to choose ridesharing? An overview of the literature

Ridesharing is a shared mobility service in which passengers and drivers with similar origins and destinations are matched to travel in the same vehicle. This service utilises unused seats in vehicles and multi-passenger rides to reduce the cost of travel. To promote ridesharing, both service providers and policymakers should carefully analyse passenger adoption behaviour to support future decision-making and planning. In this paper, 80 studies on passenger ridesharing behaviour published since 2004 are reviewed. The motivating factors and barriers are analysed and classified in terms of demographic factors, psychological factors, and situational factors, and boundary conditions are included. The work provides a corresponding research framework on ridesharing behaviour. Finally, the current literature gaps are summarised and research recommendations are provided. This study provides a comprehensive and systematic research basis for ridesharing studies, and presents important theoretical and practical contributions to guide sustainable ridesharing behaviour

Inhibition of Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Could Enhance 1,4-Benzoquinone-Induced Oxidative Damage in K562 Cells

Benzene is a chemical contaminant widespread in industrial and living environments. The oxidative metabolites of benzene induce toxicity involving oxidative damage. Protecting cells and cell membranes from oxidative damage, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) maintains the reduced state of glutathione (GSH). This study aims to investigate whether the downregulation of G6PD in K562 cell line can influence the oxidative toxicity induced by 1,4-benzoquinone (BQ). G6PD was inhibited in K562 cell line transfected with the specific siRNA of G6PD gene. An empty vector was transfected in the control group. Results revealed that G6PD was significantly upregulated in the control cells and in the cells with inhibited G6PD after they were exposed to BQ. The NADPH/NADP and GSH/GSSG ratio were significantly lower in the cells with inhibited G6PD than in the control cells at the same BQ concentration. The relative reactive oxygen species (ROS) level and DNA oxidative damage were significantly increased in the cell line with inhibited G6PD. The apoptotic rate and G2 phase arrest were also significantly higher in the cells with inhibited G6PD and exposed to BQ than in the control cells. Our results suggested that G6PD inhibition could reduce GSH activity and alleviate oxidative damage. G6PD deficiency is also a possible susceptible risk factor of benzene exposure

Forced and unforced decadal behavior of the interhemispheric SST contrast during the instrumental period (1881–2012):contextualizing the abrupt shift around 1970

The sea surface temperature (SST) contrast between the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and Southern Hemisphere (SH) influences the location of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) and the intensity of the monsoon systems. This study examines the contributions of external forcing and unforced internal variability to the interhemispheric SST contrast in HadSST3 and ERSSTv5 observations, and 10 models from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) from 1881 to 2012. Using multimodel mean fingerprints, a significant influence of anthropogenic, but not natural, forcing is detected in the interhemispheric SST contrast, with the observed response larger than that of the model mean in ERSSTv5. The forced response consists of asymmetric NH–SH SST cooling from the mid-twentieth century to around 1980, followed by opposite NH–SH SST warming. The remaining best-estimate residual or unforced component is marked by NH–SH SST maxima in the 1930s and mid-1960s, and a rapid NH–SH SST decrease around 1970. Examination of decadal shifts in the observed interhemispheric SST contrast highlights the shift around 1970 as the most prominent from 1881 to 2012. Both NH and SH SST variability contributed to the shift, which appears not to be attributable to external forcings. Most models examined fail to capture such large-magnitude shifts in their control simulations, although some models with high interhemispheric SST variability are able to produce them. Large-magnitude shifts produced by the control simulations feature disparate spatial SST patterns, some of which are consistent with changes typically associated with the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC)