Analysis of Walking-Edge Effect in Train Station Evacuation Scenarios: A Sustainable Transportation Perspective

Due to the highly developed rail transit over the past decades, the phenomena of complex individual self-organized behaviors and mass crowd dynamics have become a great concern in the train station. In order to understand passengers&rsquo walking-edge effect and analyze the relationship between the layout and sustainable service abilities of the train station, a heuristics-based social force model is proposed to elaborate the crowd dynamics. Several evacuation scenarios are implemented to describe the walking-edge effect in a train station with the evacuation efficiency, pedestrian flow, and crowd density map. The results show that decentralizing crowd flow can significantly increase the evacuation efficiency in different scenarios. When the exits are far away from the central axis of the railway station, the walking-edge effect has little influence on the evacuation efficiency. Obstacles can guide the movement of passengers by channelizing pedestrian flows. In addition, a wider side exit of the funnel-shaped corridors can promote walking-edge effect and decrease the pressure among a congested crowd. Besides providing a modified social force model with considering walking-edge effect, several suggestions are put forward for managers and architects of the train station in designing sustainable layouts. Document type: Articl

The impact of spatio-temporal travel distance on epidemics using an interpretable attention-based sequence-to-sequence model

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, travel restrictions have emerged as crucial interventions for mitigating the spread of the virus. In this study, we enhance the predictive capabilities of our model, Sequence-to-Sequence Epidemic Attention Network (S2SEA-Net), by incorporating an attention module, allowing us to assess the impact of distinct classes of travel distances on epidemic dynamics. Furthermore, our model provides forecasts for new confirmed cases and deaths. To achieve this, we leverage daily data on population movement across various travel distance categories, coupled with county-level epidemic data in the United States. Our findings illuminate a compelling relationship between the volume of travelers at different distance ranges and the trajectories of COVID-19. Notably, a discernible spatial pattern emerges with respect to these travel distance categories on a national scale. We unveil the geographical variations in the influence of population movement at different travel distances on the dynamics of epidemic spread. This will contribute to the formulation of strategies for future epidemic prevention and public health policies.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figure

Circular Accessible Depth: A Robust Traversability Representation for UGV Navigation

In this paper, we present the Circular Accessible Depth (CAD), a robust traversability representation for an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) to learn traversability in various scenarios containing irregular obstacles. To predict CAD, we propose a neural network, namely CADNet, with an attention-based multi-frame point cloud fusion module, Stability-Attention Module (SAM), to encode the spatial features from point clouds captured by LiDAR. CAD is designed based on the polar coordinate system and focuses on predicting the border of traversable area. Since it encodes the spatial information of the surrounding environment, which enables a semi-supervised learning for the CADNet, and thus desirably avoids annotating a large amount of data. Extensive experiments demonstrate that CAD outperforms baselines in terms of robustness and precision. We also implement our method on a real UGV and show that it performs well in real-world scenarios.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Resveratrol Enhances Autophagic Flux and Promotes Ox-LDL Degradation in HUVECs via Upregulation of SIRT1

Oxidized low-density lipoprotein- (Ox-LDL-) induced autophagy dysfunction in human vascular endothelial cells contributes to the development of atherosclerosis (AS). Resveratrol (RSV) protects against Ox-LDL-induced endothelium injury. The objective of this study was to determine the mechanisms underlying Ox-LDL-induced autophagy dysfunction and RSV-mediated protection in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs). The results showed that Ox-LDL suppressed the expression of sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) and increased LC3-II and sequestosome 1 (p62) protein levels without altering p62 mRNA levels in HUVECs. Pretreatment with bafilomycin A1 (BafA1) to inhibit lysosomal degradation abrogated the Ox-LDL-induced increase in LC3-II protein level. Ox-LDL increased colocalization of GFP and RFP puncta in mRFP-GFP-tandem fluorescent LC3- (tf-LC3-) transfected cells. Moreover, Ox-LDL decreased the expression of mature cathepsin D and attenuated cathepsin D activity. Pretreatment with RSV increased the expression of SIRT1 and LC3-II and increased p62 protein degradation. RSV induced RFP-LC3 aggregation more than GFP-LC3 aggregation. RSV restored lysosomal function and promoted Ox-LDL degradation in HUVECs. All the protective effects of RSV were blocked after SIRT1 was knocked down. These findings demonstrated that RSV upregulated the expression of SIRT1, restored lysosomal function, enhanced Ox-LDL-induced impaired autophagic flux, and promoted Ox-LDL degradation through the autophagy-lysosome degradation pathway in HUVECs

Benefits and risks of drug combination therapy for diabetes mellitus and its complications: a comprehensive review

Diabetes is a chronic metabolic disease, and its therapeutic goals focus on the effective management of blood glucose and various complications. Drug combination therapy has emerged as a comprehensive treatment approach for diabetes. An increasing number of studies have shown that, compared with monotherapy, combination therapy can bring significant clinical benefits while controlling blood glucose, weight, and blood pressure, as well as mitigating damage from certain complications and delaying their progression in diabetes, including both type 1 diabetes (T1D), type 2 diabetes (T2D) and related complications. This evidence provides strong support for the recommendation of combination therapy for diabetes and highlights the importance of combined treatment. In this review, we first provided a brief overview of the phenotype and pathogenesis of diabetes and discussed several conventional anti-diabetic medications currently used for the treatment of diabetes. We then reviewed several clinical trials and pre-clinical animal experiments on T1D, T2D, and their common complications to evaluate the efficacy and safety of different classes of drug combinations. In general, combination therapy plays a pivotal role in the management of diabetes. Integrating the effectiveness of multiple drugs enables more comprehensive and effective control of blood glucose without increasing the risk of hypoglycemia or other serious adverse events. However, specific treatment regimens should be tailored to individual patients and implemented under the guidance of healthcare professionals

Seizing the window of opportunity to mitigate the impact of climate change on the health of Chinese residents

The health threats posed by climate change in China are increasing rapidly. Each province faces different health risks. Without a timely and adequate response, climate change will impact lives and livelihoods at an accelerated rate and even prevent the achievement of the Healthy and Beautiful China initiatives. The 2021 China Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change is the first annual update of China’s Report of the Lancet Countdown. It comprehensively assesses the impact of climate change on the health of Chinese households and the measures China has taken. Invited by the Lancet committee, Tsinghua University led the writing of the report and cooperated with 25 relevant institutions in and outside of China. The report includes 25 indicators within five major areas (climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerability; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; economics and finance; and public and political engagement) and a policy brief. This 2021 China policy brief contains the most urgent and relevant indicators focusing on provincial data: The increasing health risks of climate change in China; mixed progress in responding to climate change. In 2020, the heatwave exposures per person in China increased by 4.51 d compared with the 1986–2005 average, resulting in an estimated 92% increase in heatwave-related deaths. The resulting economic cost of the estimated 14500 heatwave-related deaths in 2020 is US$176 million. Increased temperatures also caused a potential 31.5 billion h in lost work time in 2020, which is equivalent to 1.3% of the work hours of the total national workforce, with resulting economic losses estimated at 1.4% of China’s annual gross domestic product. For adaptation efforts, there has been steady progress in local adaptation planning and assessment in 2020, urban green space growth in 2020, and health emergency management in 2019. 12 of 30 provinces reported that they have completed, or were developing, provincial health adaptation plans. Urban green space, which is an important heat adaptation measure, has increased in 18 of 31 provinces in the past decade, and the capacity of China’s health emergency management increased in almost all provinces from 2018 to 2019. As a result of China’s persistent efforts to clean its energy structure and control air pollution, the premature deaths due to exposure to ambient particulate matter of 2.5 μm or less (PM2.5) and the resulting costs continue to decline. However, 98% of China’s cities still have annual average PM2.5 concentrations that are more than the WHO guideline standard of 10 μg/m3. It provides policymakers and the public with up-to-date information on China’s response to climate change and improvements in health outcomes and makes the following policy recommendations. (1) Promote systematic thinking in the related departments and strengthen multi-departmental cooperation. Sectors related to climate and development in China should incorporate health perspectives into their policymaking and actions, demonstrating WHO’s and President Xi Jinping’s so-called health-in-all-policies principle. (2) Include clear goals and timelines for climate-related health impact assessments and health adaptation plans at both the national and the regional levels in the National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy for 2035. (3) Strengthen China’s climate mitigation actions and ensure that health is included in China’s pathway to carbon neutrality. By promoting investments in zero-carbon technologies and reducing fossil fuel subsidies, the current rebounding trend in carbon emissions will be reversed and lead to a healthy, low-carbon future. (4) Increase awareness of the linkages between climate change and health at all levels. Health professionals, the academic community, and traditional and new media should raise the awareness of the public and policymakers on the important linkages between climate change and health.</p