How long can Chinese women work after retirement based on health level: Evidence from the CHARLS

ObjectiveTo further enhance the understanding of factors impacting female participation in the workforce based on health levels and to measure the excess work capacity of middle-aged and older female groups by residence and educational level.MethodsData of women aged 45–74 were accessed from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) from 2011, 2013, 2015, to 2018. The health status of women was comprehensively evaluated by single health variables and frailty index. A Probit model was used to measure the excess working capacity of women by region (rural/urban) and educational level, taking all women aged 45–49, rural women aged 45–49, and rural (illiterate) women in all age groups as the benchmark, respectively.ResultsThe excess capacity of all Chinese women aged 50–64 is 1.9 years, and that of women aged 50–74 is 5.1 years. The excess work capacity of women in urban and rural areas and with different educational levels is heterogeneous. The excess working capacity of urban women aged 50–64 is 6.1–7.8 years, and that of urban women aged 50–74 is 9.8–14.9 years. The excess working capacity of urban women aged 50–64 is about 6 times that of rural women. The excess work capacity of highly educated women was 3 times higher than that of illiterate women.ConclusionThe potential work capacity of Chinese women remains to be exploited, especially for urban and highly educated middle-aged and older women with better conditions of health, whose potential is more significant. A rational retirement policy for women and the progressive implementation of an equal retirement age for men and women will contribute to further advancement of gender equality and healthy aging in the workplace in China

Inter-comparison and evaluation of Arctic sea ice type products

oai:publications.copernicus.org:tc102910Arctic sea ice type (SITY) variation is a sensitive indicator of climate change. However, systematic inter-comparison and analysis for SITY products are lacking. This study analysed eight daily SITY products from five retrieval approaches covering the winters of 1999–2019, including purely radiometer-based (C3S-SITY), scatterometer-based (KNMI-SITY and IFREMER-SITY) and combined ones (OSISAF-SITY and Zhang-SITY). These SITY products were inter-compared against a weekly sea ice age product (i.e. NSIDC-SIA – National Snow and Ice Data Center sea ice age) and evaluated with five synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. The average Arctic multiyear ice (MYI) extent difference between the SITY products and NSIDC-SIA varies from -1.32×106 to 0.49×106 km2. Among them, KNMI-SITY and Zhang-SITY in the QuikSCAT (QSCAT) period (2002–2009) agree best with NSIDC-SIA and perform the best, with the smallest bias of -0.001×106 km2 in first-year ice (FYI) extent and -0.02×106 km2 in MYI extent. In the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) period (2007–2019), KNMI-SITY tends to overestimate MYI (especially in early winter), whereas Zhang-SITY and IFREMER-SITY tend to underestimate MYI. C3S-SITY performs well in some early winter cases but exhibits large temporal variabilities like OSISAF-SITY. Factors that could impact performances of the SITY products are analysed and summarized. (1) The Ku-band scatterometer generally performs better than the C-band scatterometer for SITY discrimination, while the latter sometimes identifies FYI more accurately, especially when surface scattering dominates the backscatter signature. (2) A simple combination of scatterometer and radiometer data is not always beneficial without further rules of priority. (3) The representativeness of training data and efficiency of classification are crucial for SITY classification. Spatial and temporal variation in characteristic training datasets should be well accounted for in the SITY method. (4) Post-processing corrections play important roles and should be considered with caution.</p

Simultaneous conversion of all cell wall components by an oleaginous fungus without chemi-physical pretreatment

Lignin utilization during biomass conversion has been a major challenge for lignocellulosic biofuel. In particular, the conversion of lignin along with carbohydrate for fungible fuels and chemicals will both improve the overall carbon efficiency and reduce the need for chemical pretreatments. However, few biomass-converting microorganisms have the capacity to degrade all cell wall components including lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose. We hereby evaluated a unique oleaginous fungus strain, Cunninghamella echinulata FR3, for its capacity to degrade lignin during biomass conversion to lipid, and the potential to carry out consolidated fermentation without chemical pretreatment, especially when combined with sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) bmr mutants with reduced lignin content. The study clearly showed that lignin was consumed together with carbohydrate during biomass conversion for all sorghum samples, which indicates that this organism has the potential for biomass conversion without chemical pretreatment. Even though dilute acid pretreatment of biomass resulted in more weight loss during fungal fermentation than untreated biomass, the lipid yields were comparable for untreated bmr6/bmr12 double mutant and dilute acid-pretreated wild-type biomass samples. The mechanisms for lignin degradation in oleaginous fungi were further elucidated through transcriptomics and chemical analysis. The studies showed that in C. echinulata FR3, the Fenton reaction may play an important role in lignin degradation. This discovery is among the first to show that a mechanism for lignin degradation similar to those found in white and brown rot basidiomycetous fungi exists in an oleaginous fungus. This study suggests that oleaginous fungi such as C. echinulata FR3 can be employed for complete biomass utilization in a consolidated platform without chemical pretreatment or can be used to convert lignin waste into lipids

Impact of biogenic SOA loading on the molecular composition of wintertime PM2.5 in urban Tianjin: an insight from Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry

Biomass burning is one of the key sources of urban aerosols in the North China Plain, especially in winter when the impact of secondary organic aerosols (SOA) formed from biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) is generally considered to be minor. However, little is known about the influence of biogenic SOA loading on the molecular composition of wintertime organic aerosols. Here, we investigated the water-soluble organic compounds in fine particles (PM2.5) from urban Tianjin by ultrahigh-resolution Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR MS). Our results show that most of the CHO and CHON compounds were derived from biomass burning; they contain O-poor and highly unsaturated compounds with aromatic rings, which are sensitive to photochemical reactions, and some of which probably contribute to light-absorbing chromophores. Under moderate to high SOA loading conditions, the nocturnal chemistry is more efficient than photooxidation to generate secondary CHO and CHON compounds with high oxygen content. Under low SOA-loading, secondary CHO and CHON compounds with low oxygen content are mainly formed by photochemistry. Secondary CHO compounds are mainly derived from oxidation of monoterpenes. But nocturnal chemistry may be more productive to sesquiterpene-derived CHON compounds. In contrast, the number- and intensity-weight of S-containing groups (CHOS and CHONS) increased significantly with the increase of biogenic SOA-loading, which agrees with the fact that a majority of the S-containing groups are identified as organosulfates and nitrooxy-organosulfates that are derived from the oxidation of BVOCs. Terpenes may be potential major contributors to the chemical diversity of organosulfates and nitrooxy-organosulfates under photo-oxidation. While the nocturnal chemistry is more beneficial to the formation of organosulfates and nitrooxy-organosulfates under low SOA-loading. The SOA-loading is an important factor associating with the oxidation degree, nitrate group content and chemodiversity of nitrooxy-organosulfates. Furthermore, our study suggests that the hydrolysis of nitrooxy-organosulfates is a possible pathway for the formation of organosulfates.</p

Freezing of gait in Parkinson’s disease with glucocerebrosidase mutations: prevalence, clinical correlates and effect on quality of life

ObjectivesMutations in glucocerebrosidase (GBA1) can change the clinical phenotype of Parkinson’s disease (PD). This study aimed to explore the clinical characteristics of freezing of gait (FOG) in PD patients with GBA1 mutations.MethodsA whole-exome sequencing analysis was used to identify the GBA1 mutations (pathogenic or likely pathogenic) and exclude other PD-related gene mutations. A forward binary logistic regression model was conducted to identify the associated factors of FOG. The stepwise multiple linear regression analysis models were used to explore the effect of FOG on quality of life.ResultsThe prevalence of FOG in patients with GBA1 mutations (30/95, 31.6%) was significantly higher than those in patients without GBA1 mutations (152/760, 20%) (p = 0.009). A higher (i.e., worse) Unified PD Rating Scale part III score (OR = 1.126, 95%CI = 1.061–1.194, p &lt; 0.001) and a lower (i.e., worse) Montreal Cognitive Assessment score (OR = 0.830, 95%CI = 0.713–0.967, p = 0.017) were significantly associated with FOG in PD patients with GBA1 mutations. The presence of FOG was significantly associated with the decreased (i.e., worse) score of PD Questionnaire 39 after adjustment for sex, age, disease duration, motor score, and non-motor score (B = 14.981, p = 0.001).ConclusionFOG is a relatively common disabling symptom in PD patients with GBA1 mutations, which is affected by motor disability and cognitive decline. Quality of life is reduced in patients with FOG and GBA1 mutations

Revisiting the Relationship Between Fault Detection,Test Adequacy Criteria, and Test Set Size

The research community has long recognized a complex interrelationship between test set size, test adequacy criteria, and test effectiveness in terms of fault detection. However, there is substantial confusion about the role and importance of controlling for test set size when assessing and comparing test adequacy criteria. This paper makes the following contributions: (1) A review of contradictory analyses of the relationship between fault detection, test suite size, and test adequacy criteria. Specifically, this paper addresses the supposed contradiction of prior work and explains why test suite size is neither a confounding variable, as previously suggested,nor an independent variable that should be experimentally manipulated. (2) An explication and discussion of the experimental design and sampling strategies of prior work, together with a discussion of conceptual and statistical problems, and specific guidelines for future work. (3) A methodology for comparing test-adequacy criteria on an equal basis, which accounts for test suite size by treating it as a covariate. (4) An empirical evaluation that compares the effectiveness of coverage-based and mutation-based testing to one another and random testing. Additionally, this paper proposes probabilistic coupling, a methodology for approximating the representativeness of a set of test goals for a given set of real fault

Computation Offloading for Latency Reduction in Regionalized Hierarchical Vehicular Fog Network

Regionalized communication and computation architecture aggregates idle vehicular fog computation resources in urban cities without dedicated infrastructure deployment. Vehicular fog computing migrates computation services close to the edge of the network, which can break the long response latency limitation of cloud computing. However, the high mobility and random distribution of vehicles lead to the difficulty of the fog infrastructure deployment and the offloading decision. In this paper, we investigate the latency minimization problem in the regionalized three-tier vehicular fog network, which is divided into the sub-problems of single-region offloading decision and multi-region resource allocation. In particular, we make the preliminary offloading decision for users in each roadside unit (RSU) coverage area to solve the single-region offloading decision problem. We also transfer the multi-region resource allocation problem into a group-knapsack problem to obtain the optimal resource allocation results among all the users in the base station coverage area. Simulation results validate the superiority of our proposed algorithm, which enables latency reduction in the regionalized three-tier vehicular fog network