Decomposition of carbon emission driving factors and judgment of peak status in countries along the Belt and Road

Most of the countries along the Belt and Road are still developing, with their carbon emissions yet to peak. There is a lack of comprehensive analysis and research to judge these countries' current carbon peak state and quantify key driving factors contributing to their carbon emissions. This study aims to fill this gap.A new method for judging a country's peak carbon status based on a time series of carbon emissions is developed. We divide the status of all countries along the Belt and Road into four categories: reached the peak, peak plateau period 1 (the downward trend is not significant), peak plateau period 2 (obvious recession), and not reached the peak. LMDI factorization is used to decompose the change in carbon emissions of energy consumption into multiple factors: carbon intensity, energy intensity, economic output, and population size, based on Kaya's identity theory. The carbon emission and socioeconomic databases from 2000 to 2019 are utilized for this analysis. The main positive driving factor of the three countries (Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic) that have reached the peak is GDP PPP per population, while other driving factors make negative contributions to carbon emissions. In some years, these countries briefly experienced a negative contribution of GDP PPP per population to carbon emissions. The driving factors of carbon emissions for countries in the peak plateau period are not stable, with contributions of GDP PPP per population, energy intensity, and carbon intensity fluctuating periodically. In countries that have not reached the peak of carbon emissions, population growth and economic growth are significant positive contributors, while the effect of driving factors that negatively contribute to carbon emissions is less obvious.The study's findings provide valuable insights into the carbon emission peak status and driving factors of countries along the Belt and Road, which can be used to guide policymaking and future research in addressing climate change and promoting sustainable development in these regions

A Rare Genetic Defect of MBL2 Increased the Risk for Progression of IgA Nephropathy

The aim of this study was to investigate the association between lectin pathway-related genetic variations and progression in IgA nephropathy. Biopsy-proven IgAN patients with eGFR ≥15 ml/min/1.73 m2 at baseline and a minimum follow-up of 12-months were enrolled. A total of 1,007 patients and 121 healthy controls were enrolled from two Chinese renal centers. The discovery cohort consisted of 606 patients, and the validation cohort consisted of 401 patients. First, promoters, all exons and their boundary regions of MBL2 and FCN2 were sequenced in 50 patients, and then 37 variations were identified. Of these variations, 7 expression-associated variations were selected and genotyped in the whole discovery cohort. We found that rs1800450 in MBL2 and rs7851696 in FCN2 were associated with an increased risk for ESRD as well as serum MBL or L-ficolin levels. However, only rs1800450 was successively validated for its association with ESRD (HR, 15.91; 3.27–77.34; P = 0.001) in the fully adjusted model in the validation cohort. In addition, 2.7% of patients, and 2.5% of healthy controls carried rs1800450-AA. IgAN patients with rs1800450-AA lacked expression of MBL in both serum and renal tissue and had more severe tubulointerstitial damage. Furthermore, a combined effect of rs1800450-AA with a previously reported clinical risk score was observed in which patients with both a high clinical risk score (≥1%) and rs1800450-AA had a strikingly increased 10-years ESRD risk by 37.1-fold (7.17 to 192.13-fold). In summary, IgAN patients carrying MBL2 rs1800450-AA have a high risk for renal function deterioration, probably due to inactivation of the complement MBL pathway

Forest Carbon Sequestration Potential in China under Different SSP-RCP Scenarios

The estimation of forest carbon sequestration and its economic value as a carbon sink are important elements of global carbon cycle research. In this study, based on the predicted forestland changes under the future shared socioeconomic pathways SSP1-RCP2.6, SSP2-RCP4.5, and SSP5-RCP8.5, the growth equations of different tree species were fitted using forest inventory data, and the biomass conversion factor continuum function method was used to estimate forest vegetation carbon fixation at the national scale. The carbon sink potential of the forest ecosystems in 2020–2100 was estimated under the three scenarios. Under the three social scenarios, the fixed amount of forest carbon in China exhibits a significant upward trend. Forest area increases the most, and carbon sequestration increases the most rapidly under SSP1-RCP2.6. The carbon sequestration level in Southwest China is higher than in other parts of the country, and those in Northwest and East China are lower than the national average. In order to continuously improve the carbon sequestration capacity of terrestrial ecosystem resources in China, the following actions are recommended: strengthen the protection projects of natural forests in various regions, improve the level of forest management, and gradually achieve the goal of carbon neutrality in China

Metal cation-exchanged LTA zeolites for CO2/N2 and CO2/CH4 separation: The roles of gas-framework and gas-cation interactions

Selective CO2 adsorption for efficient carbon capture from flue gas (CO2/N2 - 15/85, v/v) and biogas (CO2/CH4 - 50/50, v/v) is important for achieving global energy and climate goals but remains a challenge due to the lack of effective adsorbents. To address this issue, we attempted to develop zeolite adsorbents by systematically investigating the effect of different extra-framework metal cations (i.e., Na+, Ca2+, Mn2+, and Ce3+-exchanged in LTA zeolites) on selective CO2 adsorption from CO2/N2 and CO2/CH4. Analyzing the isosteric heat of adsorption results showed that CO2 adsorption at moderate pressure (e.g., 15 and 50 kPa relevant to the compositions of flue gas and biogas, respectively) is governed by the gas-framework interaction. On the other hand, the adsorption of N2 and CH4 was found to be dominated by the gas-cation interaction. Therefore, we concluded that metal cations with a small charge-to-size ratio are beneficial for selective CO2 adsorption from flue gas and biogas because they tend to induce strong CO2-framework interaction (due to the enhanced charge induction to zeolite framework O) and weak N2 or CH4-cation interaction (due to the weakened gas-cation electrostatic interaction). Specifically, LTA zeolites in the form of Na+, with the smallest charge-to-size ratio of cation in this study, exhibit the highest CO2 uptake and separation factor of CO2/N2 and CO2/CH4, as demonstrated by both static single-component adsorption and dynamic binary adsorption results. In addition, the potential of metal cation-exchanged LTA zeolites for VSA and PSA processes was evaluated. Our study provides valuable insights for designing small-pore zeolites as adsorbents for carbon capture

ANTI-INFLAMMATORY EFFECTS OF LOW PROTEIN DIET SUPPLEMENTED WITH KETO-AMINO ACID IN THE TREATMENT OF TYPE 2 DIABETIC NEPHROPATHY

Recent clinical research strongly approves that low-protein diet supplemented with keto-amino acid can effectively delay progression of type 2 diabetic nephropathy (DN). Anti-inflammation is one of these effects, but the mechanism is still controversial. This study is designed to further explore roles of ketogenic diets in regulation of inflammation status of type 2 DN. Twenty-one patients with type 2 DN (mean age at 65.14±7.34 years), were followed-up for 52 weeks in this study. All patients were in CKD stages 3–4 with glomerular filtration rates 26–55ml/min/1.73m2 and were all on a low-protein diet containing 0.8g protein/kg BW per day and 30–35Kcal /kg BW per day. The diet was randomly supplemented with keto-amino acids at a dosage of 100mg/kg BW per day in 10 patients, who were assigned into Group II. Other 11 patients were assigned into Group I. At the end of this study, related clinical data showed there was a significant increase in the serum level of TNF-α which could mediate inflammation systemically in Group I (from 230.25±54.34 to 332.11pg/ml, P < 0.01), but non-significant increase in Group II (from 224.59±41.24 to 253.41±31.28pg/ml, P>0.05). The level of CRP, which is produced in response to inflammation, rose greatly in Group I (from 7.5±1.07 to 20.4±3.72ug/ml, P < 0.01), but decreased in Group II (from 8.2±3.07 to 3.9±1.22ug/ml, P < 0.01). The level of adiponectin, an anti-inflammatory factor, was decreased in Group I (from 9.42±0.8 to 7.64±1.4μg/ml, P< 0.05), but showed slight increase in Group II (9.04±0.9 versus 10.47±1.2=μg/ml, P>0.05). Nutritional markers including serum albumin, hemoglobin and basal metabolic index showed no malnutrition happened during the follow-up period. In conclusion, low-protein diet supplemented with keto-amino acids contribute to ameliorate inflammation in the progression of type 2 diabetic nephropathy through regulating inflammatory factors production, including TNF-α, CRP and adiponectin

The low-temperature NO2 removal by tailoring metal node in porphyrin-based metal-organic frameworks

Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is the most toxic and prevalent form of nitrogen oxides (NOx) pollutant and its removal from ambient air is a pressing challenge. The state-of-the-art deNO(x) technologies such as selective catalytic reduction (SCR) can only work at elevated temperatures (>250-300 degrees C), but ineffective for the NOx removal under ambient conditions. The adsorptive removal of NO2 is an alternative approach to SCR, whose success depends on the design of stable adsorbents capable of selectively capturing NO2 with a highly reversible capacity. Here we synthesized and developed five porphyrin-based metal-organic frameworks (PMOFs) as robust ambient NO2 adsorbents, including three aluminum-based (Al-PMOF) isostructures, and two zirconium-based (ZrPMOFs) isostructures. Of them, Al-PMOF stands out to be the most promising candidate by showing the highest NO2 adsorption capacity (1.85 mmol/g), high stability, and good regenerability (retaining 87% capacity after five cycles of adsorption) at dry conditions. The NO2 adsorption capacity of Al-PMOF was approximately doubled (3.61 mmol/g) at wet conditions. In situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS) revealed the NO2 adsorption mechanism - the hydrogen bonding occurs between bridging hydroxyl (-OH) (attached to the metal node) and NO2 molecules. Our work demonstrates that PMOFs are promising NO2 adsorbents and will provide guidance for designing robust and reusable adsorbents for efficiently removing NO2 at ambient temperature. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Edit As You Wish: Video Description Editing with Multi-grained Commands

Automatically narrating a video with natural language can assist people in grasping and managing massive videos on the Internet. From the perspective of video uploaders, they may have varied preferences for writing the desired video description to attract more potential followers, e.g. catching customers' attention for product videos. The Controllable Video Captioning task is therefore proposed to generate a description conditioned on the user demand and video content. However, existing works suffer from two shortcomings: 1) the control signal is fixed and can only express single-grained control; 2) the video description can not be further edited to meet dynamic user demands. In this paper, we propose a novel Video Description Editing (VDEdit) task to automatically revise an existing video description guided by flexible user requests. Inspired by human writing-revision habits, we design the user command as a {operation, position, attribute} triplet to cover multi-grained use requirements, which can express coarse-grained control (e.g. expand the description) as well as fine-grained control (e.g. add specified details in specified position) in a unified format. To facilitate the VDEdit task, we first automatically construct a large-scale benchmark dataset namely VATEX-EDIT in the open domain describing diverse human activities. Considering the real-life application scenario, we further manually collect an e-commerce benchmark dataset called EMMAD-EDIT. We propose a unified framework to convert the {operation, position, attribute} triplet into a textual control sequence to handle multi-grained editing commands. For VDEdit evaluation, we adopt comprehensive metrics to measure three aspects of model performance, including caption quality, caption-command consistency, and caption-video alignment

Enhanced visible-light-driven heterogeneous photocatalytic CO2 methanation using a Cu2O@Cu-MOF-74 thin film

Cuprous oxide is a potential photocatalyst for the reduction of CO2. However, its high rate of charge recombination and low ability to adsorb CO2 limit its activity, particularly when gaseous CO2 was used. Herein, a Cu-based metal-organic framework (Cu-MOF-74) with high CO2 adsorption is coated onto Cu2O nanowires by a topotactic transformation method. The optimized Cu2O@Cu-MOF-74 composite thin film showed a CH4 evolution rate 4.5 times higher than that of bare Cu2O under visible light illumination (>420 nm), with water vapor as the electron donor. Analysis results of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, transient photocurrent measurements, and fluorescence spectroscopy collectively suggest that the decoration of Cu2O with Cu-MOF-74 facilitates electron extraction from excited Cu2O, thereby inducing long-lived photocharges for the reduction of CO2. This study provides insights into the modification of transition metal oxides for application in photocatalysis by coating the surface with metal-organic frameworks

Expression levels of key immune indicators and immune checkpoints in manganese-exposed rats

Manganese is essential trace elements, to participate in the body a variety of biochemical reactions, has important physiological functions, such as stimulate the immune cell proliferation, strengthen the cellular immunity, etc. However, excessive manganese exposure can cause damage to multiple systems of the body.The immune system is extremely vulnerable to external toxicants, however manganese research on the immune system are inadequate and biomarkers are lacking. Therefore, here we applied a manganese-exposed rat model to make preliminary observations on the immunotoxic effects of manganese. We found that manganese exposure inhibited humoral immune function in rats by decreasing peripheral blood IgG (ImmunoglobulinG, IgG), IgM (ImmunoglobulinM, IgM) and complement C3 levels; It also regulates rat cellular immune activity by influencing peripheral blood, spleen, and thymus T cell numbers and immune organ ICs (Immune Checkpoints, ICs) and cytokine expression. Furthermore, it was revealed that the impact of manganese exposure on the immune function of rats exhibited a correlation with both the dosage and duration of exposure. Notably, prolonged exposure to high doses of manganese had the most pronounced influence on rat immune function, primarily manifesting as immunosuppression.The above findings suggest that manganese exposure leads to impaired immune function and related changes in immune indicators, or may provide clues for the discovery of its biomarkers

Tubular HIPK2 is a key contributor to renal fibrosis

We previously used global Hipk2-null mice in various models of kidney disease to demonstrate the central role of homeodomain-interacting protein kinase 2 (HIPK2) in renal fibrosis development. However, renal tubular epithelial cell–specific (RTEC-specific) HIPK2 function in renal fibrogenesis has yet to be determined. Here, we show that modulation of tubular HIPK2 expression and activity affects renal fibrosis development in vivo. The loss of HIPK2 expression in RTECs resulted in a marked diminution of renal fibrosis in unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO) mouse models and HIV-associated nephropathy (HIVAN) mouse models, which was associated with the reduction of Smad3 activation and downstream expression of profibrotic markers. Conversely, WT HIPK2 overexpression in RTECs accentuated the extent of renal fibrosis in the setting of UUO, HIVAN, and folic acid–induced nephropathy in mice. Notably, kinase-dead HIPK2 mutant overexpression or administration of BT173, an allosteric inhibitor of HIPK2-Smad3 interaction, markedly attenuated the renal fibrosis in these mouse models of kidney disease, indicating that HIPK2 requires both the kinase activity and its interaction with Smad3 to promote TGF-β–mediated renal fibrosis. Together, these results establish an important RTEC-specific role of HIPK2 in kidney fibrosis and further substantiate the inhibition of HIPK2 as a therapeutic approach against renal fibrosis