Performance evaluation of heating tower heat pump systems over the world

Heating tower heat pumps (HTHPs) are proposed as an alternative to the conventional heat pumps. However, lacking performance evaluation of the HTHPs in different regions limits their applications worldwide. To address this issue, this paper carries out a large-scale comprehensive performance evaluation of the HTHPs in 869 typical locations. These locations are in the warm, mixed, and cool climate zones, where buildings need both cooling and heating supply. Seven performance indices are adopted, including the annual coefficient of performance (COP), COP in cooling season, COP in heating season, regeneration ratio, number of unsatisfactory hours, matching degree of heat pump, and matching degree of heating tower. The performance evaluation of the HTHPs is conducted by the processes of location selection, building load calculation, system sizing, simulation, and evaluation. The results show that the HTHPs have excellent performance in the warm and mixed climate zones, where the average annual COPs are 4.67 and 3.68, respectively. The HTHPs are also applicable in the cool climate zone with an average annual COP of 3.11. The distributions of all the performance indices are presented through color maps, and the results are analyzed considering the air temperature and relative humidity data of the locations.</p

Long-Short-Range Message-Passing: A Physics-Informed Framework to Capture Non-Local Interaction for Scalable Molecular Dynamics Simulation

Computational simulation of chemical and biological systems using ab initio molecular dynamics has been a challenge over decades. Researchers have attempted to address the problem with machine learning and fragmentation-based methods, however the two approaches fail to give a satisfactory description of long-range and many-body interactions, respectively. Inspired by fragmentation-based methods, we propose the Long-Short-Range Message-Passing (LSR-MP) framework as a generalization of the existing equivariant graph neural networks (EGNNs) with the intent to incorporate long-range interactions efficiently and effectively. We apply the LSR-MP framework to the recently proposed ViSNet and demonstrate the state-of-the-art results with up to $40\%$ error reduction for molecules in MD22 and Chignolin datasets. Consistent improvements to various EGNNs will also be discussed to illustrate the general applicability and robustness of our LSR-MP framework

Performance of screening tests for oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background and Aims: This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to compare the pooled diagnostic accuracy of the currently available esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) screening tests. Methods: A comprehensive literature search of Embase and Medline (up to October 31, 2020) was performed to identify eligible studies. We pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), and diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) for ESCC screening tools using a bivariate random-effects model. The summary receiver operating characteristic (sROC) curves with area under the curve (AUC) were plotted for each screening test. Results: We included 161 studies conducted in 81 research articles involving 32,209 subjects. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, and AUC (95% CIs) of the major screening tools were: (1). Endoscopy (per-oral endoscopy): 0.94 (0.87-0.97), 0.92 (0.87-0.95), and 0.97 (0.96-0.99); (2) Endoscopy (transnasal endoscopy): 0.85 (0.70-0.93), 0.96 (0.91-0.98), and 0.97 (0.95, -0.98); (3). MicroRNA: 0.77 (0.75-0.80), 0.78 (0.75-0.80), and 0.85 (0.81-0.87); (4). Autoantibody: 0.45 (0.36-0.53), 0.91 (0.89-0.93), and 0.84 (0.81-0.87); and (5). Cytology: 0.82 (0.60-0.93), 0.97 (0.88-0.99), and 0.97 (0.95-0.98). There was high heterogeneity. Conclusions: The diagnostic accuracy seems comparable between Cytology and endoscopy, whilst autoantibody and microRNAs bear potential as future non-invasive screening tools for ESCC. To reduce ESCC-related death in the high-risk populations, it is important to develop a more accurate and less invasive screening test

Distribution, Risk Factors, and Temporal Trends for Lung Cancer Incidence and Mortality: A Global Analysis

BACKGROUND: Lung cancer ranks second for cancer incidence and first for cancer mortality. Investigation into its risk factors and epidemiologic trends could help describe geographical distribution and identify high-risk population groups. RESEARCH QUESTION: What is the global incidence, mortality, associated risk factors, and temporal trends of lung cancer by sex, age, and country? STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: Data on incidence and mortality were retrieved from the Global Cancer Observatory (GLOBOCAN), Cancer Incidence in Five Continents series I-X, World Health Organization (WHO) mortality database, the Nordic Cancer Registries (NORDCAN), and the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER). We searched the WHO Global Health Observatory data repository for age-adjusted prevalence of current smoking. The Average Annual Percentage Change (AAPC) of the trends were obtained by Joinpoint Regression. RESULTS: The age-standardized rate of incidence and mortality were 22.4 and 18.0 per 100,000 globally. The lung cancer incidence and mortality were associated with Human Development Index (HDI), Gross Domestic Products (GDP), and prevalence of smoking. For incidence, more countries had increasing trends in females but decreasing trends in males (AAPC, 1.06 to 6.43 for female; -3.53 to -0.64 for male). A similar pattern was found in those 50 years or older, whereas those aged younger than 50 years had declining incidence trends in both sexes in most countries. For mortality, similar to incidence, 17 of 48 countries showed decreasing trends in males and increasing trends in females (AAPC, -3.28 to -1.32 for male, 0.63 to 3.96 for female). INTERPRETATION: Most countries had increasing trends in females but decreasing trends in males and in lung cancer incidence and mortality. Tobacco related measures and early cancer detection should be implemented to control the increasing trends of lung cancer in females, and in regions identified as having these trends. Future studies may explore the reasons behind these epidemiological transitions

Detecting Neutrinos from Supernova Bursts in PandaX-4T

Neutrinos from core-collapse supernovae are essential for the understanding of neutrino physics and stellar evolution. The dual-phase xenon dark matter detectors can provide a way to track explosions of galactic supernovae by detecting neutrinos through coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scatterings. In this study, a variation of progenitor masses as well as explosion models are assumed to predict the neutrino fluxes and spectra, which result in the number of expected neutrino events ranging from 6.6 to 13.7 at a distance of 10 kpc over a 10-second duration with negligible backgrounds at PandaX-4T. Two specialized triggering alarms for monitoring supernova burst neutrinos are built. The efficiency of detecting supernova explosions at various distances in the Milky Way is estimated. These alarms will be implemented in the real-time supernova monitoring system at PandaX-4T in the near future, providing the astronomical communities with supernova early warnings.Comment: 9 pages,6 figure

Search for light dark matter from atmosphere in PandaX-4T

We report a search for light dark matter produced through the cascading decay of $\eta$ mesons, which are created as a result of inelastic collisions between cosmic rays and Earth's atmosphere. We introduce a new and general framework, publicly accessible, designed to address boosted dark matter specifically, with which a full and dedicated simulation including both elastic and quasi-elastic processes of Earth attenuation effect on the dark matter particles arriving at the detector is performed. In the PandaX-4T commissioning data of 0.63 tonne$\cdot$year exposure, no significant excess over background is observed. The first constraints on the interaction between light dark matter generated in the atmosphere and nucleus through a light scalar mediator are obtained. The lowest excluded cross-section is set at $5.9 \times 10^{-37}{\rm cm^2}$ for dark matter mass of $0.1$ MeV$/c^2$ and mediator mass of 300 MeV$/c^2$. The lowest upper limit of $\eta$ to dark matter decay branching ratio is $1.6 \times 10^{-7}$

A Search for Light Fermionic Dark Matter Absorption on Electrons in PandaX-4T

We report a search on a sub-MeV fermionic dark matter absorbed by electrons with an outgoing active neutrino using the 0.63 tonne-year exposure collected by PandaX-4T liquid xenon experiment. No significant signals are observed over the expected background. The data are interpreted into limits to the effective couplings between such dark matter and electrons. For axial-vector or vector interactions, our sensitivity is competitive in comparison to existing astrophysical bounds on the decay of such dark matter into photon final states. In particular, we present the first direct detection limits for an axial-vector (vector) interaction which are the strongest in the mass range from 25 to 45 (35 to 50) keV/c$^2$

Single-cell genomics and regulatory networks for 388 human brains.

Single-cell genomics is a powerful tool for studying heterogeneous tissues such as the brain. Yet little is understood about how genetic variants influence cell-level gene expression. Addressing this, we uniformly processed single-nuclei, multiomics datasets into a resource comprising &gt;2.8 million nuclei from the prefrontal cortex across 388 individuals. For 28 cell types, we assessed population-level variation in expression and chromatin across gene families and drug targets. We identified &gt;550,000 cell type-specific regulatory elements and &gt;1.4 million single-cell expression quantitative trait loci, which we used to build cell-type regulatory and cell-to-cell communication networks. These networks manifest cellular changes in aging and neuropsychiatric disorders. We further constructed an integrative model accurately imputing single-cell expression and simulating perturbations; the model prioritized ~250 disease-risk genes and drug targets with associated cell types

Associations between six dietary habits and risk of hepatocellular carcinoma: A Mendelian randomization study

Abstract Diet is reported to be associated with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but whether there is a causal relationship remains unclear. This study aimed to explore the potential causal associations between dietary habits and HCC risk using Mendelian randomization in an East Asian population. From the BioBank Japan, we obtained summary‐level genome‐wide association studies data for the following six dietary habits: ever/never drinker (n = 165,084), alcohol consumption (n = 58,610), coffee consumption (n = 152,634), tea consumption (n = 152,653), milk consumption (n = 152,965), and yoghurt consumption (n = 152,097). We also obtained data on HCC (1866 cases and 195,745 controls). Single‐nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that were associated with exposures (p < 5 × 10−8) were selected as instrumental variables (IVs). Five, two, and six SNPs were identified for ever/never drinkers, alcohol consumption, and coffee consumption. One SNP was used for consumption of tea, milk, and yoghurt. The odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated by inverse variance weighted (for an IV with more than one SNP) or Wald ratio (for an IV with one SNP). Ever/never drinkers (OR, 1.11; 95% CI, 1.05–1.18; p < 0.001) and alcohol consumption (OR, 1.57; 95% CI, 1.32–1.86; p < 0.001) were positively associated with HCC risk. Conversely, coffee consumption was inversely related to HCC risk (OR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.53–0.90; p = 0.007). Similar inverse associations were observed for consumption of tea, milk, and yoghurt, with ORs (95% CIs) of 0.11 (0.05–0.26), 0.18 (0.09–0.34), and 0.18 (0.09–0.34), respectively (all p < 0.001). Conclusion: There are potential causal associations between six dietary habits and HCC risk. Our findings inform clinical practice by providing evidence on the impact of dietary habits on HCC