Towards sustainability: An assessment of an urbanisation bubble in China using a hierarchical - stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis - Choquet integral method

Urbanisation bubbles have become an increasingly serious problem. Attention has been paid to the speed of urbanisation; however, the issue of quality has been neglected, particularly in the case of China. Therefore, the aim of this research is to evaluate China’s urbanisation bubbles by employing a hierarchical - stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis (SMAA) - Choquet integral method. In order to highlight regional disparities, we measure the urbanisation bubbles at a provincial level. Our study aggregates the urbanisation bubble indices using the Choquet integral preference model, and considers the interactions between various indicators. Furthermore, robust ordinal regression and SMAA are applied to resolve the robustness issues associated with the entire set of weights assigned to the urbanisation bubble composite indicator. In addition, by employing a multiple criteria hierarchy process, the study aggregates urbanisation bubble indices not only at the comprehensive level, but also at the intermediate levels of the hierarchy. Our findings suggest that the ranking of urbanisation bubbles is positively related to the level of regional development. This study contributes to the evaluation of regional urbanisation and sustainable development

Improving Estimation Efficiency by Integrating External Summary Information from Heterogeneous Populations

This dissertation develops methodologies to incorporate summary information from external studies to improve estimation efficiency for an internal study that has individual-level data. I first propose a penalized constrained maximum likelihood (PCML) method that simultaneously selects the external studies whose target populations match the internal study's so that their information is useful for internal model fitting and incorporates the corresponding information into internal estimation. The PCML estimator has the same efficiency as an oracle estimator that knows which external information is useful and fully incorporates that information alone. I then extend the PCML method to a more general framework by allowing the number of external studies to increase with the sample size of the internal study and apply the method to study mental health of people with bipolar disorder during the COVID-19 pandemic. I further develop a doubly penalized constrained maximum likelihood (dPCML) method that also accounts for the uncertainty in external information with more flexibility on what external information can be integrated. The dPCML method covers some existing well-known data integration methods as special cases. For the proposed methods I carry out detailed theoretical investigations, provide algorithms for implementation, and conduct comprehensive simulation studies. Based on the simulation studies, the proposed methods have excellent numerical performance. For example, when using the dPCML method with external study sample sizes similar to the internal sample size, the reduction in empirical standard errors is more than 20% for the estimates of some model parameters compared to the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) without using the external information, and more than 10% compared to some other existing methods, without introducing bias.PhDBiostatisticsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/177968/1/yqzhai_1.pd

Oxygen vacancies promoting the electrocatalytic performance of CeO 2 nanorods as cathode materials for Li-O 2 batteries

Li-O 2 batteries have become very promising power sources for electronic vehicles as a result of their extraordinary energy density. Nevertheless, the unfavourable electrocatalytic activity of cathode materials in Li-O 2 batteries is still a limiting factor for the practical application of Li-O 2 batteries. This study proposes a surface engineering strategy which can enhance the electrocatalytic activity of CeO 2 nanorods by tuning the oxygen vacancies on their surface, and found that the highest concentration of oxygen vacancies induces the best electrochemical performance, including an extended electrochemical stability of 200 cycles, and reduces the overpotential of the ORR from the reported 0.26 V to 0.11 V. Ex situ XPS photoelectron spectroscopy was carried out to further explain the role of oxygen vacancies in improving the electrochemical performance of LOBs, indicating that the oxygen vacancies of CeO 2 nanorods have more obvious positive effects on the ORR than on the OER. It is believed that they can serve as the active sites for the deposition of Li 2 O 2 films by being involved in the reaction between Li + and O 2 during the ORR, and also boost the electron transport through the insoluble Li 2 O 2 films to further catalyse the Li + and O 2 reaction during the discharge and charge process. This work provides new proof for the association between the discharge/charge behaviour of LOBs and the content of oxygen vacancies

High performance MnO@C microcages with a hierarchical structure and tunable carbon shell for efficient and durable lithium storage

A MnO@C microcage with a multi-structure and tunable carbon shell was fabricated through a facile bio-inspired synthesis strategy for highly reversible Li storage. Micrometer-sized MnO unit aggregates were covered with a porous carbon shell outside with a thickness of about 0.2 μm, and a graphene-analogous carbon network inside the MnO@C microcages. The carbon shell could be tunable by a graphene-base shell. The unique double-carbon-coating structure of the MnO@C microcages enabled realizing the high Li-storage performance of the MnO particles with a micrometer size. The electrode containing the MnO@C microcages delivered a high reversible capacity of 1450.5 mA h g -1 after 270 cycles at a current density of 0.1 A g -1 , good rate capability, and outstanding cycling stability with a retention capacity of 805 mA h g -1 after 2000 cycles at a high current density of 1 A g -1 . Quantitative kinetic analysis indicated that around 40% of the charge storage came from the capacitive contribution of the microcage structure. It was found that the tunable graphene-base shell could enhance the Li-ion diffusion rate significantly, and enable a stable ultralong long life cycle performance and enhanced rate performance of the microcages

ARNO is recruited by the neuronal adaptor FE65 to potentiate ARF6-mediated neurite outgrowth

ADP-ribosylation factor 6 (ARF6) is a small GTPase that has a variety of neuronal functions including stimulating neurite outgrowth, a crucial process for the establishment and maintenance of neural connectivity. As impaired and atrophic neurites are often observed in various brain injuries and neurological diseases, understanding the intrinsic pathways that stimulate neurite outgrowth may provide insights into developing strategies to trigger the reconnection of injured neurons. The neuronal adaptor FE65 has been shown to interact with ARF6 and potentiate ARF6-mediated neurite outgrowth. However, the precise mechanism that FE65 activates ARF6 remains unclear, as FE65 does not possess a guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) domain/function. Here, we show that FE65 interacts with the ARF6 GEF, namely the ARF nucleotide-binding site opener (ARNO). Moreover, a complex consisting of ARNO, ARF6 and FE65 is detected. Notably, FE65 potentiates the stimulatory effect of ARNO on ARF6-mediated neurite outgrowth, and the effect of FE65 is abrogated by an FE65 mutation that disrupts FE65–ARNO interaction. Additionally, the intramolecular interaction for mediating the autoinhibited conformation of ARNO is attenuated by FE65. Moreover, FE65 potentiates the effects of wild-type ARNO, but not the monomeric mutant, suggesting an association between FE65 and ARNO dimerization. Collectively, we demonstrate that FE65 binds to and activates ARNO and, consequently, potentiates ARF6-mediated neurite outgrowth

Split and combine simulation extrapolation algorithm to correct geocoding coarsening of built environment exposures

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/172319/1/sim9338_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/172319/2/SIM9338-sup-0001-supinfo.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/172319/3/sim9338.pd

Dexamethasone-loaded ROS-responsive poly(thioketal) nanoparticles suppress inflammation and oxidative stress of acute lung injury

Acute lung injury (ALI) is associated with excessive inflammatory response, leading to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) without timely treatment. A fewer effective drugs are available currently to treat the ALI/ARDS. Herein, a therapeutic nanoplatform with reactive oxygen species (ROS)-responsiveness was developed for the regulation of inflammation. Dexamethasone acetate (Dex) was encapsulated into poly(thioketal) polymers to form polymeric nanoparticles (NPs) (PTKNPs@Dex). The NPs were composed of poly(1,4-phenyleneacetonedimethylene thioketal) (PPADT) and polythioketal urethane (PTKU), in which the thioketal bonds could be cleaved by the high level of ROS at the ALI site. The PTKNPs@Dex could accumulate in the pulmonary inflammatory sites and release the encapsulated payloads rapidly, leading to the decreased ROS level, less generation of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and reduced lung injury and mortality of mice. RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis showed that the therapeutic efficacy of the NPs was associated with the modulation of many immune and inflammation-linked pathways. These findings provide a newly developed nanoplatform for the efficient treatment of ALI/ARDS

Fabrication of hexaphenylsilole nanowires and their morphology-tunable photoluminescence

Immersion of nanoporous alumina membranes into saturated solutions of hexaphenylsilole with subsequent solvent evoporation affords aligned organic nanowires. The luminescent properties of the hexaphenylsilole nonowires can be manipulated by varying their morphologies, which were controlled by changing the channel sizes of the alumina templates