What are the economic concerns on environment? Mapping the research trends and frontiers on air pollution and health

There is a growing body of economic literature focusing on the negative health effect of air pollution. This paper performs a datadriven analysis of 844 economic publications on air pollution and health in the last three decades. We provide a novel way to visualize the research patterns and features, including the numerical analysis, collaboration network analysis at macro-meso-micro levels, keyword co-occurrence network analysis, and co-citation connection analysis. Additionally, the comparison with the topic dendrogram in environmental science is supplemented to seek the potential research direction. The results reveal that the entire field is now experiencing the rapid development. United States has not only published the largest number of articles, but has also established the most extensive collaborations with other countries. Besides, there have developed a couple of stable cooperative teams consisting of the leading authors. Research topics are gradually leaning toward the developing countries, and research contents are turning to psychological health. More types of air pollutants are worthy of analysis in the future

Caring about the polluted attention: evidence from the inconsistent response existing in web-based survey

Paying attention is one of the most important brain-based cognitive skills. The detrimental effect of air pollution on brain function has been largely studied by way of experiments in Neuroscience. In this paper, we provide a new way to study the impact of air pollution - in particular PM2.5 - on brain attention through observing the inattentive responding of the participants in online surveys. We construct the inconsistent index and connect it to the individual’s exposure to air pollution. The preferred estimate reveals that a one standard deviation of PM2.5 (around 30 lg=m3) increases the likelihood of inconsistency by 2.25%. Further heterogeneous analysis shows that air pollution appears to have larger effects on those young groups with high education but low income, especially for students, and the number is 5.36%. This study explores the impact of air pollution on brain health from a new perspective, and also provides a mechanism to support the recent study about air pollution and productivity

Air pollution as a cause of sleeplessness: social media Evidence from a panel of Chinese cities

We provide first evidence of a link from daily air pollution exposure to sleep loss in a panel of Chinese cities. We develop a social media-based, city-level metric for sleeplessness, and bolster causal claims by instrumenting for pollution with plausibly exogenous variations in wind patterns. Estimates of effect sizes are substantial and robust. In our preferred specification a one standard deviation increase in AQI causes an 11.6% increase in sleeplessness, and for PM2:5 is 12.8%. The results sustain qualitatively under OLS estimation but are attenuated. The analysis provides a previously unaccounted for benefit of more stringent air quality regulation. It also offers a candidate mechanism in support of recent research that links daily air quality to diminished workplace productivity, cognitive performance, school absence, traffic accidents, and other detrimental outcomes

Bismuth-doped zinc aluminosilicate glasses and glass-ceramics with ultra-broadband infrared luminescence

Abstract Broadband infrared luminescence covering the optical telecommunication wavelength region of O, E and S bands was observed from bismuth-doped zinc aluminosilicate glasses and glass-ceramics. The spectroscopic properties of the glasses and glass-ceramics depend on the thermal-treatment history. With the appearance of gahnite (ZnAl 2 O 4 ) crystalline phase, the fluorescent peak moves to longer wavelength, but the fluorescent intensity decreases. The $1300 nm fluorescence with a FWHM larger than 250 nm and a lifetime longer than 600 ls possesses these optical materials with potential applications in laser devices and broadband amplifiers. The broad infrared luminescence from the bismuth-doped zinc aluminosilicate glasses and glass-ceramics might be from BiO or bismuth clusters rather than from Bi 5+ and Bi 3+

Activation of the integrins α5β1 and αvβ3 and focal adhesion kinase (FAK) during arteriogenesis

Migration and proliferation of smooth muscle cells (SMC) are important events during arteriogenesis, but the underlying mechanism is still only partially understood. The present study investigates the expression of integrins α5β1 and vβ3 as well as focal adhesion kinase (FAK) and phosphorylated FAK (pY397), key mediators for cell migration and proliferation, in collateral vessels (CV) in rabbit hind limbs induced by femoral ligation or an arteriovenous (AV) shunt created between the distal femoral artery stump and the accompanying femoral vein by confocal immunofluorescence. In addition, the effect of the extracellular matrix components fibronectin (FN), laminin (LN), and Matrigel on expression of these focal adhesion molecules proliferation was studied in cultured SMCs. We found that: (1) in normal vessels (NV), both integrins α5β1 and αvβ3 were mainly expressed in endothelial cells, very weak in smooth muscle cells (SMC); (2) in CVs, both α5β1 and αvβ3 were significantly upregulated (P < 0.05); this was more evident in the shunt-side CVs, 1.5 and 1.3 times higher than that in the ligation side, respectively; (3) FAK and FAK(py397) were expressed in NVs and CVs in a similar profile as was α5β1 and αvβ3; (4) in vitro SMCs cultured on fibronectin (overexpressed in collaterals) expressed higher levels of FAK, FAK (pY397), α5β1, and αvβ3 than on laminin, whereas SMCs growing inside Matrigel expressed little of these proteins and showed no proliferation. In conclusion, our data demonstrate for the first time that the integrin-FAK signaling axis is activated in collateral vessels and that altered expression of FN and LN may play a crucial role in mediating the integrin-FAK signaling pathway activation. These findings explain a large part of the positive remodeling that collateral vessels undergo under the influence of high fluid shear stress

Enhancing Effect of Glycerol on the Tensile Properties of Bombyx mori Cocoon Sericin Films

An environmental physical method described herein was developed to improve the tensile properties of Bombyx mori cocoon sericin films, by using the plasticizer of glycerol, which has a nontoxic effect compared with other chemical crosslinkers. The changes in the tensile characteristics and the structure of glycerolated (0–40 wt% of glycerol) sericin films were investigated. Sericin films, both in dry and wet states, showed enhanced tensile properties, which might be regulated by the addition of different concentrations of glycerol. The introduction of glycerol results in the higher amorphous structure in sericin films as evidenced by analysis of attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectra, thermogravimetry (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) curves. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) observation revealed that glycerol was homogeneously blended with sericin molecules when its content was 10 wt%, while a small amount of redundant glycerol emerged on the surface of sericin films when its content was increased to 20 wt% or higher. Our results suggest that the introduction of glycerol is a novel nontoxic strategy which can improve the mechanical features of sericin-based materials and subsequently promote the feasibility of its application in tissue engineering

Spectroscopic super-resolution fluorescence cell imaging using ultra-small Ge quantum dots

QMUL/CSC scholarship (2011611045); BBSRC grant (BB/J001473/1)

Super-Resolution Imaging Strategies for Cell Biologists Using a Spinning Disk Microscope

In this study we use a spinning disk confocal microscope (SD) to generate super-resolution images of multiple cellular features from any plane in the cell. We obtain super-resolution images by using stochastic intensity fluctuations of biological probes, combining Photoactivation Light-Microscopy (PALM)/Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM) methodologies. We compared different image analysis algorithms for processing super-resolution data to identify the most suitable for analysis of particular cell structures. SOFI was chosen for X and Y and was able to achieve a resolution of ca. 80 nm; however higher resolution was possible >30 nm, dependant on the super-resolution image analysis algorithm used. Our method uses low laser power and fluorescent probes which are available either commercially or through the scientific community, and therefore it is gentle enough for biological imaging. Through comparative studies with structured illumination microscopy (SIM) and widefield epifluorescence imaging we identified that our methodology was advantageous for imaging cellular structures which are not immediately at the cell-substrate interface, which include the nuclear architecture and mitochondria. We have shown that it was possible to obtain two coloured images, which highlights the potential this technique has for high-content screening, imaging of multiple epitopes and live cell imaging