Explore the vast range of titles available.

The widespread adoption and sustained use of modern cookstoves has the potential to reduce harmful effects to climate, health, and the well-being of approximately one-third of the world’s population that currently rely on biomass fuel for cooking and heating. In an effort to understand and develop cleaner burning and more efficient cookstoves, 15 stove design and fuel/loading combinations were evaluated in the laboratory using the International Workshop Agreement’s five-tiered (0–4) rating system for fuel use and emissions. The designs evaluated include rocket-type combustion chamber models including reduced firepower, sunken pots, and chimneys (three stoves); gasifier-type combustion chambers using prepared fuels in the form of wood pellets (four stoves); forced draft stoves with a small electric fan (five stoves); and a single insulated charcoal stove with preheated secondary air. It was found that a charcoal burning stove was the only stove to meet all the Tier 4 levels of performance. Achieving over 40% thermal efficiency at high power was made possible by reducing firepower and gaps around the pot, although batch-fed stoves generally do not “turn down” for optimal low power performance. While all stoves met Tier 4 for carbon monoxide, only stoves equipped with electrical fans reduced respirable particulate matter to Tier 4 levels. Finally, stoves with chimneys and integrated pots were fuel efficient and virtually eliminated indoor emissions. It is hoped that these design techniques will be useful in further development and evolution of high-performance cookstove designs.

6 mm) chromatographic column ; gradient elution with acetonitrile-0.4% phosphoric acid solution (0.2 : 99. 8 , V/V) , column temperature at 25°C ; detection wavelength at 236 nm; flow rate 1.0 mL/min; using \" Similarity Evaluation System for Chromatographic Fingerprint of Traditional Chinese Medicine\" , to evaluate the similarity of the characteristic chromatogram of erirde drug, standard decoction and formula granules of honeysuckle sem. According to Technical Requirements for Quality Control and Standard Formulation of Traditional Chinese Medicine Formula Granules and the principle of quality consistency, the characteristic chromatogram of raw materials, standard decoction and mass production granules was studied in this research, which systematically and comprehensively reflected the chemical composition and transmission law of honeysuckle stem, standard decoction and granules, in order to provide an experimental basis for the formulation of quality standard of honeysuckle stem formula granules. 2 Materials 2.1 Instruments Agilent 1260 High Performance Liquid Chromatograph (Agilent) ; XPE205/XSE-204 Electronic Analytical Balance (Mettler Toledo); KQ-500DE Numerical Control Ultrasonic Cleaner (Kunshan Ultrasonic Instrument Co. , Ltd.). 2 g-adding 25 mL of 50% ethanol solution-ultrasonic treatment (power 250 W, frequency 40 kHz) for 30 min - cooling- making up for the lost weight with 50% ethanol solution - shaking well- filtering, and taking the filtrate. 3.3 Methodological investigation 3.3.1 Precision test.

A fully integrated 5 mHz highpass filter for electrophysiological signal acquisitions is described. Unlike the traditional Gm-C or pseudo-resistor architectures, the article's continuous-time filter employs the current steering technique, which helps decrease the capacitance area and reduce the total harmonic distortion (THD) simultaneously. This design was fabricated in 0.18 μm CMOS technology. Experimental results indicate that it achieves -3 dB frequency band at 5 mHz, power consumption of 15 μW and input referred noise of 3.8 μV^sub rms^. The -80 dB THD was measured at 1 Hz 0.2 V^sub p-p^ sine wave input.

In the first chapter, I propose a new design of Early Warning Systems to detect early warning signals of an impending financial crisis. The problem of EWS is formulated from a policy maker's perspective. Hence the probability threshold is obtained by minimizing the policy maker's welfare loss. This paper employs the Bayesian Quickest Change Detection as the methodology to detect the early warning signals. We show that the BQCD method outperforms the Logit model used in traditional EWS models based on results of simulation exercise and the out-of-sample prediction of the 1997 Asian financial crises. In the second chapter, I investigated the timing of U.S. monetary policy response to the 2007 financial crisis. The LIBOR-OIS spread jumped significantly on Aug 9, 2007, indicating an unusual increase in distress of the financial sector, but it was not until Aug 17, 2007, that the Federal Reserve responded with a 50 basis points of reduction of the primary credit rate after an unscheduled meeting. I further assumed that the policy maker was uncertain about the intensity of the financial crisis, and that monetary policy responded to more severe financial crisis more intensively. In order to increase the accuracy of choosing the right policy regime, waiting for more information may be desirable. I found that for certain specifications of the intensity of the financial crisis, the optimal timing of the Federal Reserve's policy response should be Aug 15, 2007. I concluded that uncertainty about the intensity of the financial crisis played an important role in the timing decision of the policy maker. In the third chapter, I investigated the issue of international monetary policy coordination under uncertainty. The consensus is that international monetary policy coordination is welfare improving, but some argue that the improvement is not significant quantitatively. This paper studied the role of model uncertainty in international monetary policy coordination, and found that considering model uncertainty can enhance welfare gain of coordination.

This paper proposed a new optimal design of Early Warning Systems (EWS) to detect early warning signals of an impending financial crisis. The problem of EWS was formulated from a policy maker's perspective. Hence the probability threshold was obtained by minimizing the policy maker's welfare loss. This paper employed the state-of-the-art Bayesian Quickest Change Detection (BQCD) as the methodology to detect the early warning signals as soon as possible. We showed that the BQCD method outperformed the Logit model used in traditional EWS models based on results of simulation exercise and the out-of-sample predictions of the 1997 Asian financial crises. We found that not only early warning signals were stronger prior to a crisis, but also stronger warning signals appeared more frequently. The BQCD method was sensitive to the increase in frequency, hence out-performed the traditional Logit-EWS model.

Comparative population genomics analysis is an effective approach to identify selection signatures in farm animals. In this study, we systematically investigated the selection signatures in six phenotypically diverse goat breeds using SNPs obtained from pooled whole-genome resequencing data. More than 95.5% of 446–642 million clean reads were mapped to the latest reference goat genome, which generated a sequencing depth ranging from 22.30 to 31.75-fold for each breed. A total of 5,802,307, 6,794,020, 7,562,312, 5,325,119, 8,764,136, and 9,488,057 putative SNPs were detected in Boer, Meigu, Jintang Black, Nanjiang Yellow, Tibetan, and Tibetan cashmere goats, respectively. Based on the genome-wide F ST and expected heterozygosity scores along 100-kb sliding windows, 68, 89, 44, 44, 19, and 35 outlier windows were deemed as the selection signatures in the six goat breeds. After genome annotation, several genes within the selection signals were found to be possibly associated with important traits in goats, such as coat color ( IRF4 , EXOC2 , RALY , EIF2S2 , and KITLG ), high-altitude adaptation ( EPAS1 ), growth ( LDB2 ), and reproduction traits ( KHDRBS2 ). In summary, we provide an improved understanding of the genetic diversity and the genomic footprints under positive selection or the adaptations to the local environments in the domestic goat genome.

Background Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is a malignant tumour. Although some standard therapies have been established to improve the cure rate, they remain ineffective for specific individuals. Therefore, it is meaningful to find more novel therapeutic approaches. Macrophage polarisation is extensively involved in the process of tumour development. Recombinant hirudin (rH) affects macrophages and has been researched frequently in clinical trials lately. Our article validated the regulatory role of rH in macrophage polarisation and the mechanism of PAR-1 by collecting clinical samples and subsequently establishing a cellular model to provide a scientifically supported perspective for discovering new therapeutic approaches. Method We assessed the expression of macrophage polarisation markers, cytokines and PAR-1 in clinical samples. We established a cell model by co-culture with THP-1 and OCI-Ly10 cell. We determined the degree of cell polarisation and expression of validation cytokines by flow cytometry, ELISA, and RT-qPCR to confirm the success of the cell model. Subsequently, different doses of rH were added to discover the function of rH on cell polarisation. We confirmed the mechanism of PAR-1 in macrophage polarisation by transfecting si-PAR-1 and pcDNA3.1-PAR-1. Results We found higher expression of M2 macrophage markers (CD163 + CMAF+) and PAR-1 in 32 DLBCL samples. After inducing monocyte differentiation into M0 macrophages and co-culturing with OCI-Ly10 lymphoma cells, we found a trend of these expressions in the cell model consistent with the clinical samples. Subsequently, we discovered that rH promotes the polarisation of M1 macrophages but inhibits the polarisation of M2 macrophages. We also found that PAR-1 regulates macrophage polarisation, inhibiting cell proliferation, migration, invasion and angiogenic capacity. Conclusion rH inhibits macrophage polarisation towards the M2 type and PAR-1 regulates polarisation, proliferation, migration, invasion, and angiogenesis of DLBCL-associated macrophages.

Background Patients with COVID-19 often produce multiple autoantibodies that impact immune function. This study aimed to assess changes in immune status and correlation with SARS-CoV-2 infection by analyzing dynamic shifts in patients’ antinuclear antibody (ANA) profiles. Methods A retrospective analysis was conducted on ANA data and clinical characteristics of 680 patients with novel coronavirus pneumonia admitted to Taizhou Enze Medical Center (Group) between December 7, 2022, and January 31, 2023. The analysis covered three phases: early COVID-19 (within one year before admission, T1), COVID-19 phase (during hospitalization, T2), and late COVID-19 (within one year after discharge, T3). ANA quantification was primarily performed using indirect immunofluorescence, and the magnetic stripe immunofluorescence luminescence method was employed to detect the ANA profile (ENA), including anti-dsDNA, nucleosome, Sm, SS-A/Ro52kD, SS-A/Ro60kD, SS-B/La, PCNA, AMA M2, Scl-70, and Jo-1. Results During the T2 phase, 680 patients were analyzed. The positive rate of the ANA test was 35%. The proportion of autoimmune diseases (AID) in ANA-positive patients was higher than in ANA-negative patients (22%vs.7%). The ANA-positive group with AID showed higher ANA titers compared to the ANA-positive group without AID. During the follow-up one year before and after SARS-CoV-2 infection, in the T1-T2 group, there were two cases of ANA changing from negative to positive (one with AID, one without AID). The positive intensity of ANA increased by 15.6% and decreased by 20%. In the T2-T3 group, the positive intensity of ANA increased by 3.3% and decreased by 33.3%. Followed up of 7 patients with high ANA titers in T2 phase, among whom 5 cases did not support AID from the perspective of diagnosis and medication, and 2 cases were diagnosed with SLE after being infected with SARS-CoV-2. Conclusions SARS-CoV-2 infection induces overactivation of the immune system, significantly impacting patients with autoimmune diseases. For patients without autoimmune diseases, ANA produced due to COVID-19 does not persist. Some COVID-19 patients may trigger their own immune system response.

Single cell approaches have increased our knowledge about the cell type composition of the non-human primate (NHP), but a detailed characterization of area-specific regulatory features remains outstanding. We generated single-cell transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility (single-cell ATAC) data of 358,237 cells from prefrontal cortex (PFC), primary motor cortex (M1) and primary visual cortex (V1) of adult female cynomolgus monkey brain, and integrated this dataset with Stereo-seq (spatial enhanced resolution omics-sequencing) of the corresponding cortical areas to assign topographic information to molecular states. We identified area-specific chromatin accessible sites and their targeted genes, including the cell type-specific transcriptional regulatory network associated with excitatory neurons heterogeneity. We reveal calcium ion transport and axon guidance genes related to specialized functions of PFC and M1, identified the similarities and differences between adult macaque and human oligodendrocyte trajectories, and mapped the genetic variants and gene perturbations of human diseases to NHP cortical cells. This resource establishes a transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility combinatory regulatory landscape at a single-cell and spatially resolved resolution in NHP cortex. Cell type epigenetic and topographic information of primate brain is lacking. Here, authors identified transcriptional regulatory network, gradient expression pattern and disease vulnerability at cell type level in PFC, M1 and V1 of monkey brain by snRNAseq, snATAC-seq and Stereo-seq.