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Particulate nitrate (NO3-) not only influences regional climates but also contributes to the acidification of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. In 2016 and 2017, four intensive online measurements of water-soluble ions in PM2.5 were conducted in Nanjing City in order to investigate the potential formation mechanisms of particulate nitrate. During the sampling periods, NO3- was the predominant species, accounting approximately for 35 % of the total water-soluble inorganic ions, followed by SO42- (33 %) and NH4+ (24 %). Significant enhancements of nitrate aerosols in terms of both absolute concentrations and relative abundances suggested that NO3- was a major contributing species to high-PM2.5 events (hourly PM2.5≥150 µg m-3). High NO3- concentrations mainly occurred underNH4+-rich conditions, implying that the formation of nitrate aerosols in Nanjing involved NH3. During the high-PM2.5 events, the nitrogen conversion ratios (Fn) were positively correlated with the aerosol liquid water content (ALWC; R>0.72 and p<0.05). Meanwhile, increasing NO3- concentrations regularly coincided with increasing ALWC and decreasing Ox (Ox=O3+NO2). These results suggested that the heterogeneous reaction was probably a major mechanism of nitrate formation during the high-PM2.5 events. Moreover, the average production rate of NO3- by heterogeneous processes was estimated to be 12.6 % h-1 (4.1 µg m-3 h-1), which was much higher than that (2.5 % h-1; 0.8 µg m-3 h-1) of gas-phase reactions. This can also explain the abrupt increases in nitrate concentrations during the high-PM2.5 events. Utilizing the ISORROPIA II model, we found that nitrate aerosol formation in Nanjing during the high-PM2.5 events was HNO3 limited. This indicated that control of NOx emissions will be able to efficiently reduce airborne particulate nitrate concentrations and improve the air quality in this industrial city.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are key components of tropospheric chemistry. We investigated ambient VOCs in an industrial area in Nanjing, China, between July 2018 and May 2020. The sum of the suite of measured total VOC (TVOC) concentrations was 59.8 ± 28.6 ppbv (part per billion by volume) during the investigation period. About twice the TVOC concentrations were observed in the autumn (83 ± 20 ppbv) and winter (77.5 ± 16.8 ppbv) seasons compared to those in spring (39.6 ± 13.1 ppbv) and summer (38.8 ± 10.2 ppbv). In previous studies in Nanjing, oxygenated VOCs (OVOCs) and halocarbons were not measured, and the current TVOC concentration without halocarbons and OVOCs was similar to the previous investigation in the same study area. However, it was twofold higher than the one reported in the nonindustrial suburban area of Nanjing. Due to the industrial influence, the halocarbons VOC group (14.3 ± 7.3 ppbv, 24 %) was the second-largest contributor to the TVOCs after alkanes (21 ± 7 ppbv, 35 %), which is in contrast with the previous studies in Nanjing and also in almost all other regions in China. Relatively high proportions of halocarbons and aromatics were observed in autumn (25.7 % and 19.3 %, respectively) and winter (25.8 % and 17.6 %, respectively) compared to those in summer (20.4 % and 11.8 %, respectively) and spring (20.3 % and 13.6 %, respectively). According to the potential source contribution function (PSCF), short-distance transport from the surrounding industrial areas and cities was the main reason for the high VOC concentrations in the study area. According to positive matrix factorization (PMF) model results, vehicle-related emissions (33 %–48 %) contributed to the major portion of the ambient VOC concentrations. Aromatics, followed by alkenes, were the top contributors to the loss rate of OH radicals (LOH; 37 % and 32 %, respectively). According to the empirical kinetic modelling approach (EKMA) and relative incremental reactivity (RIR) analysis, the study area was in the VOC-sensitive regime for ozone (O3) formation during all measurement seasons. Therefore, alkenes and aromatics emissions from automobiles need to be decreased to reduce secondary air pollution formation in the study area.

Black carbon (BC) is an essential component of particulate matter (PM), with a significant impact on climate change. Few studies have investigated the long-term changes in BC and its sources, particularly considering primary emissions of BC, which is crucial for developing effective mitigation strategies. Here, 3-year BC observations (2019–2021) are reported in Nanjing, a polluted city in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region, eastern China. The results revealed that the average BC concentration was 2.5 ± 1.6 µg m−3, peaking in winter, with approximately 80 % attributed to liquid fuel combustion. Based on 3-year monitoring data, the random forest (RF) algorithm was employed to reconstruct BC concentrations in Nanjing from 2014 to 2021. Source apportionment was conducted on the reconstructed time series, which revealed a significant decrease (p < 0.05) in BC levels over the 8-year period, primarily due to reduced emissions from liquid fuels. Compared to the earlier control policy period (P1: 2013–2017), BC concentrations declined more steeply after 2018 (P2) due to reduced solid fuel burning. The seasonal analysis indicated significant reductions (p < 0.05) in BC, BCliquid (black carbon from liquid fuel combustion) and BCsolid (black carbon from solid fuel combustion) during winter, with BCliquid accounting for 77 % of the reduction. Overall, emission reduction was the dominant factor in lowering BC levels, contributing between 62 % and 86 %, though meteorological conditions played an increasingly important role in P2, particularly for BC and BCliquid. Our results demonstrate that targeted control measures for liquid fuel combustion are necessary, as it is a major driver of BC reduction, and highlight the non-negligible influence of meteorological factors on long-term BC variations.

Thought problems and attention problems are common in childhood and are important for later-emerging psychological disorders, yet less is known about the early childhood predictors underpinning such problems. We examined whether early childhood theory of mind (ToM) and effortful control (EC) constitute predictors for preadolescent thought and attention problems. We longitudinally tracked 214 children’s ToM and EC, assessed with behavioral tasks, at ages 3 and 6, along with their thought and attention problems at ages 6 and 10, assessed using maternal report. Findings show that poorer ToM at age 6 predicted more severe development of thought problems emerging between ages 6 and 10, and poorer EC at age 6 predicted more attention problems at age 10. These findings reveal the developmental links between ToM, EC, thought problems, and attention problems, offering implications for developmental-psychopathology accounts and highlighting the importance of early childhood predictors on developing thought and attention problems’ symptomology.

Water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC) is a significant fraction of organic carbon (OC) in atmospheric aerosols. WSOC is of great interest due to its significant effects on atmospheric chemistry, the Earth's climate and human health. The stable carbon isotope (δ13C) can be used to track the potential sources and investigate atmospheric processes of organic aerosols. However, the previous methods measuring the δ13C values of WSOC in ambient aerosols require a large amount of carbon content, are time-consuming and require labor-intensive preprocessing. In this study, a method of simultaneously measuring the mass concentration and the δ13C values of WSOC from aerosol samples is established by coupling the GasBench II preparation device with isotopic ratio mass spectrometry. The precision and accuracy of isotope determination is better than 0.17 ‰ and 0.5 ‰, respectively, for samples containing WSOC amounts larger than 5 µg. This method is then applied for the aerosol samples collected every 3 h during a severe wintertime haze period in Nanjing, eastern China. The WSOC values vary between 3 and 32 µg m−3, whereas δ13C−WSOC ranges from −26.24 ‰ to −23.35 ‰. Three different episodes (Episode 1, Episode 2 and Episode 3) are identified in the sampling period, showing a different tendency of δ13C−WSOC with the accumulation process of WSOC aerosols. The increases in both the WSOC mass concentrations and the δ13C−WSOC values in Episode 1 indicate that WSOC is subject to a substantial photochemical aging during the air mass transport. In Episode 2, the decline of the δ13C−WSOC is accompanied by the increase in the WSOC mass concentrations, which is associated with regional-transported biomass burning emissions. In Episode 3, heavier isotope (13C) is exclusively enriched in total carbon (TC) in comparison to WSOC aerosols. This suggests that the non-WSOC fraction in total carbon may contain 13C-enriched components such as dust carbonate, which is supported by the enhanced Ca2+ concentrations and air mass trajectory analysis. The present study provides a novel method to determine the stable carbon isotope composition of WSOC, and it offers a great potential to better understand the source emission, the atmospheric aging and the secondary production of water-soluble organic aerosols.

Atmospheric humic-like substances (HULIS) affect the global radiation balance due to their strong light absorption at the ultraviolet wavelength. The potential sources and molecular compositions of water-soluble HULIS at a suburban site in the Yangtze River Delta from 2017 to 2018 were discussed, based on the results of the radiocarbon (14C) analysis and combining the Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS) technique in this study. The 14C results showed that the averaged non-fossil-fuel source contributions to HULIS were 39 ± 8 % and 36 ± 6 % in summer and winter, respectively, indicating significant contributions from fossil fuel sources to HULIS. The Van Krevelen diagrams obtained from the FT-ICR-MS results showed that the proportions of tannin-like and carbohydrate-like groups were higher in summer, suggesting significant contribution of HULIS from biogenic secondary organic aerosols (SOAs). The higher proportions of condensed aromatic structures in winter suggested increasing anthropogenic emissions. Molecular composition analysis on the CHO, CHON, CHOS, and CHONS subgroups showed relatively higher intensities of high O-containing macromolecular oligomers in the CHO compounds in summer, further indicating stronger biogenic SOA formation in summer. High-intensity phenolic substances and flavonoids, which were related to biomass burning and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) derivatives indicating fossil fuel combustion emissions, were found in winter CHO compounds. Besides, two high-intensity CHO compounds containing condensed aromatic ring structures (C9H6O7 and C10H5O8) identified in the summer and winter samples were similar to those from off-road engine samples, indicating that traffic emissions were one of the important fossil fuel sources of HULIS at the study site. The CHON compounds were mainly composed of nitro compounds or organonitrates with significantly higher intensities in winter, which were associated with biomass burning emissions, in addition to the enhanced formation of organonitrates due to high NOx in winter. However, the high-intensity CHON molecular formulas in summer were referring to N-heterocyclic aromatic compounds, which were produced from the atmospheric secondary processes involving reduced N species (e.g., ammonium). The S-containing compounds were mainly composed of organosulfates (OSs) derived from biogenic precursors, namely long-chain alkane and aromatic hydrocarbon, which illustrate the mixed sources of HULIS. Generally, different policies need to be considered for each season due to the different seasonal sources (i.e., biogenic emissions in summer and biomass burning in winter for non-fossil-fuel sources, traffic emissions and anthropogenic SOA formation in both seasons, and additional coal combustion in winter). Measures to control emissions from motor vehicles and industrial processes need to be considered in summer. Additional control measures on coal power plants and biomass burning should be applied in winter. These findings add to our understanding of the interaction between the sources and the molecular compositions of atmospheric HULIS.

Over the course of literacy development, children learn to recognize word sounds and meanings in print. Yet, they do so differently across alphabetic and character‐based orthographies such as English and Chinese. To uncover cross‐linguistic influences on children's literacy, we asked young Chinese–English simultaneous bilinguals and English monolinguals (N = 119, ages 5–10) to complete phonological and morphological awareness (MA) literacy tasks. Children completed the tasks in the auditory modality in each of their languages during functional near‐infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging. Cross‐linguistically, comparisons between bilinguals' two languages revealed that the task that was more central to reading in a given orthography, such as phonological awareness (PA) in English and MA in Chinese, elicited less activation in the left inferior frontal and parietal regions. Group comparisons between bilinguals and monolinguals in English, their shared language of academic instruction, revealed that the left inferior frontal was less active during phonology but more active during morphology in bilinguals relative to monolinguals. MA skills are generally considered to have greater language specificity than PA skills. Bilingual literacy training in a skill that is maximally similar across languages, such as PA, may therefore yield greater automaticity for this skill, as reflected in the lower activation in bilinguals relative to monolinguals. This interpretation is supported by negative correlations between proficiency and brain activation. Together, these findings suggest that both the structural characteristics and literacy experiences with a given language can exert specific influences on bilingual and monolingual children's emerging brain networks for learning to read. Cross‐linguistic comparison revealed that tasks that best characterize literacy success in each language, a phonological task in English and a morphological task in Chinese, yielded less activations and stronger brain‐behavior correlations. Bilinguals' English‐dominant literacy and Chinese heritage language experiences were associated with stronger left hemisphere engagement during literacy tasks in English and stronger right hemisphere engagement during literacy tasks in Chinese.

The North China Plain (NCP) is becoming one of the most polluted areas characterized by a high frequency of haze pollution. However, the spatial and temporal evolutions of aerosol chemical compositions in such a highly polluted region are not well understood due to the lack of a long-term and comprehensive observation-based network. China’s National Aerosol Composition Monitoring Network (NACMON) has conducted comprehensive offline and online measurements of compositions and optical properties of airborne aerosols in order to systematically investigate the formation process, source apportionments of haze, and interactions between haze pollution and climate change. The objective of the observations is to provide information for policy makers to make strategies for the alleviation of haze occurrence. In this paper, we present instrumentations and methodologies as well as the preliminary results of the offline observations in NACMON stations over the NCP region. The implications and future perspectives of the network are also summarized. Benefiting from simultaneous observations from this network, we found that secondary aerosols were the dominant component in haze pollution. High anthropogenic emissions, low wind speed, and high relative humidity (RH) facilitated gas-to-particle transformation and resulted in high PM 2.5 formation (PM 2.5 is particulate matter that is smaller than 2.5 μ m in diameter). Sulfate-dominant or nitrate-dominant aerosols during the haze period were driven by ambient RH. Moreover, the contributions of coal combustion and biomass burning to PM 2.5 revealed downward trends, whereas secondary aerosols showed upward trends over the last decade. Thus, we highlighted that strict control of anthropogenic emissions of precursor gases, such as NO x , NH 3 , and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), will be an important way to decrease PM 2.5 pollution in the NCP region.

While technology has influenced today’s society in many aspects, how does it advance research and practice in the field of autism spectrum disorder (ASD)? In this article, we provide a narrative review of how technology enhances early detection, subtype stratification, and intervention of ASD through advancements in both hardware and software, including neuroimaging, telehealth, and artificial intelligence. Furthermore, given that technology has become an intrinsic part of humans’ daily lives, we discuss how technology can be considered more broadly as a sociocultural context for individuals with ASD in future assessments, diagnoses, and research.

The genus Yufengus gen. nov. is established for a new species of Limacodidae, Y. atrophaneuroides sp. nov. Yufengus is from Taiwan, yet its larva is similar to monkey-slug caterpillars in the New World ( Phobetron Hübner, 1825: Limacodidae) in being covered with hairy, detachable tubercles. Monkey-slug caterpillars are currently known to form a monophyletic group which include as many as eight genera in the Americas referred to as the Phobetron complex by Epstein (1996). Although the larva of Yufengus appears, in particular, most similar to the genus Phobetron , a closer look at morphology reveals fundamental differences that are shared with Asian Phrixolepia Butler, 1877. Caterpillars of the new genus are structurally similar to Phrixolepia , but Phrixolepia is more translucent, less hairy, and differs in other characters including those of adults, separated by wing pattern and genitalia. In addition to describing the new genus Yufengus , we explore whether it is indeed in the same clade as the Phobetron complex of genera from the New World. The life history and morphology of adults and immature stages are described in this study.