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A heterojunction photocatalyst that efficiently enhanced hydrogen production from an aqueous solution containing a sacrificial reagent under solar irradiation was developed by growing N-doped TiO sub(2) on SrTiO sub(3) via a sol-gel process. The effect of N-doped TiO sub(2) combined with SrTiO sub(3) on the heterojunction properties was studied. The heterojunction characterization results indicated that the coupling of SrTiO sub(3) with N-doped TiO sub(2) enhanced the visible-light-absorption range because N-doped TiO sub(2) acted as photosensitizer. In addition, N-doped TiO sub(2) coated on SrTiO sub(3) prevented particle agglomeration, providing the heterojunction materials with finer crystals of anatase TiO sub(2) and larger specific surface area than the theoretical values. However, when the SrTiO sub(3)/N-doped TiO sub(2) weight ratios were increased to over 10 %, the material increasingly showed SrTiO sub(3)-like properties, which gradually decreased the solar-energy-absorption efficiencies, S sub(BET) values sub(,), and photoactivity. At the 5 % weight ratio of SrTiO sub(3)/N-doped TiO sub(2), the photocatalytic H sub(2) production rates of the heterojunction were significantly increased by up to 94.2 %, which could be ascribed to the efficient electron/hole separation, charge migration from the photocatalyst interior to the surface, absorption range of visible light, and prevention of particle agglomeration.

The present study was carried out to evaluate transformation kinetics of derivatized fullerene species by simulating natural aquatic processes, which will help elucidate biological effects of water-stirred nano-C sub(60) (aqu-nC sub(60)) . Physicochemical analyses of aqu-nC sub(60) included molecular and agglomerate-scale characterization, surface charge analysis through examination of electrophoretic mobility, and chemical composition analysis using spectroscopy. Detailed analysis of aqu-nC sub(60) transformation over a 28-day stirring period in both light and dark conditions indicated aqu-nC sub(60) agglomerate concentrations can be estimated as a time-function using a predictor model (R super(2) > 0.99). Number-weighted agglomerate size did not differ significantly over the 28-day stirring period regardless of photocondition, although size distributions were more uniform as stirring time increased. The total number of surface groups identified through XPS indicated increased derivatization as a function of time with additions assigned to mono-oxygenated carbon moieties while the number of di-oxygenated moieties declined. Earlier-phase stirring (t less than or equal to 14 days) products were shown to contain epoxide surface groups, which were absent in later-phase (t > 14 days) suspensions, suggesting specific pathways to derivatization with preferential mono-oxygenated states. Filter residue, a by-product of the aqu-nC sub(60) synthesis process, demonstrated high hydrophobicity and FTIR spectra similar to underivatized material, suggesting synthesis process inefficiencies.

Background In the context of public health emergencies, the presence of medical and health talents (MHT) is critically important for support in any country or region. This study aims to analyze the spatial and temporal distributions and evolution of MHT in China and propose strategies and recommendations for promoting a balanced distribution. Methods This research used data from 31 provinces in China to construct a multidimensional index system for measuring the agglomeration level of MHT. The indices include talent agglomeration density (TAD), talent agglomeration scale (TAS), talent agglomeration intensity (TAI), and talent agglomeration equilibrium (TAE). Using provincial data from the years 1982, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020, a spatiotemporal analysis of the MHT agglomeration levels was conducted. Furthermore, the regional dynamic distribution of MHT was analyzed using kernel density estimation diagrams. The spatial autocorrelation of MHT was assessed through global and local Moran’s I, and the spatial gap and decomposition of MHT were analyzed using the Dagum Gini coefficient. Results From the temporal level, the TAD and TAI of MHT showed an increasing trend over the studied period, whereas TAS decreased and TAE first increased and then decreased from 1982 to 2020. At the spatial level, the TAD, TAS, TAI, and TAE of MHT exhibited varied patterns among the eastern, central, and western regions of China, showing significant geographical disparities, generally demarcated by the Hu Huanyong Line. The regional dynamic distribution level of MHT in the country and the three regions were expanding. Spatial autocorrelation analysis using global and local Moran’s I for TAD, TAS, TAI, and TAE demonstrated significant regional differences. The Dagum Gini coefficient of TAD, TAS, TAI, and TAE revealed divergent trends in regional disparities, with overall declines in disparities for TAD and TAI, a slight increase for TAS, and fluctuating patterns for TAE. Conclusions From a temporal perspective, the overall number of MHT in China has been increasing annually at the national and provincial levels. From the spatial perspective, TAD, TAS, TAI, and TAE exhibit significant differences among the three regions. Kernel analysis reveals that the distribution differences are gradually expanding in national level and varying in regional level. Moreover, the global and local Moran’s I indices reveal varying spatial autocorrelation for TAD, TAS, TAI, and TAE. The Dagum Gini coefficients of TAD, TAS, TAI, and TAE show different patterns of decomposition.

Social recommendation has been recently proposed by incorporating trust relationship to alleviate data-sparsity and cold-start problems. However, most of existing works only focus on friends different contribution to model user representation. They ignore users have different preference on items, and share different preference with friends. To address these problems, in this paper, we propose a novel Preference-Aware Graph Attention Network (PA-GAN) for trust recommendation. And we design three modules: item aggregation for user, friend-preference aggregation for user and user aggregation for item to model users’ local and global preference. Experiments on two publicly available datasets shows the proposed model PA-GAN outperforms the state-of-the-art recommendation models, and improves performance greatly.

'Borrowed size' is an emerging policy concept in several European countries, presenting theoretical potential to explain contemporary urban dynamics unaddressed through conventional urban growth theories that emphasise the role of agglomeration economies. In its original conceptualisation by Alonso, the concept describes and explains the situation that especially smaller cities that are located in a larger 'megapolitan complex' do perform better because they have access to agglomeration benefits of larger neighbouring cities. This paper scrutinises the concept of borrowed size, thereby focusing on its conceptualisation and reviewing its empirical justification thus far. Our empirical analyses show that the concept must be stretched in terms of scale and scope to enhance its policy value. Borrowed size occurs when a city possesses urban functions and/or performance levels normally associated with larger cities. This is enabled through interactions in networks of cities across multiple spatial scales. These networks serve as a substitute for the benefits of agglomeration. Theoretically, the borrowed size concept demands a recasting of the geographical foundations of agglomeration theory.

Images posted to a social media site can employ image completion techniques to efficiently and seamlessly remove sensitive content and safeguard privacy. Image completion algorithms typically employ a time consuming patch matching stage derived nearest neighbour search algorithms. Typical patch matching processes perform poorly in the social media context which performs once-off edits on a range of high resolution images with plentiful exemplar material. We make use of hash tables to accelerate the matching stage. Our refinement is the development of a set of perceptually inspired hash functions that can exploit locality and provide a categorization consistent across any exemplar image. Descriptors derived from principal component analysis (PCA), after training on exemplar database, are used for comparison. Aggregation of descriptors improves accuracy and we adapt a probabilistic approach using randomly oriented hyperplanes to employ multiple descriptors in a single hash table. Hash table strategies demonstrate a substantial improvement in performance over a brute force strategy, and perceptually inspired features provide levels of accuracy comparable with those trained on the data using PCA descriptors. The aggregation strategies further improve accuracy although measurement of this is confounded by non-uniform distribution of the aggregated keys. Evaluation with increasing levels of missing data demonstrates that the use of hashing continues to perform well relative to the Euclidean metric benchmark. The patch matching process using aggregated perceptually inspired descriptors produces comparable results with substantial reduction in matching time when used for image completion in photographic images. While sensitivity to structural elements is identified as an issue, the complexity of the resulting process is well suited to bulk manipulation of high resolution images for use in social media. Index Terms-image completion, patch match, hash table, feature descriptor, once-off edit

The mechanism of industrial agglomeration on ecological environments is profound and complex, and has been a hot research topic in recent years. Applying the Copeland–Taylor Model, the present study investigated the environmental pollution effects of the industrial specialized and diversified agglomerations in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations, using the prefecture-level panel data for the period ranging from 2006 to 2016. The main results were as follows: (1) In regard to the entire group of subdivided industries, it was found that a U-shaped relationship existed between specialized agglomeration and the environmental pollution level. In addition, it was also indicated that the diversified agglomeration crossing threshold values had displayed an environmental pollution retardation effect. (2) It was observed that, for different factor-intensive industries, the choice of the specialized agglomeration mode for the labor-intensive and technology-intensive industries was more conducive to environmental protection. Meanwhile, the adoption of a diversified agglomeration mode by the capital-intensive and resource-intensive industries would result in lower levels of environmental pollution. Consequently, it is clear that government departments must control the agglomeration scale at a reasonable level, promote the industrial transformation of an intensive development mode, and encourage the adoption of differentiated agglomeration modes for various industries, so as to reduce environmental pollution in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations.