ALBERT

Description: Zinc (Zn)-air fuel cells (ZAFC) are a widely-acknowledged type of metal air fuel cells, but optimization of several operational parameters and components will facilitate enhanced power performance. This research study has been focused on the investigation of ZAFC Zn particle fuel with flowing potassium hydroxide (KOH) electrolyte. Parameters like optimum electrolyte concentration, temperature, and flow velocity were optimized. Moreover, ZAFC components like anode current collector and cathode conductor material were varied and the appropriate materials were designated. Power performance was analyzed in terms of open circuit voltage (OCV), power, and current density production and were used to justify the results of the study. The flow rate of the electrolyte was determined as 150 mL/min in the self-designed configuration. KOH electrolyte of 40 wt% concentration, at a temperature of 55 to 65 ℃, and with a flow velocity of 0.12 m/s was considered to be beneficial for the ZAFCs operated in this study. Nickel mesh with a surface area of 400 cm2 was chosen as anode current collector and copper plate was considered as cathode conductor material in the fuel cells designed and operated in this study. The power production of this study was better compared to some previously published works. Thus, effective enhancement and upgrading process of the ZAFCs will definitely provide great opportunities for their applications in the future.

Description: This study proposes a framework for estimating pollutant flux in an estuary. An efficient method is applied to estimate the flux of pollutants in an estuary. A gauging station network in the Danshui River estuary is established to measure the data of water quality and discharge based on the efficient method. A boat mounted with an acoustic Doppler profiler (ADP) traverses the river along a preselected path that is normal to the streamflow to measure the velocities, water depths and water quality for calculating pollutant flux. To know the characteristics of the estuary and to provide the basis for the pollutant flux estimation model, data of complete tidal cycles is collected. The discharge estimation model applies the maximum velocity and water level to estimate mean velocity and cross-sectional area, respectively. Thus, the pollutant flux of the estuary can be easily computed as the product of the mean velocity, cross-sectional area and pollutant concentration. The good agreement between the observed and estimated pollutant flux of the Danshui River estuary shows that the pollutant measured by the conventional and the efficient methods are not fundamentally different. The proposed method is cost-effective and reliable. It can be used to estimate pollutant flux in an estuary accurately and efficiently.

Description: Reasonable transportation network layoutsarecritical for optimizing a comprehensive transport system. With the gradual development of a transportation industry from quantitative expansion to structural optimization, and transformation of various transportation modes from independent operation to integrated development, traditional comprehensive transport planning theories and methods have not adapted. In thispaper, a new planning concept is proposed from the perspective of economic equilibrium with theaim ofoptimizing a supply structure for a comprehensive transport passenger transportation corridor. An in-depth analysis was conducted of the internal mechanism of the dynamic equilibrium between supply and demand of this corridor,wherein the maximum of the globaltransportation demand subjectcustomer surplus wastaken as a target function, respective interest functions of a demand subject and a supply subject served as constraints to quantitatively optimize the supply structure of the passenger transportation corridor in comprehensive transport, and a Gradient Descent algorithmwasdesigned. The results show that the proposed model better reflectstheeconomic operation mechanism of a passenger transportation market in a comprehensive transport corridor (CTC), and prove that the supply structure of CTC is closely related to passenger flow, travel value distribution, a supply subject's scale rate of return,and travel time. These research results have important academic values in terms of improving passenger transportation corridor structure optimization in region-specific comprehensive transport that conforms to a market economy mechanism. This concept can be extended from single corridor planning to point-to-point and door-to-door transportation supply structure planning, andto comprehensive transport network planning and urban transportation planning without loss of generality.

Description: This study aims to learn the characteristics of morbidity and mortality of notifiable diseases reported in children aged 0–14 years in Zhejiang Province in 2008–2017. We collated data from the China Information System for Disease Control and Prevention in Zhejiang province between 1 January 2008 and 31 December 2017 of children aged 0–14 years. From 2008 to 2017, a total of 32 types and 1,994,740 cases of notifiable diseases were reported in children aged 0–14 years, including 266 deaths in Zhejiang Province. The annual average morbidity was 2502.87/100,000, and the annual average mortality was 0.33/100,000. Male morbidity was 2886.98/100,000, and female morbidity was 2072.16/100,000, with the male morbidity rate higher than the female morbidity rate (χ2 = 54,033.12, p 〈 0.01). No Class A infectious diseases were reported. The morbidity of Class B infectious diseases showed a downward trend, but that of Class C infectious diseases showed an upward trend. There were 72,041 cases in 22 kinds of Class B infectious disease and 138 death cases, with a morbidity rate of 90.39/100,000, and a mortality rate of 0.17/100,000. There were 1,922,699 cases in 10 kinds of Class C infectious disease and 128 death cases, with a morbidity rate of 2412.47/100,000, and a mortality rate of 0.16/100,000. The main high-prevalence diseases included hand-foot-and-mouth disease (1430.38/100,000), other infectious diarrheal diseases (721.40/100,000), mumps (168.83/100,000), and influenza (47.40/100,000). We should focus on the prevention and control of hand-foot and mouth disease, other infectious diarrheal diseases, mumps and influenza in children aged 0–14 years in Zhejiang Province. It is recommended to strengthen epidemic surveillance and undertake early prevention and control measures in order to reduce the younger children incidence rate of infectious diseases. Immunization planning vaccines can help achieve a significant preventive decline of infectious diseases.

Description: Objective: The aim of this study was to analyze the trends and epidemiological characteristics of scarlet fever in Zhejiang Province in 2004–2018, intending to provide a basis for targeted prevention and control of this disease. Method: We collated the epidemiological data for cases of scarlet fever from the China Information System for Disease Control and Prevention (CISDCP) in Zhejiang province between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2018. Descriptive statistical analysis was used to analyze epidemiological characteristics of scarlet fever, whereas the Getis-Ord Gi* statistic was used to determine the hotspot incidence of scarlet fever. Results: In 2004–2018, a total of 22,194 cases of scarlet fever were reported in Zhejiang Province, with no death reports. The annual average of scarlet fever incidence was 2.82/100,000 (range,1.12 to 6.34/100,000). The male incidence was higher than that among female (χ2 = 999.834, p 〈 0.05), and a majority of the cases (86.42%) occurred in children aged 3–9 years. Each year, the incidence of scarlet fever in Zhejiang Province appeared two seasonal peaks: the first peak occurred from March to June (the constituent ratio was 49.06%), the second peak was lower than the first one during November and the following January (the constituent ratio was 28.67%). The two peaks were almost in accordance with the school spring semester and autumn–winter semester, respectively. The incidence in the northern regions of the province was generally higher than that in the southern regions. High-value clusters were detected in the central and northern regions, while low-value clusters occurred in the southern regions via the Getis-Ord Gi* statistical analysis. Conclusions: The prevalence of scarlet fever in Zhejiang Province showed a marked seasonality variation and mainly clustered in the central and northern regions in 2004–2018. Children under 15 years of age were most susceptible to scarlet fever. Kindergartens and primary schools should be the focus of prevention and control, and targeted strategies and measures should be taken to reduce the incidence.

Description: The neuroimaging techniques such as dopaminergic imaging using Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) with 99mTc-TRODAT-1 have been employed to detect the stages of Parkinson’s disease (PD). In this retrospective study, a total of 202 99mTc-TRODAT-1 SPECT imaging were collected. All of the PD patient cases were separated into mild (HYS Stage 1 to Stage 3) and severe (HYS Stage 4 and Stage 5) PD, according to the Hoehn and Yahr Scale (HYS) standard. A three-dimensional method was used to estimate six features of activity distribution and striatal activity volume in the images. These features were skewness, kurtosis, Cyhelsky’s skewness coefficient, Pearson’s median skewness, dopamine transporter activity volume, and dopamine transporter activity maximum. Finally, the data were modeled using logistic regression (LR) and support vector machine (SVM) for PD classification. The results showed that SVM classifier method produced a higher accuracy than LR. The sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, accuracy, and AUC with SVM method were 0.82, 1.00, 0.84, 0.67, 0.83, and 0.85, respectively. Additionally, the Kappa value was shown to reach 0.68. This claimed that the SVM-based model could provide further reference for PD stage classification in medical diagnosis. In the future, more healthy cases will be expected to clarify the false positive rate in this classification model.

Description: In spite of all the efforts towards deciphering the silk spinning process of spiders, the underlying mechanism is yet to be fully revealed. In this research, we designed a novel approach that allowed us to quantitatively evaluate the concentration change of silk dope during the liquid-to-solid spinning process of the orb-weaver Nephila pilipes. As a prior characterization of the optimal silking conditions, we first gauged the influence of silking-rate, ranging from 1.5 to 8.0 m/min, on dragline silk diameters and silk tensile strengths obtained from the spiders. Next, to evaluate the liquid content of the silk dope, the major ampullate gland was dissected and the concentration of the sac portion was measured by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The solid content of the dragline fibers leaving the spinneret was investigated by calculating the ratio of collected dried silk to the weight loss of the spider recorded in situ upon spinning. As the results indicate, the tensile strength and diameter of the spun dragline fibers were 800–1100 MPa and 8–11 μm, respectively. The liquid content of silk stored in the major ampullate sac (50.0 wt%) was significantly lower than that of silk leaving the spinnerets (80.9–96.1 wt%), indicating that a liquid supplying mechanism might be involved during the spinning process. This reveals, for the first time, quantitative evidence in support of the lubricative hypothesis proposed formerly, namely that a liquid coating layer is supplemented to compensate for silking resistance during the spinning process of a spider. The spigot, at the exit of the spinneret, is speculated to serve as a valve-like controller that regulates the lubrication process along with fiber formation. Taken together, these findings provide understanding of the physiological functions in the spider spinning process and could further shed some light on the future biomimetic development of silk material fabrication.

Description: Studies of the spatial extent of surface urban heat island (SUHI or UHISurf) effects require precise determination of the footprint (FP) boundary. Currently available methods overestimate or underestimate the SUHI FP boundary, and can even alter its morphology, due to theoretical limitations on the ability of their algorithms to accurately determine the impacts of the shape, topography, and landscape heterogeneity of the city. The key to determining the FP boundary is identifying background temperatures in reference rural regions. Due to the instability of remote sensing data, these background temperatures should be determined automatically rather than manually, to eliminate artificial bias. To address this need, we developed an algorithm that adequately represents the decay of land surface temperature (LST) from the urban center to surrounding rural regions, and automatically calculates thresholds for reference rural LSTs in all directions based on a logistic curve. In this study, we applied this algorithm with data from the Aqua Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (Aqua/MODIS) 8-day level 3 (L3) LST global grid product to delineate precise SUHI FPs for the Beijing metropolitan area during the summers of 2004–2018 and determine the interannual and diurnal variations in FP boundaries and their relationship with SUHI intensity.

Description: In Device-to-Device (D2D) communications, the first step is to find all of the neighboring peers in the network by performing a peer discovery process. Most previous studies use the social behaviors of the users to adjust the sending rates of the peer discovery messages (i.e., beacons) under the constraint of consumed power for increasing the Peer Discovery Ratio (PDR). However, these studies do not consider the potential for energy harvesting, which allows for the User Equipments (UEs) to procure additional power within charging areas. Accordingly, this paper proposes an Energy-Ratio Rate Decision (ERRD) algorithm that comprises three steps, namely Social Ratio Allocation (SRA), Energy Ratio Allocation (ERA), and Beacon Rate Decision (BRD). The SRA step determines the allocated power quantum for each UE from the total budget power based on the social behavior of the UE. The ERA step then adjusts this allocated power quantum in accordance with the power that is harvested by the UE. Finally, the BRD step computes the beacon rate for the UE based on the adjusted power quantum. The simulation results show that ERRD outperforms the previously-reported Social-Based Grouping (SBG) algorithm by 190% on the PDR for a budget power of one watt and 8% for a budget power of 20 watts.

Description: This scoping review explores the state of science regarding women’s toileting behaviors, gaps in knowledge, and areas for future research. Online databases were searched to identify papers published in English between January 2010 through July 2019; the search identified 25 articles. The Toileting Behaviors–Women’s Elimination Behaviors scale has been published in four validated language versions and used in 17 of the 25 studies. The most frequent behaviors include concern about public toilet cleanliness, delaying urination when busy or away from home, and using different toileting postures at and away from home. Determinants of toileting behaviors include environmental factors, chronic health conditions, and cognitive/psychological factors. Associations were found between toileting behaviors and lower urinary tract symptoms and between toileting postures and uroflowmetric parameters and post-void residual volume. Strategies that address modifiable determinants of toileting behaviors should be developed and tested in future research. Furthermore, little is known about the toileting behaviors and bladder health in older women and women from developing countries. Rigorous studies are needed to better understand the underlying mechanisms of toileting behaviors, the nature of associations between toileting behaviors and lower urinary tract symptoms, and effects of the environment on women’s toileting behaviors.