The Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) and the little fire ant (Wasmannia auropunctata) are among the top 100 invasive alien species globally, causing significant ecological and economic harm. Therefore, it is crucial to study their potential geographic distribution worldwide. This study aimed to predict their global distribution under current and future climate conditions. We used distribution data from various sources, including CABI, GBIF, and PIAKey, and key climate variables selected from 19 environmental factors to model their potential geographic distribution using MaxEnt. The AUC values were 0.925 and 0.937 for L. humile and W. auropunctata, respectively, indicating good predictive performance. Suitable areas for L. humile were mainly in southern North America, northern South America, Europe, central Asia, southern Oceania, and parts of Africa, while W. auropunctata suitable areas were mostly in southern North America, most of South America, a small part of Europe, southern Asia, central Africa, and some parts of Oceania. Under climate change scenario, suitable areas for L. humile increased, while highly suitable areas for W. auropunctata decreased. The top four countries with the largest areas of overlapping suitable habitat under current climate were Brazil, China, Australia, and Argentina, while under future SSP585 climate scenario, the top four countries were Brazil, China, Indonesia, and Argentina. Some countries, such as Estonia and Finland, will see an overlapping adaptation area under climate change. In conclusion, this study provides insight into controlling the spread and harm of L. humile and W. auropunctata.

This paper retrospectively analysed the prevalence of macrolide-resistant Mycoplasma pneumoniae (MRMP) in some parts of China. Between January 2013 and December 2019, we collected 4,145 respiratory samples, including pharyngeal swabs and alveolar lavage fluid. The highest PCR-positive rate of M. pneumoniae was 74.5% in Beijing, the highest resistance rate was 100% in Shanghai, and Gansu was the lowest with 20%. The highest PCR-positive rate of M. pneumoniae was 74.5% in 2013, and the highest MRMP was 97.4% in 2019; the PCR-positive rate of M. pneumoniae for adults in Beijing was 17.9% and the MRMP was 10.48%. Among the children diagnosed with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), the PCR-positive and macrolide-resistant rates of M. pneumoniae were both higher in the severe ones. A2063G in domain V of 23S rRNA was the major macrolide-resistant mutation, accounting for more than 90%. The MIC values of all MRMP to erythromycin and azithromycin were ≥ 64 μg/ml, and the MICs of tetracycline and levofloxacin were ≤ 0.5 μg/ml and ≤ 1 μg/ml, respectively. The macrolide resistance varied in different regions and years. Among inpatients, the macrolide-resistant rate was higher in severe pneumonia. A2063G was the common mutation, and we found no resistance to tetracycline and levofloxacin.

Examination of plant microfossils (phytoliths and starch granules) preserved in dental calculus allows for the direct identification of some components of prehistoric diets. In this article, the authors present the results of microfossil analysis of dental calculus from wild and domestic animals at the Late Neolithic site of Kangjia in the Central Plains, an area critical in the emergence of early Chinese states. Consumption of cooked plant foods by domestic pigs and dogs, and of domestic crops by wild animals, at this site hints, the authors argue, at an interdependent relationship between animal management, agricultural production and ritual practices that contributed to the political transformations of Late Neolithic China.

The mid-infrared optical frequency comb is a powerful tool for gas sensing. In this study, we demonstrate a simple mid-infrared dual-comb spectrometer covering 3–4 μm in LiNbO3 waveguides. Based on a low-power fiber laser system, the mid-infrared comb is achieved via intra-pulse difference frequency generation in the LiNbO3 waveguide. We construct pre-chirp management before supercontinuum generation to control spatiotemporal alignment for pump and signal pulses. The supercontinuum is directly coupled into a chirped periodically poled LiNbO3 waveguide for the 3–4 μm idler generation. A mid-infrared dual-comb spectrometer based on this approach provides a 100 MHz resolution over 25 THz coverage. To evaluate the applicability for spectroscopy, we measure the methane spectrum using the dual-comb spectrometer. The measured results are consistent with the HITRAN database, in which the root mean square of the residual is 3.2%. This proposed method is expected to develop integrated and robust mid-infrared dual-comb spectrometers on chip for sensing.

Adherence to post-exposure prophylaxis and post-exposure vaccination (PEV) is an important measure to prevent rabies. The purpose of this study was to explore the adherence to the vaccination protocol and its influencing factors among rabies-exposed patients in Shenzhen, China. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in a tertiary hospital in Shenzhen, China, to obtain epidemiological characteristics of patients; knowledge, attitude, and practice scores of rabies prevention; and medical records. A total of 326 patients requiring full rabies PEV were included in this study, and only 62% (202) completed the full course of vaccination according to the norms of the vaccination guidelines. After multifactor logistic regression, the factors influencing adherence to vaccination were as follows: age 31 to 40 years, time spent to reach the nearest rabies prevention clinic was >60 min, the time of injury was at night to early morning, the place of injury was a school/laboratory, the animal causing injury was a cat, the health status of the animal causing injury could not be determined, and patients with higher practice scores (all p<0.05). Understanding the factors influencing rabies vaccination adherence among rabies-exposed patients in urban areas of China and promote changes in patients’ practice toward rabies prevention is essential for rabies elimination by 2030.

Functional montmorillonite can be dispersed in polymer coatings and organic species and polymers can be intercalated into the interlayer space or grafted onto the surface of the functional montmorillonite. The addition of functional montmorillonite into polymer-based coatings can significantly improve anti-corrosion, refractory, super-hydrophobicity, antibacterial activity, and absorption of solar radiation by the resulting montmorillonite/polymer coatings. Montmorillonite can be functionalized for this purpose by ion exchange, intercalation, exfoliation, or combinations of these treatments. The rigid montmorillonite layers interspersed within the polymer matrix inhibit the penetration of corrosive substances, minimize the impact of high-temperature airflow, and thereby lead to strong resistance of the coating to corrosion and fire. The combination of polymers and dispersed montmorillonite nanolayers, which are modified by metal ions, metal oxides, and hydrophobic organic species, allows the resulting  composite coating to have quite a rough surface and a much smaller surface free energy so that the montmorillonite/polymer coating possesses superhydrophobicity. The interlayer space of functional montmorillonite can also host or encapsulate antibacterial substances, phase-change materials, and solar energy-absorbing materials. Moreover, it can act as a template to make these guest species exist in a more stable and ordered state. Literature surveys suggest that future work on the functional montmorillonite/polymer coatings should be targeted at the manufacture of functional montmorillonite nanolayers by finding more suitable modifiers and tuning the dispersion and funtionalities of montmorillonite in the coatings.

As a common mineral phase on Earth and Martian regolith, natural rutile was reported as a potential candidate for use as a Fenton catalyst in this study. The influences of Fe and V in various chemical states on the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROSs) and the catalytic activity of rutile were examined. A series of rutile samples with various surface and bulk states of Fe and V were obtained initially by hydrogen annealing of natural rutile at ~773–1173 K. X-ray diffraction, electron paramagnetic resonance spectra, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy demonstrated that the atomic fractions of Fe(III) and V(V) decreased sharply with increasing temperature, along with the accumulation of surface Fe(II) and bulk V(III). All as-prepared materials showed enhanced Fenton degradation efficiency on methylene blue (MB) compared with P25-TiO2, and the treated samples exhibited up to 3.5-fold improvement in efficiency at pH 3 compared to the untreated sample. The improved efficiency was attributed mainly to Fenton catalysis involving Fe(II) and V(III). The dissolved Fe2+ played a crucial role in the homogeneous Fenton reaction, while the bound V(III) favored adsorption primarily and may have facilitated heterogeneous Fenton reaction and the regeneration of Fe2+. The pH regulated the reaction mechanism among homogeneous (pH = 3) and heterogeneous (pH = 3.7) Fenton catalysis and physical adsorption (pH = 5, 6). The aim of the present study was to improve the understanding of the potential role of natural rutile with advanced oxidation functions in Earth systems and even on Mars, which also provide an inspiration for screening natural rutile and any other similar, Earth-abundant, low-cost minerals for environmental application.

As a photocatalyst with good prospects, TiO2 has the shortcomings of easy agglomeration and no catalytic performance under visible light. The purpose of the present study was to help solve these problems by employing muscovite as a carrier for N-doped TiO2 in a nanocomposite. The nanocomposites were prepared by a liquid precipitation-grinding method using muscovite as the matrix and urea as the nitrogen source. The crystal structures, chemical bonding, and micromorphology of the nanocomposites were analyzed by X-ray diffraction, infrared absorption spectrometry, and field emission scanning electron microscopy, respectively. Visible and ultraviolet (UV-Vis) light absorption of the nanocomposites was analyzed by solid ultraviolet diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The photocatalytic effect of the nanocomposites was studied based on the degradation of rhodamine B (RhB) solution. The photocatalytic degradation product of RhB was detected by high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, revealing that N-doping inhibits the growth of TiO2 nanoparticles. The photocatalytic performance of N-TiO2/muscovite composite nanomaterials decreased with increasing heat-treatment temperature. N-doped TiO2/muscovite nanocomposites that were heated at 400°C showed the best photocatalytic performance under visible-light illumination with an RhB degradation of 97%.

The clinical significance and potential targets of miR-150-5p have not been elucidated in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). The pooled analysis based on 539 NPC samples and 75 non-NPC nasopharyngeal samples demonstrated that the expression of miR-150-5p was down-regulated in NPC, with the area under the curve being 0.89 and the standardized mean difference being −0.66. Subsequently, we further screened the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of 14 datasets, including 312 NPC samples and 70 non-NPC nasopharyngeal samples. After the DEGs were narrowed down with the predicted targets from the miRWalk database, 1316 prospective target genes of miR-150-5p were identified. The enrichment analysis suggested that “pathways in cancer” was the most significant pathway. Finally, six hub genes of “pathways in cancer”, including EGFR, TP53, HRAS, CCND1, CDH1, and FGF2, were screened out through the STRING database. In conclusion, the down-regulation of miR-150-5p modulates the tumorigenesis and progression of NPC.

The thermal stability of bentonite is vitally important for its application in the casting field and the layer charge of montmorillonite (Qm) is one of its central crystal-chemical parameters. As the main component of bentonite, the influence of Qm on montmorillonite properties and behavior needs to be considered if bentonite is to be used in high-temperature environments. The objective of the current study was to investigate the relationship between Qm and the thermal stability of Chinese bentonite samples collected from Wuhu, Anhui Province (marked as WH); Xinyang, Henan Province (marked as XY); and Santai, Sichuan Province (marked as ST) below. The values of Qm were obtained using the O (11) method, and the structural properties of the bentonite samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetry-differential scanning calorimetry (TG-DSC), and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The results showed that, in the samples investigated, Qm was inversely related to the thermal stability of bentonite. The Qm value (electrons per half unit cell, e/huc) was greatest for sample ST (0.725 e/huc), followed by sample XY (0.470 e/huc), and by sample WH (0.354 e/huc). The dehydroxylation temperature changed related to Qm; the sample with the largest Qm value was WH (701°C), followed by sample XY (684°C), and sample ST (630°C). After the samples were calcined at 600°C, sample WH had the best montmorillonite structural integrity with the greatest degree of reusability (78.21%); while the montmorillonite structures of samples XY and ST were destroyed, and their reusabilities were only 9.48 and 6.01%, respectively.

Aiming at the problem that the covariance matrix includes the desired signal and the signal steer vector mismatches will degrade the beamforming performance, an effective robust adaptive beamforming (RAB) approach is presented in this paper based on a residual convolutional neural network (RAB-RCNN). In the presented method, the RAB-RCNN model is designed by introducing a residual unit, which can extract the deeper features from the signal sample covariance matrix. Residual noise elimination and interferences power estimation are utilized to reconstruct the desired signal covariance matrix, and correct the mismatched steering vector (SV) by the eigenvalue decomposition of the reconstructed desired signal covariance matrix. The projection method is utilized to redesign the signal interference-plus-noise covariance matrix. Furthermore, the beamforming weight vector is calculated with the two parameters obtained before and used as the label of the RAB-RCNN model, The trained model can rapidly and precisely output the predicted beamforming weight vector without complex matrix operations, including the matrix inversion of the signal covariance matrix, so that the calculation time can be reduced for beamforming. Simulations demonstrate the robustness of the presented approach against SV mismatches due to the direction-of-arrival estimation error, sensor position error, and local scattering interference.

Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) is a common childhood infectious disease. The incidence of HFMD has a pronounced seasonal tendency and is closely related to meteorological factors such as temperature, rainfall, and wind speed. In this paper, we propose a combined SARIMA-XGBoost model to improve the prediction accuracy of HFMD in 15 regions of Xinjiang, China. The SARIMA model is used for seasonal trends, and the XGBoost algorithm is applied for the nonlinear effects of meteorological factors. The geographical and temporal weighted regression model is designed to analyze the influence of meteorological factors from temporal and spatial perspectives. The analysis results show that the HFMD exhibits seasonal characteristics, peaking from May to August each year, and the HFMD incidence has significant spatial heterogeneity. The meteorological factors affecting the spread of HFMD vary among regions. Temperature and daylight significantly impact the transmission of the disease in most areas. Based on the verification experiment of forecasting, the proposed SARIMA-XGBoost model is superior to other models in accuracy, especially in regions with a high incidence of HFMD.

COVID-19’s impact on children and adolescents’ mental health has heightened global focus, leading to analysis with bibliometric and visualization tools of related studies in the Web of Science™ database from 2020 to 2023. In total, there are 5,189 studies authored by 27,102 researchers from 147 countries and significantly involving 6,926 institutions. These studies are covered by 1,246 journals. Depression, anxiety, and stress are currently well-developed and important research areas and will continue to be a priority and hot topic for further exploration and discussion in the academic research field in the future. However, certain topics, such as child maltreatment, need to be reassessed in terms of their importance. Additionally, emerging areas like telemedicine and vaccine hesitancy have emerged. Fundamental aspects such as COVID-19, family, and parenting reflect the far-reaching impact of the pandemic. Given that public health emergencies may affect the mental health of children and adolescents, it is particularly important to establish specialized response mechanisms. In addition, strengthened interdisciplinary and intersectoral cooperation focusing on the mental health of children and adolescents from vulnerable groups is crucial to ensure their healthy development and promote long-term social stability and scientific and technological progress.

The rapid development of the digital economy has highlighted the crucial role of data in economic growth. This study investigates the impact of two types of innovation on long-term growth by incorporating data into a model of creative destruction and knowledge accumulation. Unlike traditional factors, data exhibit nonrivalry between the two research and development (R&D) sectors, thereby influencing the growth rate of economic outputs simultaneously without interference. Our findings reveal the existence of a balanced growth path (BGP) in both the decentralized economy and the social planner’s economy. In horizontal innovation, data can be transformed into digital knowledge to promote the economic growth [Cong et al. (2021)]. In addition to horizontal innovation, the utilization of data in vertical innovation also enhances the success rate of innovation, with a gradual decrease in per capita data usage on the BGP. Moreover, as agents accumulate human capital, the economy achieves higher output levels, effectively addressing consumer privacy concerns. However, along the transitional path, insufficient data provision by both R&D sectors leads to lower economic growth rates or more intense economic fluctuations, necessitating policy interventions.

Dietary antioxidant indices (DAI) may be potentially associated with relative telomere length (RTL) of leucocytes. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between DAI and RTL. A cross-sectional study involving 1656 participants was conducted. A generalised linear regression model and a restricted cubic spline model were used to assess the correlation of DAI and its components with RTL. Generalised linear regression analysis revealed that DAI (β = 0·005, P = 0·002) and the intake of its constituents vitamin C (β = 0·043, P = 0·027), vitamin E (β = 0·088, P < 0·001), Se (β = 0·075, P = 0·003), and Zn (β = 0·075, P = 0·023) were significantly and positively correlated with RTL. Sex-stratified analysis showed that DAI (β = 0·006, P = 0·005) and its constituents vitamin E (β = 0·083, P = 0·012), Se (β = 0·093, P = 0·006), and Zn (β = 0·092, P = 0·034) were significantly and positively correlated with RTL among females. Meanwhile, among males, only vitamin E intake (β = 0·089, P = 0·013) was significantly and positively associated with RTL. Restricted cubic spline analysis revealed linear positive associations between DAI and its constituents’ (vitamin E, Se and Zn) intake and RTL in the total population. Sex-stratified analysis revealed a linear positive correlation between DAI and its constituents’ (vitamin E, Se and Zn) intake and RTL in females. Our study found a significant positive correlation between DAI and RTL, with sex differences.