Bioleaching offers a sustainable alternative to conventional metallurgy, but its application is limited by low leaching rates, inhibition by heavy metals, and prolonged adaptation. Here, we engineered Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans, a model bioleaching microorganism ubiquitous in mining environments, by modulating intracellular bis(3′ −5′)-cyclic dimeric guanosine monophosphate (c-di-GMP) signaling to enhance biofilm formation, bioleaching efficiency, and arsenic tolerance. Overexpression of diguanylate cyclase genes AFE_1379, AFE_0053, and AFE_1373 produced engineered strains S-222, S-306, and S-651, respectively, with 1.7-, 2.5-, and 5-fold higher intracellular c-di-GMP levels than the control carrying the empty plasmid vector. Under arsenic-free condi tions, all engineered strains showed similar growth profiles, but S-306, at intermediate c-di-GMP (306.3 ± 28.1 μg mg−1), formed cytochrome-rich biofilms with low internal resistance and achieved the highest bioleaching efficiency. Under arsenic stress, S-651, at high c-di-GMP (651.4 ± 15.5 μg mg−1), developed polysaccharide-rich biofilms that enhanced arsenic tolerance, scorodite (FeAsO₄·2H₂O) precipitation, and bioleaching performance. Transcriptomic analysis confirmed these strain-specific gene expression patterns. These findings demonstrate that tuning intracellular c-di-GMP enables A. ferrooxidans to reprogram biofilm matrix composition for extracellular electron uptake and heavy-metal resistance, providing a synthetic biology strategy for environmentally friendly bioleaching and tailings recycling
Elite athlete mothers are often positioned within competing cultural narratives: motherhood is framed as incompatible with high-performance sport, yet successful return-to-sport stories are frequently celebrated through ideals of the sporting ‘supermom’. This paper explores how motherhood is experienced by three Chinese Olympic medallists who returned to elite competition following childbirth within the Juguo Tizhi (Whole Nation System). Drawing on a feminist Foucauldian framework and narrative analysis, the paper examines how athlete-mother subjectivities are negotiated through disciplinary power, affective governance and technologies of the self within China’s state-sponsored sport system. The findings suggest that the maternal body becomes a site of bio-psycho-political tension, where postpartum embodiment, caregiving responsibilities and elite sporting demands converge. Participants’ narratives revealed how feelings of kuiqian (guilt and indebtedness) operated as a form of affective governance, transforming maternal separation and sacrifice into powerful motivations for continued athletic achievement. Simultaneously, motherhood functioned as a rupture that enabled athletes to renegotiate their relationships with sport, family and self, giving rise to processes of re-becoming and renewed forms of agency within, rather than outside, institutional power relations. The paper offers a culturally situated account of athlete motherhood and illustrates how maternal agency is continuously negotiated within a highly institutionalised sporting environment.
Background: Missed treatment workdays can prolong overall treatment time and may reduce tumor control, yet routine audits often conflate weekends, statutory holidays, and departmentally accepted rest schedules with untreated institutional workdays. Methods: We quantified calendar-defined missed-workday gaps—inter-fraction intervals containing ≥1 untreated institutional workday after excluding routine rest days—among patients with first treatment between June 2021 and December 2025 who were linkable between the MOSAIQ radiotherapy information system and the institutional oncology database (1,319 patients; 1,342 episodes). A locked stratified sample of 100 algorithm-positive gaps underwent documentation-based chart review as unplanned relevant (UR) or planned/appropriate (PA). We analyzed linkage sensitivity, opportunity-adjusted site rates with patient-clustered confidence intervals (CIs), opportunity-offset Poisson generalized estimating equations (GEE) including calendar year, and episode-clustered phase GEE. Results: Under the documentation-based chart-review rule, 92 of 100 algorithm-positive gaps were labeled UR (17 department/equipment; 75 patient-factor) and 8 PA. Gaps occurred in 638/1,342 episodes (47.5%; patient-level 48.0%). Linked versus unlinked prevalence was 48.2% versus 51.7% (absolute difference −3.4 percentage points, 95% CI −11.2 to 4.4; P = 0.435). Among subgroups with ≥50 episodes, head and neck had the highest prevalence (75.3%) and breast the lowest (41.3%); opportunity-adjusted rates were 5.63 (cluster-bootstrap 95% CI 4.76–6.52) versus 2.63 (2.36–2.92) per 100 opportunities. Opportunity-offset Poisson GEE with calendar year gave a head-and-neck versus breast incidence rate ratio (IRR) of 2.99 (95% CI 2.18–4.11). An exploratory phase GEE (29,763 intervals; 1,323 clusters) showed a late versus early odds ratio (OR) of 1.31 (95% CI 1.12–1.54; P = 0.0009; absolute rates 2.8% vs 3.6%); after site, year, and intent adjustment, the OR was 1.32 (95% CI 1.12–1.57). Conclusions: This operational audit of institutional workdays without recorded treatment—rather than clinically confirmed unplanned interruptions—shows frequent gaps after excluding routine rest. Most reviewed positives received patient-factor labels under a documentation rule. Calendar-aware auditing may support departmental monitoring; priority-based compensation remains a proposed application.
Wisdom is theorized to regulate the ethical use of cognitive strengths, but empirical evidence for its moderating role remains limited and inconsistent. This research investigates whether wisdom guides the application of intelligence and creativity toward prosocial ends, using domain-consistent, humanistic assessments across two studies (N = 933). Study 1 employed performance-based measures to examine how state-level wisdom influences the prosocial deployment of social intelligence and real-life creativity in morally complex scenarios. Study 2 used self-report measures to explore trait-level associations among integrative wisdom, social intelligence, creativity, and social mindfulness. Across both studies, wisdom consistently moderated the link between creativity and prosociality: higher wisdom predicted either stronger positive associations (Study 2) or buffered against ethically problematic use (Study 1). In contrast, no consistent evidence was found that wisdom similarly guided the use of intelligence. These findings suggest that wisdom functions as a selective moral regulator, more effectively shaping the ethical expression of open-ended, generative capacities such as creativity than of structured, instrumental capacities such as intelligence. The results underscore the importance of aligning constructs within shared evaluative domains and provide preliminary empirical support for wisdom as a meta-capacity that channels value-sensitive strengths toward socially constructive ends.
Carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) is pivotal to China's carbon neutrality goal by 2060. A national scale dynamic source-sink matching optimization model is developed to explore CCUS deployment across 31
provinces and 16 sedimentary basins under eight integrated scenarios, which combine two emission pathways
(Announced Pledges Scenario, APS; Stated Policies Scenario, STEPS) with four storage growth pathways
(CS1–CS4). The model quantifies CO₂ capture from coal-fired power, gas-fired power, steel, cement, and
chemical plants, and evaluates storage via enhanced oil recovery (EOR), enhanced gas recovery (EGR), enhanced
water recovery (EWR), and enhanced coal bed methane (ECBM). Under the CE1-CS1 pathway cumulative CO₂
capture and storage reaches 11.1 billion tons by 2060 with the Ordos Basin storing 4.24 billion tons. Coal-fired
power plants dominate capture contributions, while EWR and EGR emerge as predominant utilization modes. In
STEPS, the CE2-CS1 pathway featuring slower emission decline but sustained storage growth yields a cumulative
capture of 32.59 billion tons. Hebei, Shanxi, and Shandong collectively account for 26.5% of national capture,
with the Ordos Basin storing 8.29 billion tons. Here, EGR and ECBM become the dominant storage strategies,
reflecting higher residual emission and extended capture timelines. Economic analysis shows that the CE1-CS1
pathway generates benefits totaling 4849.5 billion yuan. Proximity between major emitters (e.g., Shanxi) and
large storage basins (e.g., Ordos) is critical for cost-effective transport. The study highlights that coal-fired power
remains the primary CCUS target, while EOR/EGR offer high-value utilization opportunities. These findings
provide a data-driven framework for scaling CCUS in China and insights for global carbon management.
Insufficient oxygen mass transfer and inadequate charge separation are two critical factors restricting the photocatalytic efficiency of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) for water purification. Here, we develop a facile strategy to simultaneously boost oxygen mass transfer and charge separation in COFs through constructing efficient oxygen capture tentacles via replacing conventional pyridine groups with nicotinic-acid/methyl-nicotinate groups, which have tunable oxygen affinity. Molecular dynamics simulations and in situ characterizations reveal that compared to pyridine groups in COF-EP1 and nicotinic-acid groups in COF-EP2, respectively serving as weak and medium oxygen capture tentacles, methyl-nicotinate groups in COF-EP3 can serve as strong oxygen capture tentacles due to their superb oxygen affinity, which can enhance oxygen interaction energies and thus promote oxygen mass transfer. Owing to the optimal charge polarization, methyl-nicotinate groups in COF-EP3 also strengthen internal electric fields to facilitate charge separation. COF-EP3 thus achieves exceptional photocatalytic degradation performance towards sulfadiazine (99.5% removal in 25 min, k = 0.21 min−1), which is 16.2 and 2.8 times higher than that of COF-EP1 (k = 0.013 min−1) and COF-EP2 (k = 0.076 min−1), respectively. Besides, COF-EP3 exhibits high sulfadiazine degradation performance in complicated water matrices, continuous-flow system, and scaled-up reactor, demonstrating its practical application potential.
This paper investigates the appropriation of offline linguistic landscapes (LLs) on Chinese social media, with a particular focus on how these LLs are creatively deployed for playful mockery and disruption of existing social order. Specifically, we present detailed analyses of a blog post and its comments to illustrate how Weibo users creatively appropriate offline LLs to playfully mock universities. Drawing on frameworks of Geosemiotics and ?ambient affiliation?, we examine the semiotic mechanisms through which the playful mockery is realized and how such mockery is perceived by the audience. The findings show that the creative appropriation of offline LLs is realized via three strategies ? resemiotization, emplacement, and homonym. Some users align with the ?mockery? bond by showing their amusement, whereas others promote the bond by posting similar cases of mockery to engage potential readers in the digital practice. We argue that these creative semiotic practices not only reflect users? agency of exploiting the playful potential of social media for expressing their sentiments, but may also deconstruct the general portrayal of universities as the ?ivory tower? of talent cultivation and knowledge production. This may, in turn, diminish the prestige of universities and risk creating an opposition between the public and these institutions.
High quality factor and sensitivity are critical to wireless sensors targeting small perturbation detection. Although introducing parity-time symmetric dynamics promises enhanced performance, the symmetric scheme often yields limited sensing behaviors. In particular, its implementation is hindered by the inherent difficulties in decoupling capacitance- and coupling strength–induced responses, the requirements of delicately matching and/or tuning both gain and loss, and the need of strong coupling strength. Here, we report a concept of critical point (CP)–based wireless sensors that do not rely on balanced gain-loss configurations, delivering ultrahigh quality factor with an extended interrogation distance. Owing to a sharp and deep reflection dip, the CP-based scheme can resolve the change in coupling coefficient down to 1.92 × 10−4 and features frequency-independent responses. Furthermore, the CP-based scheme allows for identification of tiny asymmetric capacitive perturbations as small as 2.5 × 10−5 without requiring active tuning of the other parameters under weak coupling. Critical-point wireless sensors with unbalanced gain and loss enable reliable and sensitive detection under weak coupling.
This study examines a widely used yet underexplored digital affordance specific to the Chinese social media platform WeChat, i.e., the “tap-tap” (拍一拍) function, with a particular focus on users’ metacommunicative reflections on its role in online communication. Adopting a discourse-centered online ethnographic approach that combines analyses of naturally-occurring instances of “tap-tap” use and interviews with these users, this study explores the creative ways in which participants exploit the communicative potential of “tap-tap”, and how they interpret the role of this technological affordance in their online interactions. Drawing on the concept of ‘metacommunicative reflexivity’ in sociolinguistics and communication studies, as well as ‘interpretative flexibility’ in the sociology of science, we highlight the agency of users as active adaptors of the ‘intended scripts’ of digital technologies for meaning-making and interpersonal connection. The study shows that “tap-tap” is inherently interactive, which is evident not only in its content design but also in users’ active deployment of this function for self-representation, interpersonal alignment, and conversation management. By emphasizing users’ metacommunicative reflections on a digital affordance specific to WeChat messaging, this study offers contextualized insights for understanding the complexity and creativity involved in contemporary digital communication.
