In January 2013, a severe regional haze occurred over the North China Plain. An online-coupled meteorology-chemistry model was employed to simulate the impacts of aerosol–meteorology interactions on fine particles (PM2.5) pollution during this haze episode. The response of PM2.5 to meteorology change constituted a feedback loop whereby planetary boundary layer (PBL) dynamics amplified the initial perturbation of PM2.5. High PM2.5concentrations caused a decrease of surface solar radiation. The maximal decrease in daily average solar radiation reached 53% in Beijing, thereby leading to a more stable PBL. The peak PBL height in Beijing decreased from 690 m to 590 m when the aerosol extinction was considered. Enhanced PBL stability suppressed the dispersion of air pollutants, and resulted in higher PM2.5 concentrations. The maximal increase of PM2.5 concentrations reached 140 μg m−3 in Beijing. During most PM2.5 episodes, primary and secondary particles increased simultaneously. These results imply that the aerosol–radiation interactions played an important role in the haze episode in January 2013.
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the association of known polymorphisms in the lipid metabolic pathway with body mass index (BMI), and estimate their interactions with soybean food intake. METHODS: A community-based cross-sectional survey was conducted in a Chinese Han population. BMI, soybean food intake, and single nucleotide polymorphisms of rs599839, rs3846662, rs3846663, rs12916, rs174547, rs174570, rs4938303, and rs1558861 were measured in 944 subjects. A multivariate logistic regression was used to analyze the association of the studied polymorphisms with BMIs. The expectation-maximization algorithm was employed to evaluate the extent of linkage disequilibrium between pairwise polymorphisms. The gene-environment interaction was assessed in the general multifactor dimensionality reduction model. RESULTS: The polymorphisms of rs3846662 and rs3846663 were associated with 10% highest BMIs when comparing to the 10% lowest values both in individuals and haplotype-based association tests. Although no statistically significant gene-environment interactions were found, people with the haplotype composed of C allele in rs3846662 and T allele in rs3846663 and low frequency of soybean intake had significantly higher risk to overweight and obesity as compared with those with the haplotype consisting of T allele in rs3846662 and C allele in rs3846663 and highly frequent soybean food intake, with an odds ratio of 1.64 (95% confidence interval: 1.15-2.34, P<0.01) after adjusting for the common confounders. CONCLUSION: Our study has suggested that rs3846662 and rs3846663 may be the potential candidate polymorphisms for obesity, and their effect on the pathogenesis could be mediated by the frequency of soybean food intake.
Recently, highly efficient solar cells based on organic-inorganic perovskites have been intensively reported for developing fabricating methods and device structures. Additional power conversion efficiency should be gained without increasing the thickness and the complexity of the devices to accord with practical applications. In this paper, a rough interface between perovskite and HTM was fabricated in perovskite solar cells to enhance the light scattering effect and improve the charge transport. The parameters related to the morphology have been systematically investigated by sequential deposition. Simultaneous enhancements of short-circuit current and power conversion efficiency were observed in both CH3NH3PbI3 and CH3NH3PbI3-xClx devices containing the rough interface, with power conversion efficiencies of 10.2% and 10.8%, respectively. Our finding provides an efficient and universal way to control the morphology and further optimize perovskite solar cells for devices by sequential deposition with various structures.
This study investigated the influence of two representative suspended clay particles, bentonite and kaolinite, on the transport of titanium dioxide nanoparticles (nTiO2) in saturated quartz sand in both NaCl (1 and 10 mM ionic strength) and CaCl2 solutions (0.1 and 1 mM ionic strength) at pH 7. The breakthrough curves of nTiO2 with bentonite or kaolinite were higher than those without the presence of clay particles in NaCl solutions, indicating that both types of clay particles increased nTiO2 transport in NaCl solutions. Moreover, the enhancement of nTiO2 transport was more significant when bentonite was present in nTiO2 suspensions relative to kaolinite. Similar to NaCl solutions, in CaCl2 solutions, the breakthrough curves of nTiO2 with bentonite were also higher than those without clay particles, while the breakthrough curves of nTiO2 with kaolinite were lower than those without clay particles. Clearly, in CaCl2 solutions, the presence of bentonite in suspensions increased nTiO2 transport, whereas, kaolinite decreased nTiO2 transport in quartz sand. The attachment of nTiO2 onto clay particles (both bentonite and kaolinite) were observed under all experimental conditions. The increased transport of nTiO2 in most experimental conditions (except for kaolinite in CaCl2 solutions) was attributed mainly to the clay-facilitated nTiO2 transport. The straining of larger nTiO2-kaolinite clusters yet contributed to the decreased transport (enhanced retention) of nTiO2 in divalent CaCl2 solutions when kaolinite particles were copresent in suspensions.