| 1. |
- Cheng, Hong, et al.
(författare)
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Home environment exposure and sick building syndrome (SBS) symptoms among adults in southern China : Health associations in 2010 and 2019
- 2024
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Ingår i: Building and Environment. - : Elsevier. - 0360-1323 .- 1873-684X. ; 248
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We studied time trends in home environment and sick building syndrome (SBS) symptoms in a repeat study in five cities in southern China. Moreover, we studied associations between home environment exposure and SBS symptoms. Parents from randomly selected day care centers were invited. One parent per family answered a questionnaire on the home environment and their own SBS symptoms. Data collection was performed in two surveys in 2010 and 2019 (27,292 participants in 2010 and 32,073 in 2019). We used two-level logistic regression to analyze health associations. Asthma decreased from 1.7% to 1.5% (P < 0.05) but allergic rhinitis increased from 6.5% to 16.4% (P < 0.001). All SBS symptoms decreased from 2010 to 2019 (all P < 0.001). Most aspects of the home environment improved from 2010 to 2019 but there were less cleaning, more cats, dogs, and urbanization in 2019. Redecoration, new furniture, and pests were associated with most types of SBS symptoms, similarly in 2010 and 2019. Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) was associated with SBS symptoms in 2019 only. In conclusion, prevalence of SBS symptoms among young parents in southern China decreased from 2010 to 2019 but allergic rhinitis increased. Cockroaches, rats, mice, mosquitoes or flies can be consistent biological risk factors for SBS symptoms. Redecoration, buying new furniture and traffic air pollution are other risk factors for SBS symptoms. Daily cleaning, frequently putting bedding to sunshine, and having a fan in the bathroom can be protective factors. ETS is an emerging risk factor for SBS symptoms.
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| 2. |
- Zhang, Huilin, et al.
(författare)
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Exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in outdoor air and respiratory health, inflammation and oxidative stress biomarkers : A panel study in healthy young adults
- 2023
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 899
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) can be associated with different types of health effects. However, the systemic changes of health effects between fluctuations of PAHs exposure have not been established. In this study, urinary hydroxylated PAHs (OH-PAHs) and 12 biomarkers were determined among 36 students from the urban to the suburb in Taiyuan in 2019. The concentration of & sigma;12OH-PAHs in urban areas (28.2 and 21.4 & mu;g/g Cr) was significantly higher than that in suburban area (16.8 & mu;g/g Cr). The regression showed that hydroxy-phenanthrene (OH-Phe, 1/2/3/4/9-OH-Phe) was significantly positively correlated with lung function (PEF25 and PEF50), 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), interleukin-8 (IL-8), and fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO). Moreover, there were negative associations of 2-hydroxyfluorene (2-OH-Flu) with FVC and FEV1. 1 unit increase of 1-hydroxypyrene (1-OH-Pyr) was negatively associated with 18.8% FVC, 17.3% FEV1, and 26.4% PEF25 in the suburban location, respectively. During urban2, each unit change of 2-OH-Flu was associated with 10.9% FVC and 10.5% FEV1 decrease, which were higher than those in suburban location. 8-OHdG decreased by 32.0% with each unit increase in 3-hydroxyfluorene (3-OH-Flu) during urban2 (p < 0.05), while 1.9% in the suburban location. During the suburban period, the increase in OH-Phe was correlated with the decrease in malondialdehyde (MDA). The respiratory damage caused by PAHs in the urban disappeared after backing to the urban from the suburban area. Notably, despite the total significant liner mixed regression association of FeNO with multiple OH-PAHs, the association of FeNO with OH-PAHs was not significant during different periods except for 2-OH-Flu. Our findings suggested that short-term exposure to different concentrations of PAHs might cause changes in health effects and called for further research to investigate possible alterations between health effects and PAH exposure.
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| 3. |
- Zhang, Yunqiu, et al.
(författare)
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Nanomanganese cobaltate-decorated halloysite nanotubes for the complete degradation of ornidazole via peroxymonosulfate activation
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Colloid and Interface Science. - : Elsevier. - 0021-9797 .- 1095-7103. ; 630, s. 855-866
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Peroxymonosulfate (PMS) driven by halloysite nanotubes (HNTs) modified with nanomanganese cobaltate (MnCo2O4) generates reactive oxygen species (ROS) that offer high degradation efficiency and mineralization rates for many typical antibiotic pollutants, such as ornidazole (ONZ). The experimental results show that halloysite nanotubes (HNTs) modified with nanomanganese cobaltate (MnCo2O4@HNTs denoted as MCO@HNTs) can degrade ONZ completely over a wide pH range (6.08–11.00) with little influence of the pH value. MCO@HNTs + PMS exhibited higher catalytic activity and lower Co- and Mn-ion leaching rates. It also showed a strong anti-interference effect on natural lake water and anions. Additionally, PMS can be quickly activated and consumed in natural lakes to avoid secondary pollution. The roasting of MCO@HNTs showed good catalytic activity and stability after degrading ONZ. The combination of ion quenching and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) analysis illustrated that the MCO@HNTs + PMS system had a strong oxidation capacity, and the produced singlet oxygen (1O2) was the main ROS for ONZ degradation. The degradation pathway of ONZ via the MCO@HNTs + PMS system was proposed based on the types of intermediates determined via liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). This comprehensive study shows the preparation of a simple, environmentally friendly, and cheap PMS activation catalyst that has practical application value in the treatment of antibiotic wastewater and provides a focus on actual water testing with residual amount of PMS.
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| 4. |
- Zhang, Zefei, et al.
(författare)
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Associations between outdoor air pollution, ambient temperature and fraction of exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) in university students in northern China - A panel study
- 2022
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Ingår i: Environmental Research. - : Elsevier. - 0013-9351 .- 1096-0953. ; 212
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Northern China has severe air pollution, especially in winter. Fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) is an established biomarker of airway inflammation. Aim: To study associations between ambient temperature, air pollution and FeNO in university students in northern China. Methods: We performed a panel study in 67 university students without asthma diagnosis in the city of Taiyuan. FeNO was measured 6 times, over one heating season. Outdoor PM10, PM2.5, SO2, NO2 and O-3 were measured at a fixed location in the campus. SO2, NO2 and O-3 were measured 7 days (24 h/day) before the FeNO test. PM2.5 and PM10 were measured at different lag times (lag 1 day to lag 7 days). Temperature and carbon monoxide (CO) data were collected from a nearby monitoring station (lag 7). Linear mixed models were applied to study associations between exposure and FeNO, adjusting for gender, age, current smoking, height and furry pet or pollen allergy. Results: The overall geometric mean (GM) of FeNO was 17.2 ppb. GM of FeNO was lowest (12.9 ppb) in January and highest (20.0 ppb) in April. The range of lag 7 pollution was 105.0-339.0 mu g/m(3) for PM10, 72.0-180.0 mu g/m(3) for PM2.5, 36.0-347.0 mu g/m(3) for SO2, 26.0-69.0 mu g/m(3) for NO2, 31.0-163.0 mu g/m(3) for O-3 and 0.93-3.14 mg/m(3) for CO. The lag 7 temperature ranged from -4.5 to 20.1 degrees C. FeNO was consistently higher at higher outdoor temperature (p < 0.001). In multi-pollutant models with temperature adjustment, PM10, PM2.5 and SO2 were associated with FeNO (all p-values <0.001). In contrast, CO was negatively associated (protective) with FeNO (p < 0.001). Associations between exposure and FeNO were similar in men and women. Conclusion: PM10, PM2.5 and SO2 and outdoor temperature can be associated with airway inflammation, measured as FeNO, in young adults in northern China while CO could be negatively associated with FeNO.
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| 5. |
- Cao, Wei, et al.
(författare)
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Interaction With Social Robots : Improving Gaze Toward Face but Not Necessarily Joint Attention in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder
- 2019
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Psychology. - : FRONTIERS MEDIA SA. - 1664-1078. ; 10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It is widely recognized that robot-based interventions for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) hold promise, but the question remains as to whether social humanoid robots could facilitate joint attention performance in children with ASD. In this study, responsive joint attention was measured under two conditions in which different agents, a human and a robot, initiated joint attention via video. The participants were 15 children with ASD (mean age: 4.96 +/- 1.10 years) and 15 typically developing (TD) children (mean age: 4.53 +/- 0.90 years). In addition to analyses of fixation time and gaze transitions, a longest common subsequence approach (LCS) was employed to compare participants' eye movements to a predefined logical reference sequence. The fixation of TD toward agent's face was earlier and longer than children with ASD. Moreover, TD showed a greater number of gaze transitions between agent's face and target, and higher LCS scores than children with ASD. Both groups showed more interests in the robot's face, but the robot induced a lower proportion of fixation time on the target. Meanwhile participants showed similar gaze transitions and LCS results in both conditions, suggesting that they could follow the logic of the joint attention task induced by the robot as well as human. We have discussed the implications for the effects and applications of social humanoid robots in joint attention interventions.
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| 6. |
- Tanaka, Tomotaka, et al.
(författare)
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Head-to-head comparison of amplified plasmonic exosome Aβ42 platform and single-molecule array immunoassay in a memory clinic cohort
- 2021
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Ingår i: European Journal of Neurology. - : Wiley. - 1351-5101 .- 1468-1331. ; 28:5, s. 1479-1489
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background and purpose: Various blood biomarkers reflecting brain amyloid-β (Aβ) load have recently been proposed with promising results. However, to date, no comparative study amongst blood biomarkers has been reported. Our objective was to examine the diagnostic performance and cost effectiveness of three blood biomarkers on the same cohort. Methods: Using the same cohort (n = 68), the performances of the single-molecule array (Simoa) Aβ40, Aβ42, Aβ42/Aβ40 and the amplified plasmonic exosome (APEX) Aβ42 blood biomarkers were compared using amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) as the reference standard. The extent to which these blood tests can reduce the recruitment cost of clinical trials was also determined by identifying amyloid positive (Aβ+) participants. Results: Compared to Simoa biomarkers, APEX-Aβ42 showed significantly higher correlations with amyloid PET retention values and excellent diagnostic performance (sensitivity 100%, specificity 93.3%, area under the curve 0.995). When utilized for clinical trial recruitment, our simulation showed that pre-screening with blood biomarkers followed by a confirmatory amyloid PET imaging would roughly half the cost (56.8% reduction for APEX-Aβ42 and 48.6% for Simoa-Aβ42/Aβ40) compared to the situation where only PET imaging is used. Moreover, with 100% sensitivity, APEX-Aβ42 pre-screening does not increase the required number of initial participants. Conclusions: With its high diagnostic performance, APEX is an ideal candidate for Aβ+ subject identification, monitoring and primary care screening, and could efficiently enrich clinical trials with Aβ+ participants whilst halving recruitment costs.
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| 7. |
- Zhang, Tao, et al.
(författare)
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A SHIP DETECTOR BASED ON THE IMPROVED POLARIMETRIC COVARIANCE DIFFERENCE MATRIX
- 2018
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Ingår i: IGARSS 2018 - 2018 IEEE INTERNATIONAL GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING SYMPOSIUM. - : IEEE. - 9781538671504 ; , s. 709-712
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar data has been widely used for ship detection. In our earlier study, based on the differences between ship pixels and their surrounding background pixels, we designed a polarimetric covariance difference matrix (PCDM) to detect ships. Inadequately, the phase information of scattering differences is not included in PCDM. Aiming at this deficiency, here, we present an improved PCDM matrix (IPCDM). Then an IPCDM-based ship detector is further proposed. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the method, two full polarimetric datasets are adopted. In comparing with other methods, we find that the result of our method is better.
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| 8. |
- Zhang, Tao, et al.
(författare)
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Ship detection using the surface scattering similarity and scattering power
- 2019
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Ingår i: 2019 IEEE INTERNATIONAL GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING SYMPOSIUM (IGARSS 2019). - : IEEE. - 9781538691540 ; , s. 1264-1267
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sea surface and ship have different backscattering mechanisms, in which surface scattering is predominant for sea surface in the low sea state case. Based on this fact, many ship detectors have been developed by suppressing the surface scattering resulted from sea surface. Actually, small ship may also have strong surface scattering sometimes. In such a case, the methods of avoiding using surface scattering features may easily miss the detection of small ships. To verify this point, in this paper, we first analyze the shortcomings of An's method which is based on surface scattering similarity and the power maximization synthesis detector (PMS), and then improve it for detecting small ships more effectively. In order to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method, AIRSAR L-Band Polarimetric SAR dataset is exploited. Comparing to other methods, the new method shows a better ship detection performance.
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| 9. |
- Zhang, Yaoxin, et al.
(författare)
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Could social robots facilitate children with autism spectrum disorders in learning distrust and deception?
- 2019
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Ingår i: Computers in Human Behavior. - : Elsevier BV. - 0747-5632. ; 98, s. 140-149
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Social robots have been increasingly involved in our daily lives and provide a new environment for children's growth. The current study aimed to examine how children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)learned complex social rules from a social robot through distrust and deception games. Twenty children with ASD between the ages of 5–8 and 20 typically-developing (TD)peers whose age and IQ were matched participated in distrust and deception tasks along with an interview about their perception of the human-likeness of the robot. The results demonstrated that: 1)children with ASD were slower to learn to and less likely to distrust and deceive a social robot than TD children and 2)children with ASD who perceived the robot to appear more human-like had more difficulty in learning to distrust the robot. Besides, by comparing to a previous study the results showed that children with ASD appeared to have more difficulty in learning to distrust a human compared to a robot, particularly in the early phase of learning. Overall, our study verified that social robots could facilitate children with ASD's learning of some social rules and showed that children's perception of the robot plays an important role in their social learning, which provides insights on robot design and its clinical applications in ASD intervention.
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