Objective: This study aimed to investigate the quantitative effects of outdoor air pollution, represented by 10 µg/m3 increment of PM10, on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in China, United States and European Union through systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods: Publications in English and Chinese from PubMed and EMBASE were selected. The Cochrane Review Handbook of Generic Inverse Variance was used to synthesize the pooled effects on incidence, prevalence, mortality and hospital admission. Results: Outdoor air pollution contributed to higher incidence and prevalence of COPD. Short-term exposure was associated with COPD mortality increased by 6%, 1% and 1% in the European Union, the United States and China, respectively (p < 0.05). Chronic PM exposure produced a 10% increase in mortality. In a short-term exposure to 10 µg/m3 PM10 increment COPD mortality was elevated by 1% in China (p < 0.05) and hospital admission enrollment was increased by 1% in China, 2% in United States and 1% in European Union (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Outdoor air pollution contributes to the increasing burdens of COPD.10 µg/m3 increase of PM10 produced significant condition of COPD death and exacerbation in China, United States and European Union. Controlling air pollution will have substantial benefit to COPD morbidity and mortality.
Since it had been revealed that H. pylori infection pre-exists in gastric carcinoma and precancerous lesions, the results of Meta analysis present a strong evidence to support the conclusion that H. pylori infection is a risk factor for gastric carcinoma.
In today's fast‐paced and well‐connected world, consumer electronics are evolving rapidly. As a result, the amount of discarded electronic devices is becoming a major health and environmental concern. The rapid expansion of flexible electronics has the potential to transform consumer electronic devices from rigid phones and tablets to robust wearable devices. This means increased use of plastics in consumer electronics and the potential to generate more persistent plastic waste for the environment. Hence, today, the need for flexible biodegradable electronics is at the forefront of minimizing the mounting pile of global electronic waste. A “bioadvantaged” approach to develop a biodegradable, flexible, and application‐adaptable electronic components based on crop components and graphene is reported. More specifically, by combining zein, a corn‐derived protein, and aleuritic acid, a major monomer of tomato cuticles and sheellac, along with graphene, biocomposite conductors having low electrical resistance (≈10 Ω sq−1) with exceptional mechanical and fatigue resilience are fabricated. Further, a number of high‐performance electronic applications, such as THz electromagnetic shielding, flexible GHz antenna construction, and flexible solar cell electrode, are demonstrated. Excellent performance results are measured from each application comparable to conventional nondegrading counterparts, thus paving the way for the concept of “plant‐e‐tronics” towards sustainability.
Highly stretchable and conductive composites have gained tremendous research interests due to the imperative demands in the fields of stretchable electronics and soft robotics. However, it is challenging to maintain the original performance of the composites under complex external deformations. Here, a one‐step dual‐material 3D printing technique is developed to rationally assemble liquid metal (LM) into an elastomer lattice. The 3D interconnected and deformable liquid conductive network is supported by a highly ordered and robust polydimethylsiloxane lattice skeleton, yielding the resultant composites high electrical conductivity (1.98 × 106 S m−1), stretchability (180%), and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding effectiveness (72 dB). Unlike those composites with dispersed fillers, the LM/elastomer lattice composites deliver negligible electromechanical coupling, showing a negative resistance change of only −2% at a large tensile strain of 100%. The composites also exhibit strain‐invariant EMI shielding performance in a strain range of 0–100%, and present exceptional stability over 1000 rigorous cycles of stretching and releasing. The applications of the composites in flexible display circuits, microwave shielding layer, and EMI shields in wireless power transmission systems are demonstrated. The current findings suggest an effective strategy for fabricating LM‐based composites with precisely controlled and unprecedented multi‐functionality.
Optically controlled RF switches with a novel non-contact device architecture that achieves high performance in the millimeterwave-to-terahertz (mmW-THz) region are proposed and investigated through simulation. The significant change in conductivity in semiconductors caused by photogenerated carriers is used to develop RF switches having very high performance. By including a thin layer of insulator between the active semiconductor material and the metal contacts, the carrier concentration can be enhanced over that of conventional devices. For a prototype demonstration, G-band coplanar waveguide-based optical switches (using Si and Ge as active materials) with different contact geometries have been modeled and simulated. The proposed switches outperform both conventional solid-state switches and phase-change material-based switches in the switch figure-of-merit, and are promising for developing a novel class of tunable and reconfigurable mmW-THz circuits for advanced sensing, imaging, and communication.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.