Increased human water use combined with climate change have aggravated water scarcity from the regional to global scales. However, the lack of spatially detailed datasets limits our understanding of the historical water use trend and its key drivers. Here, we present a survey-based reconstruction of China’s sectoral water use in 341 prefectures during 1965 to 2013. The data indicate that water use has doubled during the entire study period, yet with a widespread slowdown of the growth rates from 10.66 km3⋅y−2before 1975 to 6.23 km3⋅y−2in 1975 to 1992, and further down to 3.59 km3⋅y−2afterward. These decelerations were attributed to reduced water use intensities of irrigation and industry, which partly offset the increase driven by pronounced socioeconomic development (i.e., economic growth, population growth, and structural transitions) by 55% in 1975 to 1992 and 83% after 1992. Adoptions for highly efficient irrigation and industrial water recycling technologies explained most of the observed reduction of water use intensities across China. These findings challenge conventional views about an acceleration in water use in China and highlight the opposing roles of different drivers for water use projections.

Up to now, the strategy to fabricate biomimetic dental enamel-like hydroxyapatite (HA) has attracted great interest due to the extremely high degree of architectural organization of HA crystals. In this study, in the absence of surfactants, organic solvent or template-directing agents, a facile method via direct transformation from monetite (CaHPO 4 ) single crystals was developed to synthesize HA with enamel-like hierarchical structures on the nano-to microscale. The suitably shaped CaHPO 4 precursor was first synthesized under simultaneous irradiation of microwave and ultrasound. The highly oriented HA bundles, constructed of tiny crystals in a parallel structure, were then fabricated through microwave treatment of the precursor in alkaline aqueous solution. The present study indicated that the formation of the highly oriented hierarchical structure of the obtained HA was due to the intrinsically ordered structure of CaHPO 4 , the structural similarity between CaHPO 4 and HA as well as the ultrafast transformation rate.

The objective of this study is to evaluate local response to a bioactive glass based composite putty (NovaBone Putty) in a vertebral body defect model in sheep, as compared to NovaBone, a bioactive glass particulate. Two time periods were used for the study, 6 and 12 weeks. Empty defects were also used as a control. In comparing the three test groups, the relative amount of new bone for both grafted defects was substantially greater than for the empty controls (P < 0.05). At 6 weeks, the bone formation was 42% for NovaBone Putty, 27% for NovaBone and 1.2% for the ungrafted empty defect. At 12 weeks, the bone formation was 51.4% for NovaBone Putty, 47.3% for NovaBone and 5.1% for the empty defect. NovaBone Putty, the test material, had greater bone content than the NovaBone, both of which were significantly greater than the empty control.