Impact Assessment

Background: Given that many people today spend most of their time indoors, indoor environmental quality is a major public health concern.Climate change is altering indoor conditions by raising temperatures, increasing fluctuations in humidity, and intensifying extreme weather.These changes affect indoor microbial communities and chemical pollutant exposures, suggesting a need for monitoring approaches going beyond traditional ventilation strategies.Objectives: This review summarizes the impacts of climate change on indoor microbial communities and bioaerosols, their interactions with key chemical pollutants, and the potential use of AI-based systems for integrated monitoring.Methods: A PRISMA-based systematic review was conducted using PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science (2000~2025).Searches covered climate change, indoor air quality, bioaerosols, microbiomes, particulate matter, HVAC systems, and AI-based monitoring.Studies were included if they addressed climate-microbe interactions, pollutant-related microbial or health effects, or AI models for indoor environmental risk prediction.Non-indoor-environment studies, lab-only microbial work, duplicates, and grey literature were excluded.Results: Climate change was associated with shifts in indoor microbial ecosystems, including increases in pathogenic fungi, bacteria, allergens, and viral persistence.High temperature and humidity with poor ventilation created microecological high-risk zones.Chemical pollutants strengthened these effects by extending microbial survival or by increasing host susceptibility.AI tools showed high accuracy in microbial detection and reasonable performance in short-term air quality forecasting.Conclusions: Climate change is increasing indoor health risks through combined microbial and chemical exposures.AI-integrated monitoring systems that incorporate real-time environmental, microbial, and chemical data are needed to support future indoor environmental health management.

Microdroplets present distinct reaction microenvironments for aqueous heterogeneous catalysis due to their miniature reaction domains and the asymmetric gas–liquid interfacial electric fields that they generate. This study reports the development of an integrated system that combines the asymmetric gas–liquid interfaces of microdroplets with sulfur-doped bismuth tungstate (S–Bi2WO6) photocatalysis. This novel system demonstrated remarkable efficiency, achieving the removal of 99.8% tetracycline and 81.2% ciprofloxacin, 10 mg L–1 each, within 20 min, with kinetic constants 6 and 3 times higher than those in bulk solution. The energy consumption per unit TOC removal decreased by 52%, reaching 0.0435 kWh. Furthermore, the measured concentration of interfacial •OH reached 2218 μM, which is 6 times higher than that in microdroplets alone and 2.7 times higher than in bulk photocatalysis. Comprehensive characterizations and density functional theory (DFT) analyses revealed that sulfur doping narrowed the band gap by ∼0.5 eV, improved charge separation and transfer, and enhanced interfacial compatibility and surface hydrophobicity. These modifications strengthened the coupling between S–Bi2WO6 and the microdroplets interface, intensifying local electric fields and promoting the enrichment and activation of reactants, thereby enhancing the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Molecular-level simulations (MD, frontier orbitals, Fukui functions), corroborated by LC-MS, further revealed interface-biased orientations that expose electron-rich regions (e.g., CIP quinolone/piperazine; TC dimethylamine/phenolic groups). This orientation drives preferential •OH attack and accelerates defluorination, demethylation, and ring cleavage. The results provide mechanistic insight into asymmetric-interface photocatalysis and establish a microdroplets-enhanced S–Bi2WO6 platform for efficient and energy-positive antibiotic mineralization.

Nanoplastics are ubiquitous in aquatic environments, and elucidating their bioaccumulation behavior is essential for assessing toxicity and trophic transfer risks. While most studies focus on nanoplastics properties (e.g., type, size, surface charge), the influence of organismal growth stage remains unclear. Through bioaccumulation kinetic experiments with 10 mg/L polystyrene nanoplastics (PSNPs), this study found that Tetrahymena thermophila (T. thermophila) in the lag phase (cell density 4 × 104 cells/mL) exhibited the highest uptake rate of nanoplastics, 1.2-5.8 times that of the exponential phase (1-5 × 105 cells/mL) and 7.7 times that of the stationary phase (>5 × 105 cells/mL). Lag phase cells also had a larger specific surface area (0.319 vs. 0.271/0.269 μm-1), supporting their heightened uptake capacity. Under PSNP exposure, exponential and stationary phase cells showed significantly elevated reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels, accompanied by downregulated superoxide dismutase (SOD) and stable catalase (CAT) activity, indicating impaired antioxidant defense and potential redirection of energy toward stress mitigation. Consistent with efficient internalization, confocal imaging revealed clear PSNP colocalization within food vacuoles of lag period cells. Proteomic and transcriptomic analysis further confirmed the upregulation of carrier proteins, FAD/FMN oxidoreductases, and pathways associated with cellular components (membrane and organelle membrane) and molecular functions (transporter activity and transmembrane transporter activity) in lag-phase T. thermophila. Collectively, these findings provide a molecular-level understanding of the multi-phase-dependent bioaccumulation of PSNPs, offering critical insights for assessing the environmental risks of polystyrene nanoplastics in dynamic aquatic ecosystems.

双酚A（BPA）及其类似物统称为双酚类化合物（BPs），这类物质主要用于生产聚碳酸酯塑料和环氧树脂，因此广泛分布于各类环境介质、人体组织及代谢产物中。现有研究表明，BPs会对神经系统、生殖系统、免疫系统和代谢系统产生不良影响。本文将固相支撑液液萃取（SLE）与超高效液相色谱-串联质谱（UHPLC-MS/MS）技术结合，建立了一种人体尿液中17种BPs的高通量测定方法。样品经酶解处理后，依次进行全自动SLE净化、氮吹浓缩和复溶等步骤。使用CAPCELL PAK ADME色谱柱（100 mm×2.1 mm，2 μm）进行分离，以0.05 mmol/L氟化铵水溶液和0.05 mmol/L氟化铵甲醇溶液作为流动相进行梯度洗脱。质谱检测采用电喷雾电离（ESI）负离子扫描模式，在多反应监测（MRM）模式下进行，通过保留时间及离子丰度比进行定性，内标法进行定量。在优化的条件下，17种BPs可实现有效分离。17种BPs在对应的质量浓度范围内线性关系良好，相关系数（r）≥0.998 6，检出限（LOD）为0.002~0.489 μg/L，定量限（LOQ）为0.005~0.986 μg/L。选取低本底含量的儿童混合尿样为基质，在低、中、高3个加标水平下进行加标回收试验，结果表明，17种BPs的回收率为61.1%~121.7%，日内精密度为1.3%~11.2%，日间精密度为3.7%~19.0%。采用本方法对50份随机尿样进行测定，结果表明，共有11种BPs被检出，其中双酚S（BPS）和BPA的检出率最高，分别为98.0%和86.0%，检出水平中位值分别为0.075 μg/L和0.829 μg/L。本文所建方法操作简便、灵敏可靠，适用于人体尿液中17种BPs的快速定量分析，可为人群BPs暴露风险评估提供有效的技术支撑。

More frequent global wildfire events intensify the exposure risks of nitrophenols through brown carbon (BrC) emissions. Radical reactions dominate the fates of nitrophenols in surface, municipal, and atmospheric waters, yet the involved reaction kinetics and mechanisms remain poorly understood. In this work, by combining transient and steady-state multispectral analyses, the second-order rate constants (k) for nitrophenols and biomass-burning BrC reacting with HO• as well as common secondary radicals (e.g., Cl2•-, CO3•-, and NO3•) were determined (k ≈ 105-1010 M-1 s-1 at pH 2.0-10.0 for both protonated and deprotonated nitrophenols), most of which are reported for the first time. We also experimentally demonstrated that the reactions of nitrophenols and BrC with various radicals could produce a substantial amount of HONO/NO2- (a key precursor of tropospheric HO•), with molar yields reaching ∼50%. Mechanistic investigations revealed that the phenoxy radical (PhO•), generated from either single electron transfer or addition-elimination reactions during the radical reactions of nitrophenols, acted as a universal intermediate for the denitration. Hence, the new kinetic and mechanistic insights suggest that the radical-induced denitration process of BrC and nitrophenols in acidic waters may serve as a previously overlooked HONO source, but such denitration does not guarantee detoxification due to the simultaneous generation of high-risk biphenols. This work highlights the critical role of secondary radicals in nitrophenols and BrC transformation across different waters, shedding light on several unforeseen chemical impacts driven by intensified global wildfires.

While scoring rubrics are widely used to evaluate student writing, they often fail to provide actionable feedback. Delivering such feedback—especially in an automated, scalable manner—requires the standardized detection of finer-grained information within a student’s essay. Achieving this level of detail demands the same rigor in development and training as creating a high-quality rubric. To this end, we describe the development of annotation guidelines aligned with state standards for detecting these elements, outline the annotator training process, and report strong inter-rater agreement results from a large-scale annotation effort involving nearly 20,000 essays. To further validate this approach, we connect annotations to broader patterns in student writing using Latent Class Analysis (LCA). Through this analysis, we identify distinct writing patterns from these fine-grained annotations and demonstrate their meaningful associations with overall rubric scores. Our findings show promise for how fine-grained analysis of argumentative essays can support students, at scale, in becoming more effective argumentative essay writers.