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Significant amounts of ammonia, nitric acid and hydrochloric acid as ammonium particle precursors have been found in urban polluted air. In order to advance understanding the formation and dissociation of ammonium nitrate and ammonium chloride, an on-line analyzer for monitoring aerosols and gases in the ambient air was employed to measure the concentrations of sulfate, nitrate and chloride in aerosols as well as related gaseous precursors at one hour resolution. The highest levels of summed hourly-averaged sulfate, nitrate, chloride and ammonium reached up to 177.7 μg/m 3 in PM 10 from 12 to 14 June, and 101.2 μg/m 3 in PM 2.5 from 1 to 3 July, 2009 in Shanghai. Ammonium nitrate and ammonium chloride were popular in aerosols with a strong linear correlation between non-sulfate ammonium (ns-NH 4 + ) and nitrate (or nitrate plus chloride). Ammonium equivalent concentration was always less than the sum of sulfate, nitrate and chloride due to ammonium-poor aerosols, whereas the atmosphere was ammonia-rich in gas phase. The ratio of gaseous nitric acid to total nitrate less than that of hydrochloric acid to total chloride both in PM 10 and PM 2.5 indicated that ammonium nitrate was more favored to be formed than ammonium chloride.

Nomogram has demonstrated its capability in individualized estimates of survival in diverse cancers. Here we retrospectively investigated 1195 patients with esophageal squamous-cell carcinoma (ESCC) who underwent radical esophagectomy at Zhejiang Cancer Hospital in Hangzhou, China. We randomly assigned two-thirds of the patients to a training cohort (n = 797) and one-third to a validation cohort (n = 398). Cox proportional hazards regression analyses were performed using the training cohort, and a nomogram was developed for predicting 3-year and 5-year overall survival rates. Multivariate analysis identified tumor length, surgical approach, number of examined lymph node, number of positive lymph node, extent of positive lymph node, grade, and depth of invasion as independent risk factors for survival. The discriminative ability of the nomogram was externally determined using the validation cohort, showing that the nomogram exhibited a sufficient level of discrimination according to the C-index (0.715, 95% CI 0.671–0.759). The C-index of the nomogram was significantly higher than that of the sixth edition (0.664, P-value<0.0001) and the seventh edition (0.696, P-value<0.0003) of the TNM classification. This study developed the first nomogram for ESCC, which can be applied in daily clinical practice for individualized survival prediction.

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Nitrate Ammonia Alkaline metals of H 2 SO 4 and HNO 3 to form particulate SO 4 2− and NO 3 −. The relationships between mass fractions of SO 4 2− and NO 3 − in those ranges of different alkaline metal ion content also suggested that alkaline metal ions participate in the competing neutralization reaction of sulfate and nitrate. The implication of the current study is that in some regions the chemistry to incorporate sulfur and nitrogen into particle phase might be largely affected by desert/fugitive dust and sea salt, besides NH 3 . This implication is particularly relevant in coastal China and those areas with strong influence of dust storm in the North China Plain (NCP), both of which host a number of megacities with deteriorating air quality.