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Starbucks expects to add 2,150 new stores and 1,100 new online stores in the next fiscal year, and it is expected to open an additional 600 stores in China. According to Lawson, at present, the 1,550 stores in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai (hosting 850 stores alone) that sell freshly ground coffee have a total sales volume of about one million cups per month. Last year, Starbucks accelerated the speed of opening stores in China while closing stores in the U.S. and Canada. [Extracted from the article]

According to the cataloging and imaging applications for high orbit objects, a space-based constellation running in sub-geosynchronous orbits is presented in this paper, which has the function of both cataloging and imaging. To meet the synchronization belt object detection cataloging requirements, the influence of the constellation orbit deployment and optical payload scanning mode on the detection efficiency is analyzed and deduced, and there are more feasible solutions for the constellation composed of two prograde orbit satellites with higher comprehensive efficiency. An attitude guidance law meeting the detection requirements is proposed and applied to one solution taken from the feasible solutions. The simulation results show that the constellation composed of two prograde orbit satellites can traverse seamlessly all the geosynchronous Earth orbit objects whose inclination are not more than the semifield angle of the optical payload in both summer solstice and autumnal equinox, the detections are not less than 4 times and the observation arc length is not less than 1 minute, and the conclusion agrees with the theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four new triterpene saponins, ginsenosides Rh14-Rh17 (1-4), along with two known compounds, 20(S)-ginsenoside Rg2 and dammar-(E)-20(22),24-diene-3β,6α,12β-triol, were isolated from the stems and leaves of Panax ginseng. The structures of the new compounds were elucidated as 3β,6α,12β,24ξ-tetrahydroxydammar-(E)-20(22),25-diene 6-O-α-L-rhamnopyranosyl-(1→2)-β-D-glucopyranoside (1), 3β,12β,24ξ-trihydroxy-dammar-(E)-20 (22),25-diene 3-O-β-D-glucopyranosyl-(1→2)-β-D-glucopyranoside (2), 3β,6α,12β-trihydroxy-dammar-(E)-20(22),24-diene 3-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (3), and 3-oxo-6α,12β,20(S)-trihydroxydammar-24-ene 6-O-α-L-rhamnopyranosyl-(1→2)-β-D-glucopyranoside (4) bymeans of extensive spectroscopic and chemical methods, respectively. The isolated compoundswere tested for in vitro cytotoxicity against HL-60 cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present new U–Pb age data for granitoids in the Central Sikhote–Alin orogenic belt in SE Russia, which refute the established opinion about the absence of the Late Cretaceous magmatism at the eastern margin of the Palaeo-Asian continent. It was previously thought that a period of magmatic quiescence occurred from 88 to 50 Ma, related to subduction of the Palaeo-Pacific plate under the eastern margin of the Palaeo-Asian continent, although this is inconsistent with evidence from the Sikhote–Alin, Sakhalin and Japan regions. Three suites of plutonic rocks with different ages were identified in this study. The first suite has ages of 105–92 Ma and formed in a syn-orogenic setting. The second (86–83 Ma) and third (c. 73 Ma) suites formed during the post-orogenic stage of the Sikhote–Alin orogenic belt. The second and third suites were coeval with Late Cretaceous granitoids that formed in a supra-subduction continental arc known as the Eastern Sikhote–Alin volcanic–plutonic belt. However, the studied rocks are located far inland from the Eastern Sikhote–Alin volcanic–plutonic belt. The ages of the studied granitoids coincide with the timing of a change in the angle of convergence between the Palaeo-Pacific plate and eastern margin of the Palaeo-Asian continent. This change in motion of the oceanic plate with respect to the continental plate was probably caused by a rupture in the subducted slab (i.e. a slab tear), followed by asthenospheric upwelling and partial melting of the overlying crust, which ultimately generated post-orogenic intrusive magmatism. Supplementary material: Laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry zircon U–Pb data of the Bikin–Bol. Ussurka granitoid suites are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5738616 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aspergillus niger is a common pathogenic fungus causing postharvest rot of fruit and vegetable, whereas the knowledge on virulence factors is very limited. Superoxide dismutase [SOD (EC 1.15.1.10)] is an important metal enzyme in fungal defense against oxidative damage. Thus, we try to study whether Cu/Zn-SOD is a virulence factor in A. niger. Cu/Zn-SOD encoding gene sodC was deleted in A. niger [MA70.15 (wild type)] by homologous recombination. The deletion of sodC led to decreased SOD activity in A. niger, suggesting that sodC did contribute to full enzyme activity. ΔsodC strain showed normal mycelia growth and sporulation compared with wild type. However, sodC deletion markedly increased the cell's sensitivity to intracellular superoxide anion generator menadione. Besides, spore germination under menadione and H2O2 stresses were significantly retarded in ΔsodC mutant compared with wild type. Further results showed that sodC deletion induced higher superoxide anion production and higher content of H2O2 and malondialdehyde (MDA) compared with wild type, supporting the role of SOD in metabolism of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Furthermore, ΔsodC mutant had a reduced virulence on Chinese white pear (Pyrus bretschneideri) as lesion development by tlsoiIC was significantly less than wild type. The determination of superoxide anion, H2O2, and MDA in A. wger-infected pear showed that Chinese white pear infected with ΔsodC accumulated less superoxide anion, H2O2, and MDA compared with that of wild type A. niger, implying that ΔsodC induced an attenuated response in Chinese white pear during fruit-pathogen interaction. Our results indicate that sodC gene contributes to the full virulence of A. niger during infection on fruit. Aspergillus niger is one of the most common species found in fungal communities. It is an important fermentation industrial strain and is also known to cause the most severe symptoms in fruit during long-term storage (Pel et ak, 2007). Meanwhile, plants activate their signaling pathways to trigger defense responses to limit pathogen expansion. One of the earliest host responses after pathogen attack is oxidative burst, during which large quantities of ROS are generated by different host enzyme systems, such as glucose oxidase (Govrin and Levine, 2000). ROS such as singlet oxygen, superoxide anion, hydroxyl (OH-), and H2O2 are released to hinder the advance of pathogens (Gara et al., 2003). ROS can react with and damage cellular molecules, such as DNA, protein, and lipids, which will limit fungal propagation in the host plant (Apel and Hirt, 2004). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A parallel fully implicit finite volume solver for the thermal convection problem in the Earth's outer core is presented. • The solver is based on a pseudo-compressibility approach and an adaptive time stepping method. • A Newton–Krylov–Schwarz algorithm is applied to achieve good parallel scalability. • Highly accurate numerical results are obtained by using the proposed solver. A parallel and fully implicit method is developed for numerical simulations of the thermal convection of an incompressible fluid in a rotating spherical shell. The method is based on a pseudo-compressibility approach with dual time stepping in order to tackle with the numerical difficulty of the solenoidal condition in the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. The numerical solution of the nonlinear governing equations is based on the method of lines, whereby the partial differential equations are transformed into ordinary differential equations by a suitable spatial discretization. A second-order cell-centered finite volume discretization based on a collocated cubed-sphere grid is used here. In order to relax the time step limit and accurately integrate the semi-discrete nonlinear ordinary differential equations in time, we employ a second-order explicit-first-step, single-diagonal-coefficient, diagonally implicit Runge–Kutta (ESDIRK) method with adaptive time stepping. The nonlinear algebraic system arising at each pseudo-time step is solved by a Newton–Krylov–Schwarz algorithm to achieve good load balance on modern supercomputers. The numerical results are in good agreement with the benchmark solutions and more accurate than those obtained with a fractional step approach in our previous research. Large-scale tests on the Tianhe-2 supercomputer indicate that the fully implicit solver can achieve good parallel scalabilities in both strong and weak senses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]