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The relationship between green and grey urban infrastructure, local meteorological conditions, and traffic-related air pollution is complex and dynamic. This case study examined the effect of evolving morphologies around a city square park in Dublin and explores the twin impacts of local urban development (grey) and maturing parks (green) on particulate matter (PM) pollution. A fixed air quality monitoring campaign and computational fluid dynamic modelling (ENVI-met) were used to assess current (baseline) and future scenarios. The baseline results presented the distribution of PM in the study area, with bimodal (PM2.5) and unimodal (PM10) diurnal profiles. The optimal vegetation height for air quality within the park also differed by wind direction with 21 m vegetation optimal for parallel winds (10.45% reduction) and 7 m vegetation optimal for perpendicular winds (30.36% reduction). Increased building heights led to higher PM2.5 concentrations on both footpaths ranging from 25.3 to 37.0% under perpendicular winds, whilst increasing the height of leeward buildings increased PM2.5 concentrations by up to 30.9% under parallel winds. The findings from this study provide evidence of the importance of more in-depth analysis of green and grey urban infrastructure in the urban planning decision-making process to avoid deteriorating air quality conditions around city square parks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In near-road neighborhoods, residents are more frequently exposed to traffic-related air pollution (TRAP), and they are increasingly aware of pollution levels. Given this consideration, this study adopted portable air pollutant sensors to conduct a mobile monitoring campaign in two near-road neighborhoods, one in an urban area and one in a suburban area of Shanghai, China. The campaign characterized spatiotemporal distributions of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and black carbon (BC) to help identify appropriate mitigation measures in these near-road micro-environments. The study identified higher mean TRAP concentrations (up to 4.7-fold and 1.7-fold higher for PM2.5 and BC, respectively), lower spatial variability, and a stronger inter-pollutant correlation in winter compared to summer. The temporal variations of TRAP between peak hour and off-peak hour were also investigated. It was identified that district-level PM2.5 increments occurred from off-peak to peak hours, with BC concentrations attributed more to traffic emissions. In addition, the spatiotemporal distribution of TRAP inside neighborhoods revealed that PM2.5 concentrations presented great temporal variability but almost remained invariant in space, while the BC concentrations showed notable spatiotemporal variability. These findings provide valuable insights into the unique spatiotemporal distributions of TRAP in different near-road neighborhoods, highlighting the important role of hyperlocal monitoring in urban micro-environments to support tailored designing and implementing appropriate mitigation measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of software-defined vehicles (SDVs), combined with autonomous driving technologies, has enabled a new era of vehicle computing (VC), where vehicles serve as a mobile computing platform. However, the interdisciplinary complexities of automotive systems and diverse technological requirements make developing applications for autonomous vehicles challenging. To simplify the development of applications running on SDVs, we propose a comprehensive suite of vehicle programming interfaces (VPIs). In this study, we rigorously explore the nuanced requirements for application development within the realm of VC, centering our analysis on the architectural intricacies of the Open Vehicular Data Analytics Platform (OpenVDAP). We then detail our creation of a comprehensive suite of standardized VPIs, spanning five critical categories: Hardware, Data, Computation, Service, and Management, to address these evolving programming requirements. To validate the design of VPIs, we conduct experiments using the indoor autonomous vehicle, Zebra, and develop the OpenVDAP prototype system. By comparing it with the industry-influential AUTOSAR interface, our VPIs demonstrate significant enhancements in programming efficiency, marking an important advancement in the field of SDV application development. We also show a case study and evaluate its performance. Our work highlights that VPIs significantly enhance the efficiency of developing applications on VC. They meet both current and future technological demands and propel the software-defined automotive industry toward a more interconnected and intelligent future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In hazy days, several local authorities always implemented the strict traffic-restriction measures to improve the air quality. However, owing to lack of data, the quantitative relationships between them are still not clear. Coincidentally, traffic restriction measures during the COVID-19 pandemic provided an experimental setup for revealing such relationships. Hence, the changes in air quality in response to traffic restrictions during COVID-19 in Spain and United States was explored in this study. In contrast to pre-lockdown, the private traffic volume as well as public traffic during the lockdown period decreased within a range of 60−90%. The NO2 concentration decreased by approximately 50%, while O3 concentration increased by approximately 40%. Additionally, changes in air quality in response to traffic reduction were explored to reveal the contribution of transportation to air pollution. As the traffic volume decreased linearly, NO2 concentration decreased exponentially, whereas O3 concentration increased exponentially. Air pollutants did not change evidently until the traffic volume was reduced by less than 40%. The recovery process of the traffic volume and air pollutants during the post-lockdown period was also explored. The traffic volume was confirmed to return to background levels within four months, but air pollutants were found to recover randomly. This study highlights the exponential impact of traffic volume on air quality changes, which is of great significance to air pollution control in terms of traffic restriction policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concepts of resilience and sustainability are becoming popular in disaster planning and management. However, there is an absence of mutual considerations of the two concepts from an integrated perspective to promote post-disaster livelihood, particularly in the relocated rural communities. To fill the research gap, this paper explores the factors and relationships of resilient rural livelihoods (RRL) and sustainable rural livelihoods (SRL) in resettlement communities after a major disaster. Specifically, we construct a theoretical model that integrates resources, strategies, and outcomes of RRL and SRL in the recovery phase. We use a dataset for household-level recovery after the Jiangsu Tornado (2016) in China to validate the theoretical model with a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. Results show that government-driven, recovery-concentrated policies of "resilience" may not promote the long-term sustainability of rural household livelihoods because financial capital and institutional participation are negatively associated with the community's self-reliance for future disaster recovery. The tangible assets are likely to make people more confident in disaster preparedness, while the intangible assets lack such an impact and even make the relocated households concerned about future disasters. For RRL outcomes, financial capital and socio-political capital can enhance the recovery, while human capital and livelihood strategies have negative effects. In addition, natural capital and financial capital positively affect household recovery, but the human capital remains a negative contributor. These findings clearly reveal the general patterns of rural livelihoods in relocated communities after a disaster and provide insights into potential measures to promote sustainable and resilient rural livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic surveillance of mountain roads accords problems of high risk, low efficiency, and high cost; thus, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are introduced for traffic surveillance, working in conjunction with a delivery van. UAVs are assigned to monitor the high-risk road segments, while the low-risk segments are monitored by the delivery van. UAVs take off from and return to the delivery van to improve the speed and flexibility of the traffic surveillance, with reduced risk. First, a real-time and coordinated UAV path-planning problem is presented, in which the number of monitored targets is dynamic and the delivery van is moving. Then, a multi-objective optimization model is proposed to minimize both the coordination value of UAV flight distance and the number of UAVs used. Next, a penalty-based boundary intersection optimization algorithm is proposed, which adopts the decomposition strategy and Pareto technique to acquire the optimized paths in real-time. In addition, a case study is implemented to compare the proposed algorithm with two commonly used algorithms and the results indicate that the proposed algorithm performs better with respect to solution quality and calculation time. Moreover, the cost versus performance of the UAV traffic surveillance was analyzed. This demonstrates that it is effective to use the proposed approach to conduct real-time and coordinated UAV path planning. Finally, the limitations and prospects of UAV traffic surveillance are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent climatic disasters have shown the vulnerability of transportation infrastructures against natural hazards. To understand the risk of coastal hazards on urban travel activities, this study presents an activity-based modeling approach to evaluate the impacts of storm surge on the transportation network under sea-level rise in Miami-Dade County, FL. A Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based algorithm is applied to generate population attributes and travel diaries in the model simulation. Flooding scenarios in 2045 are developed based on different adaptation standards under the 100-year storm surge and population projections are from the land-use conflict identification strategy (LUCIS) model. Our analysis indicates that about 29.3% of the transportation infrastructure, including areas of the US No. 1 highway, roadways in the south and southwest of the county, and bridges connecting Miami Beach area, will be damaged under the storm surge when a low-level adaptation standard is chosen. However, the high-level adaptation standard will reduce the vulnerable infrastructures to 12.4%. Furthermore, the total increased travel time of the low-level adaptation standard could be as high as twice of that in the high-level adaptation standard during peak morning hours. Our model results also reveal that the average increased travel time due to future storm surge damage ranges between 14.2 and 62.8 min per trip. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Adaptation has become the major approach to reduce the adverse effects of storm surge and sea-level rise. However, maladaptation can happen when adaptation actions unintentionally increase community vulnerability. To evaluate the adequacy and efficacy of adaptation policies under uncertain sea-level rise, this study presents an agent-based model by integrating the random nature of storm surges, private adaptation decisions, and real estate market valuation. We evaluated the evolving flood damage of different adaptation strategies under two bounding cases of real estate market change. Our model results quantitatively illustrate the accelerating damages of storm surges under climate-induced sea-level rise. A reform in flood insurance to risk-based rates with a means-tested voucher program and a government-subsidized "twice and out" buyout program could both substantially improve coastal resilience. However, community adaptation with a public seawall may deliver false risk perception to high-risk property owners and result in maladaptation when sea-level rise rate is high. The modeling approach developed in this study can be used as a policy analysis tool to measure the impacts of sea-level rise and the effectiveness of adaptation strategies in coastal communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many coastal communities around the world are increasingly faced with pressure from sea level rise (SLR). Adapting to the impacts of SLR is now considered inevitable. Many coastal communities in the USA have started to invest in vulnerability assessments that seek to identify the degree of future risk induced by SLR and key vulnerable sectors as well as to provide a sound factual basis for designing and implementing adaptations. However, no study has systematically analyzed the content of these emerging assessments and their quality. This study aims to address this gap by evaluating 64 SLR vulnerability assessments in the USA using an established multi-criteria evaluation framework and by identifying governance factors that affect assessment quality. This study is the first baseline study to understand how the vulnerability of SLR has been assessed by US governments and, more importantly, shed light on pathways for their future improvement. Our analysis finds that the content and quality of the existing assessments vary widely. One-sided assessments that only consider physical exposure are common, and most assessments do not include plans for adaptations. The wealth of the area, amount of funding, mainstreaming efforts, and public awareness are all positively correlated with the assessment quality. We also find that assessments primarily authored by planning staff are lower in quality than those conducted through collaboration. Our findings offer comparative, empirical knowledge for urban planners and coastal managers to improve future vulnerability assessments and adaptation planning for SLR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to monitor traffic situation, and considers the UAV real-time rerouting problem. Firstly, critical target is introduced at the time of UAV route re-planning, which is used to identify the existing visited targets and the remaining unvisited targets. Meanwhile, a real-time UAV rerouting model is proposed with the consideration of time window and multi-objective optimization. Then, a target insertion method is used to generate feasible UAV routes, and a decomposition based multi-objective evolutionary algorithm is proposed. Next, a case study and algorithm sensitivity analysis are implemented, and the results show that compared with the initial optimal solutions, the optimized optimal solutions are improved significantly. In addition, the proposed algorithm is compared with the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II), the case study shows that the proposed algorithm outperforms NSGA-II in terms of computational time, the percentage of finding optimal UAV routes and solution quality. It suggests that the proposed algorithm is promising in planning UAV cruise routes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bilayer polymer coatings that consisted of a highly cross-linked polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA) bottom layer and nanostructured poly(perfluorodecyl acrylate-co-ethylene glycol diacrylate) (P(PFDA-co-EGDA)) top layer were synthesized via a single-step vapor deposition method. The vapor-synthesized PEGDA single-layer film exhibits excellent barrier performance with oxygen permeability of 0.0066 Barrer, which is more than 16-fold smaller than that of commercial PET packaging film. The P(PFDA-co-EGDA) layer, grown on top of PEGDA, shows conical array structure. Such nanostructure combined with the low surface energy of PFDA moiety enables superhydrophobicity of the coating with water contact angle of 159°. The achieved superhydrophobicity is stable over more than 168 h upon immersion in NaCl solution. The bilayer coating structure imparts a synergistic effect to minimize both the diffusion of water and ions and permeation of oxygen, resulting in a significant drop of corrosion rate to 2.19 × 10−7 mm year−1, a more than 104-fold decrease compared to bare copper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To observe the clinical efficacy of fire-needle therapy in treating deglutition disorders due to pseudobulbar palsy in the remission stage of stroke.Methods: Sixty-two eligible subjects were divided into a fire-needle group and a rehabilitation group by a simple randomization method at a ratio of 1:1. The two groups received same basic intervention; in addition, the fire-needle group received fire-needle treatment, while the rehabilitation group received rehabilitation training. The two groups of subjects all received a 3-week treatment and were evaluated by the dysphagia severity rating scale (DSRS), modified Mann assessment of swallow ability (MMASA) and Kubota Toshio swallow test (KTST) before and after the intervention. The complications and adverse events occurred during the trial were recorded. The data were statistically analyzed.Results: At the third week, the DSRS, MMASA and KTST scores changed significantly compared with the baseline in both groups (P<0.05), and the changes in the fire-needle group were more significant than those in the rehabilitation group (P<0.05). The between-group comparison at the third week showed that the therapeutic efficacy in the fireneedle group was superior to that in the rehabilitation group (P<0.05).Conclusion: Fire-needle therapy can obviously change the DSRS, MMASA and KTST scores in pseudobulbar palsy in the remission stage of stroke, and significantly enhance the therapeutic efficacy of the treatment of deglutition disorders in this stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brucella poses a great threat to animal and human health. Vaccination is the most promising strategy in the effort to control Brucella abortus (B. abortus) infection, but the currently used live vaccines interfere with diagnostic tests and could potentially result in disease outbreak. Therefore, new subunit vaccines and combined immunization strategies are currently under investigation. In this study, immunogenicity and protection ability of a recombinant adenovirus and plasmid DNA vaccine co-expressing P39 and lumazine synthase proteins of B. abortus were evaluated based on the construction of the two molecular vaccines. Four immunization strategies (single adenovirus, single DNA, adenovirus/DNA, DNA/adenovirus) were investigated. The results showed that the immunization strategy of DNA priming followed by adenovirus boosting induced robust humoral and cellular immune responses, and it significantly reduced the numbers of B. abortus in a mouse model. These results suggest that it could be a potential antigen candidate for development of a new subunit vaccine against B. abortus infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal regions worldwide are during the process of rapid urban expansion. However, expanded urban settlements in land-sea interfaces have been faced with unprecedented threats from climate change related hazards. Adaptation to coastal hazards has received increasing attention from city managers and planners. Adaptation and land management practices are largely informed by remote sensing and land change modeling. This paper establishes a framework that integrates land change analysis, coastal flooding, and sea level rise adaptation. Multilayer perceptron neural network, similarity learning, and binary logistic regression were applied to analyze spatiotemporal changes of residential, commercial, and other built-up areas in Bay County, Florida, USA. The prediction maps of 2030 were produced by three models under four policy scenarios that included the population relocation strategy. Validation results reveal that three models return overall acceptable accuracies but generate distinct landscape patterns. Predictions indicate that planned retreat of residents can greatly reduce urban vulnerability to sea level rise induced flooding. While managed realignment of the coast brings large benefits, the paper recommends different mixes of adaptation strategies for different parts of the globe, and advocates the application of reflective land use planning to foster a more disaster resilient coastal community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lightweight unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a tethered balloon platform were jointly used to investigate three-dimensional distributions of ozone and PM2.5 concentrations within the lower troposphere (1000 m) at a localized coastal area in Shanghai, China. Eight tethered balloon soundings and three UAV flights were conducted on May 25, 2016. Generalized additive models (GAMs) were used to quantitatively describe the relationships between air pollutants and other obtained parameters. Field observations showed that large variations were captured both in the vertical and horizontal distributions of ozone and PM2.5 concentrations. Significant stratified layers of ozone and PM2.5 concentrations as well as wind directions were observed throughout the day. Estimated bulk Richardson numbers indicate that the vertical mixing of air masses within the lower troposphere were heavily suppressed throughout the day, leading to much higher concentrations of ozone and PM2.5 in the planetary boundary layer (PBL). The NO and NO2 concentrations in the experimental field were much lower than that in the urban area of Shanghai and demonstrated totally different vertical distribution patterns from that of ozone and PM2.5. This indicates that aged air masses of different sources were transported to the experimental field at different heights. Results derived from the GAMs showed that the aggregate impact of the selected variables for the vertical variations can explain 94.3% of the variance in ozone and 94.5% in PM2.5. Air temperature, relative humidity and atmospheric pressure had the strongest effects on the variations of ozone and PM2.5. As for the horizontal variations, the GAMs can explain 56.3% of the variance in ozone and 57.6% in PM2.5. The strongest effect on ozone was related to air temperature, while PM2.5 was related to relative humidity. The output of GAMs also implied that fine aerosol particles were in the stage of growth in the experimental field, which is different from ozone (aged air parcels of ozone). Geographical parameters influenced the horizontal variations of ozone and PM2.5 concentrations by changing underlying surface types. The differences of thermodynamic properties between land and sea resulted in quick changes of PBL height, air temperature and dew point over the coastal area, which was linked to the extent of vertical mixing at different locations. The results of GAMs can be used to analyze the sources and formation mechanisms of ozone and PM2.5 pollutions at a localized area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six isolates of Arthrobotrys musiformis and five isolates of Arthrobotrys robusta were assessed in in vitro test regarding the capacity of prey larvae of the natural mixed trichostrongylides. In 5 isolates of A. robusta, the decrease percentage of infective larvae (L3) of trichostrongylides ranged from 97.71%-99.98% and for the isolates of A. musiformis, 5 isolates ranged from 97.99%-99.95% and only NF015 isolate 60.72%. In the following, the isolate (NPS045) of A. musiformis was selected to assess its excretion time in feces after oral administration of goats. Regarding L3 reduction rate, results demonstrated by NPS045 at each time point after fungal administration were 31.65% (12 h), 51.25% (24 h), 41.07% (48 h), 6.44% (72 h), 0% (96 h) and (120 h) (p<0.05) respectively, when compared to the control group. In the plates of the treated groups, the presence of the isolate (NPS045) was detected in samples at 12, 24 and 48 h after the fungus dose and 72 h later was not done. All native isolates of nematophagous fungi, including 6 isolates of A. musiformis and 5 isolates of A. robusta were assessed in vivo regarding the capacity of supporting the passage through goat gastrointestinal tract. The 3 isolates of A. musiformis could be able to pass through the digestive tract of goats without complete loss of ability of preying larvae of trichostrongylides in feces and their efficacies ranged from 47.60% to 55.93%. The two isolates of A. robusta survived the passage and the percentage reduction of L3 in feces were 41.96% and 66.97%, respectively. The remaining isolates were negative for both the efficacy of L3 reduction and the fungal examination in feces. In this study, the native isolates whose efficacies are good in vivo test have preliminarily demonstrated to be potential for the biological control of small ruminant parasite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying the underlying causes of disease requires accurate interpretation of genetic variants. Current methods ineffectively capture pathogenic non-coding variants in genic regions, resulting in overlooking synonymous and intronic variants when searching for disease risk. Here we present the Transcript-inferred Pathogenicity (TraP) score, which uses sequence context alterations to reliably identify non-coding variation that causes disease. High TraP scores single out extremely rare variants with lower minor allele frequencies than missense variants. TraP accurately distinguishes known pathogenic and benign variants in synonymous (AUC = 0.88) and intronic (AUC = 0.83) public datasets, dismissing benign variants with exceptionally high specificity. TraP analysis of 843 exomes from epilepsy family trios identifies synonymous variants in known epilepsy genes, thus pinpointing risk factors of disease from non-coding sequence data. TraP outperforms leading methods in identifying non-coding variants that are pathogenic and is therefore a valuable tool for use in gene discovery and the interpretation of personal genomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study on vertical variation of PM concentrations was carried out in this paper. Field measurements were conducted at eight different floor heights outside a building alongside a typical elevated expressway in downtown Shanghai, China. Results show that PM concentration decreases significantly with the increase of height from the 3rd to 7th floor or the 8th to 15th floor, and increases suddenly from the 7th to 8th floor which is the same height as the elevated expressway. A non-parametric test indicates that the data of PM concentration is statistically different under the 7th floor and above the 8th floor at the 5% significance level. To investigate the relationships between PM concentration and influencing factors, the Pearson correlation analysis was performed and the results indicate that both traffic and meteorological factors have crucial impacts on the variation of PM concentration, but there is a rather large variation in correlation coefficients under the 7th floor and above the 8th floor. Furthermore, the back propagation neural network based on principal component analysis (PCA-BPNN), as well as generalized additive model (GAM), was applied to predict the vertical PM concentration and examined with the field measurement dataset. Experimental results indicated that both models can obtain accurate predictions, while PCA-BPNN model provides more reliable and accurate predictions as it can reduce the complexity and eliminate data co-linearity. These findings reveal the vertical distribution of PM concentration and the potential of the proposed model to be applicable to predict the vertical trends of air pollution in similar situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous study showed that two alcohol dehydrogenase genes ( ADHs) were significantly upregulated in roots of Actinidia deliciosa after treatment with waterlogging using Illumina sequencing technology. Those two ADH genes, named AdADH1 and AdADH2, were isolated from A. deliciosa in this study. QRT-PCR analysis showed that AdADH1 and AdADH2 expression levels were significantly increased in A. deliciosa after treatment with waterlogging, NaCl, 4 °C, and heat stresses, but not ABA and drought stresses. The changes of AdADH1 and AdADH2 expression levels during waterlogging were much higher than those during other stresses. We examined the response to abiotic stresses in transgenic Arabidopsis lines in which the A. deliciosa AdADH1 and AdADH2 genes were introduced under the control of a constitutive promoter, respectively. Overexpression of A. deliciosa AdADH1 or AdADH2 in Arabidopsis could enhance waterlogging tolerance at five week old seedlings. However, the function of AdADH1 for waterlogging resistance was much better than that of AdADH2. Arabidopsis overexpressing AdADH1 gene could enhance the resistance to cold stress at five week old seedlings, but AdADH2 could not. Overexpression of AdADH1 gene enhances the resistance to salt stress at the stage of seed germination and in seedlings, and overexpression of AdADH2 gene enhances the resistance to salinity stress at the stage of seed germination but not in seedlings. However, transgenic Arabidopsis overexpressing AdADH1 or AdADH2 could not enhance to the osmotic stress at the stage of seed germination and in seedlings. These results indicated that A. deliciosa AdADH1 plays an important role in resistance to waterlogging, salinity, and cold stresses, but not drought stress, and AdADH2 plays an important role in resistance to waterlogging and salinity stresses, but not cold and drought stresses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The minute-scale variations of fine particulate matter (PM) and carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations near a road intersection in Shanghai, China were investigated to identify the influencing factors at three traffic periods. Measurement results demonstrate a synchronous variation of pollutant concentrations at the roadside and setbacks, and the average concentration of PM at the roadside is 7% (44% for CO) higher than that of setbacks within 500 m of the intersection. The pollution level at traffic peak periods is found to be higher than that of off-peak periods, and the morning peak period is found to be the most polluted due to a large amount of diesel vehicles and unfavorable dispersion conditions. Partial least square regressions were constructed for influencing factors and setback pollutant concentrations, and results indicate that meteorological factors are the most significant, followed by setback distance from the intersection and traffic factors. CO is found to be sensitive to distance from the traffic source and vehicle type, and highly dependent on local traffic conditions, whereas PM originates more from other sources and background levels. These findings demonstrate the importance of localized factors in understanding spatiotemporal patterns of air pollution at intersections, and support decision makers in roadside pollution management and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assays to analyze the degradation, lysis and leakage of vesicles are commonly utilized in biology and physical chemistry. Here we show the fluorescence lifetime-based sensing of the leakage of stimuli responsive PEG114-b-PLA167 block copolymer vesicles. The time-resolved technique differentiates between the fluorophore molecules in the solvated state at high concentrations, and in the wall material and in the solvated state at low concentrations. The vesicle leakage occurs after an incubation period, which was detected by the change of the time correlated single photon counting decays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Saltwater intrusion is a major hazard to coastal communities as it causes degradation of fresh water resources. The impact of rising sea level on the saltwater intrusion into coastal aquifers has been studied for decades, but how human activities affect the extent of saltwater intrusion is poorly understood. Human activities are known to influence groundwater availability indirectly by affecting precipitation patterns and directly by extracting groundwater and reducing recharge. In this paper the authors investigated the integrated impacts of human activities and rising sea level on aquifer recharge in Quintana Roo, Mexico, by incorporating anthropogenic impacts on groundwater recharge into an analytical saltwater intrusion model. The impact of human activities on groundwater extraction was firstly calculated; then, the resulting groundwater recharge was used in a Ghyben-Herzberg analytical model to determine the inland distance of saltwater intrusion. The analytical model tested six scenarios stemming from different combinations of human development patterns, hydrological settings, hydraulic conditions and rising sea level to obtain the range of possible inland movement of saltwater intrusion. Our results indicate that the groundwater recharge will decrease to 32.6 mm year if human activities increase by 50 % more. With 1-m sea level rise, inland saltwater intrusion distance is estimated to be up to 150 and 1 km under head-controlled and flux-controlled scenarios, respectively. A sensitivity analysis of the model reveals that the large hydraulic conductivity of the Quintana Roo aquifer (0.26-68.8 m s) is the most important factor in determining saltwater intrusion distance. Therefore, in this aquifer, the response to human activities is greatly exceeded by natural hydrogeological conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sea level rise (SLR), as a likely outcome of climate change, threatens coastal communities through intensified storm surge, strong wind, flooding, and other extreme weather events. While social vulnerability to SLR is receiving overwhelming attention from research communities, studies on the business impacts of SLR are much less developed. In this study, an innovative framework of integrated business vulnerability is developed for environmental hazards (e.g., SLR) and is validated by a case study of Bay County, Florida. First, the model establishes a composite business vulnerability index (BVI) by incorporating business characteristics, infrastructure factors, and other indicators based on existing literature results. Second, it identifies impacted business indicators and how they will change with the projected SLR. To account for climate change uncertainty, floodplains are generated under three SLR levels (0, 0.2, and 0.9 m). Finally, this study uses a GIS-based methodology to combine physical and business vulnerabilities to investigate overall susceptibility and how this changes with SLR. Two important findings are identified. First, business vulnerability to flooding will be escalated substantially by SLR. Considerable amount of areas, businesses, and road networks would be exposed to highest flood risk zones due to SLR. Second, highest flood risk zones do not necessarily intersect with those areas of high BVI. The results can help local governments better allocate financial and manpower resources and assist hazard mitigation teams, urban planners, and city managers in steering business development away from high-risk regions due to SLR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ferrotitanium alloy is prepared by electrochemical reduction from ilmenite in LiCl-KCl and LiCl-KCl-CaCl molten salts, respectively. The products prepared are observed by x-ray diffraction (XRD). It is shown that FeTi can be prepared from ilmenite in LiCl-KCl molten salt at 1073 K with a cell voltage of 3.2 V. Ilmenite can be electrochemically reduced to FeTi in LiCl-KCl-CaCl molten salt under the same condition. It is indicated that CaCl can promote the reaction and is favors the deoxidization of the FeTiO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a degree theory for set-valued vector variational inequalities is built in reflexive Banach spaces. By using the method of degree theory, some existence results of solutions for set-valued vector variational inequalities are established under suitable conditions. Furthermore, some equivalent characterizations for the nonemptiness and boundedness of solution sets to single-valued vector variational inequalities are obtained under pseudomonotonicity assumption. To the best of our knowledge, there are still no papers dealing with the degree theory for vector variational inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kiwifruit plants are particularly sensitive to soil waterlogging. Enhancement of waterlogging tolerance in kiwifruit can potentially considerably increase its fruit production and extend the shelf life of the fruit. We generated 95,945,496 bases of high-quality sequence from kiwifruit roots after 4-day waterlogging treatment using Illumina sequencing technology, and demonstrated de novo assembly and annotation of genes. These reads were assembled into 140,187 unigenes (mean length 556 bp). Based on a similarity search with known proteins in the non-redundant (nr) protein database, 56,912 unigenes (40.60 %) were functionally annotated with a cutoff E-value of 10−5. Using the RPKM method, we investigated differentially expressed genes by applying the Benjamini and Hochberg correction. Overall, 14,843 transcripts were identified as differentially expressed unigenes (DEG) in two samples. Among these unigenes, 5697 DEGs (about 38.5 %) were found to be induced by waterlogging, and 9146 DEGs (about 61.5 %) decreased in abundance. To identify the most important pathways represented by DEGs, we compared these genes to those in the KEGG database. The categories “ribosome,” “plant hormone signal transduction,” and “starch and sucrose metabolism” pathways contained the three highest numbers of differentially expressed unigenes and, thus, appear to play important roles in waterlogging perception. We identified many transcription factors, belonging to AP2/ERF, WRKY, TGA, MYB, bZIP families, implicating a potential function for them in waterlogging responses in kiwifruit. Our results provide a transcriptome profile that is associated with waterlogging stress induction in kiwifruit plants. The potential waterlogging stress-related transcripts identified in this study represent candidate genes and molecular resources to further understand the molecular mechanisms of the waterlogging response in kiwifruit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, some characterizations of nonemptiness and boundedness of solution sets for vector variational inequalities are studied in finite and infinite dimensional spaces, respectively. By using a new proof method which is different from the one used in Huang et al. (J Optim Theory Appl 162:548-558 ), a sufficient and necessary condition for the nonemptiness and boundedness of solution sets is established. Basing on this result, some new characterizations of nonemptiness and boundedness of solution sets for vector variational inequalities are proved. Compared with the known results in Huang et al. (), the key assumption that $$K_\infty \cap (F(K))^{w\circ }_C=\{0\}$$ is not required in finite dimensional spaces. Furthermore, the corresponding result of Huang et al. () is extended to the case of infinite dimensional spaces. Some examples are also given to illustrated the main results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the low GC content of the gene population, amino acids of the two mycoplasmas tend to be encoded by synonymous codons with an A or T end. Compared with the codon usage of ovine, Mycoplasma capricolum and M. agalactiae tend to select optimal codons, which are rare codons in ovine. Due to codon usage pattern caused by genes with key biological functions, the overall codon usage trends represent a certain evolutionary direction in the life cycle of the two mycoplasmas. The overall codon usage trends of a gene population of M. capricolum subsp. capricolum can be obviously separated from other mycoplasmas, and the overall codon usage trends of M. agalactiae are highly similar to those of M. bovis. These results partly indicate the independent evolution of the two mycoplasmas without the limits of the host cell's environment. The GC and AT skews estimate nucleotide composition bias at different positions of nucleotide triplets and the protein consideration caused by the nucleotide composition bias at codon positions 1 and 2 largely take part in synonymous codon usage patterns of the two mycoplasmas. The correlation between the codon adaptation index and codon usage variation indicates that the effect of codon usage on gene expression in M. capricolum subsp. capricolum is opposite to that of M. agalactiae, further suggesting independence of the evolutionary process influencing the overall codon usage trends of gene populations of mycoplasmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Video processing is one challenge in collecting vehicle trajectories from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and road boundary estimation is one way to improve the video processing algorithms. However, current methods do not work well for low volume road, which is not well-marked and with noises such as vehicle tracks. A fusion-based method termed Dempster-Shafer-based road detection (DSRD) is proposed to address this issue. This method detects road boundary by combining multiple information sources using Dempster-Shafer theory (DST). In order to test the performance of the proposed method, two field experiments were conducted, one of which was on a highway partially covered by snow and another was on a dense traffic highway. The results show that DSRD is robust and accurate, whose detection rates are 100% and 99.8% compared with manual detection results. Then, DSRD is adopted to improve UAV video processing algorithm, and the vehicle detection and tracking rate are improved by 2.7% and 5.5%, respectively. Also, the computation time has decreased by 5% and 8.3% for two experiments, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we establish the equivalence between the existence of zeros for set-valued mappings and the solvability of variational inequality, under some conditions involving the generalized projection operator. Basing on this result, we obtain some existence theorems of zeros for quasimonotone set-valued mappings. As application, we derive several fixed point theorems for generalized inward mappings in Hilbert spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier, we have reported that overexpression of Malus hupehensis Non- expressor of pathogenesis related gene 1 ( MhNPR1) gene in tobacco could induce the expression of pathogenesis- related genes and enhance resistance to fungus Botrytis cinerea. In this study, we showed that MhNPR1 can be induced by NaCl, PEG6000, low temperature (4 °C), abscisic acid and apple aphids' treatments in M. hupehensis. Heterogonous expression of MhNPR1 gene in tobacco conferred enhanced resistance to NaCl at the stage of seed germination, and conferred resistance to mannitol at the stage of seed germination and to PEG6000 at the stage of seedlings. Furthermore, overexpression of MhNPR1 in transgenic tobacco led to higher expression levels of osmotic-stress related genes compared with wild-type plants. This was the first report of a novel function of NPR1 that overexpression of MhNPR1 gene has a positive effect on salt and osmotic stress in tobacco, which differs from the function that overexpressing of AtNPR1 gene has a negative effect on dehydration and salt stress in rice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complement activation and inflammation have been suggested in the pathogenesis of stroke, mannose-binding lectin (MBL) were found to have roles during the process. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between acute ischemic stroke (AIS) and serum MBL levels in Chinese population. From January 1 to June 30 2013, all patients with first-ever AIS were recruited to participate in the study. Serum MBL levels and routine test were examined. The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score was assessed on admission blinded to MBL levels. During the inclusion period, 148 patients with AIS were registered and completed study. The results indicated that the serum MBL levels were significantly ( p < 0.0001) higher in acutely ischemic stroke patients as compared to normal controls [1,332; interquartile range (IQR) 996-2,134 μg/L and 897; IQR 678-1,100 μg/L, respectively]. There was a correlation between serum levels of MBL and NIHSS score [r (spearman) = 0.608, p < 0.0001). In multivariate analysis, serum MBL as a continuous variable was associated with an increased risk of AIS, after adjustment for above possible confounders (OR 1.002, 95 % CI 1.001-1.008; p < 0.0001). These results indicated that elevated MBL levels could be considered as an independent stroke risk factor in Chinese population, suggesting a role of MBL and the lectin pathway of complement activation in the pathogenesis of stroke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a new notion of 'exceptional family of elements' for convex optimization problems. By employing the notion of 'exceptional family of elements', we establish some existence results for convex optimization problem in reflexive Banach spaces. We show that the nonexistence of an exceptional family of elements is a sufficient and necessary condition for the solvability of the optimization problem. Furthermore, we establish several equivalent conditions for the solvability of convex optimization problems. As applications, the notion of 'exceptional family of elements' for convex optimization problems is applied to the constrained optimization problem and convex quadratic programming problem and some existence results for solutions of these problems are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented on the effects of the codon usage and translation speed on protein folding of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase of foot-and-mouth disease virus.

Real time synchrotron wide angle and small angle X-ray scattering (WAXS and SAXS, respectively) were used to characterize the stretch induced structural evolution of α trans-1,4-polyisoprene (trans-PI). 2D WAXS results indicated two ensembles of crystalline modifications with distinctive orientation modes coexisted during stretching. Stretching transformed part of the monoclinic α phase into highly oriented orthorhombic β phase at strain ε = ~0.4. The β phase had rather high orientational degree with polymer chains parallel to the stretching direction, while the orientational degree of α phase was much lower. Complemented by qualitative 2D SAXS analysis, it was found that amorphous layer deformation and intralamellar chain slip dominated at different stretching stage. The melt and recrystallization process of α phase which led to the formation of β phase was also investigated. Formation of two interpenetrating networks of crystalline skeleton (constructed by residual α and β crystals) and amorphous entanglement accounted for the stress-hardening in the late stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was introduced as a novel traffic device to collect road traffic information and its cruise route planning problem was considered. Firstly, a multi-objective optimization model was proposed aiming at minimizing the total cruise distance and the number of UAVs used, which used UAV maximum cruise distance, the number of UAVs available and time window of each monitored target as constraints. Then, a novel multi-objective evolutionary algorithm was proposed. Next, a case study with three time window scenarios was implemented. The results show that both the total cruise distance and the number of UAVs used continue to increase with the time window constraint becoming narrower. Compared with the initial optimal solutions, the optimal total cruise distance and the number of UAVs used fall by an average of 30.93% and 31.74%, respectively. Finally, some concerns using UAV to collect road traffic information were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) have shown potential as non-invasive prognostic biomarkers in cancer. Here, we investigated whether miRNAs present in the plasma of multiple myeloma (MM) patients have prognostic utility. We evaluated global miRNA expression profiles in the plasma of 12 multiple myeloma patients and 8 healthy controls using TaqMan Low-Density Arrays. Six miRNAs (miR-148a, miR-181a, miR-20a, miR-221, miR-625, and miR-99b) that were significantly upregulated in MM were selected and further quantified independently by quantitative reverse transcription PCR in plasma from 28 MM patients and 12 healthy controls. Moreover, within the patient group, the expression levels of miR-99b and miR-221 were associated with chromosomal abnormalities t(4; 14) and del(13q), respectively. High levels of miR-20a and miR-148a were related to shorter relapse-free survival. In summary, we have identified aberrant expression of particular circulating miRNAs that are associated with the genetic subtype and survival of MM. These plasma miRNAs have potential as clinical biomarkers in MM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Acupuncture & Tuina Science is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Mhchit1, a class I chitinase gene from Malus hupehensis, was cloned, and its expression and functionality in young seedlings were studied. Treatment with salicylic acid, methyl jasmonate, and 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid resulted in the elevation of Mhchit1 transcript levels in leaves, stems, and roots. Infection with Botryosphaeria berengeriana caused an accumulation of Mhchit1 transcripts, with maximum levels at 6 h post-inoculation. Mhchit1 expression was also induced by the apple aphid Aphis citricota. Transgenic tobacco plants that over-expressed Mhchit1 showed enhanced resistance to Botrytis cinerea, relative to wild-type control plants, and were not susceptible to polyethylene glycol. In addition, transcript levels for superoxide dismutase, ascorbate peroxidase, polyphenoloxidase, and phenylalanine ammonia lyase were up-regulated in the transgenic plants. These results suggest that Mhchit1 is not only involved in the SA-signal pathway but also with the jasmonate/ethylene-signal pathway. Our data support the role of Mhchit1 in M. hupehensis as an important part of the plant's defense strategy through promotion of resistance to a number of stress abiotic and biotic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nonemptiness and boundedness of solution set for a generalized mixed variational inequality with strict feasibility in reflexive Banach spaces. A concept of strict feasibility for the generalized mixed variational inequality is introduced, which recovers the existing concepts of strict feasibility for variational inequalities and complementarity problems. By using the equivalence characterization of nonemptiness and boundedness of the solution set for the generalized mixed variational inequality due to Zhong and Huang (J. Optim. Theory Appl. 147:454-472, ), it is proved that the generalized mixed variational inequality problem has a nonempty bounded solution set is equivalent to its strict feasibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is devoted to the stability analysis for a class of Minty mixed variational inequalities in reflexive Banach spaces, when both the mapping and the constraint set are perturbed. Several equivalent characterizations are given for the Minty mixed variational inequality to have nonempty and bounded solution set. A stability result is presented for the Minty mixed variational inequality with Φ-pseudomonotone mapping in reflexive Banach space, when both the mapping and the constraint set are perturbed by different parameters. As an application, a stability result for a generalized mixed variational inequality is also obtained. The results presented in this paper generalize and extend some known results in Fan and Zhong (Nonlinear Anal., Theory Methods Appl. 69:2566-2574, ) and He (J. Math. Anal. Appl. 330:352-363, ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Acupuncture & Tuina Science is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

According to the load-structure method, the wall rock with lining can bear the load caused by the surrounding rock, and the rock resistant coefficient (RRC) is a key parameter for evaluating the capacity of this wall rock. Based on the Mohr-Coulomb yield criterion, this paper develops a formula for calculating the RRC, which has been applied to the real engineering project, such as Xiamen Xiang’an East Passage Underwater Tunnel Project. The fact shows that this formula is helpful for designers to determine the RRC value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Acupuncture & Tuina Science is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Objective: To investigate the therapeutic effect of scalp multiple needle insertion by electric stimulation in the treatment of ischemic apoplexy. Methods: Scalp multiple needle insertion by electric stimulation was used to treat ischemic apoplexy and changes in rheoencephalogram, blood rheology, blood lipid and serum endothelin were observed. Results: The therapeutic effect was remarkable ( P<0.05) in the observation group and there were obvious changes in rheoencephalogram, blood rheology, blood lipids and serum endothelin ( P<0.05). Conclusion: Scalp multiple needle insertion by electric stimulation has an exact effect in the treatment of ischemic apoplexy. The therapeutic mechanism is related to improvement in blood circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract We present a novel visibility representation, Intersection Field (i-Field), to compute global illumination in interactive rates. The i-Field provides fast visibility and line-scene intersection queries. We factorize the direct illumination into local irradiance and visibility ratio. The latter is efficiently evaluated by querying the i-Field. The indirect illumination is simulated by photon tracing, which is also accelerated by the i-Field. By quickly detecting invalid portions, our approach can handle highly dynamic scenes, allowing light sources and scene geometries to be manipulated at interactive rates through rigid transformations and free deformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the findings of a study on the effects of acupuncture in antagonizing oxygen stress, conducted by Li Zhong-ren, Shen Mei-hong et al. Acupuncture has preventive and repairing anti-oxidative effects. Prostacyclin is negatively correlated with the anti-oxidative effect of acupuncture. The chief causes for inducing structural and functional injury of bio-membrane in ischemic brain is oxygen free radicals and lipid peroxidation.