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Meiyu is the term used to depict the consecutive rainy weather advancing in the months before the flooding season in East Asia. However, the temporal-spatial climatic characteristics of Meiyu can be differently specified by different evaluation criteria. In this study, we employ both the atmospheric circulation conditions and meteorological factors to identify the spatial characteristics of precipitation of Meiyu in Anhui Province using the collected data of 1957-2020. We further conduct a comparison analysis of the precipitation characteristics in the northern Huaihe River of Aihui province (NHA) with Meiyu rainfall features in two other regions: south of the Yangtze River in Anhui Province (SYA) and the region between the Yangtze River and Huaihe River in Anhui Province (YHA). Finally, the relation between the intensity index between Meiyu and flood or drought is investigated. The results showed that the climatic feature in NHA is a transitional region between Meiyu and non-Meiyu. Also, we proposed a Meiyu intensity index determined by the precipitation amount, intensity, and days of heavy rain. This index performs better than the Meiyu intensity index of National Standard in terms of flood and drought identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Prostate cancer represents the leading cause of male death across the world. A recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) identified five novel susceptibility loci for prostate cancer in the Japanese population. This study is to replicate and fine map the potential association of these five loci with prostate cancer in the Chinese Han population. Methods: In Phase I of the study, we tested the five single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) which showed the strongest association evidence in the original GWAS in Japanese. The study sample consists of 1,169 Chinese Hans, comprising 483 patients and 686 healthy controls. Then in phase II, flanking SNPs of the successfully replicated SNPs in Phase I were genotyped and tested for association with prostate cancer to fine map those significant association signals. Results: We successfully replicated the association of rs13385191 (located in the C2orf43 gene, P = 8.60610-5), rs12653946 (P = 1.33610-6), rs1983891 (FOXP4, P = 6.22610-5), and rs339331 (GPRC6A/RFX6, P = 1.42610-5) with prostate cancer. The most significant odds ratio (OR) was recorded as 1.41 (95% confidence interval 1.18-1.68) for rs12653946. Rs9600079 did not show significant association (P = 8.07610-2) with prostate cancer in this study. The Phase II study refined these association signals, and identified several SNPs showing more significant association with prostate cancer than the very SNPs tested in Phase I. Conclusions: Our results provide further support for association of the C2orf43, FOXP4, GPRC6A and RFX6 genes with prostate cancer in Eastern Asian populations. This study also characterized the novel loci reported in the original GWAS with more details. Further work is still required to determine the functional variations and finally clarify the underlying biological mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]