Search

Fog is an important supplemental source of water in regions with heavy fog and little rainfall. In the present study, we used the stable isotope content of xylem water to investigate the dry season water source partition between soil and fog water of two evergreen tree species ( Cleistanthus sumatranus and Lasiococca comberi), two deciduous tree species ( Mayodendron igneum and Lagerstroemia tomentosa), two liana species ( Acacia pennata and Combretum latifolium) and understory seedlings of three tree species ( C. sumatranus, L. comberi and Celtis philippensis) in a tropical karst forest in southern Yunnan, China. The soil gravimetric water content (GWC) and volumetric water content (VWC), pre-dawn leaf water potential (Ψpre-dawn) and leaf water absorbance were also measured. There were no significant differences in both GWC and VWC among 10 to 100 cm depths in the dry season. In the dry season 2009, Ψpre-dawn of the two evergreen tree species and the understory seedlings down to −4.5 to −6.3 MPa, and which were significantly lower than those of a normal dry season. The proportion that fog contributed to xylem water ranged from 15.8% (understory seedling of C. sumatranus) to 41.3% (liana species C. latifolium). After immersing in water for 3 h, leaves of all the studied species absorbed a significant volume of water. Our results reveal that the woody plants in the tropical karst forest of Xishuangbanna use fog water as an important supplement in the dry season, with more fog water being used by lianas than by trees. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a novel multiparty quantum sealed-bid auction protocol using the single photons as the message carrier of bids is proposed, followed by an example of three-party auction. Compared with those protocols based on the entangled states (GHZ state, EPR pairs, etc.), the present protocol is more economic and feasible within present technology. In order to guarantee the security and the fairness of the auction, the decoy photon checking technique and an improved post-confirmation mechanism with EPR pairs are introduced, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The penetration of mobile phones is nearly saturated in both developing and developed regions. In such a circumstance, how to prevent subscriber churn has become an important issue for today's telecom operators, as the cost to acquire a new subscriber is much higher than that to retain an existing subscriber. In this paper, we propose to leverage the power of big data to mitigate the problem of subscriber churn and enhance the service quality of telecom operators. As the information hub, telecom operators have accumulated a huge volume of valuable data on subscriber behaviors, service usage, and network operations. To enable efficient big data processing, we first build a dedicated distributed cloud infrastructure that integrates both online and offline processing capabilities. Second, we develop a complete churn analysis model based on deep data mining techniques, and utilize inter-subscriber influence to improve prediction accuracy. Finally, we use real datasets obtained from a large telecom operator in China to verify the accuracy of our churn analysis models. The dataset contains the information of over 3.5 million subscribers, which generate over 600 million call detail records (CDRs) per month. The empirical results demonstrate that our proposed method can achieve around 90% accuracy for T + 1 testing periods and identify subscribers with high negative influence successfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To evaluate the effectiveness of preoperative shaving and postoperative shampooing on the infection rate in neurosurgery. Meta-analysis. We conducted a search of the Embase, CINAHL, Scopus and PubMed databases up until February 1, 2022. Comparative studies were included. No language restrictions were applied. Original articles that compared the infection rate of patients who had their hair shaved before neurosurgery to the infection rate of unshaven patients were included. Original articles comparing the infection rates of patients whose hair was early postoperative shampooing versus patients whose hair was not shampooed after neurosurgery were also included. The risk of bias was also evaluated using the Newcastle–Ottawa quality assessment scale by two authors independently. The meta-analyses were performed using Review Manager software (RevMan 5.3; Cochrane Collaboration). The odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were assessed for dichotomous data (infection rate). The heterogeneity of the included studies was assessed using the I2 statistic (ranging from 0 to 100%). A total of 3451 studies were identified by searching the PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL and Embase databases. Fourteen studies met the inclusion criteria, however two studies did not provide data suitable for meta-analysis. Twelve studies were included in the review. Two historical control studies, four prospective studies, one clinical trial and five retrospective studies were identified. There were 4583 patients whose hair was not shaved and 4295 patients whose hair was shaved. Among them, there were 3874 patients whose hair was unshaved and was early postoperative shampooing. No significant difference in the infection rate was found between the unshaved group and shaved group (OR: 0.86, 95% CI [0.62, 1.19], P = 0.85, I2 = 0%). A significant difference in the infection rates in shunt surgery patients was found between the unshaved group and shaved group (OR: 0.43, 95% CI [0.19, 0.99], P = 0.89, I2 = 0%). No significant difference was found between the unshaved with early shampooing group and the shaved group (OR: 0.82, 95% CI [0.48, 1.41], P = 0.80, I2 = 0%). Hair preservation before neurosurgery and early shampooing after neurosurgery did not increase the infection rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a non-geodesic cyclic evolution scheme to produce and measure the geometric phase in an S U (3) interferometer. In contrast to those existing schemes, we let U(2)-invariant states evolve in the parameter space non-geodetically. During the evolution, the geometric phase shift accumulated, at the same time the dynamical phase can be cancelled when the evolution path is appropriately designed. We note that our scheme can be conveniently extended to the S U( N) case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reinvestigating the chemical constituents of the roots of Xanthium sibiricum led to the isolation of a new naphthoquinone (1), together with 13 known compounds (2–14). Their structures were elucidated by using spectroscopic analyses, including HR-ESI-MS, 1D and 2D NMR, and by comparing their NMR data with those of related compounds. Compound 1 showed moderate antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, Micrococcus tetragenus and Staphylococcus aureus, while 6 and 12 showed stronger antibacterial activity than the positive control ciprofloxacin against E. coli, with minimum inhibitory concentration values of 0.17 and 0.35 μg/mL, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]