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Background Although the effects of P deficiency on tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze) growth, P uptake and utilization as well as leaf gas exchange and Chl a fluorescence have been investigated, very little is known about the effects of P deficiency on photosynthetic electron transport, photosynthetic enzymes and carbohydrates of tea leaves. In this study, own-rooted 10-month-old tea trees were supplied three times weekly for 17 weeks with 500 mL of nutrient solution at a P concentration of 0, 40, 80, 160, 400 or 1000 μM. This objective of this study was to determine how P deficiency affects CO2 assimilation, Rubisco, carbohydrates and photosynthetic electron transport in tea leaves to understand the mechanism by which P deficiency leads to a decrease in CO2 assimilation. Results Both root and shoot dry weight increased as P supply increased from 0 to 160 μM, then remained unchanged. P-deficient leaves from 0 to 80 μM P-treated trees showed decreased CO2 assimilation and stomatal conductance, but increased intercellular CO2 concentration. Both initial and total Rubisco activity, contents of Chl and total soluble protein in P-deficient leaves decreased to a lesser extent than CO2 assimilation. Contents of sucrose and starch were decreased in P-deficient leaves, whereas contents of glucose and fructose did not change significantly except for a significant increase in the lowest P leaves. OJIP transients from P-deficient leaves displayed a rise at the O-step and a depression at the P-step, accompanied by two new steps at about 150 μs (L-step) and at about 300 μs (K-step). RC/CSo, TRo/ABS (or Fv/Fm), ETo/ABS, REo/ABS, maximum amplitude of IP phase, PIabs and PItot, abs were decreased in P-deficient leaves, while VJ, VI and dissipated energy were increased. Conclusion P deficiency decreased photosynthetic electron transport capacity by impairing the whole electron transport chain from the PSII donor side up to the PSI, thus decreasing ATP content which limits RuBP regeneration, and hence, the rate of CO2 assimilation. Energy dissipation is enhanced to protect P-deficient leaves from photo-oxidative damage in high light.

A subsurface horizontal-flow constructed wetland planted with Phragmites australis was developed and used to treat eutrophic water for nearly two years at fixed hydraulic loading rate. Substrate samples were taken at different depths respectively in the front, middle and back sites of wetland in January, May, August and October in the second year. Microbial biomass (MB) content was measured using the chloroform fumigation incubation method. The results show that the front sites have higher levels of microbial biomass carbon (MB-C), microbial biomass nitrogen (MB-N) and microbial biomass phosphorous (MB-P) than that in middle sites and back sites. The upper layers have higher levels of MB than that in the deeper layers. The MB content of wetland in January and May is higher than that in October and August. The relationship between MB and TN, TP removal efficiency of the constructed wetland was investigated. The wetland shows no apparent correlation of MB and TN removal efficiency. However, strong negative correlation is observed between MB-C and TP removal efficiency (r = -0.98, p0.05) and between MB-N, MB-P and TP removal efficiency (r = -0.99, p0.01). In constructed wetland, MB is also an active nutrient storage involved in nutrient cycling and can be used by wetland plant. MB content varies among a range level with plant growth and temperature in a growth year. Under experiment conditions, the range of MB-C, MB-N and MB-P was respectively 85.0-160.6, 16.3-34.9 and 3.12-5.77 microg x g(-1) in the second year. Seasonal variation of MB and nutrient removal is resulted from the factors integrated with temperature, microorganisms, plant, substrate and enzyme.

A self-developed binder was used for the solidification of construction refuse piles and whole soil matrix, and a technology of this solidification combining with grass-planting was adopted to ecologically protect the rural riverbanks at Tianshan Village of Shanghai. This technology and other ecological engineering techniques were also employed to reconstruct the ecological environment of a sewage pond at the Village. The results showed that the solidified piles had an anti-compression strength of up to 7.3 MPa, with good hydraulic permeability, fast hardening rate, and low drying shrinkage, which met the requirements for ecological safety. The solidified stakes could be used at a low temperature of above -18 degrees C with addition of certain anti-freezing agents. The riverbank underpinned with the solidified stakes had higher anti-compressive strength, higher ability of anti-soil erosion, and better hydraulic permeability; and its soil had the similar moisture content to bare riverbank soil, with no detrimental effects on the root growth of planted grass. After soil solidification, the shearing strength of the riverbank increased by 50 times, and its soil loss was only 5% of the bare riverbank. In the first 10 days after adopting this technology, parts of Cynodon dactylon roots on the surface of solidified soil matrix began to extend into soil; after one month, 60% of the roots penetrated into deeper soil layer; and 11 months later, the grass roots completely grew in-depth in the soil. The combination of our solidification technique with vegetation reconstruction satisfied the requirements of both stabilizing riverbank and improving riparian habitat.

To investigate the expression of MMP-2, MMP-9 and collagen type IV and their relationship in colorectal carcinomas.The expressions of collagen type IV, MMP-2 and MMP-9 was in normal and colorectal cancer tissues of 30 patients whose clinical stages were Dukes'B and C was detected with immunohistochennical staining. And the relationship among collagen type IV, MMP-2 and MMP-9 was analysed.The expression of collagen type IV was significantly decreased in colorectal cancer tissues. The expression of MMP-2 and MMP-9 was not detected in normal colorectal tissues but it was significantly increased in colorectal cancer tissues. There was a negative correlation between the expression of collagen type IV and MMP-9.The expression of collagen type IV in colorectal cancer tissues is lower than that in normal tissues. MMP-9 may play an important role in the degradation of collagen type IV in colorectal cancer.

The traditional content-based image retrieval system can not meet the users’ needs due to the ‘semantic gap’ between low-level features and the richness of human semantics. In an attempt to narrow the ‘semantic gap’, an approach which combines region-based image retrieval (RBIR) and relevance feedback (RF) with semantic color and spatial location features is presented in this paper. This method segments images into homogeneous regions and gives name for each region. In addition, the importance of each region is also taken into account. The Earth Mover’s Distance (EMD) is employed to measure the image similarity. To further improve the efficiency and accuracy of retrieval system, relevance feedback techniques are introduced in this paper. Experimental results on 1000 images database demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of our approach is encouraging.

To study the relationship between TCM syndrome type and expression of human leucocyte antigen-DRB1 (HLA-DRB1) in patients with chronic hepatitis B.Using PCR method to amplify the related segments of DNA extracted from peripheral leucocytes by the routine methods, and gene array analysis was performed to detect the expression of HLA-DRB1.HLA-DRB1 * 13 was expressed in healthy person in the control group, but was not expressed in chronic hepatitis B patients, showing significant difference between the two groups. In the patients with five different syndrome types, i.e. the dampness blocking middle-jiao type (A), the Gan-stagnancy with Pi-deficiency type (B), the blood stasis blocking collaterals type (C), the Gan-Shen yin-deficiency type (D) and the Pi-Shen yang-deficiency type (E), the former three belonged to the excessive syndrome and the latter two were deficient syndrome. Most of the CHB patients were differentiated as excessive syndrome.Difference of HLA-DR expression exists between chronic hepatitis B patients and healthy persons, the action of the difference is remained for further confirmation. HLA-DR expression in patients with different syndrome types, excessive or deficient, might be different, too.

A novel indexing and retrieval methodology based on object region that integrates color, texture, and shape feature is proposed in this paper. The major problem in developing this method is the difficulty of segmenting object region from the image. To overcome this difficulty, dual wavelet transform (DWT) is used to detect salient object region in the image. Gabor filter is used to extract texture feature and three normalized inertias are used to describe shape feature. A similarity formula is developed to index image integrating three features. In order to further improve the retrieval speed, a fuzzy clustering algorithm is developed and employed to significantly save query time without compromising the retrieval precision. Experimental results demonstrate that this method has better performance in terms of retrieval efficiency than the method using single feature or total image s features, and has faster speed than other similar retrieval system.

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the most common primary malignancy of the kidney and one of the most lethal genitourinary malignancies. Clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) has an extremely poor prognosis because of a high potential for tumor growth, vascular invasion, metastasis and recurrence. Unfortunately, the mechanism of RCC growth and metastasis is not well understood. In this report, we for the first time demonstrated ubiquitin protein ligase E3C (UBE3C) as a driving factor for RCC growth and metastasis. UBE3C expression was increased in ccRCC tissues compared with adjacent normal tissues. ccRCC patients with high UBE3C protein expression in tumors were associated with significantly worse postoperative survival. Knockdown of UBE3C expression in ACHN cells inhibited cell proliferation, migrations and invasiveness in vitro while overexpression of UBE3C in 786-O cells exerted the opposite effects. UBE3C up-regulated β-catenin protein levels and promoted β-catenin nuclear accumulation, leading to the activation of the Wnt/β-catenin signal pathway in RCC cells. Collectively, these observations suggest that UBE3C plays an important role in RCC development and progression, and UBE3C may be a novel target for prevention and treatment of ccRCC.

To evaluate the relationship between mortality and HBVDNA and HBeAg expression of severe hepatitis B patients.The mortality rates of different types of severe hepatitis patients in our hospital during the last five years were analysed. HBV DNA was detected using the fluorescence quantitative PCR method and the HBeAg expression of severe hepatitis B was studied using a microparticle method.(1) Hepatitis B morbidity was 83.5% in each type of severe hepatitis, and severe chronic hepatitis B morbidity was 96.77% in each type of severe chronic hepatitis. (2) The mortality rate of those with HBV DNA more than 1 x 10(5) copies/ml was 53.25% and the mortality of those with HBV DNA less than 1 x 10(5) copies/ml was 34.50% (P less than 0.01). The HBeAg expression had no influence on the death rate. (3) The death rate descended to 30.38% from 54.64% (HBV DNA more than 1 x 10(5) copies/ml) when treated with Lamivudine (P less than 0.01).In severe hepatitis the quantity of virus carried in the patient is one of the key factors of mortality; antivirus treatment can lower mortality.

International audience; Bloom syndrome (BS) is a rare human autosomal recessive disorder characterized by marked genetic instability associated with greatly increased predisposition to a wide range of cancers affecting the general population. BS arises through mutations in both copies of the BLM gene which encodes a 3'-5' DNA helicase identified as a member of the RecQ family. Several studies support a major role for BLM in the cellular response to DNA damage and stalled replication forks. However, the specific function(s) of BLM remain(s) unclear. The BLM protein is strongly expressed and phosphorylated during mitosis, but very little information is available about the origin and the significance of this phosphorylation. We show here that ATM kinase provides only a limited contribution to the mitotic phosphorylation of BLM. We also demonstrate that BLM is directly phosphorylated at multiple sites in vitro by the mitotic cdc2 kinase, and identify two new sites of mitotic BLM phosphorylation: Ser-714 and Thr-766. Our results identify BLM helicase as a new substrate for cdc2, which may have potential physiological implications for the role of BLM in mitosis.

The physical and electrochemical behaviors of the boron-doped diamond film electrode prepared by chemical vapor deposition technique were studied. The surface microstructure of the electrode was demonstrated by means of scanning electron microscopy. The electrochemical behaviors of the electrode were investigated using cyclic voltammetry and AC Impedance. The diamond films were polycrystalline and had uniform grains in micron grade. The results showed that the electrode had a very wide potential window and very low background current. The potential windows in acidic, neutral or alkaline medium were separately 4.3 V, 4.0 V and 3.0 V. The background current was as low as -9 x 10(-6)-5 x 10(-7) A. In electrolyte including Ferri/Ferrocyanide, the electrode surface kept good activity, and the electrochemical reaction carrying out on the surface was a diffusion-controlled reaction, with good quasi-reversibility. Studies of the oxidation of organic compounds showed that the electrocatalytic oxidation behavior was selective. Compared with Pt and graphite electrodes, the diamond electrode could oxidate aromatic compounds like phenol and nitrobenzene effectively, and the process of oxidation was very simple and complete.

To investigate the therapeutic effect of integrative Chinese and western medicine (ICWM) in treating severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and its influence on T-lymphocyte subsets.Comparative study was conducted in 133 SARS inpatients in Beijing Ditan Hospital, who were divided into 3 groups according to the treatment applied, the basic treated group, the low dose steroid group and the high dose steroid group, and all the 3 groups were subdivided into two groups, Chinese herbs and non-Chinese herbs added, respectively. Chinese drugs for clearing-up heat, dispelling dampness, detoxication, removing stasis, supplementing Qi and nourishing Yin were selected according to patients' syndrome and given additionally to all the three ICWM groups. Retrospective analysis for significance test on changes of T-lymphocyte subsets before and after treatment were carried out.T-lymphocyte counts, including CD3+, CD4+, CD8+, lowered in all patients before treatment, but increased significantly after treated for 3 weeks, the increment in all the low dose steroid treated groups was higher than that in the basic treated groups, and that in ICWM groups was higher than that in non-ICWM groups, respectively.Glycocorticosteroid and Chinese herbal medicine treatments could promote the recovery of T-lymphocyte profile, rationally use of them is the effective therapeutic method.

To investigate the role and clinical value of radionuclide imaging in hepatic impact injuries in rabbits.Rabbits were experimentally impacted on the liver with BIM-IV bio-impact machine. Liver imaging was performed with 99mTc labeled sodium phytate. Liver blood pool imaging was performed with 99mTc-stannous pyrophosphate labeled red blood cells. The results of radionuclide imaging were compared with the anatomic results.There was significant difference between the images of the injured liver and the control. Radio diminution and defect were shown in the injured liver areas. Various sorts of abnormal radioactivity distribution were observed with hepatic blood pool imaging. The results of the liver imaging and liver blood pool imaging were accorded with the results of the anatomic findings.Radionuclide imaging may well display the changes of hepatocellular structures and functions after injury, which is valuable in locating the concrete injured position and differentiating the injured degrees of liver.

Identifying the concerns of terminal cancer patients and respecting their wishes is important in clinical decision-making concerning the provision of artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH). The aim of this study was to discover terminal cancer patients' wishes and determine influencing factors toward the provision of ANH. One hundred and ninety-seven patients with terminal cancer, admitted to a palliative care unit in Taiwan over a two-year period, completed a questionnaire interview, which included demographic characteristics, knowledge and attitudes on ANH, the health locus of control, subjective norms, and the wishes to use ANH. One hundred and fifty-four patients (78.2%) used ANH in the past month. A knowledge test on issues related to ANH showed the rates of accurate responses were ranked as: peripheral intravenous route can only provide hydration (48.7%), excessive artificial nutrition may increase the proliferation of cancer cells (32%), ANH can prolong life expectancy for all patients (17.3%), and ANH can prevent all patients from starving to death (5.6%). The strongest attitude of patients toward the potential benefit of ANH was "it can provide the body need with nutrition and hydration when inability to eat or drink occurs." Otherwise, the strongest attitude toward the potential burdens of ANH was "gastrostomy makes the illness worse." One hundred and twenty-two of 197 patients (62.9%) expressed their wishes to have ANH. The results of logistic regression analysis showed that the experience of using a nasogastric tube and intravenous fluids, and subjective norms were the most significant variables related to the wishes of patients to use ANH (odds ratio [OR]=11.11, 95% confidence interval [CI]=3.20-38.64; OR=2.51, 95% CI=1.22-5.15, OR=1.30, 95% CI=1.05--1.60, respectively). However, the use of artificial nutrition was negatively affected by the knowledge of ANH (OR=0.53, 95% CI=0.37-0.84). In conclusion, Taiwanese patients with terminal cancer have insufficient knowledge about AHN and still believe in the benefits of ANH, especially in avoiding dehydration or starvation. The findings of this study indicate the importance of medical professional training and decision-making in the initial consideration of using ANH. By improving the knowledge about ANH among patients, more appropriate decisions can be achieved.

To investigate the role of intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) in the accumulation of polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMN) in the lungs at the early stage of burns.Myeloperoxidase content in lung tissues and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) were detected. ICAM-1 and its mRNA expression in lung tissues were determined by immunohistochemical method and in situ hybridization. CD11b/CD18 expression on the peripheral PMNs was measured by flow cytometry.The levels of myeloperoxidase in lung tissues and BALF after burn injury were markedly higher than those of control. Expression of ICAM-1 and its mRNA in the lung tissues and CD11b/CD18 on peripheral PMNs surface was significantly increased at 2, 6, 12, 24 h after burns.PMNs accumulation in the lungs is related to increased ICAM-1 expression on pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells and CD11b/CD18 expression on PMN at the early stage of burn injury.

The crystal structure of hexacyanoferrato(III)bis(µ-cyano){1,3-bis[(4-methyl-5-imidazol-1-yl)ethylideneamino]propan-2-ol}copper(II) hexacyanoferrato(III)-µ-cyano-{1,3-bis[(4-methyl-5-imidazol-1-yl)ethylideneamino]propan-2-ol}cuprate(II) tetradecahydrate consists of trinuclear cations and dinuclear anions whose copper atoms show square pyramidal and iron atoms octahedral coordination. The cations and anions are linked by hydrogen bonds involving 14 lattice water molecules in a network architecture. Crystals of the C51H82Cu3Fe2N30O17 belong to the triclinic P1̅ space group [a = 13.700(2), b = 13.881(2), c = 21.431(3) Å; α = 76.96(1), β = 83.07(1), γ = 74.70(1)°].

The limit of the damage threshold of optics is one of the most important factors, which affect the foundation of high power laser system. Under the actual level of technique, it is hardly to increase the laser system's loading capacity by improving the process technics or increasing the caliber. For some optics, laser conditioning is an effective way to improve their damage threshold. Related study show that the damage threshold of optics would improve to two times after laser conditioning. It is feasible that the damage threshold could be improved safely and the power density of the laser system could be stepped up by studying the mechanism and technology of laser conditioning systematically. Since the limit of coating technical, the laser conditioning mechanism must be understood and comprehended. So experiments in two aspects were done to find the changes of several sol-gel films and PVD films during laser conditioning. First, studied the infection which damage did to decide the effective size and appearance. Secondly, studied the stability of different damages under consecutive irradiation. At the same time, some factors that affect the conditioning effect were analysed in order to discuss the techniques and methods of laser conditioning scientifically.