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Cyclocarya paliurus, an important endangered plant in China, has considerable medicinal, timber, and horticultural value. However, little is known about diseases that affect its health. In recent years, stem canker diseases on C. paliurus have been observed frequently in newly established nurseries in Jiangsu Province, China. Symptomatic trees showed elliptical, sunken lesions on the bark, with internal discoloration, leading to enlarging cankers with delineated margins. Pathogenicity tests with fungi isolated from symptomatic samples reproduced typical canker symptoms on both detached branches and potted plants of C. paliurus. Moreover, conidia from pycnidia of isolate ZB-23 could also cause stem canker on C. paliurus. Through combined morphological observation and DNA sequences of ITS region, β-tubulin, and translation elongation factor 1-α genes, the pathogen was identified as Botryosphaeria dothidea. Multigene maximum likelihood and maximum parsimony phylogenetic analyses further supported the identification of the pathogen. To our knowledge, this is the first report of B. dothidea causing stem canker on C. paliurus in China.

Cyclocarya paliurus is an extremely valuable and multifunctional tree species whose leaves have traditionally been used in used in medicine or as a medicinal tea in China. In recent years, anthracnose has been frequently observed on young leaves of C. paliurus in several nurseries located in Jiangsu Province, resulting in great yield and quality losses. To date, no information is available about the prevalence of C. paliurus anthracnose in China. The main purpose of the present study was to characterize the etiology of C. paliurus anthracnose. Phylogenetic analysis of the eight-loci concatenated dataset revealed that all 44 single-spore Colletotrichum isolates belonged to three species in the Colletotrichum gloeosporioides species complex, namely, Colletotrichum aenigma, Colletotrichum fructicola, and C. gloeosporioides sensu stricto. Phenotypic features, including the colony appearance and the morphology of conidia, appressoria, and ascospores, were consistent with the phylogenetic grouping. Virulence tests validated that the three Colletotrichum species could cause typical symptoms of anthracnose on C. paliurus leaves, similar to those observed in the field. The optimum mycelial growth temperature ranged from 25 to 30°C for all representative isolates, while C. gloeosporioides s. s. isolates exhibited greater tolerance to high temperature (40°C). Fungicide sensitivity assays indicated that all three Colletotrichum species were sensitive to tetramycin, which may be a potential alternative for the management of C. paliurus anthracnose. To our knowledge, this study provides the first report of C. aenigma, C. fructicola, and C. gloeosporioides s. s. causing C. paliurus anthracnose in China as well as in the world.

Cyclocarya paliurus is an extremely valuable and multifunctional tree species whose leaves have traditionally been used in used in medicine or as a medicinal tea in China. In recent years, anthracnose has been frequently observed on young leaves of C. paliurus in several nurseries located in Jiangsu Province, resulting in great yield and quality losses. To date, no information is available about the prevalence of C. paliurus anthracnose in China. The main purpose of the present study was to characterize the etiology of C. paliurus anthracnose. Phylogenetic analysis of the eight-loci concatenated dataset revealed that all 44 single-spore Colletotrichum isolates belonged to three species in the Colletotrichum gloeosporioides species complex, namely, Colletotrichum aenigma, Colletotrichum fructicola, and C. gloeosporioides sensu stricto. Phenotypic features, including the colony appearance and the morphology of conidia, appressoria, and ascospores, were consistent with the phylogenetic grouping. Virulence tests validated that the three Colletotrichum species could cause typical symptoms of anthracnose on C. paliurus leaves, similar to those observed in the field. The optimum mycelial growth temperature ranged from 25 to 30°C for all representative isolates, while C. gloeosporioides s. s. isolates exhibited greater tolerance to high temperature (40°C). Fungicide sensitivity assays indicated that all three Colletotrichum species were sensitive to tetramycin, which may be a potential alternative for the management of C. paliurus anthracnose. To our knowledge, this study provides the first report of C. aenigma, C. fructicola, and C. gloeosporioides s. s. causing C. paliurus anthracnose in China as well as in the world.

BACKGROUND This study aimed to compare multiple quantitative evaluation indices of levels of theoretical knowledge and clinical practice skills in training medical interns in cardiovascular imaging based on the use of the blended teaching (BT) online artificial intelligence (AI) case resource network platform (CRNP), including time and frequency indices and effectiveness of the CRNP. MATERIAL AND METHODS The study included 110 medical interns who were divided into the routine teaching (RT) group (n=55) and the blended teaching (BT) group (n=55). The two were assessed using the mini-clinical evaluation exercise (mini-CEX) that assessed clinical skills, attitudes, and behaviors and using an objective written questionnaire. The following four indices were compared between the RT and BT groups: the X-ray score (XS), the computed tomography angiography (CTA) score (CS), the cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMRI) score (MS), and the average score (AS). Seven assessment indicators included: the imaging description (ID), the qualitative diagnosis (QD), the differential diagnosis (DD), examination preparation (EP), interview skill (IS), position display (PD), and human care (HC). Indicators of CRNP use included: number of times (TN), average duration (AD), single maximum duration (SMD), and total duration (TD). RESULTS AS significantly correlated with AD (rAD=0.761) and TD (rTD=0.754), and showed moderate correlation with TN (rTN=0.595), but weak correlation with SMD (rSMD=0.404). CONCLUSIONS Levels of theoretical knowledge and clinical practice skills during medical intern training in cardiovascular imaging based on BT using the CRNP teaching technology improved theoretical knowledge and practical skills.

In order to ensure the safe driving, autonomous vehicles under dynamic environments must accurately identify important targets that may change or move, especially pedestrians. Because the cameras are vulnerable to weather, light and other environmental factors, the real-time and accuracy of target detection and recognition may be poor. In this paper, we propose a method for pedestrian target recognition based on Lidar. It consists of three parts: ground point cloud removal, target object segmentation and pedestrian target recognition. Firstly, due to the huge amount of ground point cloud data, this paper uses a range image based on angle threshold algorithm to rapidly remove ground point cloud. With the mapping relationship between the disordered 3D point cloud and the ordered range image, the ground point cloud is marked and removed by the angle threshold on the range image rather than on the 3D point cloud. The ground point cloud removal is convenient for subsequent target object segmentation and recognition. Secondly, because the traditional clustering segmentation algorithm can not meet the real-time requirement of point cloud segmentation, we use improved Eps parameter DBSCAN algorithm combined with range image to segment point cloud target in this paper. For the problem of non-uniformity of 3D point cloud data density, we improve the setting of Eps parameter. For the undersegmentation between adjacent targets, we consider both Euclidean space distance and the angular distance which can distinguish the adjacent targets well in the space. Finally, considering the sparseness and disorder of the 3D point cloud and the lack of local feature extraction of the traditional PointNet network, a multi-scale feature fusion PointNet network is proposed, which combines the multi-scale local features and global feature of point cloud. The network also uses the spatial information and reflection intensity of Lidar point cloud to complete the pedestrian recognition. The experimental result shows that our proposed method can rapidly remove the ground point cloud and works well in segmentation between adjacent targets. The multi-scale feature fusion PointNet network performances well on 3D point cloud, its Area Under the Curve of ROC value reaches 0.92.

Aiming at the strong nonlinearity and nonstationary features of hydroelectric sets vibration fault signal, a vibration fault diagnosis method on the basis of singular value decomposition (SVD) and deep belief network (DBN) for hydroelectric sets is put forward. Firstly, the phase space is reconstructed from the vibration signal to obtain the feature matrix; Secondly, the SVD is performed on the feature matrix, and the singular value sequence with the fault feature is selected by the preferred difference spectrum method to achieve the purpose of noise reduction; Finally, a DBN classifier model is established to realize fault diagnosis of hydroelectric sets. The experimental verification by the actual hydroelectric sets fault data shows that the fault types of the hydroelectric sets can be effectively diagnose according to this new method.

Cultivated as a medicinal plant, Cyclocarya paliurus is a monotypic species in its genus and native to China. However, limited information is available regarding diseases that affect its health. In recent years, severe foliar blight and occasional dieback of C. paliurus were observed in the provinces of Anhui, Guangxi, Hubei and Jiangsu in China. The fungus Nigrospora sphaerica was consistently isolated from 70 diseased samples, and its identity was confirmed based on phylogenetic and morphological studies. The phylogenetic analyses of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region, translation elongation factor 1-alpha (TEF), and beta-tubulin (TUB) genes compared 15 representative isolates with reference specimens within the Nigrospora genus and validated the identity of the pathogenic fungus. The pathogenicity tests of C. paliurus leaves showed that regardless of whether mycelial plugs or conidial suspensions were used, inoculation with the N. sphaerica isolates resulted in foliar blight symptoms similar to those observed under field conditions. Mycelial growth of N. sphaerica occurred at temperatures ranging from 5 to 35 °C, with an optimum between 25 and 30 °C. In addition, high relative humidity (>85%) could promote conidial germination of N. sphaerica. This study represents an initial step in studying N. sphaerica as a new phytopathogen of C. paliurus in China with the goal of developing efficient control strategies.

The polymer matrix with introduced carbon-based nanofiber displays fascinating properties. They have inspired extensive research on the synthesis of polymer composites, which have been applied in catalysis, electronics, and energy storage. In this report, we reported a facile and efficient method to prepare poly(p-phenylene benzobisoxazole) (PBO)/nanographene (PNG) composites fibers via in-situ polymerization, accompanied by the reduction from (nanographene oxide) NGO to (nanographene) NG. By tuning the ratio of feeding PBO monomer to NGO, various composites fibers with 0.1-1 wt % contents of NG were obtained. The efficient PBO chains grafting made NG uniformly disperse in the PBO matrix, and it also increased the uniformity of the packing orientation of PBO chains. Consequently, the tensile strength, tensile modulus, and thermal stability of the obtained PNG composites fibers had been improved significantly. In addition, the composites fibers with 0.5 wt % NG exhibited a 25% increment in tensile strength, and a 41% enhancement in tensile modulus compared with neat PBO fibers. It reveals an excellent reinforcement to PBO composites fibers with NG.

Changes in actual efficiency of PS II photochemistry, non-photochemical quenching (NPQ), content of xanthophylls and kinetics of de-epoxidation were studied in ABA-fed and non-ABA-fed leaves of rice and cabbage under NaCl stress. Salt stress induced more progressive decrease in actual efficiency of PS II photochemistry (ФPS II), higher reduction state of PS II, and a small significant increase in NPQ in NaCl-sensitive rice plants as compared with NaCl-tolerant cabbage plants, whereas exogenously supplied ABA alleviated the decrease in actual efficiency of PS II photochemistry (ФPS II), induced a lower reduction state of PS II, and caused higher capacity of NPQ in ABA-fed plants than in non-ABA-fed plants. As a result, there were higher activities of photosynthetic electron transport, higher capacity of energy dissipation, and lower cumulation of excess light in cabbage than in rice plants, and in ABA-fed leaves than in non-ABA-fed leaves. The effect of ABA was more efficient in cabbage than in rice plants. Addition of exogenous ABA resulted in enhancement of the size of the xanthophyll cycle pool, promotion of de-epoxidation of the xanthophyll cycle components, and a rise in the level of NPQ by altering the kinetics of de-epoxidation of the xanthophyll cycle. Protection from photodamage appears to be achieved by coordinated contributions by exogenous ABA and xanthophyll cycle-mediated NPQ. This variety of photoprotective mechanisms may be essential for conferring photodamage tolerance under NaCl stress.