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ADP-ribosylation mediated by ADP-ribosyltransferases (ARTs) is an intricate modification that regulates diverse cellular processes including DNA repair, chromatin remodeling and gene transcription responding to stresses. In addition to the canonical poly(ADP-ribose) polymerases (PARPs), plant specific SRO (Similar to RCD One) family also contain the catalytic core of the PARP domain. However, whether the PARP domains in SROs execute the ART function is still under debate. In 2014, we reported a wheat SRO, Ta-sro1, had the ADP-ribosyltransferase activity and enhanced wheat seedling growth and abiotic stress resistance, however, a recent work by Vogt et al. showed that Ta-sro1 without ADP-ribosyltransferase activity. Based on the recent progress on PARPs and SROs in relation to ADP-ribosyltransferase activity, along with our former and recent evolving results, we argued that Ta-sro1 is a non-canonical ADP-ribosyltransferase with the enzymatic activity. Although we have revealed the novel mechanism of Ta-sro1 regulate redox homeostasis and enhance salinity stress tolerance through interacting with TaSIP1, it is of interest to further clarify whether and how the enzymatic activity of Ta-sro1 responsible for the salinity tolerance of wheat. Our study raises some interesting points and caveats that helpful for understanding the research progresses and debates about the enzymatic activity of SROs.

Background: Prescription drug misuse (PDM) is a critical mental health issue relating to psychiatric morbidity. This study investigated the prevalence of PDM and its associated psychopathology and psychosocial factors in the general population in Taiwan. Methods: The survey randomly selected a representative sample >15 year-olds using the stratified proportional randomization method. The measurements included demographic variables, previous experience with PDM, self-rated physical and mental health, health self-efficacy, risk factors for suicidality, and psychological distress. Results: The weighted one-year prevalence of PDM was 8.5% (n = 180) among 2126 participants. Those with psychological distress and lifetime suicide ideation (23.3%) or suicide attempts (5.0%) were significantly associated with PDM. PDM was also prevalent among those with poorer self-rated health and lower self-efficacy. Insomnia (OR = 1.52), depression (OR = 1.77), and low self-efficacy (OR = 2.29) had higher odds of PDM after adjustment in the logistic regression model. Conclusions: Individuals who misused prescription drugs had a higher prevalence of psychological distress and suicidality and lower levels of self-rated health. Prescription drug misuse problems should be screened for early prevention when prescribing medications for people with insomnia, depression, or lower perceived health beliefs or conditions.

The mutually beneficial relationship between plants and their root microbiota is essential for plants to adapt to unfavorable environments. However, the molecular mechanism of wheat regulating the structure of root microbiome and the influence of distant hybridization on this process are poorly understood. In this study, we systematically compared the root transcriptome and microbiome between a saline-alkali tolerant wheat introgression line SR4 (derived from somatic hybridization between wheat and tall wheatgrass) and its parent wheat variety JN177. The results indicated that root microorganisms were key factor maintaining better homeostasis of the sodium and potassium ion contents in SR4 than in JN177 under saline-alkali stress. Through systematic comparisons, we identified SR4-specific root bacterial and fungal taxa under saline-alkali stress. Through a weighted gene correlation network analysis (WGCNA) combining microbiome and transcriptome data, key functional genes and pathways, which were strongly related to root bacteria and fungi with differential abundance between JN177 and SR4, were identified. These results suggest that somatic hybridization has altered the key genes regulating root microbiome in wheat, further improving the saline-alkali tolerance of wheat introgression line. These findings provide the key bacterial and fungal taxa and functional target genes for wheat root microbiome engineering under saline-alkali stress.

Inspired by recent developments in the study of chaos in many-body systems, we construct a measure of local information spreading for a stochastic Cellular Automaton in the form of a spatiotemporally resolved Hamming distance. This decorrelator is a classical version of an Out-of-Time-Order Correlator studied in the context of quantum many-body systems. Focusing on the one-dimensional Kauffman Cellular Automaton, we extract the scaling form of our decorrelator with an associated butterfly velocity $v_b$ and a velocity-dependent Lyapunov exponent $\lambda(v)$. The existence of the latter is not a given in a discrete classical system. Second, we account for the behaviour of the decorrelator in a framework based solely on the boundary of the information spreading, including an effective boundary random walk model yielding the full functional form of the decorrelator. In particular, we obtain analytic results for $v_b$ and the exponent $\beta$ in the scaling ansatz $\lambda(v) \sim \mu (v - v_b)^\beta$, which is usually only obtained numerically. Finally, a full scaling collapse establishes the decorrelator as a unifying diagnostic of information spreading., Comment: 5+1 pages, 4 figures

Freshwater aquaculture ponds collectively cover a large area in southeast China. They are an important anthropogenic source of CH

In this study, a sampling campaign with a total of nine sampling events investigating lead in drinking water was conducted at 7 sampling locations in an old building with lead pipes in service in part of the building on the National Taiwan University campus. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of four different sampling methods, namely first draw sampling, sequential sampling, random daytime sampling and flush sampling, in lead contamination detection. In 3 out of the 7 sampling locations without lead pipe, lead could not be detected (1.1 μg/L) in most samples regardless of the sampling methods. On the other hand, in the 4 sampling locations where lead pipes still existed, total lead concentrations10 μg/L were consistently observed in 3 locations using any of the four sampling methods while the remaining location was identified to be contaminated using sequential sampling. High lead levels were consistently measured by the four sampling methods in the 3 locations in which particulate lead was either predominant or comparable to soluble lead. Compared to first draw and random daytime samplings, although flush sampling had a high tendency to reduce total lead in samples in lead-contaminated sites, the extent of lead reduction was location-dependent and not dependent on flush durations between 5 and 10 min. Overall, first draw sampling and random daytime sampling were reliable and effective in determining lead contamination in this study. Flush sampling could reveal the contamination if the extent is severe but tends to underestimate lead exposure risk.

Two new complexes Zn(TBimE)Cl2 1 and Cd(TBimE)(I)2 2 based on a semi-rigid ligand TBimE (TBimE = (E)-1,2-bis(2-benzimidazolyl)ethane) have been synthesized and their structures have been determined...

A new cave-dwelling loach of the genus Triplophysa, T. xichouensis, is described from an outlet of a subterranean river in Xisa Town, Xichou County, Yunnan Province, China. It can be distinguished from its congeners by the following characters: dorsal-fin rays iii, 8; anal-fin rays ii, 6; pectoral-fin rays i, 9 or 10; pelvic-fin rays i, 5 or 6; branched caudal-fin rays 16(8+8); eyes highly degenerated to a very tiny black dot; dorsal-fin origin closer to snout tip than to caudal-fin base and anterior to vertical line of pelvic-fin origin; pectoral fin length about two-thirds the distance between pectoral-fin origin to pelvic-fin origin; caudal peduncle slender, its length about three times its depth; caudal fin emarginate; body smooth and scaleless; lateral line complete and straight; anterior chamber of air bladder wrapped in dumbbell-shaped bony capsule and the posterior one well developed, long, oval; intestine short, bending in zigzag shape behind stomach. A key for the cave-dwelling species of Triplophysa is provided. urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:9162FFB1-7911-47C3-AE50-6A00E9590327

The paper classifies the types of power generation systems and analyze the operational data acquired from power generation systems first. Reliability index information and operational status data of power generation systems obtained from Taiwan Power Company is collected and used in this paper. Statistical analysis and comparisons can be used to detect the possible abnormalities. An operational performance index based on the lower heating value and availability of a power generation unit is then proposed and used to quantize and compare the operational performance of the generation unit. From test results, it can be observed that the operational performance grade of power generation systems can be effectively determined and operational performances between different power generation systems can be efficiently compared. The proposed operational performance index will be very helpful for observing and enhancing the operational efficiency and reliability of power generation systems.

The aseptic carton transportation packaging of Huiyuan juice was taken as an example in this research. Cape Pack was used to design the packaging process of small packaging, middle packaging, transport packaging and vehicle shipment in order to keep the packaging material minimum, transportation space utilization maximum and total cost minimum.

Modern wind plants in offshore wind farms have grown in capacity into facilities that can no longer be ignored in transmission planning studies. Additionally, a large penetration of wind generation in an offshore wind farm into the power system will bring a number of challenges on system planning, operation, and impact analyses. This paper will provide an overview of the important state-of-the-art technologies in offshore wind energy systems, including the designs on internal electric system of an offshore wind farm, transmission system to shore, generator type, system frequency, transmission cable, communications medium and SCADA system, offshore substation and transformer. Additionally, the development on reactive power compensation, collection grid topologies, redundancy design for improving system reliability, power quality standard and measurement, and protection scheme on switching transient will also illustrated in this paper.

Sonoporation refers to the use of ultrasound and acoustic cavitation to temporarily enhance the permeability of cellular membranes so as to enhance the delivery efficiency of therapeutic agents into cells. Microbubble-based ultrasound contrast agents are often used to facilitate these cavitation effects. This study used nanodroplets to significantly enhance the effectiveness of sonoporation relative to using conventional microbubbles. Significant enhancements were demonstrated both in vitro and in vivo by using gold nanorods encapsulated in nanodroplets for implementing plasmonic photothermal therapy. Combined excitation by ultrasound and laser radiation is used to trigger the gold nanodroplets to induce a liquid-to-gas phase change, which induces cavitation effects that are three-to-fivefold stronger than when using conventional microbubbles. Enhanced cavitation also leads to significant enhancement of the sonoporation effects. Our in vivo results show that nanodroplet-vaporization-assisted sonoporation can increase the treatment temperature by more than 10 °C above that achieved by microbubble-based sonoporation.

Damping behavior of Ti50.1Ni49.9 shape memory alloy during reverse martensitic transformation has been investigated by dynamic mechanical analyzer in a dual-cantilever mode. With the increase of strain amplitude, internal friction (IF) of the alloy increases in martensite and austenite states while decreases in transformation region. Based on the regularity of IF attenuation in isothermal condition, IFTr and (IFPT+ IFI) are decomposed from the strain amplitude dependent IF in transformation region. For practical application of shape memory alloys as a damping material, it is significant to evaluate the damping capacity by eliminating the influence of IFTr and consider its time independent real IF (IFPT+ IFI).

A new species of the hillstream loach genus Balitora Gray, Balitora ludongensis, from Qilong River which drains to Zuojiang River (a headwater of the Pearl River) drainage, Jingxi County, Guangxi, China. It can be distinguished from its congeners by the following characters: pectoral fin with vi–vii, 11–12 rays; pelvic fin with ii, 6–7 rays; pre-oral groove relatively shallow, upper lip without or with 3–5 fold-like papillae in a row on its middle surface and gradually smooth to the corner of mouth; two maxillary barbels at each corner of mouth, the outer one slightly longer than the inner one, 149.0–190.9% of eye diameter; eyes small, eye diameter 14.2–18.1% of head length; Dorsal-fin origin slightly anterior to pelvic-fin origin; Caudal-peduncle depth 39.1–55.0% of its length; upper lobe of caudal fin longer than the lower one; lateral-line scales 69–74; with 6–9 black blotches on the dorsal side of body.

The effect of precipitation on the internal friction (IF) of AZ91 magnesium alloy was investigated by using X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, scanning electron microscope (SEM) observation, and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). Six different states of alloy were prepared by applying different heat treatment processes: as-cast, in-complete solid solution, complete solid solution, micro-precipitation, continuous precipitation and continuous-discontinuous precipitation. It was found that the internal friction of in-completely solid-solutionized, completely solid-solutionized and micro-precipitated specimens showed a similar characteristic, and the grain boundary relaxation is completed depressed due to the Al atoms supersaturated in the alpha-Mg solution. However, a thermal relaxation internal friction peak was observed for continuously precipitated and continuously-discontinuously precipitated specimens at around 438 K and frequency of about 1 Hz, which was attributed to the grain boundaries relaxation. Furthermore, it was found that the relaxation of the beta-Mg(17)Al(12)/alpha-Mg phase interfaces should give its contribution to the background internal friction in the as-cast, continuously precipitated and continuously-discontinuously precipitated specimens.

One internal friction peak associated with the B2↔B19’ transformation appears on the cooling curve of porous NiTi shape memory alloy and the dense NiTi alloy shows the maximum peak. The tan δ value increased with the increasing of strain amplitude and the decreasing of frequency. Tan δ value of porous alloy mainly comes from the energy absorbing of the matrix at the small strain amplitude, however, if the strain amplitude is large, the tan δ value comes from the energy consumption that overcomes the friction between folds and the plastic contribution.

Two new species and a new record of Sinogastromyzon are described from Lixianjiang River of Yunnan province, China. Sinogastromyzon lixianjiangensis, new species, can be distinguished from its congeners by the following characters: pectoral fin with XIII-XIV, 15-17 rays; pelvic fin with X-XI, 10-12 rays; 60-65 lateral-line scales; no scales on the dorsum of paired fins or the region between axilla of pectoral fin and pelvic-fin origin; tip of pelvic fin close to anus; tip of anal fin close to caudal-fin base; anal-fin origin nearer to the caudal-fin base than to the posterior pelvic-fin base; anus nearer to anal-fin origin than to the posterior pelvic-fin base; dorsal side of the body with 9-11 black blotches. Sinogastromyzon macrostoma, new species can be distinguished from its congeners by the following characters: pectoral fin with XII-XIV, 12-15 rays; pelvic fin with VII-IX, 11-13 rays; 48-56 lateral-line scales; mouth extremely big, slightly arched; no scales on the dorsum of paired fins or the region between axilla of pectoral fin and pelvic-fin origin; tip of pelvic fin far beyond anus; tip of anal fin far from caudal-fin base; anal-fin origin about midway between the posterior pelvic-fin base and caudal-fin base; anus nearer to posterior pelvic-fin base than to anal-fin origin; dorsal side of the body uniformly gray, without regular blotches in formalin preserved specimen. Sinogastromyzon cf. multiocellum is firstly recorded in China.

The internal friction spectra of TiNiCu shape memory alloy (SMA), which involves thermoelastic martensitic transformation, can be divided into three different terms: intrinsic, transitory and phase transition. In this paper, the damping behavior during the reverse martensitic transformation in Ti 50 Ni 27 Cu 23 SMA has been investigated using dynamic mechanical analyzer instrument. The internal friction spectra of Ti 50 Ni 27 Cu 23 SMA have been analyzed quantitatively and divided into intrinsic and transitory contributions using an iterative method. The internal friction spectra with different oscillation frequency have been predicted based on the quantitative analysis.

Acoustic droplet vaporization has been proposed for sonoporation. In this study, we hypothesize that, by using gold nanodroplets (AuNDs), vaporization can be triggered with external application of laser irradiation. In addition, the vaporization assisted sonoporation can enhance delivery of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) into the cells, thus potentially enhancing effects of plasmonic photothermal therapy. To test our hypothesis, in vitro studies were conducted. The delivery efficiency of AuNDs was also co mpared to that of AuNPs encapsulated in ultrasound microbubbles (AuMBs). The inertial cavitation dose (ICD), and optical density (OD) valu e of AuNPs were all measured under the applications of ultrasound only, laser only, and both ultrasound and laser. Results show that the cavitational effects and microbubble destruction were the highest with both ultrasound and laser being applied. In addition, destruction ratio of AuNDs was around 43%, compared to 35% microbubble destruction of AuMBs. Likewise, the OD value of AuNDs is 1.3 times higher than that of AuMBs under the same conditions, indicating that cavitation resulting from microbubble descturction did have the capability to assist the delivery of AuNPs into the cells. After the delivery, laser heating resulted in cell death. The cell viability with AuNDs was 45% left in the in vitro studies. Synergistic effects were also evident when combing laser with ultrasound. Keywords: gold nanodroplets, photothermal therapy, vaporization, cavitation effect

Photothermal therapy is potentially an effective approach to treat cancer. By targeting gold nanorods (AuNRs) to specific tumor sites, laser irradiation can heat the AuNRs and elevate temperature to kill tumor cells. Concentration of AuNRs that can be delivered to tumor cells is the key factor for treatment effects. To enhance delivery, AuNRs encapsulated in perfluorocarbone nanodroplet (AuND) is of particular interest. We hypothesize that by utilizing ultrasound and laser at the same time, AuNDs will undergo liquid-to-gas phase change and the associated cavitational effects will significantly enhance AuNR delivery. To test this hypothesis, in vitro experiments were performed. Results show that the destruction ratio of AuNDs is 45% when both ultrasound and laser are applied. With gold microbubbles (AuMBs) where no liquid-to-gas phase change is present, the destruction ratio is only 35%. Furthermore, the AuNR concentration in the cells is 1.5 times higher for AuNDs than AuMBs. Thus, the combination of laser and ultrasound and the use of AuNDs have the potential to significantly enhance targeted photothermal therapy effects.

During April, July to August and November of 2012,three surveys were conducted to estimate the early-stage fish resources in the area of Liyuan power station on Jinshajiang River of Yunnan Province. During the survey conducted at the crossing of Daju Town, Yulong County, Yunnan Province, from July to August, 2012, two egg-tides of Jinshaia sinensis were detected. One was from 8:00 of August 1(st) to 10:00 of August 4(th) and the other one was from 23:00 of August 9(th) to 6:00 of August 13(th). The average egg diameter was 3.89 mm, ranging from 3.37 to 4.41 mm. Natural fertilization and hatching rate as well as abnormality rate in mimic wild environment were 91.5%, 97.1% and 2.2%, respectively. Meanwhile, three spawning grounds had been conjectured, which were Longpan Town, Liming Town and Judian Town of Yulong County, Yunnan Province. Moreover, the total number of eggs from those three spawning grounds during the two egg-tides was approximately 1.49×10(7) ind.. The discovery of the three spawing grounds is of importance in fullfilling the study of Jinshaia sinensis, and in protecting fish resources under the influences of power stations.该研究分别于2012年4月、7—8月及11月针对云南省金沙江梨园电站影响区域的鱼类早期资源进行了3次监测。并于2012年7—8月对云南省玉龙县大具乡大具渡口金沙江的监测中，发现中华金沙鳅(

This study presents tribal particle swarm optimization (TPSO) to optimize the parameters of the specific neurofuzzy inference system (NIS) for forecasting sunspot numbers. The proposed TPSO uses particle swarm optimization (PSO) as evolution strategies of the tribes optimization algorithm (TOA) to balance local and global exploration of the search space. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed TPSO method converges quickly and yields a lower RMS error than other current methods.

Two new Cypriniformes fish records from Yunnan Province, Carassioides acuminatus (collected from mainstream of Red River in Hekou County) and Hemimyzon pumilicorpora (collected from Gula River, Gula Town, Funing County, upper stream of the Pearl River drainage), were identified during fish specimen sorting at Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. These two new records not only clarify the distribution patterns of the two species, but also enrich the knowledge of native fishes of Yunnan Province.近期整理中国科学院昆明动物研究所馆藏鱼类标本时,发现云南省鲤形目鱼类两新纪录,须鲫(

To explore the presence of functional connectivity between anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during the manipulation of attentional network test (ANT) and its relationship with behavioral performance.Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed on 25 healthy subjects aged 17 - 20 years. And ANT was used as a paradigm. Functional connectivity between ACC-DLPFC was tested and correlation analysis conducted between functional connectivity coefficients and behavioral scores of ANT.Significant functional connectivity between the dorsal ACC (dACC) with bilateral DLPFC was found. Furthermore, event-related functional connectivity coefficients between left dACC and left DLPFC were negatively associated with the behavioral scores of executive control (r = -0.63; P0.01).Our findings provide new evidence that ACC and DLPFC are functionally connected and such functional connectivity has advantageous influence on executive control function of attention so as to contribute to our understanding of the integrated role of these brain regions in attentional network.

To obtain the three dimensional visualization model with normal measurements of fetal brain in the second trimester and analyze the developmental changes with gestational age (GA), sexual dimorphisms and cerebral asymmetries.The brains of 69 fetal specimens of 12 - 22 weeks GA were scanned by 7.0T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The developing structures were analyzed and a three dimensional visualization model was rebuilt with Amira 4.1 software.Most sulci, except for postcentral and intraparietal sulcus, were present until 22 weeks GA. And none developed secondary branches. Laminar organization, described as early as 12 weeks GA, was delineated as layers with different signal intensities and became typical after 16 weeks GA. Basal nuclei was distinctly visible. Brains had different growth rates linearly increasing with GA. But neither sexual dimorphisms nor cerebral asymmetries was detected.The initial developmental stage of fetal brain occurs at 12 - 22 weeks GA. The developing structures may be distinctly visualized on 7.0T post-mortem MRI. And the three dimensional visualization model aids greatly in the precise cognition of immature brain.

In the past, news consumption took place predominantly via newspapers and were hard to track. Nowadays, the rapid growth of the Internet means that news are continually being shared and stored on a previously unimaginable scale. It is now possible to access several news stories on the same topic on a single web page. In this paper, we proposed a topic detection and tracking system with a new word measurement scheme named TF-Density. TF-Density is a new algorithm modified from the well-known TF-IWF and TF-IDF algorithms to provide a more precise and efficient method to recognize the important words in the text. Through our experiments, we demonstrated that our proposed topic detection and tracking system is capable of providing more precise and convenient result for the tracking of news by users.

The models on direct N2O emissions from rice paddies under different water regimes developed by the authors were validated against field measurements in China reported in 2005-2007 and in other regions. In flooding rice paddies (F), N2O emission predicted by the model was consistent with previous reports in other regions. Under the water regime of flooding-midseason drainage-reflooding (F-D-F), the model developed in this study was comparable to that established by using worldwide database. The models also well fitted N2O emissions from rice paddies under the water regime of flooding-midseason drainage-reflooding-moisture but without waterlogging (F-D-F-M) in China. Consistency of rice production data derived from the database of this study with those reported in previous studies suggests that the model input data of rice production had high reliability. The input data showed that water management and nitrogen input regimes have greatly changed in rice paddies since the 1950s. During the 1950s-1970s, about 20%-25% of the rice paddy was continuous water logging, and 75%-80% under the water regime of F-D-F. Since the 1980s, about 12%-16%, 77% and 7%-12% of paddy fields were under the water regimes of F, F-D-F and F-D-F-M, respectively. Total N input during the rice growing season averaged 87.49 kg x hm(-2) in the 1950s and 224.64 kg x hm(-2) in the 1990s. Chemical N input during the rice growing season has increased from 37.4 kg x hm(-2) in the 1950s to 198.8 kg x hm(-2) in the 1990s, accounting for 43% and 88% of the seasonal total N inputs, respectively. Manure N input was applied at stable rate, ranging from 45.2 kg x hm(-2) to 48.2 kg x hm(-2) during the 1950s-1970s, but thereafter it decreased over time. The contribution of manure N to total N inputs has decreased from 52% in the 1950s to 9% in the 1990s. Crop residue N retained during the rice growing season has increased from 4.9 kg x hm(-2) in the 1950s to 6.3 kg x hm(-2) in the 1980s. A high spatial variation of nitrogen inputs during the rice growing season was found in the 1950s-1970s, while it was not pronounced in the 1980s-1990s. Overall, the results of this study suggest that the models could be used to quantify direct N2O emissions from rice paddies under various water regimes in China.

Various water management regimes, such as continuous flooding (F), flooding-midseason drainage-reflooding (F-D-F), and flooding-midseason drainage-reflooding-moist intermittent irrigation but without water logging (F-D-F-M), are currently practiced in paddy rice production in China. These water regimes have incurred a sensitive change in direct N2O emission from rice paddy fields. In order to establish statistical models quantifying the country-specific emission factor and background emission of N2O in paddy fields during the rice growing season, we compiled and statistically analyzed field data on 71 N2O measurements from 17 field studies that were published in peer-reviewed Chinese and English journals. For each field study, we documented the seasonal N2O emission, the type and amount of organic amendment and fertilizer nitrogen application, the water management regime, the drainage duration, the field location and cropping season. Seasonal total N2O was, on average, equivalent to 0.02% of the nitrogen applied in the continuous flooding rice paddies. Under the water regime of F-D-F or the F-D-F-M, seasonal N2O emissions increased with N fertilizer applied in rice paddies. Applying an Ordinary Least Square (OLS) linear regression model resulted in an emission factor of 0.42% for N2O, and in unpronounced background N2 O emission under the water regime of F-D-F. Under the F-D-F-M water regime, N2O emission factor and N2O-N background emission were estimated to be 0.73% and 0.79 kg x hm(-2) during the paddy rice growing season, respectively. After considering three different water regimes in rice paddies in China, the emission factor of N for N2O and N2O-N background emission averaged 0.54% and 0.43 kg x hm(-2). The results of this study suggest that paddy rice relative to upland crop production could have contributed to mitigating N2O emissions from agriculture in China. The emission factor of N for N2O and its background emissions can be directly adopted to develop national inventory of N2O emissions from paddy fields during the rice growing season in China.

This paper presents the measured results of flickers generated by a commercial wind power generation system (WPGS) in Taiwan. The studied WPGS consisting of four identical 660 kW wind-turbine induction generators (WTIGs) is connected to an 11.4 kV bus inside a large petroleum-chemical industrial mill located at the middle coast of Taiwan. The field measured flickers contributed by four WTIGs and a single WTIG are analyzed using a probabilistic approach since the measured quantities are random in nature. According to the measured flicker results, the generated voltage flickers of -V10 contributed by four WTIGs are evidently less than the flicker limitation of Taiwan Power Company (TPC) of Taiwan.

In order to reveal the evolution of Glu-E1 loci of Lophopyrum elongatum (Host) A. Löve and find novel alleles for wheat quality breeding, four Glu-1 alleles were isolated and characterized via genomic PCR, from this wheat-related species. Of them, 1Ex2 and 1Ey2 were novel alleles, which differ from all the previously known HMW-GS alleles of L. elongatum. Two alleles 1Ex1 and 1Ey2, which contain intact open reading frames, have been successfully expressed in E. coli. The expressed proteins showed similar electrophoresis mobility with the candidate high molecular weight glutenin subunit bands found in seeds. Sequence alignment indicated that proteins encoded by the novel alleles showed similar primary structure with those of wheat and other wheat-related grasses, however, they possess some unique modifications in their own structure. For example, the number of residues in the N-terminal domain is different from those of wheat, an irregular tripeptide present between two nonapeptide motifs and a unique cysteine position in the repetitive region. Phylogenetic analyses using N-terminal conserved sequences showed that 1Ex2 was homologous to those from the D genome; but 1Ey2 was homologous to a y-type allele 1Ky from the K genome. The evolution relationship of Glu-E1 alleles and the possible utilization of the alleles in wheat breeding are discussed.

We are grateful to all the voluntary donors of DNA samples in this study. We thank Hui Zhang and Yan-jiao Li for their technical help. We also thank Dr. Darren Curnoe for his critical reading of the manuscript. This study was supported by grants from the National 973 project of China (2007CB947701,2007CB815705), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSCX1YW-R-34, Westlight Doctoral Program), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30525028, 30700445, 30630013 and 30771181), and the Natural Science Foundation of Yunnan Province of China (2007C100M, 2009CD107).

In this paper, we present the video coder which achieves various kinds of continuous scalabilities simultaneously, including spatial scalability, temporal scalability and SNR scalability. By applying the wavelet transform that maps integer to integer in spatial and temporal dimensions, it is possible to perfectly reconstruct the original video sequences. Due to the energy compaction in the temporal domain, using wavelet transform alone does not work well, we replace it by applying the motion estimation at the Low-Low (LL) band to eliminate ringing effects. Following the 2-D SPECK algorithm to represent the wavelet (or residual) coefficients based on the bit plane quantization (according to magnitude comparisons), a precise rate control and a self- adjusting rate allocation are achieved. In order to provide all kinds of scalabilities, a multiresolution encoding/decoding concept is presented and implemented. In which the significant wavelet coefficients corresponding to different resolutions in the original embedded bit stream are interleaved. In the multiresolution decoding process, the user can specify his (or her) own desired spatial and temporal resolutions, and the server will produce the combine bit stream according to the user requirement. In addition to spatial and temporal scalabilities, SNR scalability can be achieved by fitting the exact target bitrate to the available network bandwidth.© (2000) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

The reversible variable length codes (RVLCs) have been adopted in the emerging video coding standards -- H.263+ and MPEG- 4, to enhance their error-resilience capability which is important and essential in the error-prone environments. The most appealing advantage of symmetrical RVLCs compared with asymmetrical RVLCs is that only one code table is required to forward and backward decoding, however, two code tables are required for asymmetrical RVLCs. In this paper, we propose a simple and efficient algorithm that can produce a symmetrical RVLC from a given Huffman code, and we also discuss theoretical bounds of the proposed symmetrical RVLCs.© (2000) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.