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A severe decline in ecosystem services (ES) has accompanied the rapid development of human societies. There is a growing interest in considering ES management from a systemic and integrated perspective. Yet, researchers still need to explore effective ways to integrate human and natural systems for strengthening ES. This study proposes an integrating framework that connects the concept of social-ecological system (SES) with ES. We utilize land use types as indicators of basic SES structure and employ the InVEST model to evaluate typical ES in the Jialing River Basin (JRB). By analyzing spatial and temporal characteristics of SES and multiple typical ES, we investigate how ES is related to different SES types. The results reveal that: (1) from 1980 to 2020, the SES of the JRB underwent significant transformations, including a decrease in cropland areas, while construction land and forestland areas increased. Especially, construction land SES experienced an increase as high as 212.53%. (2) Regarding ES, water yield (WY) increased while soil conservation (SC), carbon storage (CS), and habitat quality (HQ) decreased. (3) The relationship analysis demonstrated disparities in levels of ES across various SES types. Construction land SES exhibited the highest average WY but lower SC, CS, and HQ values compared to forestland which had higher average SC, CS, and HQ instead. These findings imply that regional ES will be positively or negatively affected by transformation within SES. In the long run, it is crucial to synthesize both the characteristics of SES and functional benefits provided by ES in the JRB, then control the favorable transformations within SES to enhance a sustainable supply of ES. This study provides a novel methodology for connecting SES and ES comprehensively with new perspectives that will be beneficial for building regional SES management and ES enhancement.

Abstract The use of microbial inoculants in agriculture as biofertilisers and/or biopesticides is an appealing alternative to replace or reduce the practice of agrochemicals. Plant microbiota studies are revealing the different bacterial groups which are populating plant microbiomes re‐energising the plant probiotic bacteria (PPB) translational research sector. Some single‐microbial strain bioinoculants have proven valid in agriculture (e.g., based on Trichoderma, mycorrhiza or rhizobia); however, it is now recommended to consider multistrain consortia since plant‐beneficial effects are often a result of community‐level interactions in plant microbiomes. A limiting step is the selection of a fitting combination of microbial strains in order to accomplish the best beneficial effect upon plant inoculation. In this study, we have used a subset of 23 previously identified and characterised rice‐beneficial bacterial colonisers to design and test a series of associated experiments aimed to identify potential PPB consortia which are able to co‐colonise and induce plant growth promotion. Bacterial strains were co‐inoculated in vitro and in planta using several different methods and their co‐colonisation and co‐persistence monitored. Results include the identification of two 5‐strain and one 2‐strain consortia which displayed plant growth‐promoting features. Future practical applications of microbiome research must include experiments aimed at identifying consortia of bacteria which can be most effective as crop amendments.

Abstract Inpainting high-resolution images with large holes challenges existing deep learning-based image inpainting methods. We present a novel framework—PyramidFill for high-resolution image inpainting, which explicitly disentangles the task into two sub-tasks: content completion and texture synthesis. PyramidFill attempts to complete the content of unknown regions in a lower-resolution image, and synthesize the textures of unknown regions in a higher-resolution image, progressively. Thus, our model consists of a pyramid of fully convolutional GANs, wherein the content GAN is responsible for completing contents in the lowest-resolution masked image, and each texture GAN is responsible for synthesizing textures in a higher-resolution image. Since completing contents and synthesizing textures demand different abilities from generators, we customize different architectures for the content GAN and texture GAN. Experiments on multiple datasets including CelebA-HQ, Places2 and a new natural scenery dataset (NSHQ) with different resolutions demonstrate that PyramidFill generates higher-quality inpainting results than the state-of-the-art methods.

Satellite remote sensing is an important means for humans to achieve high-resolution earth observation, and it has gradually become an important component supporting economic and social development as well as national defense and security.6G pursues deep integration of communication, perception, and computation, and communication and remote sensing integration has become an important feature of it.The development of satellite remote sensing at home and abroad were reviewed, the existing system architecture of satellite remote sensing systems and the integrated system architecture of communication and remote sensing in the 6G era were outlined, and the typical satellite remote sensing technologies and the latest research progress driven by artificial intelligence were elaborated on.In response to the trend of integrating satellite communication and remote sensing in the 6G era, the technical challenges and development trends of realizing the combination of “one satellite, multiple uses, multi-satellite networking, multi-network integration, and intelligent services” were discussed.

Abstract The authors propose a complete software and hardware framework for a novel spherical robot to cope with exploration in harsh and unknown environments. The proposed robot is driven by a heavy pendulum covered by a fully enclosed spherical shell, which is strongly protected, amphibious, anti‐overturn and has a long‐battery‐life. Algorithms for location and perception, planning and motion control are comprehensively designed. On the one hand, the authors fully consider the kinematic model of a spherical robot, propose a positioning algorithm that fuses data from inertial measurement units, motor encoder and Global Navigation Satellite System, improve global path planning algorithm based on Hybrid A* and design an instruction planning controller based on model predictive control (MPC). On the other hand, the dynamic model is built, linear MPC and robust servo linear quadratic regulator algorithm is improved, and a speed controller and a direction controller are designed. In addition, based on the pose and motion characteristics of a spherical robot, a visual obstacle perception algorithm and an electronic image stabilisation algorithm are designed. Finally, the authors build physical systems to verify the effectiveness of the above algorithms through experiments.

The survival mechanism of Salmonella treated with high-intensity ultrasound (HIU) should be explored to further enhance the bactericidal efficacy of HIU. In this study, culturable Salmonella was reduced by applying HIU. Electron microscope imaging revealed that HIU caused the disintegration of cell structure and leakage of intracellular substances. For the Salmonella after the HIU treatment, key enzymes of the tricarboxylic acid [TCA] cycle were significantly downregulated, which led to a reduced ATP content (45.25%–75.00%), although ATPase activity was augmented by 33.82%–60.64% in the Salmonella. Accordingly, surviving Salmonella could have tolerated the stress of HIU by upregulating their environmental sensing (two-component system), chemotaxis (bacterial chemotaxis), substance uptake (ABC transporter), and ATP production (oxidative phosphorylation). Therefore, synergistically blocking the ATP production, signal transduction, or substance intake of Salmonella offer promising potential strategies to improve the bactericidal effect of HIU in industrial food processing.

There are few studies on the lateral motion of spherical robots. In this article, a new algorithm is proposed to solve the problem of low control accuracy of the lateral motion. A single lateral motion model is established, and the optimal solution of the linear quadratic regulator in infinite time domain is obtained. Aiming at the problems of longitudinal velocity and lateral angle coupling and low control precision, state compensation and velocity feedforward are carried out, and an improved robust servo linear quadratic regulator control algorithm is proposed. Experiments show that the proposed lateral control algorithm has strong adaptability and robustness to changing speeds and lateral angles, and the control effect is stable and reliable.

The phenomenon of the urban PM2.5 pollution island (UPI, the PM2.5 concentration difference along the urban–rural gradient) has been a growing concern due to its pernicious impacts on both residential and environmental health. To date, however, studies on the spatialization and indexation of the UPI effect and what is might be attributed to are still lacking. In this study, the Gaussian surface fitting model was innovatively used to depict the spatial morphology of the UPI effect for 13 cities in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei urban agglomeration region of China. Multiple indicators were introduced from the fitted Gaussian surface to portray the UPI intensity (magnitude), footprint (impact extent), and capacity (cumulative risk load) characteristics. Then, their potential relationships with several representative natural and anthropogenic factors were examined based on panel, cross-section, and time-series analysis. The main findings can be summarized as follows: 1) The intensity, footprint, and capacity indicators based on the fitted Gaussian model complementarily depict the spatial characteristics of the UPI effect. The spatiotemporal analysis showed that most of the case cities experienced remarkably intensified but heterogeneous UPI effects from 2000 to 2015. 2) The panel, cross-section, and time-series analysis enriched the attribution portrayal of the UPI effect. Anthropogenic factors assigned to urbanization generally had more impact on the UPI effect than natural factors. However, the specific contributors varied across cities and times. Based on the Gaussian surface fitting model, multidimensional indicators, and multi-perspective analysis, the results of this study offer new insight into our understanding of the UPI effect and its potential associations, which is useful to broaden both the research methodology and the perspectives in the current study and thus benefit future environmental regulations by providing a worthwhile scientific reference.

Concatenating bosonic error-correcting codes with qubit codes can substantially boost the error-correcting power of the original qubit codes. It is not clear how to concatenate optimally, given that there are several bosonic codes and concatenation schemes to choose from, including the recently discovered Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) – stabilizer codes [Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 080503 (2020)] that allow protection of a logical bosonic mode from fluctuations of the conjugate variables of the mode. We develop efficient maximum-likelihood decoders for and analyze the performance of three different concatenations of codes taken from the following set: qubit stabilizer codes, analog or Gaussian stabilizer codes, GKP codes, and GKP-stabilizer codes. We benchmark decoder performance against additive Gaussian white noise, corroborating our numerics with analytical calculations. We observe that the concatenation involving GKP-stabilizer codes outperforms the more conventional concatenation of a qubit stabilizer code with a GKP code in some cases. We also propose a GKP-stabilizer code that suppresses fluctuations in both conjugate variables without extra quadrature squeezing and formulate qudit versions of GKP-stabilizer codes.

Clarifying the spatiotemporal changes in the supply and demand relationship of ecosystem services (ESs) is essential for optimizing ESs management. However, several studies have reported the ESs supply and demand risk in complex mountainous areas. In this study, we quantitatively analyzed the spatiotemporal variation in ESs supply, demand, and their trade-off and synergy, including water yield, soil conservation, and food provision in the Bailongjiang watershed (BLJW) in western China. The results showed that the total supply and demand of water-yield and soil-conservation services rose with a surplus from 2002 to 2018, except for food provision. A high value characterizes the water-yield and soil-conservation supply in the south, but there are low values in the east BLJW. The spatial distribution of water and food supply–demand featured a high demand in the subareas with population aggregation. Soil-conservation demand is high in the northwest and south of Wudu. The dominant spatial matching type of supply and demand in water yield was a high supply with a low demand. Soil conservation was associated with a low supply and low demand, and food provision with a high supply and increased demand. A synergy existed between water yield and soil conservation. Trade-offs existed between water yield, food provision, and soil conservation. The spatial distribution of trade-off intensity showed distinctive patterns. The supply–demand ratio of WY and SC decreased with the increasing trade-off intensity. This study comprehensively considers ES and supply–demand conflicts, thus providing a new perspective and approach for enhancing ecosystem services and high-quality regional development.

The frequency of intratympanic (IT) steroid injection varies from once daily to once weekly or less among studies and does not reach a uniform standard. This study investigated the potential association between the number of IT steroid injections and hearing recovery to determine the optimal number in sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) patients. A retrospective study involving 233 SSNHL patients receiving IT steroids plus batroxobin within 7 days of onset was performed. Patients were followed up for 3 months. More than 15 dB of HL improvement in the pretreatment pure tone average (PTA) was defined as effective. The effective group had a higher IT injection numbers than the ineffective group (≥ 6 times: 84.6 vs. 61.1, p < 0.001). Regardless of the unadjusted model or adjusted model, patients who received more frequent IT steroid injections seemed more likely to recover hearing (unadjusted model, OR, 95% CI: 1.25, 1.06–1.48; p = 0.007; adjusted model, OR, 95% CI: 1.21, 1.01–1.45; p = 0.044). Six IT injections had the highest rate of hearing recovery (79.1%). In conclusion, IT injection number was an independent factor that was positively associated with hearing recovery, and the optimal number of IT steroid injections was 6. Batroxobin plus higher number of IT steroid injections showed more effective for treating SSNHL.

Because images are vulnerable to external attacks in the process of network transmission and traditional image encryption algorithms have limitations such as long encryption time, insufficient entropy or poor diffusion of cipher image information when encrypting color images, a fast image encryption algorithm based on logistics-sine-cosine mapping is proposed. The algorithm first generates five sets of encrypted sequences from the logistics-sine-cosine mapping, then uses the order of the encryption sequence to scramble the image pixels and designs a new pixel diffusion network to further improve the key sensitivity and plain-image sensitivity of the encryption algorithm. Finally, in a series of security analysis experiments, the experimental image Lena was tested 100 times, and the average encryption time was 0.479 s. The average value of the information entropy, pixel change rate and uniform average change intensity of the cipher image reached 7.9994, 99.62% and 33.48%, respectively. The experimental results show that the fast image encryption algorithm based on logistics-sine-cosine mapping takes less time to encrypt, and the cipher image has good information entropy and diffusivity. It is a safe and effective fast image encryption algorithm.

A large number of bubbles generated by the air agitation device in an external melting ice storage system can cause the disturbance of the ice–water mixture, which can enhance the heat transfer and contribute to the reduction in energy consumption. The structural design and optimization of the air agitation device in an external melting ice storage system is the key issue for energy savings. In this study, the influence of different orifice spacings and diameters on the distribution of the gas–liquid flow field, gas holdup, heat-transfer coefficient, and power consumption in the ice storage tank was investigated by numerical simulation. The simulated results showed that the heat-transfer coefficient of the ice–water mixture with air bubbles should be 3–5 times higher than the natural convection when the air superficial velocity is 0.03 m/s. The gas holdup was mainly affected by the orifice spacing, and the maximum varied from 5.0% to 8.2%. When the orifice spacing was less than 150 mm, the gas holdup changed a little in the horizontal direction, and the uniformity became worse when the orifice spacing was larger than 180 mm. An orifice diameter larger than 3 mm can improve the heat transfer and cause less air-compressing energy consumption, which decreased by approximately 1.62%.

Sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) patients with vertigo have a poorer prognosis. However, the factors associated with hearing recovery remain uncertain. This retrospective study was to evaluate the association between hearing characteristics/hearing recovery and the patterns of vestibulocochlear lesions in SSNHL patients with vertigo. Patients were classified into groups according to the patterns of vestibular dysfunction. We not only compared hearing characteristics and prognosis among subgroups but also determined the potential association between vestibular lesion location and hearing recovery. The shapes of the audiogram differed significantly between patients with normal vestibular function and patients with vestibular dysfunction (p = 0.022). Patients whose audiogram indicated profound hearing loss were 3.89 times more likely to have vestibular dysfunction than those whose audiogram shape indicated low-frequency hearing loss (95% CI, 1.02–14.86, p = 0.047). Patients who had saccule dysfunction were 0.11 times as likely to have hearing recovery than those who had normal saccule function (95% CI, 0.11–0.31, p = 0.001). When adjusted for sex and age, patients who had saccule dysfunction were 0.07 times as likely to have hearing recovery than those who had normal saccule function (95% CI, 0.02–0.22, p = 0.001). Abnormal results following cVEMP testing may be a potential predictive factor for poor hearing recovery.

La(Fe,Si)13-based compounds are promising refrigerants for new magnetic refrigeration technology. Cumulatively, rapid solidification is one of the most effective synthetic methods for these compounds because it requires a short annealing time. However, the strips were found to become more susceptible to external factors due to the reduced dimensionality. In this work, the effect of annealing pressure on the surface oxidation of rapidly solidified LaFe11.5Si1.5C0.13 strips during heat treatment is explored. The results show that a lower annealing pressure (5 × 10−5 Pa) leads to obvious oxidation on the surface of the strip during the heat treatment. As a result, the chemical composition of the 1:13 phase becomes nonuniform on the strips after heat treatment. By annealing the strip composed of almost the single 1:13 phase under lower annealing pressure, the 1:13 phase is also decomposed because of oxidation. On the contrary, no obvious oxide layer is observed on the surface of the strip with the increase in the annealing pressure to 1 atm during the heat treatment. Additionally, the magnetic measurements show that the maximum magnetic entropy change (|ΔS|max) becomes smaller due to surface oxidation. The strips annealed under a higher annealing pressure exhibit a higher |ΔS|max of 15.97 J/(kg K). Therefore, the higher annealing pressure (1 atm) can be helpful to fully exploit the magnetocaloric potential of La(Fe,Si)13-based strips.

Abstract We study the holographic complexity of Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton gravity using the recently proposed “complexity = volume” and “complexity = action” dualities. The model we consider has a ground state that is represented in the bulk via a so-called hyperscaling violating geometry. We calculate the action growth of the Wheeler-DeWitt patch of the corresponding black hole solution at non-zero temperature and find that, depending on the parameters of the theory, there is a parametric enhancement of the action growth rate relative to the conformal field theory result. We match this behavior to simple tensor network models which can capture aspects of hyperscaling violation. We also exhibit the switchback effect in complexity growth using shockwave geometries and comment on a subtlety of our action calculations when the metric is discontinuous at a null surface.

We derive and study an approximate static vacuum solution generated by a point-like source in a higher derivative gravitational theory with a pair of complex conjugate ghosts. The gravitational theory is local and characterized by a high derivative operator compatible with Lee–Wick unitarity. In particular, the tree-level two-point function only shows a pair of complex conjugate poles besides the massless spin two graviton. We show that singularity-free black holes exist when the mass of the source M exceeds a critical value Mcrit. For M>Mcrit the spacetime structure is characterized by an outer event horizon and an inner Cauchy horizon, while for M=Mcrit we have an extremal black hole with vanishing Hawking temperature. The evaporation process leads to a remnant that approaches the zero-temperature extremal black hole state in an infinite amount of time.

Falling weight deflectometer (FWD) is widely used in traffic transport industry. In order to solve the traceability of FWD, the definition of deflection was studied, the use and measurement of FWD was thoroughly analysed, and the measurement parameters were determined. Calibration device, standard foundation, and experimental environmental conditions of FWD was set up. The measurement uncertainty of the calibration equipment has been analysed. Through the test of the typical FWD, the performance of the calibration equipment is tested. Through the establishment of the traceability chain of ‘ Absolute normal low frequency vibration standard device-FWD calibration equipment-FWD’, it can meet the calibration/verification requirements of FWD.

ABSTRACT Sporisorium scitamineum is the fungal pathogen causing severe sugarcane smut disease that leads to massive economic losses globally. S. scitamineum invades host cane by dikaryotic hyphae, formed after sexual mating of two haploid sporidia of opposite mating type. Therefore, mating/filamentation is critical for S. scitamineum pathogenicity, while its molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. The AGC (cyclic AMP [cAMP]-dependent protein kinase 1 [protein kinase A {PKA}], cGMP-dependent protein kinase [PKG], and protein kinase C [PKC]) kinase family is a group of serine/threonine (Ser/Thr) protein kinases conserved among eukaryotic genomes, serving a variety of physiological functions, including cell growth, metabolism, differentiation, and cell death. In this study, we identified an AGC kinase, named SsAgc1 (for S. scitamineum Agc1), and characterized its function by reverse genetics. Our results showed that SsAgc1 is critical for S. scitamineum mating/filamentation and pathogenicity, and oxidative stress tolerance under some circumstances. Transcriptional profiling revealed that the SsAgc1 signaling pathway may control expression of the genes governing fungal mating/filamentation and tryptophan metabolism, especially for tryptophol production. We showed that tryptophan and tryptophol could at least partially restore ssagc1Δ mating/filamentation. Overall, our work revealed a signaling pathway mediated by AGC protein kinases to regulate fungal mating/filamentation, possibly through sensing and responding to tryptophol as signal molecules. IMPORTANCE The AGC signaling pathway represents a conserved distinct signaling pathway in regulation of fungal differentiation and virulence, while it has not been identified or characterized in the sugarcane smut fungus Sporisorium scitamineum. In this study, we identified a PAS domain-containing AGC kinase, SsAgc1, in S. scitamineum. Functional analysis revealed that SsAgc1 plays a regulatory role on the fungal dimorphic switch.

Although research relating to the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon has been significantly increasing in recent years, there is still a lack of a continuous and clear recognition of the potential gradient effect on the UHI—landscape relationship within large urbanized regions. In this study, we chose the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region, which is a large scaled urban agglomeration in China, as the case study area. We examined the causal relationship between the LST variation and underlying surface characteristics using multi-temporal land cover and summer average land surface temperature (LST) data as the analyzed variables. This study then further discussed the modeling performance when quantifying their relationship from a spatial gradient perspective (the grid size ranged from 6 to 24 km), by comparing the ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) methods. The results indicate that: (1) both the OLS and GWR analysis confirmed that the composition of built-up land contributes as an essential factor that is responsible for the UHI phenomenon in a large urban agglomeration region; (2) for the OLS, the modeled relationship between the LST and its drive factor showed a significant spatial gradient effect, changing with different spatial analysis grids; and, (3) in contrast, using the GWR model revealed a considerably robust and better performance for accommodating the spatial non-stationarity with a lower scale dependence than that of the OLS model. This study highlights the significant spatial heterogeneity that is related to the UHI effect in large-extent urban agglomeration areas, and it suggests that the potential gradient effect and uncertainty induced by different spatial scale and methodology usage should be considered when modeling the UHI effect with urbanization. This would supplement current UHI study and be beneficial for deepening the cognition and enlightenment of landscape planning for UHI regulation.

Deformation is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature. This process usually refers to the change in shape, size, and position of an object in the time and spatial domain under various loads. Under normal circumstances, during engineering construction, technicians are generally required to monitor the safe operation of structural facilities in the transportation field and the health of bridge, because monitoring in the engineering process plays an important role in construction safety. Considering the reliability risk of sensors after a long-time work period, such as signal drift, accurate measurement of strain gauges is inseparable from the value traceability system of high-precision strain gauges. In this study, two vibrating wire strain gauges with the same working principle were measured using the parallel method at similar positions. First, based on the principle of time series, the experiment used high-frequency dynamic acquisition to measure the thermometer strain of two vibrating wire strain gauges. Second, this experiment analyzed the correlation between strain and temperature measured separately. Under the condition of different prestress, this experiment studied the influencing relationship of temperature corresponding variable. In this experiment, the measurement repetitiveness was analyzed using the meteorology knowledge of single sensor data, focused on researching the influence of temperature and prestress effect on sensors by analyzing differences of their measurement results in a specified situation. Then, the reliability and stability of dynamic vibrating wire strain gauge were verified in the experiment. The final conclusion of the experiment is the actual engineering in the later stage. Onsite online meteorology in the application provides support.

In the phytopathogenic fungus Sporisorium scitamineum, sexual mating between two compatible haploid cells and the subsequent formation of dikaryotic hyphae is essential for infection. This process was shown to be commonly regulated by a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and a cAMP/PKA signaling pathway in the corn smut fungus Ustilago maydis but remains largely unknown in S. scitamineum. In this study, we identified a conserved putative MAP kinase Kpp2 in S. scitamineum and named it as SsKpp2. The sskpp2Δ mutant displayed significant reduction in mating/filamentation, which could be partially restored by addition of cAMP or tryptophol, a quorum-sensing molecule identified in budding yeast. Transcriptional profiling showed that genes governing S. scitamineum mating or tryptophol biosynthesis were significantly differentially regulated in the sskpp2Δ mutant compared to the WT, under mating condition. Our results demonstrate that the MAP kinase SsKpp2 is required for S. scitamineum mating/filamentation likely through regulating the conserved pheromone signal transduction pathway and tryptophol production.