Chapter 37 Introduction to Section 6

This handbook addresses a growing list of challenges faced by regions and cities in the Pacific;Rim, drawing connections around the what, why, and how questions that are fundamental;to sustainable development policies and planning practices. These include the connection;between cities and surrounding landscapes, across different boundaries and scales; the persistence;of environmental and development inequities; and the growing impacts of global;climate change, including how physical conditions and social implications are being anticipated;and addressed. Building upon localized knowledge and contextualized experiences,;this edited collection brings attention to place-;based;approaches across the Pacific Rim and;makes an important contribution to the scholarly and practical understanding of sustainable;urban development models that have mostly emerged out of the Western experiences. Nine;sections, each grounded in research, dialogue, and collaboration with practical examples and;analysis, focus on a theme or dimension that carries critical impacts on a holistic vision of city-;landscape;development, such as resilient communities, ecosystem services and biodiversity,;energy, water, health, and planning and engagement.;This international edited collection will appeal to academics and students engaged in;research involving landscape architecture, architecture, planning, public policy, law, urban;studies, geography, environmental science, and area studies. It also informs policy makers,;professionals, and advocates of actionable knowledge and adoptable ideas by connecting;those issues with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);of the United Nations. The;collection of writings presented in this book speaks to multiyear collaboration of scholars;through the APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes (SCL);Program and its global network,;facilitated by SCL Annual Conferences and involving more than 100 contributors;from more than 30 institutions

Chapter 37 Introduction to Section 6

This handbook addresses a growing list of challenges faced by regions and cities in the Pacific;Rim, drawing connections around the what, why, and how questions that are fundamental;to sustainable development policies and planning practices. These include the connection;between cities and surrounding landscapes, across different boundaries and scales; the persistence;of environmental and development inequities; and the growing impacts of global;climate change, including how physical conditions and social implications are being anticipated;and addressed. Building upon localized knowledge and contextualized experiences,;this edited collection brings attention to place-;based;approaches across the Pacific Rim and;makes an important contribution to the scholarly and practical understanding of sustainable;urban development models that have mostly emerged out of the Western experiences. Nine;sections, each grounded in research, dialogue, and collaboration with practical examples and;analysis, focus on a theme or dimension that carries critical impacts on a holistic vision of city-;landscape;development, such as resilient communities, ecosystem services and biodiversity,;energy, water, health, and planning and engagement.;This international edited collection will appeal to academics and students engaged in;research involving landscape architecture, architecture, planning, public policy, law, urban;studies, geography, environmental science, and area studies. It also informs policy makers,;professionals, and advocates of actionable knowledge and adoptable ideas by connecting;those issues with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);of the United Nations. The;collection of writings presented in this book speaks to multiyear collaboration of scholars;through the APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes (SCL);Program and its global network,;facilitated by SCL Annual Conferences and involving more than 100 contributors;from more than 30 institutions

Study on the continuous phase evolution and physical properties of gas-atomized high-entropy alloy powders

In this study, AlCoCrFeNi high entropy alloy (HEA) powders were fabricated by gas atomization process, and the effects of annealing heat treatment on phase evolution and mechanical properties were investigated. The as-atomized powders have pure BCC phase with a spherical shape and equal composition distribution, and then the FCC and sigma phase sequentially generated after annealing. The mechanical property such as hardness was evidently enhanced, which was caused by precipitation hardening effect. After the raw powders were annealed at 600 °C, the FCC (Al-Ni) phase began to precipitate, the its phase intensity raised with the annealing temperature. Then, the sigma phase (Fe-Cr) formed as the annealing temperature reached 800 °C. Both mechanical properties and lattice constant were influenced by heating effect. According to the results, the lattice became loose with the increasing temperature. In summary, the mechanical properties and phase constitutions of gas-atomized AlCoCrFeNi HEA powders can be adjusted via annealing process, resulting in precipitation hardening effect

Effects of mangrove removal on benthic organisms in the Siangshan Wetland in Hsinchu, Taiwan

Mangrove degradation is a well-documented trend, but the spread of mangroves within the Siangshan Wetland in Hsinchu, Taiwan, runs contrary to that trend. The spread of mangroves changes the structure and functions of habitats for benthic organisms, causes infilling of estuaries and flooding and creates breeding grounds for small black mosquitoes. A large-scale mangrove-removal project was undertaken by the Hsinchu City Government from October 2015 to March 2016. They also investigated the consequences of mangrove removal on benthic organisms and adjacent habitats from October 2015 to September 2016, and the density, species count, Shannon–Wiener index (H′), and Pielou’s evenness index (J′) of the mangrove and non-mangrove regions were compared. In this study, we used satellite telemetry images to monitor fluctuations in mangrove density from 2006 to 2016. The non-mangrove region exhibited more variations than the mangrove region. After mangrove removal, species returned to their original habitats and noteworthy biological values significantly increased in the mangrove regions. This study presents evidence to argue that mangrove removal benefits benthic organisms. The results indicate that mangrove removal can be an appropriate habitat rehabilitation strategy for benthic organisms. The ecological findings of this study can inform coastal managers or other officials who seek to steward mangrove biomass

How restorative landscapes can benefit psychological and physiological responses: a pilot study of human–naturerelationships in Sweden and Taiwan

Restorative landscapes provide people with the opportunity to experience nature. This pilot study aimed to determine whether cultural differences affect psychological and physiological responses to restorative landscapes. Two populations, one in Taiwan and one in Sweden, were experimentally compared by showing them photos of restorative landscapes from each country. The results showed that restorativeness was affected more by photos of the restorative landscape in Sweden than in Taiwan. The results showed that restorativeness in terms of psychological and physiological responses was affected. A significant variation in heart rate was observed between the populations: Taiwanese participants experienced higher heart rates when viewing unfamiliar and novel scenery when compared to Swedish participants. No significant differences between the populations were observed regarding attention capacity, working memory, and muscle tension. The psychological and physiological responses to the two countries’ distinctive restorative landscapes may have implications for designing such landscapes in urban green spaces

Various criteria in the evaluation of biomedical named entity recognition

BACKGROUND: Text mining in the biomedical domain is receiving increasing attention. A key component of this process is named entity recognition (NER). Generally speaking, two annotated corpora, GENIA and GENETAG, are most frequently used for training and testing biomedical named entity recognition (Bio-NER) systems. JNLPBA and BioCreAtIvE are two major Bio-NER tasks using these corpora. Both tasks take different approaches to corpus annotation and use different matching criteria to evaluate system performance. This paper details these differences and describes alternative criteria. We then examine the impact of different criteria and annotation schemes on system performance by retesting systems participated in the above two tasks. RESULTS: To analyze the difference between JNLPBA's and BioCreAtIvE's evaluation, we conduct Experiment 1 to evaluate the top four JNLPBA systems using BioCreAtIvE's classification scheme. We then compare them with the top four BioCreAtIvE systems. Among them, three systems participated in both tasks, and each has an F-score lower on JNLPBA than on BioCreAtIvE. In Experiment 2, we apply hypothesis testing and correlation coefficient to find alternatives to BioCreAtIvE's evaluation scheme. It shows that right-match and left-match criteria have no significant difference with BioCreAtIvE. In Experiment 3, we propose a customized relaxed-match criterion that uses right match and merges JNLPBA's five NE classes into two, which achieves an F-score of 81.5%. In Experiment 4, we evaluate a range of five matching criteria from loose to strict on the top JNLPBA system and examine the percentage of false negatives. Our experiment gives the relative change in precision, recall and F-score as matching criteria are relaxed. CONCLUSION: In many applications, biomedical NEs could have several acceptable tags, which might just differ in their left or right boundaries. However, most corpora annotate only one of them. In our experiment, we found that right match and left match can be appropriate alternatives to JNLPBA and BioCreAtIvE's matching criteria. In addition, our relaxed-match criterion demonstrates that users can define their own relaxed criteria that correspond more realistically to their application requirements

Promoter methylation of the hMLH1 gene and protein expression of human mutL homolog 1 and human mutS homolog 2 in resected esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

ObjectiveAberrant expression of mismatch repair genes, such as human mutL homolog 1 (hMLH1) and human mutS homolog 2 (hMSH2), are common in some human cancers, and promoter methylation is believed to inactivate expression of hMLH1. We investigated whether promoter methylation is involved in loss of hMLH1 protein and whether aberrant expression of hMLH1 and hMSH2 protein is related to prognosis after resection for esophageal squamous cell cancer.MethodsWe analyzed promoter methylation of hMLH1 using methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction and hMLH1 and hMSH2 protein by using immunohistochemistry in 60 resected tumor specimens. The Pearson χ2 test was used to compare expression of hMLH1 and hMSH2 protein among patients with different clinicopathologic parameters. Concordance analysis was performed between hMLH1 methylation and its protein expression.ResultsLoss of hMLH1 and hMSH2 protein was found in 43 (72%) and 39 (65%, P = .06) of 60 resected specimens, respectively. hMLH1 protein correlated well with tumor staging (P < .0001), depth of tumor invasion (P = .008), and nodal involvement (P < .0001) but not with distant metastasis, whereas hMSH2 did not show correlation with any of these parameters. A concordance rate of 83.3% was present between expression of hMLH1 protein and its promoter methylation (P < .001).ConclusionsAberrant expression of hMLH1 and hMSH2 protein is frequently associated with the presence of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, and expression of hMLH1 protein is a better prognostic predictor than is expression of hMSH2 protein. Promoter methylation is one of the mechanisms responsible for loss of hMLH1 protein in esophageal squamous cell cancer

A predicted protein, KIAA0247, is a cell cycle modulator in colorectal cancer cells under 5-FU treatment

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the predominant gastrointestinal malignancy and the leading cause of cancer death. The identification of genes related to CRC is important for the development of successful therapies and earlier diagnosis.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Molecular analysis of feces was evaluated as a potential method for CRC detection. Expression of a predicted protein with unknown function, KIAA0247, was found in feces evaluated using specific quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Its cellular function was then analyzed using immunofluorescent staining and the changes in the cell cycle in response to 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) were assessed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Gastrointestinal tissues and peripheral blood lymphocytes ubiquitously expressed KIAA0247. 56 CRC patients fell into two group categories according to fecal KIAA0247 mRNA expression levels. The group with higher fecal KIAA0247 (<it>n </it>= 22; ≥ 0.4897) had a significantly greater five-year overall survival rate than the group with lower fecal KIAA0247 (<it>n </it>= 30; < 0.4897) (66.0 ± 11.6%; <it>p </it>= 0.035, log-rank test). Fecal expression of KIAA0247 inversely related to CRC tumor size (Kendall's tau-b = -0.202; <it>p </it>= 0.047). Immunofluorescent staining revealed that the cytoplasm of CRC cells evenly expresses KIAA0247 without 5-FU treatment, and KIAA0247 accumulates in the nucleus after 40 μM 5-FU treatment. In HCT116 p53^-/-cells, which lack p53 cell cycle control, the proportion of cells in the G2/M phase was larger (13%) in KIAA0247-silent cells than in the respective shLuc control (10%) and KIAA0247-overexpressing cells (7%) after the addition of low dose (40 μM) 5-FU. Expression of three cyclin genes (cyclin A2, cyclin B1, and cyclin B2) also downregulated in the cells overexpressing KIAA0247.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This is the first description of a linkage between KIAA0247 and CRC. The study's data demonstrate overexpression of KIAA0247 associates with 5-FU therapeutic benefits, and also identify the clinical significance of fecal KIAA0247 in CRC.</p