5,226 research outputs found
Industrialization, urbanization, and land use in China:
Rapid industrial development and urbanization transfer more and more land away from agricultural production, threatening China's capability to feed itself. This paper analyzes the determinants of land use by modeling arable land and sown area separately. An inverse U-shaped relationship between land use intensity and industrialization is explored both theoretically and empirically. The findings highlight the conflict between the two policy goals of industrialization and grain self-sufficiency in the end. Several policy recommendations are offered to reconcile the conflict.Industrialization., Land use., Urbanization., China.,
Surface diffusion coefficients by thermodynamic integration: Cu on Cu(100)
The rate of diffusion of a Cu adatom on the Cu(100) surface is calculated
using thermodynamic integration within the transition state theory. The results
are found to be in excellent agreement with the essentially exact values from
molecular-dynamics simulations. The activation energy and related entropy are
shown to be effectively independent of temperature, thus establishing the
validity of the Arrhenius law over a wide range of temperatures. Our study
demonstrates the equivalence of diffusion rates calculated using thermodynamic
integration within the transition state theory and direct molecular-dynamics
simulations.Comment: 4 pages (revtex), two figures (postscript
Teaching relational database fundamentals: a lack-of-progress report
This paper describes and evaluates changes introduced in six successive
years teaching a relational databases module. We explain
how we plan to obtain some certainty on the value of interventions.
Using an archive of data over the period, we find some interventions
that should not be repeated. We also show that most changes
introduced did not significantly improve students’ learning, contrary
to expectations. Instead, factors that were ignored had more
influence on performance that factors we attempted to affect
Collective modes of CP(3) Skyrmion crystals in quantum Hall ferromagnets
The two-dimensional electron gas in a bilayer quantum Hall system can sustain
an interlayer coherence at filling factor nu=1 even in the absence of tunneling
between the layers. This system has low-energy charged excitations which may
carry textures in real spin or pseudospin. Away from filling factor nu =1 a
finite density of these is present in the ground state of the 2DEG and forms a
crystal. Depending on the relative size of the various energy scales, such as
tunneling (Delta_SAS), Zeeman coupling (Delta_Z) or electrical bias (Delta_b),
these textured crystal states can involve spin, pseudospin, or both
intertwined. In this article, we present a comprehensive numerical study of the
collective excitations of these textured crystals using the GRPA. For the pure
spin case, at finite Zeeman coupling the state is a Skyrmion crystal with a
gapless phonon mode, and a separate Goldstone mode that arises from a broken
U(1) symmetry. At zero Zeeman coupling, we demonstrate that the constituent
Skyrmions break up, and the resulting state is a meron crystal with 4 gapless
modes. In contrast, a pure pseudospin Skyrme crystal at finite tunneling has
only the phonon mode. For Delta_SAS=0, the state evolves into a meron crystal
and supports an extra gapless U(1) mode in addition to the phonon. For a CP(3)
Skyrmion crystal, we find a U(1) gapless mode in the presence of the
symmetry-breaking fields. In addition, a second mode with a very small gap is
present in the spectrum.Comment: 16 pages and 12 eps figure
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(L128) and (V247) of CXCR1 Are Critical Amino Acid Residues for G Protein Coupling and Receptor Activation
CXCR1, a classic GPCR that binds IL-8, plays a key role in neutrophil activation and migration by activating phospholipase C (PLC)β through and which generates diacylglycerol and inositol phosphates (IPs). In this study, two conserved amino acid residues of CXCR1 on the transmembrane domain (TM) 3 and TM6, (L128) and (V247), respectively, were selectively substituted with other amino acids to investigate the role of these conserved residues in CXCR1 activation. Although two selective mutants on Leu128, Leu128Ala (L128A) and Leu128Arg (L128R), demonstrated high binding affinity to IL-8, they were not capable of coupling to G proteins and consequently lost the functional response of the receptors. By contrast, among the four mutants at residue Val247 (TM6.40), replacing Val247 with Ala (V247A) and Asn (V247N) led to constitutive activation of mutant receptors when cotransfected with . The V247N mutant also constitutively activated the protein. These results indicate that L128 on TM3.43 is involved in G protein coupling and receptor activation but is unimportant for ligand binding. On the other hand, V247 on TM6.40 plays a critical role in maintaining the receptor in the inactive state, and the substitution of V247 impaired the receptor constraint and stabilized an active conformation. Functionally, there was an increase in chemotaxis in response to IL-8 in cells expressing V247A and V247N. Our findings indicate that and are critical for G protein coupling and activation of signaling effectors, providing a valuable insight into the mechanism of CXCR1 activation
Upstream-binding factor is sequestered into herpes simplex virus type 1 replication compartments
Previous reports have shown that adenovirus recruits nucleolar protein upstream-binding factor (UBF) into adenovirus DNA replication centres. Here, we report that despite having a different mode of viral DNA replication, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) also recruits UBF into viral DNA replication centres. Moreover, as with adenovirus, enhanced green fluorescent protein-tagged fusion proteins of UBF inhibit viral DNA replication. We propose that UBF is recruited to the replication compartments to aid replication of HSV-1 DNA. In addition, this is a further example of the role of nucleolar components in viral life cycle
A disciplinary commons for database teaching
This paper discusses the experience of taking part in a disciplinary commons devoted to the teaching of database systems. It will discuss the structure of a disciplinary commons and our experience of the database version
Observations of Recent Arctic Sea Ice Volume Loss and Its Impact on Ocean-Atmosphere Energy Exchange and Ice Production
Using recently developed techniques we estimate snow and sea ice thickness distributions for the Arctic basin through the combination of freeboard data from the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) and a snow depth model. These data are used with meteorological data and a thermodynamic sea ice model to calculate ocean-atmosphere heat exchange and ice volume production during the 2003-2008 fall and winter seasons. The calculated heat fluxes and ice growth rates are in agreement with previous observations over multiyear ice. In this study, we calculate heat fluxes and ice growth rates for the full distribution of ice thicknesses covering the Arctic basin and determine the impact of ice thickness change on the calculated values. Thinning of the sea ice is observed which greatly increases the 2005-2007 fall period ocean-atmosphere heat fluxes compared to those observed in 2003. Although there was also a decline in sea ice thickness for the winter periods, the winter time heat flux was found to be less impacted by the observed changes in ice thickness. A large increase in the net Arctic ocean-atmosphere heat output is also observed in the fall periods due to changes in the areal coverage of sea ice. The anomalously low sea ice coverage in 2007 led to a net ocean-atmosphere heat output approximately 3 times greater than was observed in previous years and suggests that sea ice losses are now playing a role in increasing surface air temperatures in the Arctic
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