The Study on Prospect and Early Opportunities for Carbon Capture and Storage in Guangdong Province, China

AbstractCCS is regarded as an important and strategic technology option to reduce CO2 emission, and has received tremendous attention around the world. Guangdong, as the largest economic and energy-consuming province in China, is necessary to take CCS as an important option to reduce its future CO2 emission. This paper presents the partial outcome of the first CCS-related research in Guangdong, which is aiming for preliminary assessment on the feasibility of CCS development in Guangdong. The main objective of the study is to characterize the industrial CO2 emissions and understand its CCS prospects. Coal-fired power plants in Guangdong are the major point sources, contributing to more than 90% of CO2 emissions from the electric power generation. The power plants are mainly located in the Pearl River Delta, while the newly built and projected large plants are mainly located in eastern coastal zone, which provides a great potential for CO2 capture. For the storage potential, there are six sedimentary basins in or around Guangdong with effective storage capacity of 568 GtCO2. Since the onshore storage capacity in Guangdong is limited, the northern portion of the Pear River Mouth Basin (PRMB) was considered the most promising choice for Guangdong to storage CO2. By considering the distance between source and sink, technology maturity, land resources and other factors, it can be concluded that in the short term the power plants under construction and projected located in the eastern coastal areas will be the most promising resources for CO2 capture and the corresponding storage sites are the existing oil/gas fields which located in the northeast of PRMB. But in the long term, as technologies and the international carbon market mature, the extensively retrofitting of existing coal-fired power plants in the Pearl River Delta region with CO2 capture will become possible. In order to promote the development of CCS in Guangdong, more basic investigation and policy research are necessary in the coming years

The relationship of drought-related gene expression in Arabidopsis thaliana to hormonal and environmental factors

Almost 2000 drought-responsive genes were identified in Arabidopsis thaliana under progressive soil drought stress using whole-genome oligonucleotide microarrays. Most of the drought-regulated genes recovered to normal expression levels by 3 h after rewatering. It has previously been shown that the abscisic acid (ABA) analogue (+)-8′-acetylene-ABA (PBI425) hyperinduces many ABA-like changes in gene expression to reveal a more complete list of ABA-regulated genes, and it is demonstrated here that PBI425 produced a correspondingly increased drought tolerance. About two-thirds of drought-responsive genes (1310 out of 1969) were regulated by ABA and/or the ABA analogue PBI425. Analysis of promoter motifs suggests that many of the remaining drought-responsive genes may be affected by ABA signalling. Concentrations of endogenous ABA and its catabolites significantly increased under drought stress and either completely (ABA) or partially (ABA catabolites) recovered to normal levels by 3 h after rehydration. Detailed analyses of drought transcript profiles and in silico comparisons with other studies revealed that the ABA-dependent pathways are predominant in the drought stress responses. These comparisons also showed that other plant hormones including jasmonic acid, auxin, cytokinin, ethylene, brassinosteroids, and gibberellins also affected drought-related gene expression, of which the most significant was jasmonic acid. There is also extensive cross-talk between responses to drought and other environmental factors including light and biotic stresses. These analyses demonstrate that ABA-related stress responses are modulated by other environmental and developmental factors

Mining biological information from 3D short time-series gene expression data: the OPTricluster algorithm

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Nowadays, it is possible to collect expression levels of a set of genes from a set of biological samples during a series of time points. Such data have three dimensions: gene-sample-time (GST). Thus they are called 3D microarray gene expression data. To take advantage of the 3D data collected, and to fully understand the biological knowledge hidden in the GST data, novel subspace clustering algorithms have to be developed to effectively address the biological problem in the corresponding space.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We developed a subspace clustering algorithm called Order Preserving Triclustering (OPTricluster), for 3D short time-series data mining. OPTricluster is able to identify 3D clusters with coherent evolution from a given 3D dataset using a combinatorial approach on the sample dimension, and the order preserving (OP) concept on the time dimension. The fusion of the two methodologies allows one to study similarities and differences between samples in terms of their temporal expression profile. OPTricluster has been successfully applied to four case studies: immune response in mice infected by malaria (<it>Plasmodium chabaudi</it>), systemic acquired resistance in <it>Arabidopsis thaliana</it>, similarities and differences between inner and outer cotyledon in <it>Brassica napus </it>during seed development, and to <it>Brassica napus </it>whole seed development. These studies showed that OPTricluster is robust to noise and is able to detect the similarities and differences between biological samples.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our analysis showed that OPTricluster generally outperforms other well known clustering algorithms such as the TRICLUSTER, gTRICLUSTER and K-means; it is robust to noise and can effectively mine the biological knowledge hidden in the 3D short time-series gene expression data.</p

A novel adenoviral vector which mediates hypoxia-inducible gene expression selectively in neurons.

NRC publication: Ye

Empirical Research on Decoupling Relationship between Energy-Related Carbon Emission and Economic Growth in Guangdong Province Based on Extended Kaya Identity

The decoupling elasticity decomposition quantitative model of energy-related carbon emission in Guangdong is established based on the extended Kaya identity and Tapio decoupling model for the first time, to explore the decoupling relationship and its internal mechanism between energy-related carbon emission and economic growth in Guangdong. Main results are as follows. (1) Total production energy-related carbon emissions in Guangdong increase from 4128×104 tC in 1995 to 14396×104 tC in 2011. Decoupling elasticity values of energy-related carbon emission and economic growth increase from 0.53 in 1996 to 0.85 in 2011, and its decoupling state turns from weak decoupling in 1996–2004 to expansive coupling in 2005–2011. (2) Land economic output and energy intensity are the first inhibiting factor and the first promoting factor to energy-related carbon emission decoupling from economic growth, respectively. The development speeds of land urbanization and population urbanization, especially land urbanization, play decisive roles in the change of total decoupling elasticity values. (3) Guangdong can realize decoupling of energy-related carbon emission from economic growth effectively by adjusting the energy mix and industrial structure, coordinating the development speed of land urbanization and population urbanization effectively, and strengthening the construction of carbon sink

A novel adenoviral vector-mediated neuronal selective gene expression in neonatal mouse brain in response to hypoxia: Neurosci.Lett.

Selective gene expression targeting neurons is a challenge, which, if successfully overcome, carries an enormous potential for clinical applications in therapeutics against neurodegenerative diseases. We have reported previously the construction of a series of adenoviral vectors capable of selectively expressing a reporter gene luciferase in cultured neurons [D. Huang, A. Desbois, S.T. Hou, A novel adenoviral vector which mediates hypoxia-inducible gene expression selectively in neurons, Gene Ther. 12 (2005) 1369-1376]. A combination of neuron restrictive silencer elements (NRSEs), hypoxia responsive elements (HREs) and CMV minimal promoter (CMVmp) was packaged into replication defective adenovirus to target gene expression selectively in neurons in a hypoxia-regulated manner. In the present study, we injected the adenoviral vectors into the neonatal mouse brain followed by treatment with hypoxia. The expression of the reporter luciferase gene was examined by luciferase assay and fluorescent immunostaining. Neurons and glial cells were identified by staining with antibodies against NeuN and GFAP, respectively. Remarkably, in response to hypoxia, Ad/5HRE-3NRSE showed strong hypoxia-inducible gene expression of the reporter luciferase selectively in neurons but not in glial cells. In contrast, brains infected with the control vector Ad/5HRE showed no selectivity in luciferase expression (in both neurons and glial cells) under the hypoxic condition. Taken together, these studies demonstrated that this vector (Ad/5HRE-3NRSE) can mediate gene expression selectively in neurons both in vitro and in vivo, supporting the suggestion that further refinement of this vector may lead to the development of a useful tool to investigate mechanisms of neuronal damage following cerebral ischemia and a possible effective gene therapy vector to strokeNRC publication: Ye

Evolution of Solar Photovoltaic Policies and Industry in China

Abstract China has experienced a rapid growth of both SPV manufacturing capacity and installed capacity in the last twenty-five years. However, this growth has followed a very erratic path. This study identifies policies issued through this period for a closer look on the impact of these policies to the solar photovoltaic (SPV) industry development in China. This paper examines five stages in China’s SPV policy from mid-1990s to 2019. Each stage has implemented different combinations of policy program. These changes in government policy and the effects to the SPV sector are attributed to three main sets of variables. First and foremost, the events that influence the policy and strategy priorities of Chinese government. Secondary factors include the government’s poor management of the policy impacts to the SPV manufacturing industry and the domestic SPV market at early days, as well as policymaking and problems coping within government. The subsidy, FIT policies and other programs had stimulated the deployment of SPV in a large scale but brings several problems such as subsidy reliance. The fundamental measure to improve SPV development into a grid parity era is the technological advancement of photovoltaic in efficiency and manufacturing

Impacts of Built-Environment on Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Traffic: A Systematic Literature Review

With the acceleration of global urbanization, the interaction between the urban built environment and transportation carbon emissions (TCE) has become an urgent problem and an area of intensive research. This paper presents a bibliometric and visual analysis of 1060 pieces of literature related to the built environment and TCE from 1998 to 2022. It explores the current research progress and future development trends in this field. The results show the following. (1) The number of papers published on the built environment and TCE during this period has shown a continuous increasing trend, and the periods of growth can be divided into three stages. (2) Research in this area has been carried out in many countries and regions around the world, involving different dimensions such as examinations at the city, provincial, and national levels. (3) Through an analysis involving keyword clustering, a keyword hotspot map, and a burst map, we have established that the research on TCE has exhibited step-by-step growth, and the carbon emissions from vehicles is the topic that has been considered over the longest period. (4) The impact of the built environment on TCE can be broadly divided into macro-functional and micromorphological factors

Characterization of the expression of key adenoviral receptors CAR and integrin beta3/beta5 subunits on the membrane of human NT2 neurons.

NRC publication: Ye