Guidelines for integrating ecological and biological engineering technologies for control of severe erosion in mountainous areas â A case study of the Xiaojiang River Basin, China

Ecological environment issues caused by soil erosion have always been the attractive and significant problems all over the world. Under the background of global warming, debris flow, landslide, and other intense gravitational erosion activities have become aggravated, which leads to the decrease of biological diversity, ecosystem stability, resistance, productivity, and the like, which presents new challenges to traditional measures of soil and water conservation. This article, based on research conducted on controlling mountain hazard on the Xiaojiang River basin over the last 30 years, summarizes the managerial achievement of typical ecological engineering technologies and analyzes the principles and application of each type of treatment. The results indicated that established ecological engineering technologies play a significant role in the prevention and treatment of intense gravitational erosion caused by mountain hazard. However, there are still a great deal of limitation of application condition and maneuverability during management process. How to furtherly develop the rational combining pattern between ecological engineering (e.g. contour hedgerow) and geotechnical engineering (e.g. slit dam) and how to strengthen the risk control and improve management strategy will be the key points for preventing intense gravitational erosion in future by ecological engineering. Keywords: Soil and water conservation, Ecological engineering, Gravitational erosion, Risk control, Mountain hazard

Land Use Changes and Their Driving Forces in a Debris Flow Active Area of Gansu Province, China

Land use change is extremely sensitive to natural factors and human influence in active debris flow. It is therefore necessary to determine the factors that influence land use change. This paper took Wudu District, Gansu Province, China as a study area, and a systemic analysis of the transformational extent and rate of debris flow waste-shoal land (DFWSL) was carried out from 2005 to 2015. The results show that from 2005 to 2015, cultivated land resources transformed to other types of land; cultivated lands mainly transformed to grassland from 2005 to 2010 and construction land from 2010 to 2015. Moreover, the growth rate of construction land from 2005 to 2010 was only 0.11%, but increased to 6.87% between 2010 and 2015. The latter is more than 60 times the former. This increase was brought about by natural disasters (debris flow, earthquakes, and landslides) and anthropogenic factors (national policies or strategies), which acted as driving forces in debris flow area. The former determines the initial use type of the DFWSL while the latter only affects the direction of land use and transformation

Developing Temperature-Resilient Plants: A Matter of Present and Future Concern for Sustainable Agriculture

Plants are decisive for nurturing life on Earth, but climate change threatens global food security, poverty decrease, and sustainable agriculture [...

A Deep Learning Approach for Wireless Network Performance Classification Based on UAV Mobility Features

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has drawn attention from the military and researchers worldwide, which has advantages such as robust survivability and execution ability. Mobility models are usually used to describe the movement of nodes in drone networks. Different mobility models have been proposed for different application scenarios; currently, there is no unified mobility model that can be adapted to all scenarios. The mobility of nodes is an essential characteristic of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), and the motion state of nodes significantly impacts the network’s performance. Currently, most related studies focus on the establishment of mathematical models that describe the motion and connectivity characteristics of the mobility models with limited universality. In this study, we use a backpropagation neural network (BPNN) to explore the relationship between the motion characteristics of mobile nodes and the performance of routing protocols. The neural network is trained by extracting five indicators that describe the relationship between nodes and the global features of nodes. Our model shows good performance and accuracy of classification on new datasets with different motion features, verifying the correctness of the proposed idea, which can help the selection of mobility models and routing protocols in different application scenarios having the ability to avoid repeated experiments to obtain relevant network performance. This will help in the selection of mobility models for drone networks and the setting and optimization of routing protocols in future practical application scenarios

The complete chloroplast genome of Viburnum dilatatum (Adoxaceae)

Viburnum dilatatum Thunb. is a large deciduous tree of Adoxaceae. In this study, the chloroplast genome sequence of V. dilatatum is 158,392 bp, consisting of a large single-copy (LSC) region with 87,070 bp, a small single-copy (SSC) region with 18,242 bp , and two inverted repeat (IR) regions with 26,540 bp. The GC content in the chloroplast genome of C. julianae is 38.1%. The chloroplast genome of V. dilatatum contains 126 genes, including 83 protein-coding genes, 39 tRNA genes, and 4 rRNA genes. Phylogenetic tree showed that V. dilatatum was clustered with V. utile

Effect of Sarcopenia on Survival and Health-Related Quality of Life in Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma after Hepatectomy

Background: Although sarcopenia has been reported as a negative prognostic factor in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the lack of studies with a prospective design utilizing comprehensive sarcopenia assessment with composite endpoints is an important gap in understanding the impact of sarcopenia in patients with HCC. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between sarcopenia and postoperative 1-year mortality and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) based on sarcopenia assessment. Methods: The study cohort, who received resection surgery for HCC between May 2020 and August 2021, was assessed for sarcopenia based on grip strength, the chair stand test, skeletal muscle mass, and gait speed. The primary outcome measures were 1-year mortality and HRQOL determined using the QLQ-C30 questionnaire. In addition, we collected hospital costs, postoperative hospital stays, complications, 30-day and 90-day mortality, and 90- and 180-day readmission rates. Univariate and multivariate linear regression analyses were conducted to examine factors associated with global health status. Results: A total of 153 eligible patients were included in the cohort. One-year mortality was higher in patients with sarcopenia than in those without sarcopenia (p = 0.043). There was a correlation between sarcopenia and the surgical approach to global health status (p = 0.025) and diarrhea (p = 0.003). Conclusions: Preoperative sarcopenia reduces postoperative survival and health-related quality of life in patients with HCC