Assessment of soil salinisation in the Ejina Oasis located in the lower reaches of Heihe River, Northwestern China

Recognition of the spatial-temporal distribution characteristics of soil salinity has become an important basis for the formulation of strategies required in the utilisation and sustainable development of soil resources in arid and semi-arid area. In this paper, based on vegetation cover dataset during 1998–2015 in Ejina region combined with the collected soil salinity data, geostatistical methods were used to explore the temporal and spatial dynamic characteristics of soil salinity and its impact on vegetation in the study area. The results showed significant differences in soil salinisation characteristics with a large variability in the soil salinity among the different soil depths, with a variation coefficient ranging from about 0.97–1.47. Soils are represented by a continuous variation, both in space and time. Soil salinity showed an obvious spatial autocorrelation, with a plaque type distribution. The areas of the salinised soil found for the years 2003, 2011 and 2015 were approximately 18,565, 23,206 and 17,721 km2, respectively. From the relationships deduced between the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) and soil moisture and salt content in different soil depths, the present study ascertains that the soil moisture content is the most important limiting factor of vegetation growth in Ejina Oasis

Recycled moisture in an enclosed basin, Guanzhong Basin of Northern China, in the summer: Contribution to precipitation based on a stable isotope approach

Recycled moisture, mainly originated from evapotranspiration (surface evaporation and transpiration), is the main sources of precipitation. Influenced on the different regional/local environments, the contributions of recycled moisture to precipitation present as different proportions. Recycled moisture has an important impact on the hydrological cycle, further occurred a series of environmental effect for regional/local. Aimed to estimate the contribution of recycled moisture to precipitation in an enclosed basin, Guanzhong Basin of northern China, precipitation and lake/reservoir samples were collected. The isotope ratio analysis was done for the summer season, and a three-component mixing model based on the stable hydrogen and oxygen isotopes was applied. The results indicated that the averaged contribution of recycled moisture to precipitation was 17.44% in Guanzhong Basin of northern China, while the mean proportions of surface evaporation moisture and transpiration moisture were found to be 0.38% and 16.97%, respectively. Comparatively, most of the recycled moisture mainly comes from transpiration moisture rather than evaporation moisture, suggesting that transpiration moisture from cropland, vegetation, and plants instead of evaporation is dominant in moisture recycling of the Guanzhong Basin

Hsp70 promotes TNF-mediated apoptosis by binding IKKγ and impairing NF-κB survival signaling

The major heat shock protein, Hsp70, can protect against cell death by directly interfering with mitochondrial apoptosis pathways. However, Hsp70 also sensitizes cells to certain apoptotic stimuli like TNF. Little is known about how Hsp70 enhances apoptosis. We demonstrate here that Hsp70 promotes TNF killing by specifically binding the coiled-coil domain of IκB kinase γ (IKKγ) to inhibit IKK activity and consequently inhibit NF-κB-dependent antiapoptotic gene induction. An IKKγ mutant, which interacts with Hsp70, competitively inhibits the Hsp70–IKKγ interaction and relieves heat-mediated NF-κB suppression. Depletion of Hsp70 expression with RNA interference rescues TNF-mediated cell death. Although TNF may or may not be sufficient to trigger apoptosis on its own, TNF-triggered apoptosis was initiated or made worse when Hsp70 expression increased to high levels to disrupt NF-κB signaling. These results provide significant novel insights into the molecular mechanism for the pro-apoptotic behavior of Hsp70 in death-receptor-mediated cell death

Design and implementation of an array signal processing system

In this project, an array signal processing test-bed is constructed. This test-bed is named as the Versatile MIMO Antenna Processing System (vMAPS). vMAPs is a high-end data acquisition and processing system that combines the low cost and familiarity of a standard PC environment with high performance PCI products from Interactive Circuits and Systems Limited (ICS) and third party DSP and data storage hardware. The vMAPS uses WinNT, Windows 2000 or Windows 2000 server operating system and the popular LabView software for GUI based control and display. With the integration highly advanced PCI and PMC bus boards and associated software, a wide range of high speed and high accuracy data acquisition, storage, demodulation and sensor array processing applications can be easily configured. In the project, experiments are conducted on Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimation, adaptive beamforming and space-time coding. Experimental results show that the system is working satisfactory