Atomic decoration for improving the efficiency of field electron emission of carbon nanotubes

The field electron emission from the single-walled carbon nanotubes with their open ends terminated by -BH, -NH, and -O has been simulated. The apex-vacuum barrier and the emission current have been calculated. It has been found that -BH and -NH suppress the apex-vacuum barrier significantly and lead to higher emission current in contrast to the -O terminated structure in the same applied field. The calculated binding energy implies that the carbon nanotubes terminated with -BH and -NH are more stable than those saturated by oxygen atoms or by hydrogen atoms.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, LaTeX; content changed, typos corrected, references adde

Microorganism-regulated mechanisms of temperature effects on the performance of anaerobic digestion

Additional file 2. Additional tables

Artificial intelligence-based non-invasive tumor segmentation, grade stratification and prognosis prediction for clear-cell renal-cell carcinoma

Due to the complicated histopathological characteristics of clear-cell renal-cell carcinoma (ccRCC), non-invasive prognosis before operative treatment is crucial in selecting the appropriate treatment. A total of 126 345 computerized tomography (CT) images from four independent patient cohorts were included for analysis in this study. We propose a V Bottleneck multi-resolution and focus-organ network (VB-MrFo-Net) using a cascade framework for deep learning analysis. The VB-MrFo-Net achieved better performance than VB-Net in tumor segmentation, with a Dice score of 0.87. The nuclear-grade prediction model performed best in the logistic regression classifier, with area under curve values from 0.782 to 0.746. Survival analysis revealed that our prediction model could significantly distinguish patients with high survival risk, with a hazard ratio (HR) of 2.49 [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.13-5.45, P = 0.023] in the General cohort. Excellent performance had also been verified in the Cancer Genome Atlas cohort, the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium cohort, and the Kidney Tumor Segmentation Challenge cohort, with HRs of 2.77 (95%CI: 1.58-4.84, P = 0.0019), 3.83 (95%CI: 1.22-11.96, P = 0.029), and 2.80 (95%CI: 1.05-7.47, P = 0.025), respectively. In conclusion, we propose a novel VB-MrFo-Net for the renal tumor segmentation and automatic diagnosis of ccRCC. The risk stratification model could accurately distinguish patients with high tumor grade and high survival risk based on non-invasive CT images before surgical treatments, which could provide practical advice for deciding treatment options.</p

Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies Candidate Genes Related to Seed Oil Composition and Protein Content in Gossypium hirsutum L.

Cotton (Gossypium spp.) is a leading natural fiber crop and an important source of vegetable protein and oil for humans and livestock. To investigate the genetic architecture of seed nutrients in upland cotton, a genome-wide association study (GWAS) was conducted in a panel of 196 germplasm resources under three environments using a CottonSNP80K chip of 77,774 loci. Relatively high genetic diversity (average gene diversity being 0.331) and phenotypic variation (coefficient of variation, CV, exceeding 3.9%) were detected in this panel. Correlation analysis revealed that the well-documented negative association between seed protein (PR) and oil may be to some extent attributable to the negative correlation between oleic acid (OA) and PR. Linkage disequilibrium (LD) was unevenly distributed among chromosomes and subgenomes. It ranged from 0.10–0.20 Mb (Chr19) to 5.65–5.75 Mb (Chr25) among the chromosomes and the range of Dt-subgenomes LD decay distances was smaller than At-subgenomes. This panel was divided into two subpopulations based on the information of 41,815 polymorphic single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. The mixed linear model considering both Q-matrix and K-matrix [MLM(Q+K)] was employed to estimate the association between the SNP markers and the seed nutrients, considering the false positives caused by population structure and the kinship. A total of 47 SNP markers and 28 candidate quantitative trait loci (QTLs) regions were found to be significantly associated with seven cottonseed nutrients, including protein, total fatty acid, and five main fatty acid compositions. In addition, the candidate genes in these regions were analyzed, which included three genes, Gh_D12G1161, Gh_D12G1162, and Gh_D12G1165 that were most likely involved in the control of cottonseed protein concentration. These results improved our understanding of the genetic control of cottonseed nutrients and provided potential molecular tools to develop cultivars with high protein and improved fatty acid compositions in cotton breeding programs through marker-assisted selection

Paper-based microfluidic aptasensors

For in-situ disease markers detection, point-of-care (POC) diagnosis has great advantages in speed and cost compared with traditional techniques. The rapid diagnosis, prognosis, and surveillance of diseases can significantly reduce disease-related mortality and trauma. Therefore, increasing attention has been paid to the POC diagnosis devices due to their excellent diagnosis speed and portability. Over the past ten years, paper-based microfluidic aptasensors have emerged as a class of critical POC diagnosis devices and various aptasensors have been proposed to detect various disease markers. However, most aptasensors need further improvement before they can actually enter the market and be widely used. There is thus an urgent need to sort out the key points of preparing the aptasensors and the direction that needs to be invested in. This review summarizes the representative articles in the development of paper-based microfluidic aptasensors. These works can be divided into paper-based optical aptasensors and paper-based electrochemical aptasensors according to their output signals. Significant focus is applied to these works according to the following three parts: (1) The ingenious design of device structure; (2) Application and synthesis of nanomaterial; (3) The detection principle of the proposed aptasensor. This is a detailed and comprehensive review of paper-based microfluidic aptasensors. The accomplishments and shortcomings of the current aptasensors are outlined, the development direction and the future prospective are given. It is hoped that the research in this review can provide a reference for further development of more advanced, more effective paper-based microfluidic aptasensors for POC disease markers diagnosi

A combination of leaf rust resistance gene Lr34 and lesion mimic gene lm significantly enhances adult plant resistance to Puccinia triticina in wheat

Citation: Li, Tao, GuiHua Bai, and ShiLiang Gu. “A Combination of Leaf Rust Resistance Gene Lr34 and Lesion Mimic Gene Lm Significantly Enhances Adult Plant Resistance to Puccinia Triticina in Wheat.” Chinese Science Bulletin 57, no. 17 (June 1, 2012): 2113–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-012-5001-x.Leaf rust caused by Puccinia triticina is an economically-important disease in wheat worldwide. A combination of different types of resistance genes may significantly enhance rust resistance under rust-favorable conditions. To investigate the interactions between the rust resistance gene Lr34 and the lesion mimic gene lm on 1BL in Ning 7840, a segregating F8-10 population of 180 recombinant inbred lines was developed from Ning 7840/Chokwang and evaluated for both lesion mimic expression and leaf rust response at the adult plant stage in a greenhouse. A major quantitative trait locus (QTL), derived from Sumai 3, was co-localized with Lr34 on chromosome 7D and explained 41.5% of phenotypic variations for rust severity and 22.1% for leaf tip necrosis (LTN). The presence of Lr34 was confirmed by Lr34-specific markers cssfr1 and cssfr2 in Ning 7840 and Sumai 3. Unlike Lr34, lm conditioned a spontaneous lesion mimic phenotype and had a significant effect on reducing uredinial size, and a smaller effect on severity. Additive effects were observed between lm and Lr34 for severity and LTN, and an epistatic effect was observed for infection type. Single marker analysis also identified several other QTL with minor effects on severity, infection type, or LTN

Quantitative trait loci for resistance to Fusarium head blight in the Chinese wheat landrace Huangfangzhu

Citation: Li, T., Bai, G., Wu, S. et al. Euphytica (2012) 185: 93. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-012-0631-2The Chinese wheat landrace Huangfangzhu (HFZ) has a high level of resistance to Fusarium head blight (FHB). To identify chromosomal regions that are responsible for FHB resistance in HFZ, F8 recombinant inbred lines (RIL) were developed from a cross between HFZ and Wheaton, a U.S. hard spring wheat. FHB was evaluated by single floret inoculation in both greenhouse and field environments. Two quantitative trait loci (QTL) with major effects were identified. One QTL was located on the short arm of chromosome 3B, and explained 35.4% of the phenotypic variation; the other QTL was assigned to 7AL and explained 18.0% of the phenotypic variation for FHB response. In addition, three minor QTL were detected on chromosomes 1AS, 1B and 5AS by single marker regression. HFZ contributed all favorable alleles. The RIL with HFZ alleles at the QTL on 3BS and 7AL displayed significantly lower percentages of infected spikelets than RIL without these alleles in both greenhouse and field environments. HFZ combined several alleles from germplasm reported previously and is a promising alternative source for improving wheat FHB resistance