Building a Facilitated Design Collaboration Environment

Complex design problems require members of project teams go beyond individualistic work to engage in joint activity of generating new insights, new ideas, and new artifacts. Excellence in the design of GUIs requires creative problem solving. It is widely accepted that creative problem solving is most effective when individuals or groups employ a cyclic process of divergence-convergence consisting of three phases. In this paper we propose a collaborative environment for GUI design and evaluation, at the core of which is a process-based Agent Facilitator (AF). The advantage of this AF lies in its 1) focus on process of managing group dynamics rather than the content of the discussion, 2) democratic and non-obtrusive facilitation style, 3) strong feedback mechanism and 4) transparent collaboration and consensus making process. We discuss the system architecture and the implementation of a prototype extending the online chat mechanism. Although our initial effort has focused on the domain of Graphic User Interface (GUI) design, this framework is applicable to other design domains

High Diversity of Cytospora Associated With Canker and Dieback of Rosaceae in China, With 10 New Species Described

Cytospora canker is a destructive disease of numerous hosts and causes serious economic losses with a worldwide distribution. Identification of Cytospora species is difficult due to insufficient phylogenetic understanding and overlapped morphological characteristics. In this study, we provide an assessment of 23 Cytospora spp., which covered nine genera of Rosaceae, and focus on 13 species associated with symptomatic branch or twig canker and dieback disease in China. Through morphological observation and multilocus phylogeny of internal transcribed spacer (ITS), large nuclear ribosomal RNA subunit (LSU), actin (act), RNA polymerase II subunit (rpb2), translation elongation factor 1-α (tef1-α), and beta-tubulin (tub2) gene regions, the results indicate 13 distinct lineages with high branch support. These include 10 new Cytospora species, i.e., C. cinnamomea, C. cotoneastricola, C. mali-spectabilis, C. ochracea, C. olivacea, C. pruni-mume, C. rosicola, C. sorbina, C. tibetensis, and C. xinjiangensis and three known taxa including Cytospora erumpens, C. leucostoma, and C. parasitica. This study provides an initial understanding of the taxonomy of Cytospora associated with canker and dieback disease of Rosaceae in China

Proteomic analysis of glucohexaose induced resistance to downy mildew in Cucumis sativus

Glucohexaose, as one of synthetic oligosaccharides, induces the resistance response to protect plants from pathogen infection by inducing the systemic acquired resistance-like (SAR-like) response. To study the molecular mechanism of glucohexaose induced resistance, we investigate the physiological, biochemical and proteomic changes after glucohexaose treatment. The results shows cucumber plants had the highest protection level of 66.79% 48 h after the third times of 10 μg mLglucohexaose treatment. Significant increases in chlorophyll, photo synthetic rate, soluble sugar, leave dry weight and HO were observed after glucohexaose treatment. Eighteen up-regulated proteins were identified by MALDI-TOF/TOF in glucohexaose-treated plants, predicted to be involved in photosynthesis, photorespiration, oxidative burst, transcriptional regulation, signal transduction and pathogen defense processes. The identification of up-regulated proteins involved in photo synthetic processes is a significant finding which suggests that a boost in metabolites is required for repartition of resources towards defense mechanisms. The proteins which responded to glucohexaose also included those associated with oxidative burst response, such as APX and isocitrate dehydrogenase. More comprehensive studies about the link between the molecular mechanisms regulated by ROS mediated photosynthesis and cucumber induced resistance by glucohexaose, are necessary in the future to broaden our understanding of induced resistance in plants