Whole-brain patterns of 1H-magnetic resonance spectroscopy imaging in Alzheimer's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies

Acknowledgements We thank Craig Lambert for his help in processing the MRS data. The study was funded by the Sir Jules Thorn Charitable Trust (grant ref: 05/JTA) and was supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre and the Biomedical Research Unit in Lewy Body Dementia based at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust and Newcastle University and the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre and Biomedical Research Unit in Dementia based at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Cambridge.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Impact of Flooding on China’s Agricultural Production and Food Security in 2020

In June and July 2020, severe floods wreaked havoc in many provinces in southern China (Wong 2020). China’s Ministry of Emergency Management reported that rainfall during this year’s rain season reached 759.2 mm, which is more than twice the usual amount and the highest level since 1961.1 According to news from the State Council Information Office, as of August 13, 2020, the heavy rainfall has affected 27 provinces, 63 million people, and led to a direct loss of $26 billion, which is around 0.21% of China’s estimated 2020 GDP. Specifically, the floods affected 6.03 million hectares of cropland, with 1.14 million hectares of crop failure, mostly concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River basin.2 To put the affected cropland into perspective, the total summer crop sown area in 2020 is 26.17 million hectares; therefore, the floods affected 23% of the planted area of summer crops and caused 4.3% crop failure. After severe flooding in the Yangtze River basin, heavy rain also hit Sichuan and Shandong in mid-August, causing more agricultural production loss and pushing food prices further

The Energy Complexity of Broadcast

Energy is often the most constrained resource in networks of battery-powered devices, and as devices become smaller, they spend a larger fraction of their energy on communication (transceiver usage) not computation. As an imperfect proxy for true energy usage, we define energy complexity to be the number of time slots a device transmits/listens; idle time and computation are free. In this paper we investigate the energy complexity of fundamental communication primitives such as broadcast in multi-hop radio networks. We consider models with collision detection (CD) and without (No-CD), as well as both randomized and deterministic algorithms. Some take-away messages from this work include: 1. The energy complexity of broadcast in a multi-hop network is intimately connected to the time complexity of leader election in a single-hop (clique) network. Many existing lower bounds on time complexity immediately transfer to energy complexity. For example, in the CD and No-CD models, we need $\Omega(\log n)$ and $\Omega(\log^2 n)$ energy, respectively. 2. The energy lower bounds above can almost be achieved, given sufficient ($\Omega(n)$) time. In the CD and No-CD models we can solve broadcast using $O(\frac{\log n\log\log n}{\log\log\log n})$ energy and $O(\log^3 n)$ energy, respectively. 3. The complexity measures of Energy and Time are in conflict, and it is an open problem whether both can be minimized simultaneously. We give a tradeoff showing it is possible to be nearly optimal in both measures simultaneously. For any constant $\epsilon>0$, broadcast can be solved in $O(D^{1+\epsilon}\log^{O(1/\epsilon)} n)$ time with $O(\log^{O(1/\epsilon)} n)$ energy, where $D$ is the diameter of the network

China’s Agricultural Imports under the Phase One Deal: Is Success Possible?

We examine China’s committed agricultural purchases under the phase one trade deal and whether it can fulfill those commitments due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We review China’s actual agricultural imports from the United States and other countries up to the first quarter of 2020 and analyze trade deal obligations China must still meet by the end of 2020. We use prior seasonal patterns and US-China price differentials to predict China’s agricultural imports from the United States in 2020. We examine total agricultural and related products with special focus on corn, soybeans, cotton, sorghum, pork, and beef. The data show China currently has an enormous market demand for agricultural imports, and, to date, has imported large quantities of pork, cotton, sorghum, and soybeans from the United States. However, China imports an even greater amount of agricultural products from other countries, which, in part, reflects a continued diversification away from US agricultural imports before and during the trade war. We predict China will import $18.60 billion in agricultural products from the United States in 2020, far behind the phase one target of$36.5 billion. The first quarter of 2020 was a trying time for agricultural trade, especially for China, so there is still room for optimism, and we see several positive signs that China will accelerate its agricultural purchases. First, US-China price differentials of relevant commodities recently increased, providing a market signal for China to increase imports from the United States. Second, there are indications that, beginning in October, China plans to import large quantities of corn, as its domestic supply gap has widened. Third, China has announced its intention to purchase 20 million tons of corn, 10 million tons of soybeans, and one million tons of cotton for its national reserve. Fourth, China is short on animal protein due to the African Swine Fever outbreak, and thus is purchasing an increasing share from the United States. Fifth, China is making good progress meeting the regulatory and structural changes promised as part of the phase one deal, including updating lists of US facilities eligible to export distillers dried grains with solubles and beef and pork products lists. However, US-China trade prospects depend critically on COVID-19’s impact on international logistics and China’s political willingness to allow US imports to return to and exceed pre-trade-war levels. We provide a commodity specific estimate of what China will need to import from the US in the last three quarters if it is to meet the terms of the deal by the end of 2020

Aquafaba from commercially canned chickpeas as potential egg replacer for the development of vegan mayonnaise : recipe optimization and storage stability

This work is part of the Strategic Research Programme 2016-2021 and is funded by the Scottish Government's Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS). Microscopy was performed in the Microscopy and Histology Core Facility at the University of Aberdeen.Peer reviewedPostprin

Is China’s Hog Rebuilding Complete? Reconciling Inventory and Price Data

The African swine fever (ASF) outbreak that started in August 2018 wiped out 40% of China’s sow inventory. China has been making substantial efforts, including subsidizing large hog producers and encouraging industrialization and modernization of hog production, to rebuild and expand its pork production (Xiong et al. 2020). While China’s governmental inventory data as of December 2020 show sow and hog inventory were 92.1% and 93.1% of their respective 2017 levels (MARAC 2021), recent record-high piglet, sow, hog, and pork prices suggest a large persistent supply shortage. China’s record pork and live swine imports in 2020 suggest that China’s hog rebuilding might be fast but of low genetic quality. Specifically, it seems likely that the retention of low-quality commercial generation gilts helped rebuild the herd but set back the national breeding system by abandoning purebred grandparents and parent generation propagation (Dim Sums 2021)

US Agricultural Exports to China during the Phase One Trade Deal: Larger Pie, Smaller Slice?

The United States and China signed the Phase One trade deal on January 15, 2020. The deal ran from February 15, 2020, to February 14, 2022, and obligated China to purchase $36.5 billion worth of US agricultural products in the first year ($12.5 billion more than the baseline) and $43.5 billion in the second year ($19.5 billion more than the baseline) (He et al. 2020). While China fulfilled 81% of its agricultural purchase obligations and China’s purchases of several products, such as corn and pork, reached historical levels, it is unclear if China’s record purchases were driven by China’s growing import demand or its trade deal obligations. We investigate whether China’s agricultural imports from the United States grew in proportion to China’s agricultural imports from all sources during the trade deal. We look at both total agricultural trade and trade for specific commodities that are important for the United States. We also compare the comparative advantage of the United States and major exporters of corn, soybeans, and pork using the normalized revealed comparative advantage (NRCA) index (Yu et al. 2009)

High-Spatial Resolution Laser Doppler Blood Flow Imaging

This paper was presented at the 4th Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2014), which was held at University College, London, UK. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Italian Union of Thermofluiddynamics, IPEM, the Process Intensification Network, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Heat Transfer Society, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group, and the Energy Institute, ASME Press, LCN London Centre for Nanotechnology, UCL University College London, UCL Engineering, the International NanoScience Community, www.nanopaprika.eu.A full-field laser Doppler blood flow imaging (LDI) system based on an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) coupled with a high-speed CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) camera chip has been developed which provides blood flow images with flexible frame rates and spatial resolution. When a high spatial resolution is required, 1280x1024-pixel blood flow images were obtained by processing up to 2048 samples at 0.2 frames per second (fps). Alternatively, a maximum of 15.5fps was achieved by reducing the spatial resolution and sampling points to 256x256 pixels and 128 samples respectively. This system was applied to a high-spatial resolution flow imaging application in which a mixture of water and polystyrene microspheres was pumped through a micropipette (diameter = 250m) with controlled velocities, and the resulting flow was imaged and processed. The performance was demonstrated by the resulting flow images which are of size 1280×1024 pixels and obtained by processing 2048 samples at each pixel

Angiotensin‐converting enzyme inhibitory activity of hydrolysates generated from whey protein fortified with salal fruits (Galtheria shallon) by enzymatic treatment with Pronase from Streptomyces griseus

This work is part of the Strategic Research Programme 2016-2021 and is funded by the Scottish Government's Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS).Peer reviewedPostprin

Predicting China’s Corn Acreage and Production in 2021/22 and 2022/23

China’s corn imports exceeded its corn tariff rate quota (TRQ) of 7.2 million metric tons (MMTs) in 2020 and reached a record of 26 MMTs in the 2020/21 marketing year (USDA 2021a). While China’s recent corn import surge was largely due to its feed demand to recover its hog inventory from the African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreak, the prospect for China’s corn imports is unclear. Figure 1 shows that China’s corn futures price with maturity in November 2021 declined from around $10.80 per bushel in May to$9.70 per bushel in September 2021. The current level is still high relative to the historical norm. Over this period, China’s hog futures price declined from the highest point of around $2 per pound to around$1 per pound. The hog futures price drop suggests that China’s hog inventory recovery is likely making good progress, which will put upward pressure on China’s corn imports in 2021/22 and 2022/23. The net impact will depend on China’s domestic corn production, and to estimate this we need reasonable estimates of Chinese farmers’ acreage and yield price supply elasticities