Production status and research advancement on root rot disease of faba bean (Vicia faba L.) in China

China is the largest producer of faba bean with a total harvested area of 8.11×105 ha and a total production of 1.69 ×106 tons (dry beans) in 2020, accounting for 30% of the world production. Faba bean is grown in China for both fresh pods and dry seed. East China cultivates large seed cultivars for food processing and fresh vegetables, while northwestern and southwestern China grow cultivars for dry seeds, with an increased production of fresh green pods. Most of the faba bean is consumed domestically, with limited exports. The absence of unified quality control measures and simple traditional cultivation practices contributes to the lower competitiveness of the faba bean industry in international markets. Recently, new cultivation methods have emerged with improved weed control, as well as better water and drainage management, resulting in higher quality and income for producers. Root rot disease in faba bean is caused by multiple pathogens, including Fusarium spp., Rhizoctonia spp., and Pythium spp. Fusarium spp. is the most prevalent species causing root rot in faba bean crops and is responsible for severe yield loss, with different species causing the disease in different regions in China. The yield loss ranges from 5% to 30%, up to 100% in severely infected fields. The management of faba bean root rot disease in China involves a combination of physical, chemical, and bio-control methods, including intercropping with non-host crops, applying rational nitrogen, and treating seeds with chemical or bio-seed treatments. However, the effectiveness of these methods is limited due to the high cost, the broad host range of the pathogens, and potential negative impacts on the environment and non-targeted soil organisms. Intercropping is the most widely utilized and economically friendly control method to date. This review provides an overview of the current status of faba bean production in China, the challenges faced by the industry due to root rot disease, and the progress in identifying and managing this disease. This information is critical for developing integrated management strategies to effectively control root rot in faba bean cultivation and facilitating the high-quality development of the faba bean industry

Is the NH4+-induced growth inhibition caused by the NH4+ form of the nitrogen source or by soil acidification?

Soil acidification often occurs when the concentration of ammonium (NH4+) in soil rises, such as that observed in farmland. Both soil acidification and excess NH4+ have serious adverse effects on crop growth and food production. However, we still do not know which of these two inhibitors has a greater impact on the growth of crops, and the degree of their inhibitory effect on crop growth have not been accurately evaluated. 31 wheat cultivars originating in various areas of China were planted under 5 mM sole NH4+ (ammonium nitrogen, AN) or nitrate nitrogen in combined with two pH levels resembling acidified conditions (5.0 and 6.5). The results showed that the shoots and roots biomass were severely reduced by AN in both and these reduction effects were strengthened by a low medium pH. The concentration of free NH4+ and amino acids, the glutamine synthetase activity were significantly higher, but the total soluble sugar content was reduced under NH4+ conditions, and the glutamine synthetase activity was reduced by a low medium pH. Cultivar variance was responsible for the largest proportion of the total variance in plant dry weight, leaf area, nodal root number, total root length and root volume; the nitrogen (N) form explains most of the variation in N and C metabolism; the effects of pH were the greatest for plant height and root average diameter. So, soil acidification and excess NH4+ would cause different degrees of inhibition effects on different plant tissues. The findings are expected to be useful for applying effective strategies for reducing NH4+ stress in the field

O2ATH: An OpenMP Offloading Toolkit for the Sunway Heterogeneous Manycore Platform

The next generation Sunway supercomputer employs the SW26010pro processor, which features a specialized on-chip heterogeneous architecture. Applications with significant hotspots can benefit from the great computation capacity improvement of Sunway many-core architectures by carefully making intensive manual many-core parallelization efforts. However, some legacy projects with large codebases, such as CESM, ROMS and WRF, contain numerous lines of code and do not have significant hotspots. The cost of manually porting such applications to the Sunway architecture is almost unaffordable. To overcome such a challenge, we have developed a toolkit named O2ATH. O2ATH forwards GNU OpenMP runtime library calls to Sunway's Athread library, which greatly simplifies the parallelization work on the Sunway architecture.O2ATH enables users to write both MPE and CPE code in a single file, and parallelization can be achieved by utilizing OpenMP directives and attributes. In practice, O2ATH has helped us to port two large projects, CESM and ROMS, to the CPEs of the next generation Sunway supercomputers via the OpenMP offload method. In the experiments, kernel speedups range from 3 to 15 times, resulting in 3 to 6 times whole application speedups.Furthermore, O2ATH requires significantly fewer code modifications compared to manually crafting CPE functions.This indicates that O2ATH can greatly enhance development efficiency when porting or optimizing large software projects on Sunway supercomputers.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, 5 tables

Evaluating the importation of yellow fever cases into China in 2016 and strategies used to prevent and control the spread of the disease

During the yellow fever epidemic in Angola in 2016, cases of yellow fever were reported in China for the first time. The 11 cases, all Chinese nationals returning from Angola, were identified in March and April 2016, one to two weeks after the peak of the Angolan epidemic. One patient died; the other 10 cases recovered after treatment. This paper reviews the epidemiological characteristics of the 11 yellow fever cases imported into China. It examines case detection and disease control and surveillance, and presents recommendations for further action to prevent additional importation of yellow fever into China

Corrigendum to: The TianQin project: current progress on science and technology

In the originally published version, this manuscript included an error related to indicating the corresponding author within the author list. This has now been corrected online to reflect the fact that author Jun Luo is the corresponding author of the article

The role of mechano-sensitive ion channels in osteoarthritis pain

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a disabling and prevalent condition affecting 27 million US citizens and 4.2 million Canadians. Pain is the primary symptom of OA and it is manifested as mechanical hypersensitivity to joint palpation/movement, although the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. This project aims to examine changes that occur in mechanosensitive ion channels (MSCs) of joint innervating pain-sensing neurons (nociceptors) during OA. These channels transduce mechanical stimuli into electrical signals. Using a mouse model that produces OA-like joint pathophysiology and pain, we assess if alteration in the gating properties of MSCs in joint-innervating nociceptors is a contributor to OA pain. We hypothesize that MSCs are sensitized to mechanical stimulation in OA and blocking their activity will reduce pain behaviours in OA mice. Using acutely dissociated neurons from healthy and OA mice, we performed electrophysiology on knee-innervating nociceptors to examine the properties of MSCs. Our data shows that MSCs from OA nociceptors have a reduced mechanical activation threshold, which results in an increased mechanically-evoked current. Analysis of the frequency of patches containing MSCs demonstrates that nociceptors of OA mice do not have an increased density of active MSCs at the membrane. Furthermore, single channel iV curves demonstrate that it is likely that the same MSC is present in both naïve and disease states. Lastly, GsTMx4, a blocker of MSCs, blocks MSCs present in knee-innervating nociceptors. Finally, in behavioral experiments, intra-articular injection of GsMTx4 in the OA knee produces significant analgesia. In summary, our model for OA pain shows that in nociceptors, MSCs are sensitized to mechanical stimuli and contribute to OA pain. Furthermore, targeting these channels in OA knees may be a valuable therapeutic strategy for managing OA pain.L’arthrose est une maladie invalidante touchant 27 millions de personnes aux États-Unis et 4.2 millions de Canadiens. Elle est caractérisée principalement par une douleur, qui se manifeste par une hypersensibilité aux stimulations mécaniques suite à un mouvement ou à la palpation des jointures. Les mécanismes sous-jacents cette hypersensibilité demeurent cependant inexpliqués. Le présent projet vise à examiner les changements induits par l’arthrose dans l’activité des canaux mécanosensibles (MSCs) exprimés dans les neurones répondant aux stimuli douloureux (nocicepteurs) qui innervent les articulations. Ces canaux convertissent les stimuli mécaniques en signaux électriques. A l’aide d’un modèle murin d’arthrose, qui reproduit la physiopathologie et la douleur articulaire, nous examinons si des altérations dans l’activité des MSCs présents dans les nocicepteurs des articulations est un facteur important pour la douleur arthritique. Notre hypothèse est que l’arthrose sensibilise les MSCs aux stimulations mécaniques, et que de bloquer l’activité de ces canaux chez les souris arthritiques réduira non-seulement cette hypersensibilité au niveau cellulaire, mais également leurs comportements associés à la douleur. En utilisant des neurones dissociés provenant de souris en santé et de souris arthritiques, nous avons effectué des enregistrements électrophysiologiques sur les nocicepteurs des genoux. Nos données démontrent que ces nocicepteurs, dont l’activation est mécanique, ont un seuil d’excitabilité minimum réduit, et que cette hypersensibilité accroit également les courants engendrés par les stimuli mécaniques. L’analyse des courbes iV des canaux ioniques indiquent que les MSCs présents dans les cellules en santé soient les mêmes que ceux des cellules arthritiques. De plus, nous avons démontré que le peptide GsTMx4 (extrait de l’araignée Grammostola spatulata et qui a pour propriété de bloquer les MSCs) est efficace pour bloquer les MSCs des récepteurs nociceptifs des genoux. Finalement, une injection de GsMTx4 avant la flexion ou l’extension de l’articulation réduit de façon significative les scores de douleurs des souris arthritiques. En résumé, notre modèle de douleur arthritique démontre donc que les MSCs exprimés par les nocicepteurs sont hypersensibilisés aux stimuli mécaniques et contribuent significativement à la douleur arthritique. Nos données suggèrent qu’un traitement ciblant spécifiquement les MSCs pourrait avoir des effets bénéfiques chez les patients souffrant d’arthrose en réduisant leurs douleurs

Examining the Hiring Challenges and Labor Force Shortage in Barron County, WI

Color poster with text, charts, and graphs.Many local businesses in Barron County have been struggling with hiring individuals recently. To determine what factors, cause the shortage of employees, we investigated the demographics, housing, transportation, and public safety of Barron County, and compared the data of Barron County with that of Wisconsin and the US. We found old dependency ratio at Barron County is too high, which directly results in the lack of labor. A solution to decrease the dependency ratio within a community is to promote immigration for younger people, maintaining and attracting younger generations to the community. Then, we analyzed the existing research data and concluded that household median income is highly correlated with the ratio of gaining and maintaining young generation. The findings of this proposed research will help to direct the local business and government to areas of improving labor force participation and assist in guiding future studies and investigation if necessary.University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Program