A TV-Gaussian prior for infinite-dimensional Bayesian inverse problems and its numerical implementations

Many scientific and engineering problems require to perform Bayesian inferences in function spaces, in which the unknowns are of infinite dimension. In such problems, choosing an appropriate prior distribution is an important task. In particular we consider problems where the function to infer is subject to sharp jumps which render the commonly used Gaussian measures unsuitable. On the other hand, the so-called total variation (TV) prior can only be defined in a finite dimensional setting, and does not lead to a well-defined posterior measure in function spaces. In this work we present a TV-Gaussian (TG) prior to address such problems, where the TV term is used to detect sharp jumps of the function, and the Gaussian distribution is used as a reference measure so that it results in a well-defined posterior measure in the function space. We also present an efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm to draw samples from the posterior distribution of the TG prior. With numerical examples we demonstrate the performance of the TG prior and the efficiency of the proposed MCMC algorithm

Low soil available phosphorus level reduces cotton fiber length via osmoregulation

IntroductionPhosphorus (P) deficiency hinders cotton (Gossypium hirustum L.) growth and development, seriously affecting lint yield and fiber quality. However, it is still unclear how P fertilizer affects fiber length.MethodsTherefore, a two-year (2019-2020) pool-culture experiment was conducted using the split-plot design, with two cotton cultivars (CCRI-79; low-P tolerant and SCRC-28; low-P sensitive) as the main plot. Three soil available phosphorus (AP) contents (P0: 3 ± 0.5, P1: 6 ± 0.5, and P2 (control) with 15 ± 0.5 mg kg−1) were applied to the plots, as the subplot, to investigate the impact of soil AP content on cotton fiber elongation and length. ResultsLow soil AP (P0 and P1) decreased the contents of the osmotically active solutes in the cotton fibers, including potassium ions (K+), malate, soluble sugar, and sucrose, by 2.2–10.2%, 14.4–47.3%, 8.7–24.5%, and 10.1–23.4%, respectively, inhibiting the vacuoles from facilitating fiber elongation through osmoregulation. Moreover, soil AP deficiency also reduced the activities of enzymes participated in fiber elongation (plasma membrane H+-ATPase (PM-H+-ATPase), vacuole membrane H+-ATPase (V-H+-ATPase), vacuole membrane H+-translocating inorganic pyrophosphatase (V-H+-PPase), and phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPC)). The PM-H+-ATPase, V-H+-ATPase, V-H+-PPase, and PEPC were reduced by 8.4–33.0%, 7.0–33.8%, 14.1–38.4%, and 16.9–40.2%, respectively, inhibiting the transmembrane transport of the osmotically active solutes and acidified conditions for fiber cell wall, thus limiting the fiber elongation. Similarly, soil AP deficiency reduced the fiber length by 0.6–3.0 mm, mainly due to the 3.8–16.3% reduction of the maximum velocity of fiber elongation (VLmax). Additionally, the upper fruiting branch positions (FB10–11) had higher VLmax and longer fiber lengths under low soil AP. DiscussionCotton fibers with higher malate content and V-H+-ATPase and V-H+-PPase activities yielded longer fibers. And the malate and soluble sugar contents and V-H+-ATPase and PEPC activities in the SCRC-28's fiber were more sensitive to soil AP deficiency in contrast to those of CCRI-79, possibly explaining the SCRC-28 fiber length sensitivity to low soil AP

Hypoxia-induced autophagy as an additional mechanism in human osteosarcoma radioresistance

AbstractOsteosarcoma (OS) responds poorly to radiotherapy, but the mechanism is unclear. We found OS tumor tissues expressed high level of protein HIF-1α, a common biological marker indicative of hypoxia. It is known that hypoxic cells are generally radioresistant because of reduced production of irradiation-induced DNA-damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the anaerobic condition. Here we report another mechanism how hypoxia induces radioresistance. In MG-63 human osteosarcoma cells, hypoxic pretreatment increased the cellular survival in irradiation. These hypoxia-exposed cells displayed compartmental recruitment of GFP-tagged LC3 and expression of protein LC3-II, and restored the radiosensitivity upon autophagy inhibition. The following immunohistochemistry of OS tumor tissue sections revealed upregulated LC3 expression in a correlation with HIF-1α protein level, implying the possibly causative link between hypoxia and autophagy. Further studies in MG-63 cells demonstrated hypoxic pretreatment reduced cellular and mitochondrial ROS production during irradiation, while inhibition of autophagy re-elicited them. Taken together, our study suggests hypoxia can confer cells resistance to irradiation through activated autophagy to accelerate the clearance of cellular ROS products. This might exist in human osteosarcoma as an additional mechanism for radioresistance

IPC02-27155 DEVELOPMENT OF LARGE DIAMETER X70 HIGH TOUGHNESS HSAW LINEPIPE FOR GAS TRANSMMISION

ABSTRACT X70 large diameter linepipe with helical seam SAW were developed, with1016mm OD and 14.6mm WT. Acicular ferrite type linepipe steel is adopted for the base material, which was found having high toughness and low yield strength loss after pipe forming. The very stringent requirements for toughness, i.e. 190J/140J for average/minimum for pipe body and 120J/90J for average/minimum for weld and HAZ were meet successfully. The yield strength loss due to Bauschinger effect was found lower than 20 MPa, which benefited

Non-smooth analysis method in optimal investment-BSDE approach

Abstract In this paper, the investment process is modeled by backward stochastic differential equation. We investigate a necessary condition for optimal investment problem by the method of non-smooth analysis. Furthermore, some applications of our result are given