Contributions of photosynthetic organs to the seed yield of hybrid rice: The effects of gibberellin application examined by carbon isotope technology

The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Contributions of photosynthetic organs to the seed yield of hybrid rice: The effects of gibberellin application examined by carbon isotope technology. Seed Science and Technology, 46(3), (2018): 533-546, doi:10.15258/sst.2018.46.3.10.Changes in the structure and quality of a hybrid combination population have been observed after the application of gibberellins. Such changes would affect the accumulation and distribution of photosynthetic products, which would subsequently affect the yield during hybrid rice seed production. In this study, photosynthetic physiological characteristics and the distribution of photosynthetic products were evaluated in a field experiment. The transport of panicle photosynthetic products to grain was demonstrated using a 14C isotope tracer technique.The contribution ratios of the panicle and leaf to yield in the hybrid rice seed production were 32.3 and 42.1%, respectively. Through isotope tracing technology, it was determined that about 90% of the photosynthetic products of the panicle and 50% of those of the leaf were delivered to the panicle. During the filling period, the contribution of panicle to yield was concentrated in the early period (0–10 days after pollination), and the contribution of leaf to yield was more significant in the late period (10 days after pollination to maturity). These results suggest that the panicle makes an important photosynthetic contribution (equivalent to that of the flag leaf) during the process of grain filling, especially at 0–5 days after the heading stage.We are thankful to anonymous reviewers and editors for their helpful comments and suggestions. This research was part of the project for the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31271666), “12th 5-year plan” Agro-Scientific Research in the Public Interest (Grant No. 201303002) and the Earmarked Fund for China Agriculture Research System (Grant No. CARS-01-26)

Cover crops and chicken grazing in a winter fallow field improve soil carbon and nitrogen contents and decrease methane emissions

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Zheng, H., Zhou, L., Wei, J., Tang, Q., Zou, Y., Tang, J., & Xu, H. Cover crops and chicken grazing in a winter fallow field improve soil carbon and nitrogen contents and decrease methane emissions. Scientific Reports, 10(1), (2020): 12607, doi:10.1038/s41598-020-69407-y.Using symbiotic farming methods [cover crops and chicken grazing (+ C)] in a winter fallow field, we found that the soil organic matter and total nitrogen of the + C treatment were 5.2% and 26.6% higher, respectively, than those of a treatment with cover crops and no chicken grazing (− C). The annual rice grain yield of the + C treatment was 3.8% higher than that of the − C treatment and 12.3% higher than that of the bare fallow field (CK), while the annual CH4 emissions of the + C treatment were 26.9% lower than those of the − C treatment and 10.6% lower than those of the CK treatment. The 100-year global warming potential of the + C treatment was 6.2% lower than that of the − C treatment. Therefore, the use of winter cover crops and chicken grazing in a winter fallow field was effective at reducing CH4 emissions and significantly improving soil nutrients and rice yield.This study was supported by the Earmarked Fund for China Agriculture Research System (CARS-01-26), the China-UK joint Red Soil Critical Zone project from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41571130053), and Hunan “A Hundred Scholars” Program

SEPT: Towards Scalable and Efficient Visual Pre-Training

Recently, the self-supervised pre-training paradigm has shown great potential in leveraging large-scale unlabeled data to improve downstream task performance. However, increasing the scale of unlabeled pre-training data in real-world scenarios requires prohibitive computational costs and faces the challenge of uncurated samples. To address these issues, we build a task-specific self-supervised pre-training framework from a data selection perspective based on a simple hypothesis that pre-training on the unlabeled samples with similar distribution to the target task can bring substantial performance gains. Buttressed by the hypothesis, we propose the first yet novel framework for Scalable and Efficient visual Pre-Training (SEPT) by introducing a retrieval pipeline for data selection. SEPT first leverage a self-supervised pre-trained model to extract the features of the entire unlabeled dataset for retrieval pipeline initialization. Then, for a specific target task, SEPT retrievals the most similar samples from the unlabeled dataset based on feature similarity for each target instance for pre-training. Finally, SEPT pre-trains the target model with the selected unlabeled samples in a self-supervised manner for target data finetuning. By decoupling the scale of pre-training and available upstream data for a target task, SEPT achieves high scalability of the upstream dataset and high efficiency of pre-training, resulting in high model architecture flexibility. Results on various downstream tasks demonstrate that SEPT can achieve competitive or even better performance compared with ImageNet pre-training while reducing the size of training samples by one magnitude without resorting to any extra annotations.Comment: Accepted by AAAI 202

Use acupuncture to relieve perimenopausal syndrome: study protocol of a randomized controlled trial

Law Number 11 / 2008 on Information and Electronic Transaction (UU ITE) is the regulation concerning on criminal law in addition to the Criminal Code (KUHP). UU ITE is commonly regarded additional regulation of the Criminal Code as a special law (lex specialis) in which Penal Code is deemed as lex generalis. It is based on the principle of lex specialis derogate legi generalis. This article uses legal research to review the decision of District Court in Bandung Number 1033/PID.B/2014/PN.BDG where it comprises legislation and cases. It concludes that the judge is not frugal in applying the principle lex specialis derogat legi generalis in the consideration. This is associated with the indictment of public prosecutor which only prejudges with article 303 paragraph (1) to 2. In contrast, the indictment which does not meet the requirement of a careful, clear, and complete description asserts to become void by law. Keywords: Online Gambling, Criminal Principle, Indictmen

Applications of Catalytic Hairpin Assembly Reaction in Biosensing.

Nucleic acids are considered as perfect programmable materials for cascade signal amplification and not merely as genetic information carriers. Among them, catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA), an enzyme-free, high-efficiency, and isothermal amplification method, is a typical example. A typical CHA reaction is initiated by single-stranded analytes, and substrate hairpins are successively opened, resulting in thermodynamically stable duplexes. CHA circuits, which were first proposed in 2008, present dozens of systems today. Through in-depth research on mechanisms, the CHA circuits have been continuously enriched with diverse reaction systems and improved analytical performance. After a short time, the CHA reaction can realize exponential amplification under isothermal conditions. Under certain conditions, the CHA reaction can even achieve 600 000-fold signal amplification. Owing to its promising versatility, CHA is able to be applied for analysis of various markers in vitro and in living cells. Also, CHA is integrated with nanomaterials and other molecular biotechnologies to produce diverse readouts. Herein, the varied CHA mechanisms, hairpin designs, and reaction conditions are introduced in detail. Additionally, biosensors based on CHA are presented. Finally, challenges and the outlook of CHA development are considered

Electroacupuncture for psychogenic erectile dysfunction: A resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study exploring the alteration of fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuation

BackgroundPsychogenic erectile dysfunction (PED) can seriously affect emotional and marital wellbeing. Electroacupuncture (EA) seems an effective method for treating PED. However, the central mechanisms underlying PED and the beneficial effects of EA treatment are unclear. The purpose of this study was to explore the central mechanisms of PED and to examine the impact of EA on erectile function.MethodsWe recruited 14 PED patients and 14 matched normal controls (NCs). PED patients underwent twice rs-fMRI scans, respectively, pre- and post-treatment. The NCs only completed one rs-fMRI scan. We used the fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (fALFF) to compare spontaneous neural activity between the PED patients and NCs, and to examine the differences between the pre- and post-EA treatment scans in the PED patients.ResultsScores on the IIEF5, QEQ, and SEAR improved after EA treatment. Compared with the NCs, PED patients showed increased fALFF in the right posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), right supplementary motor area (SMA), and left middle occipital gyrus. Most of these regions are closely implicated in sexual inhibition. The results of the correlation analysis results indicated that the fALFF of the right PCC was negatively correlated with IIEF5 scores. After treatment, fALFF values were substantially lower in the left triangular part of the inferior frontal gyrus, right DLPFC, right SMA, bilateral PCC and the orbital part of the middle frontal gyrus, and higher in the left middle temporal gyrus and left caudate nucleus. These regions mainly belong to the default mode network (DMN), executive control network and primary sensory motor network. The results of the correlation analysis indicated a positive association between the changes in IIEF5 score and changes in the fALFF value in the right PCC after EA treatment.ConclusionIn conclusion, our study highlights that PED patients have abnormal patterns of activity in the right PCC, right DLPFC, and right SMA mainly involved in the DMN, executive central network, and sensory motor network which could lead to a higher levels of sexual inhibition. EA might regulate the process of sexual inhibition to improve erection function in PED patients probably by modulating spontaneous brain activity in the DMN, executive central network, and sensory motor network

Simultaneous Formation of CH₃NH₃PbI₃ and electron transport layers using antisolvent method for efficient perovskite solar cells

A new antisolvent method was developed to prepare CH₃NH₃PbI₃ and electron transport layers for making efficient hybrid perovskite solar cells. By directly using [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester in chlorobenzene solution as antisolvent, CH₃NH₃PbI₃ and electron transport layers were simultaneously formed in the films. This method not only simplifies the fabrication process of devices, but also produces uniform perovskite films and improves the interfacial structures between CH₃NH₃PbI₃ and electron transport layers. Large perovskite grains were observed in these films, with the average grain size of >1 μm. The so-formed CH₃NH₃PbI₃/electron transport layers demonstrated good optical and charge transport properties. And perovskite solar cells fabricated using these simultaneously-formed layers achieved a higher power conversion efficiency of 16.58% compared to conventional antisolvent method (14.92%). This method reduces nearly 80% usage of chlorobenzene during the fabrication, offering a more facile and environment-friendly approach to fabricate efficient perovskite solar cells than the conventional antisolvent method

Using the concept of preperitoneal membrane anatomy in total extraperitoneal prosthesis: a preliminary report

PurposeTotal extraperitoneal prosthesis (TEP) is one of the most commonly used laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair procedures. This work aims to report the application of membrane anatomy to TEP and its value in intraoperative space expansion.MethodsThe clinical data of 105 patients, from January 2018 to May 2020, with inguinal hernia who were treated with TEP (58 patients in the General Department of the Second Hospital of Sanming City, Fujian Province, and 47 patients in the General Department of the Zhongshan Hospital Affiliated to Xiamen University) were retrospectively analyzed.ResultsAll surgeries were successfully completed under the guidance of the concept of preperitoneal membrane anatomy. The operation time was 27.5 ± 9.0 min, blood loss was 5.2 ± 0.8 ml, and the peritoneum was damaged in six cases. The postoperative hospital stay was 1.5 ± 0.6 days, and five cases of postoperative seroma occurred, all self-absorbed. During the follow-up period of 7–59 months, there was no case of chronic pain and recurrence.ConclusionThe membrane anatomy at the correct level is the premise of a bloodless operation to expand the space while protecting adjacent tissues and organs to avoid complications