24,893 research outputs found
Regional estimation of daily to annual regional evapotranspiration with MODIS data in the Yellow River Delta wetland
Evapotranspiration (ET) from the wetland of the Yellow River Delta (YRD) is one of the important components in the water cycle, which represents the water consumption by the plants and evaporation from the water and the non-vegetated surfaces. Reliable estimates of the total evapotranspiration from the wetland is useful information both for understanding the hydrological process and for water management to protect this natural environment. Due to the heterogeneity of the vegetation types and canopy density and of soil water content over the wetland (specifically over the natural reserve areas), it is difficult to estimate the regional evapotranspiration extrapolating measurements or calculations usually done locally for a specific land cover type. Remote sensing can provide observations of land surface conditions with high spatial and temporal resolution and coverage. In this study, a model based on the Energy Balance method was used to calculate daily evapotranspiration (ET) using instantaneous observations of land surface reflectance and temperature from MODIS when the data were available on clouds-free days. A time series analysis algorithm was then applied to generate a time series of daily ET over a year period by filling the gaps in the observation series due to clouds. A detailed vegetation classification map was used to help identifying areas of various wetland vegetation types in the YRD wetland. Such information was also used to improve the parameterizations in the energy balance model to improve the accuracy of ET estimates. This study showed that spatial variation of ET was significant over the same vegetation class at a given time and over different vegetation types in different seasons in the YRD wetlan
Responses to Phytohormones, Mg Stress and Dehydration and Its Correlation with Stomatal Density in Bread Wheat
ERECTA is an ancient family of leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinases (RLKs) that coordinate growth and development of plant. TaERECTA, one copy of the ERECTA homologs in wheat, was isolated from bread wheat Chinese Spring. The Ser/Thr kinase of TaERECTA was expressed in E. coli after IPTG induction and confirmed by immunoblot. TaERECTA showed higher expression in younger organs with rapid development, as well as great expression in younger spikes at booting stage. Under exogenous application of gibberellin (GA3) and abscisic acid (ABA), and Mg2+ stress, the expression of TaERECTA was largely suppressed, whereas under exogenous application of indole acetic acid (IAA) and brassinolide (BR), and dehydration stress, its expression was initially suppressed and then up-regulated. Natural variation was apparent in the relative expression of TaERECTA among 9 different bread wheat lines, and its expression level was negatively correlated with the stomatal density. These results suggested that TaERECTA could be exploitable for manipulating agronomical traits important through regulating stomata density, with potential implication for bread wheat improvement
Unraveling the Nature of Charge Excitations in LaCuO with Momentum-Resolved Cu -edge Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering
Results of model calculations using exact diagonalization reveal the orbital
character of states associated with different Raman loss peaks in Cu -edge
resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) from LaCuO. The model
includes electronic orbitals necessary to highlight non-local Zhang-Rice
singlet, charge transfer and - excitations, as well as states with apical
oxygen 2 character. The dispersion of these excitations is discussed with
prospects for resonant final state wave-function mapping. A good agreement with
experiments emphasizes the substantial multi-orbital character of RIXS profiles
in the energy transfer range 1-6 eV.Comment: Original: 4.5 pages. Replaced: 4 pages and 4 figures with updated
content and reference
Critical behaviour of combinatorial search algorithms, and the unitary-propagation universality class
The probability P(alpha, N) that search algorithms for random Satisfiability
problems successfully find a solution is studied as a function of the ratio
alpha of constraints per variable and the number N of variables. P is shown to
be finite if alpha lies below an algorithm--dependent threshold alpha\_A, and
exponentially small in N above. The critical behaviour is universal for all
algorithms based on the widely-used unitary propagation rule: P[ (1 + epsilon)
alpha\_A, N] ~ exp[-N^(1/6) Phi(epsilon N^(1/3)) ]. Exponents are related to
the critical behaviour of random graphs, and the scaling function Phi is
exactly calculated through a mapping onto a diffusion-and-death problem.Comment: 7 pages; 3 figure
CD4+ T-cell responses to Epstein-Barr virus nuclear antigen EBNA1 in Chinese populations are highly focused on novel C-terminal domain-derived epitopes
Epstein-Barr virus nuclear antigen EBNA1, the one viral protein uniformly expressed in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), represents a prime target for T-cell-based immunotherapy. However, little is known about the EBNA1 epitopes, particularly CD4 epitopes, presented by HLA alleles in Chinese people, the group at highest risk for NPC. We analyzed the CD4 T-cell responses to EBNA1 in 78 healthy Chinese donors and found marked focusing on a small number of epitopes in the EBNA1 C-terminal region, including a DP5- restricted epitope that was recognized by almost half of the donors tested and elicited responses able to recognize EBNA1-expressing, DP5-positive target cells
A GPU-based finite-size pencil beam algorithm with 3D-density correction for radiotherapy dose calculation
Targeting at the development of an accurate and efficient dose calculation
engine for online adaptive radiotherapy, we have implemented a finite size
pencil beam (FSPB) algorithm with a 3D-density correction method on GPU. This
new GPU-based dose engine is built on our previously published ultrafast FSPB
computational framework [Gu et al. Phys. Med. Biol. 54 6287-97, 2009].
Dosimetric evaluations against Monte Carlo dose calculations are conducted on
10 IMRT treatment plans (5 head-and-neck cases and 5 lung cases). For all
cases, there is improvement with the 3D-density correction over the
conventional FSPB algorithm and for most cases the improvement is significant.
Regarding the efficiency, because of the appropriate arrangement of memory
access and the usage of GPU intrinsic functions, the dose calculation for an
IMRT plan can be accomplished well within 1 second (except for one case) with
this new GPU-based FSPB algorithm. Compared to the previous GPU-based FSPB
algorithm without 3D-density correction, this new algorithm, though slightly
sacrificing the computational efficiency (~5-15% lower), has significantly
improved the dose calculation accuracy, making it more suitable for online IMRT
replanning
Fast Monte Carlo Simulation for Patient-specific CT/CBCT Imaging Dose Calculation
Recently, X-ray imaging dose from computed tomography (CT) or cone beam CT
(CBCT) scans has become a serious concern. Patient-specific imaging dose
calculation has been proposed for the purpose of dose management. While Monte
Carlo (MC) dose calculation can be quite accurate for this purpose, it suffers
from low computational efficiency. In response to this problem, we have
successfully developed a MC dose calculation package, gCTD, on GPU architecture
under the NVIDIA CUDA platform for fast and accurate estimation of the x-ray
imaging dose received by a patient during a CT or CBCT scan. Techniques have
been developed particularly for the GPU architecture to achieve high
computational efficiency. Dose calculations using CBCT scanning geometry in a
homogeneous water phantom and a heterogeneous Zubal head phantom have shown
good agreement between gCTD and EGSnrc, indicating the accuracy of our code. In
terms of improved efficiency, it is found that gCTD attains a speed-up of ~400
times in the homogeneous water phantom and ~76.6 times in the Zubal phantom
compared to EGSnrc. As for absolute computation time, imaging dose calculation
for the Zubal phantom can be accomplished in ~17 sec with the average relative
standard deviation of 0.4%. Though our gCTD code has been developed and tested
in the context of CBCT scans, with simple modification of geometry it can be
used for assessing imaging dose in CT scans as well.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, and 1 tabl
Recommended from our members
Relationship Between Foveal Cone Structure and Visual Acuity Measured With Adaptive Optics Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscopy in Retinal Degeneration.
PurposeTo evaluate foveal function in patients with inherited retinal degenerations (IRD) by measuring visual acuity (VA) after correction of higher-order aberrations.MethodsAdaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (AOSLO) was used to image cones in 4 healthy subjects and 15 patients with IRD. The 840-nm scanning laser delivered an "E" optotype to measure AOSLO-mediated VA (AOSLO-VA). Cone spacing was measured at the preferred retinal locus by two independent graders and the percentage of cones below the average density of 47 age-similar healthy subjects was computed. Cone spacing was correlated with best-corrected VA measured with the Early Treatment of Diabetic Retinopathy Study protocol (ETDRS-VA), AOSLO-VA, and foveal sensitivity.ResultsETDRS-VA significantly correlated with AOSLO-VA (Ο = 0.79, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.5-0.9). Cone spacing correlated with AOSLO-VA (Ο = 0.54, 95% CI 0.02-0.7), and negatively correlated with ETDRS letters read (Ο = -0.64, 95% CI -0.8 to -0.2). AOSLO-VA remained β₯20/20 until cones decreased to 40.2% (CI 31.1-45.5) below normal. Similarly, ETDRS-VA remained β₯20/20 until cones were 42.0% (95% CI 36.5-46.1) below normal. Cone spacing z scores negatively correlated with foveal sensitivity (Ο = -0.79, 95% CI -0.9 to -0.4) and foveal sensitivity was β₯35 dB until cones were 43.1% (95% CI 39.3-46.6) below average.ConclusionsVA and foveal cone spacing were weakly correlated until cones were reduced by 40% to 43% below normal. The relationship suggests that VA is an insensitive measure of foveal cone survival; cone spacing may be a more sensitive measure of cone loss
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