Three-dimensional structure of the milky way dust: modeling of LAMOST data

We present a three-dimensional modeling of the Milky Way dust distribution by fitting the value-added star catalog of LAMOST spectral survey. The global dust distribution can be described by an exponential disk with scale-length of 3,192 pc and scale height of 103 pc. In this modeling, the Sun is located above the dust disk with a vertical distance of 23 pc. Besides the global smooth structure, two substructures around the solar position are also identified. The one located at $150^{\circ}<l<200^{\circ}$ and $-5^{\circ}<b<-30^{\circ}$ is consistent with the Gould Belt model of \citet{Gontcharov2009}, and the other one located at $140^{\circ}<l<165^{\circ}$ and $0^{\circ}<b<15^{\circ}$ is associated with the Camelopardalis molecular clouds.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure, accepted by Ap

Use of Intensity Analysis to Characterize Land Use/Cover Change in the Biggest Island of Persian Gulf, Qeshm Island, Iran

In this study, land use/cover change was systematically investigated in the Qeshm Island to understand how human and nature interact in the largest island of Persian Gulf. Land-use maps were prepared for 1996, 2002, 2008, and 2014 using Landsat satellite imagery in six classes including agriculture, bare-land, built-up, dense-vegetation, mangrove, and water-body, and then dynamic of changes in the classes was evaluated using intensity analysis at three levels: interval, category, and transition. Results illustrated that, while the land changes were fast over the first and third time intervals (1996–2002 and 2008–2014), the trend of changes was slow in the second period (2002–2008). Driven by high demand for construction and population growth, the built-up class was identified as an active gainer in all the three time intervals. The class of bare-land was the main supplier of the land for other classes especially for built-up area, while built-up did not act as the active supplier of the land for other classes. The dense-vegetation class was active in all three time intervals. As for the mangrove class, drought and cutting by residents had negative effects, while setting up protected areas can effectively maintain this valuable ecosystem. High demands were observed for land change in relation to built-up and agriculture classes among other classes. The findings of this study can advance our understanding of the relationship and behavior of land use/cover classes among each other over 18 years in a coastal island with arid climate

Polysorbate cationic synthetic vesicle for gene delivery

Synthetic nonionic surfactant vesicles (niosomes) are a colloidal system with closed bilayer structures, displaying distinct advantages in stability and cost compared with liposomes. In this article, polysorbate cationic niosomes (PCNs) were developed as gene carriers. The PCNs comprised nonionic surfactants (i.e., polysorbates) and a cationic cholesterol, and were synthesized using a film hydration method. The niosomes thus prepared possessed a regular morphology, and a particle size of 100 ∼ 200 nm, and a zeta potential of +30 ∼ 45 mV. The PCNs showed great physical stability over the course of 4 weeks at room temperature. The binding capacity of PCNs toward oligodeoxynucleotides (ODN) was assessed by a gel retardation approach, which demonstrated that the ionic complexes were formed when ± charge ratio reached to 4 or greater. Gene transfer study showed that the PCNs exhibited a high efficiency in mediating cellular uptake and transferred DNA expression. Based on these findings, PCNs may offer the potential to function as an effective gene delivery system. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A:, 2011.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/79430/1/32999_ftp.pd

Coupled effects of climate variability and land use pattern on surface water quality: An elasticity perspective and watershed health indicators.

Understanding the coupled effects of climate variability and land use on riverine nitrogen is essential for watershed management. The climate-water relationships for ammonium (NH4-N) and nitrate (NO3-N) were determined by an elasticity approach and then the watershed health index was estimated using the reliability, resilience, and vulnerability framework. These methods were applied to an in-situ monitoring dataset of N concentrations measured during 2010-2017 from nine sub-watersheds in the Jiulong River Watershed, China. The results showed that temperature and precipitation elasticity of NH4-N and NO3-N changed substantially among various land use patterns. The N concentrations were highly sensitive to extreme climate conditions, particularly at urban and agricultural sub-watersheds. The measure of risk indicators revealed that the watershed health index varied from good health to unhealthy status. Linear regression analysis was used to analyze the interactions among watershed characteristics, climate elasticity, and watershed health. Cropland and population had strong positive correlations with climate elasticity of NO3-N. Forest and elevation had strong negative associations with climate elasticity of NO3-N. Watershed health significantly declined with increasing proportion of cropland and population density. This study demonstrated that human-impacted watersheds were less healthy to unhealthy and tend to be more sensitive to climate variability than natural watersheds, which is useful for efforts aimed at improving watershed management

Mitochondria, Telomeres and Telomerase Subunits.

Mitochondrial functions and telomere functions have mostly been studied independently. In recent years, it, however, has become clear that there are intimate links between mitochondria, telomeres, and telomerase subunits. Mitochondrial dysfunctions cause telomere attrition, while telomere damage leads to reprogramming of mitochondrial biosynthesis and mitochondrial dysfunctions, which has important implications in aging and diseases. In addition, evidence has accumulated that telomere-independent functions of telomerase also exist and that the protein component of telomerase TERT shuttles between the nucleus and mitochondria under oxidative stress. Our previously published data show that the RNA component of telomerase TERC is also imported into mitochondria, processed, and exported back to the cytosol. These data show a complex regulation network where telomeres, nuclear genome, and mitochondria are co-regulated by multi-localization and multi-function proteins and RNAs. This review summarizes the connections between mitochondria and telomeres, the mitochondrion-related functions of telomerase subunits, and how they play a role in crosstalk between mitochondria and the nucleus

Self-attention for Enhanced OAMP Detection in MIMO Systems

Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems are essential for wireless communications. Sinceclassical algorithms for symbol detection in MIMO setups require large computational resourcesor provide poor results, data-driven algorithms are becoming more popular. Most of the proposedalgorithms, however, introduce approximations leading to degraded performance for realistic MIMOsystems. In this paper, we introduce a neural-enhanced hybrid model, augmenting the analyticbackbone algorithm with state-of-the-art neural network components. In particular, we introduce aself-attention model for the enhancement of the iterative Orthogonal Approximate Message Passing(OAMP)-based decoding algorithm. In our experiments, we show that the proposed model canoutperform existing data-driven approaches for OAMP while having improved generalization to otherSNR values at limited computational overhead.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, ICASSP 202

BLSP: Bootstrapping Language-Speech Pre-training via Behavior Alignment of Continuation Writing

The emergence of large language models (LLMs) has sparked significant interest in extending their remarkable language capabilities to speech. However, modality alignment between speech and text still remains an open problem. Current solutions can be categorized into two strategies. One is a cascaded approach where outputs (tokens or states) of a separately trained speech recognition system are used as inputs for LLMs, which limits their potential in modeling alignment between speech and text. The other is an end-to-end approach that relies on speech instruction data, which is very difficult to collect in large quantities. In this paper, we address these issues and propose the BLSP approach that Bootstraps Language-Speech Pre-training via behavior alignment of continuation writing. We achieve this by learning a lightweight modality adapter between a frozen speech encoder and an LLM, ensuring that the LLM exhibits the same generation behavior regardless of the modality of input: a speech segment or its transcript. The training process can be divided into two steps. The first step prompts an LLM to generate texts with speech transcripts as prefixes, obtaining text continuations. In the second step, these continuations are used as supervised signals to train the modality adapter in an end-to-end manner. We demonstrate that this straightforward process can extend the capabilities of LLMs to speech, enabling speech recognition, speech translation, spoken language understanding, and speech conversation, even in zero-shot cross-lingual scenarios

Assessing the Influence of Land Use and Land Cover Datasets with Different Points in Time and Levels of Detail on Watershed Modeling in the North River Watershed, China

National Natural Science Foundation of China [40901100, 40810069004]Land use and land cover (LULC) information is an important component influencing watershed modeling with regards to hydrology and water quality in the river basin. In this study, the sensitivity of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to LULC datasets with three points in time and three levels of detail was assessed in a coastal subtropical watershed located in Southeast China. The results showed good agreement between observed and simulated values for both monthly and daily streamflow and monthly NH4+-N and TP loads. Three LULC datasets in 2002, 2007 and 2010 had relatively little influence on simulated monthly and daily streamflow, whereas they exhibited greater effects on simulated monthly NH4+-N and TP loads. When using the two LULC datasets in 2007 and 2010 compared with that in 2002, the relative differences in predicted monthly NH4+-N and TP loads were -11.0 to -7.8% and -4.8 to -9.0%, respectively. There were no significant differences in simulated monthly and daily streamflow when using the three LULC datasets with ten, five and three categories. When using LULC datasets from ten categories compared to five and three categories, the relative differences in predicted monthly NH4+-N and TP loads were -6.6 to -6.5% and -13.3 to -7.3%, respectively. Overall, the sensitivity of the SWAT model to LULC datasets with different points in time and levels of detail was lower in monthly and daily streamflow simulation than in monthly NH4+-N and TP loads prediction. This research provided helpful insights into the influence of LULC datasets on watershed modeling

Comparative study of two models to simulate diffuse nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in a medium-sized watershed, southeast China

The aim of this study was to compare and assess two models to calculate diffuse nitrogen and phosphorus emissions in a selected watershed. The GIS-based empirical model and the physically-based AnnAGNPS model were evaluated for comparative purposes. The methodologies were applied for the Jiulong River watershed, covering 14,700 km(2) located in southeast China, with intensive agricultural activities. The calculated loadings by AnnAGNPS model was checked by the measured values at the watershed outlet, whereas the calculated nitrogen and phosphorus emission by GIS-based empirical model spatially provided the potential values in terms of sub-watersheds, districts/counties, and land use type. Both models gave similar levels of diffuse total nitrogen emissions, which also fit well with previous estimates made in the Jiulong River watershed. Comparatively, the GIS-based empirical model gave sound results of source apportionment of non-point source pollution (NPS) froth the available input data and critical source areas identification of diffuse nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. The AnnAGNPS model predicted reasonable nitrogen loading at the watershed outlet and simulated well for NPS management alternatives under changing land use conditions. The study indicated that the GIS-based empirical model has its advantage in extensive studies as a decisions support tool for preliminary design since it is easily applied to large watersheds with fewer data requirements, while AnnAGNPS has its advantage in detailed emission assessment and scenario development. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved