Economic Indicators July 2002

This publication presents basic statistics data about economic condition in Indonesia. It contains statistics on economics and finance such as consumer price index, whose sale price index, foreign currency, and banking, investment, agriculture products, mining and quarrying products balance of payments, exports and imports, consumption, hotel and tourism, and national income. Specially in each January edition, it present data of Indonesian population. Previously, this monthly publication is called Statistics Conjuncture (January 1950-July/August 1963)

AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR3 plays distinct role during early flower development

<p>AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR3 (ARF3), one of the auxin response factors family of transcription factors, is well characterized by its functions in polarity identification and organ patterning. We recently demonstrated that ARF3 plays important roles in floral meristem (FM) maintenance and termination by regulating cytokinin biosynthesis and signaling. However, the relationship of its multiple roles in differently developmental stage is still unclear. Here, we present data that ARF3 plays distinct roles during early flower development that are different from its roles in organ polarity determination and pattering. Thus, our findings shed light on the functional diversity of one specific transcription factor in plant development.</p

Characterizing Spatial Patterns of Airborne Coarse Particulate (PM10–2.5) Mass and Chemical Components in Three Cities: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Background: The long-term health effects of coarse particular matter (PM10–2.5) are challenging to assess because of a limited understanding of the spatial variation in PM10–2.5 mass and its chemical components. Objectives: We conducted a spatially intensive field study and developed spatial prediction models for PM10–2.5 mass and four selected species (copper, zinc, phosphorus, and silicon) in three American cities. Methods: PM10–2.5 snapshot campaigns were conducted in Chicago, Illinois; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 2009 for the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and Coarse Airborne Particulate Matter (MESA Coarse). In each city, samples were collected simultaneously outside the homes of approximately 40 participants over 2 weeks in the winter and/or summer. City-specific and combined prediction models were developed using land use regression (LUR) and universal kriging (UK). Model performance was evaluated by cross-validation (CV). Results: PM10–2.5 mass and species varied within and between cities in a manner that was predictable by geographic covariates. City-specific LUR models generally performed well for total mass (CV R2, 0.41–0.68), copper (CV R2, 0.51–0.86), phosphorus (CV R2, 0.50–0.76), silicon (CV R2, 0.48–0.93), and zinc (CV R2, 0.36–0.73). Models pooled across all cities inconsistently captured within-city variability. Little difference was observed between the performance of LUR and UK models in predicting concentrations. Conclusions: Characterization of fine-scale spatial variability of these often heterogeneous pollutants using geographic covariates should reduce exposure misclassification and increase the power of epidemiological studies investigating the long-term health impacts of PM10–2.5. Citation: Zhang K, Larson TV, Gassett A, Szpiro AA, Daviglus M, Burke GL, Kaufman JD, Adar SD. 2014. Characterizing spatial patterns of airborne coarse particulate (PM10–2.5) mass and chemical components in three cities: the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. Environ Health Perspect 122:823–830; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.130728

Biological soil crusts: An eco-adaptive biological conservative mechanism and implications for ecological restoration

<div><p>Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are highly complex associations of soil particles with mosses, cyanobacteria, lichens, bacteria, and fungi. BSCs affect many ecological processes, including infiltration and evaporation, soil erosion, vegetation succession, and nutrient cycling, and perform important ecological functions of ecosystems in arid areas. In the past 30 years, many studies on BSCs were conducted by researchers all over the world. This paper reviews the recent research progresses and frontier problems, and discusses the current controversial conclusions. The main ideas are as follows: (1) influenced by many macroclimate and micro-environment factors, BSCs are characterized by developmental complexity, composition diversity, and spatial heterogeneity. In any typical areas where exist all types of BSCs at different succession stages, it is of great significance to conduct comparable studies on BSCs and to explore if there exists a probable zonality for them. (2) BSCs not only exert positive impacts on soil fertility and soil erosion, but they also show controversial influences on the hydrological processes, especially on infiltration, evaporation, soil moisture, and vegetation succession such as survival, germination, emergence, and establishment. To understand the function-performing mechanisms of BSCs is helpful for the revealing of their action patterns and the comprehension of the implications of the patterns on ecological processes and restoration as well as clarification of existing controversial points. It will eventually contribute to the effective management and utilization of BSCs resources in a given region for large-scale ecological engineering.</p></div

Incorporating conditional random fields and active learning to improve sentiment identification.

Many machine learning, statistical, and computational linguistic methods have been developed to identify sentiment of sentences in documents, yielding promising results. However, most of state-of-the-art methods focus on individual sentences and ignore the impact of context on the meaning of a sentence. In this paper, we propose a method based on conditional random fields to incorporate sentence structure and context information in addition to syntactic information for improving sentiment identification. We also investigate how human interaction affects the accuracy of sentiment labeling using limited training data. We propose and evaluate two different active learning strategies for labeling sentiment data. Our experiments with the proposed approach demonstrate a 5%-15% improvement in accuracy on Amazon customer reviews compared to existing supervised learning and rule-based methods

Effects of bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) release from polylactide-poly (ethylene glycol)-polylactide (PELA) microcapsule-based scaffolds on bone

<div><p>Multiple growth factors can be administered to mimic the natural process of bone healing in bone tissue engineering. We investigated the effects of sequential release of bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) from polylactide-poly (ethylene glycol)-polylactide (PELA) microcapsule-based scaffolds on bone regeneration. To improve the double emulsion/solvent evaporation technique, VEGF was encapsulated in PELA microcapsules, to which BMP-2 was attached. The scaffold (BMP-2/PELA/VEGF) was then fused to these microcapsules using the dichloromethane vapor method. The bioactivity of the released BMP-2 and VEGF was then quantified in rat mesenchymal stem cells (rMSCs). Immunoblotting analysis showed that BMP-2/PELA/VEG promoted the differentiation of rMSCs into osteoblasts via the MAPK and Wnt pathways. Osteoblast differentiation was assessed through alkaline phosphatase expression. When compared with simple BMP-2 plus VEGF group and pure PELA group, osteoblast differentiation in BMP-2/PELA/VEGF group significantly increased. An MTT assay indicated that BMP-2-loaded PELA scaffolds had no adverse effects on cell activity. BMP-2/PELA/VEG promoted the differentiation of rMSCs into osteoblast via the ERK1/2 and Wnt pathways. Our findings indicate that the sequential release of BMP-2 and VEGF from PELA microcapsule-based scaffolds is a promising approach for the treatment of bone defects.</p></div

Metabolites from the co-culture of nigranoic acid and <i>Umbelopsis dimorpha</i> SWUKD3.1410, an endophytic fungus from <i>Kadsura angustifolia</i>

<p>The ability of the endophytic fungus <i>Umbelopsis dimorpha</i> SWUKD3.1410 to transform the triterpene nigranoic acid (3, 4-secocycloarta-4(28), 24-(<i>Z</i>)-diene-3, 26-dioic acid; <b>1</b>) was investigated. Co-culture of nigranoic acid with <i>U. dimorpha</i> SWUKD3.1410 yielded six major products, including a new triterpene (<b>2</b>) and 5 known compounds (<b>3</b>–<b>7</b>). Their structures were identified by the extensive 1D, 2D NMR and HR-ESI-MS Data analysis, and by comparison with those reported data. Among them, <b>2</b>–<b>4</b> were transformed from nigranoic acid (<b>1</b>), while <b>5</b>–<b>7</b> were derived from the culture medium stimulated by the substrate. On the basis of the structures of <b>2</b>–<b>4</b>, it was proposed that the transformative process probably involved isomerase and hydroxylase, in which the former was rare in fungi. Additionally, all the compounds (<b>1</b>–<b>7</b>) were evaluated for their cytotoxic activity. As a result, compounds <b>1</b>, <b>3</b>–<b>5</b> exhibited weak cytotoxicity against the tested cell lines, while others showed no cytotoxicity.</p

Application of the Target Lipid Model and Passive Samplers to Characterize the Toxicity of Bioavailable Organics in Oil Sands Process-Affected Water

Oil sand operations in Alberta, Canada will eventually include returning treated process-affected waters to the environment. Organic constituents in oil sand process-affected water (OSPW) represent complex mixtures of nonionic and ionic (e.g., naphthenic acids) compounds, and compositions can vary spatially and temporally, which has impeded development of water quality benchmarks. To address this challenge, it was hypothesized that solid phase microextraction fibers coated with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) could be used as a biomimetic extraction (BE) to measure bioavailable organics in OSPW. Organic constituents of OSPW were assumed to contribute additively to toxicity, and partitioning to PDMS was assumed to be predictive of accumulation in target lipids, which were the presumed site of action. This method was tested using toxicity data for individual model compounds, defined mixtures, and organic mixtures extracted from OSPW. Toxicity was correlated with BE data, which supports the use of this method in hazard assessments of acute lethality to aquatic organisms. A species sensitivity distribution (SSD), based on target lipid model and BE values, was similar to SSDs based on residues in tissues for both nonionic and ionic organics. BE was shown to be an analytical tool that accounts for bioaccumulation of organic compound mixtures from which toxicity can be predicted, with the potential to aid in the development of water quality guidelines

Application of the Target Lipid Model and Passive Samplers to Characterize the Toxicity of Bioavailable Organics in Oil Sands Process-Affected Water

Oil sand operations in Alberta, Canada will eventually include returning treated process-affected waters to the environment. Organic constituents in oil sand process-affected water (OSPW) represent complex mixtures of nonionic and ionic (e.g., naphthenic acids) compounds, and compositions can vary spatially and temporally, which has impeded development of water quality benchmarks. To address this challenge, it was hypothesized that solid phase microextraction fibers coated with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) could be used as a biomimetic extraction (BE) to measure bioavailable organics in OSPW. Organic constituents of OSPW were assumed to contribute additively to toxicity, and partitioning to PDMS was assumed to be predictive of accumulation in target lipids, which were the presumed site of action. This method was tested using toxicity data for individual model compounds, defined mixtures, and organic mixtures extracted from OSPW. Toxicity was correlated with BE data, which supports the use of this method in hazard assessments of acute lethality to aquatic organisms. A species sensitivity distribution (SSD), based on target lipid model and BE values, was similar to SSDs based on residues in tissues for both nonionic and ionic organics. BE was shown to be an analytical tool that accounts for bioaccumulation of organic compound mixtures from which toxicity can be predicted, with the potential to aid in the development of water quality guidelines