Changes in farmers' welfare from land requisition in the process of rapid urbanization

The marked impact of the welfare gap on total welfare within collectives has rarely, if at all, been addressed in traditional welfare theories and in Amartya Sen’s theory of welfare functioning and capabilities. With this observation as our starting point, we constructed a research framework that combined welfare functioning, the welfare gap, and welfare capability to assess and analyze changes in the welfare of farmers whose land was requisitioned in Zhejiang province. The findings of our study were as follows. (1) The total welfare functioning of farmers whose land was requisitioned increased by 11.8% as a result of improvements in economic and dwelling conditions and community surroundings. However, social security and psychological conditions deteriorated. (2) Although total welfare functioning has improved, gaps are widening in the distribution of welfare functioning among farmers who underwent land requisition. This was evidenced by the increase of the weighted Gini coefficient, which rose from 0.26 to 0.32 after land requisition. (3) As a result of the improvement in welfare capability, a judgmental bias is evident when farmers assess whether they have gained or lost welfare after land requisition. We conclude that welfare studies should focus not only on the quantitative aspects of welfare distribution, but should also pay more attention to its fairness and impartiality. This can prevent social problems posed by an oversized welfare gap. Moreover, after land requisition, the government and community should provide education and training services, and the current one-time compensation model should be replaced by a lifelong compensation model. At the same time, endowment insurance should be extended in rural areas and urban medical insurance should be progressively incorporated into the social security benefits of farmers who have undergone land requisition.This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final version is published by Elsevier in Land Use Policy here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837714002099

Music Reading Expertise Modulates Visual Spans in both Music Note and EnglishLetter Reading

Here we investigated how music reading experience modu-lates visual spans in language reading. Participants wereasked to identify music notes, English letters, Chinese charac-ters, and novel symbols (Tibetan letters) presented at randomlocations on the screen while maintaining central fixation. Wefound that for music note reading, musicians outperformednon-musicians at some peripheral positions in both visualfields, and for English letter reading, musicians outperformednon-musicians at some peripheral positions in the RVF butnot in the LVF. In contrast, in both Chinese character andnovel symbol reading, musicians and non-musicians did notdiffer in their performance at peripheral positions. Since bothmusic and English reading involve a left-to-right reading di-rection and a RVF/LH advantage, these results suggest thatthe modulation of music reading experience on visual spans inlanguage reading depends on the similarities in the cognitiveprocesses involved

Chandra Observation of NGC 1559: Eight Ultraluminous X-ray Sources Including a Compact Binary Candidate

Despite the 30-year history of ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) studies, issues like the majority of their physical natures (i.e., neutron stars, stellar-mass black holes, or intermediate black holes) as well as the accretion mechanisms are still under debate. Expanding the ULX sample size in the literature is clearly a way to help. To this end, we investigated the X-ray source population, ULXs in particular, in the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1559 using a Chandra observation made in 2016. In this 45-ks exposure, 33 X-ray point sources were detected within the 2.'7 isophotal radius of the galaxy. Among them, 8 ULXs were identified with the criterion of the X-ray luminosity $L_x>10^{39}$ erg s$^{-1}$ (0.3-7~keV). Both X-ray light curves and spectra of all the sources were examined. Except for some low-count spectra that only provide ambiguous spectral fitting results, all the X-ray sources were basically spectrally hard and therefore likely have non-thermal origins. While no strong X-ray variability was present in most of the sources owing to the relatively short exposure of the observation, we found an intriguing ULX, named X-24, exhibiting a periodicity of $\sim$7500s with a detection significance of 2.7$\sigma$. We speculate that it is the orbital period of the system. Roche-lobe over flow and Roche limit are consistent with the speculation. Thus, we suggest that X-24 may be the one of the rare compact binary ULXs, and hence, a good candidate as a stellar-mass black hole.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Keratin 8 phosphorylation regulates its transamidation and hepatocyte Mallory‐Denk body formation

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154269/1/fsb2026006010.pd

Compressive Sensing-Based Grant-Free Massive Access for 6G Massive Communication

The advent of the sixth-generation (6G) of wireless communications has given rise to the necessity to connect vast quantities of heterogeneous wireless devices, which requires advanced system capabilities far beyond existing network architectures. In particular, such massive communication has been recognized as a prime driver that can empower the 6G vision of future ubiquitous connectivity, supporting Internet of Human-Machine-Things for which massive access is critical. This paper surveys the most recent advances toward massive access in both academic and industry communities, focusing primarily on the promising compressive sensing-based grant-free massive access paradigm. We first specify the limitations of existing random access schemes and reveal that the practical implementation of massive communication relies on a dramatically different random access paradigm from the current ones mainly designed for human-centric communications. Then, a compressive sensing-based grant-free massive access roadmap is presented, where the evolutions from single-antenna to large-scale antenna array-based base stations, from single-station to cooperative massive multiple-input multiple-output systems, and from unsourced to sourced random access scenarios are detailed. Finally, we discuss the key challenges and open issues to shed light on the potential future research directions of grant-free massive access.Comment: Accepted by IEEE IoT Journa

Whole-Genome Sequencing to Identify Mutants and Polymorphisms in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) provides a new platform for the identification of mutations that produce a mutant phenotype. We used Illumina sequencing to identify the mutational profile of three Chlamydomonas reinhardtii mutant strains. The three strains have more than 38,000 changes from the reference genome. NG6 is aflagellate and maps to 269 kb with only one nonsynonymous change; the V12E mutation falls in the FLA8 gene. Evidence that NG6 is a fla8 allele comes from swimming revertants that are either true or pseudorevertants. NG30 is aflagellate and maps to 458 kb that has six nonsynonomous changes. Evidence that NG30 has a causative nonsense allele in IFT80 comes from rescue of the nonswimming phenotype with a fragment bearing only this gene. This gene has been implicated in Jeune asphyxiating thoracic dystrophy. Electron microscopy of ift80-1 (NG30) shows a novel basal body phenotype. A bar or cap is observed over the distal end of the transition zone, which may be an intermediate in preparing the basal body for flagellar assembly. In the acetate-requiring mutant ac17, we failed to find a nonsynonymous change in the 676 kb mapped region, which is incompletely assembled. In these strains, 43% of the changes occur on two of the 17 chromosomes. The excess on chromosome 6 surrounds the mating-type locus, which has numerous rearrangements and suppressed recombination, and the changes extend beyond the mating-type locus. Unexpectedly, chromosome 16 shows an unexplained excess of single nucleotide polymorphisms and indels. Overall, WGS in combination with limited mapping allows fast and accurate identification of point mutations in Chlamydomonas

Land use policy and spatiotemporal changes in the water area of an arid region

In this study, we developed a framework to analyze the impact of land use policies on water area changes. We used quantitative and qualitative approaches in our model, including Delphi method, Moran's I, 3D kernel density surface (3D-KDS) technique, and orthogonalized regression. The model facilitates visual examination of spatiotemporal patterns in water area changes and identification of the net effect of land use policies on water area changes. We consider three types of land use policy and four control variables which include water management policy and climate change factors to test the model by using data from Ejina, an oasis area from Inner Mongolia, China. The results of both 3D-KDS and Moran's I coefficient showed distinctive patterns in negative and positive water area changes. Standardized coefficients from the augmented orthogonalized ordinary least squares (OLS) models helped isolate the net effects of the three types of land use policy on negative and positive water area changes. Land use policies had greater impact on hydrological environment changes than water management policy and climate change factors. Our model can be utilized to assess the effectiveness of land use policies in an area and aid in helpful in monitoring the implementation of existing policies and design of new land use policies.The authors are indebted to the National Natural Science Fund (41571162) and Advantage Discipline Construction Project of Jiangsu Province

Contribution of transcriptional regulation to natural variations in Arabidopsis

BACKGROUND: Genetic control of gene transcription is a key component in genome evolution. To understand the transcriptional basis of natural variation, we have studied genome-wide variations in transcription and characterized the genetic variations in regulatory elements among Arabidopsis accessions. RESULTS: Among five accessions (Col-0, C24, Ler, WS-2, and NO-0) 7,508 probe sets with no detectable genomic sequence variations were identified on the basis of the comparative genomic hybridization to the Arabidopsis GeneChip microarray, and used for accession-specific transcriptome analysis. Two-way ANOVA analysis has identified 60 genes whose mRNA levels differed in different accession backgrounds in an organ-dependent manner. Most of these genes were involved in stress responses and late stages of plant development, such as seed development. Correlation analysis of expression patterns of these 7,508 genes between pairs of accessions identified a group of 65 highly plastic genes with distinct expression patterns in each accession. CONCLUSION: Genes that show substantial genetic variation in mRNA level are those with functions in signal transduction, transcription and stress response, suggesting the existence of variations in the regulatory mechanisms for these genes among different accessions. This is in contrast to those genes with significant polymorphisms in the coding regions identified by genomic hybridization, which include genes encoding transposon-related proteins, kinases and disease-resistance proteins. While relatively fewer sequence variations were detected on average in the coding regions of these genes, a number of differences were identified from the upstream regions, several of which alter potential cis-regulatory elements. Our results suggest that nucleotide polymorphisms in regulatory elements of genes encoding controlling factors could be primary targets of natural selection and a driving force behind the evolution of Arabidopsis accessions