Blurring the Lines between Aid and Business in the Agricultural Technology Demonstration Centre in Zimbabwe

In recent years, tremendous attention has been given to China’s burgeoning agricultural engagements in Africa. Due to limited access to these engagements, most discussions have focused on macro-level discourse analysis as well as political and economic analysis on its impacts. Little research of an anthropological nature has been undertaken at the micro-level operation of ongoing projects, taking note of the nature of interactions between the donors and local counterpart staff within a given cultural setting. This article focuses on a Chinese- Zimbabwe Agricultural Technology Demonstration Centre (ATDC) to provide insights into the daily activities, interactions and cultural encounters with locals. Ethnographic methodologies are used to examine the Chinese and Africans’ activities, ideas and dialogues at the Demonstration Centre to present through empirical observations how China’s macro strategy is implemented in actual practices of staff and local partners at the ATDC in Zimbabwe

AdaptDHM: Adaptive Distribution Hierarchical Model for Multi-Domain CTR Prediction

Large-scale commercial platforms usually involve numerous business domains for diverse business strategies and expect their recommendation systems to provide click-through rate (CTR) predictions for multiple domains simultaneously. Existing promising and widely-used multi-domain models discover domain relationships by explicitly constructing domain-specific networks, but the computation and memory boost significantly with the increase of domains. To reduce computational complexity, manually grouping domains with particular business strategies is common in industrial applications. However, this pre-defined data partitioning way heavily relies on prior knowledge, and it may neglect the underlying data distribution of each domain, hence limiting the model's representation capability. Regarding the above issues, we propose an elegant and flexible multi-distribution modeling paradigm, named Adaptive Distribution Hierarchical Model (AdaptDHM), which is an end-to-end optimization hierarchical structure consisting of a clustering process and classification process. Specifically, we design a distribution adaptation module with a customized dynamic routing mechanism. Instead of introducing prior knowledge for pre-defined data allocation, this routing algorithm adaptively provides a distribution coefficient for each sample to determine which cluster it belongs to. Each cluster corresponds to a particular distribution so that the model can sufficiently capture the commonalities and distinctions between these distinct clusters. Extensive experiments on both public and large-scale Alibaba industrial datasets verify the effectiveness and efficiency of AdaptDHM: Our model achieves impressive prediction accuracy and its time cost during the training stage is more than 50% less than that of other models

Discovery of Brassica yellows virus and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus in Diaphorina citri and changes in virome due to infection with ‘Ca. L. asiaticus’

Detection of new viruses or new virus hosts is essential for the protection of economically important agroecosystems and human health. Increasingly, metatranscriptomic data are being used to facilitate this process. Such data were obtained from adult Asian citrus psyllids (ACP) (Diaphorina citri Kuwayama) that fed solely on mandarin (Citrus _aurantium L.) plants grafted with buds infected with ?Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus? (CLas), a phloem-limited bacterium associated with the severe Asian variant of huanglongbing (HLB), the most destructive disease of citrus. Brassica yellows virus (BrYV), the causative agent of yellowing or leafroll symptoms in brassicaceous plants, and its associated RNA (named as BrYVaRNA) were detected in ACP. In addition, the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV), which affects pigs and is economically important to pig production, was also found in ACP. These viruses were not detected in insects feeding on plants grafted with CLas-free buds. Changes in the concentrations of insect-specific viruses within the psyllid were caused by coinfection with CLas. IMPORTANCE The cross transmission of pathogenic viruses between different farming systems or plant communities is a major threat to plants and animals and, potentially, human health. The use of metagenomics is an effective approach to discover viruses and vectors. Here, we collected buds from the CLas-infected and CLas-free mandarin (Citrus aurantium L. [Rutaceae: Aurantioideae: Aurantieae]) trees from a commercial orchard and grafted them onto CLas-free mandarin plants under laboratory conditions. Through metatranscriptome sequencing, we first identified the Asian citrus psyllids feeding on plants grafted with CLas-infected buds carried the plant pathogen, brassica yellows virus and its associated RNA, and the swine pathogen, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus. These discoveries indicate that both viruses can be transmitted by grafting and acquired by ACP from CLas1 mandarin seedlings

Case Report A giant mass on the left shin: report of a case

Abstract: A woman presented to our department with an asymptomatic progressive peripherally expanding skin lesion on her left shin for 6 years. The doctor in a local clinic considered it was a deep fungal infection, however, treatment with itraconazole systemically was ineffective. A second biopsy showed papillomatous hyperplasia and a central keratin-filled crater with a buttress like extension of surrounding epidermis and a well-demarcated regular base. In the upper dermis, diffused infiltration of mixed inflammatory cells was observed with perivascular infiltrate. Deeper dermis, appendageal structures and subcutaneous tissue were unremarkable. Periodic acid-schiffic staining and diamine silver staining of the specimen were negative. A diagnosisof Keratoacanthoma centrifugum marginatum (KCM) was finally established

High-detectivity ultraviolet photodetectors based on laterally mesoporous GaN

Photodetectors for the ultraviolet (UV) range of the electromagnetic spectrum are in great demand for several technologies, but require the development of novel device structures and materials. Here we report on the high detectivity of UV photodetectors based on well-ordered laterally mesoporous GaN. The specific detectivity of our devices under UV-illumination reaches values of up to 5.3×1014 Jones. We attribute this high specific detectivity to the properties of the mesoporous GaN/metal contact interface: the trapping of photo-generated holes at the interface lowers the Schottky barrier height thus causing a large internal gain. The high detectivity along with the simple fabrication process make these laterally mesoporous GaN photodetectors of great potential for applications that require selective detection of weak optical signals in the UV range

How much can we trust GPS wildlife tracking? An assessment in semi-free-ranging Crested Ibis Nipponia nippon

GPS tracking has been increasingly used for wildlife studies in recent decades, but its performance has not been fully assessed, especially for newly developed lightweight transmitters. We assessed the performance of eight GPS transmitters developed in China by attaching them to Crested Ibises Nipponia nippon confined to two acclimation cages mimicking real habitats. We calculated the distance between GPS locations and the centroid of the cages as the positioning error, and used the 95% (95th percentile) positioning errors to define the accuracy. The positioning success averaged 92.0%, which is much higher than that of previous studies. Locations were not evenly distributed by Location Class (LC), with the LC A and B locations accounting for 88.7%. The observed 95% positioning error in the locations of LC A (9–39 m) and B (11–41 m) was quite accurate, while up to 6.9–8.8% of poor-quality locations were detected in LC C and D with >100 m or even >1, 000 m positioning error. Positioning success and accuracy were different between the test sites, probably due to the difference in vegetation structure. Thus, we argue that the tested transmitters could provide a large proportion of high-quality data for fine-scale studies, and a number of poor-quality locations that need attention. We suggest that the HPOD (horizontal dilution of precision) or PDOP (positional dilution of precision) be reported instead of the LC as a measurement of location accuracy for each location to ensure identification and filtering of implausible locations

Current Status and Future Perspective of Waste Printed Circuit Boards Recycling

AbstractFor waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), large quantities of waste printed circuit boards (PCBs) are released into environment. In light of their characteristics including complex structures, high metals content and potential hazards, waste PCBs are regarded as the most difficult parts of WEEE to be recycled. Therefore in recent ten years, the issue has attracted much attention from researchers and enterprises. This article reviews the latest processes of waste PCBs developed from laboratories to pilot engineering applications, and presents the most suitable available technology for waste PCBs, typically categorized as manually dismantling and automatic approaches in developing and developed countries, respectively. Towards achieving the better sustainability and recyclability for waste PCBs, nonmetal powder and precious metals should be developed for a deep recovery following mechanical treatment. Additionally, a significant shift is emerging from dismantling for recycling of printed wiring boards, to disassembling for remanufacturing of electronic components, which will indicate that a new paradigm of reclaiming waste PCBs is shaping