Effects of cultivation years on effective constituent content of Fritillaria pallidiflora Schernk

Fritillaria pallidiflora Schrenk has been treasured in traditional classic medicine as an antitussive, antiasthmatic and expectorant for hundreds of years. With gradually decreasing wild F. pallidiflora resources, the herb can no longer satisfy the demand. Artificial cultivation is one of the most effective ways to solve the contradiction between supply and demand in the medicinal material market. During the growth of Rhizomes medicinal plants, root biomass and active ingredient content showed dynamic accumulated variation with increasing cultivation years. Up to now, hardly any attempts have been made to investigate the relationship between quality and cultivation years of F. pallidiflora. Therefore, in this paper, we determined the optimum harvesting time by comparing biomass and biological characteristics of F. pallidiflora at different cultivation times. High-performance liquid chromatography with evaporative light scattering detection and phenol-sulfuric acid visible spectrophotometry was performed to determine imperialine and polysaccharide content of F. pallidiflora bulbs. From year 1 to 6 of cultivation, we observed an upward trend in plant height, diameter and dry weight of F. pallidiflora, while water content decreased. Plant height and dry weight increased remarkably during the fourth year of cultivation. The content of imperialine and polysaccharide of F. pallidiflora bulbs, on the other hand, showed an upward trend from year 1 to 3, after which it decreased from year 3 to 6. By comparing plant growth, biomass development and the accumulation of imperialine and polysaccharide, the best harvesting time of F. pallidiflora was determined to be after 4 years of cultivation. Our results showed that it is possible to establish a safe, effective, stable and controllable production process, which could play an important role in achieving sustainable utilization of F. pallidiflora resources.Fritillaria pallidiflora Schrenk has been treasured in traditional classic medicine as an antitussive, antiasthmatic and expectorant for hundreds of years. With gradually decreasing wild F. pallidiflora resources, the herb can no longer satisfy the demand. Artificial cultivation is one of the most effective ways to solve the contradiction between supply and demand in the medicinal material market. During the growth of Rhizomes medicinal plants, root biomass and active ingredient content showed dynamic accumulated variation with increasing cultivation years. Up to now, hardly any attempts have been made to investigate the relationship between quality and cultivation years of F. pallidiflora. Therefore, in this paper, we determined the optimum harvesting time by comparing biomass and biological characteristics of F. pallidiflora at different cultivation times. High-performance liquid chromatography with evaporative light scattering detection and phenol-sulfuric acid visible spectrophotometry was performed to determine imperialine and polysaccharide content of F. pallidiflora bulbs. From year 1 to 6 of cultivation, we observed an upward trend in plant height, diameter and dry weight of F. pallidiflora, while water content decreased. Plant height and dry weight increased remarkably during the fourth year of cultivation. The content of imperialine and polysaccharide of F. pallidiflora bulbs, on the other hand, showed an upward trend from year 1 to 3, after which it decreased from year 3 to 6. By comparing plant growth, biomass development and the accumulation of imperialine and polysaccharide, the best harvesting time of F. pallidiflora was determined to be after 4 years of cultivation. Our results showed that it is possible to establish a safe, effective, stable and controllable production process, which could play an important role in achieving sustainable utilization of F. pallidiflora resources

Shear localization and recrystallization in dynamic deformation of 8090 Al-Li alloy

The microstructural evolution in localized shear deformation was investigated in an 8090 Al-Li alloy by split Hopkinson pressure bar (strain rate of approximately 10(3) s(-1)) at ambient temperature and 77 K. The alloy was tested in the peak-, over-, under-, and natural-aged conditions, that provide a wide range of microstructural parameters and mechanical properties. Two types of localized shear bands were distinguished by optical microscopy: the deformed shear band and the white-etching shear band. They form at different stages of deformation during localization. There are critical strains for the occurrence of deformed and white-etching localized shear deformation, at the imposed strain rate. Observations by transmission electron microscopy reveal that the white-etching bands contain fine equiaxed grains; it is proposed that they are the result of recrystallization occurring during localization. The deformed-type bands are observed after testing at 77 K in all heat treatment conditions, but they are not as well defined as those developed at ambient temperature. Cracking often occurs along the localized shear at ambient temperature. The decrement in temperature is favorable for the nucleation, growth and coalescence of the microcracks along the shear bands, inducing fracture

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale(1-3). Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter(4); identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation(5,6); analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution(7); describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity(8,9); and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes(8,10-18).Peer reviewe

New Development of China’s National Evaluation Standard for Green Building (ESGB-2014)

In 2006, China published the first National Evaluation Standard for Green Building (ESGB), which soon became the most widely spread evaluation system in the country. With the fast growth of urbanization, ESGB 2006 version no longer meets the current needs and requires an update. Based on the implementation outcomes of ESGB 2006 and expert opinions, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural Development published a new version of ESGB in 2014 (ESGB 2014). This research reviews the previous cases of buildings accredited with ESGB 2006 and collects the facts and data to explain the implementation results and identifies its weakness of the ESGB 2006. A comparative analysis of the ESGB 2014 with ESGB 2006 is based on an in-depth overview of both ESGB 2014 and ESGB 2006. The comparison results shows the improvement of the current ESGB 2014 in details, i.e., evaluated object, stage partition, weighted value, structure, indicators, etc. A case study is followed by choosing one building project to evaluate and calculate the green building accreditation according to both ESGB 2014 and ESGB 2006, and demonstrate the differences and development of ESGB 2014.OLD Housing Quality and Process Innovatio

Inferring network properties based on the epidemic prevalence

Dynamical processes running on different networks behave differently, which makes the reconstruction of the underlying network from dynamical observations possible. However, to what level of detail the network properties can be determined from incomplete measurements of the dynamical process is still an open question. In this paper, we focus on the problem of inferring the properties of the underlying network from the dynamics of a susceptible-infected-susceptible epidemic and we assume that only a time series of the epidemic prevalence, i.e., the average fraction of infected nodes, is given. We find that some of the network metrics, namely those that are sensitive to the epidemic prevalence, can be roughly inferred if the network type is known. A simulated annealing link-rewiring algorithm, called SARA, is proposed to obtain an optimized network whose prevalence is close to the benchmark. The output of the algorithm is applied to classify the network types.Network Architectures and Service

Lanthanide-Doped Nanoprobes as Orthogonal NIR-II Fluorescence Channels for In Vivo Information Storage

Information storage in vivo will lead to next-generation identification and security authentication. Here, an information storage method was proposed for in vivo application by using a pair of lanthanide-doped nanoprobes (NdNPs and ErNPs) with orthogonal emissions in the second near-infrared window. The information is stored in different fluorescence channels separately, while the selective readout could be realized by simply manipulating excitation wavelengths. The small-animal experiments primarily confirm the applicability of this method in vivo. The binary numbers ″1″ and ″0″ are implanted under the mice's skin, and the corresponding signals ″on″ and ″off″ can be collected by charge-coupled devices under different laser filter combinations. The design of lanthanide-doped probes with the nanoscale features and orthogonal emissions is expected to provide a new strategy for information storage in vivo. The lanthanide materials with excellent down-conversion near-infrared fluorescence performance have shown great application potential in the field of photonics. Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.BT/Biocatalysi

Assessment on China's urbanization after the implementation of main functional areas planning

China has implemented main functional areas planning (MFAP) since 2010, which is essential for improving the efficiency of land space utilization and achieving sustainable urban development. Quantitative assessments of the urban development levels (UDLs) at the county level across China after the implementation of MFAP have not been well-documented. In this study, a unified indicator system was developed, and the UDLs of 2850 counties in China after MFAP implementation were evaluated. The results showed that MFAP played a positive role in urban development in China. The UDLs in China generally increased but showed obvious spatial differences. The higher UDLs were mostly found in the counties in the five urban belts, which reflects the overall urban layout of China. The UDLs were generally low in the western counties in comparison with those in the eastern part of China. The differences in the UDLs from east to west were greater than those from north to south. Moreover, the differences in the UDLs presented a spatial agglomeration effect. This study could offer insight into the refinement of MFAP in China and sustainable urban development in developing countries.Accepted Author ManuscriptHydraulic Structures and Flood Ris

Tunable polaritons from plasmon-phonon coupling in hyperbolic media

Micro and Nano Engineerin