Non-Oscillatory Hierarchical Reconstruction for Central and Finite Volume Schemes

This is the continuation of the paper "central discontinuous Galerkin methods on overlapping cells with a non-oscillatory hierarchical reconstruction" by the same authors. The hierarchical reconstruction introduced therein is applied to central schemes on overlapping cells and to nite volume schemes on non-staggered grids. This takes a new nite volume approach for approximating non-smooth solutions. A critical step for high order nite volume schemes is to reconstruct a nonoscillatory high degree polynomial approximation in each cell out of nearby cell averages. In the paper this procedure is accomplished in two steps: first to reconstruct a high degree polynomial in each cell by using e.g., a central reconstruction, which is easy to do despite the fact that the reconstructed polynomial could be oscillatory; then to apply the hierarchical reconstruction to remove the spurious oscillations while maintaining the high resolution. All numerical computations for systems of conservation laws are performed without characteristic decomposition. In particular, we demonstrate that this new approach can generate essentially non-oscillatory solutions even for 5th order schemes without characteristic decomposition.The research of Y. Liu was supported in part by NSF grant DMS-0511815. The research of C.-W. Shu was supported in part by the Chinese Academy of Sciences while this author was visiting the University of Science and Technology of China (grant 2004-1-8) and the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Scienti c/Engineering Computing. Additional support was provided by ARO grant W911NF-04-1-0291 and NSF grant DMS-0510345. The research of E. Tadmor was supported in part by NSF grant 04-07704 and ONR grant N00014-91-J-1076. The research of M. Zhang was supported in part by the Chinese Academy of Sciences grant 2004-1-8

Mining Magnaporthe oryzae sRNAs With Potential Transboundary Regulation of Rice Genes Associated With Growth and Defense Through Expression Profile Analysis of the Pathogen-Infected Rice

In recent years, studies have shown that phytopathogenic fungi possess the ability of cross-kingdom regulation of host plants through small RNAs (sRNAs). Magnaporthe oryzae, a causative agent of rice blast, introduces disease by penetrating the rice tissues through appressoria. However, little is known about the transboundary regulation of M. oryzae sRNAs during the interaction of the pathogen with its host rice. Therefore, investigation of the regulation of M. oryzae through sRNAs in the infected rice plants has important theoretical and practical significance for disease control and production improvement. Based on the high-throughput data of M. oryzae sRNAs and the mixed sRNAs during infection, the differential expressions of sRNAs in M. oryzae before and during infection were compared, it was found that expression levels of 366 M. oryzae sRNAs were upregulated significantly during infection. We trained a SVM model which can be used to predict differentially expressed sRNAs, which has reference significance for the prediction of differentially expressed sRNAs of M. oryzae homologous species, and can facilitate the research of M. oryzae in the future. Furthermore, fifty core targets were selected from the predicted target genes on rice for functional enrichment analysis, the analysis reveals that there are nine biological processes and one KEGG pathway associated with rice growth and disease defense. These functions correspond to thirteen rice genes. A total of fourteen M. oryzae sRNAs targeting the rice genes were identified by data analysis, and their authenticity was verified in the database of M. oryzae sRNAs. The 14 M. oryzae sRNAs may participate in the transboundary regulation process and act as sRNA effectors to manipulate the rice blast process

Uncovering the dispersion history, adaptive evolution and selection of wheat in China

Wheat was introduced to China approximately 4500 years ago, where it adapted over a span of time to various environments in agro-ecological growing zones. We investigated 717 Chinese and 14 Iranian/Turkish geographically diverse, locally adapted wheat landraces with 27,933 DArTseq (for 717 landraces) and 312,831 Wheat660K (for a subset of 285 landraces) markers. This study highlights the adaptive evolutionary history of wheat cultivation in China. Environmental stresses and independent selection efforts have resulted in considerable genome-wide divergence at the population level in Chinese wheat landraces. In total, 148 regions of the wheat genome show signs of selection in at least one geographic area. Our data show adaptive events across geographic areas, from the xeric northwest to the mesic south, along and among homoeologous chromosomes, with fewer variations in the D genome than in the A and B genomes. Multiple variations in interdependent functional genes, such as regulatory and metabolic genes controlling germination and flowering time were characterized, showing clear allelic frequency changes corresponding to the dispersion of wheat in China. Population structure and selection data reveal that Chinese wheat spread from the northwestern Caspian Sea region to south China, adapting during its agricultural trajectory to increasingly mesic and warm climatic areas

Impact of lockdown on the growth of children in China aged 3-6 years during the COVID-19 pandemic

BackgroundLockdowns in COVID-19 pandemic led to less physical activity and more intake of unhealthy food in children. The aim of this study was to investigate the negative impact of major lockdowns on the growth of children aged 3-6 years during COVID-19 pandemic period.MethodsPhysical examination results in 2019 to 2022 from 5834 eligible children (2972 males and 2862 females) from Southwestern China who were 3 years old in 2019 were retrospectively collected. Height and weight data points were extracted from the results, and percentiles of height (height%), weight (weight%), and BMI (BMI%), and rates of overweight and obesity were calculated and compared between different years during the pandemic.ResultsAfter analyzing the 15404 growth data points from 5834 children, a slowly increasing trend of height% from 2019 to 2022 was observed. Weight%, BMI%, overweight rate, obesity rate, and combined overweight and obesity rate had two peaks in 2020 and 2022 when major lockdowns were adopted and a drop in between (year 2021), except for obesity rate which did not drop in 2021. Similar results were shown after stratification by gender.ConclusionThe lockdowns in COVID-19 pandemic promoted obesity of kindergarten children, but did not show any negative impact on their height growth possibly due to over-nutrition of children during lockdowns. More efforts need to be made to limit the increase of obesity rate in kindergarten children during possible future lockdowns

Functioning styles of personality disorders and five-factor normal personality traits: a correlation study in Chinese students

BACKGROUND: Previous studies show that both the categorical and dimensional descriptors of personality disorders are correlated with normal personality traits. Recently, a 92-item inventory, the Parker Personality Measure (PERM) was designed as a more efficient and precise first-level assessment of personality disorders. Whether the PERM constructs are correlated with those of the five-factor models of personality needs to be clarified. METHODS: We therefore invited 913 students from poly-technical schools and colleges in China to answer the PERM, the Five-Factor Nonverbal Personality Questionnaire (FFNPQ), and the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire (ZKPQ). RESULTS: Most personality constructs had satisfactory internal alphas. PERM constructs were loaded with FFNPQ and ZKPQ traits clearly on four factors, which can be labelled as Dissocial, Emotional Dysregulation, Inhibition and Compulsivity, as reported previously. FFNPQ Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness and Extraversion formed another Factor, named Experience Hunting, which was not clearly covered by PERM or ZKPQ. CONCLUSION: The PERM constructs were loaded in a predictable way on the disordered super-traits, suggesting the PERM might offer assistance measuring personality function in clinical practice

Central Discontinuous Galerkin Methods on Overlapping Cells with a Non-Oscillatory Hierarchical Reconstruction

The central scheme of Nessyahu and Tadmor [J. Comput. Phys, 87 (1990)] solves hyperbolic conservation laws on a staggered mesh and avoids solving Riemann problems across cell boundaries. To overcome the difficulty of excessive numerical dissipation for small time steps, the recent work of Kurganov and Tadmor [J. Comput. Phys, 160 (2000)] employs a variable control volume, which in turn yields a semi-discrete non-staggered central scheme. Another approach, which we advocate here, is to view the staggered meshes as a collection of overlapping cells and to realize the computed solution by its overlapping cell averages. This leads to a simple technique to avoid the excessive numerical dissipation for small time steps [Y. Liu; J. Comput. Phys, 209 (2005)]. At the heart of the proposed approach is the evolution of two pieces of information per cell, instead of one cell average which characterizes all central and upwind Godunov-type nite volume schemes. Overlapping cells lend themselves to the development of a central-type discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method, following the series of work by Cockburn and Shu [J. Comput. Phys. 141 (1998)] and the references therein. In this paper we develop a central DG technique for hyperbolic conservation laws, where we take advantage of the redundant representation of the solution on overlapping cells. The use of redundant overlapping cells opens new possibilities, beyond those of Godunov-type schemes. In particular, the central DG is coupled with a novel reconstruction procedure which post-processes the central DG solution to remove spurious oscillations in the presence of shocks. This reconstruction is motivated by the moments limiter of Biswas, Devine and Flaherty [Appl. Numer. Math. 14 (1994)], but is otherwise di fferent in its hierarchical approach. The new hierarchical reconstruction involves a MUSCL or a second order ENO reconstruction in each stage of a multi-layer reconstruction process without characteristic decomposition. It is compact, easy to implement over arbitrary meshes and retains the overall pre-processed order of accuracy while eff ectively removes spurious oscillations around shocks.The research of Y. Liu was supported in part by NSF grant DMS-0511815. The research of C.-W. Shu was supported in part by the Chinese Academy of Sciences while this author was visiting the University of Science and Technology of China (grant 2004-1-8) and the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Scienti c/Engineering Computing. Additional support was provided by ARO grant W911NF-04-1-0291 and NSF grant DMS-0510345. The research of E. Tadmor was supported in part by NSF grant 04-07704 and ONR grant N00014-91-J-1076. The research of M. Zhang was supported in part by the Chinese Academy of Sciences grant 2004-1-8

Surface photo-response of nanostructure metal oxides using high vacuum kelvin probe technique

The Kelvin Probe (KP) is a non-contact, non-destructive vibrating capacitor device used to measure the work function difference, or for non-metals, the surface potential, between a conducting specimen and a vibrating tip. The Kelvin method was firstly postulated by the renowned Scottish scientist W. Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, in 1861. In this work, a high vacuum KP system incorporating with light source is setup to characterize the surface photo-response of novel nanosized semiconductive metal oxides( NMO) materials, which possess superior photocatalytic properties. [4th Award

Optimal error estimates of the semidiscrete discontinuous Galerkin methods for two dimensional hyperbolic equations on Cartesian meshes using

In this paper, we study the optimal error estimates of the classical discontinuous Galerkin method for time-dependent 2-D hyperbolic equations using Pk elements on uniform Cartesian meshes, and prove that the error in the L2 norm achieves optimal (k + 1)th order convergence when upwind fluxes are used. For the linear constant coefficient case, the results hold true for arbitrary piecewise polynomials of degree k ≥ 0. For variable coefficient and nonlinear cases, we give the proof for piecewise polynomials of degree k = 0, 1, 2, 3 and k = 2, 3, respectively, under the condition that the wind direction does not change. The theoretical results are verified by numerical examples