Response of arum lily calli to culture filtrate of Pectobacterium carotovorum subsp. carotovorum

This report demonstrated that culture filtrate of Pectobacterium carotovorum ssp. carotovorum isolate ZT0505, the pathogen of bacterial soft rot disease of arum lily (Zantedeschia sp.), contained extracellular enzymes and caused arum lily leaf tissue and callus maceration. Arum lily leaf tissue and callus sensitivity to culture filtrate coincided with the host susceptibility to the pathogen. The rates of survival of callus pieces were determined after exposure for various times to culture filtrate. Survival of callus pieces (%) increased with reduction of exposure time from 20 to 14 h and from 14 to 8 h. One out of 30 callus pieces was still viable after 3 cycles of 8 h exposure. Subsequently, the surviving cells in this callus pieces proliferated and differentiated into shoots. Based on this initial work, the callus screening using culture filtrate as selection agent may be useful for in vitro selection of soft rot resistant germplasm in arum lily

Performance of Photosensors in the PandaX-I Experiment

We report the long term performance of the photosensors, 143 one-inch R8520-406 and 37 three-inch R11410-MOD photomultipliers from Hamamatsu, in the first phase of the PandaX dual-phase xenon dark matter experiment. This is the first time that a significant number of R11410 photomultiplier tubes were operated in liquid xenon for an extended period, providing important guidance to the future large xenon-based dark matter experiments.Comment: v3 as accepted by JINST with modifications based on reviewers' comment

Bromelain and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Diabetes: An Exploratory Randomized, Placebo Controlled, Double Blind Clinical Trial

Objective: The objective of this trial was to assess whether the dietary supplement (bromelain) had the potential to reduce plasma fibrinogen and other Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) risk factors in patients with diabetes. Methods: This randomized placebo controlled, double blind, parallel design, efficacy study was carried out in China and investigated the effect of 12 weeks of bromelain (1.05g/day) on plasma fibrinogen . This randomized controlled trial (RCT) recruited 68 Chinese diabetic patients (32 males and 36 females; Han origin, mean age of 61.26 years (Standard Deviation, 12.62 years)) with at least one CVD risk factor. Patients were randomized into either bromelain or placebo group. While bromelain group received bromelain capsule, the placebo group received placebo capsule which consisted inert ingredient and has no treatment effect. Patients and researcher were blinded and did not know whether they received bromelain or placebo capsules. Plasma fibrinogen, CVD risk factors and anthropometric indicators were determined at baseline and at 12 weeks. Results: The change in the fibrinogen level in the placebo group at the end of the study showed a mean reduction of 0.36g/L (Standard Deviation (SD) 0.96g/L) compared with the mean reduction of 0.13g/L (SD 0.86g/L) for the bromelain group. However, there was no significant difference in the mean change in fibrinogen between the placebo and bromelain groups (mean difference=0.23g/L (SD 0.22g/L), p=0.291). Similarly, the difference in mean change in other CVD risk factors (blood lipids, blood pressure), blood glucose, C - reactive protein (CRP) and anthropometric measures between the bromelain and placebo groups was also not statistically significant. Conclusions: This RCT failed to show a beneficial effect in reducing fibrinogen or influencing other selected CVD risk factors but suggests other avenues for subsEquent research on bromelain

Siamese Verification Framework for Autism Identification During Infancy Using Cortical Path Signature Features

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disability, which is lack of biologic diagnostic markers. Therefore, exploring the ASD Identification directly from brain imaging data has been an important topic. In this work, we propose the Siamese verification model to identify ASD using 6 and 12 months cortical features. Rather than directly classifying a testing subject is ASD or not, we determine whether it has the same or different label with the reference subject who has been successfully diagnosed. Then, based on the comparison to all the reference subjects, we can predict the label of the testing subject. The advantage of modeling the classification problem as a verification framework is that it can greatly enlarge the training data size and enable us to train a more accurate and reliable model in an end-to-end manner. In addition, to further improve the classification performance, we introduce the path signature (PS) features, which can capture the dynamic longitudinal information of the brain development for the ASD Identification. Experiments showed that our proposed method reaches the best result, i.e., 87% accuracy, 83% sensitivity and 90% specificity comparing to the state-of-the-art methods

Raman spectroscopy of epitaxial graphene on a SiC substrate

The fabrication of epitaxial graphene (EG) on SiC substrate by annealing has attracted a lot of interest as it may speed up the application of graphene for future electronic devices. The interaction of EG and the SiC substrate is critical to its electronic and physical properties. In this work, Raman spectroscopy was used to study the structure of EG and its interaction with SiC substrate. All the Raman bands of EG blue shift from that of bulk graphite and graphene made by micromechanical cleavage, which was attributed to the compressive strain induced by the substrate. A model containing 13 x 13 honeycomb lattice cells of graphene on carbon nanomesh was constructed to explain the origin of strain. The lattice mismatch between graphene layer and substrate causes the compressive stress of 2.27 GPa on graphene. We also demonstrate that the electronic structures of EG grown on Si and C terminated SiC substrates are quite different. Our experimental results shed light on the interaction between graphene and SiC substrate that are critical to the future applications of EG.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure

Phytochemical and biological properties of ajuga decumbens (labiatae): A review

Ajuga decumbens Thunb is a member of Labiatae family and widespread in China, Korea and Japan. This plant possesses diverse pharmacological activities, such as anti-inflammatory, antitumor, antibacterial, antiviral, cytotoxic, as well as insecticidal activities. Several compounds have been isolated from A. decumbens, which display a wide spectrum of biological and pharmacological activities. Hence, it would be useful to review current literature for available pharmacological activities of the plant as well as its active ingredients

Non-ancient solution of the Ricci flow

For any complete noncompact K$\ddot{a}$hler manifold with nonnegative and bounded holomorphic bisectional curvature,we provide the necessary and sufficient condition for non-ancient solution to the Ricci flow in this paper.Comment: seven pages, latex fil

Nitrous Oxide Production in Co-Versus Counter-Diffusion Nitrifying Biofilms

For the application of biofilm processes, a better understanding of nitrous oxide (N 2 O) formation within the biofilm is essential for design and operation of biofilm reactors with minimized N 2 O emissions. In this work, a previously established N 2 O model incorporating both ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) denitrification and hydroxylamine (NH 2 OH) oxidation pathways is applied in two structurally different biofilm systems to assess the effects of co-and counter-diffusion on N 2 O production. It is demonstrated that the diffusion of NH 2 OH and oxygen within both types of biofilms would form an anoxic layer with the presence of NH 2 OH and nitrite (), which would result in a high N 2 O production via AOB denitrification pathway. As a result, AOB denitrification pathway is dominant over NH 2 OH oxidation pathway within the co-and counter-diffusion biofilms. In comparison, the co-diffusion biofilm may generate substantially higher N 2 O than the counter-diffusion biofilm due to the higher accumulation of NH 2 OH in co-diffusion biofilm, especially under the condition of high-strength ammonium influent (500 mg N/L), thick biofilm depth (300 μm) and moderate oxygen loading (∼1-∼4 m 3 /d). The effect of co-and counter-diffusion on N 2 O production from the AOB biofilm is minimal when treating low-strength nitrogenous wastewater