Study on China's timber resource shortage and import structure:natural forest protection program outlook,1998 to 2008

The state of China's ecological environment has improved to some extent since the Chinese government initiated the Natural Forest Protection Program (NFPP) in 1998. The logging prohibition and limitation policies adopted by the NFPP, however, have reduced domestic timber supply. Together with the thriving economy, decreasing domestic timer supply continues to widen the gap between supply and demand. Importation is considered to be the primary solution to this issue, making China the world's largest timber importer. China's major timber suppliers are Russia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Gabon, among which Russia accounts for more than 61 percent of China's total timber imports. The relatively cheaper conifers imported from Russia account for more than 60 percent of all imported timber, with volumes continually increasing because of the rapid pace at which China has been implementing its infrastructure projects. In addition, as living standards continue to improve, requirements for home decor and furniture also grow, further increasing the demand for tropical to temperate timber. In the long term, imports will remain the main solution to the insufficient domestic timber supply in China.NFPP; timber resource shortage; timber import structure

Na/K-ATPase Signaling and Salt Sensitivity: The Role of Oxidative Stress

Other than genetic regulation of salt sensitivity of blood pressure, many factors have been shown to regulate renal sodium handling which contributes to long-term blood pressure regulation and have been extensively reviewed. Here we present our progress on the Na/K-ATPase signaling mediated sodium reabsorption in renal proximal tubules, from cardiotonic steroids-mediated to reactive oxygen species (ROS)-mediated Na/K-ATPase signaling that contributes to experimental salt sensitivity

Poly[[diaqua­bis­(μ3-3-carboxyl­ato-4-hy­droxy­benzene­sulfonato)­tri-μ2-pyrazine-tetra­silver(I)] dihydrate]

The title coordination polymer, {[Ag4(C7H4O6S)2(C4H4N2)3(H2O)2]·2H2O}n, contains two independent AgI ions. One AgI ion is coordinated by one O atom from a 3-carboxyl­ato-4-hy­droxy­benzene­sulfonate (L) ligand, two N atoms from two pyrazine ligands and a water mol­ecule. The other AgI ion is coordinated by two O atoms from two L ligands and one N atom from a pyrazine ligand. One of the pyrazine ligands lies on an inversion center. The L and pyrazine ligands link the AgI ions into polymeric layers parallel to the ac plane. The layers are connected by inter­molecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds. An intra­molecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bond is also present in the L ligand

A Comprehensive Review and Analysis of Nanosensors for Structural Health Monitoring in Bridge Maintenance: Innovations, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

This paper presents a thorough review and detailed analysis of nanosensors for structural health monitoring (SHM) in the context of bridge maintenance. With rapid advancements in nanotechnology, nanosensors have emerged as promising tools for detecting and assessing the structural integrity of bridges. The objective of this review is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the various types of nanosensors utilized in bridge maintenance, their operating principles, fabrication techniques, and integration strategies. Furthermore, this paper explores the challenges associated with nanosensor deployment, such as signal processing, power supply, and data interpretation. Finally, the review concludes with an outlook on future developments in the field of nanosensors for SHM in bridge maintenance.publishedVersio

Large screen enabled tri-port MIMO handset antenna for low LTE bands

In recent years, the screen-to-body ratio of mobile handsets has been increasing. Today, the screen nearly fills up the entire front side. Conventionally, the screen is mainly seen as a metallic object that adversely affects antenna performance. In this paper, the large screen is used for the first time to facilitate an additional uncorrelated MIMO port in a tri-port design, for several LTE bands below 1 GHz. To this end, the screen and the terminal chassis are modeled as two metal plates and their characteristic modes are analyzed. Four modes are then tuned to resonance and selectively excited to yield three uncorrelated MIMO ports. Simulation and measurement results are in good agreement. The measured bandwidths are 23%, 17% and 21%. Within the operating band, the measured isolation is above 13 dB, envelope correlation coefficient below 0.16 and average total efficiency above 72%

Measuring Significance of Community Structure in Complex Networks

Many complex systems can be represented as networks and separating a network into communities could simplify the functional analysis considerably. Recently, many approaches have been proposed for finding communities, but none of them can evaluate the communities found are significant or trivial definitely. In this paper, we propose an index to evaluate the significance of communities in networks. The index is based on comparing the similarity between the original community structure in network and the community structure of the network after perturbed, and is defined by integrating all the similarities. Many artificial networks and real-world networks are tested. The results show that the index is independent from the size of network and the number of communities. Moreover, we find the clear communities always exist in social networks, but don't find significative communities in proteins interaction networks and metabolic networks.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl