Can technology demonstration promote rural households’ adoption of conservation tillage in China?

Under the uncertainty of conservation tillage on output, technology demonstration, as an information disclosure mechanism, is very worthy of attention for its effects on rural households’ conservation tillage adoption. This study constructs a three-stage technology adoption model to discuss the theoretical relationship between technology demonstration and rural households’ conservation tillage adoption decision, and then empirical analyzed it using a sampling rural household data from six provinces in the main grain-producing areas of China. The results show that: First, the cognition of conservation tillage is the pre-determined stage for the adoption and its intensity. Second, technology demonstration has significant positive effect on rural households’ cognition of conservation tillage, but it strongly negative related to the adoption and adoption intensity. Third, extending the technology demonstration time cannot change the rural households’ adoption decision. Fourth, the technological demonstration has similar effects on the conservation tillage adoption of small-scale and large-scale farmers. Fifth, increasing land size helps rural households to adopt conservation tillage, while land fragmentation hinders their adoption

Discussion on event-based cameras for dynamic obstacles recognition and detection for UAVs in outdoor environments

To safely navigate and avoid obstacles in a complex dynamic environment, autonomous drones need a reaction time less than 10 milliseconds. Thus, event-based cameras have increasingly become more widespread in the academic research field for dynamic obstacles detection and avoidance for UAV, as their achievements outperform their frame-based counterparts in term of low-latency. Several publications showed significant results using these sensors. However, most of the experiments relied on indoor data. After a short introduction explaining the differences and features of an event-based camera compared to traditional RGB camera, this work explores the limits of the state-of-art event-based algorithms for obstacles recognition and detection by expanding their results from indoor experiments to real-world outdoor experiments. Indeed, this paper shows the inaccuracy of event-based algorithms for recognition due to insufficient amount of events generated and the inefficiency of event-based obstacles detection algorithms due to the high ration of noise

CB-Conformer: Contextual biasing Conformer for biased word recognition

Due to the mismatch between the source and target domains, how to better utilize the biased word information to improve the performance of the automatic speech recognition model in the target domain becomes a hot research topic. Previous approaches either decode with a fixed external language model or introduce a sizeable biasing module, which leads to poor adaptability and slow inference. In this work, we propose CB-Conformer to improve biased word recognition by introducing the Contextual Biasing Module and the Self-Adaptive Language Model to vanilla Conformer. The Contextual Biasing Module combines audio fragments and contextual information, with only 0.2% model parameters of the original Conformer. The Self-Adaptive Language Model modifies the internal weights of biased words based on their recall and precision, resulting in a greater focus on biased words and more successful integration with the automatic speech recognition model than the standard fixed language model. In addition, we construct and release an open-source Mandarin biased-word dataset based on WenetSpeech. Experiments indicate that our proposed method brings a 15.34% character error rate reduction, a 14.13% biased word recall increase, and a 6.80% biased word F1-score increase compared with the base Conformer

Oxidation of copper electrodes on flexible polyimide substrates for non-enzymatic glucose sensing

The integration of non-enzymatic glucose sensing entities into device designs compatible with industrial production is crucial for the broad take-up of non-invasive glucose sensors. Copper and its oxides have proven to be promising candidates for electrochemical glucose sensing. They can be fabricated in situ enabling integration with standard copper metallisation schemes for example in printed circuit boards (PCBs). Here, copper oxide electrodes are prepared on flexible polyimide substrates through direct annealing of patterned electrode structures. Both annealing temperature and duration are tuned to optimise the sensor surface for optimum glucose detection. A combination of microscopy and spectroscopy techniques is used to follow changes to the surface morphology and chemistry under the varying annealing conditions. The observed physico-chemical electrode characteristics are directly compared with electrochemical testing of the sensing performance, including chronoamperommetry and interference experiments. A clear influence of both aspects on the sensing behaviour is observed and an anneal at 250 °C for 8 h is identified as the best compromise between sensor performance and low interference from competing analytes

Ssams2, a Gene Encoding GATA Transcription Factor, Is Required for Appressoria Formation and Chromosome Segregation in Sclerotinia sclerotiorum

AMS2, amulticopy suppressor for the cpn1 (SpCENP-A) mutant, functions to specifically regulate histone genes transcription and chromosome segregation. As a cell-cycle-regulated GATA transcription factor in eukaryotic organisms, little research has been done on the role of AMS2 protein in pathogenic fungi. In Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, Ssams2 (SS1G_03252) encodes a protein which has been predicted to contain GATA-box domain. Here, Ssams2-silenced strains with significantly reduced Ssams2 gene expression levels exhibited defect in hyphal growth, hyphal branching patterns, compound appressoria differentiation and the oxalic acid production compared to the wild-type (WT) strain. By common bean leaves infection assays, we identified the role of Ssams2 in full virulence. Furthermore, the numbers of cell nucleus in the same length of mycelium in Ssams2-silenced transformants were significantly less than that in the WT strain. The expression levels of histone genes and cell cycle genes in transformants were down-regulated significantly in the RNAi strains. Taken together, our work suggests that the TF SsAMS2 is required for growth, appressoria formation, virulence, and chromosome segregation in S. sclerotiorum

Sssfh1, a Gene Encoding a Putative Component of the RSC Chromatin Remodeling Complex, Is Involved in Hyphal Growth, Reactive Oxygen Species Accumulation, and Pathogenicity in Sclerotinia sclerotiorum

SFH1 (for Snf5 homolog) protein, comprised in the RSC (Remodels Structure of Chromatin) chromatin remodeling complex, functions as a transcription factor (TF) to specifically regulate gene transcription and chromatin remodeling. As one of the well-conserved TFs in eukaryotic organisms, little is known about the roles of SFH1 protein in the filamentous fungi. In Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, one of the notorious plant fungal pathogens, there are nine proteins predicted to contain GATA-box domain according to GATA family TF classification, among which Sssfh1 (SS1G_01151) encodes a protein including a GATA-box domain and a SNF5 domain. Here, we characterized the roles of Sssfh1 in the developmental process and fungal pathogenicity by using RNA interference (RNAi)-based gene silencing in S. sclerotiorum. RNA-silenced strains with significantly reduced Sssfh1 RNA levels exhibited slower hyphal growth and decreased reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation in hyphae compared to the wild-type (WT) strain. Yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) and bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) assays demonstrated that SsSFH1 interacts with SsMSG5, a MAPK phosphatase in S. sclerotiorum. Furthermore, Sssfh1-silenced strains exhibited enhanced tolerance to NaCl and H2O2. Results of infection assays on soybean and common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) leaves indicated that Sssfh1 is required for full virulence of S. sclerotiorum during infection in the susceptible host plants. Collectively, our results suggest that the TF SsSFH1 is involved in growth, ROS accumulation and virulence in S. sclerotiorum

High-performance piezoelectric nanogenerators based on Cs₂Ag_0.3Na_0.7InCl₆ double perovskites with high polarity induced by Zr/Te codoping

Piezoelectric nanogenerators (PENGs), which operate based on mechanical-to-electrical energy conversion, have been widely explored for exciting applications in modern devices such as wearable electronics, self-powered sensors, and energy harvesters. Herein, we report on high-performance PENGs based on Cs2Ag0.3Na0.7InCl6 double perovskite (CDP) within a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) matrix, which exhibit enhanced polarity due to rationally designed Zr/Te codoping. As a proof of concept, the resultant PENGs based on Zr/Te codoped CDP@PVDF deliver an excellent piezoelectric output, with a maximum open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current density of 67 V and 18 μA·cm−2. This level of performance is ∼19 and ∼12 times higher than PVDF-based PENGs with no CDP, and ∼2 and ∼4 times higher than CDP@PVDF-based PENGs without doping or with single Te doping, and ∼1 and ∼2 times higher than CDP@PVDF-based PENGs with single Zr doping, respectively. Moreover, the as-assembled PENGs exhibit impressive potential in wearable energy harvesters, motion sensors, and DC-power devices with robust stability, underscoring their bright future toward practical applications.</p

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals &lt;1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Using mobile apps to facilitate English learning for college students in China

With the popularization of mobile technology and the explosion of apps, Chinese college students can use mobile apps to improve their English ability. While there is considerable enthusiasm for using apps to support learning with their multimedia capabilities, portability, connectivity, and flexibility, there is a paucity of research evidence about whether such approach can facilitate English learning for college students and what students’ attitudes are towards the new approach. Besides, there is a lack of research about which apps are good and suitable for them in specific aspects of English studies, such as spoken English, reading comprehension, listening or writing.In order to figure out them, the semi-interview survey and experiment are used in our study. The interviewees were 5 college students studying at USST or SDTU, China. They talked about their attitudes towards using apps to study on their own. In the experiment, the subjects were 15 exchange students, now studying at the University of Borås. The experiment examined the effect that college students use mobile devices to learn English by themselves.The finding suggests that the new learning approach is effective and helpful for college students to improve English by using their mobile devices, as well as undergraduates are willing to use apps to learn English with self-regulated learning approach instead of traditional learning approach. Some apps well suited for college students are presented. Based on the findings, we provide useful instructional strategies for college students to learn English by themselves in the end