Isoflavone Content of Soybean Cultivars from Maturity Group 0 to VI Grown in Northern and Southern China

Soybean isoflavone content has long been considered to be a desirable trait to target in selection programs for their contribution to human health and plant defense systems. The objective of this study was to determine isoflavone concentrations of various soybean cultivars from maturity groups 0 to VI grown in various environments and to analyze their relationship to other important seed characters. Forty soybean cultivars were grown in replicated trials at Wuhan and Beijing of China in 2009/2010 and their individual and total isoflavone concentrations were determined by HPLC. Their yield and quality traits were also concurrently analyzed. The isoflavone components had abundant genetic variation in soybean seed, with a range of coefficient variation from 45.01% to 69.61%. Moreover, individual and total isoflavone concentrations were significantly affected by cultivar, maturity group, site and year. Total isoflavone concentration ranged from 551.15 to 7584.07 μg g(−1), and averaged 2972.64 μg g(−1) across environments and cultivars. There was a similar trend regarding the isoflavone contents, in which a lower isoflavone concentration was generally presented in early rather than late maturing soybean cultivars. In spite of significant cultivar × year × site interactions, cultivars with consistently high or low isoflavone concentrations across environments were identified, indicating that a genetic factor plays the most important role for isoflavone accumulation. The total isoflavone concentration had significant positive correlations with plant height, effective branches, pods per plant, seeds per plant, linoleic acid and linolenic acid, while significant negative correlations with oleic acid and oil content, indicating that isoflavone concentration can be predicted as being associated with other desirable seed characteristics

Enhancement of thermoelectric performance in n-type PbTe1−ySey by doping Cr and tuning Te:Se ratio

Lead telluride and its alloys have been extensively studied for medium temperature thermoelectric applications due to decent figure-of-merit (ZT) at temperature close to 900 K. However, little emphasis has been given to improve the ZT near room temperature. In this investigation, we report a systematic study of Cr doping in PbTe[subscript 1−y]Se[subscript y] with y=0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 0.85, and 1. We found the peak ZT temperature increased with increasing concentration of Se. The highest ZT of ~0.6 at room temperature in Te-rich Cr[subscript 0.015]Pb[subscript 0.985]Te[subscript 0.75]Se[subscript 0.25] was obtained due to a lowered thermal conductivity and enhanced power factor resulted from high Seebeck coefficient of about −220 µV K[superscript −1] and high Hall mobility ~1120 cm[superscript 2] V[superscript −1] s[superscript −1] at room temperature. A room temperature ZT of ~0.5 and peak ZT of ~1 at about 573–673 K is shown by Se-rich sample Cr[subscript 0.01]Pb[subscript 0.99]Te[subscript 0.25]Se[subscript 0.75]. This improvement of the room temperature ZT improved the average ZT over a wide temperature range and could potentially lead to a single leg efficiency of thermoelectric conversion for Te-rich Cr[subscript 0.015]Pb[subscript 0.985]Te[subscript 0.75]Se[subscript 0.25] up to ~11% and Se-rich Cr[subscript 0.01]Pb[subscript 0.99]Te[subscript 0.25]Se[subscript 0.75] up to ~13% with cold side and hot side temperature at 300 K and 873 K, respectively, if matched with appropriate p-type legs

Outstanding hydrogen evolution reaction catalyzed by porous nickel diselenide electrocatalysts

To relieve our strong reliance on fossil fuels and to reduce greenhouse effects, there is an ever-growing interest in using electrocatalytic water splitting to produce green, renewable, and environment-benign hydrogen fuel via the hydrogen evolution reaction. For commercially feasible water electrolysis, it is imperative to develop electrocatalysts that perform as efficiently as Pt but using only earth-abundant commercial materials. However, the highest performance current catalysts consist of nanostructures made by using complex methods. Here we report a porous nickel diselenide (NiSe_2) catalyst that is superior for water electrolysis, exhibiting much better catalytic performance than most first-row transition metal dichalcogenide-based catalysts, well-studied MoS_2, and WS_2-based catalysts. Indeed NiSe2 performs comparably to the state-of-the-art Pt catalysts. We fabricate NiSe_2 directly from commercial nickel foam by acetic acid-assisted surface roughness engineering. To understand the origin of the high performance, we use first-principles calculations to identify the active sites. This work demonstrates the commercial possibility of hydrogen production via water electrolysis using porous bulk NiSe_2 catalysts

Efficient hydrogen evolution by ternary molybdenum sulfoselenide particles on self-standing porous nickel diselenide foam

With the massive consumption of fossil fuels and its detrimental impact on the environment, methods of generating clean power are urgent. Hydrogen is an ideal carrier for renewable energy; however, hydrogen generation is inefficient because of the lack of robust catalysts that are substantially cheaper than platinum. Therefore, robust and durable earth-abundant and cost-effective catalysts are desirable for hydrogen generation from water splitting via hydrogen evolution reaction. Here we report an active and durable earth-abundant transition metal dichalcogenide-based hybrid catalyst that exhibits high hydrogen evolution activity approaching the state-of-the-art platinum catalysts, and superior to those of most transition metal dichalcogenides (molybdenum sulfide, cobalt diselenide and so on). Our material is fabricated by growing ternary molybdenum sulfoselenide particles on self-standing porous nickel diselenide foam. This advance provides a different pathway to design cheap, efficient and sizable hydrogen-evolving electrode by simultaneously tuning the number of catalytic edge sites, porosity, heteroatom doping and electrical conductivity

A Chandra Study of Temperature Substructures in Intermediate-Redshift Galaxy Clusters

By analyzing the gas temperature maps created from the Chandra archive data, we reveal the prevailing existence of temperature substructures on ~100 kpc scales in the central regions of nine intermediate-redshift (z~0.1) galaxy clusters, which resemble those found in the Virgo and Coma Clusters. Each substructure contains a clump of hot plasma whose temperature is about 2-3 keV higher than the environment, corresponding to an excess thermal energy of ~1E58-1E60 erg per clump. Since if there were no significant non-gravitational heating sources, these substructures would have perished in 1E8-1E9 yrs due to thermal conduction and turbulent flows, whose velocity is found to range from about 200 to 400 km/s, we conclude that the substructures cannot be created and sustained by inhomogeneous radiative cooling. We also eliminate the possibilities that the temperature substructures are caused by supernova explosions, or by the non-thermal X-ray emission due to the inverse-Comptonization of the CMB photons. By calculating the rising time of AGN-induced buoyant bubbles, we speculate that the intermittent AGN outbursts (~ 1E60 erg per burst) may have played a crucial role in the forming of the high temperature substructures. Our results are supported by recent study of McNamara & Nulsen (2007), posing a tight observational constraint on future theoretical and numerical studies.Comment: 31 pages, 7 figures, ApJ accepte

Psychometric properties of the Chinese version Fear of Cancer Recurrence Questionnaire-7 (FCR-7)

Funding: President Foundation of Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University (2017L001); Guangzhou Science and Technology Project (201804010132); Key Item of Guangzhou bureau of education (2019KC106), and Innovation Item of Guangdong Provincial Department of Education (2018A043442).This article investigates the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the 7-item Fear of Cancer Recurrence Questionnaire (FCR-7). A total of 1,025 cancer patients were recruited and asked to complete the Chinese FCR-7, Fear of Progression Questionnaire—Short Form (FoP-Q–SF), 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), and 7-item General Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GAD-7). The internal consistency and test–retest reliabilities were examined. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were conducted on random split-half samples. Overall relationships of FCR-7 with other psychological constructs were examined. The Chinese FCR-7 showed good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .87), test–retest reliability (r = .90), and item–total correlations (range = .583–.872). The unitary factor structure was supported by the EFA and the CFA fit statistics (comparative fit index = .99, root-mean-square error of approximation = .039, 95% confidence interval [.01, .07]). The total score of FCR-7 was positively associated with FoP-Q–SF (r = .756, p < .01), PHQ-9 (r = .522, p < .01), and GAD-7 (r = .553, p < .01). Patients with low monthly income (p < .001) and family cancer history (p = .012) and those who had gone through chemotherapy (p = .001) tended to report higher fear of cancer recurrence (FCR). The FCR-7 has been translated and successfully culturally adapted into a Chinese version. It is a reliable and valid measurement for assessing FCR.PostprintPeer reviewe

A Joint Chandra and XMM-Newton View of Abell 3158: Massive Off-Centre Cool Gas Clump As A Robust Diagnostic of Merger Stage

By analysing the Chandra and XMM-Newton archived data of the nearby galaxy cluster Abell 3158, which was reported to possess a relatively regular, relaxed morphology in the X-ray band in previous works, we identify a bow edge-shaped discontinuity in the X-ray surface brightness distribution at about $120h_{71}^{-1}$ kpc west of the X-ray peak. This feature is found to be associated with a massive, off-centre cool gas clump, and actually forms the west boundary of the cool clump. We find that the cool gas clump is moving at a subsonic velocity of ~700 km/s toward west on the sky plane. We exclude the possibility that this cool clump was formed by local inhomogeneous radiative cooling in the intra-cluster medium, due to the effectiveness of the thermal conduction on the time-scale of $\sim 0.3$ Gyr. Since no evidence for central AGN activity has been found in Abell 3158, and this cool clump bears many similarities to the off-centre cool gas clumps detected in other merging clusters in terms of their mass, size, location, and thermal properties (e.g. lower temperature and higher abundance as compared with the environment), we speculate that the cool clump in Abell 3158 was caused by a merger event, and is the remnant of the original central cool-core of the main cluster or the infalling sub-cluster. This idea is supported not only by the study of line-of-sight velocity distribution of the cluster member galaxies, but also by the study of gas entropy-temperature correlation. This example shows that the appearance of such massive, off-centre cool gas clumps can be used to diagnose the dynamical state of a cluster, especially when prominent shocks and cold fronts are absent.Comment: Accepted by MNRAS; 12 pages, 6 figure

Advances in Multi-Sensor Data Fusion: Algorithms and Applications

With the development of satellite and remote sensing techniques, more and more image data from airborne/satellite sensors have become available. Multi-sensor image fusion seeks to combine information from different images to obtain more inferences than can be derived from a single sensor. In image-based application fields, image fusion has emerged as a promising research area since the end of the last century. The paper presents an overview of recent advances in multi-sensor satellite image fusion. Firstly, the most popular existing fusion algorithms are introduced, with emphasis on their recent improvements. Advances in main applications fields in remote sensing, including object identification, classification, change detection and maneuvering targets tracking, are described. Both advantages and limitations of those applications are then discussed. Recommendations are addressed, including: (1) Improvements of fusion algorithms; (2) Development of “algorithm fusion” methods; (3) Establishment of an automatic quality assessment scheme