Impact on Grassland Biomass from Climate Warming and Drying

It is becoming increasingly urgent to assess the impact of climate change on grassland biomass due to the important role these grasslands play in animal production. The typical steppe in Xilinhot of Inner Mongolia is the most representative vegetation types in the temperate grasslands of the northern China. One means to determine climate change is using the Aridity index (AI, also referred to as the dry degree of climate in this article) that is based on both temperature and precipitation (Arora 2002; Bannayan et al.. 2010; Nastos et al. 2012). The objective of this paper was to indicate how the biomass of a grassland ecosystem was affected by AI when determined by integrating regional temperature and precipitation

Research on the Most Sustainable Livestock Carrying Capacity in Grassland Management

Although the concept of livestock carrying capacity is highly controversial (Gillson and Hoffman 2007; Roe 1997), it is still used as the key index for grassland management, especially in China. ‘X city’ which has enacted a Lives-tock and Forage Balance Policy (LFBP) since the beginning of this century as part of a trial to test the effectiveness of the policy. The LFBP Implementing Rule in ‘X city’ (Trial Implementation) developed in 2002 was designed with the purpose of trying to adjust the utilization of grassland based on a predetermined livestock carrying capacity (LCC). We collected information on the LCC adopted by herders LCC and the LCC determined by local government in ‘X City’ to determine which LCC was more like to be sustainable, given that sustainable management by definition must be economically viable, ecologically sensible and socially acceptable. [Editor’s note: given some sensitivity of the research the city and county locations have not been disclosed

Association of hematocrit value with cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in incident hemodialysis patients

Association of hematocrit value with cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in incident hemodialysis patients.BackgroundAssociations between hematocrit values and clinical outcome have been studied with conflicting results in cardiac patients, end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients, and ESRD patients with cardiac disease. We studied dialysis patients to determine the relationship between hematocrit value and cardiac risk under current Dialysis Outcomes Quality Initiative (DOQI) practices.MethodsMedicare data were used to study 50,579 incident hemodialysis patients selected from January 1, 1998, to December 31, 1999, who received hemodialysis for 9 months after the onset of ESRD. Patients were divided into groups on the basis of the hematocrit value: ≤30%, >30% to ≤33%, >33% to ≤36%, >36% to ≤39%, and >39%. For hospitalization, the follow-up extended to 21/2 years; for mortality, 3 years.ResultsCompared to patients with hematocrit values of >33% to ≤36%, patients with values of >36% to ≤39% and those with values of >39% had risk ratios for hospitalization due to cardiac disease of 0.92 (95% CI 0.88 to 0.97) and 0.79 (95% CI 0.72 to 0.87), respectively, and risk ratios for death due to cardiac disease of 0.92 (95% CI 0.87 to 0.98) and 0.83 (95% CI 0.74 to 0.93), respectively, in the follow-up period.ConclusionThe significant associations we report do not establish a causal relationship between higher hematocrit values and lower risks of cardiac morbidity and mortality. A randomized clinical trial in low-risk patients is needed to establish causality

Application of indirect immunofluorescence on the diagnosis of pemphigus

Pemphigus is an autoimmune bullous disease, and although several diagnostic methods are now in use indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) is still considered an important tool for diagnosing pemphigus because of its convenience, repeatability, and reduced pain for patients. The goal of the present study was to evaluate the diagnostic value of IIF on normal human skin (NS), monkey esophagus (ME), and salt-split skin (SS) for better diagnosis of pemphigus. Clinical data of 70 patients with pemphigus and 56 control were collected. IIF on NS, ME, and SS were assessed separately by observing fluorescein deposition and comparing its differentiation to different kinds of pemphigus and its sensitivities and specificities to different substrates. Intercellular deposition of IgG was visible when IIF on NS, ME, and SS were positive in patients with pemphigus. Their corresponding sensitivities and specificities were 30.0%, 84.3%, and 70.0% and 96.4%, 96.4%, and 94.6%, respectively. The differences in sensitivity were statistically significant between NS and ME and between NS and SS (P&lt;0.001) and the specificities among the three substrates were not statistically significantly different (P&gt;0.05). As for different types of pemphigus, the sensitivities between NS and ME and between NS and SS were statistically significantly different in both Dsg1- and Dsg3-positive and only Dsg1-positive patients with pemphigus (P&lt;0.01); the sensitivities between NS and ME were statistically significantly different only in Dsg3-positive patients with pemphigus (P&lt;0.001); there were no statistically significant differences between ME and SS. We therefore propose that ME is a good substrate for pemphigus diagnosis with higher sensitivity and superior to NS, particularly for patients with anti-Dsg3 antibodies. SS is a good alternative substrate to ME with almost identical higher sensitivities and specificities for diagnosis of pemphigus.</p

Research Progress of the Treatment of PD-1 Immune CheckpointInhibitors in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Targeted immune checkpoint-based immunotherapy has achieved remarkable success in the treatment of malignant tumors. Immune checkpoint inhibitor-programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) antibody opens a new era of immunotherapy for platinum-refractory recurrent/metastatic oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). The overall survival of patients treated with immunological checkpoint inhibitors was significantly prolonged, and the overall incidence of grade 3-4 drug-related adverse events (AEs) occurred was lower; however, there are still some challenges to the PD-1’s application in OSCC clinic treatment. This article is just to briefly highlight the development of such application to date

Countermeasure of Research University Development Based on the Index System Analysis of the Comprehensive Competitiveness Ranking of Chinese Universities

Under new situations and circumstances, more quickly and efficiently resources allocation is a natural advance for higher education development. Its inevitable result is that universities must pay great attention to the construction and the promotion of their competitiveness hand in hand with cultivating talents needed in society. This paper made a comprehensive overview to the Comprehensive Competitiveness Ranking of Chinese Universities (CCRCU) released by RCCSE, and emphasized on analyzing the changing trends of evaluation methods and indicators, and digging the development trends of the connotation and extension of universities competence. Some suggestions and countermeasures are put forward

Deep Learning-based Side Channel Attack on HMAC SM3

SM3 is a Chinese hash standard. HMAC SM3 uses a secret key to encrypt the input text and gives an output as the HMAC of the input text. If the key is recovered, adversaries can easily forge a valid HMAC. We can choose different methods, such as traditional side channel analysis, template attack-based side channel analysis to recover the secret key. Deep Learning has recently been introduced as a new alternative to perform Side-Channel analysis. In this paper, we try to recover the secret key with deep learning-based side channel analysis. We should train the network recursively for different parameters by using the same dataset and attack the target dataset with the trained network to recover different parameters. The experiment results show that the secret key can be recovered with deep learning-based side channel analysis. This work demonstrates the interests of this new method and show that this attack can be performed in practice

Infrared High-Index Coating Materials, PbTe and Pb1−xGexTe: Properties and Applications

The greater value of refractive index for high-index layers in thin-film interference filters operating in the infrared has an incomparable advantage. Lead telluride (PbTe), which is much superior to other infrared high-index coating materials due to its high index and advantage of fundamental absorption edges, has played an important role in filters employed in the infrared radiometer and other instruments launched in space atmosphere sounding research projects. In this chapter, we summarized some recent achievements in the investigations into another infrared high-index coating material—lead germanium telluride (Pb1−xGexTe), a pseudo-binary alloy of PbTe and GeTe. It can be revealed that the layers of Pb1−xGexTe exhibit the tunable optical properties, such as temperature coefficient of refractive index and fundamental absorption edge, as well as mechanical properties, such as the hardness and Young’s modulus, corresponding to its intrinsic ferroelectric phase transition. Some important applications in thin-film interference filters were also demonstrated for its tremendous potential, such as a stable narrow bandpass interference filter without temperature-induced wavelength shift and a tunable infrared short wavelength cutoff filter. Furthermore, it is also revealed that electron beam evaporation is a more effective congruent-transfer technique to deposit the layers of Pb1−xGexTe