Six New Species of Leucoagaricus (Agaricaceae) from Northeastern China

Six new species, Leucoagaricus albosquamosus, Leucoagaricus atroviridis, Leucoagaricus aurantioruber, Leucoagaricus candidus, Leucoagaricus centricastaneus and Leucoagaricus virens, collected from northeastern China are described based on morphological characters and molecular evidence. Illustrations of fresh basidiomata and line drawings of key anatomical characters are provided. A phylogenetic tree inferred from internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and large subunit ribosomal RNA gene (LSU) sequences shows that three of the new taxa are nested within the section Leucoagaricus and two of the new taxa are in the subgenus Sericeomyces, whereas the other new taxus is clustered with Leucoagaricus viriditinctus and Leucoagaricus irinellus, forming a clade that does not fit in any known section

Six New Species of <i>Leucoagaricus</i> (Agaricaceae) from Northeastern China

Six new species, Leucoagaricus albosquamosus, Leucoagaricus atroviridis, Leucoagaricus aurantioruber, Leucoagaricus candidus, Leucoagaricus centricastaneus and Leucoagaricus virens, collected from northeastern China are described based on morphological characters and molecular evidence. Illustrations of fresh basidiomata and line drawings of key anatomical characters are provided. A phylogenetic tree inferred from internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and large subunit ribosomal RNA gene (LSU) sequences shows that three of the new taxa are nested within the section Leucoagaricus and two of the new taxa are in the subgenus Sericeomyces, whereas the other new taxus is clustered with Leucoagaricus viriditinctus and Leucoagaricus irinellus, forming a clade that does not fit in any known section

Dual-Level Decoupled Transformer for Video Captioning

Video captioning aims to understand the spatio-temporal semantic concept of the video and generate descriptive sentences. The de-facto approach to this task dictates a text generator to learn from \textit{offline-extracted} motion or appearance features from \textit{pre-trained} vision models. However, these methods may suffer from the so-called \textbf{\textit{"couple"}} drawbacks on both \textit{video spatio-temporal representation} and \textit{sentence generation}. For the former, \textbf{\textit{"couple"}} means learning spatio-temporal representation in a single model(3DCNN), resulting the problems named \emph{disconnection in task/pre-train domain} and \emph{hard for end-to-end training}. As for the latter, \textbf{\textit{"couple"}} means treating the generation of visual semantic and syntax-related words equally. To this end, we present $\mathcal{D}^{2}$ - a dual-level decoupled transformer pipeline to solve the above drawbacks: \emph{(i)} for video spatio-temporal representation, we decouple the process of it into "first-spatial-then-temporal" paradigm, releasing the potential of using dedicated model(\textit{e.g.} image-text pre-training) to connect the pre-training and downstream tasks, and makes the entire model end-to-end trainable. \emph{(ii)} for sentence generation, we propose \emph{Syntax-Aware Decoder} to dynamically measure the contribution of visual semantic and syntax-related words. Extensive experiments on three widely-used benchmarks (MSVD, MSR-VTT and VATEX) have shown great potential of the proposed $\mathcal{D}^{2}$ and surpassed the previous methods by a large margin in the task of video captioning

Selective removal of divalent cations by polyelectrolyte multilayer nanofiltration membrane: Role of polyelectrolyte charge, ion size, and ionic strength

We fabricatedﾠpolyelectrolyteﾠmultilayerﾠ(PEM)ﾠnanofiltrationﾠ(NF) membranes using a layer-by-layer (LbL) method for effective removal of scale-forming divalent cations (Mg2+, Ca2+, Sr2+, and Ba2+) from feedwaters with different salinities. Twoﾠpolymersﾠwith opposite charges, polycation (poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride), PDADMAC) and polyanion (poly(sodium 4-styrenesulfonate), PSS), were sequentially deposited on a commercialﾠpolyamideﾠNF membrane to form a PEM. Compared to pristine and PSS-terminated membranes, PDADMAC-terminated membranes demonstrated much higher rejection of divalent cations and selectivity forﾠsodiumﾠtransport over divalent cations (Na+/X2+) due to a combination of both Donnan- and size-exclusion effects. A PDADMAC-terminated membrane with 5.5 bilayers exhibited 97% rejection of Mg2+ﾠwith selectivity (Na+/Mg2+) greater than 30. We attribute the order of cation rejection (Mg2+ﾠ> Ca2+ﾠ> Sr2+ﾠ> Ba2+) to the ionic size, which governs both the hydration radius and hydration energy of the cations. The ionic strength (salinity) of the feed solution had a significant influence on both water flux and cation rejection of PEM membranes. In feed solutions with high ionic strength, abundant NaCl salt screened the charge of the polyelectrolytes and led to swelling of the multilayers, resulting in decreased selectivity (Na+/X2+) and increased water permeability. The fabricated PEM membranes can be potentially applied to the pretreatment of mild-salinity brackish waters to reduce membrane scaling in the mainﾠdesalinationﾠstage

Two Sarcoviolins with Antioxidative and α‑Glucosidase Inhibitory Activity from the Edible Mushroom <i>Sarcodon leucopus</i> Collected in Tibet

Edible mushrooms are known as an important source of natural antioxidants. The ethyl acetate extract of the edible mushroom <i>Sarcodon leucopus</i> (Zangzi mushroom) possesses strong antioxidative activity. Bioactivity-guided isolation afforded 10 compounds from its fruiting bodies, including two new sarcoviolins, sarcoviolin β (<b>1</b>) and episarcoviolin β (<b>2</b>), and one new <i>p</i>-terphenyl derivative (<b>3</b>) along with seven known compounds. The structures of the new compounds were elucidated by spectroscopic methods and comparison with the known compounds. Compounds <b>1</b>–<b>10</b> were found to have antioxidant effects in the DPPH scavenging assay, the total antioxidant capacity assay, the reducing power assay, and the lipid peroxidation assay. Further study indicated that they could protect DNA strands from free radical-induced cleavage at 200 μM. Compounds <b>1</b>–<b>10</b> also presented strong α-glucosidase inhibitory activity. Of all tested compounds, compound <b>1</b> exhibited the strongest inhibitory activity, with an IC₅₀ value of 0.58 μM

Video_1_Design and dynamic analysis of jumping wheel-legged robot in complex terrain environment.MOV

Wheel-legged robots have fast and stable motion characteristics on flat roads, but there are the problems of poor balance ability and low movement level in special terrains such as rough roads. In this paper, a new type of wheel-legged robot with parallel four-bar mechanism is proposed, and the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controller and fuzzy proportion differentiation (PD) jumping controller are designed and developed to achieve stable motion so that the robot has the ability to jump over obstacles and adapt to rough terrain. The amount of energy released by the parallel four-bar linkage mechanism changes with the change of the link angle, and the height of the jump trajectory changes accordingly, which improves the robot’s ability to overcome obstacles facing vertical obstacles. Simulations and real scene tests are performed in different terrain environments to verify obstacle crossing capabilities. The simulation results show that, in the pothole terrain, the maximum height error of the two hip joint motors is 2 mm for the obstacle surmounting method of the adaptive retractable wheel-legs; in the process of single leg obstacle surmounting, the maximum height error of the hip joint motors is only 6.6 mm. The comparison of simulation data and real scene experimental results shows that the robot has better robustness in moving under complex terrains.</p

Enhanced Thermoelectric Properties of Codoped Cr₂Se₃: The Distinct Roles of Transition Metals and S

Pristine Cr₂Se₃ is a narrow-band gap semiconductor but with an inferior <i>ZT</i> value of 0.22 obtained at 623 K. In this paper, we improve the thermoelectric performance of the Cr₂Se₃ material by optimizing carrier concentration, suppressing the bipolar thermal conductivity, and reducing the lattice thermal conductivity simultaneously. First, the effect of different dopants (Nb, Ni, and Mn) on the phase composition and thermoelectric transport properties of M_2<i>x</i>Cr_{2–2<i>x</i>}Se₃ (M = Nb, Ni, and Mn; <i>x</i> = 0–0.02) compounds are systematically investigated. The roles of those dopants are distinct. Mn-doped samples show superior thermoelectric properties in comparison with those of other-element-doped samples. Doping with Mn significantly increases the carrier concentration, accompanied with a suppression of the intrinsic excitation and a reduction of both the bipolar thermal conductivity and the lattice thermal conductivity of Cr₂Se₃. To further reduce the thermal conductivity, we have synthesized Mn and S codoped Mn_0.04Cr_1.96Se_{3–3<i>x</i>}S_3<i>x</i> (<i>x</i> = 0–0.1) samples. Alloying with S significantly decreases the lattice thermal conductivity and enlarges the band gap, boosting the Seebeck coefficient. The maximum <i>ZT</i> value of Mn_0.04Cr_1.96Se_2.7S_0.3 reaches 0.33 at 823 K. Compared with the pristine Cr₂Se₃ sample, the maximum <i>ZT</i> value is increased by 50% and the temperature corresponding to the peak value shifts toward higher temperatures by 200 K