Timing of Drought Affected the Growth, Physiology, and Mortality of Mongolian Pine Saplings

Background and Objectives: More frequent and severe droughts are occurring due to climate change in northern China. In addition to intensity and duration, the timing of droughts may be decisive for its impacts on tree growth, mortality, and the whole forest ecosystem. The aim of this study was to compare the effect of drought occurring in the early- and mid-growing season on the growth and physiology of Mongolian pine (Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica Litv.) saplings. Materials and Methods: Four-year-old container saplings that were about to sprout were exposed to three treatments: (i) regular irrigation throughout the growing season (CTRL), (ii) no irrigation in the early growing season (weeks 1–5) followed by regular irrigation (EGD), (iii) no irrigation in the mid growing season (weeks 5–10), and regular irrigation in the early and late growing season (MGD). We measured the root and shoot growth, sapling mortality, and the physiological changes in the roots and needles periodically. Results: Drought in the mid growing season was more harmful than in the early growing season in terms of chlorophyll fluorescence, electrolyte leakage of needles, needle length, stem diameter increment, and sapling mortality. The high mortality in the mid growing season might be attributed to the joint effect of drought and high temperature. Drought in the early growing season decreased root growth, and the starch and soluble sugars in roots as much as the drought in the mid growing season. Abscisic acid concentration increased in fine roots, but decreased in old needles after drought. Conclusions: Special attention should be paid on forest sites susceptible to drought during afforestation in the face of ongoing climate change

Timing of Drought Affected the Growth, Physiology, and Mortality of Mongolian Pine Saplings

Background and Objectives: More frequent and severe droughts are occurring due to climate change in northern China. In addition to intensity and duration, the timing of droughts may be decisive for its impacts on tree growth, mortality, and the whole forest ecosystem. The aim of this study was to compare the effect of drought occurring in the early- and mid-growing season on the growth and physiology of Mongolian pine (Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica Litv.) saplings. Materials and Methods: Four-year-old container saplings that were about to sprout were exposed to three treatments: (i) regular irrigation throughout the growing season (CTRL), (ii) no irrigation in the early growing season (weeks 1–5) followed by regular irrigation (EGD), (iii) no irrigation in the mid growing season (weeks 5–10), and regular irrigation in the early and late growing season (MGD). We measured the root and shoot growth, sapling mortality, and the physiological changes in the roots and needles periodically. Results: Drought in the mid growing season was more harmful than in the early growing season in terms of chlorophyll fluorescence, electrolyte leakage of needles, needle length, stem diameter increment, and sapling mortality. The high mortality in the mid growing season might be attributed to the joint effect of drought and high temperature. Drought in the early growing season decreased root growth, and the starch and soluble sugars in roots as much as the drought in the mid growing season. Abscisic acid concentration increased in fine roots, but decreased in old needles after drought. Conclusions: Special attention should be paid on forest sites susceptible to drought during afforestation in the face of ongoing climate change

OmniZoomer: Learning to Move and Zoom in on Sphere at High-Resolution

Omnidirectional images (ODIs) have become increasingly popular, as their large field-of-view (FoV) can offer viewers the chance to freely choose the view directions in immersive environments such as virtual reality. The M\"obius transformation is typically employed to further provide the opportunity for movement and zoom on ODIs, but applying it to the image level often results in blurry effect and aliasing problem. In this paper, we propose a novel deep learning-based approach, called \textbf{OmniZoomer}, to incorporate the M\"obius transformation into the network for movement and zoom on ODIs. By learning various transformed feature maps under different conditions, the network is enhanced to handle the increasing edge curvatures, which alleviates the blurry effect. Moreover, to address the aliasing problem, we propose two key components. Firstly, to compensate for the lack of pixels for describing curves, we enhance the feature maps in the high-resolution (HR) space and calculate the transformed index map with a spatial index generation module. Secondly, considering that ODIs are inherently represented in the spherical space, we propose a spherical resampling module that combines the index map and HR feature maps to transform the feature maps for better spherical correlation. The transformed feature maps are decoded to output a zoomed ODI. Experiments show that our method can produce HR and high-quality ODIs with the flexibility to move and zoom in to the object of interest. Project page is available at http://vlislab22.github.io/OmniZoomer/.Comment: Accepted by ICCV 202

Alphabetic Knowledge and Phonological Awareness : A comparison between Malaysian Preschool Children from Public and Private Kindergartens

Alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness are essential skills in learning to read. This research examined the level of acquisition on alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness among 60 preschoolers from private and public preschools in Kuching, Sarawak. The mean age of the children was 5.58. The children were administered letter name and sound knowledge, and letter naming fluency tests to examine their alphabetic knowledge; Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing and Yopp-Singer Phoneme Segmentation Test to examine their phonological awareness. Higher achievement in alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness was found among preschoolers from private preschools compared to those from public preschools. This study discusses the implications for practice and the ways teachers could explicitly foster alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness skills in the classroom

The Association between Individual SNPs or Haplotypes of Matrix Metalloproteinase 1 and Gastric Cancer Susceptibility, Progression and Prognosis

BACKGROUND: The single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in matrix metalloproteinase 1(MMP-1) play important roles in some cancers. This study examined the associations between individual SNPs or haplotypes in MMP-1 and susceptibility, clinicopathological parameters and prognosis of gastric cancer in a large sample of the Han population in northern China. METHODS: In this case-controlled study, there were 404 patients with gastric cancer and 404 healthy controls. Seven SNPs were genotyped using the MALDI-TOF MS system. Then, SPSS software, Haploview 4.2 software, Haplo.states software and THEsias software were used to estimate the association between individual SNPs or haplotypes of MMP-1 and gastric cancer susceptibility, progression and prognosis. RESULTS: Among seven SNPs, there were no individual SNPs correlated to gastric cancer risk. Moreover, only the rs470206 genotype had a correlation with histologic grades, and the patients with GA/AA had well cell differentiation compared to the patients with genotype GG (OR=0.573; 95%CI: 0.353-0.929; P=0.023). Then, we constructed a four-marker haplotype block that contained 4 common haplotypes: TCCG, GCCG, TTCG and TTTA. However, all four common haplotypes had no correlation with gastric cancer risk and we did not find any relationship between these haplotypes and clinicopathological parameters in gastric cancer. Furthermore, neither individual SNPs nor haplotypes had an association with the survival of patients with gastric cancer. CONCLUSIONS: This study evaluated polymorphisms of the MMP-1 gene in gastric cancer with a MALDI-TOF MS method in a large northern Chinese case-controlled cohort. Our results indicated that these seven SNPs of MMP-1 might not be useful as significant markers to predict gastric cancer susceptibility, progression or prognosis, at least in the Han population in northern China

Using combination of lifting wavelet and multiclass SVM based on global optimization class strategy for fault pattern identification

This paper presents a new method based on lifting wavelet for obtaining a fast multiclass SVM classification based on global optimization class strategy for fault diagnosis of roller bearing. Decision making was performed in two stages: feature extraction by computing the lifting wavelet coefficients and classification using the multiclass SVM classifiers trained on the extracted features. Experiments demonstrate that in comparison to discrete wavelet transform the lifting wavelet feature extraction can speed up the identification phase as well as achieve higher accuracy of multiclass SVM that is based on global optimization class strategy. Experimental results also reveal that the proposed multiclass SVM of global optimization is better than strategy of one against one and DAGSVM

A REAL-TIME PEDESTRIAN DETECTION SYSTEM IN STREET SCENE

U današnje vrijeme dolazi do sve veće svijesti očuvanju okoliša. Često je na udaru automobilska industrija jer se smatra jednim od najvećih zagađivača okoliša. Iz tih se razloga energetski sustavi sve više okreću prema obnovljivim izvorima energije a transport prema elektrifikaciji putem hibridnih i električnih vozila. Iako je većina komponenti koja sačinjava hibridni električni pogon vozila već odavno poznata te njihov razvoj dolazi do vrhunca, nije još točno određen i definiran pravac najboljeg i najefikasnijeg upravljanja hibridnim pogonima, posebno onima kod kojih je električni motor relativno male snage (tzv. umjerena hibridna vozila). Pod pojmom upravljanja u ovom kontekstu smatra se pojam nadređene strategije upravljanja koji se bavi time kako najbolje iskoristiti komponente hibridnog sustava u svrhu smanjenje potrošnje goriva. Iz tog razloga u ovom radu se obrađuje jedan od mogućih načina upravljanja umjerenim hibridnim električnim vozilom paralelne P2 konfiguracije. Razvija se strategija temeljena na bazi pravila (engl. rule-based), koja ovisno o zadanim pravilima definira stanje i parametre rada zadanih komponenti. Unutar upravljačke strategije definiraju se takozvane funkcionalnosti hibridnog vozila prema prethodno spomenutoj bazi pravila. Funkcionalnosti koje se razmatraju jesu: sporohodna električna vožnja, pasivno i aktivno električno krstarenje te regenerativno kočenje. Razvijena upravljačka strategija implementira se i ispituje unutar simulacijskog paketa AVL CRUISE, pri čemu je kod simulacijskog ispitivanja naglasak na analizi smanjenja potrošnje goriva te utjecaja voznost na vozila.In recent years, environmental awareness is growing. Automotive industry is often hit by criticism as it is considered as one of the largest environmental polluters. For these reasons energy systems are increasingly turning towards renewable energy sources, and transport systems towards electrification through hybrid and electric vehicles. Although most of the components which constitute the hybrid system have long been known and their development is at its climax, the best and most efficient control strategy design for such systems has not yet been defined and determined, especially for those with relatively low power electric motors (so-called mild hybrid electric vehicles). Here, the control strategy term refers to high-level control strategy for hybrid powertrain, which combines the hybrid system components with the aim of reducing the fuel consumption. For this reason, this paper deals with one of the possible approaches of high-level control strategy development for mild hybrid electric vehicle in P2 configuration. A rule-based control strategy is developed, which, depending on the given rules, defines the operation mode and parameters of the hybrid powertrain components. Within the control strategy, the so-called hybrid vehicle functionalities are defined according to the previously mentioned rule base. The functionalities to be considered are: eCreep, eCoasting, eSailing and regenerative braking. The developed control strategy is implemented and verified within the simulation package AVL CRUISE, whereby simulation testing focuses on analysis of fuel consumption reduction and the driveability of the vehicle