Advances in the human skin microbiota and its roles in cutaneous diseases

Skin is the largest organ in the human body, and the interplay between the environment factors and human skin leads to some skin diseases, such as acne, psoriasis, and atopic dermatitis. As the first line of human immune defense, skin plays significant roles in human health via preventing the invasion of pathogens that is heavily influenced by the skin microbiota. Despite being a challenging niche for microbes, human skin is colonized by diverse commensal microorganisms that shape the skin environment. The skin microbiota can affect human health, and its imbalance and dysbiosis contribute to the skin diseases. This review focuses on the advances in our understanding of skin microbiota and its interaction with human skin. Moreover, the potential roles of microbiota in skin health and diseases are described, and some key species are highlighted. The prevention, diagnosis and treatment strategies for microbe-related skin diseases, such as healthy diets, lifestyles, probiotics and prebiotics, are discussed. Strategies for modulation of skin microbiota using synthetic biology are discussed as an interesting venue for optimization of the skin-microbiota interactions. In summary, this review provides insights into human skin microbiota recovery, the interactions between human skin microbiota and diseases, and the strategies for engineering/rebuilding human skin microbiota

Developments in Fatty Acid-Derived Insect Pheromone Production Using Engineered Yeasts

The use of traditional chemical insecticides for pest control often leads to environmental pollution and a decrease in biodiversity. Recently, insect sex pheromones were applied for sustainable biocontrol of pests in fields, due to their limited adverse impacts on biodiversity and food safety compared to that of other conventional insecticides. However, the structures of insect pheromones are complex, and their chemical synthesis is not commercially feasible. As yeasts have been widely used for fatty acid-derived pheromone production in the past few years, using engineered yeasts may be promising and sustainable for the low-cost production of fatty acid-derived pheromones. The primary fatty acids produced by Saccharomyces cerevisiae and other yeasts are C16 and C18, and it is also possible to rewire/reprogram the metabolic flux for other fatty acids or fatty acid derivatives. This review summarizes the fatty acid biosynthetic pathway in S. cerevisiae and recent progress in yeast engineering in terms of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology strategies to produce insect pheromones. In the future, insect pheromones produced by yeasts might provide an eco-friendly pest control method in agricultural fields

shorter verifier-local revocation group signature with backward unlinkability

Natl. Inst. Inf. Commun. Technol. (NICT); Microsoft Research; Voltage Security; Hitachi, Ltd.; NTT DataUsed as the privacy-preserving attestation by Trusted Computing effort (TCG) or the privacy-preserving authentication protocol in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), group signature becomes more important than ever. Membership revocation is a delicate issue in group signatures. Verifier-local revocation (VLR) is a reasonable resolution, especially for mobile environments. Back unlinkability (BU) is a currently introduced security property providing further privacy. Based on the Decision Linear (DLIN) assumption and the q-Strong Diffie-Hellman (q-SDH) assumption, a new BU-VLR group signature scheme is proposed, which has the shortest signature size and smallest computation overhead among the previous BU-VLR group signature schemes. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Revolts Frequency during 1644–1911 in North China Plain and Its Relationship with Climate

Based on the records of social revolts in the Actual Annals of Qing Dynasty (a collection of official records), the revolts frequency (amount of counties where revolts happened every year) in North China Plain during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) is reconstructed. By comparing revolts frequency with temperature and precipitation series, the interaction between climate and social responses is analyzed. It can be concluded that revolts broke out more frequently in colder periods and less frequently in warmer periods. There were much more revolts in drought decades than in wet decades, and the three fatal peasant uprisings in the Qing Dynasty were all ignited by severe droughts. The impacts of changes in temperature and precipitation on revolts should be estimated at different time scales. The correspondence emerged at neither decadal nor yearly scale until the turn between 18th and 19th centuries, the critical period when per capita cropland area decreased to a vulnerable level. Food crisis increased the vulnerability of local society, and changes in temperature and precipitation became an important trigger for revolts. Xiao, L., Y. Ye, and B. Wei, 2011: Revolts frequency during 1644–1911 in North China Plain and its relationship with climate. Adv. Clim. Change Res., 2 (4), doi:10.3724/SP.J.1248.2011.00218

Optimizing Forest Spatial Structure with Neighborhood-Based Indices: Four Case Studies from Northeast China

The fine-scale spatial patterns of trees and their interactions are of paramount importance for controlling the structure and function of forest ecosystems; however, few management techniques can be employed to adjust the structural characteristics of uneven-aged mixed forests. This research provides an accurate, efficient, and impersonal comprehensive thinning index (P-index) for selecting candidate harvesting trees; the index was proposed by weighting the commonly used quantitative indices with respect to stand fine-scale structures, competition status, tree vigor, and tree stability. The applications of the proposed P-index in evaluating and simulating the process of thinning operations were examined using four 1-ha mapped plots with different forest types, namely, natural secondary forest, natural pine-broadleaved mixed forest, natural larch-birch mixed forest, and natural oak forest, which were widely distributed across the Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China. The results indicated that the proposed P-index could effectively affect the structural differentiations between different forest types and alternative thinning intensities. The marginal benefits of alternative thinning intensities on the integrated forest structure indicated that removing 10% of the trees from the plots might be the optimal thinning intensity from the perspective of optimizing stand structure, in which the P-index values could be increased by approximately 5%–11% for the four tested plots. The main conclusion from this paper was that the proposed P-index could be used as a quantitative tool to manage uneven-aged mixed forests

Interface characteristics of selective laser melted stainless steel 316L and Inconel 718

Additive manufactured dissimilar metal constructs of alternating Inconel 718 and Stainless Steel 316L layers were fabricated by using selective laser melting. The solidified interfaces between two materials were examined to understand the interface characteristics. No distinct horizontal layers have been observed and undulating dissimilar interfaces at meso-scale. The undulations of the interfacing are understood a result of the melt pool surface oscillations driven by forces such as surface tension. The shape of the interface and the chemical distribution across the interface implied that the mass transport by the flow can significantly influence the interface morphology.<br/

threshold password-based authenticated group key exchange in gateway-oriented setting

Korea Internet & Security Agcy, Elect & Telecommun Res Inst, Korea Inst Informat Security & Cryptography, Korea Commun CommissIn this paper, we extend Abdalla et al. s work in Asiacrypt 2005 to group-based setting. Our goal is to allow a group of users to establish a shared session key with a gateway under the assistance of an authentication server, while the server has no information about this session key and the gateway has no information about any password. Distinct to ordinary password-based group key exchange protocols, different shares of a groupwise password are assigned to group users respectively in our protocol. Each share is also a human-memorable password. According to our protocol, a group of at least k (a predefined threshold) users is authorized to establish a key with gateway. Additionally, the new protocol is proven secure in random-oracle model

Steady Modeling for an Ammonia Synthesis Reactor Based on a Novel CDEAS-LS-SVM Model

A steady-state mathematical model is built in order to represent plant behavior under stationary operating conditions. A novel modeling using LS-SVR based on Cultural Differential Evolution with Ant Search is proposed. LS-SVM is adopted to establish the model of the net value of ammonia. The modeling method has fast convergence speed and good global adaptability for identification of the ammonia synthesis process. The LS-SVR model was established using the above-mentioned method. Simulation results verify the validity of the method

Research progress on large-area perovskite thin films and solar modules

Organometal halide perovskites have exhibited a bright future as photovoltaic semiconductor in next generation solar cells due to their unique and promising physicochemical properties. Over the past few years, we have witnessed a tremendous progress of efficiency record evolution of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Up to now, the highest efficiency record of PSCs has reached 22.1%; however, it was achieved at a very small device area of <0.1 cm2. With the device area increasing to mini-module scale, the efficiency record dropped dramatically. The inherent causes are mainly ascribed to inadequate quality control of large-area perovskite thin films and insufficient optimization of solar module design. In current stage of PSCs research and development, to overcome these two obstacles is in urgent need before this new technology could realize scale-up industrialization. Herein, we present an overview of recently developed strategies for preparing large-area perovskite thin films and perovskite solar modules (PSMs). At last, cost analysis and future application directions of PSMs have also been discussed