Greening-Induced Runoff Loss in the Western United States

This study assessed how vegetation will influence long-term runoff trends across the western United States (western US) in the future. I used a land surface model with improved dynamic vegetation root processes to better quantify regional runoff trends across five regions (Upper and Lower Colorado, Great Basin, Pacific Northwest, and California). The model was driven by statistically downscaled and bias-corrected outputs from three global climate models under the Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. Vegetation greening dominated significant transpiration increases that contributed most to increasing evapotranspiration across the western US, especially during spring and summer. Consistent with these trends, runoff exhibited drastic reductions over these five regions, especially during summer. Annual runoff was reduced by up to -79%, -100%, -71%, -16%, and -35% across these regions, respectively. Overall, this study provides reliable fine-scale future projections of water resources for the western US and suggests that vegetation will aggravate the water crisis the western US is currently facing

A Stochastic Frontier Model for Discrete Ordinal Outcomes: A Health Production Function

The stochastic frontier model used for continuous dependent variables is extended to accommodate output measured as a discrete ordinal outcome variable. Conditional on the inefficiency error, the assumptions of the ordered probit model are adopted for the log of output. Bayesian estimation utilizing a Gibbs sampler with data augmentation is applied to a convenient re-parameterisation of the model. Using panel data from an Australian longitudinal survey, demographic and socioeconomic characteristics are specified as inputs to health production, whereas production efficiency is made dependent on lifestyle factors. Posterior summary statistics are obtained for selected health status probabilities, efficiencies, and marginal effects.Bayesian estimation, Gibbs sampling, ordered probit, production efficiency.

Nonoscillations for odd-dimensional systems of linear retarded functional differential equations

AbstractThis paper is concerned with the nonoscillatory problems of odd-dimensional systems of linear retarded functional differential equations. Based upon the corresponding characteristic equations, we get some criteria for nonoscillations by utilizing the matrix measures

Examining Virtual Tourism Community in China

This paper works to increase the body of knowledge on virtual community and incorporates a comparison using a different cultural environment – the context of China. We examine a virtual community of one of the largest travel companies in China - Mango. The Mango virtual community provides a platform for people to get to know each other, offer help and receive help when they have tourism related questions. The purpose of this study is to 1) investigate the usage pattern of a tourism virtual community, 2) apply social capital theory to virtual community, 3) validate prior virtual community research findings in a non-Western (China) tourism context 4) provide implications based on the analysis of user posting patterns. Our results also show collective action is generated by networks of relationships, reciprocity, trust, and social norms

Determination of Volatile Compounds of Illicium verum Hook. f. Using Simultaneous Distillation-Extraction and Solid Phase Microextraction Coupled with Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

Purpose: To determine the characteristic aromatic constituents of star anise (Illicium verum Hook. f.) and identify its main aroma compounds for sensory evaluation.Methods: The volatile compounds of star anise were prepared by simultaneous distillation-extraction (SDE) and the compounds were identified by gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS). The flavor compounds were confirmed by gas chromatography-olfactometry (GC-O). Their flavor dilution factor (FD) values were determined using aroma extract dilution analysis (AEDA). Finally, standard samples that meet the requirements for sensory evaluation were extracted by the solid-phase microextraction (SPME) to further validate characteristic aroma molecules.Results: Forty seven compounds were confirmed, with trans-anethole, estragole, and anisaldehyde the main aroma components. The content of trans-anethole was the highest (75.76 %), followed by linalool (1.44 %). Limonene (1.01 %) and 4’- ethoxypropiophenone (0.72 %) were the lowest.Conclusion: Combining SDE coupled with AEDA and SPME coupled with GC-MS is beneficial for identifying characteristic aroma compounds for star anise, such as trans-anethole, linalool and limonene in terms of FD value. The findings may be useful for star anise quality control in the food industry.Keywords: Aroma, Flavor dilution factor (FD value), Gas chromatography-olfactometry, Simultaneous distillation-extraction, Sensory evaluation, Star anise, Illicium verum, Trans-anethole, Linaloo, Limonen

Thermal Effect of Metal Fin inside Elevated Radiant Floor Based on the Thermal Utilization of a Burning Cave

A rural house integrated with an elevated floor heating system based on the thermal utilization of a burning cave has been established to provide a more comfortable and clear indoor environment. Inside the elevated floor heating system, air is taken as the heat transfer medium and tin layer is designed as metal fin in the middle layer of the elevated floor to enhance heat transfer. In this study, heat transfer process and thermal performance of the inner metal fin were analyzed by theoretical calculations and field measurements. The results show that while the heat flux of the burning cave is decreased from 460 W/m2 to 200 W/m2, the convection heat intensity of the hot air inside the elevated floor under each room is from 2W/m2 to 9W/m2. Finally, it confirms that the effective length of the metal layer should be less than 0.4m. All the above results show that appropriate design parameters can lead to an optimum heat transfer process

On the Caching Schemes to Speed Up Program Reduction

Program reduction is a highly practical, widely demanded technique to help debug language tools, such as compilers, interpreters and debuggers. Given a program P which exhibits a property ψ, conceptually, program reduction iteratively applies various program transformations to generate a vast number of variants from P by deleting certain tokens, and returns the minimal variant preserving ψ as the result. A program reduction process inevitably generates duplicate variants, and the number of them can be significant. Our study reveals that on average 62.3% of the generated variants in HDD, a state-of-the-art program reducer, are duplicates. Checking them against ψ is thus redundant and unnecessary, which wastes time and computation resources. Although it seems that simply caching the generated variants can avoid redundant property tests, such a trivial method is impractical in the real world due to the significant memory footprint. Therefore, a memory-efficient caching scheme for program reduction is in great demand. This thesis is the first effort to conduct systematic, extensive analysis of memory-efficient caching schemes for program reduction. We first propose to use two well-known compression methods, i.e., ZIP and SHA, to compress the generated variants before they are stored in the cache. Furthermore, our keen understanding on the program reduction process motivates us to propose a novel, domain-specific, both memory and computation-efficient caching scheme, Refreshable Compact Caching (RCC). Our key insight is two-fold: 1) by leveraging the correlation between variants and the original program P, we losslessly encode each variant into an equivalent, compact, canonical representation; 2) we periodically remove stale cache entries to minimize the memory footprint over time. Our evaluation on 20 real-world C compiler bugs demonstrates that caching schemes help avoid issuing redundant queries by 62.3%; correspondingly, the runtime performance is notably boosted by 15.6%. With regard to the memory efficiency, all three methods use less memory than the state-of-the-art string-based scheme STR. ZIP and SHA cut down the memory footprint by 73.99% and 99.74%, compared to STR; more importantly, the highly-scalable, domain-specific RCC dominates peer schemes, and outperforms the second-best SHA by 89.0%

Hsa_circ_0072765 knockdown inhibits proliferation, activation and migration in transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β)-induced hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) by the miR-197-3p/TRPV3 axis

Background. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) participate in the progression of diverse human diseases. However, the effects of circRNAs on liver fibrosis are limited. In this study, we aimed to investigate the functions of hsa_circ_0072765 in liver fibrosis. Methods. Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β)treated hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) were used as the cell model of liver fibrosis. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) or western blot was performed to determine the expression of hsa_circ_0072765, microRNA-197-3p (miR-197-3p) and transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V member 3 (TRPV3). 5’-ethynyl-2’-deoxyuridine (EdU) assay, flow cytometry analysis and woundhealing assay were conducted to evaluate cell proliferation, cell cycle and migration. HSC activation was assessed by determining the expression of alphasmooth muscle actin (α-SMA) and type I collagen alpha 1 (Col1A1). Dual-luciferase reporter assay and RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP) were manipulated to analyze the relationship of hsa_circ_0072765, miR-197-3p and TRPV3. The exosome morphology was observed under transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Results. Hsa_circ_0072765 level was increased in TGF-β-induced HSCs. Hsa_circ_0072765 knockdown inhibited cell proliferation, cell cycle, activation and migration in TGF-β-induced HSCs. Hsa_circ_0072765 sponged miR-197-3p and negatively regulated miR-1973p expression. MiR-197-3p inhibition reversed the effects of hsa_circ_0072765 knockdown on TGF-βinduced HSC proliferation, cell cycle, activation and migration. In addition, TRPV3 was the target gene of miR-197-3p and miR-197-3p overexpression inhibited TGF-β-treated HSC proliferation, cell cycle, activation and migration by targeting TRPV3. Besides, we found that exosomal hsa_circ_0072765 was increased in TGFβ-treated HSCs. Conclusion. Hsa_circ_0072765 promoted the progression of TGF-β-treated HSCs by decoying miR197-3p and upregulating TRPV

CCAAT/Enhancer Binding Protein-delta (C/EBP-delta) regulates cell growth, migration and differentiation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>CCAAT/enhancer binding protein-delta (C/EBP-delta) is a member of the highly conserved C/EBP family of basic region leucine zipper transcription factors. C/EBP family members regulate cell growth and differentiation and "loss of function" alterations in C/EBPs have been reported in a variety of human cancers. C/EBP-delta gene expression is upregulated by G₀growth arrest, IL-6 family cytokines and endotoxin treatments. C/EBP-delta exhibits properties of a tumor suppressor gene, including reduced expression and promoter methylation-induced silencing in transformed cell lines and primary tumors. In addition, C/EBP-delta gene expression is repressed by c-Myc, an oncogene that is over-expressed in a wide range of human cancers. "ChIP-chip" studies demonstrated that C/EBP-delta functions as a transcriptional activator of target genes that function in intracellular signal transduction, transcription, DNA binding/repair, cell cycle control, cell adhesion, and apoptosis. Despite progress in determining the biochemical functions of C/EBP-delta, the specific cellular defects that are induced by C/EBP-delta "loss of function" alterations are poorly understood. This study investigated the impact of C/EBP-delta "loss of function" alterations on growth arrest, migration/invasion and differentiation in nontransformed mouse mammary epithelial cells (MECs) and primary mouse embryo fibroblasts (MEFs).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>C/EBP-delta siRNA transfected MECs exhibited ~90% reduction in C/EBP-delta mRNA and protein levels. C/EBP-delta siRNA treatment resulted in defective growth arrest as demonstrated by persistently elevated BrdU labeling, ³H-thymidine incorporation and cyclin D1 levels in response to growth arrest treatments. C/EBP-delta siRNA treatment also resulted in increased migration/invasion and defective differentiation. C/EBP-delta knockout MEFs exhibited defective growth arrest and increased proliferation/migration. Re-introduction of C/EBP-delta expression restored the growth arrest response of C/EBP-delta knockout MEFs. Finally, deletion of the C/EBP-delta DNA binding domain or the C/EBP-delta bZIP domain resulted in the loss of C/EBP-delta growth inhibition in clonogenic assays.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study demonstrates that C/EBP-delta functions in the regulation of critical cell fate determining programs such as growth arrest, migration, and differentiation. These results support the tumor suppressor function of C/EBP-delta and identify potential mechanisms in which "loss of function" alterations in C/EBP-delta could promote cell transformation and tumorigenesis.</p