Existence of Positive Solutions for a Nonlinear Higher-Order Multipoint Boundary Value Problem

We study the existence of positive solutions for a nonlinear higher-order multipoint boundary value problem. By applying a monotone iterative method, some existence results of positive solutions are obtained. The main result is illustrated with an example

Imatinib plus Granulocyte Colony-Stimulating Factor in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Patients Who Have Achieved Partial or Complete Cytogenetic Response while on Imatinib

Background: The BCR/ABL tyrosine kinase inhibitor imatinib is highly effective in the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) but fails to eliminate all leukemia cells. In this study, we investigated whether the addition of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) could reduce the level of residual disease in patients with Ph-positive CML who appeared to have achieved a suboptimal response to imatinib alone. Methods: Eleven patients with CML who had achieved ≧35% Ph-negativity on imatinib were enrolled. The starting dose of imatinib was 400 mg or 600 mg orally daily, and of G-CSF 5 µg/kg s.c. daily. The administration of G-CSF was postponed or interrupted in the event of leukocytosis (≧30 ×109 leukocytes/l) until the white blood cell count fell below 20 × 109/l. Efficacy was assessed by serial monitoring of blood levels of BCR-ABL transcripts. Results: Of 11 evaluable patients, 9 had an appreciable decline in BCR-ABL transcript levels; in 7 cases the reduction was greater than 1 log. Conclusions: We conclude that the addition of G-CSF should be considered for patients on imatinib who fail to obtain optimal response to imatinib alone and that this approach deserves further evaluation as frontline therapy for newly diagnosed CML.Baijun Fang and Ling Mai are equal contributors

2-(2,4,6-Trimethyl­phen­yl)-1,10-phenanthroline

In the title mol­ecule, C21H18N2, the mean plane of the benzene ring of the mesityl group forms a dihedral angle of 82.69 (4)° with that of the phenanthroline ring system. The crystal structure is stabilized by π–π stacking inter­actions between the phenanthroline system and the benzene ring of the mesityl group of a symmetry-related mol­ecule, with centroid–centroid distances of 3.7776 (14) and 3.7155 (13) Å

Phylogeny of the genus Morus (Urticales: Moraceae) inferred from ITS and trnL-F sequences

Both nuclear ribosomal ITS and chloroplast trnL-F sequences were acquired from 13 mulberry genotypes belonging to nine species and three varieties, and one paper mulberry. The later belongs to genus B. papyrifera, designed as outgroup, and were analyzed. Within the genus Morus, the sequence diversity of ITS was much higher than that of trnL-F. The results of phylogenetic analyses based on these data (separately or combined) show that the genus Morus is monophyletic group. Strict consensus tree obtained through the Neighbor-joining method can be divided into five major clades in the genus Morus, according to combined sequence data. M. bombycis, M. alba var. venose formed clades A and B, respectively. Clade C comprises of 5 species; M. rotundiloba, M. atropurpurea, M. mongolica, M. australi, and M. mongolica var. diabolica. Clade D comprises of 3 species; M. wittiorum, M. laevigata, and M. alba. Clade E comprises of 2 species; M. multicaulis, and M.alba var. macrophylla. The results from cluster analysis were basically in agreement with the existing morphologic classification.African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 4 (6), pp. 563-569, 200

A Fast, Efficient Domain Adaptation Technique for Cross-Domain Electroencephalography(EEG)-Based Emotion Recognition

Electroencephalography (EEG)-based emotion recognition is an important element in psychiatric health diagnosis for patients. However, the underlying EEG sensor signals are always non-stationary if they are sampled from different experimental sessions or subjects. This results in the deterioration of the classification performance. Domain adaptation methods offer an effective way to reduce the discrepancy of marginal distribution. However, for EEG sensor signals, both marginal and conditional distributions may be mismatched. In addition, the existing domain adaptation strategies always require a high level of additional computation. To address this problem, a novel strategy named adaptive subspace feature matching (ASFM) is proposed in this paper in order to integrate both the marginal and conditional distributions within a unified framework (without any labeled samples from target subjects). Specifically, we develop a linear transformation function which matches the marginal distributions of the source and target subspaces without a regularization term. This significantly decreases the time complexity of our domain adaptation procedure. As a result, both marginal and conditional distribution discrepancies between the source domain and unlabeled target domain can be reduced, and logistic regression (LR) can be applied to the new source domain in order to train a classifier for use in the target domain, since the aligned source domain follows a distribution which is similar to that of the target domain. We compare our ASFM method with six typical approaches using a public EEG dataset with three affective states: positive, neutral, and negative. Both offline and online evaluations were performed. The subject-to-subject offline experimental results demonstrate that our component achieves a mean accuracy and standard deviation of 80.46% and 6.84%, respectively, as compared with a state-of-the-art method, the subspace alignment auto-encoder (SAAE), which achieves values of 77.88% and 7.33% on average, respectively. For the online analysis, the average classification accuracy and standard deviation of ASFM in the subject-to-subject evaluation for all the 15 subjects in a dataset was 75.11% and 7.65%, respectively, gaining a significant performance improvement compared to the best baseline LR which achieves 56.38% and 7.48%, respectively. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method relative to state-of-the-art methods. Moreover, computational efficiency of the proposed ASFM method is much better than standard domain adaptation; if the numbers of training samples and test samples are controlled within certain range, it is suitable for real-time classification. It can be concluded that ASFM is a useful and effective tool for decreasing domain discrepancy and reducing performance degradation across subjects and sessions in the field of EEG-based emotion recognition

THE BIOLOGY OF PHENACOCCUS AZALEAE KUWANA, A PEST OF BUNGE PRICKLY ASH (ZANTHOXYLUM BUNGEANUM MAXIM) FOREST IN NORTHERN CHINA

THE BIOLOGY OF PHENACOCCUS AZALEAE KUWANA, A PEST OF BUNGE PRICKLY ASH (ZANTHOXYLUM BUNGEANUM MAXIM) FOREST IN NORTHERN CHINA. Phenacoccus azaleae Kuwana (Hemiptera: Coccoidea: Pseudococcidae) is a major new pest of bunge prickly ash forest in northern China, where it causes high tree mortality when present for two consecutive years. This paper reports on the biology of this pest in northern China, where it has been studied since 1995. The life cycle can be divided into eight phases, two of which cause severe injury to the host plant, through the feeding of: (a) the 3rd-instar nymphs and adult females between late March and mid-May, and (b) the young nymphs which are present on the leaves between late June and October. The adult sex ratio was 6-7TM:1¢. The various development stages are described. Of the natural enemies, ladybirds (Coccinellidae) and lacewings (Neuroptera) were the major predators, but they were not abundant in the newly- infested areas. In addition, a few parasitic Hymenoptera were recorded but appeared to be ineffective. Key words: Aphis gossypii, Papilio xuthus, Podagri comeiashirahatai, Calloides magnificus, Agrilus zanthoxylumi, plum, elm, Azalea, Japan, Korea, voltinism, development, population dynamics, damage, Lasius fuliginosus, L. niger, sex ratio, growth rate, Harmonia axyridis, Coccinella septempunctata, Chrysopa

A Review on Fault Mechanism and Diagnosis Approach for Li-Ion Batteries

Li-ion battery has attracted more and more attention as it is a promising storage device which has long service life, higher energy, and power density. However, battery ageing always occurs during operation and leads to performance degradation and system fault which not only causes inconvenience, but also risks serious consequences such as thermal runaway or even explosion. This paper reviews recent research and development of ageing mechanisms of Li-ion batteries to understand the origins and symptoms of Li-ion battery faults. Common ageing factors are covered with their effects and consequences. Through ageing tests, relationship between performance and ageing factors, as well as cross-dependence among factors can be quantified. Summary of recent research about fault diagnosis technology for Li-ion batteries is concluded with their cons and pros. The suggestions on novel fault diagnosis approach and remaining challenges are provided at the end of this paper