Preparation of La-doped BiFeO₃thin films with Fe²⁺ ions on Si substrates

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A Policy-Driven Large Scale Ecological Restoration: Quantifying Ecosystem Services Changes in the Loess Plateau of China

As one of the key tools for regulating human-ecosystem relations, environmental conservation policies can promote ecological rehabilitation across a variety of spatiotemporal scales. However, quantifying the ecological effects of such policies at the regional level is difficult. A case study was conducted at the regional level in the ecologically vulnerable region of the Loess Plateau, China, through the use of several methods including the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE), hydrological modeling and multivariate analysis. An assessment of the changes over the period of 2000–2008 in four key ecosystem services was undertaken to determine the effects of the Chinese government's ecological rehabilitation initiatives implemented in 1999. These ecosystem services included water regulation, soil conservation, carbon sequestration and grain production. Significant conversions of farmland to woodland and grassland were found to have resulted in enhanced soil conservation and carbon sequestration, but decreased regional water yield under a warming and drying climate trend. The total grain production increased in spite of a significant decline in farmland acreage. These trends have been attributed to the strong socioeconomic incentives embedded in the ecological rehabilitation policy. Although some positive policy results have been achieved over the last decade, large uncertainty remains regarding long-term policy effects on the sustainability of ecological rehabilitation performance and ecosystem service enhancement. To reduce such uncertainty, this study calls for an adaptive management approach to regional ecological rehabilitation policy to be adopted, with a focus on the dynamic interactions between people and their environments in a changing world

Observation of a ppb mass threshoud enhancement in \psi^\prime\to\pi^+\pi^-J/\psi(J/\psi\to\gamma p\bar{p}) decay

The decay channel $\psi^\prime\to\pi^+\pi^-J/\psi(J/\psi\to\gamma p\bar{p})$ is studied using a sample of $1.06\times 10^8$ $\psi^\prime$ events collected by the BESIII experiment at BEPCII. A strong enhancement at threshold is observed in the $p\bar{p}$ invariant mass spectrum. The enhancement can be fit with an $S$-wave Breit-Wigner resonance function with a resulting peak mass of $M=1861^{+6}_{-13} {\rm (stat)}^{+7}_{-26} {\rm (syst)} {\rm MeV/}c^2$ and a narrow width that is $\Gamma<38 {\rm MeV/}c^2$ at the 90% confidence level. These results are consistent with published BESII results. These mass and width values do not match with those of any known meson resonance.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Chinese Physics

Evidence of phonon-assisted tunnelling in electrical conduction through DNA molecules

We propose a phonon-assisted tunnelling model for explanation of conductivity dependence on temperature and temperature-dependent I-V characteristics in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules. The capability of this model for explanation of conductivity peculiarities in DNA is illustrated by comparison of the temperature dependent I-V data extracted from some articles with tunnelling rate dependences on temperature and field strength computed according to the phonon-assisted tunnelling theory. PACS Codes: 87.15.-v, 71.38.-k, 73.40.GkComment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Five-frequency Galileo long-baseline ambiguity resolution with multipath mitigation

© 2018, The Author(s). For long-baseline over several hundreds of kilometers, the ionospheric delays that cannot be fully removed by differencing observations between receivers hampers rapid ambiguity resolution. Compared with forming ionospheric-free linear combination using dual- or triple-frequency observations, estimating ionospheric delays using uncombined observations keeps all the information of the observations and allows extension of the strategy to any number of frequencies. As the number of frequencies has increased for the various GNSSs, it is possible to study long-baseline ambiguity resolution performance using up to five frequencies with uncombined observations. We make use of real Galileo observations on five frequencies with a sampling interval of 1 s. Two long baselines continuously receiving signals from six Galileo satellites during corresponding test time intervals were processed to study the formal and empirical ambiguity success rates in case of full ambiguity resolution (FAR). The multipath effects are mitigated using the measuremen ts of another day when the constellation repeats. Compared to the results using multipath-uncorrected Galileo observations, it is found that the multipath mitigation plays an important role in improving the empirical ambiguity success rates. A high number of frequencies are also found to be helpful to achieve high ambiguity success rate within a short time. Using multipath-uncorrected observations on two, three, four and five frequencies, the mean empirical success rates are found to be about 73, 88, 91, and 95% at 10 s, respectively, while the values are increased to higher than 86, 95, 98, and 99% after mitigating the multipath effects

International consensus on natural orifice specimen extraction surgery (NOSES) for colorectal cancer

In recent years, natural orifice specimen extraction surgery (NOSES) in the treatment of colorectal cancer has attracted widespread attention. The potential benefits of NOSES including reduction in postoperative pain and wound complications, less use of postoperative analgesic, faster recovery of bowel function, shorter length of hospital stay, better cosmetic and psychological effect have been described in colorectal surgery. Despite significant decrease in surgical trauma of NOSES have been observed, the potential pitfalls of this technique have been demonstrated. Particularly, several issues including bacteriological concerns, oncological outcomes and patient selection are raised with this new technique. Therefore, it is urgent and necessary to reach a consensus as an industry guideline to standardize the implementation of NOSES in colorectal surgery. After three rounds of discussion by all members of the International Alliance of NOSES, the consensus is finally completed, which is also of great significance to the long-term progress of NOSES worldwide.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Global Expression Analysis Revealed Novel Gender-Specific Gene Expression Features in the Blood Fluke Parasite Schistosoma japonicum

BACKGROUND: Schistosoma japonicum is one of the remarkable Platyhelminths that are endemic in China and Southeast Asian countries. The parasite is dioecious and can reside inside the host for many years. Rapid reproduction by producing large number of eggs and count-react host anti-parasite responses are the strategies that benefit long term survival of the parasite. Praziquantel is currently the only drug that is effective against the worms. Development of novel antiparasite reagents and immune-prevention measures rely on the deciphering of parasite biology. The decoding of the genomic sequence of the parasite has made it possible to dissect the functions of genes that govern the development of the parasite. In this study, the polyadenylated transcripts from male and female S. japonicum were isolated for deep sequencing and the sequences were systematically analysed. RESULTS: First, the number of genes actively expressed in the two sexes of S. japonicum was similar, but around 50% of genes were biased to either male or female in expression. Secondly, it was, at the first time, found that more than 50% of the coding region of the genome was transcribed from both strands. Among them, 65% of the genes had sense and their cognate antisense transcripts co-expressed, whereas 35% had inverse relationship between sense and antisense transcript abundance. Further, based on gene ontological analysis, more than 2,000 genes were functionally categorized and biological pathways that are differentially functional in male or female parasites were elucidated. CONCLUSIONS: Male and female schistosomal parasites differ in gene expression patterns, many metabolic and biological pathways have been identified in this study and genes differentially expressed in gender specific manner were presented. Importantly, more than 50% of the coding regions of the S. japonicum genome transcribed from both strands, antisense RNA-mediated gene regulation might play a critical role in the parasite biology