Urban Building Energy Planning With Space Distribution and Time Dynamic Simulation

It is important to deal with energy saving in buildings of one city level, and plan the energy system from one building to one city level. We strongly suggest conducting urban building energy planning (UBEP

LSD: a leaf senescence database

By broad literature survey, we have developed a leaf senescence database (LSD, http://www.eplantsenescence.org/) that contains a total of 1145 senescence associated genes (SAGs) from 21 species. These SAGs were retrieved based on genetic, genomic, proteomic, physiological or other experimental evidence, and were classified into different categories according to their functions in leaf senescence or morphological phenotypes when mutated. We made extensive annotations for these SAGs by both manual and computational approaches, and users can either browse or search the database to obtain information including literatures, mutants, phenotypes, expression profiles, miRNA interactions, orthologs in other plants and cross links to other databases. We have also integrated a bioinformatics analysis platform WebLab into LSD, which allows users to perform extensive sequence analysis of their interested SAGs. The SAG sequences in LSD can also be downloaded readily for bulk analysis. We believe that the LSD contains the largest number of SAGs to date and represents the most comprehensive and informative plant senescence-related database, which would facilitate the systems biology research and comparative studies on plant aging

ICDP workshop on scientific drilling of Nam Co on the Tibetan Plateau: 1 million years of paleoenvironmental history, geomicrobiology, tectonics and paleomagnetism derived from sediments of a high-altitude lake

The Tibetan Plateau is of peculiar societal relevance as it provides freshwater from the so-called “Water Tower of Asia” to a large portion of the Asian population. However, future climate change will affect the hydrological cycle in this area. To define parameters for future climate change scenarios it is necessary to improve the knowledge about thresholds, timing, pace and intensity of past climatic changes and associated environmental impacts. Sedimentary archives reaching far back in time and spanning several glacial–interglacial cycles such as Nam Co provide the unique possibility to extract such information. In order to explore the scientific opportunities that an ICDP drilling effort at Nam Co would provide, 40 scientists from 13 countries representing various scientific disciplines met in Beijing from 22 to 24 May 2018. Besides paleoclimatic investigations, opportunities for paleomagnetic, deep biosphere, tectonic and paleobiological studies were discussed. After having explored the technical and logistical challenges and the scientific opportunities all participants agreed on the great value and need to drill this extraordinary archive, which has a sediment thickness of more than 1 km, likely covering more than 1 Ma

Genetic Network between Leaf Senescence and Plant Immunity: Crucial Regulatory Nodes and New Insights

Leaf senescence is an essential physiological process that is accompanied by the remobilization of nutrients from senescent leaves to young leaves or other developing organs. Although leaf senescence is a genetically programmed process, it can be induced by a wide variety of biotic and abiotic factors. Accumulating studies demonstrate that senescence-associated transcription factors (Sen-TFs) play key regulatory roles in controlling the initiation and progression of leaf senescence process. Interestingly, recent functional studies also reveal that a number of Sen-TFs function as positive or negative regulators of plant immunity. Moreover, the plant hormone salicylic acid (SA) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been demonstrated to be key signaling molecules in regulating leaf senescence and plant immunity, suggesting that these two processes share similar or common regulatory networks. However, the interactions between leaf senescence and plant immunity did not attract sufficient attention to plant scientists. Here, we review the regulatory roles of SA and ROS in biotic and abiotic stresses, as well as the cross-talks between SA/ROS and other hormones in leaf senescence and plant immunity, summarize the transcriptional controls of Sen-TFs on SA and ROS signal pathways, and analyze the cross-regulation between senescence and immunity through a broad literature survey. In-depth understandings of the cross-regulatory mechanisms between leaf senescence and plant immunity will facilitate the cultivation of high-yield and disease-resistant crops through a molecular breeding strategy

Combination of High- and Low-Rate GPS Receivers for Monitoring Wind-Induced Response of Tall Buildings

High-rise buildings are susceptible to wind-induced displacements, which can be precisely monitored by using GPS technology. However, GPS monitoring applications may be subject to signal interference and high hardware costs. This study presents a new wind-induced vibration monitoring approach that is based on the mixed use of high-rate and low-rate GPS receivers. In the proposed approach, high-rate receivers are only required in the monitoring stations, where we apply time-differenced positioning to obtain position changes between adjacent epochs. The derived high-rate monitoring station position changes are then integrated with low-rate single epoch relative positioning results between the monitoring and reference stations. Experimental results with both simulated and real data show that the proposed method has a comparable performance with the traditional relative positioning approach, in terms of determining buildings’ vibration frequency, displacement, and acceleration

SChLAP1 contributes to non-small cell lung cancer cell progression and immune evasion through regulating the AUF1/PD-L1 axis

SChLAP1 is recently reported as a key oncogenic long non-coding RNA in human cancer. However, whether SChLAP1 functions in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and its specific potential regulatory mechanism remain unexplored. In this study, we found that depletion of SChLAP1 significantly inhibited NSCLC cell proliferation, migration and invasion in vitro, and retarded tumour growth and lung metastasis in vivo. SChLAP1 facilitated NSCLC cell immune evasion against CD8+ T cells through PD-1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint. In detail, SChLAP1 was able to directly interact with AUF1, antagonizing the binding between AUF1 and PDL1 mRNA 3′-UTR, resulting in increasing PDL1 mRNA stability and expression, thereby repressing CD8+ T cell function. Consistently, anti-PD-1/PD-L1 treatment evidently blocked the enhanced cell proliferation and invasion caused by SChLAP1 overexpression. Importantly, SChLAP1 was significantly upregulated in NSCLC cell lines, serum and tissues, which was identified as an excellent indicator for the diagnosis and prognosis of NSCLC. In conclusion, our data for the first time uncover that SChLAP1 functions an oncogene in NSCLC by promoting cancer cell immune evasion via regulating the AUF1/PDL1 axis, targeting of SChLAP1 may be a potential approach to improve the efficacy of immunotherapy in NSCLC patients