117 research outputs found
Assessing the Influence of Citizen Emotions on E-Government Satisfaction in Service Recovery Situations
E-government involves many aspects of public administration ranging from introducing new technology to provide citizens with access to programs, services and information via the online channel. Citizenâs emotion plays a significant role in e-government satisfaction, but much less is known about citizen emotions. The purpose of this study is to explore how citizen emotions affect satisfaction in e-government service recovery. The citizen\u27s psychology mechanism under the service recovery circumstance is carefully studied, and a conceptual model among the key constructs of citizenâs emotion and citizen satisfaction of e-government is developed. The method of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is adopted to verify the internal quality of the proposed measurement model. The empirical results indicated that positive emotions have a significant impact on citizen satisfaction of e-government and no significant impact of negative emotions. Furthermore, our study identifies that perceived justice and perceived service quality that influence citizen satisfaction
Effects of Glyphosate-Resistant Genetically Modified Soybean on Blood Biochemical Indexes, Hepatopancreatic Antioxidant Capacity and Tissue Morphology of Cyprinus carpio
The juvenile carps (Cyprinus carpio) were fed diets with four protein sources (15% and 30% glyphosate-resistant genetically modified (GM) named GM 15 and GM 30, respectively, and 15% and 30% non-genetically modified (NGM) soybean named NGM 15 and NGM 30) for 180 days. Results showed that alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity for the GM30 group was significantly lower than that of the NGM30 group. The activity of glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) in the hepatopancreas of carp for the GM30 group was significantly higher than that of the NGM15 group (P0.05). This study indicates that it may aggravate the damage degree of intestinal epithelial cells of carp and more easily cause liver cell damage in the short term when the amount of GM soybean in the feeds was 30%. Therefore, higher glyphosate-resistant GM soybean may have adverse effects on the carp's serum, intestinal, and hepatopancreas and considerably reduce the hepatopancreatic carp's antioxidant capacity
A low-cost collaborative location scheme with GNSS and RFID for the Internet of Things
The emergence and development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted growing attention to low-cost location systems when facing the dramatically increased number of public infrastructure assets in smart cities. Various radio frequency identification (RFID)-based locating systems have been developed. However, most of them are impractical for infrastructure asset inspection and management on a large scale due to their high cost, inefficient deployment, and complex environments such as emergencies or high-rise buildings. In this paper, we proposed a novel locating system by combing the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) with RFID, in which a target tag was located with one RFID reader and one GNSS receiver with sufficient accuracy for infrastructure asset management. To overcome the cost challenge, one mobile RFID reader-mounted GNSS receiver is used to simulate multiple location known reference tags. A vast number of reference tags are necessary for current RFID-based locating systems, which means higher cost. To achieve fine-grained location accuracy, we utilize a distance-based power law weight algorithm to estimate the exact coordinates. Our experiment demonstrates the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed scheme with sufficient accuracy, low cost and easy deployment on a large scale. The proposed scheme has potential applications for location-based services in smart cities
Rivaroxaban vs. warfarin for the treatment and prevention of venous thromboembolism: A meta-analysis
BackgroundAnticoagulant treatment is used to treat and prevent venous thromboembolism (VTE). However, the relative effectiveness of newer anticoagulants vs. warfarin has not been appraised.ObjectiveThe aim was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of rivaroxaban for VTE in comparison to warfarin.Materials and methodsFrom January 2000 until October 2021, all related studies were collected by EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, PubMed and Web of Scienceand. During the review process, two reviewers independently analyzed the included studies, including quality evaluation, screening and data extraction. We focused on VTE events as our primary outcomes.ResultsIn total, 20 trials were retrieved. These studies involved 230,320 patients, of which 74,018 received rivaroxaban and 156,302 received warfarin. Compared with warfarin, the incidence of VTE in rivaroxaban is significantly lower (risk ratio (RR) 0.71, 95% confidence interval (CI) [0.61, 0.84]; Pâ<â0.0001, random effect model), and signiïŹcantly reduced major [RR: 0.84, 95% CI (0.77, 0.91); Pâ<â0.0001, fixed effect model] and nonmajor [RR: 0.55, 95% CI (0.41, 0.74); Pâ<â0.0001, fixed effect model] bleeding. No signiïŹcant differences in all-cause mortality between the two groups [RR: 0.68, 95% CI (0.45, 1.02); Pâ=â0.06, fixed effect model].ConclusionRivaroxaban significantly reduced the incidence of VTE compared to warfarin in this meta-analysis. In order to verify these findings, larger sample sizes are required in well-designed studies
The Genomes of Oryza sativa: A History of Duplications
We report improved whole-genome shotgun sequences for the genomes of indica and japonica rice, both with multimegabase contiguity, or almost 1,000-fold improvement over the drafts of 2002. Tested against a nonredundant collection of 19,079 full-length cDNAs, 97.7% of the genes are aligned, without fragmentation, to the mapped super-scaffolds of one or the other genome. We introduce a gene identification procedure for plants that does not rely on similarity to known genes to remove erroneous predictions resulting from transposable elements. Using the available EST data to adjust for residual errors in the predictions, the estimated gene count is at least 38,000â40,000. Only 2%â3% of the genes are unique to any one subspecies, comparable to the amount of sequence that might still be missing. Despite this lack of variation in gene content, there is enormous variation in the intergenic regions. At least a quarter of the two sequences could not be aligned, and where they could be aligned, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rates varied from as little as 3.0 SNP/kb in the coding regions to 27.6 SNP/kb in the transposable elements. A more inclusive new approach for analyzing duplication history is introduced here. It reveals an ancient whole-genome duplication, a recent segmental duplication on Chromosomes 11 and 12, and massive ongoing individual gene duplications. We find 18 distinct pairs of duplicated segments that cover 65.7% of the genome; 17 of these pairs date back to a common time before the divergence of the grasses. More important, ongoing individual gene duplications provide a never-ending source of raw material for gene genesis and are major contributors to the differences between members of the grass family
Energy saving potential of fragmented green spaces due to their temperature regulating ecosystem services in the summer
Urban green spaces help to moderate the urban heat island (UHI) effects, and can provide important temperature regulating ecosystem services and opportunities for savings in cooling energy. However, because explicit market values for these benefits are still lacking, they are rarely incorporated into urban planning actions. Green spaces can generate a three-dimensional (3D) cool island that may reduce the cooling energy requirements within and around urban areas, but such 3D cooling effect has not been considered in previous studies quantifying energy savings from green spaces. This study presents a new and simple approach to quantify potential energy savings due to the temperature regulating ecosystem services of small-scale fragmented green spaces using the 3D simulation of the summer-day outdoor thermal environment in Nanjing, China. Field survey data and the microclimate model ENVI-met were applied to examine the outdoor 3D thermal environmental patterns at Gulou Campus of Nanjing University under two different scenarios: âwithâ and âwithoutâ green spaces. Modeling results were applied to quantify potential cooling energy savings based on the effect of green spaces on the outdoor urban environment and to calculate the cumulative temperature reduction due to green spaces using a regression model. The results show that, in the horizontal direction, the simulated distribution of wind speed and mean air temperature at 1.5 m height were closely related to the spatial distribution of the underlying surface types. Removal of green spaces increased mean air temperature by 0.5 °C (33.1 °C vs. 33.6 °C). In the vertical direction, removal of green spaces had little effect on the near-surface wind field; however, above the surface, the turbulence perpendicular to the main wind direction significantly increased. Quantification of the cooling benefits of green spaces in relation to the mean height of buildings on Gulou Campus yielded 5.2 W/m2 cooling energy, saving totally 1.3 Ă 104 kW h during a single daytime hot summer period. This case study corroborates the importance of green space for cooling and informs city planners and decision-makers on how microclimate is impacted by the loss of green spaces. These findings will facilitate preservation, planning, and design of green spaces to increase urban environmental benefits and to improve the microclimate of urban areas at neighborhood, city, and regional scales
Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome
The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers âŒ99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of âŒ1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead
Does Rapid Urbanization Improve Green Water-Use Efficiency? Based on the Investigation of Guangdong Province, China
The green water-use efficiency considers the undesired output of water pollution discharge as well as desirable output, pursuing the unification of economic and ecological benefit. In recent years, China has been undergoing a process of rapid urbanization and a dramatic change in the water utilization pattern, while the water pollution discharge is becoming more obvious. Taking Guangdong Province as an example, the largest economy and urbanization pilot area, exploring the impact of different aspects of rapid urbanization on green water-use efficiency is of great significance for promoting new-type urbanization and green development. This study adopts the super efficiency slack-based model (SE-SBM) considering undesirable output to measure the green water-use efficiency of each city in Guangdong Province. On this basis, mixed panel, random panel, and fixed panel models are used to explore the relationship between industrial urbanization, population urbanization, land urbanization, social urbanization, and urban-rural integration on green water-use efficiency. The results reveal that Guangdongâs green water-use efficiency follows a low upward trend. The green water-use efficiency of the Pearl River Delta has improved rapidly, while other regions are maintained at a low level, so regional disparities are also widening. Industrial urbanization and land urbanization have a significant positive effect on green water-use efficiency, while social urbanization and urban-rural integration have a significant negative effect. The effect of population urbanization on the efficiency is not significant. The construction of new-type urbanization should be accelerated, the green transformation and upgrading of industries should be guided, and the urbanization of agricultural migrants should be promoted. It is necessary to rationally plan and utilize urban land resources and comprehensively improve urban functions and livability
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