Forecasting the Use of Institutional Elder Care in China: A System Dynamic Simulation

With the rapid population aging in China, the older adults who needs for long-term care (LTC) increased dramatically in the past decades. To forecasting the use of institutional elder care in China, this study constructed a system dynamic model for LTC use to capture the decision-making process of living arrangement and institutional care use among the aging population in China. The results showed that the number of older adults living at institutions will increase from 200 million in 2015 to 290 million in 2035, which account for an increase of 45%. This study provides policy implications that would assist policy makers understand the LTC delivery process and its influence factors, and help implement effective LTC policy scenarios.This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number 71503054)

A key variant in the cis-regulatory element of flowering gene Ghd8 associated with cold tolerance in rice.

Variations in the gene promoter play critical roles in the evolution of important adaptive traits in crops, but direct links of the regulatory mutation to the adaptive change are not well understood. Here, we examine the nucleotide variations in the promoter region of a transcription factor (Ghd8) that control grain number, plant height and heading date in rice. We find that a dominant promoter type of subspecies japonica displayed a high activity for Ghd8 expression in comparison with the one in indica. Transgenic analyses revealed that higher expression levels of Ghd8 delayed heading date and enhanced cold tolerance in rice. Furthermore, a single-nucleotide polymorphism (T1279G) at the position -1279 bp that locates on the potential GA-responsive motif in the Ghd8 promoter affected the expression of this gene. The 1279 T variant has elevated expression of Ghd8, thus conferring increased cold tolerance of rice seedlings. Nucleotide diversity analysis revealed that the approximately 25-kb genomic region surrounding Ghd8 in the subspecies japonica was under significant selection pressure. Our findings demonstrate that the join effects of the regulatory and coding variants largely contribute to the divergence of japonica and indica and increase the adaptability of japonica to the cold environment

Quantum correlation and classical correlation dynamics in the spin-boson model

We study the quantum correlation and classical correlation dynamics in a spin-boson model. For two different forms of spectral density, we obtain analytical results and show that the evolutions of both correlations depend closely on the form of the initial state. At the end of evolution, all correlations initially stored in the spin system transfer to reservoirs. It is found that for a large family of initial states, quantum correlation remains equal to the classical correlation during the course of evolution. In addition, there is no increase in the correlations during the course of evolution.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Suivi de partition pour l'alignement de la voix chantée

National audienceThe pitch of singing voice is relatively less accurate and less stable than that of musical instruments and there are many variabilities, such as vibrato, intonation, etc. The music/score alignment system AnteScofo is based on the pitch information which adapts well to instrument music, but raises reliability problems for singing voice. This internship has two objectives, the first is to integrate the phonetic information into the system alignment to achieve the singing voice/text alignment and the second is to merge this information with that of pitch to make the system more robust. To accomplish the first objective, we integrate the vowel templates into the system, and conduct a preliminary experiment to prove that the spectral envelope gene- rated by the method "True envelope" is sufficiently distinctive for the vowels. To accomplish the second objective, two information fusion methods are proposed and among those the arith- metic averaging of the observation probabilities is proven to be the most robust by the evaluation.La hauteur du son de la voix chantée est relativement moins juste et moins stable que celle de la musique instrumentale et il existe de nombreuses variabilités, comme le vibrato, l'intona- tion, etc. Le système d'alignement " musique/partition " AnteScofo se fonde sur l'information de la hauteur du son qui s'adapte bien à la musique instrumentale, mais qui pose des problèmes de fiabilité pour le chant. Ce stage a deux objectifs, le premier est d'intégrer l'information pho- nétique dans le système pour réaliser l'alignement " voix chantée/texte "; le deuxième est de fusionner cette information avec celle de la hauteur du son pour rendre le système d'alignement plus robuste. Pour accomplir le premier objectif, on intègre les gabarits de voyelle dans le sys- tème, et conduit une expérience pour mettre en évidence que l'enveloppe spectrale générée par la méthode " True envelope " est suffisamment distinctive pour les voyelles. Pour accomplir le deuxième objectif, deux méthodes de fusion d'information sont proposées et parmi lesquelles la méthode de la moyenne arithmétique des probabilités d'observation est prouvée d'être la plus robuste par l'évaluation