Weight of Evidence Method and Its Applications and Development

AbstractThe development and applications about the weight of evidence technology in recent years are reviewed. This paper introduced the improved weight of evidence in remote sensing image processing and in different fields of application. Summary its constraints and existent problems. Look forward to the weight of evidence for the practical application

Mechanisms of Stress Tolerance in Xerophyte \u3cem\u3eZygophyllum xanthoxylum\u3c/em\u3e and Their Application in Genetic Improvement of Legume Forages

Xerophytes, naturally growing in desert areas, have evolved multiple protective mechanisms to survive and grow well in harsh environments. Zygophyllum xanthoxylum, a succulent xerophyte with excellent adaptability to adverse arid environments and a fodder shrub with high palatability and nutrient value, colonizes arid areas in China and Mongolia. In this study, we found that Z. xanthoxylum grew better responding to salt condition with a typical feature for halophytes and became more tolerant to drought in the presence of moderate salinity (50 mM NaCl); 50 mM NaCl alleviated deleterious impacts of drought on the growth of Z. xanthoxylum by improving the relative water content, inducing a significant drop in leaf water potential and, concomitantly, increasing leaf turgor pressure and chlorophyll concentrations resulting in an enhancement of overall plant photosynthetic activity. Subsequently, co-expression of genes encoding the tonoplast Na+/H+ antiporter (ZxNHX) and H+-PPase (ZxVP1-1) which involve in leaf Na+ accumulation under stress condition by compartmentalizing Na+ into vacuoles in Z. xanthoxylum significantly improved both drought and salt tolerance in legume forages, Lotus corniculatus L. and Medicago sativa L

Advances on layered transition-metal oxides for sodium-ion batteries: a mini review

The energy storage mechanism and manufacturing equipment of sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) and lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are similar. However, SIBs offer several advantages, such as low cost, abundant resources, environmental friendliness, and high safety. Consequently, they have garnered significant attention. SIBs are poised to be potential replacements for LIBs and represent ideal candidates in the field of large-scale energy storage. Layered transition-metal oxides (TMOs) are considered highly promising cathode materials due to their high average voltage, high specific capacity, and ease of synthesis. This paper provides a review of recent advances in layered TMOs for SIBs, including NaxCoO2, NaxMnO2, NaxFeO2, and their derivatives. Furthermore, the challenges and prospects in the development of layered TMOs are also discussed. It is hoped that this review will assist in the design and preparation of SIBs with superior electrochemical performance and further facilitate their practical application

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Experimental investigation of reactivity controlled compression ignition with n-butanol/n-heptane in a heavy-duty diesel engine

Butanol is a potential alternative fuel to be applied in the internal combustion engine for its sustainability and low-sooting propensity. In this paper, n-butanol is port injected as low reactivity fuel and n-heptane is directly injected into cylinder as high reactivity fuel to achieve high thermal efficiency as well as low soot/NOx emissions. To understand the effects of charge preparation parameters and load range of this reactivity controlled compression ignition combustion, experiments are performed in a single cylinder heavy-duty diesel engine. The results show that single direct injection causes either too early combustion phasing or excessive HC/CO emissions. Increasing the inlet boosting pressure is beneficial to obtain high thermal efficiency but HC/CO emissions deteriorate remarkably. The double direct injection strategy can phase the combustion properly and obtain high gross indicated efficiency without sacrificing CO emissions too much. Additionally, a high exhaust gas recirculation rate is necessary to achieve proper control of combustion phasing as the reactivity of n-butanol is not low enough. It is found that the n-butanol/n-heptane reactivity controlled compression ignition can be operated from low to medium loads. And the sensitivity of combustion phasing to the direct injection timing decreases as the load increases. At medium–high load, combustion couldn't be phased after the top dead center, which leads to high pressure rise rates and high peak pressures. Extremely low particulate matter and NOx emissions are observed throughout this tested load range and a gross indicated efficiency over 50% can be observed from low to medium load

Dual nonlinearity Controlling of Mode and Dispersion Properties in Graphene-Dielectric Plasmonic Waveguide

Abstract We study the mode and dispersion properties of graphene-dielectric nonlinear plasmonic waveguide considering the dual nonlinearity of dielectric and graphene. For TM polarization, the mode distribution, the permittivity distribution, and dispersion relation were obtained by numerically solving the Maxwell equations. Compared with the case considering only the nonlinearity of dielectric, the initial field intensity to excite plasmon modes reduces obviously when introducing the dual nonlinearity. In addition, the influence of dual nonlinearity on dispersion relation is discussed, and we find that the graphene’s nonlinearity affects strongly the dispersion properties. The introduction of dual nonlinearity leads to the decrease of the initial field intensity, which has potential application in all-optical switches with low threshold

Prediction of fetal loss in Chinese pregnant patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: a retrospective cohort study.

To develop a predictive model for fetal loss in women with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Impacts of Water Level Fluctuations on Soil Aggregate Stability in the Three Gorges Reservoir, China

Aggregate is the basic unit of soil structure, which is crucial to the sustainability of soil system functions such as structural stability and Fertility Maintenance. Three Gorges Dam (TGD) has extensively led to a dramatic hydrological regime alteration, which may consequently affect various soil physical properties. The aim of this study was to investigate the long-run temporal variation of soil aggregate stability as induced by water-level fluctuations in the riparian zone of the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR). Sampling plots were established along different elevations considering the interval of 5 m, starting from 150 m to 175 m. A Laser Diffraction based analysis that allows the measurement of soil aggregate stability after the removal of soil organic matter helped to particularly study the effect of external factors on soil aggregate stability of the study area. In addition, wet-sieving method considering the effect of chemical binding agents was used to quantify aggregate stability. The present results indicated a significant increase of Mean Volume Diameter, MVD (p &lt; 0.05) within the study period. Continuous drying-wetting cycles mended soil aggregate stability with a 14.25% increase of the MVD from 2012 to 2016. In the Water-Level Fluctuation Zone (WLFZ), the lower land has predominantly contributed to the increase of soil aggregate stability compared to upper land, with an increase of 62.19% and 37.81% for MVD, 60.88% and 39.12% for D10, 95.34% and 4.66% for D90 at lower and upper elevations, respectively. Sediment deposition below 165 m has precluded a direct effect of water stress on soil aggregates, which certainly declined soil disaggregation. The removal of SOM while analyzing aggregate stability by LD may explain the contradiction between the resulted MVD, and the MWD and GMD. The increase of MWD and GMD was mainly attributed to the increase of SOM with r2 = 0.89 (p &lt; 0.01) and r2 = 0.90 (p &lt; 0.01), while the increase of MVD was highly predicted by the decrease of SOM with r2 = 0.88 (p &lt; 0.01). Since this study presents a remarkable change of soil in the riparian area due to dry-wet cycles, our results may help to deeply understand the soil ecology and environmental changes in the WLFZ