Secure Communication Based on Hyperchaotic Chen System with Time-Delay

This research is partially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (61172070, 60804040), Fok Ying Tong Education Foundation Young Teacher Foundation(111065), Innovative Research Team of Shaanxi Province(2013KCT-04), The Key Basic Research Fund of Shaanxi Province (2016ZDJC-01), Chao Bai was supported by Excellent Ph.D. research fund (310-252071603) at XAUT.Peer reviewedPostprin

Investigation of the energy performance of a novel modular solar building envelope

The major challenges for the integration of solar collecting devices into a building envelope are related to the poor aesthetic view of the appearance of buildings in addition to the low efficiency in collection, transportation, and utilization of the solar thermal and electrical energy. To tackle these challenges, a novel design for the integration of solar collecting elements into the building envelope was proposed and discussed. This involves the dedicated modular and multiple-layer combination of the building shielding, insulation, and solar collecting elements. On the basis of the proposed modular structure, the energy performance of the solar envelope was investigated by using the Energy-Plus software. It was found that the solar thermal efficiency of the modular envelope is in the range of 41.78–59.47%, while its electrical efficiency is around 3.51% higher than the envelopes having photovoltaic (PV) alone. The modular solar envelope can increase thermal efficiency by around 8.49% and the electrical efficiency by around 0.31%, compared to the traditional solar photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) envelopes. Thus, we have created a new envelope solution with enhanced solar efficiency and an improved aesthetic view of the entire building

Microbial Glycosylation of Antitubercular Agent Chlorflavonin

Flavonoids have shown health-benefiting properties, such as antioxidative and anti-inflammatory activities, and are commonly used as nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals. Although flavonoids are predominantly identified from plants, several filamentous fungal species have also been reported to produce bioactive flavonoids, including chlorflavonin from Aspergillus candidus, a novel halogenated flavonoid with potent antifungal and antitubercular (anti-TB) activities. Unfortunately, the low water-solubility of this molecule may hinder its bioavailability. Glycosylation is an effective method to enhance the polarity of natural products and alter their physicochemical properties. This work focuses on the development of novel water-soluble chlorflavonin derivatives to combat the threat of drug-resistant tuberculosis. In this study, we first increased the production titer of chlorflavonin in A. candidus NRRL 5214 by optimizing the fermentation and purification processes. Next, chlorflavonin-5-O-β-D-glucuronopyranoside (1) and chlorflavonin-7-O-4 -O-methyl-β-D-glucopyranoside (2) were produced from chlorflavonin using Streptomyces chromofuscus ATCC 49982 and Beauveria bassiana ATCC 7159, respectively. Compared to chlorflavonin (4.38 ± 0.54 mg/L in water), the water solubility of the two new glycosides was determined to be 117.86 ± 4.81 mg/L (1) and 124.34 ± 9.13 mg/L (2), respectively. This study provides a promising method to create water-soluble glycosides of chlorflavonin for the development of novel anti-TB drugs

Characteristics of optical multi-peak solitons induced by higher-order effects in an erbium-doped fiber system

We study multi-peak solitons \textit{on a plane-wave background} in an erbium-doped fiber system with some higher-order effects, which is governed by a coupled Hirota and Maxwel-Bloch (H-MB) model. The important characteristics of multi-peak solitons induced by the higher-order effects, such as the velocity changes, localization or periodicity attenuation, and state transitions, are revealed in detail. In particular, our results demonstrate explicitly that a multi-peak soliton can be converted to an anti-dark soliton when the periodicity vanishes; on the other hand, a multi-peak soliton is transformed to a periodic wave when the localization vanishes. Numerical simulations are performed to confirm the propagation stability of multi-peak solitons riding on a plane-wave background. Finally, we compare and discuss the similarity and difference of multi-peak solitons in special degenerate cases of the H-MB system with general existence conditions.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Modeling plant diseases under climate change: evolutionary perspectives

Infectious plant diseases are a major threat to global agricultural productivity, economic development, and ecological integrity. There is widespread concern that these social and natural disasters caused by infectious plant diseases may escalate with climate change and computer modeling offers a unique opportu-nity to address this concern. Here, we analyze the intrinsic problems associated with current modeling strategies and highlight the need to integrate evolutionary principles into polytrophic, eco-evolutionary frameworks to improve predictions. We particularly discuss how evolutionary shifts in functional trade-offs, relative adaptability between plants and pathogens, ecosystems, and climate preferences induced by climate change may feedback to future plant disease epidemics and how technological advances can facilitate the generation and integration of this relevant knowledge for better modeling predictions