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The Antarctic Peninsula (AP) experienced a new extreme warm event and record high surface melt in February 2022, rivaling the recent temperature records from 2015 and 2020, and contributing to an alarming series of extreme warm events there. The northern/northwestern AP was directly impacted by an intense atmospheric river (AR) bringing anomalous heat and rainfall, while AR-enhanced foehn effect further warmed its northeastern side. The event was triggered by multiple large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns linking the AR formation to tropical convection anomalies and stationary Rossby waves, with anomalous Amundsen Sea low and record-breaking blocking high. The cascade of impacts culminated in widespread and intensive surface melt across the AP. The event was statistically attributed to global warming. Increasing frequency of such events can undermine the stability of the AP ice shelves, with multiple local to global impacts, including acceleration of the AP ice mass loss and changes in sensitive ecosystems.

The incidence and mortality of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are gradually increasing during the past years. Recently, some studies have reported that malic enzyme (ME) plays an important role in cancer development, while the involvement of ME2 in HCC remains still undetermined. Here, we demonstrated that ME2 played an oncogenic role in HCC. ME2 was overexpressed in HCC tissues. TCGA database showed that the ME2 transcript level was inversely associated with the survival of HCC patients. Loss‐of‐function and gain‐of‐function assays showed that ME2 promoted HCC cell growth and migration. Furthermore, the xenografted tumorigenesis of MHCC97H cells was retarded by ME2 knockdown. ME2 silencing also suppressed the cell cycle process and induced apoptosis. Mechanistically, ME2 potentiated triglyceride synthesis, inhibition of which suppressed the proliferation and migration. We propose that ME2 promotes HCC progression by increasing triglyceride production., The expression of ME2 was significantly elevated in HCC tissues.ME2 promotes HCC progression by increasing triglyceride production.

Circular RNA (circRNAs) functions vital in the pathogenesis and progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the expressions and functions of certain circRNAs on metastasis and proliferation of that cancer is still unclear. Bioinformation analysis and qRT-PCR indicated that CircC16orf62 was prominent upregulated in HCC of which the expression level was positively associated to cancer’s malignant progression. Gain or loss-of-function studies indicated that the reduction of CircC16orf62 expression promotes the proliferation, invasion, and glycolysis of HCC in vitro and in vivo. The bioinformatic analysis found that miR-138-5p and PTK2 were the downstream target of CircC16or62. Then, the FISH(Fluorescence immunoin situ hybridization) and cell nucleoplasmic separation determined that CircC16orf62 located in the cell cytoplasm. Plasmid vectors or siRNAs were used to change the expression of CircC16orf62, miR-138-5p, and PTK2 in PC cell lines. CircC16orf62 functioned as a molecular sponge for miR-138-5p, and a competitive endogenous RNA for PTK2, promoting AKT/mTOR pathway activation. Our observations lead us to conclude that CircC16orf62 functions as an oncogene in HCC progression, behaving as a competitive endogenous RNA for miR-138-5p binding, thus activating the AKT/mTOR pathway. In conclusion, CircC16orf62 is an oncogene through the miR-138-5p/PTK2/Akt axis in HCC cells, indicating CircC16orf62 can be a therapeutic target with potentiality for liver cancer and a predictive marker for people with HCC.

The development of biosimilar products or follow-on biologics has been flourishing in recent years because of their lower price than the originators. In this study, a multivariate data analysis method based on JMP software was proposed to assess the glycosylation pattern similarity of antibody candidates from different conditions in optimization experiments with a reference. A specific distance was generated by this method and indicated the glycoform similarity between the biosimilar and the reference. This method can be applied to analyze the similarity of other physicochemical and functional characteristics between follow-on biologics and originators. Then, the design of experimental methods can be realized to optimize the conditions of cell culture to attain similar antibody candidates. A higher concentration of GlcNAc added to the basal media made the glycan of the antibody more similar to the glycan of the reference in this study.

Glycosylation is critical for monoclonal antibody production because of its impact on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Modulation of glycan profile is frequently needed in biosimilar development. However, glycosylation profile is not a single value like that of cell culture titer, hence making it challenging for the Design of Experiment (DoE) methodology to be directly applied. In this study, a Her2-binding antibody was developed as a biosimilar to Herceptin. Cluster analysis was introduced to demonstrate the similarity of glycan profiles between the samples and the reference with specific value—distance. The glycosylation was subsequently optimized with the DoE method. Basal medium and feed medium were found to be the significant factors to the glycosylation pattern. Moreover, a combination of medium and feed strategy was developed to attain the most similar glycoprotein molecule to that of the originator biologic drug. This study may provide an additional option to evaluate multivariable factors and assess biosimilarity and/or comparability in monoclonal antibody production.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is becoming increasingly prevalent worldwide. Fluoropyrimidine drugs are the primary chemotherapy regimens in routine clinical practice of CRC. However, the survival rate of patients on fluoropyrimidine-based chemotherapy varies significantly among individuals. Biomarkers of fluoropyrimidine drugs’' efficacy are needed to implement personalized medicine. This review summarized fluoropyrimidine drug-related microRNA (miRNA) by affecting metabolic enzymes or showing the relevance of drug efficacy. We first outlined 42 miRNAs that may affect the metabolism of fluoropyrimidine drugs. Subsequently, we filtered another 41 miRNAs related to the efficacy of fluoropyrimidine drugs based on clinical trials. Bioinformatics analysis showed that most well-established miRNA biomarkers were significantly enriched in the cancer pathways instead of the fluoropyrimidine drug metabolism pathways. The result also suggests that the miRNAs screened from metastasis patients have a more critical role in cancer development than those from non-metastasis patients. There are five miRNAs shared between these two lists. The miR-21, miR-215, and miR-218 can suppress fluoropyrimidine drugs’' catabolism. The miR-326 and miR-328 can reduce the efflux of fluoropyrimidine drugs. These five miRNAs could jointly act by increasing intracellular levels of fluoropyrimidine drugs’' cytotoxic metabolites, leading to better chemotherapy responses. In conclusion, we demonstrated that the dynamic changes in the transcriptional regulation via miRNAs might play significant roles in the efficacy and toxicity of the fluoropyrimidine drug. The reported miRNA biomarkers would help evaluate the efficacy of fluoropyrimidine drug-based chemotherapy and improve the prognosis of colorectal cancer patients.

In this work, we thoroughly analyze the rate-region provided by the asynchronous transmission in multiple access channels (MACs). We derive the corresponding capacity-regions, applicable to a wide range of pulse shaping methods. We analytically prove that asynchronous transmission enlarges the capacity-region of MACs. Although successive interference cancellation (SIC) can achieve the optimal sum-rate for the conventional uplink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) methods, it is unable to achieve the boundary of the capacity-region for the asynchronous transmission. We demonstrate that for the asynchronous transmission, the optimal SIC decoding order to achieve the maximum sum-rate is based on the users’ channel strengths. This optimal ordering is in contrast to the conventional uplink NOMA, where various decoding orders can result in the maximum sum-rate. Furthermore, we provide practical transceiver designs to approach the capacity-region. The memory induced by asynchronous transmission enables the use of the trellis-based detection methods which improves the performance. In addition, we propose a transceiver design, based on channel diagonalization to exploit the frequency-selectivity introduced by timing offsets. The proposed transceiver design, joint with the turbo principle, enables us to achieve a rate pair that is not achievable by the synchronous transmission.

Temperature trends across Antarctica over the last few decades reveal strong and statistically significant warming in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) contrasting with no significant change overall in East Antarctica. However, recent studies have documented cooling in the AP since the late 1990s. This study aims to place temperature changes in the AP and West Antarctica into a larger spatial and temporal perspective by analyzing monthly station-based surface temperature observations since 1957 across the extratropical Southern Hemisphere, along with sea surface temperature (SST) data and mean sea level pressure reanalysis data. The results confirm statistically significant cooling in station observations and SST trends throughout the AP region since 1999. However, the full 60-yr period shows statistically significant, widespread warming across most of the Southern Hemisphere middle and high latitudes. Positive SST trends broadly reflect these warming trends, especially in the midlatitudes. After confirming the importance of the southern annular mode (SAM) on southern high-latitude climate variability, the influence is removed from the station temperature records, revealing statistically significant background warming across all of the extratropical Southern Hemisphere. Antarctic temperature trends in a suite of climate models from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) are then investigated. Consistent with previous work the CMIP5 models warm Antarctica at the background temperature rate that is 2 times faster than that observed. However, removing the SAM influence from both CMIP5 and observed temperatures results in Antarctic trends that differ only modestly, perhaps due to natural multidecadal variability remaining in the observations.

Recent studies have numerically demonstrated the possible advantages of the asynchronous non-orthogonal multiple access (ANOMA) over the conventional synchronous non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). The ANOMA makes use of the oversampling technique by intentionally introducing a timing mismatch between symbols of different users. Focusing on a two-user uplink system, for the first time, we analytically prove that the ANOMA with a sufficiently large frame length can always outperform the NOMA in terms of the sum throughput. To this end, we derive the expression for the sum throughput of the ANOMA as a function of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), frame length, and normalized timing mismatch. Based on the derived expression, we find that users should transmit at full powers to maximize the sum throughput. In addition, we obtain the optimal timing mismatch as the frame length goes to infinity. Moreover, we comprehensively study the impact of timing error on the ANOMA throughput performance. Two types of timing error, i.e., the synchronization timing error and the coordination timing error, are considered. We derive the throughput loss incurred by both types of timing error and find that the synchronization timing error has a greater impact on the throughput performance compared to the coordination timing error.

The development of biosimi lar products or follow on biologics has been flourishing in recent years because of lower price than originators. In th is study, a multivariate data analysis method based on JMP software was proposed to assess the glycosylation pattern similarity of antibo dy candidates from different conditions in optimization experiment with reference. A specific distance was generated by t specific distance was generated by this method and indicated the glycoform similarity his method and indicated the glycoform similarity between biosimilar and reference. This method can be applied to analyze the similaritbetween biosimilar and reference. This method can be applied to analyze the similarity of y of other physicochemical and function characters between followother physicochemical and function characters between follow--on biologics and originators. on biologics and originators. Then the design of experiThen the design of experiments method can be realized to optimize culture conditions of cellments method can be realized to optimize culture conditions of cell culture to attain similar antibody candidatesculture to attain similar antibody candidates..

In this letter, we study a two-user downlink asynchronous non-orthogonal multiple access (ANOMA) with limited feedback. We employ the max-min criterion for the power allocation and derive the closed-form expressions for the upper and lower bounds of the max-min rate. It is demonstrated that ANOMA can achieve the same or even higher average max-min rate with a lower feedback rate compared with non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). Moreover, we propose a quantizer optimization algorithm which applies to both NOMA and ANOMA. Simulation results show that the optimized quantizer significantly improves the average max-min rate compared with the conventional uniform quantizer, especially in the scenario with a low feedback rate.

This letter considers the capacity computations of faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) signaling. It calculates the theoretical capacity of FTN signaling which is obtained by a correlated input. The capacity-achieving power spectral density (PSD) is derived and its superiority over the independent input is shown. The practical issue imposed by the capacity-achieving PSD, i.e., out-of-band (OOB) emission, is shown. To solve this issue, an upper-bound is introduced for the input PSD to limit the OOB emission. The new optimization problem is solved and the constrained PSD is obtained. The introduced PSD captures the trade-off between the obtained capacity and the OOB emission.

In this paper, we analyze the benefits of intentionally adding timing mismatch in the downlink transmit beamforming for wireless transmission. Transmit beamforming enables the so-called space-division multiple access (SDMA), where multiple spatially separated users are served simultaneously. The optimal beamforming vectors can be found to minimize the average transmit power under each user’s Quality-of-Service (QoS) constraint. We show that intentionally adding timing offsets between the transmitted signals can significantly reduce the average transmission power compared with the conventional optimal beamforming method while providing the same QoSs for users. The frequency-selectivity in communication channels provides the opportunity to exploit intelligent design for performance improvement. The frequency-selectivity is limited in environments with line-of-sight links or little scattering. In such environments, we propose the use of intentional time delays to induce frequency-selectivity that can be exploited. We provide three different methods exploiting the artificially induced frequency-selectivity which improve the performance with a computational complexity similar to that of the optimal synchronous beamforming. We derive the expressions for the achievable rates using the proposed methods and then provide efficient algorithms to solve the minimum power optimization. We show analytically and numerically that our proposed methods can provide the same QoS while serving more users, utilizing a fewer number of transmit antennas and using reduced power compared with the conventional beamforming methods.

Recent studies have demonstrated the superiority of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) over orthogonal multiple access (OMA) in cooperative communication networks. In this paper, we propose a novel half-duplex cooperative asynchronous NOMA (C-ANOMA) framework with user relaying, where a timing mismatch is intentionally added in the broadcast signal. We derive the expressions for the individual throughputs of the strong user (acts as relay) which employs the block-wise successive interference cancellation (SIC) and the weak user which combines the symbol-asynchronous signal with the interference-free signal. We analytically prove that in the C-ANOMA systems with a sufficiently large frame length, the strong user attains the same throughput to decode its own message while both users can achieve a higher throughput to decode the weak user's message compared with those in the cooperative NOMA (C-NOMA) systems. Besides, we obtain the optimal timing mismatch when the frame length goes to infinity. Furthermore, to exploit the trade-off between the power consumption of base station and that of the relay user, we solve a weighted sum power minimization problem under quality of services (QoS) constraints. Numerical results show that the C-ANOMA system can consume less power compared with the C-NOMA system to satisfy the same QoS requirements.

In this letter, we propose a trellis-coded non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme. The signals for different users are produced by trellis coded modulation (TCM) and then superimposed on different power levels. By interpreting the encoding process via the tensor product of trellises, we introduce a joint detection method based on the Viterbi algorithm. Then, we determine the optimal power allocation between the two users by maximizing the free distance of the tensor product trellis. Finally, we manifest that the trellis-coded NOMA outperforms the uncoded NOMA at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

Debugging transactions and understanding their execution are of immense importance for developing OLAP applications, to trace causes of errors in production systems, and to audit the operations of a database. However, debugging transactions is hard for several reasons: 1) after the execution of a transaction, its input is no longer available for debugging, 2) internal states of a transaction are typically not accessible, and 3) the execution of a transaction may be affected by concurrently running transactions. We present a debugger for transactions that enables non-invasive, post-mortem debugging of transactions with provenance tracking and supports what-if scenarios (changes to transaction code or data). Using reenactment, a declarative replay technique we have developed, a transaction is replayed over the state of the DB seen by its original execution including all its interactions with concurrently executed transactions from the history. Importantly, our approach uses the temporal database and audit logging capabilities available in many DBMS and does not require any modifications to the underlying database system nor transactional workload., Comment: to appear as "Debugging Transactions and Tracking their Provenance with Reenactment" in PVDLB 2017, vol 10., nr. 12

Background X-linked agammaglobulinemia (XLA) is a primary immunodeficiency disorder caused by germline mutations in the Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) gene on X chromosome. These mutations disturb B-cell development, decrease immunoglobulin levels, increase susceptibility to infection or neoplasms, and increase the risk of developing colorectal cancer (CRC). For occasional cases of CRC have been reported in XLA patients, low levels of B lymphocytes and immunoglobulins induced by congenital immune disorder make them more susceptible to drug-related toxicities (DRT). Therefore, gene sequencing, therapeutic drug monitoring and any possible measurement to predict DRT should be considered before determining the course of chemotherapy for XLA patients with CRC. Case presentation In this study, we reported a 21-year-old male who developed metastatic CRC in the context of XLA. Since the whole exome sequencing and therapeutic drug monitoring did not reveal any predictive markers of DRT, we applied standard first-line chemotherapy to the patient. However, progressive disease occurred after the fifth treatment cycle. Therefore, the administration of oxaliplatin was changed to irinotecan as second-line therapy. After that, the patient firstly suffered from severe hypocalcemia and eventually died due to metastatic CRC after the eighth treatment cycle. The overall survival time was 7.5 months. Conclusions This study reported the first written record of a Chinese XLA patient with metastatic CRC and severe hypocalcemia. Whole exome sequencing and bioinformatic analysis indicated the somatic mutations in ABCA6, C6 and PAX3 genes might contribute to the early-onset and metastasis CRC. Besides, a number of germline mutations in genes related to calcium metabolism (CACNA2D4, CD36, etc.) and the administration of irinotecan were speculated to be the causes of severe hypocalcemia. We therefore suggested that in order to avoid severe DRT, clinicians should take genetic background and therapeutic drug monitoring into consideration while planning chemotherapy treatment for XLA patients with CRC.

Pseudo-Boolean monotone functions are unimodal functions which are trivial to optimize for some hillclimbers, but are challenging for a surprising number of evolutionary algorithms. A general trend is that evolutionary algorithms are efficient if parameters like the mutation rate are set conservatively, but may need exponential time otherwise. In particular, it was known that the ( 1 + 1 ) -EA and the ( 1 + λ ) -EA can optimize every monotone function in pseudolinear time if the mutation rate is c / n for some c 1 , but that they need exponential time for some monotone functions for c > 2.2 . The second part of the statement was also known for the ( μ + 1 ) -EA. In this paper we show that the first statement does not apply to the ( μ + 1 ) -EA. More precisely, we prove that for every constant c > 0 there is a constant μ 0 ∈ N such that the ( μ + 1 ) -EA with mutation rate c / n and population size μ 0 ≤ μ ≤ n needs superpolynomial time to optimize some monotone functions. Thus, increasing the population size by just a constant has devastating effects on the performance. This is in stark contrast to many other benchmark functions on which increasing the population size either increases the performance significantly, or affects performance only mildly. The reason why larger populations are harmful lies in the fact that larger populations may temporarily decrease the selective pressure on parts of the population. This allows unfavorable mutations to accumulate in single individuals and their descendants. If the population moves sufficiently fast through the search space, then such unfavorable descendants can become ancestors of future generations, and the bad mutations are preserved. Remarkably, this effect only occurs if the population renews itself sufficiently fast, which can only happen far away from the optimum. This is counter-intuitive since usually optimization becomes harder as we approach the optimum. Previous work missed the effect because it focused on monotone functions that are only deceptive close to the optimum.

This study illustrated the importance of smoothed vertical layers and orthogonal grids in an orthogonal terrain-following coordinate (an OTF-coordinate) in reducing advection errors over steep terrain. Three coordinates, namely, classic terrain-following coordinate, hybrid terrain-following coordinate (HTF-coordinate) and OTF-coordinate, were employed in Schar-type advection experiments for various terrains. The results demonstrated that the OTF-coordinate could diminish the grids with high skewness in the HTF-coordinate over steep terrain; the orthogonal grids share the same importance in reducing advection errors with smoothed vertical layers. Therefore, the advection errors in the OTF-coordinate are considerably reduced than those in the corresponding HTF-coordinate over steep terrain.

In this study, the high temperature visual test system (HTVTS) and high temperature thermogravimetric test system (HTTTS) were set up to observe the formation process of ash, thereby analyzing the mechanism of biomass melt combustion. Then, the effect of the molten ash on the combustion process was investigated. Results show that during the combustion, once the local temperature of the biomass particle is higher than the ash melting temperature, the generated ash could be melted and contracted into a spherical shape by the surface tension. The molten ash located in the interior of the biomass particle adhere to the char surface, thereby preventing the contact between char and oxygen. The molten ash located on the surface of biomass particle could drop down from the surface of biomass particle. When the conversion rate is higher than 45%, the effect of molten ash on the reaction rate becomes more obvious.

Background: As cross-sectional images expanded in clinical practice, the number of renal lesions discovered incidentally has been increasing. CT protocols for renal mass evaluation may include pre- and post-contrast phase. However, a major concern with respect to those multiphase techniques is often the radiation dose. One further critical issue is how to minimize the radiation dose while image quality is optimized in routine daily clinical practice. Objectives: To evaluate the image quality and radiation dose of renal artery CT angiography (CTA) with optimal sinogram affirmed iterative reconstruction (SAFIRE) strength level at 80 kVp for optimizing the scan and reconstruction parameters of renal artery CTA, in comparison to 120 kVp acquisition with filtered back projection (FBP). Patients and Methods: Sixty consecutive patients were classified into three groups prospectively in this study: 1) 80 kVp group (n = 30) with FBP and 2) 80 kVp group with SAFIRE (S4) and 3) 120 kV group (n = 30) with FBP. CT values and noise were measured, contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the renal artery CTA were calculated for quantitative assessment. Subjective image quality was evaluated by two experienced abdominal radiologists with a five-point scale in a blinded and randomized setting for qualitative assessment. Volume CT dose index (CTDIvol) and size-specific dose estimate (SSDE) were calculated and estimated for each subject presented in this study. Results: As for quantitative assessment, CNR, SNR and CT values of renal artery in 80kVp group with SAFIRE strength levels or FBP were higher than those of 120 kVp group with FBP (all Ps < 0.05), the mean noise gradually decreased in 80kVp group when increasing the SAFIRE strength levels (S1 - S5). As for qualitative assessment, the overall image quality, vessel sharpness, segmental renal artery displayed in maximum intensity projection (MIP) or multiplanar reformation (MPR), and diagnostic confidence of the two groups were all accepted by two radiologists (inter-observer agreement ranged from 0.600 to 0.940) (score ≥ 3). The overall image quality of 80 kVp with SAFIRE 4 was similar to that of 120 kVp group with FBP (P = 0.412), as well as segmental renal artery displayed in MIP and diagnostic confidence (P = 0.095 and P = 0.061, respectively). As for radiation dose reduction, 80kVp group could reduce 32.7% CTDIvol and 31.2% SSDE compared to the 120 kVp group. Conclusion: In patients with BMI lower than 28 kg/m2, renal artery CTA at 80 kVp with SAFIRE is feasible and can provide satisfactory images for clinical applications. This method also provides reduction in radiation dose. SAFIRE strength level 4 is recommended for reconstructing renal artery CTA.

We introduce and investigate the opportunities of multi-antenna communication schemes whose training and feedback stages are interleaved and mutually interacting. Specifically, unlike the traditional schemes where the transmitter first trains all of its antennas at once and then receives a single feedback message, we consider a scenario where the transmitter instead trains its antennas one by one and receives feedback information immediately after training each one of its antennas. The feedback message may ask the transmitter to train another antenna; or, it may terminate the feedback/training phase and provide the quantized codeword (e.g., a beamforming vector) to be utilized for data transmission. As a specific application, we consider a multiple-input single-output system with $t$ transmit antennas, a short-term power constraint $P$, and target data rate $\rho$. We show that for any $t$, the same outage probability as a system with perfect transmitter and receiver channel state information can be achieved with a feedback rate of $R_1$ bits per channel state and via training $R_2$ transmit antennas on average, where $R_1$ and $R_2$ are independent of $t$, and depend only on $\rho$ and $P$. In addition, we design variable-rate quantizers for channel coefficients to further minimize the feedback rate of our scheme., Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications

The orthogonal curvilinear terrain-following coordinate (OS-coordinate) can create smooth vertical layers and orthogonal vertical computational grids, therefore reducing the advection errors in the classic terrain-following coordinate. The reduction of advection errors by the OS-coordinate had been validated by the idealized experiments using one kind of terrain and one kind of resolution. We have implemented two more types of 2D linear advection experiments to further analyze the advection errors of the OS-coordinate. The first experiment is to use three kinds of terrain which are one-crest, three-crest, and five-crest wavelike terrain (multi-mountain experiment). And the second experiment is to use five different horizontal (vertical) resolutions (multi-resolution experiment). In both types of the experiments, we compare the advection errors in the OS-coordinate with those in the corresponding hybrid terrainfollowing coordinate (HS-coordinate) to investigate the effect of the OS-coordinate on reducing the advection errors. For the multimountain experiment, the advection errors in the OS-coordinate and those in the HS-coordinate are almost the same in one-crest terrain experiments. And in the three-crest terrain experiments, the advection errors in the OS-coordinate are slightly smaller than those in the HS-coordinate. However, in the five-crest terrain experiment (complex terrain), the advection errors in the OS-coordinate are much reduced comparing with those in the HS-coordinate. This reason is that the OS-coordinate creates the orthogonal computational grids while the HS-coordinate creates the non-orthogonal computational grids. And the differences between these two grids are most significant in the five-crest terrain experiments. Moreover, the differences between these two grids actually represent the different quality of them. This indicates that the OS-coordinate can reduce the advection errors comparing with the corresponding hybrid terrain-following coordinate above the complex terrain, through improving the quality of the vertical computational grids. For the multi-resolution experiments, the advection errors in the OS-coordinate are always smaller than those in the HS-coordinate, and more importantly, the higher the vertical resolution is, the greater the reduction of the advection errors by the OS-coordinate is. All the results obtained by the idealized experiments in this paper indicate that the OS-coordinate may reduce the advection errors near the complex terrain in a high-resolution model.

The present experiment, involving both the in vivo injection of abscisic acid (ABA) into apple (Malus domestica Brohk.) fruits and the in vivo incubation of fruit tissues in ABA-containing medium, revealed that ABA activates both soluble and cell wall-bound acid invertases. Immunoblotting and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays showed that this ABA-induced acid invertase activation is independent of the amount of enzyme present. The acid invertase activation induced by ABA is dependent on medium pH, time course, ABA dose, living tissue and developmental stage. Two isomers of cis-(+)-ABA, (-)-ABA and trans-ABA, had no effect on acid invertases, showing that ABA-induced acid invertase activation is specific to physiologically active cis-(+)ABA. Protein kinase inhibitors K252a and H7 as well as acid phosphatase increased the ABA-induced effects. These data indicate that ABA specifically activates both soluble and cell wall-bound acid invertases by a posttranslational mechanism probably involving reversible protein phosphorylation, and this may be one of the mechanisms by which ABA is involved in regulating fruit development. (Managing editor: Ping He)

This paper proposes a trajectory-based optimal area forwarding (TOAF) algorithm tailored for multihop data delivery from infrastructure nodes (e.g., Internet access points) to moving vehicles (infrastructure-to-vehicle) in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) with partial deployment of stationary nodes. It focuses on reducing the delivery-delay jitter and improving the low reliability of infrastructure-to-vehicle communication. To adapt with the real world, TOAF supposes that stationary nodes are partially installed at intersections in VANETs, and nodes' trajectories can be calculated and predicted, such as using cloud services and GPS, to find the optimal area where the destination vehicle may receive a packet timely. AP selects the optimal area from the trajectory of the destination vehicle and determines the delivery sequence, which includes stationary and mobile nodes from the AP to the optimal area. During delivery, if a new node finds that the delay to the next stationary node is less than that of the current carrier, it can be added to the sequence, reducing the delivery delay. The addition of a new node continues until the packet reaches the optimal area and infrastructure-to-vehicle communication is achieved. The simulation results confirm that TOAF can improve the performance of delivery-delay jitters and reliability of infrastructure-to-vehicle communication with partial deployment of stationary nodes.