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Beetles in the weevil subfamily Platypodinae are among the dominant groups of insects in wet tropical forests, which together with bark and ambrosia beetles in the subfamily Scolytinae. Easily recognised by the circle-shaped entrance holes in fallen logs and a very elongated body shape, they have earned the common name, “pinhole borers”. All except two Platypodinae species are ambrosia beetles that cultivate fungi in wood tunnels as the sole food for their larvae. Platypodinae is a peculiar weevil subfamily of species that cultivate fungi in tunnels excavated in dead wood. The Platypodinae is likely the oldest known lineage of fungus-cultivating insects, with an origin of the ambrosial habit more than 80 Ma. Here, we sequenced and characterized the complete mitochondrial genome of E. parallelus, which was collected from logs imported from SierraLeone. The complete circular mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of Euplatypus parallelus is 16,095 bp in size, containing 37 typical genes and one non-coding AT-rich region. The AT content of the AT-rich region is 87.5%. All protein-coding genes (PCGs) start with standard ATN initiation codons except for nad1and end with complete termination codons TAA except for cox1genes using an incomplete stop codon T. tRNA genes are predicted with a characteristic cloverleaf secondary structure except for trnS1(AGN), whose dihydrouridine (DHU) arm is replaced by a simple loop. The size of the large and small ribosomal RNA genes are 1386 and 741 bp, respectively.

Purpose. This study investigated the correlation between corneal biomechanical parameters and the speed of myopia progression. Methods. This is a retrospective, multicenter study. Both Chinese and Caucasian children were involved. The follow-up time was at least 12 months. Ocular biometry data including the central corneal thickness (CCT), axial length (AL), corneal keratometry (K), anterior chamber depth (ACD), white-to-white (WTW) distance, and pupil size (PS) were measured. The age of onset, speed of progression of spherical equivalent (SE), and speed of AL elongation were calculated. Data were analyzed using the R programming language. Results. This study comprised 306 eyes of 153 myopic children. 122 children were Chinese, and 31 children were Caucasian. The myopia progression was faster in Chinese children than that in the Caucasian group in both SE progression speed and AL elongation speed. The CCT was negatively correlated with the SE speed of progression (correlation coefficient, R = −0.65, and p = 7.25 × 10 − 38 ) and AL speed (R = −0.47 and p = 1.62 × 10 − 18 ). CCT was positively correlated with the age of onset (R = 0.35 and p = 4.53 × 10 − 10 ). No significant correlation (R > 0.3 and p < 0.01) was found between other ocular biometries (K, ACD, WTW, and PS) and the onset and speed of the progression of myopia. The same trends were found in both Chinese and Caucasian children and in both the right eye and left eye. Conclusion. CCT was negatively correlated with myopia (SE) progression speed and AL elongation speed. Thin CCT may be associated with faster myopia progression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the problem of morphological distortion formed in the construction of road DEM by traditional methods, a road DEM construction method at a fine scale was designed based on tilt photogrammetry data collected by UAV in this paper. The method fully considers the morphological changes of the road surface in transverse and longitudinal directions and simplifies the road to a belt model which is horizontal in transverse direction and undulating in longitudinal direction. The basic feature of the longitudinal undulating zonal model is embedded into the interpolation construction process of road DEM as a morphological constraint condition. In this study, four road sections were selected as experimental data to conduct modeling tests from low and gentle hillsides and inside the city respectively. The modeling results show that; 1) compared with the control method, the road DEM construction method proposed in this paper has obvious advantages in road morphology expression, and eliminates the abnormal fluctuation phenomenon caused by data; 2) because of the data density and high elevation accuracy, there is little difference in elevation accuracy between the control method and the proposed method, in urban roads inside the city, the average and standard deviation of road elevation obtained by the two methods are basically the same, the interpolation of corresponding analysis index of the two methods is about 0.05 m in low and gentle hillsides. It shows that the road DEM construction method not only improves the expression of morphological features but also does not reduce the elevation accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research examines the assembly of leucyl-tRNA synthetases from bacterial sources to understand the structure-function relationships of the enzyme. Genome analysis demonstrates that horizontal gene transfer plays an important role in species evolution.

Ground observation is able to obtain highly accurate data with high temporal resolution at observation points, but these observation points are too sparsely to satisfy the application requirements at regional scale. Satellite remote sensing can frequently supply spatially continuous information on earth surface, which is impossible from ground-based investigations, but remote sensing description is not able to directly obtain process parameters. In fact, in terms of fundamental theorem of surfaces, a surface is uniquely defined by the first fundamental coefficients, about the details of the surface observed when we stay on the surface, and the second fundamental coefficients, the change of the surface observed from outside the surface. A method for high accuracy surface modeling (HASM) has been developed initiatively to find solutions for error problem and slow-speed problem of earth surface modeling since 1986. HASM takes global approximate information (e.g., remote sensing images or model simulation results) as its driving field and local accurate information (e.g., ground observation data and/or sampling data) as its optimum control constraints. Its output satisfies the iteration stopping criterion which is determined by application requirement for accuracy. This paper reviews problems to be solved in every development stage and applications of HASM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a combination of a novel interpolation method and a local regression method was employed to improve the estimation accuracy of monthly precipitation over China. After the normalized processing and Box-Cox transformation of the data, we used the geographically weighted regression (GWR) method to describe the spatial precipitation trend, and then interpolated the residual by using a modified high accuracy surface modeling method (HASM-PRE). A high quality database of monthly precipitation with a resolution of 1 km was constructed based on the meteorological stations. Results showed that wet years and dry years appear alternatively, and trend analysis of precipitation data series from 1981 to 2010 showed that the probability of years with extreme precipitation has increased in recent years. Precipitation in winter is rather uncertain and more dynamic from year to year compared to precipitation in summer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The height-diameter relationship model is crucial in the estimation of forest stand volume, biomass and carbon storage, etc. To improve prediction accuracy, the classified factors method for height-diameter relationship modeling was developed based on the classified height method. The data set contained 959 tree samples obtained from 28 plots measured by topographic factors (aspect, slope position and altitude). The Chapman-Richards equation was used to build models. Classification methods have improved fitting performance and prediction accuracy compared to the classical method. The classified height method has the best fitting performance because it has the highest determination coefficient ( R = 0.927) and the lowest root mean square error (RMSE = 1.548), whereas the classified factors method has the highest prediction accuracy because it has the lowest mean absolute error (MAE = 1.137) and mean relative error (MRE = 0.109). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To investigate the effect of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) specific siRNA on proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR). Methods: Cultured human retinal pigment epithelial (hRPE) cell line D407 was treated with three mTOR specific small interfering RNAs. Cell proliferation, attachment, spreading, and migration were performed. The impact of the mTOR specific siRNA on PVR was tested using a rabbit model in which PVR was induced by the injection of hRPE cells. Results: Decreasing mTOR expression by about 82% using small interfering RNA resulted in a significant decrease in cell spreading and migration. Whereas retinal detachment occurred in 100% of the control group animals, co-injection of the mTOR specific siRNA substantially reduced the severity and incidence (50%) of retinal detachments. Conclusions: Gene therapy with mTOR specific siRNA attenuates PVR in a rabbit model of the disease. This may be a new approach to preventing PVR in humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Relativistic laser pulses still can be amplified in micro-tubes when there exist beam pointing fluctuations (BPFs). • Light intensification in micro-tubes exhibits strong polarization-dependence in the influence of BPFs. • The BPFs-induced off-axis incident also leads to pulse shortening inside the tube. • Micro-tube plasma lenses can be used as locators to transversely stabilize the position of beam centroid. We analyze, via an off-axis incident model and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, the influence of beam pointing fluctuations (BPFs) on the propagation properties of relativistic laser pulses in micro-tubes. It is observed that the in-tube laser intensity can be further amplified in the BPFs-induced off-axis incident case. But the intensification factor exhibits strong polarization-dependence. When the laser pulse is linearly polarized in the off-axis incident plane (p-polarization), more electrons may be dragged out from about a half of the tube inner surface in each across section than in the on-axis incident case, enhancing the effects of relativistic nonlinearity and channel focusing. The area for generating more electrons is reduced by one half in the s-polarization case, resulting in less efficient light intensification. The BPFs-induced off-axis incident also leads to pulse shortening. Moreover, light confinement in the tube core is evident and the laser pulse tends to be coaxial with the tube. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]