Search

The design of water supply systems powered by solar photovoltaic (PV) systems are installed for irrigation and other allied applications at remote rural areas which lack proper on-grid power systems. These systems have been operating successfully for several decades at locations receiving ample solar radiation, assisting in the reduction of carbon emissions. Hybrid life cycle assessment was performed in this study to determine the carbon emissions for a solar PV water pumping system (SPVWPS) in Xilin Gol League, Inner Mongolia. The carbon emission (g/mm³) produced by 1 m³ of water raised by 1 m was used as a reference in this assessment. The present analysis estimates the net CO2 emissions generated during the stages of production, transportation, construction, operation, maintenance, and recycling of SPVWPS. The results from SPVWPS were compared with CO2 emissions from diesel operated pumping systems. It was discovered that the carbon emission intensity produced during the 25-year operation period of SPVWPS was 0.80 g/mm³. The major CO2 emissions of SPVWPS were generated during the manufacturing stage totaled 2.02t, accounting for 55.19% of total emissions. When compared to the mobile diesel-powered water supply project, the CO2 emission intensity from SWPS was found to be about 0.55 times lower by about 1.46 g/mm³. As a result, the rapid development of SPVWPS in rural and pastoral areas represents the realization of rural low-carbon transformation and development, as well as the achievement of China’s “double carbon” reduction targets by 2050. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the many factors that affect commodity prices, price forecasting has become a problematic research point. With the development of machine learning and artificial in-telligence, some advanced ensemble algorithms and deep learning prediction methods based on time series have high accuracy and robustness. These algorithms have gradually become the inevitable choice for solving price prediction problems. Based on the National Bureau of Statistics of China data from January 2012 to December 2021, this study pro-poses deep learning combined forecasting model based on neural networks to predict wheat prices and fill the research gap in agricultural product price forecasting. Researchers utilize Python and Selenium to realize the automatic data acquisition of web pages to achieve the purpose of data collection and calculation. The final price result curve pre-dicted by the price prediction model based on LSTM deep learning agrees with the actual price curve, and the mean square error MSE is only 0.00026. It shows that this prediction model based on time series influenced by multiple factors has an excellent application prospect in price prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vicia mingyueshanensis, a new species from the Mingyue Mountain Region of western Jiangxi, China, is described and illustrated. It is a perennial climbing liana that always links to riparian woods. A morphological comparison indicated that the new species is closely similar to Vicia taipaica K. T. Fu and Vicia dichroantha Diels; however, it differs from the other two species by several salient characters, such as plant indumentum, stipule shape, corolla colour, bractlet shape and calyx shape. Photographs, a preliminary conservation assessment, table of morphological characters and distribution map comparing this new species to two morphologically-similar species are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In situ zircon U-Pb ages for the recently discovered Zhunuo porphyry copper deposit in the western part of the Gangdese metallogenic belt in Tibet were determined by sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe (SHRIMP). The ages can be divided into two separate groups, reflecting more than four major tectono-magmatic events in the area. The 62.5±2.5 Ma age of inherited zircons may be related to the volcanic eruption of the Linzizong Group formed shortly after the India-Asia continental collision. The 50.1±3.6 Ma age most likely corresponds to the time of underplating of mantle-derived mafic magma in Gangdese. The 15.6±0.6 Ma age obtained from magmatic zircons is interpreted as the age of crystallization of the Zhunuo ore-forming porphyry. Finally, a molybdenite Re-Os isochron age of 13.72±0.62 Ma is consistent with another zircon U-Pb age of 13.3 ±0.2 Ma, representing the time of copper mineralization. These ages, in combination with available literature data, indicate that magmatic crystallization and copper mineralization in the Gangdese metallogenic belt became gradually younger westward, and further suggest that the Zhunuo porphyry copper deposit was formed in the same tectonic stage as other porphyry copper deposits in the eastern and central Gangdese belt. This conclusion provides critical information for future exploration of porphyry copper deposits in western Gangdese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Torque teno canis virus (TTCaV) is a small virus with circular single-stranded DNA that has been reported to cause infections in dogs. The present study aimed to identify the presence of TTCaV in blood samples obtained from domestic dogs, and examine its diversity and evolution of the genomes. Five strains of TTCaV were detected, and the overall prevalence was found to be 7% (28/400). Phylogenetic analysis showed that the five genomes were closely clustered with the previously known Cf-TTV10 and LDL strains and formed a Thetatorque virus. Homology analysis of the whole genome showed a sequence identity of 94.6%–96.8% among the five genomes. The percent sequence similarity among the five complete genomes ranged from 95.3% to 97.4% and from 95.1% to 97% compared to the Cf-TTV10 and LDL strains respectively. The ORF1-encoded amino acid sequences showed 94.4%–97.2% identity among the five isolates. Our findings suggest that the TTCaV has a large genetic diversity and showed that TTCaV and canine parvovirus (CPV) co-infection exists in China. Further studies on the pathogenicity of TTCaV are required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnopharmacological relevance Infection is a major group of diseases which caused significant mortality and morbidity worldwide. Traditional Chinese herbs have been used to treat infective diseases for thousands years. The numerous clinical practices in disease therapy make it a large chemical resource library for drug discovery. Materials and methods In this study, we collected 1156 kinds of herbs and 22,172 traditional Chinese medicinal compounds (Tcmcs). The chemical informatics and network pharmacology were employed to analyze the anti-infective effects of herbs and Tcmcs. In order to evaluate the drug likeness of Tcmcs, the molecular descriptors of Tcmcs and FDA-approved drugs were calculated and the chemical space was constructed on the basis of principal component analysis in the eight descriptors. On purpose to estimate the effects of Tcmcs to the targets of FDA-approved anti-infective or anti-inflammatory drugs, the molecular docking was employed. After that, docking score weighted predictive models were used to predict the anti-infective or anti-inflammatory efficacy of herbs. Results The distribution of herbs in the phylogenetic tree showed that most herbs were distributed in family of Asteraceae, Fabaceae and Lamiaceae. Tcmcs were well coincide with drugs in chemical space, which indicated that most Tcmcs had good drug-likeness. The predictive models obtained good specificity and sensitivity with the AUC values above 0.8. At last, 389 kinds of herbs were obtained which were distributed in 100 families, by using the optimal cutoff values in ROC curves. These 389 herbs were widely used in China for treatment of infection and inflammation. Conclusion Traditional Chinese herbs have a considerable number of drug-like natural products and predicted activities to the targets of approved drugs, which would give us an opportunity to use these herbs as a chemical resource library for drug discovery of anti-infective and anti-inflammatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "Improvements in ecosystem services form investments in natural capital" by Z. Ouyang and others and published in the June 17, 2016 issue.