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Goji berry is an important cash crop of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of China. In the summer of 2019 and 2020, a root rot outbreak appeared in Zhongning County Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. The correct identification of the causal agent is very important for prevention and cure of this root rot disease. The rotten root samples of symptomatic trees were dug for strain isolation using tissues separation method. The fungi were identified based on both morphological characteristics and molecular signatures. Five healthy 1‐year‐old goji berry cv. 'Ningqi‐7' seedlings inoculated with F. redolens QT114 showed root rot symptoms and F. redolens was re‐isolated from the rotted roots of inoculated seedlings. This is the first report of F. redolens causing root rot of Chinese wolfberry (L. barbarum L. cv. 'Ningqi‐7'). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biomonitoring of atmospheric element deposition often uses a single composite sample to test the local mean lichen element concentrations, so as to reduce the expenditure. However, further study is needed to test the composite sample representativeness on the mean element concentration (CSRMC) and its lichen species specificity and element specificity. In this study, we compare the concentration differences of 55 elements between three lichens (Evernia mesomorpha Nyl., EVM; Usnea aciculifera Vain., UAC; Ramalina sinensis Jatta., RSI) from a remote forest site of Hebei, northern China. The results show that the differences of element concentrations between lichens have strong element specificity. Composite samples can well represent the local mean element concentrations in three lichens. CSRMC is the highest in RSI in comparison with EVM and UAC. It is usually ranking 1 for most elements in three lichens except Al, Ca, Hg, P and Si. Therefore, when we use the composite samples with a small sample size for lichen biomonitoring, it is necessary to carefully select lichen species and the number of composite samples according to the CSRMC of the elements of interest. This method is especially suitable for sites with small spatial heterogeneity in atmospheric element depositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The geographical patterns of tree species richness in forest communities have been studied widely, but little is known about the geographical variation of the estimated species richness and minimum areas using species-area curves. A differential technique based on the species-area relationships (SAR) was developed for estimating the minimum area (Amin) capturing 60-80% of the species in each plot, which is an important characteristic of a forest community. The relationship between estimated species richness (ESR) from the SAR and the corresponding minimum area is described by the linear model ESR = 0.0051xAmin (R² = 0.98, p < 0.0001). Both the ESR and the minimum area exhibit similar geographical variations with a significant increase along altitudinal and a decrease along latitudinal gradients. The spatial variations of the ESR were partitioned into three geographical components and their combined effects. Altitude accounted for 40% and 45% of the total variation in the ESR and the minimum area, respectively. While latitude accounted for 69% and 61% of the total variation in the ESR and the minimum area, respectively. Thus, latitude is the main determinant which influences the geographical variation of the ESR. As far as we know, this study presents the first report of the geographical patterns of the minimum area in temperate forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The flood-duration-frequency (QDF) analysis is performed using annual maximum streamflow series of 1-10 day durations observed at Pingshi and Lishi stations in southern China. The trends and change point of annual maximum flood flow and flood duration are also investigated by statistical tests. The results indicate that (1) the annual maximum flood flow only has a marginally increasing trend, whereas the flood duration exhibits a significant decreasing trend at the 0.10 significant level. The change point for the annual maximum flood flow series was found in 1991 and after which the mean maximum flood flow increased by 45.26%. (2)The period after 1991 is characterized by frequent and shorter duration floods due to increased rainstorm. However, land use change in the basin was found intensifying the increased tendency of annual maximumflow after 1991. And (3) under nonstationary environmental conditions, alternative definitions of return period should be adapted. The impacts on curve fitting of flood series showed an overall change of upper tail from "gentle" to "steep," and the design flood magnitude became larger. Therefore, a nonstationary frequency analysis taking account of change point in the data series is highly recommended for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A statistical downscaling method (SDSM) was evaluated by simultaneously downscaling air temperature, evaporation, and precipitation in Haihe River basin, China. The data used for evaluation were large-scale atmospheric data encompassing daily NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data and the daily mean climate model results for scenarios A2 and B2 of the HadCM3 model. Selected as climate variables for downscaling were measured daily mean air temperature, pan evaporation, and precipitation data (1961–2000) from 11 weather stations in the Haihe River basin. The results obtained from SDSM showed that: (1) the pattern of change in and numerical values of the climate variables can be reasonably simulated, with the coefficients of determination between observed and downscaled mean temperature, pan evaporation, and precipitation being 99%, 93%, and 73%, respectively; (2) systematic errors existed in simulating extreme events, but the results were acceptable for practical applications; and (3) the mean air temperature would increase by about 0.7°C during 2011~2040; the total annual precipitation would decrease by about 7% in A2 scenario but increase by about 4% in B2 scenario; and there were no apparent changes in pan evaporation. It was concluded that in the next 30 years, climate would be warmer and drier, extreme events could be more intense, and autumn might be the most distinct season among all the changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Annual, winter and summer precipitation records for the period 1951–2005 from 160 stations in China were analysed using the rotated empirical orthogonal function (REOF), the Mann–Kendall trend test and the Continuous Wavelet Transform (CTW) method. The REOF method was used to analyse the annual and seasonal variability of precipitation patterns over China, the Mann–Kendall method was used to detect the temporal trend of the rotated principal components time series, and the continuous wavelet method was used to explore the periodicity of precipitation changes. In general, six coherent regions across China are identified using the REOF method: north-east China; the middle and lower Yangtze River basin; the Haihe River and the Liaohe River; north-west China; the middle Yellow River and the South-east Rivers (rivers in south-east China). Continuous wavelet transform results indicate that the significant 2–4 year and 6–9 year bands are the major period components. Precipitation in China is uneven in space and time, and its complex temporal structure and spatial variations are different in each season. The Mann–Kendall test results show that, in general, the middle and the lower sections of the Yangtze River are dominated by increasing annual, summer and winter precipitation. Increasing annual precipitation can be observed in north-west China. Increasing summer precipitation is found in north-east China and the Pearl River basin, and the South-east Rivers are dominated by increasing winter precipitation. The availability of water as a resource is in close association with precipitation changes; therefore, this research will be helpful to watershed-based water resource managers in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial and temporal variability of winter extreme low-temperature events and summer extreme high-temperature events was investigated using daily air temperature series (1960–2004) from 66 sites in the Yellow River basin, China, with the help of Mann–Kendall trend test method. In this study an extreme temperature event is defined by exceeding or falling below various threshold values of daily maximum and daily minimum air temperature: 90th percentile, 95th percentile for the high-temperature events; 10th percentile and 5th percentile for the low-temperature events. The analysis results indicate that: 1) significant upward trend of frequency and intensity of the high-temperature events is found in the stations in the west and north part of the Yellow River basin, but trends in most stations in the middle and lower Yellow River basin are not significant at >95% confidence level; 2) almost the whole Yellow River basin is dominated by the significant downward trend of frequency of the cold events. Stations featured by the increasing winter minimum temperature are also more than those featured by changing summer maximum temperature; and 3) annual warming trend in the Yellow River basin mainly results from the increase in winter minimum temperature. Significant warming in the upper reach of the Yellow River will be likely to threaten the availability of the water resource in the whole basin, which should draw certain concerns from local policy-makers and water resource management agency in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantitative assessment of the hydrological response to urbanization has been a major concern in hydrology and water resources management. In this study, a procedure combining different statistical methods and a hydrological model to quantify annual runoff response to spatial and temporal variations of impervious surface areas was proposed and applied to the Qinhuai River basin, an urbanized basin located in southeastern China, over the period from 1986 to 2013. The landscape indicators, such as impervious area and number of impervious patches were used to measure the spatial configuration of urbanization and quantify the runoff response to urbanization. Impervious area data were derived from the Landsat images using superior ensemble learning method of rotation forest. The Mann–Kendall test, Sen's estimator, Pettitt test and double mass curve method were applied to examine gradual trend and abrupt changes for hydro-meteorological data series. A hydrological model based on stepwise regression analysis was built and used to explore the relation among annual runoff and precipitation, potential evapotranspiration and landscape indicators. The results showed that annual runoff and runoff coefficient had significant increasing trends and an abrupt change after year 2001 when the watershed impervious area reached 8.6%. The average annual runoff increased by 60%, of which, urbanization was responsible for 59% of the increase, while precipitation changes were responsible for the remaining 1% in the study region. The annual runoff response to impervious area showed a nonlinear relationship, and was more sensitive in dry years than wet years. The changes of impervious area were more remarkable in connecting the existed impervious patches than in developing the new ones beginning in the early 2000s, which increased the watershed's drainage capacity and resulted in the abrupt change of runoff response. The study demonstrated that the proposed procedure was efficient to quantify the runoff responses to urbanization using landscape metrics of impervious surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The Main objective of the study is to understand and quantify the hydrological responses of land use and land cover changes. The Yangtze River Delta is one of the most developed regions in China with the rapid development of urbanization which serves as an excellent case study site for understanding the hydrological response to urbanization and land use change. The Xitiaoxi River basin, one of the main upstream rivers to the Taihu Lake in the Yangtze River Delta, was selected to perform the study. The urban area in the basin increased from 37.8km2 in 1985 to 105km2 in 2008. SWAT model, which makes direct use of land cover and land use data in simulating streamflow, provides as a useful tool for performing such studies and is therefore used in this study. The results showed that (1) the expansion of urban areas had a slight influence on the simulated annual streamflow and evapotranspiration (ET) as far as the whole catchment is concerned; (2) surface runoff and baseflow were found more sensitive to urbanization, which had increased by 11.3% and declined by 11.2%, respectively; (3) changes in streamflow, evapotranspiration and surface runoff were more pronounced during the wet season (from May to August), while baseflow and lateral flow had a slight seasonal variation; (4) the model simulated peak discharge increased 1.6–4.3% and flood volume increased 0.7–2.3% for the selected storm rainfall events at the entire basin level, and the change rate was larger for smaller flood events than for larger events; (5) spatially, changes of hydrological fluxes were more remarkable in the suburban basin which had a relative larger increase in urbanization than in rural sub-basins; and (6) analysis of future scenarios showed the impacts of urbanization on hydrological fluxes would be more obvious with growth in impervious areas from 15% to 30%. In conclusion, the urbanization would have a slight impact on annual water yield, but a remarkable impact was found on surface runoff, peak discharge and flood volume especially in suburban basins in the study area. The study suggested that more attention must be paid for flood mitigation and water resources management in planning future urban development in the region. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This study developed and used an integrated modeling system, coupling a distributed hydrologic and a dynamic land-use change model, to examine effects of urbanization on annual runoff and flood events of the Qinhuai River watershed in Jiangsu Province, China. The Hydrologic Engineering Center’s Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) was used to calculate runoff generation and the integrated Markov Chain and Cellular Automata model (CA-Markov model) was used to develop future land use maps. The model was calibrated and validated using observed daily streamflow data collected at the two outlets of watershed. Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images from 1988, 1994, 2006, Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) images from 2001, 2003 and a China–Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS) image from 2009 were used to obtain historical land use maps. These imageries revealed that the watershed experienced conversion of approximately 17% non-urban area to urban area between 1988 and 2009. The urbanization scenarios for various years were developed by overlaying impervious surfaces of different land use maps to 1988 (as a reference year) map sequentially. The simulation results of HEC-HMS model for the various urbanization scenarios indicate that annual runoff, daily peak flow, and flood volume have increased to different degrees due to urban expansion during the study period (1988–2009), and will continue to increase as urban areas increase in the future. When impervious ratios change from 3% (1988) to 31% (2018), the mean annual runoff would increase slightly and the annual runoff in the dry year would increase more than that in the wet year. The daily peak discharge of eight selected floods would increase from 2.3% to 13.9%. The change trend of flood volumes is similar with that of peak discharge, but with larger percentage changes than that of daily peak flows in all scenarios. Sensitivity analysis revealed that the potential changes in peak discharge and flood volume with increasing impervious surface showed a linear relationship, and the changes of small floods were larger than those of large floods with the same impervious increase, indicating that the small floods were more sensitive than large floods to urbanization. These results suggest that integrating distributed land use change model and distributed hydrological model can be a good approach to evaluate the hydrologic impacts of urbanization, which are essential for watershed management, water resources planning, and flood management for sustainable development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Define the concept of "design flood and FLWL in operation period". • Propose a framework to determine design flood in operation period. • Apply t-copula and GA to solve curse of dimensionality in derivation of MLRC. • Increase hydropower generation using FLWL in operation period. The hydrological regimes of downstream reservoirs have been significantly altered due to the operation and regulation of upstream cascade reservoirs. The original design flood quantiles, namely "design flood in construction period", do not consider anthropogenic impacts in reservoir operation period, and have led to enormous conflicts between flood control and conservation. In this study, the "design flood and flood limited water level in operation period" are defined for practical application. We establish a general framework to measure the spatiotemporal pattern of streamflow and to estimate design floods of cascade reservoirs in operation period. The multivariate t-copula and a genetic algorithm strategy are proposed to solve the curse of dimensionality encountered in the derivation of most likely regional composition. The Jinsha River and Yalong River cascade reservoir system in China, which consists of 13 large reservoirs with the total storage capacity of 74.06 billion m3 and hydropower capacity of 71.47 GW, is selected as a case study. Results indicate that: (1) The curse of dimensionality can be well addressed by applying multivariate t-copula to build high dimensional joint distribution and using the genetic algorithm to achieve the most likely regional composition. (2) Compared with the design floods in construction period, the design floods of downstream reservoirs in operation period have been significantly reduced due to the upstream reservoir regulation. The 1000-year design peak flood discharge, 3-day, 7-day and 30-day flood volumes of Xiangjiaba reservoir decrease by 38.7%, 37.4%, 34.2% and 13.8%, respectively. (3) The flood limited water level of these reservoirs can be raised without increasing flood control risks in operation period. The cascade reservoirs in the Jinsha River and Yalong River can generate 3.28 billion kW h more hydropower (or increase 4.3%) annually during flood season. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The North of Jiangsu was a traditional area for leprosy in Chinese history. In the period of the Republic of China, one of the largest leprosy clinics in China was established in Ru Gao (Jugao) with the help of Chinese and foreign charitable organizations, the Chinese central government and some squires. It was the only large clinic for leprosy in the North of Jiangsu. It was officially opened in 1924, attached to the Presbyterian Church hospital, and was closed in 1927 after the breakout of the civil war. It reopened in May 1933, hosted by a leprologist, Lee S. Huizenga. Ru Gao (Jugao) leprosy clinic treated around 1,000 lepers in the North of Jiangsu with medicines and language communication. The establishment of the leprosy clinic made a historical contribution in terms of preventing leprosy from spreading to Shanghai. It closed in the spring of 1938 because of the invasion of the Japanese military.

Trichinellosis is a worldwide zoonotic parasitic disease, which may infect humans and a wide range of animals, including carnivores, herbivores and even birds. Humans get infections through ingestion of raw or semi-cooked meat or meat products containing live Trichinella larvae. Currently, this zoonosis is predominantly prevalent in southwestern, northeastern and central parts of China, which poses a great threat to human health and socioeconomic development. In addition, the emergent public health hazards caused by trichinellosis outbreaks greatly threaten human health and social stability. This review describes the current status, diagnosis, treatment and control measures of trichinellosis in China, so as to provide insights into trichinellosis control in the country.

Rugao and Haian belonging to First Branch of Su-Wan Liberated Area found fulminant cholera in 1946. The fulminant cholera spread throughout the Su-Wan Liberated Area in a short period of time. Thus, local mass and military led by CPC actively launched the Movement of Epidemic Prevention. They took some actions to clear up the circumstance, eliminate the pathogen, prevent the food contamination and cut off the route of transmission. Vaccination was carried out on a large scale. As a result of these measure, the fulminant cholera was efficiently controlled.

Objective: To explore the effect of ambient fine particulate matters (PM(2.5)) exposure on nasal oxidative stress level in patients with allergic rhinitis (AR). Methods: A panel of sixty AR patients was recruited as subjects. Four repeated measurements were carried out from June 2017 to January 2018. Nasal irrigation solution was collected and examined for malondialdehyde (MDA) and superoxide dismutase (SOD). Monitoring data of atmospheric pollutants and meteorological factors during measurement periods were also collected. Time activity pattern combined with micro-environment monitoring method was used to evaluate PM(2.5) exposure. Mixed effect model was applied to analyze the relationship between PM(2.5) exposure concentration and oxidative stress level. Results: 49 subjects accomplished the four repeated measurements, and the mean± SD of their age was (36.7±8.4) years old. The median of MDA and SOD in four measurement periods was 3.70, 3.70, 5.58, 6.24 nmol/ml, and 105.50, 102.50, 95.00, 96.50 U/ml. The concentration of PM(2.5) exposure in four measurement periods was (40.0±2.7), (41.5±2.5), (52.3±5.9) and (74.7±4.9) μg/m(3), respectively. Results of single pollutant mixed effect model analysis showed that 0-, 1-, 2-, 3-day lag concentrations of PM(2.5) was significantly positively associated with MDA, about β (95 %CI ) estimated as 0.24 (0.17, 0.30), 0.34 (0.27, 0.41), 0.32 (0.20, 0.44) and 0.33 (0.23, 0.43), respectively. 0-, 1-, 2-day concentrations of PM(2.5) was significantly negatively associated with SOD, about β (95 %CI ) estimated as -0.99 (-1.66, -0.31), -1.35 (-2.08, -0.62) and -0.94 (-1.80, -0.07), respectively. Multivariate analysis found that lag 1-day concentration of PM(2.5) was still significantly associated with MDA and SOD after controlling for temperature, age and other influencing factors. For a 10 μg/m(3) increase of PM(2.5) concentration, MDA increased 0.26 (95 %CI : 0.18, 0.33) nmol/ml, and SOD decreased 0.87 (95 %CI : 0.21, 1.53) U/ml. Conclusion: Our results suggested that PM(2.5) exposure can aggravate the nasal oxidative stress response of AR patients.

The purposes of this study were to investigate the distribution characteristics of CAG repeat polymorphism in exon 1 of androgen receptor gene and the association of CAG polymorphism with VO₂max response to hypoxic training in North China Han men. Sixty-five healthy young men completed a 30-day HiHiLo training (living high, exercise high and training low) in a simulated normobaric hypoxic environment. All subjects slept in 14.3-14.8% O₂ concentration, and participated in hypoxic training three times a week in 15.4% O₂ concentration. VO₂max (peak oxygen consumption) and body weight were measured before and after hypoxic training. A total of 15 repeat alleles were observed by CAG genotype analyze, in which (CAG)22 was most common. When using 21 and 22 alleles, respectively, as cut-off points, we found that the baseline body weight of two shorter genotype groups was significantly lower than that of longer ones, and that the ΔVO₂max and ΔrVO₂max (Δrelative value of VO₂max) of two shorter genotype groups were significantly higher than those of longer ones after hypoxic training. These findings indicated that AR CAG repeat polymorphism was associated with the exercise performance after simulated normobaric hypoxic HiHiLo training in North China Han men, and that the shorter genotypes had a better individual response to hypoxic training., (© 2010 The Authors. International Journal of Andrology © 2010 European Academy of Andrology.)