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In mountainous areas, it is the undulant terrain, various types of geomorphic and land use that make the remote sensing images great metamorphism. Moreover, due to the elevation, there are many areas covered with shadow, clouds and snow that make the images more inaccurate. As a result, it would be very difficult to carry out auto-classification of RS images in these areas. The study took Southwest China as the case study area and the TM images, SPOT images as the basic information sources assisted by the auxiliary data of DEM, NDVI, topographical maps and soil maps to preprocess the images. After preprocessing by topographic correction and wiping off clouds, snow and shadows, all the image data were stacked together to form the images to be classified. Then, the research used segmentation technology and hierarchical method to extract the main types of land use in the area automatically. The results indicated that the qualitative accuracies of all types of land use extracted in Southwest China were above 90 percent, and the quantitative accuracies was above 86 percent. The goal of reducing workloads had been realized.

This article analyzes the correlation of NDVI and two meteorological data including temperature and precipitation, and probes the spatial pattern of responding sensitivity of the vegetation to temperature and precipitation change. By constructing the NDVIr index, the relation between vegetation cover and land use in the Longitudinal Range-Gorge Region (LRGR) is revealed. The conclusion is as follows: (1) The time lag effect that vegetation responds to temperature and precipitation change is proven. Different regions have different delay time corresponding to maximum correlation coefficient. According to response time of precipitation and temperature combination, three kinds of temperature-precipitation forms are defined, namely, precipitation and temperature in the same time, precipitation prior to temperature and temperature prior to precipitation. (2) The spatial distribution of sensitivity, of which vegetation responses to temperature, is characterized by several high and low scattered correlation centers. Different from temperature, two insensitive regions and two sensitive belts are formed to present the response of vegetation to precipitation. (3) The NDVIr is constructed, which can perfectly reflect the corresponding relationship between meteorological factors and land use condition in the LRGR.

Zinc finger protein, one of the most important transcription factors, plays an essential role in regulating gene expression. C2H2 type zinc protein with KRAB domain contains two parts, one is C2H2 zinc finger motif which is use to binding to the DNA, while the other is KRAB associated box which mostly performs as a transcription repressor. In this study, we report the cloning and characterization of a novel splice variant of the human ZNF300 gene (ZNF300-B). The ZNF300-B gene cDNA is 2293 bp in length, encoding a putative protein with 619 amino acid residues. ZNF300-B gene is mapped to chromosome 5q32–5q33 with seven exons. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis showed that ZNF300-B and ZNF-300 were expressed highly in human testis.

A model of phosphorus purification in a watershed was established based on the export coefficient and purification index of phosphorus in different types of land cover. The model was employed to simulate the economic value of the ecosystem service with the expected water quality standard and marginal cost of pollutant purification of the upper reaches of Xin' an River of Anhui, China. The results revealed that from 2000 to 2010, some farmland outside the Tunxi, Jixi, Shexian, Yixian and Xiuning was converted to built-up land. The total amount of phosphorus exported to the upper Xin' an River decreased a little, and the main source of phosphorus pollution was farmland and built-up land. More than half of the exported phosphorus was efficiently purified by different types of land cover via flow accumulation. The pattern of purification and export of highly concentrated phosphorus showed the same trend which occurred in the northern part of the watershed including the Yangzhi River, Fengle River and Hengjiang River. Forestland and grassland did not efficiently purify phosphorus in the watershed owing to the irrational distribution of existing land cover. The total service value was 3.80 and 3.31 million Yuan in 2000 and 2010, respectively.

High sensitivitymagnetic measurementscanbe achieved by utilizing atomic spinmanipulation in the spin-exchange-relaxation-free (SERF) regime, which uses an alkali cell as a sensing element. The atomic number density of the alkali vapor and the pressure of the buffer gasare among the most important parameters of the cell andrequire accurate measurement. A method has been proposed and developedto measure the atomic number density and the pressure based on absorption spectroscopy, by sweeping the absorption line and fittingthe experiment data with a Lorentzian profile to obtainboth parameters. Due to Doppler broadening and pressure broadening, which is mainly dominated by the temperature of the cell and the pressure of buffer gas respectively, this work demonstrates a simulation of the errorbetween the peaks of the Lorentzian profile and the Voigt profile caused by bothfactors. The results indicates that the Doppler broadening contribution is insignificant with an error less than 0.015% at 313-513 K for a 4He density of 2 amg, and an error of 0.1% in the presence of 0.6-5 amg at 393 K. We conclude that the Doppler broadening could be ignored under above conditions, and that the Lorentzianprofile is suitably applied to fit the absorption spectrumobtainingboth parameters simultaneously. In addition we discuss the resolution and the instability due to thelight source, wavelength and the temperature of the cell. We find that the cell temperature, whose uncertainty is two orders of magnitude larger than the instability of the light source and the wavelength, is one of the main factors which contributes to the error.

The vast territory, diverse climate, rich landscape types, the numerous lakes, and vast sea in the east and south, relatively superior natural, historical and geographical conditions from tertiary and quaternary, make China one of the richest countries in ecosystem in the world. In this chapter, our topic include the main types of ecological system, crisscross band of ecological system, ecological security, ecological function area division, landscape pattern, ecological process, microbial ecology, and so on. Because rapid population growth and large-scale rapid urbanization process bring huge pressure on resources and environment, combined with the impact from the global climate warming and unreasonable land-use activities, ecological security has become a key focus areas of national security and sustainable development strategy. At present China still has not formed a unified evaluation index system and standard of evaluation methods to evaluate ecological security, and the exact meaning of ecological security is a lack of unified understanding. We still use static evaluation in most work at present, short in researching dynamic change, and the evolution trend of ecological security. Ecological security properties, assessment scales of time and space of theoretical basis, evaluation index system, and evaluation method are an important part of the study of ecology in China at present. To develop regional ecological function zoning plan, clarifying the main ecological problems of different ecological function areas has very important practical significance. Ecological regionalization has become the current macro and ecosystem ecology research hot spot. Using the theory of modern ecology, with full consideration regional ecological processes, ecosystem service functions, and ecological sensitivity to human activity intensity relationship on the basis of comprehensive functional zone is one of the ecology theories in practice. Ecological function regionalization is based on partition method and consolidation method. The relationship between landscape patterns and ecological processes and scale features is complex as landscape itself, and the simple concept of causality is not enough for quantitative research. The main research methods include landscape pattern index analysis, spatial autocorrelation analysis, and landscape model. The research contents involved in the evolution of the landscape pattern and drive process.

As a result of intensifying human activities around the Changshou Reservoir, water environmental quality has declined over the years. Water quality had been monitored from 1999 to 2002. The result indicated that the concentrations of total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) are high. The concentrations of phosphorus range from 0.037 mg/L to 0.444 mg/L, exceeding the critical value (0.02 mg/L) for eutrophication. The concentrations of total nitrogen and chlorophylla range from 0.70 mg/L to 4.18 mg/L and from 1.10 mg/m3 to 61.2 mg/m3, respectively. The eutrophication status of the water body was assessed using the method of integrated nutrition state index, which revealed that all sampling sites were eutrophicated from the year of 2001. About 69.6% of the annual total nitrogen input and 26% of the annual total phosphorus input originated from the upstreams. The contributions of nitrogen and phosphorus from precipitation to the water body are very small (0.9% and 0.3%, respectively) owing to their low contents (1.21 mg/L and 0.029 mg/L, respectively). Runoff is the secondarily important input source, which accounts for 19.0% of the total N input and 47.0% of the total P input, respectively. Attention should be paid to the aquaculture inputs, whose contributions account for 10.5% of the total N and 26.6% of the total phosphorus to the water body, respectively. Nutrient loads are estimated to be 118 gNm−2·a−1 and 8 gPm−2·a−1. About 69.4% of nitrogen and 79.7% of phosphorus input into the reservoir were retained in 2002.

Ecological footprint's theory and method are used to calculate and analysis the ecological carrying capacity in Tibet. The results indicate: Tibet ecological footprint (2. 1 hm2) keeps higher than countrywide average level (1. 5 hm2), and lower than global average level (2. 4 hm2); the result show that Tibet pasture ecological footprint is the most different with other area, and woodland is the second; Tibet ecological footprint grows from 1. 25 hm2 in 1978 to 2. 09 hm2 in 2002, which states that life level is improving continuously; GDP (per RMB 104 Yuan) ecological footprint reduces from 61. 9 hm2 in 1978 to 4. 54 hm2 in 2002, which states resources utilized ratio is increasing continuously.

The tensile properties of short δ-Al 2 O 3 fiber randomly reinforced aluminum alloy composites were characterized. Systems based on three matrix alloys, Al–5.5Zn, Al–5.5Mg and Al–12Si, were prepared to observe and measure the microstructural and mechanical characteristics of squeeze cast short fiber composites, including the orientation and length of short fiber, interfacial bond and micro-hardness of the reinforced matrix. It was found that the orientation and length of the short fibers satisfied the Weibull's and normal distribution, respectively. The micro-hardness values of the reinforced matrix alloys were higher than that of the unreinforced alloys. The interfacial bond differed with the variation of matrix alloy. Based on the microstructural characteristics and in situ tensile observation by scanning electronic microscopy, the fracture mechanisms of the three composite systems were discussed and related to the microstructural characterization. Finally, the tensile strengths of the composites were predicted by the statistical integration average method, based on using the maximum energy criterion for the composite strength. In this way, the prediction accounts for the practical distributions of the fiber orientation and length. The predicted results agree well with the experimental data.

In this paper, a speech emotion recognition (SER) algorithm was proposed to improve the emotional perception of hearing-impaired people. The algorithm utilizes multiple kernel technology to overcome the drawback of SVM: slow training speed. Firstly, in order to improve the adaptive performance of Gaussian Radial Basis Function (RBF), the parameter determining the nonlinear mapping was optimized on the basis of Kernel target alignment. Then, the obtained Kernel Function was used as the basis kernel of Multiple Kernel Learning (MKL) with slack variable that could solve the over-fitting problem. However, the slack variable also brings the error into the result. Therefore, a soft-margin MKL was proposed to balance the margin against the error. Moreover, the relatively iterative algorithm was used to solve the combination coefficients and hyper-plane equations. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can acquire an accuracy of 90% for five kinds of emotions including happiness, sadness, anger, fear and neutral. Compared with KPCA[Formula: see text]+[Formula: see text]CCA and PIM-FSVM, the proposed algorithm has the highest accuracy.

To improve the performance of gain compensation based on three-segment sound pressure level (SPL) in hearing aids, an improved multichannel loudness compensation method based on eight-segment SPL was proposed. Firstly, the uniform cosine modulated filter bank was designed. Then, the adjacent channels which have low or gradual slopes were adaptively merged to obtain the corresponding non-uniform cosine modulated filter according to the audiogram of hearing impaired persons. Secondly, the input speech was decomposed into sub-band signals and the SPL of every sub-band signal was computed. Meanwhile, the audible SPL range from 0 dB SPL to 120 dB SPL was equally divided into eight segments. Based on these segments, a different prescription formula was designed to compute more detailed gain to compensate according to the audiogram and the computed SPL. Finally, the enhanced signal was synthesized. Objective experiments showed the decomposed signals after cosine modulated filter bank have little distortion. Objective experiments showed that the hearing aids speech perception index (HASPI) and hearing aids speech quality index (HASQI) increased 0.083 and 0.082 on average, respectively. Subjective experiments showed the proposed algorithm can effectively improve the speech recognition of six hearing impaired persons.

Background The goal of this study was to assess the association between endometrial thickness on the chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) day and in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (IVF-ET) outcome in normal responders after GnRH antagonist administration. Methods A retrospective cohort study was performed in normal responders with GnRH antagonist administration from January 2011–December 2013. Patients were divided into four groups according to endometrial thickness, as follows: = 7- = 8- =14 mm (group 4). Results A total of 2106 embryo transfer cycles were analyzed. The pregnancy rate (PR) was 44.87%. The clinical pregnancy rate, ongoing pregnancy rate and the implantation rate (17.28%, 13.79%, 10.17%, respectively) were significantly lower in group 1 compared to the other three groups (p

With GIS and RS technology, characteristics of land use change and ecosystem services value of different years in six national nature reserves in Xinjiang, China were analyzed with remote sensing image of the year 2000-2010. Results showed that the area of water body and grassland decreased while the area of forest, farmland, wetland, unused land and construction land increased in 2000-2010. Variation rate of land use change in 2000-2005 was faster, as 2.4-6.3 times as that in 2005-2010. The total ecosystem services value mostly consisted of that of water body, grassland and forest, accounting for 93% approximately. During the study, the values of all kinds of the ecosystem services increased except for grassland and water body, the total ecosystem services value increased firstly and then decreased, and overall emerged as a reducing trend with the rate of 1.2%. In the process of the development of the west regions, it is necessary to pay more attention to the protection of natural resources and ecosystem restoration, so as to achieve sustainable development of resources, environment and social economy in the western regions.

To enhance the stability and robustness of visual inspection system (VIS), a new surface defect target identification method for copper strip based on adaptive genetic algorithm (AGA) and feature saliency is proposed. First, the study uses gray level cooccurrence matrix (GLCM) and HU invariant moments for feature extraction. Then, adaptive genetic algorithm, which is used for feature selection, is evaluated and discussed. In AGA, total error rates and false alarm rates are integrated to calculate the fitness value, and the probability of crossover and mutation is adjusted dynamically according to the fitness value. At last, the selected features are optimized in accordance with feature saliency and are inputted into a support vector machine (SVM). Furthermore, for comparison, we conduct experiments using the selected optimal feature subsequence (OFS) and the total feature sequence (TFS) separately. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can guarantee the correct rates of classification and can lower the false alarm rates.

We study the cross-database speech emotion recognition based on online learning. How to apply a classifier trained on acted data to naturalistic data, such as elicited data, remains a major challenge in today’s speech emotion recognition system. We introduce three types of different data sources: first, a basic speech emotion dataset which is collected from acted speech by professional actors and actresses; second, a speaker-independent data set which contains a large number of speakers; third, an elicited speech data set collected from a cognitive task. Acoustic features are extracted from emotional utterances and evaluated by using maximal information coefficient (MIC). A baseline valence and arousal classifier is designed based on Gaussian mixture models. Online training module is implemented by using AdaBoost. While the offline recognizer is trained on the acted data, the online testing data includes the speaker-independent data and the elicited data. Experimental results show that by introducing the online learning module our speech emotion recognition system can be better adapted to new data, which is an important character in real world applications.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the composition, morphology, characteristics, distribution and function of distinct macrophage subpopulations in the mouse thymus. Apoptosis of mouse thymocytes was induced by glucocorticoids and three monoclonal antibodies against Mac-2, F4/80 and ED1 were used for immunofluorescence staining and immunohistochemical analysis. The morphology of thymic macrophages was examined by transmission electron microscopy. Four subpopulations of mouse thymic macrophages were identified. Dendritic macrophages were identified using anti-Mac-2 and anti-F4/80 antibodies, and were demonstrated to be distributed in the entire thymus. Phagocytes were also observed. In addition, plate-shaped macrophages, identified using the anti-F4/80 antibody, were distributed under the thymic cortex capsule. Small oval macrophages, identified using the anti-Mac-2 antibody, were distributed in the thymic medulla and corticomedullary region (CMR), while phagocytes were not observed in these types of cell. ED1+ thymic macrophages with irregular forms were distributed in the CMR. All of the four subpopulations of mouse thymic macrophages described above exhibited acid phosphate activity. This study indicated the existence of macrophage subpopulations with different shapes, distribution and functions in the mouse thymus.

Environmental risk assessment is an essential step in the development of solutions for pollution problems and new environmental regulations. An assessment system for environmental risks has been developed in China in recent decades. However, many of the Chinese technical guidelines, standards, and regulations were directly adapted from those of developed countries, and were not based on the Chinese environmental and socioeconomic context. Although existing environmental regulations for pollutants are usually obtained by extrapolations from high-dose toxicological data to low-dose scenarios using linear-non-threshold (LNT) models, toxicologists have argued that J-shaped or inverse J-shaped curves may dominate the dose–response relationships for environmental pollutants at low doses because low exposures stimulate biological protective mechanisms that are ineffective at higher doses. The costs of regulations based on LNT and J-shaped models could therefore be dramatically different. Since economic factors strongly affect the decision-making process, particularly for developing countries, it is time to strengthen basic research to provide more scientific support for Chinese environmental regulations. In this paper, we summarize current Chinese environmental policies and standards and the application of environmental risk assessment in China, and recommend a more scientific approach to the development of Chinese regulations.

Triptolide (TP) has been used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but its mechanism of action is not understood. T-cell activation and associated release of cytokines appear to be major factors in the pathogenesis of RA. The overexpression of T-cell receptor (TCR) variable gene (V gene) fragments can cause the activation and infiltration of autoreactive T cells. This study examines the effects of TP on rats with collagen-induced arthritis (CIA). The levels of interleukin-10 (IL-10) in the serum were examined with ELISA. Compared to the CIA group, the levels of IL-10 were greater in the TP treatment group. Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction confirmed that the expression of TCR V beta (BV) 15 and TCR BV19 was increased in the CIA group, whereas in the TP treatment group, the expression was decreased. In this study, TP was found to enhance IL-10 levels and decrease the expression levels of TCR BV15 and TCR BV19. These changes might help explain the effectiveness of TP in the treatment of RA.

Seasonal characteristics of the total nitrogen TN), total phosphorus (TP) and other factors in the sediment and water in the Yuyuantan Lake were analyzed. Correlation among all forms of P was estimated considering the seasonal variations of TP. The result showed that the concentrations of TN and TP are lower in summer and higher in autumn. All nutritional indexes are much higher in the west of lake than that in the east of lake. The study on seasonal occurrence characteristics of N and P provided basis for the evaluation of ecological security in the lake.

A model was established to simulate an ecosystem service of avoiding reservoir sedimentation and its economic value based on the process of sediment delivery in a watershed. The model included fabricating the watershed of the study reservoir. The sediment retention coefficient of different land cover types were used to simulate the spatial patterns of the annual quantity of the sediment that were prevented from entering the reservoir by the vegetation in each cell followed the flow path in watershed. The economic value of the ecosystem service in this model was determined by the marginal cost of reservoir desilting. This study took the Ertan reservoir as an example. The results showed that most eroded soil was intercepted by different types of ecosystems in the process of sediment delivery in a watershed. The region with a higher quantity of sediment retention was around the reservoir. The absolute quantity of average sediment retention in forestland was lower, so the sediment retention ability of forestland failed to be brought into fullest play in watershed.

Aiming at the fact that the current approaches of evaluating the efficacy of ecosystem provisioning service were lack of spatial information and did not take the accessibility of products into account, this paper established an evaluation model to simulate the spatial distribution of ecosystem provisioning service and its economic value, based on ArcGIS 9. 2 and taking the supply and demand factors of ecosystem products into account. The provision of timber product in Laojunshan in 2000 was analyzed with the model. In 2000, the total physical quantity of the timber' s provisioning service in Laojunshan was 11.12 x 10(4) m3 x a(-1), occupying 3.2% of the total increment of timber stock volume. The total provisioning service value of timber was 6669.27 x 10(4) yuan, among which, coniferous forest contributed most (90.41%). Due to the denser distribution of populations and roads in the eastern area of Laojunshan, some parts of the area being located outside of conservancy district, and forests being in scattered distribution, the spatial distribution pattern of the physical quantity of timber's provisioning service was higher in the eastern than in the western area.

By using software ArcGIS 9.2, an evaluation model was established to simulate the ecosystem service of Ertan Reservoir watershed in mitigating the sand sedimentation in the reservoir. In the meantime, sediment delivery ratio and universal soil loss equation were used to simulate the spatial patterns of the annual sediment yield and sediment retention in the watershed as well as the value during the service life period. In 2000, the total quantity of soil retention in the watershed was 12. 1 x 10(8) t x a(-1). The region with higher soil retention was near the main and branch streams of Yalong River, and that with higher sediment delivery ratio was near the streams and the Ertan Reservoir. The region with higher sediment yield and sediment retention was around the reservoir. The actual sediment yield in the study area was 629.3 x 10(4) t x a(-1), occupying 12.7% of the actual soil erosion volume. Farmland was the most important source of sediment yield, with its sediment yield occupying 62.9% of the total. The contribution of forestland to the mitigation of reservoir sand sedimentation was higher than that of the other lands on a per unit area basis. For the reservoir's designed operating life (100 a), the total value of the watershed in the service of mitigating Ertan Reservoir sand sedimentation was 2.75 billion yuan.

Two problems will be met with while directly using simple genetic algorithm to solve image interpolation: one is how many bits are needed for difference-chromosome coding. Setting it too large will increase implementation spending while making it too small will evolve into local minimum. The other is premature, if some individuals are most dominant in current population, they will emphasize their superiority in future evolution, so the diversity is restrained and evolution will be plunged into local minimum. This paper investigates messy algorithm and niche algorithm which can easily remedy the two shortcomings above. For the purpose of extracting an ultimate algorithm, messy algorithm and niche algorithm are combined. Experiments on the application of image super-resolution demonstrate the algorithm proposed has better performance than messy algorithm or niche algorithm used alone.

In this paper, network coding aware routing protocol for lossy wireless networks is proposed. It considers both potential coding opportunity in available route discovery process and link delivery ratio in optimal route selection. In route discovery process, it detects whether current flow can be coded with established flows in networks. And when more than one coding schemes exists in some intermediate node, it can determine coding scheme with the highest priority. Besides, in optimal path selection process, it adopts an improved ETX metric to estimate and choose the path which has lowest transmission count. Simulation results show that our proposed protocol can effectively improve the throughput of lossy wireless networks.