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Abies fabri (Mast.) Craib. (A. fabri) is an endemic and dominant species in typical subalpine dark coniferous forests distributed in mountainous regions of Western Sichuan, China. We investigated the ecophysiological responses of A. fabri seedlings to short-term experimental drought, nitrogen supply and their interaction. Drought stress was created by excluding natural precipitation with automatically controlled plastic roof that covered the seedlings. Nitrogen fertilization was applied weekly by spraying over seedlings ammonium nitrate solution (50 kg N ha(-1) year(-1)) during the growing season of 2009. The results showed that drought stress decreased leaf relative water content (RWC), whereas it caused marked increases in root mass ratio (RMR) and root/shoot mass ratio by 6.19 and 10.39%, respectively, as compared with the control. Drought stress increased malondialdehyde (MDA) content, electrolyte leakage, proline content, soluble sugars content and the activities of antioxidant enzymes, whereas nitrogen supply decreased MDA content, but enhanced activities of some antioxidant enzymes [especially peroxidase (POD)]. In the drought stressed plots, nitrogen supply increased RWC and decreased the content of MDA. The combination of drought stress and nitrogen supply also decreased the activities of antioxidant enzymes. These results indicated that the negative effects of drought stress on A. fabri seedlings might be alleviated by nitrogen supply.

To study the growth characteristics of different germplasm and analyze the correlation between morphologic and individual yield of Isatis indigotica.The planting samples were collected during the growth period, morphological characteristics and root yield per plant in 13 germplasm of I. indigotica from all over the country were determined by correlation and path analysis.The growth characteristics of various I. indigotica germplasm were consistent. The difference of morphological characteristics and root yield with various germplasm were significant. The root yield per plant was positively correlated to the main root length and the number of individual plant leaves.The number of leaves per plant and root length are selected for high-yield lines, meanwhile, leaf length and leaf diameter are important factors for breeding high-yield lines as well.

In order to ascertain the invasive mechanism and control strategy of the invasive Crofton weed, Ageratina adenophora, its ecological adaptability and population differentiation, the formation of single dominant population, displacement of native plants and sustainable management strategies were investigated. The present results helped to clarify and explain such issues as the adaptability post invasion, interaction and competition between inter- and intra-species and community resistance, thereby providing important references to researches on other invasive alien species.

During production or commercialization of fine iron powder, water content is the most important parameter for evaluating and controlling the fine iron powder properties. In order to improve the portability, operability, and speed of the water determination and to reduce testing cost, a new method to quickly detect the water content in fine iron powder using capacitance type sensor is put forward. The basic principle and characteristics of this measuring technique are examined. Structure and testing circuit for the capacity sensor are designed with parameters optimized through experimental research. A mathematical model to correlate water content to the capacitance is proposed. The present work had laid the foundation for developing an utility-type fast detecting device for water content in fine iron powder which can be adopted in real-time monitoring for processing or trading of fine iron powder.

For many high-reliability products, reliability assessment relying on the tests has become unrealistic, but expert experience shows its advantage to the above problem. In order to resolve the problem that how to fuse the expert experience, we convert the expert experience into the reliability probability density distribution, determine the knowledge framework and basic probability assignment function based on the definition of consistent degree, fuse the basic probability distribution based on D-S fusion rule, and get the fusion distribution weights, finally obtain the reliability of the product. This method has been validated by an example, and shows perfect.

Considering the measurement accuracy of the line profile error is affected because of the position error between the design benchmarks and measurement benchmarks during the measurement process, this paper brings forward a new method to calculate the plane line profile error precisely based on the complex figure optimization design. Use the indirect method of coordinate transformation to establish the objective function, and adopt complex figure algorithm and Newton-Iterative method to optimize fitting turning point, then to evaluate the plane line profile error precisely. Eliminate the effect of the position error betwe the design benchmarks and the measurement benchmarks by auto-spotting in the measurement process and ensure measurement accuracy. This method is highly feasible, precise and convenient to use.

AR process's denoising methods are discussed in this paper whose system response being perceived under the additive white noise, within the two discussed methods, the formula analysis method is proved less satisfactory through experiments results whereas in Kalman Filter method both the system impulses of AR process and noise contaminated system response are regarded as inputs and white noise only as parameters involved in computation. Through above process computer simulation shows that influences of noise chaotic factors to the computation results can be reduced.

A 3D measuring system on structure light which uses color-encoded technique and digital projection technique to realize 3D measuring is introduced. In this measuring system, a color-encoded pattern that is created by a new method is created by software on a computer and then projected to an object by a digital projection system controlled by the computer. The image of the object is captured by a CCD color digital camera position at an angle different from that of the digital projection system. The color of each pixel determined by the proportion of its primary color, red, green, and blue (RGB) has a one-to-one correspondence with the projection angle. Decoding and calculating for the color image captured, the 3D coordinates of the points on the object surface can be obtained.

A color-encoded technique for 3D measurement is presented in this paper. In this technique, a color pattern that is composed of RGB components is created by software on a computer screen and projected to an object by a digital light processing, which is controlled by the computer. The image of the object is captured by a CCD color digital camera positioned at an angle different from that of the digital projection system. The color of each pixel of the image has a one-to-one correspondence with the projection angle. The 3D depth map of the object is obtained by way of computer decoding and calculating of the color image captured. This paper mainly introduces the errors analysis and the computer simulation method. The results of the example shows that the relatively errors of the 3D measuring system are smaller than 1%. Simulations have been performed and the results validate the method.

In this paper, a NIR Spectral System based on Acoustic Optical Tunable Filter (AOTF) was developed for measuring milk constituents. Factors affecting the repeatability of measuring spectra of the system were analyzed by using the transmitted spectra of Ultra-High Temperature (UHT) sterilized milk. Orthogonal experimental design method was employed to determine the significance level of these factors and the optimal condition for measuring spectra of the system. It is concluded that the crucial factor affecting the spectra repeatability is the ambient temperature. Further temperature testing results show that, when the environmental condition is basically invariant, the temperature of the AOTF crystal is basically constant and the drifting amplitude of wave number is within 0.5cm -1 , when the ambient temperature varies, the temperature of AOTF crystal changes correspondingly. The drifting of wave number is about 1cm -1 when the temperature of AOTF crystal changes 1°C. It is found that the wave number drifting increases with decreasing temperature of AOTF crystal. These testing results are of important significance to further improve the measuring accuracy of the system.

In this paper, methods of adopting NIR spectra to measure milk constituents and Direct Orthogonalization (DO) pre-processing are studied. Based on the spectra of representative solutions, the DO method was employed to filter the signal noise that is irrelevant to the concentration being measured. The predictions of the Partial Least Squares (PLS) Regression models with and without the DO pre-processing are evaluated. During the experiments, the transmitted spectra of a water solution with glucose and NaCl mixture and the scattered reflection spectra of milk are acquired respectively in the near infrared region of 1000~1700nm using a homemade NIR Spectral System for measuring milk constituents. With the DO pre-processing of the spectroscopic data, the number of the optimal Principal Component (PC) of the PLS model is reduced. It should be noted that the sum of this PC number and the PC number corresponding to the DO preprocessing is equal to the optimal PC number of the PLS model without DO pre-processing. After the DO pre-processing, the Root Mean Square Error of Cross Validation (RMSECV) of PLS model is slightly reduced whereas the Root Mean Square Error of Prediction (RMSEP) is reduced significantly.

Epiblema strenuana is the most important natural enemy against Ambrosia artemisiifolia, A. trifida and Parthenium hysterophorus. In this paper, its ecological adaptability and application risk as a biological agent against ragweed was analyzed and reviewed. Epiblema strenuana had a restrict host specificity, with all the field hosts belonging to Ambrosinae, and its selective risk on sunflower and chrysanthemum was less than 0.01 or/and zero (no risk). 15-35 degrees C was the suitable temperature regimes for E. strenuana to develop, and lower constraint temperature could reach -8(-)-12 degrees C. The population size of this insect could increase 23 and 4 times on A. artemisiifolia, A. trifida and Xanthium sibiricum after each generation, respectively. In the field, the infected plants had an average of 20-30 galls per plant, and died with 5.2 and 26 galls before and after rosette stage. The spread distance of this moth within 12 months after release was more than 100 km. It indicated that E. strenuana was an effective and safe agent for cereal and economic crops, ornamental plants, and indigenous natural enemy in the introduced region.

There may be several ecological impacts induced by transgenic cottons, apart from their direct impact on target pest. The interactions between target insect and transgenic cotton, and the way of toxic expressed by transgenic cotton varied with plant spatial parts and different growing stages are regarded as the main cause for insect to develop resistance. In transgenic cotton field, although chemicals applied to control major insect pest could be reduced greatly, insect community structure including insect pests and beneficial organisms is less stable than that of regular cotton field. It is much easier for minor insect pests developing to be major pest. In order to full utilization of transgenic cottons and keep their efficiency on target pest, methods including integrated pest management and breeding higher efficiency transgenic cottons by genetic engineering are proposed for management of pest resistance and non-target pests.

Although it is believed that altered conformations exposing cryptic regions are intermediary and critical steps in the mechanism of transthyretin (TTR) amyloid formation, no effective therapy targeting this step is available. In this study, to establish the antibody therapy for familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy (FAP), we generated a monoclonal anti-TTR antibody, which specifically reacts with surface epitopes of TTR (MAb ATTR) and evaluated its binding affinity and specificity for TTR amyloid fibrils. MAb ATTR showed specific binding affinity for TTR amyloid fibrils, but not for native form of TTR. Moreover, MAb ATTR indeed showed the high consistency with Congo red positive areas in tissue specimens from FAP ATTR V30M patients, indicating that MAb ATTR showed binding affinity and specificity for TTR amyloid fibrils in vitro and in vivo. MAb ATTR may have a potential to suppress TTR amyloid deposition and become a candidate for the antibody therapy for FAP.

Transthyretin (TTR)-related familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy (FAP) is characterized by systemic accumulation of amyloid fibrils caused by a point mutation in the TTR gene. Despite the ...

The 5-year survival of patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) has not changed apparently for the past 30 years. Although cylindromatosis (CYLD) is thought as a potent tumor suppressor, its biological significances in malignancies are largely unknown. The aim of this study was to clarify the role of CYLD in OSCC progression. We investigated expression of CYLD in OSCC including intraepithelial neoplasia (IEN; n = 48) and invasive carcinomas (n = 133) tissues and normal oral mucosal tissues (n = 35) by immunohistochemistry. In addition, effects of CYLD knockdown by siRNA transfection on OSCC progression using 5 OSCC cell lines (SAS, Tu4, HSC3, Ca9-22, and SCC-NA) and HaCaT keratinocytes. Our immunohistochemical analyses revealed that CYLD expression was significantly reduced at invasive lesions in OSCC tissues whereas it was conserved in normal epithelium and IEN. In addition, lower CYLD expression was associated with the correlation with the increased tumor size, advanced clinical stage, and poor overall survival in invasive OSCC. Accordingly, CYLD knockdown led to acquisition of mesenchymal state and increased migratory activity in all the OSCC cell lines as well as HaCaT keratinocytes. Notably, such EMT-like changes were completely blocked by a TGFβR1 inhibitor in all the OSCC cell lines, but not in HaCaT keratinocytes. Furthermore, treatment with excess amount of anti-TGFβ antibody (1D11) did not inhibit the EMT-like changes induced by CYLD repression. These findings suggest that downregulation of CYLD promotes invasion through EMT-like changes via ligand-independent TGFβR1 activation in OSCC cells in mechanisms distinct from normal epithelium. Further studies for these mechanisms probably provide new insights into the biology including “TGFβ switch” and development of a novel therapy in OSCC. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2012 Mar 31-Apr 4; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 16. doi:1538-7445.AM2012-16

Sand wedges in the Hexi Corridor mainly formed in an alluvial gravel stratum of the late Pleistocene and the radiocarbon ages of the eolian sand infilling wedge prove that they were a product of the last ice age. During their period of formation, the mean annual air temperature in the Hexi Corridor was about −5.3°C., i.e. about 13°C lower than that of the present. This estimated value is coincident with the decrease in air temperature predicated from mirabilite (Na2SO4 · 10H2O) sedimentary layer in study area, and also agrees with research on the estimated amplitude of air temperature lowering in middle and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere during the last glacial period. The annual precipitation in the Western Hexi Corridor at that time was probably about 100–200 mm, i.e. about 100 mm more than at present.

Although transthyretin (TTR) is expressed in pancreatic alpha (glucagon) cells in the islets of Langerhans, the function of TTR in pancreatic alpha cells remains unknown. In this study, by using TTR knockout (TTR KO) mice, we determined the novel role of TTR in glucose homeostasis. We demonstrated that TTR KO mice evidenced impaired recovery of blood glucose and glucagon levels. Lack of TTR induced significantly lower levels of glucagon in the islets of Langerhans. These results suggest that TTR expressed in pancreatic alpha cells may play important roles in glucose homeostasis via regulating the expression of glucagon.

Summary Objective: Nitric oxide (NO), carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) were endogenously-generated molecules gas. They owned important biological activity and participated in many pathophysiological processes. This study aimed to examine the levels of three gasotransmitters in the early phase of trauma patients. Method: Blood samples were collected from 60 trauma patients and ten healthy volunteers. Concentration of serum iNOS and HO-1 were analyzed by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay and plasma H2S was determined by colorimetric method. Meanwhile, the occurrence of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) was also monitored. Results: The levels of iNOS, HO-1 and endogenous H2S in the patients group were significantly different from the healthy control group, and the difference was more obvious with the increase of ISS score. iNOS levels were positively correlated with ISS scores and blood lactic acid values, and HO-1 and endogenous H2S were negatively correlated with ISS scores and blood lactic acid values. Of 60 trauma patients, eight (13.33%) developed MODS. The level of iNOS in the MODS group was higher than that in non-MODS group, while HO-1 and H2S were significant lower in the MODS group. Conclusion: The three gasotransmitters participated in systemic inflammatory responses during early trauma and could be used as important indicators for trauma severity. Their measurements were meaningful for evaluating the severity and prognosis of trauma.