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The rise of the Tubo Kingdom is considered as the key period for the formation of modern groups on the Tibetan Plateau. The ethnic origin of the residents of the Tubo Kingdom is quite complex, and their genetic structure remains unclear. The tombs of the Tubo Kingdom period in Dulan County, Qinghai Province, dating back to the seventh century, are considered to be the remains left by Tubo conquerors or the Tuyuhun people dominated by the Tubo Kingdom. The human remains of these tombs are ideal materials for studying the population dynamics in the Tubo Kingdom. In this paper, we analyzed the genome-wide data of eight remains from these tombs by shotgun sequencing and multiplex PCR panels and compared the results with data of available ancient and modern populations across East Asia. Genetic continuity between ancient Dulan people with ancient Xianbei tribes in Northeast Asia, ancient settlers on the Tibetan Plateau, and modern Tibeto-Burman populations was found. Surprisingly, one out of eight individuals showed typical genetic features of populations from Central Asia. In summary, the genetic diversity of ancient Dulan people and their affiliations with other populations provide an example of the complex origin of the residents in the Tubo Kingdom and their long-distance connection with populations in a vast geographic region across ancient Asia.

Graphene has excellent properties, such as excellent conductivity, more pores, stable chemical and structural properties, high specific surface area, so it is usually used in the battery fields. In order to further explore the capacitive properties of graphene, this experiment used electrochemical stripping method, the electrochemical electrode was characterized by constant potential treatment methods, cyclic voltammetry curve, and constant current charging–discharging curve. The capacitive performance of modified graphene at different potentials was compared. If a constant potential peeling treatment is performed, the interlayer spacing of graphene increases, and this time, the specific surface area is enlarged, and the electrical properties of the graphene electrode material are correspondingly improved. Cyclic voltammetry curve results show that the graphene electrode exhibits better capacitance performance after being treated with a constant potential in neutral electrolyte. When treating with 3.1 V constant potential and voltage range of -1.1 V–1.1 V, capacitance can reach 327.273 F. The chronopotentiometry curve results show that 3.1 V graphene electrode mass ratio capacitance can reach 218.182 F/g under voltage range of -0.3 V–0.3 V, meeting the energy storage requirements of the battery industry, and it is expected to become an ideal electrode material in the field of supercapacitors.

International audience; AbstractAdaptive management of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) provides a new option for sustainable agriculture. Previous studies showed that the functional role of AMF was frequently dependent on soil moisture and planting densities in the semiarid environment. However, a systematic quantitative analysis of the effects of AMF inoculation on crop productivity and soil quality needs to be investigated. Therefore, a 2-year field experiment was conducted to test the inoculation effects of AMF (Funneliformis mosseae) on wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) productivity and soil quality in the semiarid Loess Plateau under two water regimes (irrigated and non-irrigated) with seven plant densities in year 2017 and 2018. Our results showed that in the non-irrigated treatment, inoculation with AMF greatly increased dryland wheat aboveground biomass, crop productivity, water use efficiency, rhizosphere soil organic carbon, soil organic carbon to total nitrogen ratio, microbial biomass carbon to nitrogen ratio, and microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen (P

In rain-fed semiarid areas, low soil water availability is a major challenge constraining crop productivity and agricultural sustainability. Soil surface mulching with plastic film has been widely used to improve soil water availability in the Loess Plateau of China. However, a systematic assessment on soil water balance dynamics under plastic mulching is still lacking. We conducted a meta-analysis on plastic mulching observations across the Loess Plateau to quantify the intensity of evapotranspiration (ET), spatiotemporal dynamics of soil water storage (SWS), and annual soil water balance in the plastic mulching systems. The results indicated that compared with non-mulching, plastic mulching significantly enhanced ET by 2.6% across the entire dataset. The magnitude of intensified ET was strongly associated with mulching pattern, mean annual precipitation and nitrogen application. Plastic mulching led to a significant increase in SWS by 8.4% at 0−60 cm soil layer, yet a decrease by 0.8% at 60−200 cm layer over the growing season, comparing with non-mulching. Importantly, an effective water recovery effect was observed at the deep soil layer under plastic mulching, as evidenced by the significantly greater SWS (+30%) over the fallow season, in comparison with that of non-mulching. Nitrogen input level and mean annual precipitation proved to be the most important factors in driving SWS. As a result, crop yield and water use efficiency were substantially improved under plastic mulching, and such enhancements were the most pronounced under full plastic mulching and lower annual mean precipitation. Increased vegetation growth due to plastic mulching can turn to impact soil water dynamics in both growing and fallow seasons, but it did not disrupt the annual equilibrium of SWS. Particularly, more precipitation storage at deep soil layer during the non-growing season appeared to fully offset the extra water loss by enhanced ET. Our findings provide critical insight into the success of plastic mulching farming practice regarding field productivity and soil water sustainability.

The aim of the present study was to compare the effect of different surgical methods on postoperative cognitive function in patients undergoing abdominal surgery, determine the risk factors of postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) by logistic regression, and investigate these risk factors through different surgical methods. A total of 70 patients undergoing selective abdominal surgery were selected into this study. The age of these patients ranged within 32 to 85 years. The cognitive function of these patients was assessed by the mini-mental state examination at one day before the operation, and at the first and seventh day after the operation. The temperature of the tympanic membrane, PETCO2 values, visual analogue scale scores, educational level, and operation time were recorded. Logistic regression analysis was used to analyze related factors of POCD. The incidence rate of perioperative hypothermia in groups O and L were 31.2 and 10.5 per cent, respectively; and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). The difference in visual analogue scale scores at the first and seventh day after the operation between these two groups were statistically significant (P < 0.01). The incidence of POCD in group O was significantly higher than that in group L at the first and seventh day after the operation (P < 0.05). According to logistic regression results, it was found that age, perioperative hypothermia, and postoperative pain were risk factors of POCD. The difference in POCD for the patients undergoing abdominal surgery through different surgical methods was statistically significant, and this was closely correlated to perioperative hypothermia and postoperative pain.

Inoculation with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi can modify stomatal behavior and increase antioxidant enzyme activities and therefore play a pivotal role in plant growth. We hypothesised that inoculation with AM fungi postpones the non-hydraulic root signal and alters physiological and biochemical traits, which enhances drought tolerance and water-use efficiency (WUEB) for plant biomass. Two pot experiments (including progressive soil drying and partial root-zone drying) were conducted to reveal how mycorrhizal colonization altered root signal and its effects on plant growth, biochemical traits and WUEB in maize seedlings in drying soil. In our experiments, inoculation with Funneliformis mosseae improved water absorption and reduced the sensitivity of roots to drought. In addition, it decreased leaf abscisic acid (ABA) content of inoculated plants. Regardless of water conditions, plant biomass production, antioxidant enzyme activity, net photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance and WUEB were elevated in AM fungal treatments compared to non-AM fungal treatments. Under water-stressed conditions, inoculation with F. mosseae greatly reduced leaf ABA content, and postponed the decline in photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance and osmotic adjustment. Malondialdehyde (MDA) level was significantly lower in mycorrhizal plants than in non-inoculation plants. However, inoculation with F. mosseae increased antioxidant enzyme activities including peroxidase (POD) and superoxide dismutase (SOD). In this study, inoculation with F. mosseae reduced ABA accumulation that acts as a non-hydraulic root signal and thereby postponed a decline in stomatal conductance and photosynthetic rate, improved water use efficiency and antioxidant enzymes activities, and accordingly reduced proline and MDA content. Thus, inoculation with AM fungi played a role in effective defense for better drought acclimation in water-stressed maize seedlings.

With a discharge device in a hollow-needle and plate electrode configurations, an atmospheric pressure uniform plasma plume is generated by DC voltage excitation in the ambient air with argon as working gas. The plasma plume is a pulsed discharge despite a direct current voltage is applied through measurements by optical and electrical methods. In order to explain the formation mechanism of the pulse, spatially resolved signals emitted from the plume were detected. It was found that the plasma plume denoted as the luminous layer propagates (a plasma bullet) from the hollow needle to the plate electrode except for the corona discharge in the vicinity of the hollow needle tip. Optical emission spectroscopy is used to investigate the excited electron temperature of the plasma plume as a function of the applied voltage or the spatial distribution of the excited electron temperature. The results show that the excited electron temperature (about 3 eV) increases with increasing applied voltage. Moreover, it increases with the increasing distance along the gas flow under constant voltage.

In order to optimize the big data management of smart grid construction, analyze and process the extreme weather grid measuring point data of grid operation data which is abundant and discrete with mathematics. Considering of the continuous changing characteristics of weather in effective field of surface, buffer and expand the influential range of grid measuring point, then merge the same data, embellish the data with B-spline curve, store the spatial coordinates in enterprise-class grid resource centre, publish in map with unified service, and show the visual graphical distribution of extreme weather through OGC protocol, realize the visualization of grid resource.

China has become the largest carbon emitter in the world since 2008 for its coal dominated energy structure, which has attracted both economic and political attention from international society. This paper proposes a responsibility sharing principle for carbon emissions considering carbon emission efficiency and energy structure, which tries to promote the regional cooperation for carbon reduction among different regions on the domestic level. The case studies on China’?s six-region carbon flow network prove the effectiveness of proposed sharing principle.

Inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers were used to investigate the genetic diversity within and among thirteen natural populations of Camellia japonica (L.). Twenty ISSR primers gave rise to 211 discernible DNA bands of which 190 (90.1%) were polymorphic. On average each primer gave rise to 10.55 bands including 9.50 bands with polymorphic profile. At the species level, high genetic diversity was detected (PPB: 90.1%; HE: 0.3414; H: 0.5013). However, relatively low genetic diversity existed within populations. Shiko-2 exhibits the greatest level of variability (PPB: 76.8%; HE: 0.2966; H: 0.4319), whereas XS presents its own variability at the lowest level (PPB: 67.3%; HE: 0.2344; H: 0.3478). A relatively high level of genetic differentiation among populations was revealed by Nei's gene diversity statistics (21.3%), Shannon's information measure (21.4%) and analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) (22.5%). There was significant correlation between genetic distance and geographic distance (r = 0.8154, P

Synthetic nanomaterials have the disadvantages of large-scale investment, high energy consumption, complex production process and heavy environmental load. Mineral nanomaterials such as sepiolite group mineral nanomaterials are characterized by small size effect, quantum size effect and surface effect. Water treatment application of sepiolite group mineral nanomaterials has become an active research area and showed good development and application prospects. Based on the above reasons, this paper systematically summarizes the water treatment application of sepiolite group mineral nanomaterials, and development trend related to water treatment application of sepiolite group mineral nanomaterials were also proposed.

In the paper, the experimental teaching is adopted to the inorganic material specialty English to promote the English comprehensive ability and professional skills of students. The experiment is to prepare sepiolite nanofibers by means of the microwave chemical method using natural sepiolite samples as raw materials. Through the experiment, the English practical ability and skills of students are developed.

Sepiolite mineral nanofibers are typical porous materials widely existing in nature and have many nanometer level micropore and mesopore, which could play an active role in many fields such as thermal insulation functional additive for composite materials. Based on the above reason, this paper briefly summarized the research progress of microstructure of sepiolite mineral nanofibers, and research orientations related to microstructure of sepiolite mineral nanofibers were also proposed.

Plasma jet is a kind of important plasma source at atmospheric pressure. In recent years, it becomes an important hot topic in the field of low temperature plasma. In this paper, using a tungsten needle and a tungsten wire mesh, a direct-current excited jet is developed to operate in argon at atmospheric pressure. In the atmospheric pressure argon, the plasma jet can produce a stable plasma plume. By using the method of emission spectroscopy, the parameters of the plasma plume are investigated. The discharge emits dazzling white light from the area between the tungsten needle electrode and the wire mesh electrode. A plasma plume with a flame shape appears outside the tungsten wire mesh electrode. For a constant value of voltage (U = 13.5 kV), the length of the plasma plume increases with the gas flow rate. For a constant value of the gas flow rate(10 L · min⁻¹), the length of the plasma plume increases with the voltage. The voltage is inversely proportional to the current under the constant gas flow rate. In other words, the voltage decreases with the discharge current, which indicates that a glow discharge is formed in the plasma jet. Optical emission spectrum in 300 to 800 nm is collected from the direct-current excited plasma jet. By Boltzmann plot method, the excited electron temperature of the plasma plume is investigated as a function of the applied voltage or the gas flow rate. Results show that the excited electron temperature increases with decreasing applied voltage under the constant gas flow. Moreover, it increases with decreasing the gas flow under the constant voltage. Based on the discharge theory, these experimental phenomena are explained qualitatively. These results are of great importance to the development of atmospheric pressure uniform discharge plasma source and its application in industrial field.

A whole process chain managerial strategy is presented to solve the problems of sludge treatment and disposal of municipal wastewater treatment plants in a city of northern China. The problems include negligence of the sludge treatment, scarce capacity, ambiguous responsiblity, lack of whole process management and coherence of management on wastewater and sludge treatment. The system of whole process chain managerial strategy can provide a safe and effective platform to collect the relevant data about sludge disposal. In the system，all executants have the obligation and responsibility to record the data, supervise the operation and management of other subject, and give the report of the record data regularly. The system can be used to discover the problem in sludge disposal, and also it can give suggestion for the planning and adjust the ability of sludge disposal in a city for long-term.

Organosepiolite has been prepared by exchanging with hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as a modifier. The adsorption kinetics and thermodynamics of methyl orange from aqueous solutions onto organosepiolite are studied, then the adsorption principle is discussed. The results of XRD and FTIR show that sepiolite can be well modified by treating with CTAB. The results indicate that the adsorption isotherm for methyl orange accords with the Langumir equation. The adsorption enthalpy and entropy changes are –13.54 kJ/mol and -32.8J/(mol•K), respectively. And the adsorption exhibits spontaneous physical adsorption and exothermic. The adsorption dynamics follows the laws of pseudo-second-order kinetics with the energy of activation is 6.36kJ/ mol.

Developing easy cleaning and antibacterial ceramics is the key to actualize the ceramics with functionalized, high-quality and band established in china. This paper which combined with research status from home and broad analysed the performance influence of ceramic glaze with different processing methods and discussed the way and methods which can improve the quality of ceramics.

A super-hydrophilic functional ceramic was prepared by adjusting the chemical components of ceramic glaze. Effect of surface free energy of ceramic glaze on oil droplet shape and its behavior in water were studied. The results show that water can spread on ceramic surface with high surface free energy, and oil droplet can aggregate rapidly and separate from the ceramic surface in water. For the ceramic with lower surface free energy, the polar shares are dependant on its easy-cleaning property. The higher the polar shares, the better the easy-cleaning property, and the easier the droplet separates from the ceramic surface in water.

This paper studied the structures of basal diameter, height and canopy width of Camellia azalea population in E' huangzhang Nature Reserve of Guangdong. The spatial distribution patterns and dynamics of the population were measured by applying aggregate indices including disperse coefficient, negative binomial distribution, Cassie index, clumping index, mean crowding, patch index and Green index. The results showed that in the natural distribution region, the population was mainly composed of adult trees, and was in declining due to seriously lack of seedlings. The structures of diameter, height and canopy width were not identical among different plots. In the plots, the spatial distribution pattern of C. azalea population showed clump or random, and changed from clump to random with the development of the population.

A linear-field plasma jet composed of line-to-plate electrodes is used to generate a large-scale brush-shaped plasma plume with flowing argon used as working gas. Through electrical measurement and fast photography, it is found that the plasma plume bridges the two electrodes for the discharge in the positive voltage half-cycle, which behaves like fast moving plasma bullets directed from the anode to the cathode. Compared with the positive discharge, the negative discharge only develops inside the nozzle and propagates much slower. Results also indicate that the gas temperature of the plume is close to room temperature, which is promising for biomedical application.

The secondary growth is a significant biological activity for plant development, and the secondary xylem (i.e. wood) plays an important role for human life. The secondary growth includes several consecutive processes such as vascular tissue differentiation, secondary cell wall deposition, lignification, PCD and heart wood formation. Considerable evidence indicated that auxin is the major signal involved in several aspects of the ontogeny of the vascular system. At the same time, a suite of putative transcription factors such as MYB, NAC, AP2/EREBP, homeobox and MADS have been implicated in the regulation of the secondary growth. The candidate genes in the signaling and transcriptional regulation which have been identified will assist future investigations to unravel the molecular mechanisms of secondary growth. The important aspect in secondary growth and the identification of regulatory genes were reviewed here.

This study investigates the system errors found in full-field reflection-type three-dimensional angle-deviation microscopes. The microscope, which is based on the algorithm of reflectivity-height transformation, can be used to measure the 3D surface profile of a specimen in real time without scanning. The system error is made up of the errors caused by the optical components, light source, deflection direction of the test light, lack of focus, object length, magnification, and numerical aperture. The incorrect object location is the principal cause of height measurement error. However, the total error percentage is below 3.2%, and the lateral and axial resolutions are better than 0.5 μm and 1 nm, respectively, in the measuring range of 200 nm.

Ingestion of soft faeces derived from caecal contents, caecotrophy, in herbivorous small mammals is considered an adaptation to the metabolic disadvantage of small body size, especially when feeding on diets of low quality. We investigated daily activity patterns in captive Brandt's voles (Lasiopodomys brandtii), including feeding, locomotion, caecotrophy, and defaecation, by continuous 24 h visual observation; and estimated the contribution of soft faeces ingestion (caecotrophy) to intake of protein and energy. Brandt's voles ingested 68.8 +/- 7.4 fecal pellets per day, averaging 17 +/- 2% of total faeces produced. The amount of faeces ingested did not differ between female and male voles or between night and day time. All animals showed average 3 h ultradian cycles in behaviour during the course of the day and night. The contributions of caecotrophy to the dietary intake of crude protein and metabolizable energy were estimated respectively as 9 and 8% on a high-protein, easily digested commercial rabbit pellet diet. However, the importance of caecotrophy to the field voles is likely to be higher on a natural diet of lower nutrient density. The rhythm of caecotrophy in voles depended mainly on the rhythm of the colonic separation mechanism in the proximal colon and passage in the distal colon, and may be regulated by feeding and other activity rhythms. Ultradian rhythms in caecotrophy helped to minimise potential conflicts in utilizing the gut, especially in balancing the caecal fermentation and salvaging nutrients contained in caecal bacteria.

In this study, by using a plasma jet driven by a direct-current voltage, a plasma plume can be generated in ambient air with argon used as the working gas. Through optical and electrical measurements, it is found that the plume discharge is pulsed despite the application of a direct-current voltage. The pulse frequency is investigated as a function of the sustaining voltage across the two electrodes and the gas flow rate. Differently from those of ordinary jets that usually operate in the bullet or continuous mode, the discharges of the direct-current jet almost volley at the same moment, while the quenching of the discharges propagates away from the jet nozzle.

The present studies were conducted to determine changes in the quantities of select isoflavones and in the bioactivity (ability to inhibit proliferation of human breast cancer cell lines) of extracts from blends of soy protein and cornmeal during extrusion processing. The extrusion of samples resulted in an average 24% decrease in the concentration of total isoflavones for all samples. Although the amounts of specific genistein-derived and daidzein-derived forms changed following extrusion, the content of the aglycones genistein and daidzein per g sample generally did not change. The extrusion of samples generally resulted in decreased antiproliferative action toward breast cancer cells, although antiproliferative activity was not eliminated. Therefore, extrusion of soy protein/cornmeal-containing foods are likely to retain a considerable portion of their isoflavone content and some of the health benefits associated with soy.