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Climate change has renewed interest in the production capacity of agriculture. Few researchers paid attention to price policy and heteroscedasticity in yield model. We incorporate rice price policy into the yield model at the expected price using a Tobit procedure and take Kalman filter theory to explore useful information, and then estimate the rice yield response to climate and rice price using a spatial autoregressive combined model in high-latitude regions of China from 1992 to 2018. Meanwhile, we apply two different Breusch-Pagan tests to examine heteroscedasticity. Our results suggest that spatial correlation of the error term is a more critical source of heteroscedasticity and cannot be completely solved by only allowing spatially autocorrelated errors due to possible technology diffusion effects. The results also show that rice price support policy is useful for constructing rice expected prices, and the price elasticities of rice and corn on rice yield are 0.194 and -0.097, respectively. Among climate variables, the total growing degree days in the growing season has positive effects, and monthly accumulated growing degree days also matter, especially in June. Precipitation in July and August has a significant effect with an inverse U shape. Projections of future climate change suggest that rice yield will mainly increase, ranging from 0.095% to 1.769%, but the rate of increase in yield will slow down in the higher-rate global warming. This study shows how price policy could be incorporated into yield response model and highlights the importance of climate factors and crop price policy for rice yield.

Agricultural technical education is widely used in Chinese agricultural production to reduce farmers’ pesticide overuse. However, the effectiveness of technical education is questioned by scholars ...

In this study, we investigated the impact of three different perceived risk and environmental attitude on the fertilizer reduction behavior in vegetable production and the interplay between perceived risk and environmental attitude. We found that perceived economic risk can exert a significant and negative effect on farmers’ fertilizer reduction behavior (−0.39) and perceived social and psychological risks has a relatively weak negative impact with coefficients of −0.25 and −0.23, respectively. A more friendly environmental attitude can significantly and positively affect farmers’ fertilizer reduction behavior. Furthermore, environmental attitude has a moderating effect on the association between perceived risk and farmer’s fertilizer reduction behavior, but just significant for economic and social risk. In other words, a better environmental attitude could reduce the negative effect of perceived risk. This study promoted our new understanding of the risk perception’s impact on farmers’ behavior.

Virtual water trade is widely considered as a potential method to solve local water shortage and unequal distribution. However, limited research investigated water-saving efficiency and water inequality of inter-provincial virtual water trade. In this study, we sought to explore this issue within China based on the 2015 input-output data. A multi-regional input-output model and a modified input-output model were used to estimate the virtual water trade and its impact on water-saving and water inequality. Our results suggest that: (1) The total virtual water flow across the country is 200.03 × 109 m3, which accounts for 32.77% of water withdrawal. The agriculture sector contributes the highest proportion (73.99%) to virtual water flow. (2) Virtual water trade could decrease water withdrawal by 446.08 × 109 m3 compared with withdrawal under no-trade situation at a national level, and 22 provinces could gain benefits through inter-provincial trade with a positive water-saving efficiency index. (3) Virtual water trade also causes water inequality, which exacerbates water scarcity of exported provinces, especially in northwest provinces. (4) There is a conflict between water conservation and water inequality, but different provinces show significant heterogeneity.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on China’s grain futures prices. Related literature has discussed several factors contributing to the dramatic boom and bust in China’s grain futures prices, but has overlooked the influence of EPU. Design/methodology/approach The study employs a newly developed time-varying parameter vector autoregressive model to study and contrast the impact of different types of uncertainty on China’s grain futures prices. The directional volatility spillover index is used to measure the impact of EPU on China’s grain futures prices and compare the differences among commodities. Findings The results show that EPU affects China’s grain futures prices significantly. The 2008 global financial crisis had stronger influence on China’s grain futures prices than other types of uncertainty. Furthermore, EPU has smaller influence on wheat futures price than on maize and soybean. The Chinese Government interventions may be the reason for this difference. Originality/value This study addresses the lack of empirical investigation on the influence of EPU on China’s grain futures price volatility.

The sustainable and efficient use of water resources has gained wide social concern, and the key point is to investigate the virtual water trade of the water-scarcity region and optimize water resources allocation. In this paper, we apply a multi-regional input-output model to analyze patterns and the spillover risks of the interprovincial virtual water trade in the Yellow River Economic Belt, China. The results show that: (1) The agriculture and supply sector as well as electricity and hot water production own the largest total water use coefficient, being high-risk water use sectors in the Yellow River Economic Belt. These two sectors also play a major role in the inflow and outflow of virtual water, (2) The overall situation of the Yellow River Economic Belt is virtual water inflow, but the pattern of virtual water trade between eastern and western provinces is quite different. Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, and Inner Mongolia belong to the virtual water net inflow area, while the virtual water net outflow regions are concentrated in Shanxi, Gansu, Xinjiang, Ningxia, and Qinghai, (3) Due to higher water resource stress, Shandong and Shanxi suffer a higher cumulative risk through virtual water trade. Also, Shandong, Henan, and Inner Mongolia have a higher spillover risk to other provinces in the Yellow River Economic Belt.

Melilotoides ruthenica is used for herbage with high nutrition and anti-drought. Complete chloroplast genomes are employed for the relationship analysis of phylogeny within plant families. High-throughput sequencing technology was used to exhibit the sequence of complete chloroplast of M. ruthenica. The genome is constituted by a circular molecule (130,149 base pairs (bp)) which contained only one copy of inverted repeat sequence. The genome encodes 116 genes, including 85 protein-coding genes (73.28%), 26 tRNA genes (22.41%), and 5 rRNA genes (4.31%), respectively. 113 genes are single copy and 3 genes (psaA, ndhK, and ccsA) have double copies that are duplicated in the cp genome. The coding capacity of protein-coding genes of totally 17,455 codons was represented in the M. ruthenica cp genome. Among these codons, 776 encoding for isoleucine and 48 for cysteine are the most and the least amino acids, respectively. The M. ruthenica cp genome has 12 intron-containing genes and the gene rps12 is trans-splicing in the cp genome. High codon usage was observed for phenylalanine and leucine. Phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that M. ruthenica and Medicago truncatula have close relationship with Vicia Sativa, Lens Calinaris and Lathyrus Tingitanus. Our results help to develop the chloroplast molecular biology and provide data information for the study of genetic breeding of M. ruthenica.

Understanding the meteorological driving factors of changes in rice production is critical to global food security. In this study, we apply multivariate adaptive regression spline algorithm to exam...

Maintaining the traceability links of a software is tedious, error-prone task, but an essential requirement. Information retrieval has been approached to help to generate traceability links. Traceability links are usually determined by the similarity between two artifacts. However, methods are put forward mainly based on vector space model, topic model etc. which ignored the word semantic. According to that, this paper adapts the popular word embedding technique to traceability recovery tasks, and handle the out-of-vocabulary words at test time. In the end, a machine learning method is used (learning to rank) to improve our final result. Several contrast experiments are conducted on five public datasets, and the baseline methods are outperformed under the same condition.

To prevent genomic instability, cells respond to DNA lesions by blocking cell cycle progression and initiating DNA repair. Homologous recombination repair of DNA breaks requires CtIP-dependent resection of the DNA ends, which is thought to play a key role in activation of CHK1 kinase to induce the cell cycle checkpoint. But the mechanism is still not fully understood. Here, we establish that And-1, a replisome component, promotes DNA-end resection and DNA repair by homologous recombination. Mechanistically, And-1 interacts with CtIP and regulates CtIP recruitment to DNA damage sites. And-1 localizes to sites of DNA damage dependent on MDC1-RNF8 pathway, and is required for resistance to many DNA-damaging and replication stress-inducing agents. Furthermore, we show that And-1-CtIP axis is critically required for sustained ATR–CHK1 checkpoint signaling and for maintaining both the intra-S- and G2-phase checkpoints. Our findings thus identify And-1 as a novel DNA repair regulator and reveal how the replisome regulates the DNA damage induced checkpoint and genomic stability.

// Heng Zhang 1, * , Xiaofeng Guo 7, * , Xing Feng 2 , Tingting Wang 3, 4, * , Zhaohua Hu 1 , Xiangyong Que 1 , Qingsong Tian 5 , Tianbo Zhu 5 , Guixian Guo 6 , Wei Huang 1 , Xinzhi Li 1 1 Department of Orthopedics, Renhe Hospital, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, Hubei, China 2 Department of Molecular Pharmacology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA 3 Department of General Surgery, Beijing Friendship Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China 4 National Clinical Research Center of Digestive Diseases, Beijing, China 5 Department of Medicine, Medical College, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, Hubei, China 6 Department of Medicine, The Second Hospital Affiliated to Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China 7 Medical College of Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian, China * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Xinzhi Li, email: xinzhilirenhe@163.com Xing Feng, email: fengx1@cinj.rutgers.edu Keywords: osteosarcoma, miRNA-543, glycolysis, PRMT9, HIF-1α Received: April 17, 2016 Accepted: November 06, 2016 Published: November 28, 2016 ABSTRACT Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common primary bone tumor, occurring frequently in adolescents and possessing a high malignant severity. MicroRNAs play critical roles during OS development. Thus, elucidation of the involvement of specific microRNAs in the development of OS may provide novel therapeutic targets for OS treatment. Here, we showed that in the OS specimens from patients, the levels of miR-543 were significantly increased whereas the levels of PRMT9 were significantly decreased, compared to the paired normal bone tissue. Moreover, miR-543 and PRMT9 inversely correlated in the OS cell lines. Bioinformatics analyses predicted that miR-543 may target the 3'-UTR of PRMT9 mRNA to inhibit its translation, which was confirmed by luciferase-reporter assay. MiR-543 promoted OS cell proliferation in vitro and in vivo . Mechanistically, miR-543 inhibited PRMT9-enhanced cell oxidative phosphorylation, while miR-543 depletion promoted PRMT9-increased HIF-1α instability and inhibited glycolysis in OS cells. Clinically, miR-543 expression was negatively correlated with PRMT9 expression in OS tissues. Together, our data provide important evidence for glycolysis in OS development, and suggest that targeting glycolytic pathway through miR-543/PRMT9/HIF-1α axis may represent a potential therapeutic strategy to eradicate OS cells.

SummaryDNA end resection is a highly regulated and critical step in DNA double-stranded break (DSB) repair. In higher eukaryotes, DSB resection is initiated by the collaborative action of CtIP and the MRE11-RAD50-NBS1 (MRN) complex. Here, we find that the deubiquitylating enzyme USP4 directly participates in DSB resection and homologous recombination (HR). USP4 confers resistance to DNA damage-inducing agents. Mechanistically, USP4 interacts with CtIP and MRN via a specific, conserved region and the catalytic domain of USP4, respectively, and regulates CtIP recruitment to sites of DNA damage. We also find that USP4 autodeubiquitylation is essential for its HR functions. Collectively, our findings identify USP4 as a key regulator of DNA DSB end resection.