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Asparagus cochinchinensis is a traditional Chinese medicinal plant. The chloroplast (cp) genome study on A. cochinchinensis is poorly understood. In this research, we collected the data from the cp genome assembly and gene annotation of A. cochinchinensis, followed by further comparative analysis with six species in the genus Asparagus. The cp genome of A. cochinchinensis showed a circular quadripartite structure in the size of 157,095 bp, comprising a large single-copy (LSC), a small single-copy (SSC), and two inverted repeat (IR) regions. A total of 137 genes were annotated, consisting of 86 protein-coding genes, 8 ribosomal RNAs, 38 transfer RNAs, and 5 pseudo-genes. Forty scattered repetitive sequences and 247 simple sequence repeats loci were marked out. In addition, A/T-ending codons were shown to have a basis in the codon analysis. A cp genome comparative analysis revealed that a similar gene composition was detected in the IR and LSC/SSC regions with Asparagus species. Based on the complete cp genome sequence in Asparagaceae, the result showed that A. cochinchinensis was closely related to A. racemosus by phylogenetic analysis. Therefore, our study providing A. cochinchinensis genomic resources could effectively contribute to the phylogenetic analysis and molecular identification of the genus Asparagus.

Asparagus setaceus (Kunth) Jessop is a horticultural plant of the genus Asparagus. Herein, the whole chloroplast (cp) genome of A. setaceus was sequenced with PacBio and Illumina sequencing systems. The cp genome shows a characteristic quadripartite structure with 158,076 bp. In total, 135 genes were annotated, containing 89 protein-coding, 38 tRNA, and 8 rRNA genes. Contrast with the previous cp genome of A. setaceus registered in NCBI, we identified 7 single-nucleotide polymorphisms and 15 indels, mostly situated in noncoding areas. Meanwhile, 36 repeat structures and 260 simple sequence repeats were marked out. A bias for A/T-ending codons was shown in this cp genome. Furthermore, we predicted 78 RNA-editing sites in 29 genes, which were all for C-to-U transitions. And it was also proven that positive selection was exerted on the rpoC1 gene of A. setaceus with the K a/K s data. Meanwhile, a conservative gene order and highly similar sequences of protein-coding genes were revealed within Asparagus species. Phylogenetic tree analysis indicated that A. setaceus was a sister to Asparagus cochinchinensis. Taken together, our released genome provided valuable information for the gene composition, genetics comparison, and the phylogeny studies of A. setaceus.

Accurate and fast human motion pattern recognition is the key to ensuring lower limb assistive devices' appropriate assistance. The research on human motion pattern recognition of lower limb assistive devices mainly focuses on sagittal gait. The motion pattern such as circular walking (CW) is asymmetric about the sagittal plane of the body. CW is common in daily living. However, the recognition algorithm of CW is rarely reported. Since lower limb assistive devices interact with humans, lacking the capability of recognizing CW is dangerous. Thus, to realize the accurate and fast recognition of CW, this article proposed a finite class Bayesian interference system (FC-BesIS). FC-BesIS is designed to recognize walking activities (linear walking and CW) and gait events (heel contact, load response, mid stance, terminal stance, pre-swing, initial swing, mid swing, and terminal swing). A finite class method which reduces the number of potential classes according to elimination rules before decision-making is introduced. Elimination rules are designed based on likelihood estimation and sensor information. The experiments show that walking activities and gait events can be accurately and fastly recognized by FC-BesIS. The experiments also show that the performance of FC-BesIS in mean recognition accuracy (MRA) and mean decision time (MDT) is improved compared with BesIS. The MRA of walking activities and gait events are 100% and 97.38%, respectively. The MDT of walking activities and gait events are 28.19 ms and 33.94 ms, respectively. Overall, FC-BesIS has been proved to be an accurate and fast recognition algorithm for human motion patterns using wearable sensors.

Garden asparagus ( Asparagus officinalis L.) is a kind of nutritious and healthy vegetable with important economic value in the world. China has become the largest production country of garden asparagus in the world. But the seeds mainly depend on import, so we need to innovate breeding system and improve the international competitiveness of domestic asparagus varieties. Genetic analysis demonstrated that the genetic variation of garden asparagus was low and its heterosis was weak among cultivars. Inter-specific hybridization is an important means to utilize heterosis, but the relationship between the classical taxonomy and molecular phylogeny of the genus Asparagus is disordered, which limits the development of interspecific hybridization breeding. In this genus, thirty-one species have been found in China, which is an effective genetic resource for the utilization of heterosis among Asparagus species. In order to provide reference for the next step to clarify the phylogenetic relationship of this genus and to carry out the interspecific hybrid breeding of garden asparagus in the near future, the research progress of its classical and molecular phylogeny of this genus is reviewed in this study.

The condition of active assistance is the basic design criteria of target assistance torque profile. Based on the human-exoskeleton interaction model, the condition of active assistance was derived first. And then, some biomechanical simulation experiments based on OpenSim were carried out to demonstrate the the condition of active assistance. The condition of active assistance for exoskeleton robot is that the target assistance torque and the human joint muscle torque should be in a same direction and the assistance ratio should be greater than 0 and less than 1.

Heel-strike (HS) and toe-off (TO) events of the human walking are the basis for gait analysis. The gait event detection algorithm is applied in the fields of spatio-temporal parameter analysis, rehabilitation, and wearable auxiliary devices. Based on the shank’s absolute angular velocity in the sagittal plane, offline/online detection of HS-TO for normal walking, incline walking and other gaits in sagittal plane can be achieved. This type of detection algorithms assume that the motion occurs only in the sagittal plane, and the motion characteristics of the left and right shanks in one gait cycle are consistent. However, the effectiveness of this type of gait event detection algorithms for the turning gait is unclear. The turning gait in daily life is frequent and inevitable. Ignoring the gait event detection for the turning gait will limit the application of the existing gait event detection algorithms. To this end, this paper compared the degree of symmetry of the absolute angular velocity of the left and right shanks under normal walking and turning gait. The validity of a typical HS-TO detection algorithm based on shank joint angular velocity is analyzed, and the necessity of studying the turning gait event detection algorithm is demonstrated.

The lower extremity exoskeleton is a device for auxiliary assistance of human movement. The interaction performance between the exoskeleton and the human is determined by the lower extremity exoskeleton&rsquo, s controller. The performance of the controller is affected by the accuracy of the dynamic equation. Therefore, it is necessary to study the dynamic parameter identification of lower extremity exoskeleton. The existing dynamic parameter identification algorithms for lower extremity exoskeletons are generally based on Least Square (LS). There are some internal drawbacks, such as complicated experimental processes and low identification accuracy. A dynamic parameter identification algorithm based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) with search space defined by Recursive Least Square (RLS) is developed in this investigation. The developed algorithm is named RLS-PSO. By defining the search space of PSO, RLS-PSO not only avoids the convergence of identified parameters to the local minima, but also improves the identification accuracy of exoskeleton dynamic parameters. Under the same experimental conditions, the identification accuracy of RLS-PSO, PSO and LS was quantitatively compared and analyzed. The results demonstrated that the identification accuracy of RLS-PSO is higher than that of LS and PSO.

With the increasing prevalence of lower limb dyskinesia, it is urgent to study exoskeleton devices that can help patients walk normally. Combined with the passive exoskeleton which is rarely studied at present, aiming at the difficulty of walking in the patients with lower limb dyskinesia, this paper makes a simulation study on the metabolism of human muscles at this stage. Firstly, we analyzed the biomechanical characteristics and metabolism of human body during normal walking with a human motion simulation software, OpenSim, and determined the position and stage of the assist, and added the passive exoskeleton equivalent model to the human body model. Then we compared the metabolism of human body with different passive assist stiffness and determined a stiffness which can reduce the body stride metabolism by 18%. Finally, we analyzed the changes of the force of related muscles with and without assist, and optimized the assist stage. After simulation analysis, the loading of passive exoskeleton can reduce the metabolism of human body by 19.47%.

The passive exoskeleton has attracted more and more attention from researchers because of its small weight and portability. However, research on the passive exoskeleton of the hip joint during walking is rarely reported. In order to expand the application of passive exoskeletons in walking assist, this article analyzed human biomechanical characteristics through OpenSim and conducted passive assist research of hip joints based on the characteristics of muscle metabolism. First, starting from the biomechanical properties of the human body, the muscles and their functions related to hip flexion/extension were identified. Further, through the study of muscle metabolism, the support phase was used as the assist phase, and a variable-stiffness hip passive assisted exoskeleton was added to the simplified human musculoskeletal model. Finally, through the OpenSim simulation, the total metabolism of the support phase at different stiffness and the metabolism of the muscles which drive the hip joint were compared. The effect of changes in the stiffness of passive exoskeleton on human metabolism was studied, and a stiffness which is capable of reducing metabolism by 12.84% was obtained. On this basis, the stage of assist was optimized based on the muscle force with/without assist, and the metabolism was further reduced by 21.56%.

The Wx gene primarily influences the physiochemical properties changes of rice (Oryza sativa L.) To improve the grain qualities of the cv. Y58S with low amylose content (AC) value, the genetic effect of Wx gene was explored on quality traits. With the BC3F2 genetic population of Y58S line associated with different AC value as the materials, this study reported the genetic effect of three different Wx alleles (Wxa, Wxin, Wxb) under near-isogenic background. It was shown that Wx had major effects on the quality traits, and the genetic effect value was in the order Wxa > Wxin > Wxb. In addition, during the course of physiochemical properties changes of higher AC rice cultivars determined by Wxa or Wxin allele, accompanied by the increasing of AC, gel consistency and head milled rice recovery would be decreased in combination with the rising of chalky traits, all of which resulted in substantial fluctuations on quality traits (p < 0.01). However, the genetic law was not evident for Wxb allele. Therefore, except for the major gene Wx, the minor genes in the regulative network of starch-synthesis might be utilized for quality improvement.

In the present study, we carried out an examination of the amino acid usage in the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) proteome. We found that tRNA abundance, base composition, hydrophobicity and aromaticity, protein second structure, cysteine residue (Cys) content and protein molecular weight had significant impact on the amino acid usage of the zebra finch. The above factors explained the total variability of 22.85%, 25.37%, 10.91%, 5.06%, 4.21%, and 3.14%, respectively. Altogether, approximately 70% of the total variability in zebra finch could be explained by such factors. Comparison of the amino acid usage between zebra finch, chicken (Gallus gallus) and human (Homo sapiens) suggested that the average frequency of various amino acid usage is generally consistent among them. Correspondence analysis indicated that base composition was the primary factor affecting the amino acid usage in zebra finch. This trend was different from chicken, but similar to human. Other factors affecting the amino acid usage in zebra finch, such as isochore structure, protein second structure, Cys frequency and protein molecular weight also showed the similar trends with human. We do not know whether the similar amino acid usage trend between human and zebra finch is related to the distinctive neural and behavioral traits, but it is worth studying in depth.

Foot placement plays an important role in human stable walking. Utilizing the linear inverted pendulum model and the capture point theory, the laws of foot placement and two stable walking conditions are derived in this paper. These stable walking conditions are demonstrated by the optical motion capture experiment. The experiment not only shows that the foot placement during walking is within a capture region and locates on an equal velocity point, but also demonstrates the foot placement of human during stable walking can be predicted by the stable condition derived in this paper.

The Wx gene primarily influences the physiochemical properties changes of rice (Oryza sativa L.) To improve the grain qualities of the cv. Y58S with low amylose content (AC) value, the genetic effect of Wx gene was explored on quality traits. With the BC3F2 genetic population of Y58S line associated with different AC value as the materials, this study reported the genetic effect of three different Wx alleles (Wxª, Wx in, Wx b) under near-isogenic background. It was shown that Wx had major effects on the quality traits, and the genetic effect value was in the order Wxª > Wx in > Wx b. In addition, during the course of physiochemical properties changes of higher AC rice cultivars determined by Wxª or Wx in allele, accompanied by the increasing of AC, gel consistency and head milled rice recovery would be decreased in combination with the rising of chalky traits, all of which resulted in substantial fluctuations on quality traits (p < 0.01). However, the genetic law was not evident for Wx b allele. Therefore, except for the major gene Wx, the minor genes in the regulative network of starch-synthesis might be utilized for quality improvement.

Understanding of the plant uptake of organic chemicals is essential to assessing contaminant mobility in the ecosystem, exposure to humans, and phytoremediation technologies. In this study, we measured the uptake of trifluralin and lindane from water by ryegrass as a function of uptake time for periods of 96 and 120 h, respectively. Trifluralin concentration in ryegrass increased sharply at the early stage of uptake and reached the maximum at 10 h, and then decreased with uptake time. 14C-labelled trifluralin uptake displayed a similar trend but a higher 14C-concentration than that of extracted parent compound, indicating metabolism and formation of bound residues following trifluralin uptake. Lindane concentration in ryegrass slowly increased with uptake time and approached a plateau, indicating minimal metabolism and formation of bound residues. The difference in the uptake characteristics of these two chemicals may be related to the differences in their lipophilicity, and chemical and biological reactivities. A two-compartment model accounting for the contributions of transpiration, metabolism and formation of bound residues to overall uptake was developed to assess the uptake kinetics. The model adequately described the uptake of trifluralin and lindane into ryegrass by providing the first-order rate constants of uptake, release, transpiration, and metabolism and formation of bound residues. These rate constants are used in calculating plant concentration factor (PCF). The ratios of trifluralin concentrations in ryegrass to its aqueous concentrations are between the PCF at thermodynamic equilibrium and the PCF at steady state, suggesting the utility of both PCF values.

The remote spatial join queries are always the performance bottleneck in the distributed spatial information query. In the paper, the spatial join queries are optimized by taking advantage of the grid computing resources according to the characteristics of spatial information. At first, the software architecture for distributed spatial query is designed as the different kinds of grid services, and in the architecture, the grid computing resources are utilized by the remote spatial join query grid services; Secondly, the partitioned parallel spatial join queries are implemented by the Kd-Tree based spatial partition method, in the way, a spatial join query task is separated into several sub-spatial join queries, which can run in parallel to improve the query performance, and the cost model for the partitioned parallel spatial join queries is also presented; Thirdly, the optimization algorithm for the query plan generation and some implementation details are brief descript; At last, the paper is summarized and the future research directions are discussed.

Spatial information sharing and integration has now become an important issue of Geographical Information Science (GIS). Web Service technologies provide a easy and standard way to share spatial resources over network, and grid technologies which aim at sharing resources such as data, storage, and computational powers can help the sharing go deeper. However, the dynamic characteristic of grid brings complexity to spatial query optimization which is more stressed in GIS domain because spatial operations are both CPU intensive and data intensive. To address this problem, a new grid framework is employed to provide standard spatial services which can also manage and report their state information to the coordinator which is responsible for distributed spatial query optimization.

Y58S is an elite line with superior grain qualities except for the low amylose content (AC). Basmati 370 was used as donor of Wxin with intermediate AC into Y58S by marker assisted backcross breeding. Through repeated backcrossing, three Wxin substitution lines were obtained, which were crossed with 93–11 to produce hybrids. The improved Y58S lines and the hybrids derived from them had significantly increased AC and chalkiness with reduction on gel consistency and the head rice recovery, while the agronomic performance remained same as the parent lines. Changes in eating qualities indicated the Waxy region might have pleiotropic effect on grain traits.