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Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying complex disorders requires the integration of data and knowledge from different sources including free text literature and various biomedical databases. To facilitate this process, we created the Biomedical Concept Diagram Editor (BCDE) to help researchers distill knowledge from data and literature and aid the process of hypothesis development. A key feature of BCDE is the ability to capture information with a simple drag-and-drop. This is a vast improvement over manual methods of knowledge and data recording and greatly increases the efficiency of the biomedical researcher. BCDE also provides a unique concept matching function to enforce consistent terminology, which enables conceptual relationships deposited by different researchers in the BCDE database to be mined and integrated for intelligible and useful results. We hope BCDE will promote the sharing and integration of knowledge from different researchers for effective hypothesis development.

China is experiencing a process of rapid industrialization and urbanization at the cost of agricultural land and environment, particularly in the costal areas. This study takes Jinan as a case presenting a time-series analysis of urban land expansion from 313 to 2003. The results show that the urban expansion of Jinan city mainly took place in the last 100 years, especially after the economic reform in 1978. Social development and economic growth, urban population growth and migration policies were factors driving the urban land expansion. Urban sprawl resulted in a disappearance of wetlands and a great loss of agricultural land, and over-pumping of ground water that led to disappearance of the city's feature, namely ”the city of springs”.

A HP-5880A gas Chromatograph equipped with TCD and FID has been used to determine trace amounts of O2+Ar, N2, CO, CH4 and CO2 in pure and ultra pure hydrogen. Utilizing the preconcentration technique, the minimum detectability with a 10-liter sample is around 0.2 ppb (v/v) for O2+Ar, 0.4 ppb (v/v) for N2, 0.05 ppb (v/v) for CO, 0.2 ppb (v/v) for CH4 and 0.3 ppb (v/v) for CO2. Calculation of results in trace gas analysis is discussed and a calculation method is proposed for the concentration of impurities in the sample calculated from the difference of successive sampling volumes and peak areas.