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Salinity is one of the main limiting factors driving the expansion of Spartina alterniflora by affecting plant functioning. Comparative studies of plant leaves, under 0 (T0), 5 (T5), 10 (T10), and 20 g/kg (T20) soil salinity, were carried out. Results showed that soil salinity significantly affected most leaf traits of S. alterniflora. Total and live leaf numbers first increased and then decreased with increasing soil salinity. Leaf morphology in T5 were substantially larger than another three treatments, and the ratio of leaf length to width considerably decreased with increasing soil salinity. As the soil salinity increased, leaf dry mass and leaf dry matter content (LDMC) displayed a pattern similar to total leaf number. Leaf mass traits indicated that while a more efficient nutrient conservation strategy was adopted in T10, S. alterniflora rapidly produced biomass in T0. Strong correlations were observed between leaf morphological and mass traits except for some parts of LDMC. The confidence ellipses of leaf traits indicated significant differences in leaf traits of the four treatments. We believe that insights into the aforementioned aspects can contribute to a better understanding of the responses of leaf traits of S. alterniflora and provide valuable information about its adaptation strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately and quickly identifying harmful driving behaviors is of great research significance. This article introduces a multi class Adaboost algorithm for accurately and quickly identifying harmful driving behaviors on urban roads. This method first carefully collects data related to bad driving behavior on road sections. Then, the optical flow method is used to capture images of driving behavior, and the TV-L1 optical flow method is used to refine the images to improve clarity. Finally, the CART decision tree serves as the cornerstone for constructing a rigorously trained weak classifier, strategically combining multiple individual weak classifiers to form a robust strong classifier. This powerful classifier is supported by the Adaboost algorithm and can provide detailed classification of bad driving behavior. To ensure a holistic assessment, fuzzy mathematics is deployed to discern behavioral risks, thereby facilitating the correlated identification of adverse driving patterns. Experiment results verifies the efficacy of our approach, with recognition time dwindling to a mere 1.9 seconds and the accuracy of correlated recognition soaring to an impressive 99.8%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wastewater from agricultural source carries excess nitrogen and phosphorous into wetlands and causes eutrophication in waterbody. Enrichment of nitrogen and phosphorous affects the natural nutrient removal and plant growth in wetlands. We conducted a greenhouse experience to explore the effects of excess N and P on the growth of Carex schmidtii, so as to provide evidence for wetland phytoremediation. The results showed that high concentration of N had negative effects on the plant height and growth rate of C. schmidtii. Excess N and P significantly reduced the leaf morphology and mass per plant or leaf but increased the length and the ratio of withered leaf. Furthermore, the chlorophyll content and lid peroxidation indicated that high concentrations of N and P exerted much injury to the blades of C. schmidtii. These results help in understanding the responses of C. schmidtii to agricultural wastewater and suggest the limited capacity of C. schmidtii tussock for the phytoremediation of agricultural wastewater in wetlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To study the soil pH value, quality characteristics of organic matter, and available elements in intensive cultivation of walnut orchards in different areas of Hubei Province, and to provide the scientific basis for the soil management of walnut orchards in different areas, the distribution frequency and correlation of the pH value, organic matter and alkalescence N, available P, available K, available Ca, available Mg, available S, available Fe, available Zn, andavailable B in 135 walnut orchards from 6 walnut production areas in Hubei Province were analyzed by a typical sampling method. The differences and main sources of comprehensive fertility coefficients in different production areas were also analyzed. The distribution frequency of organic matter and available elements in walnut orchards were unbalanced. Available P was the most skewed with 55.67%. The soil organic matter content was significantly correlated with the contents of alkalescence N, available P, available K, available Mg, available Fe, available Zn and available B. The comprehensive soil fertility coefficient ranged from 1.21 to 1.84, with an average of 1.52, which was the general fertility level. The maximum limiting factor of soil fertility was available S, followed by alkalescence N and available P. There were significant differences in comprehensive soil fertility among different walnut production areas. 92.67% of the differences came from within the production areas, and 7.33% from between production areas. The highest differentiation coefficients were available K and available P, which were 26.20% and 10.79%, respectively. The contents of alkalescence N and P were elements that affect the soil fertility of walnut production areas in Hubei Province. And the skew amounts and differentiation coefficients of P were larger than other elements. In view of the significant positive correlation between organic matter content and most soil elements, in order to improve the comprehensive soil fertility, it is suggested that soil management should focus on increasing soil organic matter, the application of phosphorus fertilizer and improving the availability of phosphorus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regulation mechanism of wetland plants in response to consecutive drought (D) and re-flooding (RT) events can be identified via nutrient responses. Nutrient responses of Carex schmidtii were tested using a simulation experiment with five treatments: D, wetting (W) and RT resulted in C. schmidtii being re-flooded after 30, 40 and 60 days of drought. D and RT treatments partly affected nutrient stoichiometry of C. schmidtii. Plant nutrient stoichiometry experienced a shift of adaption from drought to flooding and making part or full recoveries after RT with reference to D and W treatments. Plant P concentration had a negative relationship with N:K ratio. D and RT effects on plant trade-offs and scaling exponents of C. schmidtii were profound; the scaling exponent of P~N increased with initial re-flooding time, while that of K~N decreased. Although nutrient trade-offs in D gradually differed from W and RT over time, the nutrient trade-offs of RT recovered with reference to W. The D and RT were recorded to contribute to nutrient flexibility of C. schmidtii; however, strong internal stability of stoichiometric relationships effectively relieved changes in plant nutrient stoichiometry. The findings aid our understanding of nutrient responses of C. schmidtii to D and RT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to its versatility, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) has been widely applied to investigate the effects of management activities and climate change on water availability and quality. However, the use of high spatial resolution data and the advantages of SWAT itself have significantly increased the input/output (I/O) demand and thus the runtime of modeling routines that require a large number of iterative simulations. In this study, we proposed a generic scheme to reduce the SWAT runtime by caching the model inputs using the in-memory NoSQL database Redis. Then the SWAT source codes (rev 488) was modified according to this proposed scheme to develop the MA-SWAT (memory accelerated SWAT) model by incorporating a new subroutine known as Fortran_calls_c to retrieve the cached inputs. We then evaluated MA-SWAT with four synthetic hydrological models and five different parallel schemes in a quad-core commodity laptop. The test results showed that when applied with a parallel simulation program, MA-SWAT could achieve a speedup by a factor of 8.4 ~ 10.9 depending on model complexity. Compared with the original SWAT, MA-SWAT significantly improved the computation speed, indicating that the proposed scheme is a desirable method for solving high computational demand problems such as calibration, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis. Moreover, the proposed concept of linking the SWAT model with Redis via the minimalistic C client driver of Redis is a generic method, and it is possible to apply this method to other Fortran-implemented environmental model to alleviate I/O demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVE: To explore the expression level of neuron-specific enolase (NSE), S100B and neuropeptide Y (NPY) in children with acute miliary tuberculosis and secondary tubercular meningitis. PATIENTS AND METHODS: 28 children diagnosed with acute miliary tuberculosis and secondary tubercular meningitis were included into group A, 25 children diagnosed with pure acute miliary tuberculosis were included into group B and 23 children diagnosed with suspected meningitis were included into group C. The levels of NSE, S100B and NPY in cerebrospinal fluid and serum were detected. RESULTS: The levels of NSE, S100B and NPY in cerebrospinal fluid and serum of group A were significantly higher than the levels in the other two groups, differences were statistically significant (p<0.05). A multifactor retrospective analysis suggested that secondary tubercular meningitis was significantly correlated with the high expression of S100B, NPY and NSE in cerebrospinal fluid and serum. CONCLUSIONS: Early detection of the expression levels of NSE, S100B and NPY in cerebrospinal fluid and serum was of great value for the diagnosis of tubercular meningitis secondary to acute miliary tuberculosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sharing feature-based computer-aided design (CAD) models is a challenging problem that is frequently encountered among heterogeneous CAD systems. In this work, a new asymmetric strategy is presented to enrich the theory of feature-based interoperability, particularly when addressing a singular feature or singular sketch. This paper analyzes the semantic asymmetry singular feature interoperability (SA-SFI) and parameter asymmetry singular sketch interoperability (PA-SSI) in detail. We pay special attention to the problem of PA-SSI, which is universally significant in collaborative product development (CPD). The objective of PA-SSI is to develop an optimized model to exchange a singular sketch (spline) to ensure that the exchanged model both maintains high geometric fidelity and can be effectively edited in the target CAD system. The proposed method applies the estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) to automatically solve this problem, and a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is built according to the promising solutions. Furthermore, Hausdorff distance is adopted to calculate the fitness, and a local optimization operator is designed to enhance the global search capability of the population. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can maintain a sufficiently high geometric fidelity, and ensure that the exchanged model of the target CAD system can be parametrically edited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]