The Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH hereafter) region is characterized by mountainous environments and a variety of regional climatic conditions. High-altitude regions in the HKH have the recent warming ...amplifications, especially during the global warming hiatus period. The rapid warming cause solid state water (snow, ice, glacier, and permafrost) to shrink, leading to increase in meltwater and there have been found more frequent incidences of flash floods, landslides, livestock diseases, and other disasters in the HKH region. Increasing awareness of climate change over the HKH region is reached a consensus. Meanwhile, the HKH region is often referred to as the water towers of Asia as many highaltitude regions store its water in the form of snow and/or glacier, feeding ten major large rivers in Asia. Therefore, the impacts of climate change on water availability in these river basins have huge influences on the livelihood of large number of population, especially in downstream regions. However, the scarcity of basic hydro-meteorological observations particularly in high-altitude regions of HKH limits rigorous analysis of climate change. Most studies used reanalysis data and/or model-reconstructed products to explore the spatial and temporal characteristics of hydro-meteorological processes, especially for extreme events. In this study, we review recent climate change in the HKH region, and the scientific challenges and research recommendations are suggested for this high-altitude area.
In this paper, we analyzed the long-term changes in temperature and precipitation in the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region based on climate datasets LSAT-V1.1 and CGP1.0 recently developed by the ...China Meteorological Administration. The analysis results show that during 1901e2014 the annual mean surface air temperature over the whole HKH has undergone a significant increasing trend. We determined the change rates in the mean temperature, mean maximum temperature, and mean minimum temperature to be 0.104 C per decade, 0.077 C per decade, and 0.176 C per decade, respectively. Most parts of the HKH have experienced a warming trend, with the largest increase occurring on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) and south of Pakistan. The trend of precipitation for the whole HKH is characterized by a slight decrease during 1901e2014. During 1961e2013, however, the trend of the annual precipitation shows a statistically significant increase, with a rate of 5.28% per decade and has a more rapid increase since the mid-1980s. Most parts of northern India and the northern TP have experienced a strong increase in the number of precipitation days (daily rainfall 1 mm), whereas Southwest China and Myanmar have experienced a declining trend in precipitation days. Compared to the trends in precipitation days, the spatial pattern of trends in the precipitation intensity seems to be more closely related to the terrain, and the higher altitude areas have shown more significant upward trends in precipitation intensity during 1961e2013.
Amyloid beta peptide （Aβ） is produced through the proteolytic processing of a transmembrane protein, amyloid precursor protein （APP）, by β- and y-secretases. Aβ accumulation in the brain is proposed ...to be an early toxic event in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer＇s disease, which is the most common form of dementia associated with plaques and tangles in the brain. Currently, it is unclear what the physiological and pathological forms of Aβ are and by what mechanism Aβ causes dementia. Moreover, there are no efficient drugs to stop or reverse the progression of Alzheimer＇s disease. In this paper, we review the structures, biological functions, and neurotoxicity role of Aβ. We also discuss the potential receptors that interact with Aβ and mediate Aβ intake, clearance, and metabolism. Additionally, we summarize the therapeutic developments and recent advances of different strategies for treating Alzheimer＇s disease. Finally, we will report on the progress in searching for novel, potentially effective agents as well as selected promising strategies for the treatment of Alzheimer＇s disease. These prospects include agents acting on Aβ, its receptors and tau protein, such as small molecules, vaccines and antibodies against Aβ inhibitors or modulators of β- and y-secretase; Aβ-degrading proteases; tau protein inhibitors and vaccines; amyloid dyes and microRNAs.
Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions have become essential tools for the construction of carbon–carbon and carbon–heteroatom bonds. Over the last three decades, great efforts have been made with ...cross-coupling chemistry in the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative new pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals (mainly herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides). In view of the growing interest in both modern crop protection and cross-coupling chemistry, this review gives a comprehensive overview of the successful applications of various Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling methodologies, which have been implemented as key steps in the synthesis of agrochemicals (on R&D and pilot-plant scales) such as the Heck, Suzuki, Sonogashira, Stille, and Negishi reactions, as well as decarboxylative, carbonylative, α-arylative, and carbon–nitrogen bond bond-forming cross-coupling reactions. Some perspectives and challenges for these catalytic coupling processes in the discovery of agrochemicals are briefly discussed in the final section. The examples chosen demonstrate that cross-coupling chemistry approaches open-up new, low-cost, and more efficient industrial routes to existing agrochemicals, and such methods also have the capability to lead the new generation of pesticides with novel modes of action for sustainable crop protection.
For the compressible flows with broadband length scales, good dispersion and dissipation properties are crucial for the numerical schemes to realize high-fidelity simulations. It has been recognized ...that the minimization of dispersion error is an effective measure to improve the resolution of schemes. However, it is still an open problem for the schemes to control or adjust the dissipation. In this paper, a class of high-order finite difference schemes with minimized dispersion and adaptive dissipation is proposed. As the first step to automatically adjust the dissipation according to the flow structures, we devise a scale sensor to quantify the local length scale of the numerical solution as the effective scaled wavenumber. Then the dispersion-dissipation condition is used to construct the relationship between the dissipation parameter and the effective scaled wavenumber. Thus, we obtain a class of finite difference schemes with adaptive dissipation. To achieve the shock-capturing capability and maintain the superior spectral properties in the smooth regions, we combine the adaptive dissipation scheme with the corresponding weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) scheme to construct a hybrid scheme. At each grid point, either of the sub-schemes is applied dynamically according to a new shock detector. The shock detection accuracy of the new detector has been effectively improved compared with classical ones. The approximate dispersion relation (ADR) shows that the new hybrid scheme is accurate and robust. Several benchmark test problems with broadband length scales as well as discontinuities are presented to verify the high resolution, high efficiency and the good shock-capturing capability of the proposed scheme. The performance of the proposed scheme in turbulence simulation is also demonstrated by the three-dimensional isotropic Taylor-Green vortex problem.
Based on a new multi-source dataset (GLDP-V1.0) recently developed in China Meteorological Administration, we employed precipitation indices including percentile-based indices of light (below the ...50th percentile), moderate (between the 50th and 90th percentile), and intense (above the 90th percentile) precipitation, maximum 1-day, 3-day, and 5-day precipitation amounts (RX1DAY, RX3DAY, and RX5DAY, respectively), and consecutive wet and dry days (CWDs and CDDs) to analyze variations in extreme precipitation events in the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) during 1961–2012. The main results are presented as follows. Firstly, there was a significant increase in the amount of light and moderate precipitation and number of associated days over various parts of India and northern Tibetan Plateau during 1961–2012; but the intensity of light precipitation decreased significantly in the Hindu Kush and central India, and the regional average intensity also decreased. Secondly, the amount and frequency of intense precipitation mostly increased significantly on the Tibetan Plateau, but there was a heterogeneous change over the remainder of the HKH, and regional average annual intense precipitation amount and frequency significantly increased over the HKH during 1961–2012. Thirdly, regional average RX1DAY, RX3DAY, and RX5DAY all showed significant upward trends during 1961–2012, and there was a significant increased tendency of consecutive wet-days in most parts of the study region; however, trends of consecutive dry-days were mostly opposite to those of consecutive wet-days, with regional averaged consecutive dry-days showing no noticeable trend.
This study uses the CMA (China Meteorological Administration) global land-surface daily air temperature dataset V1.0 (GLSATD V1.0) to analyze long-term changes in extreme temperature events over the ...Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) during 1961–2015. Results show there was a significant decrease in the number of extreme cold events (cold nights, cold days, and frost days) but a significant increase in the number of extreme warm events (warm nights, warm days, and summer days) over the entire HKH during 1961–2015. For percentile-based indices, trends of extreme events related to minimum temperature (Tmin) were greater in magnitude than those related to maximum temperature (Tmax). For absolute-value based indices, maximum Tmax, minimum Tmin, and summer days all show increasing trends, while frost days and the diurnal temperature range (DTR) show significant decreasing trends. In addition, there was a decrease in extreme cold events in most parts of east HKH, particularly in Southwest China and the Tibetan Plateau, while there was a general increase in extreme warm events over the entire HKH. Finally, the change in extreme cold events in the HKH appears to be more sensitive to elevation (with cold nights and cold days decreasing with elevation), whereas the change in warm extremes (warm nights, warm days, and maximum Tmax) shows no detectable relationship with elevation. Frost days and minimum Tmin also have a good relationship with elevation, and the trend in frost days decreases with an increase in elevation while the trend in minimum Tmin increases with an increase in elevation.
Optical trapping describes the interaction between light and matter to manipulate micro-objects through momentum transfer. In the case of 3D trapping with a single beam, this is termed optical ...tweezers. Optical tweezers are a powerful and noninvasive tool for manipulating small objects, and have become indispensable in many fields, including physics, biology, soft condensed matter, among others. In the early days, optical trapping was typically accomplished with a single Gaussian beam. In recent years, we have witnessed rapid progress in the use of structured light beams with customized phase, amplitude, and polarization in optical trapping. Unusual beam properties, such as phase singularities on-axis and propagation invariant nature, have opened up novel capabilities to the study of micromanipulation in liquid, air, and vacuum. We summarize the recent advances in the field of optical trapping using structured light beams.
The necessity to promote smart grid (SG) has been recognized with a strong consensus. The SG integrates electrical grids and communication infrastructures and forms an intelligent electricity network ...working with all connected components to deliver sustainable electricity supplies. Many advanced communication technologies have been identified for SG applications with a potential to significantly enhance the overall efficiency of power grids. In this paper, the challenges and applications of communication technologies in SG are discussed. In particular, we identify three major challenges to implement SG communication systems, including standards interoperability, cognitive access to unlicensed radio spectra, and cyber security. The issues to implement SG communications on an evolutional path and its future trends are also addressed. The aim of this paper is to offer a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art researches on SG communications.
Identification of grain shape determining genes can facilitate breeding of rice cultivars with optimal grain shape and appearance quality. Here, we identify GS9 (Grain Shape Gene on Chromosome 9) ...gene by map-based cloning. The gs9 null mutant has slender grains, while overexpression GS9 results in round grains. GS9 encodes a protein without known conserved functional domain. It regulates grain shape by altering cell division. The interaction of GS9 and ovate family proteins OsOFP14 and OsOFP8 is modulated by OsGSK2 kinase, a key regulator of the brassinosteroids signaling pathway. Genetic interaction analysis reveals that GS9 functions independently from other previously identified grain size genes. Introducing the gs9 allele into elite rice cultivars significantly improves grain shape and appearance quality. It suggests potential application of gs9, alone or in combination with other grain size determining genes, in breeding of rice varieties with optimized grain shape.
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