Gyrinops walla is an important agarwood-producing tree and threatened species from Sri Lanka. Herein, we assembled and characterized the complete chloroplast (cp) genome of G. walla as a genomic ...resource for conservation purposes. The 175,130 bp long genome is comprised of 87,376 bp large single-copy (LSC) and 3316 bp small single-copy (SSC) regions, which are separated by two inverted repeat (IR) region, each with a size of 42,291 bp. A total of 140 genes were predicted for the cp genome, which includes 94 protein-coding, 38 tRNA, and eight rRNA genes. Phylogenetic analysis showed that G. walla is fully resolved in a sister position to Aquilaria in the family Thymelaeaceae. The data provided will be useful for study on the molecular phylogenetics and evolution of Thymelaeaceae in the future.
In this study, the authors analyse the coverage probability of downlink Poisson networks under a double shadowed (DS) fading channel, where the DS fading composes of lognormal shadowing and $\kappa ...$κ–$\mu $μ shadowed fading with integer parameters. Firstly, they provide a probability density function of DS fading and approximate it as a weighted sum of $\kappa $κ–$\mu $μ shadowed distributions according to the Gaussian–Hermit quadrature rule. The comprehensive nature and heavy-tailed feature of the DS fading model are presented. Secondly, under the closest cell-association rule and the general cell-association rule, they, respectively, derive closed-form expressions for the coverage probability of downlink Poisson networks with DS fading. Numerical results show that the DS fading environment with rich clusters and mild fluctuations enlarges the coverage probability of Poisson network under the two types of cell-association policies. Moreover, the coverage probability decreases as the large-scale shadowed parameter increases when a severing base station (BS) is selected by the closest cell-association rule to avoid the ping-pong effect compared to the general cell-association rule. The convergence of coverage probability is also validated in the numerical section when the locations of users or BSs are, respectively, modelled by modified Thomas cluster processes.
Sleep stage classification is of great importance in human health monitoring and disease diagnosing. Clinically, visual-inspected classifying sleep into different stages is quite time consuming and ...highly relies on the expertise of sleep specialists. Many automated models for sleep stage classification have been proposed in previous studies but their performances still exist a gap to the real clinical application. In this work, we propose a novel multi-view fusion network named MVF-SleepNet based on multi-modal physiological signals of electroencephalography (EEG), electrocardiography (ECG), electrooculography (EOG), and electromyography (EMG). To capture the relationship representation among multi-modal physiological signals, we construct two views of Time-frequency images (TF images) and Graph-learned graphs (GL graphs). To learn the spectral-temporal representation from sequentially timed TF images, the combination of VGG-16 and GRU networks is utilized. To learn the spatial-temporal representation from sequentially timed GL graphs, the combination of Chebyshev graph convolution and temporal convolution networks is employed. Fusing the spectral-temporal representation and spatial-temporal representation can further boost the performance of sleep stage classification. A large number of experiment results on the publicly available datasets of ISRUC-S1 and ISRUC-S3 show that the MVF-SleepNet achieves overall accuracy of 0.821, <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">F_{1}</tex-math></inline-formula> score of 0.802 and Kappa of 0.768 on ISRUC-S1 dataset, and accuracy of 0.841, <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">F_{1}</tex-math></inline-formula> score of 0.828 and Kappa of 0.795 on ISRUC-S3 dataset. The MVF-SleepNet achieves competitive results on both datasets of ISRUC-S1 and ISRUC-S3 for sleep stage classification compared to the state-of-the-art baselines. The source code of MVF-SleepNet is available on Github ( https://github.com/YJPai65/MVF-SleepNet ).
Energy consumption is an important economical index of a fuel cell hybrid vehicle (FCHV). To analyse the energy consumption of a range extender FCHV and reduce the cost of experiments, this study ...developed a nonlinear regression model of the powertrain of the vehicle to predict the current and voltage on the DC bus, which were used in the investigation of energy consumption, by using the intelligent algorithms including Back Propagation neural network (BP), Genetic Algorithm-Back Propagation neural network (GABP) and least square support vector machine (LSSVM). The model based on the LSSVM achieves the best predicted performance and can consider the nonlinear characteristics of the powertrain quite well. A case study was discussed by applying the obtained model and integrated with a hierarchical energy management strategy (HEMS). The specific results of energy consumption showed that it is feasible to use the predicted data of the obtained model in the analysis of the energy consumption of the FCHV.
•Energy consumption of a range extender FCHV was investigated.•The DC bus electrical parameters was predicted by modelling the nonlinear powertrain based on intelligent algorithms.•A case study was carried out to predict the specific energy consumption of the FCHV during a real-world driving schedule.
As the largest automobile market in the world, gasoline price has had a profound impact on consumers in China. However, consumers always queue to refuel when gasoline prices rise. To examine the ...consumer responses and behaviors to gasoline price rise, we built a Motivation-Individuality-Reaction (MIR) model with a novel comprehensive analysis approach that employed a social network-based public survey and a questionnaire-based individual survey. We found that the tax-included gasoline prices are opaque partly because of the neutral public attitude, and while Chinese consumers are sensitive to gasoline prices, the sensitivity appears to decrease when there are continuous price rises. Personal perceptions rather than social-demographics were found to have a significant effect on consumer behaviour, which also explained the queuing to refuel actions. The findings also suggested that gasoline price rises should be no more than 20% over the short term to ensure consumer market stability. Consumer vehicle purchasing behaviours were found to be less sensitive to gasoline prices than vehicle using behaviours, which verified the applicability and effectiveness of the MIR model in analyzing consumer daily behaviours. The proposed model and mixed-methods-based approach could be applied to a wider range of social science-based energy research and behavioural economics analysis.
•A neutral public attitude partly causes the opacity of China's tax-included gasoline price.•Consumers' strong sensitivity to gasoline prices decreases as the price continues to rise.•Cumulative gasoline price rises should not exceed 20% over the short term to ensure societal stability.•A novel mixed-methods-based approach provides a comprehensive view of gasoline price impact on consumer behaviour.•The proposed MIR model can be extended to social science-based energy and behavioural economics research.
An in situ experiment was conducted to explore how deer grazing and trampling exerted impact on the seasonal variation of soil respiration in Carex argyi communities in a subtropical seasonally ...flooded wetland. Soil respiration, soil temperature, above- and below-ground biomass and potential microbial respiration of fenced (ungrazed) and grazed C. argyi communities were monitored from May 2009 to April 2010. Grazing and trampling decreased above-ground biomass, but had no significant effect on below-ground biomass. Soil respiration in the fenced plot was lower than in the grazed plot, while substrate-induced respiration and bacterial respiration showed the reverse trends. The contribution that bacterial respiration made to total soil respiration was higher in the grazed plot, but the contribution made by fungal respiration remained relatively consistent. Soil temperature explained 70.7% of the seasonal variation of soil respiration in the fenced plot, but only 34.8% in the grazed plot. The results suggested that: (1) soil temperature was the major factor affecting the variation of soil respiration in the undisturbed subtropical wetland ecosystem; (2) grazing and trampling stimulated soil respiration and increased the dependence of soil respiration on microbial activity.
► Soil respiration was accelerated by deer disturbance in a subtropical wetland. ► Deer disturbance reduced the temperature dependence of soil respiration. ► Bacterial respiration played a critical role in improving soil respiration.
Myocardial infarction (MI) leads to the mass death of cardiomyocytes accompanying with the unfavorable alternation of microenvironment, a fibrosis scar deprived of electrical communications, and the ...lack of blood supply in the infarcted myocardium. The three factors are inextricably intertwined and thus result in a conservative MI therapy efficacy in clinic. A holistic approach pertinently targeted to these three key points would be favorable to rebuild the heart functions. Here, an injectable conductive hydrogel was constructed via in situ Michael addition reaction between multi-armed conductive crosslinker tetraaniline-polyethylene glycol diacrylate (TA-PEG) and thiolated hyaluronic acid (HA-SH). The resultant soft conductive hydrogel with equivalent myocardial conductivity and anti-fatigue performance was loaded with plasmid DNA encoding eNOs (endothelial nitric oxide synthase) nanocomplexes and adipose derived stem cells (ADSCs) for treating MI. The TA-PEG/HA-SH/ADSCs/Gene hydrogel-based holistic system was injected into the infarcted myocardium of SD rats. We demonstrated an increased expression of eNOs in myocardial tissue the heightening of nitrite concentration, accompanied with upregulation of proangiogenic growth factors and myocardium related mRNA. The results of electrocardiography, cardiogram, and histological analysis convincingly revealed a distinct increase of ejection fraction (EF), shortened QRS interval, smaller infarction size, less fibrosis area, and higher vessel density, indicating a significant improvement of heart functions. This conception of combination approach by a conductive injectable hydrogel loaded with stem cells and gene-encoding eNOs nanoparticles will become a robust therapeutic strategy for the treatment of MI.
The fluctuating Beckmann (FB) fading is a general fading model, and it extends the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\kappa </tex-math></inline-formula>-<inline-formula> <tex-math ...notation="LaTeX">\mu </tex-math></inline-formula> shadowed fading to a power imbalance scenario. However, the FB fading contains a generalized Lauricella confluent hypergeometric function, which makes the performance analysis in downlink stochastic geometry-based heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets) face a big challenge. In this letter, we first approximate the general and complex FB fading as a Gamma distribution based on the second-order moment matching method. For the application of Laplace trick, we then propose a simple and novel Erlang distribution to approximate the Gamma distribution with non-integer parameters. Using the proposed distribution as well as the Rician approximation for a small parameter, we successfully obtain approximate expressions for the coverage probability and average rate in a downlink <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{L} </tex-math></inline-formula>-tier HetNet with FB fading and validate through simulations.
MicroRNA (miRNA)-mediated gene silencing is a master gene regulatory pathway in plant-pathogen interactions. The differential accumulation of miRNAs among plant varieties alters the expression of ...target genes, affecting plant defense responses and causing resistance differences among varieties. Botryosphaeria dothidea is an important phytopathogenic fungus of apple (Malus domestica). Malus hupehensis (Pamp.) Rehder, a wild apple species, is highly resistant, whereas the apple cultivar "Fuji" is highly susceptible. Here, we identified a 22-nt miRNA candidate named miRcand137 that compromises host resistance to B. dothidea infection and whose processing was affected by precursor sequence variation between M. hupehensis and "Fuji." miRcand137 guides the direct cleavage of and produced target-derived secondary siRNA against Ethylene response factor 14 (ERF14), a transcriptional activator of pathogenesis-related homologs that confers disease resistance to apple. We showed that miRcand137 acts as an inhibitor of apple immunity by compromising ERF14-mediated anti-fungal defense and revealed a negative association between miRcand137 expression and B. dothidea sensitivity in both resistant and susceptible apples. Furthermore, MIRCAND137 was transcriptionally activated by the invading fungi but not by the fungal elicitor, implying B. dothidea induced host miRcand137 as an infection strategy. We propose that the inefficient miRcand137 processing in M. hupehensis decreased pathogen-initiated miRcand137 accumulation, leading to higher resistance against B. dothidea.
•Nonlinear stacking is used to improve the resolution of the fracture seismic method.•The improved fracture seismic method can effectively characterize the pathways of geothermal fluid ...migration.•Determined the optimal connectivity of the fracture network within a specified depth range.•The conjunctions of northwest-oriented regional faults with northeast-oriented faults identified through the fracture seismic method are potential drilling targets.
The Heishan geothermal area is located at southern area of the gigantic rock body of the Lincang Granite in western Yunnan, where the groundwater system and geothermal fluids are mainly distributed along the Heishan-Hejian fault with exposed temperatures ranging from 85 °C to 99 °C and an average geothermal gradient exceeding 49 km/ °C, showing a high potentiality for power generation. In order to understand its origin and distribution characteristics and to identify favorable drilling targets for further exploration and development, this study conducted analyses and characterizations of the ground water system, thermal structures, and heat storage fracture network through using the improved fracture seismic method. The results indicate that the distribution of vertical fracture network of Heishan geothermal area is mainly controlled by a set of secondary northeast trending faults, which govern the hydraulic circulation in the geothermal area together with the northwest-southeast trending main structures. Horizontally, the well-connected fracture network is predominantly distributed at depths ranging from 1500 to 2000 m, exhibiting a trend of thermal convergence from northwest to southeast. Therefore, the southern part of the Heishan geothermal area, particularly the high energy intensity zone at depths of 2000 to 2500 m, represents a favorable drilling targets. Furthermore, this underground fracture characterization method can be also applied to improve the success rate of directional reservoir transformation of enhanced geothermal system (EGS) and effectively monitor it.
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