Dermal thickness,rather than drug concentration and injection speed,influences the effective area of botulinum toxin type A in the dermis

Background:Recently,microbotulinum,a new technique that involves injecting botulinum toxin type A(BoNTA)microdroplets into superficial cutaneous tissue,has gained popularity.The precise distribution of BoNTA in the targeted area profoundly affects outcomes.Many factors may influence the effective area of BoNTA in the dermis.This study aimed to determine the dermal distribution properties of BoNTA to guide microbotulinum injection.Methods:Ten healthy males aged 18–65 years without BoNTA treatment in the previous year were recruited to receive intradermal injections in the chest and back.Ultrasound was used to ensure the intradermal delivery of injections and measure the dermal thickness.The minor iodine starch test was performed at baseline and 3 days,7 days,21 days,1 month,and 2 months after treatment.Results:All participants received intradermal injections.The dermis was thinner on the chest(thickness,0.20±0.03 cm)than on the back(thickness,0.39±0.07 cm)(P<0.05).An injection in the thicker dermis had a significantly smaller effective area at every follow-up visit.The drug concentration did not affect the effective area except at 3 days after treatment.Injection speed did not influence the effective area at any follow-up visits.Conclusion:An injection in a thicker dermis leads to a smaller effective area for intradermal injections.When the BoNTA dose is the same,the drug concentration and injection speed do not matter.

Climate-Vegetation Coverage Interactions in the Hengduan Mountains Area, Southeastern Tibetan Plateau, and Their Downstream Effects

Little is known about the mechanism of climate-vegetation coverage coupled changes in the Tibetan Plateau(TP)region,which is the most climatically sensitive and ecologically fragile region with the highest terrain in the world.This study,using multisource datasets(including satellite data and meteorological observations and reanalysis data)revealed the mutual feedback mechanisms between changes in climate(temperature and precipitation)and vegetation coverage in recent decades in the Hengduan Mountains Area(HMA)of the southeastern TP and their influences on climate in the downstream region,the Sichuan Basin(SCB).There is mutual facilitation between rising air temperature and increasing vegetation coverage in the HMA,which is most significant during winter,and then during spring,but insignificant during summer and autumn.Rising temperature significantly enhances local vegetation coverage,and vegetation greening in turn heats the atmosphere via enhancing net heat flux from the surface to the atmosphere.The atmospheric heating anomaly over the HMA thickens the atmospheric column and increases upper air pressure.The high pressure anomaly disperses downstream via the westerly flow,expands across the SCB,and eventually increases the SCB temperature.This effect lasts from winter to the following spring,which may cause the maximum increasing trend of the SCB temperature and vegetation coverage in spring.These results are helpful for estimating future trends in climate and eco-environmental variations in the HMA and SCB under warming scenarios,as well as seasonal forecasting based on the connection between the HMA eco-environment and SCB climate.

Variation Characteristics of Hydrothermal Resources Effectiveness Under the Background of Climate Change in Southern Rice Production Area of China

The spatiotemporal characteristics of hydrothermal resources in southern rice production area of China have changed under the background of climate change,and this change would affect the effectiveness of hydrothermal resources during local rice growing period.According to the cropping system subdivision in southern rice production area of China during 1980s,this study used climate data from 254 meteorological stations and phonological data from 168 agricultural observation stations in the south of China,and adopted 6 international evaluation indices about the effectiveness of hydrothermal resources to analyze the temporal and spatial characteristics of hydrothermal resources during the growing period of single cropping rice system and double cropping rice system for 16 planting zones in the whole study area.The results showed that：in southern rice production area of China,the effectiveness of thermal resources of single cropping rice area（SCRA） was less than that of double cropping rice area（DCRA）,whereas the effectiveness of thermal resources of both SARA and DCRA showed a decreasing trend.The index value of effective precipitation satisfaction of SCRA was higher than that of DCRA,nevertheless the index value of effective precipitation satisfaction of both SCRA and DCRA showed a decreasing trend.There was a significant linear relationship between effective thermal resource and water demand,likely water demand increased by 18 mm with every 100°C d increase of effective heat.Effective precipitation satisfaction index（EPSI） showed a negative correlation with effective heat,yet showed a positive correlation with effective precipitation.EPSI reduced by 1% when effective heat resource increased by 125°C d.This study could provide insights for policy makers,land managers or farmers to improve water and heat resource uses and rationally arrange rice production activities under global climate change condition.

Evaluation of Ecological Effectiveness of Protected Areas in Northwest China

Protected areas(PAs) have experienced explosive growth in Northwest China over the last three decades, but their effectiveness in representing regional ecological system diversity has not attracted considerable attention. Low effectiveness would exacerbate the conservation-development conflicts, particularly those that arise as a result of the Great Western Development Strategy(GWDS). Thus, an assessment of the effectiveness of the PA network has become quite important. We proposed natural vegetation communities to represent regional ecological system diversities, and proposed Global 200 Priority Ecoregions, Important Bird Areas, and ecosystem function regions to represent important conservation areas. To determine their effectiveness, we studied the extent to which ecological system diversities and important conservation areas are represented by the existing 96 PAs. Our results indicated that the total coverage of vegetation communities in PAs in Northwest China is not sufficiently comprehensive. As the PA system has expanded, the growth in the total area of the PAs has been greater than that of their vegetation community richness. While most of the important conservation areas are covered by PAs, some regions have not yet reached the 10% threshold; further, PAs are distributed unevenly and conservation gaps remain in the region. Therefore, these regions should receive more attention when planning new PAs. It is vital that more biodiversity datasets and assessment of ecosystem function regions are integrated in order to provide a basis for the government to formulate appropriate protection and development strategies.

Laboratory Research on Effective Test Area of Short-Crested Waves Generated by Two-Sided Segmented Wavemakers

The size and shape of the effective test area are crucial to consider when short-crested waves are created by segmented wavemakers. The range of the effective test area of short-crested waves simulated by two-sided segmented wavemakers is analyzed in this paper. The experimental investigation on the wave field distribution of short-crested waves generated by two-sided segmented wavemakers is conducted by using an array of wave gauges. Wave spectra and directional spreading function are analyzed and the results show that when the main direction is at a certain angle with the normal line of wave generators, the wave field of 3D short-crested waves generated by two-sided segmented wavemakers has good spatial uniformity within the model test area. The effective test area can provide good wave environments for seakeeping model tests of various ocean engineering structures in the deep ocean engineering basin.

Evolution and Determinants of Population Agglomeration in Less Developed Metropolitan Areas:A Case Study of the Taiyuan Metropolitan Area,China

It is of importance to enhance the urban areas'capacity for population aggregation in underdeveloped regions,aiming to rectify the imbalanced and insufficient pattern of economic development in China.Taking the Taiyuan Metropolitan Area(TMA)in central China as a case study,this paper examines the evolutionary process and characteristics of population agglomeration from 2000 to 2020,and identifies factors associated with agglomeration and their spatial effects.The findings indicated that:1)against the background of sustained population shrinkage in the provincial area,the TMA showed a demographic trend of steady increase,albeit with a decelerated growth rate.In the metropolitan area,urban population size continued to grow rapidly,whereas the rural areas endured sustained losses.Disparities in city size continued to widen,and the polarization of concentrated population in the core cities kept increasing.2)Agglomerations in both secondary and service industries had significant positive effects on local population agglomeration,with the former effect being stronger.Regional economic development,government fiscal expenditure,and financial advancement all contributed to facilitating local population clustering.From a spatial spillover perspective,service agglomeration and financial development promoted population agglomeration in surrounding areas.Conversely,fiscal expenditure inhibited such agglomeration.As for industrial agglomeration and regional economic development,their spatial spillover effects were non-significant.The results obtained reveal several policy implications aimed at enhancing the population agglomeration capacity of the metropolitan area in underdeveloped regions during the new era.

Analysis and Countermeasures on Effective Land Use of Rural Residential Area in Jinan, Shandong Province

With the improvement of urbanization and the expansion of urban size, the cultivated land decreases gradually but the demand for urban land increases, thereby resulting in the conflict of land use. Analyzing the status quo of land use of rural residential area, this paper points out that two main problems, namely, the low degree of land use, and the waste of land resources that are prevalent in the rural residential area. Based on the above analysis, the author states that the emphasis on land use will be the plain regions in the future, and adoption of reasonable economic measures will be the new solution to the problems.

Assessing Marine Protected Areas Effectiveness: A Case Study with the Tobago Cays Marine Park

Given the socio-economic consequences associated with declaring areas of ocean protected in order to achieve conservation objectives, this paper contributes to the growing global need to assess Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) as an effective management tool. It adds to the current body of knowledge on MPA effectiveness by conducting an evaluation of the Tobago Cays Marine Park (TCMP), located in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) in the eastern Caribbean, using a modified MPA effectiveness framework. Due to the limited information existing about the current performance of this MPA, this assessment also provides needed insight on the effect that the TCMP is having on the marine ecosystem, as well as its overall management performance. By comparing the performance of the MPA over a 10-year span (2007 and 2016), the results indicate that overall, the TCMP could be described as having limited success when key management categories of context, planning, input, process, output and outcomes are evaluated. In particular, efforts dedicated to planning, process and outcomes are assessed as deficient. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that efforts to realize the stated goals relating to conservation, public awareness and public education were being neglected. However, considerable effort was being expended by TCMP staff on achieving the remaining goal focusing on deriving economic benefits from touristic activities in the Park. Preliminary field research examining the effects of the TCMP on the abundance and density of an economically important species, Lobatus gigas, (commonly referred to as the queen conch) showed the TCMP as having no effect towards conch protection. The results and recommendations of this study, combined with continued monitoring of a recommended targeted suite of indicators, could contribute to better-informed adaptive MPA management, leading to progress towards the achievement of the stated goals for the TCMP.

Effective Life and Area Based Data Storing and Deployment in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

In vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs), store-carry-forward approach may be used for data sharing, where moving vehicles carry and exchange data when they go by each other. In this approach, storage resource in a vehicle is generally limited. Therefore, attributes of data that have to be stored in vehicles are an important factor in order to efficiently distribute desired data. In VANETs, there are different types of data which depend on the time and location. Such kind of data cannot be deployed adequately to the requesting vehicles only by popularity-based rule. In this paper, we propose a data distribution method that takes into account the effective life and area in addition to popularity of data. Our extensive simulation results demonstrate drastic improvements on acquisition performance of the time and area specific data.

Multi-Objective Bacterial Foraging Optimization Algorithm Based on Effective Area in Cognitive Emergency Communication Networks

Cognitive emergency communication net-works can meet the requirements of large capac-ity,high density and low delay in emergency com-munications.This paper analyzes the properties of emergency users in cognitive emergency communi-cation networks,designs a multi-objective optimiza-tion and proposes a novel multi-objective bacterial foraging optimization algorithm based on effective area(MOBFO-EA)to maximize the transmission rate while maximizing the lifecycle of the network.In the algorithm,the effective area is proposed to prevent the algorithm from falling into a local optimum,and the diversity and uniformity of the Pareto-optimal solu-tions distributed in the effective area are used to eval-uate the optimization algorithm.Then,the dynamic preservation is used to enhance the competitiveness of excellent individuals and the uniformity and diversity of the Pareto-optimal solutions in the effective area.Finally,the adaptive step size,adaptive moving direc-tion and inertial weight are used to shorten the search time of bacteria and accelerate the optimization con-vergence.The simulation results show that the pro-posed MOBFO-EA algorithm improves the efficiency of the Pareto-optimal solutions by approximately 55%compared with the MOPSO algorithm and by approx-imately 60%compared with the MOBFO algorithm and has the fastest and smoothest convergence.

Application Effects of Ultra-fine Powder Shaped Maize Seed Coating Agent in Spring Sowing areas in northeast China

The research explored adaptability maize seed coating agent in spring sowing and effects of ultra-fine powder shaped areas in northeast China. The results showed that germination potential and rate both improved around 5% and the num- ber of root increased by 4% in the treatments with ultra-fine powder shaped maize seed coating agent compared with the control group without seed coating. What＇s more, the treatments with ultra-fine powder shaped maize seed coating agent took advantages in terms of fresh weight of seeding, stem diameter, and dry weight. It is notable that control effects on underground insects performed the best, with per- centage over 94%, which is more excellent relative to other agents in markets. Therefore, ultra-fine powder shaped maize seed coating agent can be widely applied in spring sowing areas in northeast China, without side effects.

Diurnal Variations of Summer Precipitation in the Beijing Area and the Possible Effect of Topography and Urbanization

The present study examined the diurnal variations of summer precipitation in the Beijing area by usingsubdaily precipitation and wind observations. A combined effect of topography and urbanization on thecharacteristics of diurnal variations was suggested. It was shown that stations located in the plain areaexhibited typical night rain peaks, whereas those in the mountainous area exhibited clear afternoon peaks ofprecipitation diurnal variations. The precipitation peaks were associated with wind fields around the Beijingarea, which were found to be highly modulated by mountain-valley circulation and urban-country circulation.The lower-tropospheric wind exhibited a clear diurnal shift in its direction from north at 0800 LST to southat 2000 LST, which reflected mountain-valley circulation. The transitions from valley to mountain windand the opposite generally happened after sunset and sunrise, respectively, and both occurred earlier for thestations located closer to mountains. By comparing the diurnal variations of precipitation at stations in anortheast suburb, an urban area, and a southwest suburb, it was revealed that the northeast suburb grouphad the highest normalized rainfall frequency, but the southwest group had the lowest from late afternoon tolate evening. On the contrary, in the early morning from about 0200 to 1000 LST, the southwest group andurban group had the highest normalized rainfall frequency. This pattern might originate from the combinedeffects of mountain-valley topography and urbanization.

Eco-compensation effects of the wetland recovery in Dongting Lake area

Eco-compensation is an environmental economic instrument for internalization of external cost. Returning farmland to lake is one of the important parts of restoring wetland ecosystem function in the Yangtze River Valley of China. Whether the project of lake recovery can be successful depends on the compensation to the farmers who have lost their original benefits and contributed to the wetland ecosystem recovery by returning farmland to lake. Aiming at the wetland recovery of the Dongting Lake, the practical implementation of pro- grams of the lake recovery and flood control in this area has been challenged by the heavy task of population resettlement, so it is an ideal area for case studies to reach the academic objectives proposed as the above. Based on field survey and experimentation, this research evaluated the benefit losses of the resettled farmers and the increased values of ecosystem service functions caused by wetland recovery, and furthermore, the value of eco-compensation for relocated farmers was calculated by considering the combination of the farmers＇ compensation appeal. The value of eco-compensation for relocated farmers in the Dongting Lake area was 6084.5 yuan per household by synthetic analysis of the effects on wetland ecosystem restoration. Moreover, this article took Dongting Lake area as a case to study and explore the basic issues of the eco-compensation by returning farmland to lake, that was who should pay, who should be paid, how much the payment was and what the payment means was, which sought the mechanisms of wetland restoration eco-compensation and prompted the people＇s enthusiasms for ecological restoration.

Crust-Mantle Structure and Coupling Effects on Mineralization : An Example from Jiaodong Gold Ore Deposits Concentrating Area, China

Based on the results of two dimension velo city structure, 1∶100 000 aeromagnetic anomaly, 1∶200 000 bouguer gravity anom aly and seismic anisotropy of Jiaodong and neighboring region in Shandong, China , the information of geophysical field was divided into two parts: deep and sh allow focus fields. And then, the information of two different fields was c ombined with that of deep seated geology and ore deposit features. The syntheti c result was adopted to analyze three dimension structure, to probe into crust mantle coupling effects of mineralization and dynamics of ore formation system .

RELATIVE SEA LEVEL RISE AND ITS EFFECTS ON ENVIRONMENT AND RESOURCES IN CHINAS COASTAL AREAS

Due to global climate warming and natural and man-made land subsidence etc., relative sea level rise in the coastal plains of China will exceed 2-3 times over the golbal mean value during the first half part of the 21st century. It will result in a series of adverse impacts on evolution of natural environment and socioeconomic development of the coastal area. This paper analyses environmental and resource effects induced by relative sea level rise in China's coastal areas on the basis of rough estimate of future relative sea level rise. These effects include inundating tidal flat and wetlands and increase in inundated risk of coastal habitable land,exacerbating storm surge. coastal erosion, flooding and salt water intrusion hazards.as well as endangering land. water. tourism and living resources and their utilization.

Evaluation of Spectral Scale Effects in Estimation of Vegetation Leaf Area Index Using Spectral Indices Methods

Spectral index methodology has been widely used in Leaf Area Index(LAI) retrieval at different spatial scales. There are differences in the spectral response of different remote sensors and thus spectral scale effect generated during the use of spectral indices to retrieve LAI. In this study, PROSPECT, leaf optical properties model and Scattering by Arbitrarily Inclined Layers(SAIL) model, were used to simulate canopy spectral reflectance with a bandwidth of 5 nm and a Gaussian spectral response function was employed to simulate the spectral data at six bandwidths ranging from 10 to 35 nm. Additionally, for bandwidths from 5 to 35 nm, the correlation between the spectral index and LAI, and the sensitivities of the spectral index to changes in LAI and bandwidth were analyzed. Finally, the reflectance data at six bandwidths ranging from 40 to 65 nm were used to verify the spectral scale effect generated during the use of the spectral index to retrieve LAI. Results indicate that Vegetation Index of the Universal Pattern Decomposition(VIUPD) had the highest accuracy during LAI retrieval. Followed by Normalized Difference Vegetation Index(NDVI), Modified Simple Ratio Indices(MSRI) and Triangle Vegetation Index(TVI), although the coefficient of determination R^2 was higher than 0.96, the retrieved LAI values were less than the actual value and thus lacked validity. Other spectral indices were significantly affected by the spectral scale effect with poor retrieval results. In this study, VIUPD, which exhibited a relatively good correlation and sensitivity to LAI, was less affected by the spectral scale effect and had a relatively good retrieval capability. This conclusion supports a purported feature independent of the sensor of this model and also confirms the great potential of VIUPD for retrieval of physicochemical parameters of vegetation using multi-source remote sensing data.

Weapon effectiveness and the shapes of damage functions

This paper provides a review of methods of assessing a fragmentation weapon’s effectiveness against a point target or an area target with keeping the focus on the necessity of using the Carleton damage function with the correct shape factor.First,cookie-cutter damage functions are redefined to preserve the shape factor of and to have the same lethal area as the corresponding Carleton damage function.Then,closed-form solutions of the effectiveness methods are obtained by using those cookie-cutter damage functions and the Carleton damage function.Finally,the closed-form solutions are applied to calculate the probability of damaging a point target and the expected fractional damage to an area target for several attack scenarios by using cookie-cutter damage functions and the Carleton damage functions with different shape factors.The comparison of the calculation results shows that using cookie-cutter damage functions or the Carleton damage function with a wrong shape factor results in quite significant differences from using the original Carleton damage function with a correct shape factor when weapon’s delivery error deviations are less than or comparable to the lengths of the lethal area and the aim point is far from a target.The effectiveness methods improved in this paper will be useful for mission planning utilizing the precision-guided munitions in circumstances where the collateral damage should be reduced.

Discussion on the dextral movement and its effect in continental China and adjacent areas since Cenozoic

Continental China has moved dextral Eastward since Cenozoic time,driven by the collision of the Indian with the Eurasian plate.Evidence for this comes from landscape evolution,the distribution of earthquake epicenters,Cenozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks,and the measurement of GPS velocity vectors,the distribntion of crustal stress,paleomagnetic data,and deep mantle structure,among others.This movement commenced around 40 Ma,coupled with thickened lithosphere and widespread stress release along strikeslip faults that bound the continental Chinese block.Because of continued Northward subduction of the Indian plate,manifestation of the dextral movement has intensified since 25 Ma.Far-reaching effects include extensive strike-slip movement on the Tan-Lu fault in Eastern China,formation of the Dabie ultrahigh pressure metamorphic terrane,extensive thrust faults in East China,delamination and thickening of the lithosphere of South China,a possible tectonic doubling of the Middle-Lower Yangtze Valley metallogenic belt,and the formation of the Japan,Huanghai (East China),and South China Sea.

Spatial-temporal Heterogeneity of Industrial Structure Transformation and Carbon Emission Effects in Xuzhou Metropolitan Area

Employing decoupling index and industrial structure characteristic bias index methods, this study analyzed the spatial-temporal characteristics of industrial structure transformations and their resulting carbon emissions in the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area from 2000 to 2014, with a focus on their relationships and driving factors. Our research indicates that carbon emission intensity from industrial structures in the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area at first showed an increasing trend, which then decreased. Furthermore, the relationship between emissions and industrial economic growth has been trending toward absolute decoupling. From the perspective of the center-periphery, the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area formed a concentric pattern, where both progress towards low emissions and the level of technological advancement gradually diminished from the center to the periphery. In terms of variation across provinces, the ISCB index in the eastern Henan has decreased the slowest, followed by the southern Shandong and the northern Anhui, with the northern Jiangsu ranking last. During this period, resource-and labor-intensive industries were the primary growth industries in the northern Anhui and the eastern Henan, while labor-intensive industries dominated the southern Shandong and capital-intensive industries dominated the northern Jiangsu. In terms of city types, the spatial pattern for industrial structure indicates that recession resource-based cities had higher carbon emission intensities than mature resource-based cities, followed by non-resource-based cities and regenerative resource-based cities. Generally, the industrial structure in the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area has transformed from being resource-intensive to capital-intensive, and has been trending toward technology-intensive as resource availability has been exploited to exhaustion and then been regenerated. Industrial structure has been the leading factor causing heterogeneity of carbon emission intensities between metropolitan cities. Therefore, the key to optimizing the industrial structure and layout of metropolitan areas is to promote industrial structure transformation and improve the system controlling collaborative industrial development between cities.

Effect of Agricultural Comprehensive Development on Increasing Income of Farmers in Jiangsu Hilly and Mountainous Areas

To adapt to rural and agricultural economic development,Jiangsu Province adjusted main task of comprehensive development of hilly and mountainous areas to supporting and promoting agricultural structural adjustment of hilly and mountainous areas and promoting increase of agricultural benefits and farmers' income. Through typical survey,this paper made an objective evaluation of effect of agricultural comprehensive development of hilly and mountainous areas in Jiangsu Province from increasing farmers' income. Results indicated that agricultural comprehensive development investment projects in Jiangsu hilly and mountainous areas are closely coupled with local agricultural production structure; financial funds promote social capital input to construction of economic forest,fruit and grass planting,and livestock raising. Through demonstration and guidance of farmers,it promoted adjustment of agricultural production structure and increased farmers' income. Finally,it came up with pertinent policy recommendations.