Elite sd1 alleles in japonica rice and their breeding applications in northeast China

The Green Revolution gene sd1 has been used extensively in modern rice breeding,especially in indica cultivars.However,elite sd1 alleles and related germplasm resources used for japonica rice breeding have not been identified,and extensive efforts are needed for japonica rice breeding to obtain new dwarfing sources.Data from MBKbase-Rice revealed seven sd1 haplotypes in indica and four in japonica rice.Two new sd1 alleles were identified in indica rice.In 295 japonica accessions from northeast Asia,except for the weak functional allele SD1-EQ,sd1-r was the major allele,reducing plant height in comparison with SD1-EQ.Japonica germplasm resources carrying reported sd1 alleles were identified by genotype searching and further verified by literature search,genealogical analysis,and d Caps markers.Pedigrees and geographic distribution showed that sd1-r is an excellent allele widely used in northern China and Tohoku in Japan,and sd1-j is commonly used in east China and Kyushu in Japan.Dongnong-and Xiushui-series cultivars carrying sd1-r and sd1-j,respectively,are essential branches of the backbone parents of Chinese japonica rice,Akihikari and Ce21,with the largest number of descendants and derived generations.In semi-dwarf japonica rice breeding,sd1-d was introgressed into Daohuaxiang 2(DHX2).Dwarf and semi-dwarf lines carrying sd1-d were selected and designated as 1279 and 1280,respectively,after withstanding typhoon-induced strong winds and heavy rains in 2020,and are anticipated to become useful intermediate materials for future genetic research and breeding.This work will facilitate the introduction,parental selection,and marker-assisted breeding,and provide a material basis for the next step in identifying favorable genes that selected together with the sd1 alleles in japonica backbone parents.

An Automatic Segmentation of Kidney in Serial Abdominal CT Scans Using Region Growing Approach

Automatic kidney segmentation from abdominal CT images is a key step in computer-aided diagnosis for kidney CT as well as computeraided surgery. However, kidney segmentation from CT images is generally performed manually or semi-autornatically because of gray levels similarities of adjacent organs/tissues in abdominal CT images. This paper presents an efficient algorithm for segmenting kidney from serials of abdominal CT images. First, we extracted estimated kidney position （EKP） according to the statistical geometric location of kidney within the abdomen. Second, we analyzed the intensity distribution of EKP for several abdominal CT images and exploit an adaptive threshold searching algorithm to eliminate many other organs/tissues in the EKP. Finally, a novel region growing approach based on labeling is used to obtain the fine kidney regions. Experimental results are comparable to those of manual tracing radiologist and shown to be efficient.

Farmer's Adaptive Strategies on Land Competition between Societal Outcomes and Agroecosystem Conservation in the Purple-soiled Hilly Region,Southwestern China

The worldwide extension and intensification of farming during the last century has led to ecosystem degradation and caused a series of environmental problems.Conservation of ecosystem services in agricultural regions has been implemented by top-down government actions or initiated by resilience scientists in the developed countries,but little attention was paid in the developing countries,especially in some remote mountainous regions.The present paper presents a case study showing how local farmers obtained both maximal societal outcomes and agroecosystem conservation interests in the absence of distinct boundaries between agricultural and protected ecological areas in the densely populated purple-soiled hilly region of southwestern China.The local community(Yanting County) has developed a mosaic agricultural-forestry-fishery-stock breeding system with spatially targeted land uses,diverse agricultural productions and multiple ecological partnerships.It indicates that the local farmers have hereditarily perceived sound strategies on maximizing sustainable societal outcomes and optimizing tradeoffs among macro-market,state policy,new technological facility and ecological reinforcement.

A Comparison Study of the Contributions of Additional Observations in the Sensitive Regions Identified by CNOP and FSV to Reducing Forecast Error Variance for the Typhoon Morakot

The sensitive regions of conditional nonlinear optimal perturbations (CNOPs) and the first singular vector (FSV) for a northwest Pacific typhoon case are reported in this paper. A large number of probes have been designed in the above regions and the ensemble transform Kalman filter (ETKF) techniques are utilized to examine which approach can locate more appropriate regions for typhoon adaptive observations. The results show that, in general, the majority of the probes in the sensitive regions of CNOPs can reduce more forecast error variance than the probes in the sensitive regions of FSV. This implies that adaptive observations in the sensitive regions of CNOPs are more effective than in the sensitive regions of FSV. Furthermore, the reduction of the forecast error variance obtained by the best probe identified by CNOPs is twice the reduction of the forecast error variance obtained by FSV. This implies that dropping sondes, which is the best probe identified by CNOPs, can improve the forecast more than the best probe identified by FSV. These results indicate that the sensitive regions identified by CNOPs are more appropriate for adaptive observations than those identified by FSV.

GmNF-YC4 delays soybean flowering and maturation by directly repressing GmFT2a and GmFT5a expression

Flowering time and growth period are key agronomic traits which directly affect soybean(Glycine max(L.)Merr.)adaptation to diverse latitudes and farming systems.The FLOWERING LOCUS T(FT)homologs GmFT2a and GmFT5a integrate multiple flowering regulation pathways and significantly advance flowering and maturity in soybean.Pinpointing the genes responsible for regulating GmFT2a and GmFT5a will improve our understanding of the molecular mechanisms governing growth period in soybean.In this study,we identified the Nuclear Factor Y-C(NFY-C)protein GmNF-YC4 as a novel flowering suppressor in soybean under long-day(LD)conditions.GmNF-YC4 delays flowering and maturation by directly repressing the expression of GmFT2a and GmFT5a.In addition,we found that a strong selective sweep event occurred in the chromosomal region harboring the GmNF-YC4 gene during soybean domestication.The GmNF-YC4Hap3 allele was mainly found in wild soybean(Glycine soja Siebold&Zucc.)and has been eliminated from G.max landraces and improved cultivars,which predominantly contain the GmNF-YC4Hap1 allele.Furthermore,the Gmnf-yc4 mutants displayed notably accelerated flowering and maturation under LD conditions.These alleles may prove to be valuable genetic resources for enhancing soybean adaptability to higher latitudes.

Optimal structural design for a certain near-space composite propeller of airship using adaptive region division blending model

Near-space airship is a frontier and hotspot in current military research and development,and the near-space composite propeller is the key technology for its development.In order to obtain higher aerodynamic efficiency at an altitude of 22 km,a certain near-space composite propeller is designed as a long and slender aerodynamic shape with a 10 m diameter,which brings many challenges to the composite structure design.The initial design is obtained by the composite structure variable stiffness design method using based on fixed region division blending model.However,it weighs 23.142 kg,exceeding the required 20 kg.In order to meet the structural design requirements of the propeller,a variable stiffness design method using the adaptive region division blending model is proposed in this paper.Compared with the methods using the fixed region division blending model,this method optimizes region division,stacking thickness and stacking sequence in a single level,considering the coupling effect among them.Through a more refined region division,this method can provide a more optimal design for composite tapered structures.Additionally,to improve the efficiency of optimization subjected to manufacturing constraints,a hierarchical penalty function is proposed to quickly filter out the solutions that do not meet manufacturing constraints.The above methods combined with a Genetic Algorithm(GA)using specific encoding are adopted to optimize the near-space composite propeller.The optimal design of the structure weighs 18.831 kg,with all manufacturing constraints and all structural response constraints being satisfied.Compared with the initial design,the optimal design has a more refined region division,and achieves a weight reduction of 18.6%.This demonstrates that a refined region division can significantly improve the mechanical performance of the composite tapered structure.

Shadow regions detection algorithm by adaptive narrowband two-phase Chan-Vese model

An adaptive narrowband two-phase Chan-Vese （ANBCV） model is proposed for improving the shadow regions detection performance of sonar images. In the first noise smoothing step, the anisotropic second-order neighborhood MRF （Markov Random Field, MRF） is used to describe the image texture feature parameters. Then, initial two-class segmentation is processed with the block mode k-means clustering algorithm, to estimate the approximate position of the shadow regions. On this basis, the zero level set function is adaptively initialized by the approximate position of shadow regions. ANBCV model is provided to complete local optimization for eliminating the image global interference and obtaining more accurate results. Experimental results show that the new algorithm can efficiently remove partial noise, increase detection speed and accuracy, and with less human intervention.

An adaptive region growing algorithm for breast masses in mammograms

This study attempted to accurately segment the mammographic masses and distinguish malignant from benign tumors.An adaptive region growing algorithm with hybrid assessment function combined with maximum likelihood analysis and maximum gradient analysis was developed in this paper.In order to accommodate different situations of masses,the likelihood and the edge gradients of segmented masses were weighted adaptively by the use of information entropy.106 benign and 110 malignant tumors were included in this study.We found that the proposed algorithm obtained segmentation contour more accurately and delineated the tumor body as well as tumor peripheral regions covering typical mass boundaries and some spiculation patterns.Then the segmented results were evaluated by the classification accuracy.42 features including age,intensity,shape and texture were extracted from each segmented mass and support vector machine(SVM)was used as a classifier.The classification accuracy was evaluated using the area(A_(z))under the receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curve.It was found that the maximum likelihood analysis achieved an A_(z)value of 0.835,the maximum gradient analysis got an A_(z)value of 0.932 and the hybrid assessment function performed the best classification result where the value of A_(z)was 0.948.In addition,compared with traditional region growing algorithm,our proposed algorithm is more adaptive and provides a better performance for future works.