Mutual Conversion of Land Use between Urban and Rural Area in the Process of Urbanization: A Case Study of Shandong Province

Urbanization is one of the driving forces for the land use change in type and structure, and its prominent effect is to convert rural land to urban land. This paper takes Shan-dong Province as an example to analyze the current situation of the mutual conversion between the urban and rural areas from the aspects of the structure of land use, the decreasing tendency of the cultivated land, the changes of land use in urban and rural residential areas. It points out that cultivated land is converted to residential area land, industrial and/or mining area land. The relationship between the urban area land and the cultivated land is more direct; meanwhile, the changes of rural residential area lag behind obviously. The decrease of the cultivated land and the decline of soil quality will be the two difficult problems in the process of urbanization.

Conversion of a normal maize hybrid into a waxy version using in vivo CRISPR/Cas9 targeted mutation activity

Waxy maize is a specialty maize that produces mainly amylopectin starch with special food or industrial values. The objective of this study was to overcome the limitations of wx mutant allele acquisition and breeding efficiency by conversion of parental lines from normal to waxy maize. The intended mutation activity was achieved by in vivo CRISPR/Cas9 machinery involving desired-target mutation of the Wx locus in the ZC01 background,abbreviated as ZC01-DTM^(wx). Triple selection was applied to segregants to obtain high genome background recovery with transgene-free wx mutations. The targeted mutation was identified, yielding six types of mutations among progeny crossed with ZC01-DTM^(wx).The amylopectin contents of the endosperm starch in mutant lines and hybrids averaged94.9%, while those of the wild-type controls were significantly(P < 0.01) lower, with an average of 76.9%. Double selection in transgene-free lines was applied using the Bar strip test and Cas9 PCR screening. The genome background recovery ratios of the lines were determined using genome-wide SNP data. That of lines used as male parents was as high as98.19% and that of lines used as female parents was as high as 86.78%. Conversion hybrids and both parental lines showed agronomic performance similar to that of their wild-type counterparts. This study provides a practical example of the efficient extension of CRISPR/Cas9 targeted mutation to industrial hybrids for transformation of a recalcitrant species.

Conversion of Andean montane forest to exotic forest plantation modifies soil physicochemical properties in the buffer zone of Ecuador's Podocarpus National Park

Background:Andean montane forests(AMF)are biodiversity hotspots that provide fundamental hydrological services as well as carbon storage and sequestration.In recent decades,southern Ecuador AMFs have been seriously threatened by increased logging and conversion to forest plantations with exotic species.In this context,our main objective was to evaluate the effects of AMF conversion to forest plantations on soil physicochemical properties in the buffer zone(Bz)of the Podocarpus National Park(PNP),in southern Ecuador.For this purpose,random samples were taken at a depth of 0-10 cm in four plots in each contrast zone and analyzed for bulk density,porosity,textural class,leaf litter depth,soil pH,as well as the contents of organic matter(SOM),soil organic carbon(SOC),total nitrogen,and available phosphorus and potassium.Results:The results indicate that the conversion of AMFs produces an increase in bulk density and a decrease in SOM,SOC,and total nitrogen contents,thus modifying soil properties,which could result in a decrease in water regulation capacity and produce an increased risk of soil erosion.This accelerates degradation processes,as well as threatens shortages of the drinking water supply.Conclusions:This study can help decision-makers to implement soil management plans in the Bz of the PNP,based on the implementation of new regulations,where the conservation of AMF is promoted.In addition,it is recommended to apply environmental restoration strategies in the anthropized areas of the AMF,as well as in the areas with exotic eucalyptus and pine plantations.

High-Efficiency Wide-Band Cross-Polarization Conversion Using Bi-layered Metal Hole Pairs

We present a polarization converter composed of bi-layered metal films perforated with rectangle hole pairs in each film. The proposed converter can convert the polarization of an incident linearly-polarized electromagnetic wave to its orthogonal direction with high efficiency and large bandwidth in the infrared or microwave regions.To make sure of the mechanism of polarization conversion, the current and electric-field distributions at different resonant frequencies are analyzed. It is found that the cross-polarized transmission is due to the near-field coupling between hole pairs in neighboring metal films. Finally, a prototype of the proposed converter is fabricated and measured in the microwave region. Good agreement between the experimental and simulated results is obtained.

Broad-Band All-Optical Wavelength Conversion of Differential Phase-Shift Keyed Signal Using an SOA-Based Nonlinear Polarization Switch

Broad-band all-optical wavelength conversion of differential phase-shift keyed （DPSK） signal is experimentally demonstrated. This scheme is composed of a one-bit delay interferometer demodulation stage followed by a semiconductor optical amplifier （SOA） based nonlinear polarization switch. A wavelength converter for the 10 G b/s DPSK signal is presented, which has a wide wavelength range of more than 30 nm. The converted signals experience small power penalties less than 1.4 dB compared with the original signal, at a bit error rate of 10-9. Additionally, the optical spectra, the measured waveforms and the open eye diagrams of the converted signals show a high quality wavelength conversion performance.

Addressing nonresponse bias in forest inventory change estimation using response homogeneity classifications

Estimating amounts of change in forest resources over time is a key function of most national forest inventories(NFI). As this information is used broadly for many management and policy purposes, it is imperative that accurate estimations are made from the survey sample. Robust sampling designs are often used to help ensure representation of the population, but often the full sample is unrealized due to hazardous conditions or possibly lack of land access permission. Potentially, bias may be imparted to the sample if the nonresponse is nonrandom with respect to forest characteristics, which becomes more difficult to assess for change estimation methods that require measurements of the same sample plots at two points in time, i.e., remeasurement. To examine potential nonresponse bias in change estimates, two synthetic populations were constructed: 1) a typical NFI population consisting of both forest and nonforest plots, and 2) a population that mimics a large catastrophic disturbance event within a forested population. Comparisons of estimates under various nonresponse scenarios were made using a standard implementation of post-stratified estimation as well as an alternative approach that groups plots having similar response probabilities(response homogeneity). When using the post-stratified estimators, the amount of change was overestimated for the NFI population and was underestimated for the disturbance population, whereas the response homogeneity approach produced nearly unbiased estimates under the assumption of equal response probability within groups. These outcomes suggest that formal strategies may be needed to obtain accurate change estimates in the presence of nonrandom nonresponse.

东北地区农业结构转型时期土地利用变化的成因与效应

During the last decade of the 20th century, extensive conversion inagricultural land use took place in Northeast China. The goal of this study is to ascertain itsspatial distribution and regional differentiation, determine its causes, and analyze itsenvironmental impact. Especially we attempt to elucidate how institutional constraints havefacilitated the change at a time of agrarian restructuring when newly emerging free market washybridized with the former planned economy. Information on six categories of land use was mappedfrom interpretation of Landsat TM images recorded in 1990, 1995 and 2000. Most of land use changestook place during the first half of the decade, coinciding with abrupt and chaotic changes ingovernment directives. Farmland was changed mainly to woodland, water body and built-up areas whilewoodland and grassland were converted chiefly to farmland. Spatially, the change from farmland towoodland was restricted to the west of the study area. The change from grassland to farmland tookplace in the grazing and farming interlocked west. These chaotic and occasionally conflictingchanges were largely caused by lack of stability and consistency in agricultural land use policiespromulgated. They have exerted adverse impacts on the local environment, including land degradation,increased flooding, and modified climate regime.

A modified voice conversion algorithm using compressed sensing

A voice conversion algorithm,which makes use of the information between continuous frames of speech by compressed sensing,is proposed in this paper.According to the sparsity property of the concatenated vector of several continuous Linear Spectrum Pairs（LSP）in the discrete cosine transformation domain,this paper utilizes compressed sensing to extract the compressed vector from the concatenated LSPs and uses it as the feature vector to train the conversion function.The results of evaluations demonstrate that the performance of this approach can averagely improve 3.21%with the conventional algorithm based on weighted frequency warping when choosing the appropriate numbers of speech frame.The experimental results also illustrate that the performance of voice conversion system can be improved by taking full advantage of the inter-frame information,because those information can make the converted speech remain the more stable acoustic properties which is inherent in inter-frames.

Voice conversion using structured Gaussian mixture model in cepstrum eigenspace

A new methodology of voice conversion in cepstrum eigenspace based on structured Gaussian mixture model is proposed for non-parallel corpora without joint training. For each speaker, the cepstrum features of speech are extracted, and mapped to the eigenspace which is formed by eigenvectors of its scatter matrix, thereby the Structured Gaussian Mixture Model in the EigenSpace （SGMM-ES） is trained. The source and target speaker＇s SGMM-ES are matched based on Acoustic Universal Structure （AUS） principle to achieve spectrum transform function. Experimental results show the speaker identification rate of conversion speech achieves 95.25%, and the value of average cepstrum distortion is 1.25 which is 0.8% and 7.3% higher than the performance of SGMM method respectively. ABX and MOS evaluations indicate the conversion performance is quite close to the traditional method under the parallel corpora condition. The results show the eigenspace based structured Gaussian mixture model for voice conversion under the non-parallel corpora is effective.

Multi-Wavelength Conversion Using FP-LD with Linear Optical Amplifier

We propose and demonstrate a multi-wavelength converter using FP-LD with linear optical amplifier (LOA) which based on cross-gain modulation can convert an input signal to many wavelengths simultaneously for reconfigurable wavelength conversion in OXC and broadcasting in WDM systems.

All-Optical Wavelength Conversion With Multi-Channel Broadcasting at 10 Gb/s Using an Electroabsorption Modulator

All-optical wavelength conversion has been demonstrated with an electroabsorption modulator based on cross-absorption modulation. For the first time, simultaneous broadcasting up to 6 different wavelengths at 10Gb/s is obtained with less than 0.5-dB polarization dependence.

Conversion from whispered speech to normal speech using the extended bilinear transformation method

A method of conversion from whispered speech to normal speech using the extended bilinear transformation was proposed. On account of the different deviation degrees of the whisper＇s formants in different frequency bands, the spectrum of the whispered speech will be processed in the separate partitions of this paper. On the basis of this spectrum, we will establish a conversion function able to usefully convert whispered speech to normal speech. Because of the whisper＇s non-linear offset in relation to normal speech, this paper introduces an expansion factor in the bilinear transform function making it correspond more closely to the actual conversion demands of whispered speech to normal speech. The introduction of this factor takes the non-linear move of the spectrum and the compression of the formant bandwidth into consideration, thus effectively reducing the spectrum distortion distance in the conversion. The experiment results show that the conversion presented in this paper effectively improves both the sound quality and the intelligibility of whispered speech.

Optical Wavelength Filter Using Mode Conversion in Multimode Waveguide

A wavelength filter with simple structure using multimode waveguide is proposed. The device uses mode conversion by a grating structure fabricated simultaneously with the multimode waveguide.

Photonic Analog-to-Digital Conversion of Time-Continuous Signals using a TDM Switching-Wavelength Sampling Source

A 20 Gsample/s photonic analog-to-digital converter is constructed using a 4-switching-wavelength repetitive sampling pulse source. The signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SINAD) is measured to be 44.5 dB and corresponds to 7 effective number of bits.

Occurrence factors of large vacant lots in central districts and their utilization by local governments in Japan

In Japan, focal cities experience a number of probtems retated to deterioration of residentiat environment, quality of public service, and vitalization of commercial rand. SpecificaLLy, the presence of Large vacant tots behind sizable stores, office buildings, hospitals, and factories devitatize urban activity and its Landscape. Many local cities are seeking to actuatize a sustainable compact city with an integrated poputation, commerce, traffic and other pubLic services in ways that promote a tow carbon and energy-conserving society. Against the backdrop of these issues, this study examines the occurrence of large vacant lots and their utilization by tocat governments in Japan based on a questionnaire and fietd survey. It highlights severat cases in which a Large vacant tot is used to forward the development of a compact city by a tocat government.

Spatially explicit estimation of soil organic carbon stock of an estuarine mangrove wetland of eastern India using elemental analysis and very-fine resolution satellite data

Background:This study estimated the total soil organic C(SOC)stock of the wetland influence zone of Bichitrapur mangroves in eastern India in a spatially explicit manner.Both spatial and vertical distribution of SOC densities with respect to land use/land cover(LULC)pattern were assessed.Subsequently,some site-specific management strate-gies were forwarded towards enhancement of C sequestration potential.Methods:The changing patterns of LULC within the wetland influence zone of the site were analyzed using Landsat TM(30 m)and Pleiades-1A(2 m)imageries from 1988 to 2018.Point-specific SOC measurement was done using samples taken from four core-depth intervals(viz.D1:0–20 cm,D2:20–40 cm,D3:40–70 cm,D4:70–100 cm)at 89 locations belonging to different LULC categories.Spatial interpolation was applied on this point-based data to produce SOC density and stock models as a whole and at all core-depths.Relationships between SOC density,core-depth and present LULC were evaluated through multivariate statistical analyses.Results:The LULC transformations during last three decades suggested the gradual growth of mangrove plantations as well as agricultural and aquacultural activities.Most amount of SOC was concentrated in D1(37.17%)followed by D3(26.51%),while D4 had the lowest(10.87%).The highest mean SOC density was observed in the dense mangrove patches(248.92 Mg ha^(−1))and the lowest mean was in the Casuarina plantations(2.78 Mg ha^(−1)).Here,Spline method emerged as the best-fit interpolation technique to model SOC data(R^(2)=0.74)and estimated total SOC stock of the entire wetland influence zone as 169,569.40 Mg and the grand mean as 125.56 Mg ha^(−1).Overall,LULC was inferred as a major determinant of SOC dynamics with a statistically significant effect(p<0.001),whereas no such inference could be drawn for soil core-depth.Conclusions:The C sequestration potential of sites such as the present one could be increased with appropriate zone-wise plantation strategies,restriction on the land conversion to aquaculture and promotion of ecotourism.Peri-odic monitoring through integration of geospatial techniques and elemental analyses would be immensely beneficial in this regard.