The structure of the plant communities in the different environment contact sites on the base of the soil-geobotanic profiling in the changing climate of Lake Baikal region

The results of studies of the peculiarities of formation of phytocenoses in environments contact sites of the western and eastern coasts of the Lake Baikal has been showed in this paper. On the base of geobotanic profiling combined with soil one, the structure and dynamics of phytocenoses forming under the conditions of mutual development of light-coniferous taiga forest and of extra zonal steppes. Edaphic conditions and placement of phytocenoses are main trigger factors determining the ways of plant cover development in this part of Lake Baikal basin. We discuss the characteristics properties inherent in the linkage of the dynamics and spatial variability of the vegetation with the change of climate in the Baikal region. The regional conditions of the physiogeographic environment had given rise to structurally highly contrasting plant communities in this region. The increase in yearly mean summertime amounts of rainfall, combined with the rise of yearly mean winter temperatures over the last years were conducive to changes in the spatial structure of vegetation. The boundary between the types of vegetation undergoes smoothing. The upper boundary of forest is altered because of changes of the environment that are responsible for the zonality and properties of vertical zonality of the vegetation on the mountains surrounding Lake Baikal. Changes in the vegetation serve as indicators of climate change as well as providing diagnostic tools for the genesis of the Baikal region’s natural environment.

Plant opal analysis of the Guangfucun Site in Wujiang City,Jiangsu Province

The Guangfucun Site is located in thewest of Taoyuan Town,Wujiang City,the furthest south end of JiagsuProvince.It is a Neolithic site datedto 6055±125 BP.The cultural de-posits belong to the Majiabang Cul-ture.This paper reported the resultsof plant opal analysis of the site and

An ultrasonic humidification fluorescent tracing method for detecting unsaturated atmospheric water absorption by the aerial parts of desert plants

Atmospheric water absorption by plants has been explored for more than two centuries, and the aerial parts of plants, particularly the leaves of certain species, have been demonstrated to have an ability to absorb and utilize saturated atmospheric water such as fog, dew and condensed water. So far, however, there have been few studies on the aerial parts of desert plants in their absorption of unsaturated water from the atmosphere. This study presents an ultrasonic humidification fluorescent tracing method of detecting unsaturated atmospheric water absorption by the aerial parts of desert plants. We constructed an organic glass room based on the sizes of field plants. Then, the aboveground parts of the plants were humidified in the sealed glasshouse using an ultrasonic humidifier containing fluorescent reagents. The humidity and wetting time were controlled by turning on or off the humidifier according to the reading of a thermo-hygrometer suspended in the glasshouse. Fluorescence microscopy was employed to observe these plant samples. This method can generate unsaturated atmospheric water vapor and incorporate other fluorescent reagents or water-soluble chemical reagents for gasified humidification. In addition, it can identify plant parts that absorb unsaturated atmospheric water from the air, detect water absorption sites on the surface of leaves or tender stems, and determine the ability of tissues or microstructure of aerial parts to absorb water. This method provides a direct visual evidence for the inspection of leaf or tender stem microstructure in response to unsaturated atmospheric water absorption. Moreover, this method shows that aqueous pores in the cuticles of leaves or tender stems of desert plants are large enough to allow the passage of ionic fluorescent brightener with a molecular weight of up to 917 g/mol. Thus, this paper provides an important approach that explores the mechanism by which desert plants utilize unsaturated atmospheric water.

Antibody-Like Phosphorylation Sites. Theme for Studies of Cancer, Aging and Evolution

Sequence similarities were found between protein and DNA sequences encoding certain part of conserved variable immunoglobulin domains (i.e. conserved IgV) and phosphorylation sites. Hypermutation motifs were then indicated in the majority of the corresponding non-IgV nucleotide sequences. According to database confirmations or double prediction of phosphorylation sites, 80% of the selected human and mouse IgV-related phosphorylation sites or their highly probable candidates exhibited substrate relationship to ataxia-telangiectasia-mutated kinase known as ATM. In accordance with literature data, inactivation of ATM by mutations can participate in the mechanisms of carcinogenesis, neurodegeneration and possibly also in aging. In agreement with this relationship, some of the selected IgV-/ATM-related segments formed molecules specifically involved in carcinogenesis. The selected IgV-related sequence segments were also similar to certain segments of higher plants containing immunoglobulin-like repeats and related regions. Bioinformatic analysis of some selected plant sequences then indicated the presence of catalytic domains composing serine/threonine/tyrosine receptor/receptor-like kinases, which are considered important structures for evolution of very early and part of later Ig-domain-related immunity. The analyzed conserved domain similarities also suggested certain interesting structural and phylogenic relationships, which need to be further investigated. This review in fact briefly summarizes the findings on the subject from the last twenty years.

Accumulation behavior of heavy metals by Bidens pilosa L.from metallurgical slag:effects on plant physiology and absorption characteristics

Many of the abandoned mining and industrial land in villages and towns are seriously polluted by heavy metals in China,it is necessary for sustainable development to adopt efficient and economical ways to restore the ecology of abandoned mining and industrial land.Pollution level of topsoil contaminated with metallurgical slag from nonferrous metal smelting waste site in Baoding,North China and the heavy metals(HMs)accumulation behavior of Bidens pilosa L.(B.pilosa,native pioneer plant)were studied.Two selected study sites were mainly contaminated by As(270~434 mg/kg),Cd(63~95 mg/kg),Pb(5496~24504 mg/kg)and Zn(4500~21300 mg/kg),which exceed the national standard severely.Investigation of multi-metal accumulation in different parts of B.pilosa indicated that the absorption of toxic metals varied by types,concentration and species of HMs under stress conditions,soil property and plant tissues.The results showed that B.pilosa had excellent ability to accumulate HMs under different HMs stress condition,with the highest accumulation concentration of 85 mg/kg for As,380 mg/kg for Cd,4000 mg/kg for Pb,and 7500 mg/kg for Zn in roots under experimental conditions,respectively.The growth trend of B.pilosa declined with the increase of HMs stress concentration in tested soils.HMs stress led to different degrees of plant toxicity and obstruction of physiological metabolism.Among the plant physiological index,Chla and ChlT decreased 28.0%and 28.1%,37.3%and 35.5%under different stress treatments,respectively.Indicators related to physiological metabolic strength and stress resistance of plant,such as MDA(Malondiadehyde),CAT(catalase),SOD(superoxide dismutase)and SP(soluble protein),all increased with the increase of HMs stress concentration.

Plant Landscape Design in River Renovation Based on Site Characte-ristics——A Case Study of Plant Landscape Design in Renovation of Longwanggang River

Plant landscape design in the renovation of Longwanggang River was taken for example to elaborate that plant landscape designs based on site characteristics are mainly demonstrated as "respecting original landforms, considering original plant species, communities and landscapes, exploring proper indigenous plant species". Plant landscapes of Longwanggang River were oriented as riverfront landscape belt with multiple textures, urban portal and ecological corridor, aiming at returning to the nature, integrating environmental resources, achieving large scales and multiple forms. Considering properties of the neighboring plots, functional areas are divided according to different community types and eco-community structure of the plant landscapes, so as to form landscape nodes, highlight overall plant landscape effects, regional characteristics and low maintenance cost.

Choice of Species in China's Plantation Forestry

This paper reviews the new developments in the choice of tree species for China’s plantation forestry in relation to forest regionalization and site classification. After a brief discussion on the fundamental principles of choosing species,it gives the statistical data of the species composition of established forest plantations and recommendation for suitable tree species for plantations in some important forestry regions. Results of studies in 3 different cases have been given to illustrate the research approach in choice of tree species in accordance with the planting sites.

Study on Site Specific Design Earthquake Ground Motion of Nuclear Power Plants in China

The main technical backgrounds and requirements are introduced with regard to earthquake ground motion design parameters in several domestic and American standards,codes and guides involved in the seismic analysis and design activities of nuclear power plants in China.Based on the research results from site seismic safety evaluation of domestic nuclear power plant projects in the last years,characteristics and differences of site specific design spectra are analyzed in comparison with standard response spectra,and the suitability of standard response spectra for domestic nuclear power plant projects is discussed.

Multi-site occupancies and dependent photoluminescence of Ca_(9)Mg_(1.5)(PO_(4))_(7):Eu^(2+) phosphors:A bifunctional platform for optical thermometer and plant growth lighting

Herein,we demonstrate an optical thermometer based on single Eu^(2+)doped Ca_(9)Mg_(1.5)(PO_4)_7 phosphors,which were prepared by traditional solid-state reaction technique under a reduction atmosphere.Considerations on the bond length obtained by the crystal structure refinement and the dependent photoluminescence performances allow to assign the two distinct emission bands to Eu^(2+)ions occupied Cal-Ca3 and Mg2 sites.Moreover,the blue and red emitting bands perfectly match with the photosynthetic action spectrum,which can enhance the indoor plant photosynthesis.The optimal doping content of Eu^(2+)ions in this Ca_(9)Mg_(1.5)(PO_(4))_(7)system is 3 mol%.The corresponding concentration quenching effect is verified as dipole-dipole interaction with the critical distance of 3.315 nm.Furthermore,by exploiting the fluorescence intensity technique,the optical thermal resistance properties of Ca_(9)Mg_(1.5)(PO_4)_7:Eu^(2+)are identified based on the temperature dependent emission spectra in a range of 303-523 K.In detail,the maximum absolute and relative sensitivity S_(a)and S_(r)of Ca_9Mg_(1.5)(PO_(4))_(7):Eu^(2+)thermometer are as high as 0.637%/K and 0.3155 K^(-1),respectively.Consequently,the Eu^(2+)doped Ca_(9)Mg_(1.5)(PO_(4))_(7)phosphors establish a bifunctional platfo rm for both optical the rmometer and plant growth lighting via multi-site occupancies.

A Decision Support System for Selection of Solar Power Plant Locations by Applying Fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS: An Empirical Study

The objective of this research is to propose a decision support system for avoiding flood on solar power plant site selection. Methodologically, the geographic information system (GIS) is used to determine the optimum site for a solar power plant. It is intended to integrate the qualitative and quantitative variables based upon the adoption of the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy AHP) and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) model. These methods are employed to unite the environmental aspects and social needs for electrical power systematically. Regarding a case study of the choice of a solar power plant site in Thailand, it demonstrates that the quantitative and qualitative criteria should be realized prior to analysis in the Fuzzy AHP-TOPSIS model. The fuzzy AHP is employed to determine the weights of qualitative and quantitative criteria that can affect the selection process. The adoption of the fuzzy AHP is aimed to model the linguistic unclear, ambiguous, and incomplete knowledge. Additionally, TOPSIS, which is a ranking multi-criteria decision making method, is employed to rank the alternative sites based upon overall efficiency. The contribution of this paper lies in the evolution of a new approach that is flexible and practical to the decision maker, in providing the guidelines for the solar power plant site choices under stakeholder needs: at the same time, the desirable functions are achieved, in avoiding flood, reducing cost, time and causing less environmental impact. The new approach is assessed in the empirical study during major flooding in Thailand during the fourth quarter of 2011 to 2012. The result analysis and sensitivity analysis are also presented.

Investigation of Vertical Planting in Urban Districts of Chongqing Municipality

Through investigating types,plant application,slope materials,soil,planting trough,auxiliary climbing facilities,and application of new technologies in vertical planting of urban districts in Chongqing Municipality,characteristics and existing problems of its vertical planting were analyzed,and corresponding suggestions given to provide references for vertical planting of mountainous cities.

Functions and Plant Configuration of Wuhan Jiangtan Park

With the rapid development of social economy, and constant improvement of living standards, modern people have had higher requirements on neighboring environment. Park green space is an important component of urban ecosystem, it improves quality of urban ecological environment, reduces urban heat island effect, and beautifies city environment. By studying plant configuration in Jiangtan Park, Hankou District, Wuhan City, functional areas were regarded as a whole to collect data, AHP was applied to investigate the sample plots, garden plant landscape evaluation system was established, and landscapes in all units were evaluated. From the perspectives of site type, functional area, plant configuration, landscape composition, this paper analyzed site conditions of Jiangtan Park, provided scientific theoretic support and case reference for the plant configuration of park green spaces, which would play an extremely important role in improving urban ecological environment and enhancing urban landscape effect.

Application of Optimized BP Neural Network in Addressing for Garbage Power Plant

Neural network has the abilities of self-studying, self-adapting, fault tolerance and generalization. But there are some defaults in its basic algorithm, such as low convergence speed, local extremes, and uncertain number of implied layer and implied notes. This paper presents a solution for overcoming these shortages from two aspects. One is to adopt principle component analysis to select study samples and make some of them contain sample characteristics as many as possible, the other is to train the network using Levenberg-Marquardt backward propagation algorithm. This new method was proved to be valid and practicable in site selection of practical garbage power generation plants.

Nuclear Power Industry of China Enters a New Stage of Development

This article describes the basic conditions of nuclear power plants or projects in China, which have been built up, or under construction, or approved by the State Council. Excellent operating indexes of the existing nuclear power plants and the capability of independent design, manufacture, construction and operation are briefly enumerated. There are over thirty nuclear power plant sites in the coastal and inland areas, which have been checked or preevaluated. This proves that a solid foundation for large-scaled development of nuclear power industry has been laid and nuclear power will certainly play an important role in power supply and environment protection of China.

Host plant choice in the comma butterfly-larval choosiness may ameliorate effects of indiscriminate oviposition

In most phytophagous insects, the larval diet strongly affects future fitness and in species that do not feed on plant parts as adults, larval diet is the main source of nitrogen. In many of these insect-host plant systems, the immature larvae are considered to be fully dependent on the choice of the mothers, who, in turn, possess a highly developed host recognition system. This circumstance allows for a potential mother-offspring conflict, resulting in the female maximizing her fecundity at the expense of larval performance on suboptimal hosts. In two experiments, we aimed to investigate this relationship in the polyphagous comma butterfly, Polygonia c-album, by comparing the relative acceptance of low- and medium-ranked hosts between females and neonate larvae both within individuals between life stages, and between mothers and their offspring. The study shows a variation between females in oviposition acceptance of low-ranked hosts, and that the degree of acceptance in the mothers correlates with the probability of acceptance of the same host in the larvae. We also found a negative relationship between stages within individuals as there was a higher acceptance of lower ranked hosts in females who had abandoned said host as a larva. Notably, however, neonate larvae of the comma butterfly did not unconditionally accept to feed from the least favorable host species even when it was the only food source. Our results suggest the possibility that the disadvantages associated with a generalist oviposition strategy can be decreased by larval participation in host plant choice.

Development and mapping of SSR markers linked to resistance-gene homologue clusters in common bean

Common bean is an important but often a disease-susceptible legume crop of temperate,subtropical and tropical regions worldwide. The crop is affected by bacterial, fungal and viral pathogens. The strategy of resistance-gene homologue(RGH) cloning has proven to be an efficient tool for identifying markers and R(resistance) genes associated with resistances to diseases. Microsatellite or SSR markers can be identified by physical association with RGH clones on large-insert DNA clones such as bacterial artificial chromosomes(BACs). Our objectives in this work were to identify RGH-SSR in a BAC library from the Andean genotype G19833 and to test and map any polymorphic markers to identify associations with known positions of disease resistance genes. We developed a set of specific probes designed for clades of common bean RGH genes and then identified positive BAC clones and developed microsatellites from BACs having SSR loci in their end sequences. A total of 629 new RGH-SSRs were identified and named BMr(bean microsatellite RGH-associated markers). A subset of these markers was screened for detecting polymorphism in the genetic mapping population DOR364 × G19833. A genetic map was constructed with a total of 264 markers,among which were 80 RGH loci anchored to single-copy RFLP and SSR markers. Clusters of RGH-SSRs were observed on most of the linkage groups of common bean and in positions associated with R-genes and QTL. The use of these new markers to select for disease resistance is discussed.

Development of plant communities after restoration of the Antaibao mining site, China

To investigate the dynamic changes in the artificial vegetation in an abandoned mining site,we analyzed the re lationships among community types,environmental variables and community structure in the process of vegetation restoration in the Antaibao mining site,China by survey of the communities and use of biological dating methods.By means of the quantitative classification method(two-way indicator-species analysis,TWINSPAN)and the ordination technique(de-trended correspondence analysis,DCA;and de-trended canonical correspondence analysis,DCCA),the plant communities were classified into seven groups:community I,Robinia pseudoacacia+Pimus tabulaeformis-Caragana kor-shinskii-Agropyron cristatum;community II,Robinia pseudoacacia-Hippophae rhamnoides-Artemisia capil-laries;community II,Ulmus pumila-Elaeagmus angu-stifolia-Artemisia capillaries;community IV,Caragana korshinskii-Agropyron cristatum+Artemisia capillaries;community V,Hippophae rhamnoides-Elymus dahur-icus;community VI,Elaeagnus angustifolia+Hippophae rhamnoides-Brassica jucea;community VII,Hippophae rhammoides+Elaeagnus angustifolia-Salsola collina.We conclude that the community types and diversity are mainly influenced by the succession time and the soil organic matter content.The forest community is more adaptable to the special inhabitation than the shrub community.

Alpine Ecosystems of Northwest Yunnan,China:an Initial Assessment for Conservation

Implementing conservation actions on-the-ground is not a straightforward process,especially when faced with high scientific uncertainty due to limited available information. This is especially acute in regions of the world that harbor many unique species that have not been well studied,such as the alpine zone of the Hengduan Mountains of Northwest Yunnan (NWY),a global biodiversity hotspot and site of The Nature Conservancy’s Yunnan Great Rivers Project. We conducted a quantitative,but rapid regional-level assessment of the alpine flora across NWY to provide a broad-based understanding of local and regional patterns of the alpine flora,the first large-scale analysis of alpine biodiversity patterns in this region. Multivariate analyses were used to classify the major plant community types and link community patterns to habitat variables. Our analysis indicated that most species had small distributions and/or small population sizes. Strong patterns emerged with higher diversity in the more northern mountains,but beta diversity was high,averaging only 10% among sites. The ordinations indicated that elevation and geographic location were the dominant environ-mental gradients underlying the differences in the species composition among communities. The high beta diversity across the alpine of these mountains implies that conservation strategies ultimately will require the protection of large numbers of species over a large geographical area. However,prioritiza-tion should be given to areas where potential payoffs are greatest. Sites with high species richness also have a greater number of endemic species,and,by focusing efforts on these sites,conservation investments would be maximized by protecting the greatest number of unique species.