Seed size is one of the vital traits determining seed appearance, quality, and yield. Untangling the genetic mechanisms regulating soybean 100-seed weight (100-SW), seed length and seed width across environments may p...Seed size is one of the vital traits determining seed appearance, quality, and yield. Untangling the genetic mechanisms regulating soybean 100-seed weight (100-SW), seed length and seed width across environments may provide a theoretical basis for improving seed yield. However, there are few reports related to QTL mapping of 100-SW across multiple ecological regions. In this study, 21 loci associated with seed size traits were identified using a genome-wide association of 5361 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across three ecoregions in China, which could explain 8.12%–14.25% of the phenotypic variance respectively. A new locus, named as SW9-1 on chromosome 9 that explained 10.05%–10.93% of the seed weight variance was found significantly related to seed size traits, and was not previously reported. The selection effect analysis showed that SW9-1 locus has a relatively high phenotypic effect (13.67) on 100-SW, with a greater contribution by the accessions with bigger seeds (3.69) than the accessions with small seeds (1.66). Increases in seed weight were accompanied by increases in the frequency of SW9-1T allele, with >90% of the bred varieties with a 100-SW >30 g carrying SW9-1T. Analysis of SW9-1 allelic variation in additional soybean accessions showed that SW9-1T allele accounting for 13.83% of the wild accessions, while in 46.55% and 51.57% of the landraces and bred accessions, respectively, this results indicating that the SW9-1 locus has been subjected to artificial selection during the early stages of soybean breeding, especially the utilization of SW9-1T in edamame for big seed. These results suggest that SW9-1 is a novel and reliable locus associated with seed size traits, and might have an important implication for increasing soybean seed weight in molecular design breeding. Cloning this locus in future may provide new insights into the genetic mechanisms underlying soybean seed size traits.展开更多
With the increasing interest on natural products discovery, utilization of plant parts which are commonly disregarded is another breakthrough. This study sought to determine the secondary metabolites present, phenolic...With the increasing interest on natural products discovery, utilization of plant parts which are commonly disregarded is another breakthrough. This study sought to determine the secondary metabolites present, phenolic contents, radical scavenging activities and antibacterial properties of 10 selected ornamental flowers which were Adenium obesum, Allamanda cathartica, Bougainvillea glabra, Catharanthus roseus, Caesalpinia pulcherrima, Heliconia subulata, Ixora coccinea, Mussaenda philippica, Tecoma stans and Torenia fournieri, from Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines. The ethanolic crude extracts were subjected to thin layer chromatography （TLC） phytochemical screening. Total phenolics expressed as mg AAE/g sample were determined through Folin-Ciocalteu method. Radical scavenging activities were measured using DPPH assay. Antibacterial activities were assessed through TLC bioautography. To quantify bacterial susceptibility of C. pulcherrima, MIC and MBC were employed in the ethyl acetate sub-fraction. TLC showed different types of phenolics, alkaloids, essential oils and terpenes. T. fournieri showed the highest total phenolics with 155 mg AAE/g while H. subulatahad showed the lowest with 3.50 mg AAE/g. Measurement of IC59 showed that H. subulata had the highest antioxidant activity followed by T. fournieri with 303 ppm and 320 ppm, respectively. H. subulata having the least amount of total phenolics had greatest radical scavenging activity. This indicates that other than phenolics, other metabolites can pose great antioxidant activities. The antibacterial testing showed that M. philippica, 1. coccinea, 1-1. subulata, C. pulcherrima and A. cathartica were bioactive against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coll. MIC and MBC of C. pulcherrima ethyl acetate sub-fraction is within the range of 2.5-10 mg/mL.展开更多
This paper examines a selection of OB （organizational behaviour） textbooks from 1992 to 2012. Using both content analysis and semiotic language analysis, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate how sports images ...This paper examines a selection of OB （organizational behaviour） textbooks from 1992 to 2012. Using both content analysis and semiotic language analysis, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate how sports images in textbooks--although used to ostensibly explain organizational behaviour concepts--can have implications for addressing issues of gender, race, ethnicity, disabilities, and intersectionality. We conclude that sports images and metaphors （along with other asides, examples, and illustrations） need to be used carefully and reflectively.展开更多
Grazing by domestic herbivores is generally recognized as a major ecological factor and an important evolutionary force in grasslands, Grazing has both extensive and profound effects on individual plants and communiti...Grazing by domestic herbivores is generally recognized as a major ecological factor and an important evolutionary force in grasslands, Grazing has both extensive and profound effects on individual plants and communities, We investigated the response patterns of Polygonum viviparum species and the species diversity of an alpine shrub meadow in response to long-term livestock grazing by a field manipulative experiment controlling livestock numbers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China, Here, we hypothesize that within a range of grazing pressure, grazing can alter relative allocation to different plant parts without changing total biomass for some plant species if there is life history trade-offs between plant traits, The same type of communities exposed to different grazing pressures may only alter relative species＇ abundances or species composition and not vary species diversity because plant species differ in resistant capability to herbivory, The results show that plant height and biomass of different organs differed among grazing treatments but total biomass remained constant, Biomass allocation and absolute investments to both reproduction and growth decreased and to belowground storage increased with increased grazing pressure, indicating the increasing in storage function was attained at a cost of reducing reproduction of bulbils and represented an optimal allocation and an adaptive response of the species to long- term aboveground damage, Moreover, our results showed multiform response types for either species groups or single species along the gradient of grazing intensity, Heavy grazing caused a 13,2% increase in species richness, There was difference in species composition of about 18%-20% among grazing treatment, Shannon-Wiener （H′） diversity index and species evenness （E） index did not differ among grazing treatments, These results support our hypothesis,展开更多
This article uses gender analysis to reexamine the New Lifk Movement illustrating how strategies for women＇s leadership cultivation played an important role in Guomindang （GMD） state-building efforts during the 193...This article uses gender analysis to reexamine the New Lifk Movement illustrating how strategies for women＇s leadership cultivation played an important role in Guomindang （GMD） state-building efforts during the 1930s and 1940s. The GMD government promoted the New Life Movement to rectify the morals and conduct of civil servants and the general public for the purpose of building a modern nation-state at minimum cost. Although the New Life Movement is best known for employing urban middle-class centric approaches to reform, its Women＇s AdvisoW Council （WAC） carried the moderr）izing project to China＇s rural interior, where tbe GMD was previously bereft of access to local society. Although the WAC prioritized the mobilization of rural women for the war effort, its endeavors transcended the confinement of ＂women＇s work＂ and were instrumental in bridging the central government and local authorities, bringing the state into rural households.展开更多
Background: Conscious patients admitted to intensive care units(ICUs) suffer from pain for various reasons, which can affect their recovery process.Objective: The present study compared the effects of aromatherapy wit...Background: Conscious patients admitted to intensive care units(ICUs) suffer from pain for various reasons, which can affect their recovery process.Objective: The present study compared the effects of aromatherapy with Citrus aurantium and lavender essential oils against placebo for reducing pain in conscious intensive care patients.Design, setting, participants and interventions: This study was a parallel randomized placebo-controlled trial. The ICUs of two educational hospitals in Kerman in Southeastern Iran were the study setting.One hundred and fifty conscious intensive care patients were randomly divided into three groups using a stratified block randomization method. Two groups received aromatherapy with essential oils: one with lavender and the other with C. aurantium;these patients received a 30-minute therapy session using their assigned essential oil on the second day of their intensive care stay. The placebo group used 5 drops of normal saline instead of essential oil during their session.Main outcome measures: Patient’s pain was assessed using a visual analog scale before the aromatherapy intervention, as well as immediately after and one and three hours after intervention.Results: The mean pain score of the lavender group was 40.01 before the aromatherapy intervention and fell to 39.40, 30.60 and 23.68 immediately after the intervention, and at hour one and three postintervention, respectively. The mean pain score of the C. aurantium group was 45.48 before the intervention and was reduced to 32.34 at three hours after the intervention. The mean pain of the placebo group decreased from 42.80 before the intervention to 35.20 at three hours after the intervention. Pain scores of all groups decreased during the study(P < 0.001). The mean pain of the lavender group was significantly lower than that of the placebo group at three hours after the intervention.Conclusion: The results of this study showed that aromatherapy with lavender essential oil reduced pain in conscious ICU patients. Our data could not justify the use of C. aurantium for reducing pain in this population.展开更多
Research on blockchains addresses multiple issues,with one being the automated creation of smart contracts.Developing smart contract methods is more difficult than mainstream software development as the underlying blo...Research on blockchains addresses multiple issues,with one being the automated creation of smart contracts.Developing smart contract methods is more difficult than mainstream software development as the underlying blockchain infrastructure poses additional complexity.We report on a new approach to developing smart contracts with the objective of automating the process to increase developer efficiency and reduce the risk of errors introduced by software developers.To support industry adoption,we use Business Process Model and Notation(BPMN)modeling to describe an application while targeting applications in the trade vertical.We describe a system that transforms a BPMN model into a multi-modal model that combines Discrete Event(DE)modeling for concurrency with Hierarchical State Machines(HSMs)to represent application functionality.Then,further transformations are used to transform the DE-HSM model into methods in smart contracts.The system lets the modeler decide which of the independent patterns should be transformed into methods of a separate smart contract that is deployed on a sidechain for the purpose of(i)reducing processing costs and/or(ii)providing privacy so that other participants in the smart contract do not have visibility into the processing of the pattern.We also briefly describe a proof-of-concept tool we built to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.展开更多
基金supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0100201)the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31771819)+2 种基金the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2017M621990)the Introduced Leading Talent Research Team for Universities in Anhui Provincethe Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province, China (1608085QC66)
文摘Seed size is one of the vital traits determining seed appearance, quality, and yield. Untangling the genetic mechanisms regulating soybean 100-seed weight (100-SW), seed length and seed width across environments may provide a theoretical basis for improving seed yield. However, there are few reports related to QTL mapping of 100-SW across multiple ecological regions. In this study, 21 loci associated with seed size traits were identified using a genome-wide association of 5361 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across three ecoregions in China, which could explain 8.12%–14.25% of the phenotypic variance respectively. A new locus, named as SW9-1 on chromosome 9 that explained 10.05%–10.93% of the seed weight variance was found significantly related to seed size traits, and was not previously reported. The selection effect analysis showed that SW9-1 locus has a relatively high phenotypic effect (13.67) on 100-SW, with a greater contribution by the accessions with bigger seeds (3.69) than the accessions with small seeds (1.66). Increases in seed weight were accompanied by increases in the frequency of SW9-1T allele, with >90% of the bred varieties with a 100-SW >30 g carrying SW9-1T. Analysis of SW9-1 allelic variation in additional soybean accessions showed that SW9-1T allele accounting for 13.83% of the wild accessions, while in 46.55% and 51.57% of the landraces and bred accessions, respectively, this results indicating that the SW9-1 locus has been subjected to artificial selection during the early stages of soybean breeding, especially the utilization of SW9-1T in edamame for big seed. These results suggest that SW9-1 is a novel and reliable locus associated with seed size traits, and might have an important implication for increasing soybean seed weight in molecular design breeding. Cloning this locus in future may provide new insights into the genetic mechanisms underlying soybean seed size traits.
文摘With the increasing interest on natural products discovery, utilization of plant parts which are commonly disregarded is another breakthrough. This study sought to determine the secondary metabolites present, phenolic contents, radical scavenging activities and antibacterial properties of 10 selected ornamental flowers which were Adenium obesum, Allamanda cathartica, Bougainvillea glabra, Catharanthus roseus, Caesalpinia pulcherrima, Heliconia subulata, Ixora coccinea, Mussaenda philippica, Tecoma stans and Torenia fournieri, from Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines. The ethanolic crude extracts were subjected to thin layer chromatography （TLC） phytochemical screening. Total phenolics expressed as mg AAE/g sample were determined through Folin-Ciocalteu method. Radical scavenging activities were measured using DPPH assay. Antibacterial activities were assessed through TLC bioautography. To quantify bacterial susceptibility of C. pulcherrima, MIC and MBC were employed in the ethyl acetate sub-fraction. TLC showed different types of phenolics, alkaloids, essential oils and terpenes. T. fournieri showed the highest total phenolics with 155 mg AAE/g while H. subulatahad showed the lowest with 3.50 mg AAE/g. Measurement of IC59 showed that H. subulata had the highest antioxidant activity followed by T. fournieri with 303 ppm and 320 ppm, respectively. H. subulata having the least amount of total phenolics had greatest radical scavenging activity. This indicates that other than phenolics, other metabolites can pose great antioxidant activities. The antibacterial testing showed that M. philippica, 1. coccinea, 1-1. subulata, C. pulcherrima and A. cathartica were bioactive against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coll. MIC and MBC of C. pulcherrima ethyl acetate sub-fraction is within the range of 2.5-10 mg/mL.
文摘This paper examines a selection of OB （organizational behaviour） textbooks from 1992 to 2012. Using both content analysis and semiotic language analysis, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate how sports images in textbooks--although used to ostensibly explain organizational behaviour concepts--can have implications for addressing issues of gender, race, ethnicity, disabilities, and intersectionality. We conclude that sports images and metaphors （along with other asides, examples, and illustrations） need to be used carefully and reflectively.
基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30671490).
文摘Grazing by domestic herbivores is generally recognized as a major ecological factor and an important evolutionary force in grasslands, Grazing has both extensive and profound effects on individual plants and communities, We investigated the response patterns of Polygonum viviparum species and the species diversity of an alpine shrub meadow in response to long-term livestock grazing by a field manipulative experiment controlling livestock numbers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China, Here, we hypothesize that within a range of grazing pressure, grazing can alter relative allocation to different plant parts without changing total biomass for some plant species if there is life history trade-offs between plant traits, The same type of communities exposed to different grazing pressures may only alter relative species＇ abundances or species composition and not vary species diversity because plant species differ in resistant capability to herbivory, The results show that plant height and biomass of different organs differed among grazing treatments but total biomass remained constant, Biomass allocation and absolute investments to both reproduction and growth decreased and to belowground storage increased with increased grazing pressure, indicating the increasing in storage function was attained at a cost of reducing reproduction of bulbils and represented an optimal allocation and an adaptive response of the species to long- term aboveground damage, Moreover, our results showed multiform response types for either species groups or single species along the gradient of grazing intensity, Heavy grazing caused a 13,2% increase in species richness, There was difference in species composition of about 18%-20% among grazing treatment, Shannon-Wiener （H′） diversity index and species evenness （E） index did not differ among grazing treatments, These results support our hypothesis,
文摘This article uses gender analysis to reexamine the New Lifk Movement illustrating how strategies for women＇s leadership cultivation played an important role in Guomindang （GMD） state-building efforts during the 1930s and 1940s. The GMD government promoted the New Life Movement to rectify the morals and conduct of civil servants and the general public for the purpose of building a modern nation-state at minimum cost. Although the New Life Movement is best known for employing urban middle-class centric approaches to reform, its Women＇s AdvisoW Council （WAC） carried the moderr）izing project to China＇s rural interior, where tbe GMD was previously bereft of access to local society. Although the WAC prioritized the mobilization of rural women for the war effort, its endeavors transcended the confinement of ＂women＇s work＂ and were instrumental in bridging the central government and local authorities, bringing the state into rural households.
文摘Background: Conscious patients admitted to intensive care units(ICUs) suffer from pain for various reasons, which can affect their recovery process.Objective: The present study compared the effects of aromatherapy with Citrus aurantium and lavender essential oils against placebo for reducing pain in conscious intensive care patients.Design, setting, participants and interventions: This study was a parallel randomized placebo-controlled trial. The ICUs of two educational hospitals in Kerman in Southeastern Iran were the study setting.One hundred and fifty conscious intensive care patients were randomly divided into three groups using a stratified block randomization method. Two groups received aromatherapy with essential oils: one with lavender and the other with C. aurantium;these patients received a 30-minute therapy session using their assigned essential oil on the second day of their intensive care stay. The placebo group used 5 drops of normal saline instead of essential oil during their session.Main outcome measures: Patient’s pain was assessed using a visual analog scale before the aromatherapy intervention, as well as immediately after and one and three hours after intervention.Results: The mean pain score of the lavender group was 40.01 before the aromatherapy intervention and fell to 39.40, 30.60 and 23.68 immediately after the intervention, and at hour one and three postintervention, respectively. The mean pain score of the C. aurantium group was 45.48 before the intervention and was reduced to 32.34 at three hours after the intervention. The mean pain of the placebo group decreased from 42.80 before the intervention to 35.20 at three hours after the intervention. Pain scores of all groups decreased during the study(P < 0.001). The mean pain of the lavender group was significantly lower than that of the placebo group at three hours after the intervention.Conclusion: The results of this study showed that aromatherapy with lavender essential oil reduced pain in conscious ICU patients. Our data could not justify the use of C. aurantium for reducing pain in this population.
文摘Research on blockchains addresses multiple issues,with one being the automated creation of smart contracts.Developing smart contract methods is more difficult than mainstream software development as the underlying blockchain infrastructure poses additional complexity.We report on a new approach to developing smart contracts with the objective of automating the process to increase developer efficiency and reduce the risk of errors introduced by software developers.To support industry adoption,we use Business Process Model and Notation(BPMN)modeling to describe an application while targeting applications in the trade vertical.We describe a system that transforms a BPMN model into a multi-modal model that combines Discrete Event(DE)modeling for concurrency with Hierarchical State Machines(HSMs)to represent application functionality.Then,further transformations are used to transform the DE-HSM model into methods in smart contracts.The system lets the modeler decide which of the independent patterns should be transformed into methods of a separate smart contract that is deployed on a sidechain for the purpose of(i)reducing processing costs and/or(ii)providing privacy so that other participants in the smart contract do not have visibility into the processing of the pattern.We also briefly describe a proof-of-concept tool we built to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.
