Evaluation of the WRF Model with Different Land Surface Schemes: A Drought Event Simulation in Southwest China during 2009–10

The authors examined the performance of version 3.4.1 of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model(WRF) with various land surface schemes in simulating a severe drought event in Southwest China. Five numerical experiments were completed using the Noah land surface scheme, the Pleim-Xiu land surface scheme, the Noah-MP land surface schemes, the Noah- MP scheme with dynamic vegetation, and the Noah-MP scheme with dynamic vegetation and groundwater processes. In general, all the simulations reasonably reproduced the spatial and temporal variations in precipitation, but significant bias was also found, especially for the spatial pattern of simulated precipitation. The WRF simulations with the Noah-MP series land surface schemes performed slightly better than the WRF simulation with the Noah and Pleim-Xiu land surface schemes in reproducing the severe drought events in Southwest China. The leaf area index(LAI) simulated by the different land surface schemes showed significant deviations in Southwest China. The Pleim-Xiu scheme overestimated the value of LAI by a factor of two. The Noah-MP scheme with dynamical vegetation overestimated the magnitude of the annual cycle of the LAI, although the annual mean LAI was close to observations. The simulated LAI showed a long-term lower value from autumn 2009 to spring 2010 relative to normal years. This indicates that the LAI is a potential indictor to monitor drought events.

FT-RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY FOR MONITORING THE POLYMERIZATION OF ACRYLIC ACID IN AQUEOUS SOLUTION

FT-Raman spectroscopy was used to monitor the polymerization of acrylic acid in aqueous solution. A simple method to avoid the noise in the background during the signal processing via Fourier transformation was used in this work. The effects of the amount of initiator used on the polymerization are studied. When the amount of the initiator in the polymerization was increased, both the rate and extent of polymerization of acrylic acid will be increased.

Studies on the PEO-PPO-PEO Block Copolymer Release from Alginate Hydrogel

Alginate hydrogel is one of the most widely used carriers for the immobilization of microbial cells. If surfactants are encapsulated with alginate hydrogel, increasing temperature or concentration can make the encapsulated surfactants aggregate and form micelle.

Crystal structure determination of alkaline haemorrhagin AaHⅢ from snake venom of Agkistrodon acutus

The haemorrhagin AaH Ⅲ isolated from the snake venom of Agkistrodon acutus is one of the few al-kaline ones in snake venoms. Its crystals belong to space group P212121 with a = 9. 573 4 nm, b = 4. 996 7 nm and c = 4. 728 8 nm. Its crystal structure was determined by the molecular replacement method according to the model of metalloproteinase Adamalysin n from eastern rattlesnake venom. The AaHⅢ structure has been refined by PROLSQ. The final R factor was 0.254 and the RMS deviations of bond lengths and angles were 0. 001 8 nm and 1.5°. The structure comparison suggested that AaHⅢ has a similar structure to other snake venom zinc-metalloproteinases. They all belong to matrix metalloproteinases super-family.

Convergence of viscosity solutions for 2×2 hyperbolic conservation laws with one characteristic field linearly degenerate on some zero measure sets

Suppose that the two eigenvalues of system （0.1） are λ1（u, v）, λ2（u, v）, the corres-ponding Riemann invariants are w=w（u, v）, z=z（u, v）, and w=w（u, v）, z=z（u, v） give a bijective smooth mapping from （u, v） plane onto （w, z） plane. Throughout this note, we always suppose that A1 u0（x）, v0（x） are bounded measurable functions. A2 λ1（u, v）, λ2（u, v）∈C1 and system （0.1） are strictly hyperbolic, i.e. λ1（u, v）【λ2（u, v）.

Crystal structure of Streptomyces diastaticus No. 7 strain M1033 xylose isomerase

The crystal structures of Streptomyces diastaticus No. 7 strain M1033 xylose isomerase (SDXyI) have been analysed and refined at 0.19nm. The crystal space group is I222, with unit cell dimensions of a=9.884 ran, b=9.393nm and c=8.798nm. Based on the coordinates of the Streptomyces rubiginosus xylose isomerase (SRXyI), the initial model of SDXyl was built up by the dose packing analysing and R-factor searching and refined by PROLSQ to a final R-factor of 0.177 with the rms deviations of bond lengths and bond angles of 0.001 9nm and 2.1°, respectively. No significant global conformation change existed between SRXyI and SDXyI except the local conformation in the active site.

Preliminary X-ray diffraction study on haemorrhagin AaHⅢ from snake venom of Agkistrodon acutus

Haemorrhagins,Which cause local haemorrhage or even death after injection into exper-imental animals,exist widely in many kinds of snake venoms.Almost allthe haemorrhagins reported are zinc-metalloproteinases with highly conserved amino acid se-quences.Some of them could degrade the proteins in matrices so that they are the im-portant targets for drugs to combat diseases such as arthritis and cancer.Snake venommetalloproteinases can be divided into three classes based on their molecular