Investigation on biodiversity and population structure of Penaeus sernisulcatus [sic] in northern waters of Persian Gulf

Green tiger prawn, Penaeus sentisulcatus is one of the commercial species of Persian Gulf, which is distributed from north to Strait of I Iormoze. Concerning its role in fisheries economic, various research projects on stock assessment, biology and aquaculture has been conducted. This research is targeted the identification of various populations of green tiger prawn in northern waters of Persian Gulf. The area has been divided to five regions from north to south named; Bahrakan, Boushehr, Tangestan, Motaaf and Strait of Hormoz. In each region, numbers of sampling stations trawled, and live shrimp species carried in containers equipped with air pump, to coastal laboratories in Boushehr and Bandar Abbass Fisheries Research Centers. Biometeric, morphometeric and merestic measures for 45 factars done, and peices of muscles, eye and ovary tissues dissected, and stored in liquid nitrogen. Protein extraction, and polyacrylamid gel electrophoresis by SDS-PAGE technique for tissues samples conducted. Data of 45 morphometeric and merestic characteristics analyzed by principal component analysis (PCA), and clustering analysis methods. The results of analysis showed that, the populations of Bahrakan and Mota.af regions are differentiated, while population of Boushehr and Tangestan regions were mixed, and named as a single population. The analysis of electrophoretic data also confirmed this result, and showed a distinct population in Strait of Hormoz. Therefore, this research illustrated four distinct populations for P. semisulcatus in northern area of Persian Gulf, named Bahrakan (north of Boushehr), Boushehr and Tangesta.n (adjacent), Motaaf and it's south, and Strait of Hormoz. Study of morphometeric characteristics of carapace factors, genital organs, antenna and life cycle of samples of different regions resulting identification of a subspecies, which is named Penaeus seinisuleatus persicus.

A Comparative Review of Existing Data and Methodologies for Calculating Embodied Energy and Carbon of Buildings

In the Climate Change Act of 2008 the UK Government pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. As one step towards this, regulations are being introduced requiring all new buildings to be ‘zero carbon’ by 2019. These are defined as buildings which emit net zero carbon during their operational lifetime. However, in order to meet the 80% target it is necessary to reduce the carbon emitted during the whole life-cycle of buildings, including that emitted during the processes of construction. These elements make up the ‘embodied carbon’ of the building. While there are no regulations yet in place to restrict embodied carbon, a number of different approaches have been made. There are several existing databases of embodied carbon and embodied energy. Most provide data for the material extraction and manufacturing only, the ‘cradle to factory gate’ phase. In addition to the databases, various software tools have been developed to calculate embodied energy and carbon of individual buildings. A third source of data comes from the research literature, in which individual life cycle analyses of buildings are reported. This paper provides a comprehensive review, comparing and assessing data sources, boundaries and methodologies. The paper concludes that the wide variations in these aspects produce incomparable results. It highlights the areas where existing data is reliable, and where new data and more precise methods are needed. This comprehensive review will guide the future development of a consistent and transparent database and software tool to calculate the embodied energy and carbon of buildings.

Multilinear function factorisation for time series feature extraction

This work applies a variety of multilinear function factorisation techniques to extract appropriate features or attributes from high dimensional multivariate time series for classification. Recently, a great deal of work has centred around designing time series classifiers using more and more complex feature extraction and machine learning schemes. This paper argues that complex learners and domain specific feature extraction schemes of this type are not necessarily needed for time series classification, as excellent classification results can be obtained by simply applying a number of existing matrix factorisation or linear projection techniques, which are simple and computationally inexpensive. We highlight this using a geometric separability measure and classification accuracies obtained though experiments on four different high dimensional multivariate time series datasets. © 2013 IEEE.

Design trade-offs for energy regeneration and control in vehicle suspensions

This paper investigates the fundamental trade-offs involved in designing energy-regenerative suspensions, in particular, focusing on efficiency of power extraction and its effect on vehicle dynamics and control. It is shown that typical regenerative devices making use of linear-to-rotational elements can be modelled as a parallel arrangement of an inerter and a dissipative admittance. Taking account of typical adjustable parameters of the generator, it is shown, for a given suspension damping coefficient, that the power efficiency ratio scales with inertance. For a typical passenger vehicle, it is shown that there is a feasible compromise, namely that good efficiency is achievable with an inertance value that is not detrimental to vehicle performance. A prototype is designed and tested with a resistive termination and experimental results show good agreement between ideal and experimental admittances. The possibility to use dynamic (rather than purely resistive) loads to improve vehicle control without limiting the energy recovery is discussed. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Identification and characterization of a novel envelope protein in Rana grylio virus

Viral envelope proteins have been proposed to play significant roles in virus infection and assembly. In this study, an envelope protein gene, 53R, was cloned and characterized from Rana grylio virus (RGV), a member of the family Iridoviridae. Database searches found its homologues in all sequenced iricloviruses, and sequence alignment revealed several conserved structural features shared by virus capsid or envelope proteins: a myristoylation site, two predicted transmembrane domains and two invariant cysteine residues. Subsequently, RT-PCR and Western blot detection revealed that the transcripts encoding RGV 53R and the protein itself appeared late during infection of fathead minnow cells and that their appearance was blocked by viral DNA replication inhibitor, indicating that RGV 53R is a late expression gene. Moreover, immunofluorescence localization found an association of 53R with virus factories in RGV-infected cells, and this association was further confirmed by expressing a 53R-GFP fusion protein in pEGFP-N3/53R-transfected cells. Furthermore, detergent extraction and Western blot detection confirmed that RGV 53R was associated with virion membrane. Therefore, the current data suggest that RGV 53R is a novel viral envelope protein and that it may play an important role in virus assembly. This is thought to be the first report on a viral envelope protein that is conserved in all sequenced iridoviruses.

Isolation, characterization and genome sequence of a birnavirus strain from flounder Paralichthys olivaceus in China

A birnavirus strain, Paralichthys olivaceus birnavirus (POBV), was isolated and characterized from cultured flounder in China, and its complete genomic sequence was subsequently determined. The virus could induce cytopathic effects (CPE) in four of seven fish cell lines and was resistant to chloroform, 5-iodo-2'-deoxyuridine, acid and alkaline pH, and heat treatment. Purified virus particles had a typical icosahedral shape, with a diameter of approximately 55-60 nm. The genomic segments A and B of POBV were 3,091 and 2,780 bp in length and shared many of the features of the members of the family Birnaviridae. Segment A contained two partially overlapping ORFs encoding a polyprotein, pVP2-VP4-VP3, and a nonstructural protein, VP5, while segment B had only one ORF encoding for the VP1, a viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp). This is the first report about a birnavirus strain from a new non-salmonid host in China and its complete genome sequence.

Determination of 266 pesticide residues in apple juice by matrix solid-phase dispersion and gas chromatography-mass selective detection

A macro matrix solid-phase dispersion (MSPD) method was developed to extract 266 pesticides from apple juice samples prior to gas chromatography-mass selective detection (GC-MSD) determination. A 10 g samples was mixed with 20 g diatomaceous earth. The mixture was transferred into a glass column. Pesticide residues were leached with a 160 mL hexane-dichloromethane (1:1) at 5 mL/min. Two hundred and sixty-six pesticides were divided into three groups and detected by GC-MSD under selective ion monitoring. The proposed method takes advantage of both liquid-liquid extraction and conventional MSPD methods. Application was illustrated by the analysis of 236 apple juice samples produced in Shaanxi province China mainland this year. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Kinetics of alkaline phosphatase in lake sediment associated with cage culture of Oreochromis niloticus

Variations in kinetics of alkaline phosphatase occurring in different sites of sediment associated with cage culture of Oreochromis niloticus in a shallow Chinese freshwater lake (Lake Donghu) were described. In addition, the kinetic parameters of each 2.5-cm stratum in the sediment from the surface down to 37.5 cm were analyzed. Horizontally, the V-max values of alkaline phosphatase in surface sediments increased markedly at sites immediately under and adjacent to the cage that would be subjected to the deposition of fish feces. Peak V-max values in the top 5 cm of the sediment under the cage were also observed relative to their deeper control. After a treatment where the fish feces were added over 12 days, the sediment in deeper layer exhibited a significantly higher V-max value, thereby corroborating the relationship between V-max values of alkaline phosphatase and fish feces in sediments. The fish feces exhibited a remarkable alkaline phosphatase activity (APA). Thus, it is indeed a source of the enzyme. Effects of the fish feces were dose- and time-dependent. The V-max values in sediments were always stimulated, but the K-m values showed much more variability. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Analysis of organchlorine compounds in water by solid phase microextraction and gas chromatography

In this work, both,solid phase microextraction (SPME) and solid phase extraction(SPE) were used to enrich organochlorine compounds in water samples and analyzed by gas chromatography with electron capture detector. The operating conditions of SPME have been studied and different kinds of solid phase were compared. Linear alkybenzene sulfonate(LAS) was added to the samples to investigate its effect on the analysis. The results indicated that polyacrylate was better than other commercial solid phases in extraction of moderated polar organic compounds and the sensitivity of SPME was higher than SPE. LAS affect much in liquid-liquid extraction and headspace SPME; but it has little effect on SPE and direct-SPME method. The applications showed that SPME was a fast and effective method in sample preparation.

Fabrication and optical characterization of GaN-based nanopillar light emitting diodes

InGaN/GaN-multiple-quantum-well-based light emitting diode ( LED) nanopillar arrays with a diameter of approximately 200nm and a height of 700nm are fabricated by inductively coupled plasma etching using Ni self-assembled nanodots as etching mask. In comparison to the as-grown LED sample an enhancement by a factor of four of photoluminescence ( PL) intensity is achieved after the fabrication of nanopillars, and a blue shift and a decrease of full width at half maximum of the PL peak are observed. The method of additional wet etching with different chemical solutions is used to remove the etch-induced damage. The result shows that the dilute HCl ( HCl:H2O=1:1) treatment is the most effective. The PL intensity of nanopillar LEDs after such a treatment is about 3.5 times stronger than that before treatment.

Preparation of I-2 clusters and their absorption spectra

Samples have been prepared at different temperatures by loading It molecules into the cages of zeolite 5A, and the measurements of the absorption spectra have been carried out for the prepared samples. It is shown that 12 molecular clusters are formed in the cages of zeolite 5A, and it is also found that molecular clusters which are bonded with intermolecular forces have an important feature, namely, the intermolecular distance in molecular clusters can be changed on different preparing conditions and the blue shift of absorption edges can not be as the criterion of forming molecular clusters.

Ground target detection, classification and sensor fusion in distributed fiber seismic sensor network - art. no. 683015

This paper describes the ground target detection, classification and sensor fusion problems in distributed fiber seismic sensor network. Compared with conventional piezoelectric seismic sensor used in UGS, fiber optic sensor has advantages of high sensitivity and resistance to electromagnetic disturbance. We have developed a fiber seismic sensor network for target detection and classification. However, ground target recognition based on seismic sensor is a very challenging problem because of the non-stationary characteristic of seismic signal and complicated real life application environment. To solve these difficulties, we study robust feature extraction and classification algorithms adapted to fiber sensor network. An united multi-feature (UMF) method is used. An adaptive threshold detection algorithm is proposed to minimize the false alarm rate. Three kinds of targets comprise personnel, wheeled vehicle and tracked vehicle are concerned in the system. The classification simulation result shows that the SVM classifier outperforms the GMM and BPNN. The sensor fusion method based on D-S evidence theory is discussed to fully utilize information of fiber sensor array and improve overall performance of the system. A field experiment is organized to test the performance of fiber sensor network and gather real signal of targets for classification testing.

Photoluminescence characteristics of GaAs/AlGaAs quantum dot arrays fabricated by dry and dry-wet etching

GaAs/AlGaAs quantum dot arrays with different dot sizes made by different fabrication processes were studied in this work. In comparison with the reference quantum well, photoluminescence (PL) spectra from the samples at low temperature have demonstrated that PL peak positions shift to higher energy side due to quantization confinement effects and the blue-shift increases with decreasing dot size, PL linewidths are broadened and intensities are much reduced. It is also found that wet chemical etching after reactive ion etching can improve optical properties of the quantum dot arrays.

两种银莲花属植物的化学成分研究

本学位论文由5 章组成。第1 章报道了两头尖中三萜皂苷类化合物的全扫描电喷雾多级质谱分析及银莲花素A 的电喷雾质谱裂解规律；第2 和3 章报道了两种银莲花属药用植物化学成分的研究结果；第4 章报道了银莲花素A 的化学结构修饰及其对一种蛋白酪氨酸磷酸酯酶（PTP-1B）的抑制活性；第5 章综述了电喷雾质谱在皂苷类化合物结构鉴定中的应用进展。 第1 章报道了运用全扫描电喷雾多级质谱对两头尖中三萜皂苷类化合物的快速定性检测，共检测出18 个准分子离子峰，根据多级质谱数据并结合文献报道，对其中的15 个准分子离子峰进行了归属，并区分了一些同分异构体；更有意思的是，发现了3 个未见文献报道的三萜皂苷类化合物。根据它们的多级质谱数据，对其结构分别进行了初步解析。本章同时对银莲花素A 特殊的质谱裂解途径通过衍生物制备及其质谱分析进行了确认。 第2 和3 章，分别报道了两头尖和打破碗花花中水溶性多糖苷的分离纯化和结构鉴定。采用D101 大孔树脂和反复硅胶柱层析等分离手段，从两头尖水溶性部分分离得到8 个三萜皂苷类化合物，通过红外、电喷雾质谱和核磁共振等现代谱学方法，并结合传统的化学手段鉴定了它们的结构，其中4 个化合物为新化合物，分别命名为多被银莲花皂苷19、多被银莲花皂苷20、多被银莲花皂苷21和多被银莲花皂苷22。从打破碗花花水溶性部位分离得到6 个三萜皂苷类化合物，通过现代谱学手段，并结合传统的化学方法对它们进行了鉴定，其中1 个为新化合物，命名为打破碗花花苷H。 第4 章报道了以银莲花素A 及其同系物为先导化合物，进行化学结构修饰并对修饰产物进行广泛的生物活性筛选，发现在银莲花素A 及其同系物的结构中引入一些酸性基团后，其生物活性发生了变化，一些修饰产物显示出很强的PTP-1B 抑制作用，提示这些化合物有可能用于治疗II 型糖尿病。 第5 章综述了电喷雾多级质谱用于皂苷类化合物结构鉴定的研究进展。 This dissertation composes of five chapters. The first chapter elaborates the detection and qualification of the triterpenoidal saponins in Anemone raddeana by positive and negative full scan ESI-MSn. This part also reports the special fragmentation pathway of Raddeanin A by ESI-MS/MS. The second and third chapters present the phytochemical investigation of two medicinal plants from Anemone. The fourth part dwells on the structure modification of Raddeanin A and their inhibitory activity against PTP-1B. The last part is a review on the progress in the application of ESI-MSn in the structure identification of saponins. The first chapter reports the application of full scan ESI-MSn for fast analysis of triterpenoid saponins in Anemone raddeana. Eighteen quasi- molecular ion peaks were detected in the positive full scan ESI-MS and fifteen of them were identified by analysis of their tandem mass spectral data in the negative ion mode. Several isomers were differentiated. More interesting, three unreported triterpenoid saponins in this medicinal plant were detected and their structures were deduced according to the dissociation pathway of the known triterpenoidal saponins. This chapter also confirms the special fragmentation pathway of Raddeanin A by its derivative and the mass spectral analysis. The second and third chapters expatiate on the isolation and identification of the chemical constituents from A. raddeana and A. hupehensis. Eight compounds were isolated from the roots and stems of A. raddeana by methanol extraction and repeated column chromatography (including D101 and silica gel), and their structures were determined on the basis of IR, ESI-MS, NMR and chemical methods (including acid hydrolysis and alkaline saponification). Among them, four are new triterpenoid saponins and named as Raddeanoside R19, Raddeanoside R20, Raddeanoside R21 and Raddeanoside R22. Six compounds were isolated from the whole plants of A. hupehensis by the same methods as above, and their structures were also determined with the same way. One of them was confirmed to be new triterpenoid saponins and named as hupehensis saponin H. In the fourth chapter, in order to look for new active compounds, the structure of Raddeanin A and its analogs were modified. It was found that the modified products exhibited obvious inhibitory activity against PTP-1B when several acid groups were introduced. The fifth chapter summarizes the progress on the application of ESI-MSn in the structure identification of saponins.

Advanced superconducting electron cyclotron resonance ion source SECRAL: Design, construction, and the first test result

Superconducting electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source with advanced design in Lanzhou (SECRAL) is a next generation ECR ion source and aims for developing a very compact superconducting ECR ion source with a structure and high performances for highly charged ion-beam production. The ion source was designed to be operated at 18 GHz at initial operation and finally will be extended to 28 GHz. The superconducting magnet confinement configuration of the ion source consists of three axial solenoid coils and six sextupole coils with a cold iron structure as field booster and clamping. At full excitation, this magnet assembly can produce peak mirror fields on the axis of 3.6 T at injection, 2.2 T at extraction, and a radial sextupole field of 2.0 T at plasma chamber wall. What is different from the traditional design, such as LBNL VENUS and LNS SERSE, is that the three axial solenoid coils are located inside of the sextupole bore in order to reduce the interaction forces between the sextupole coils and the solenoid coils. SECRAL may open the way for building a compact and high-performance 18-28 GHz superconducting ECR ion source. Very preliminary commissioning results are promising. Detailed design, construction issues and very preliminary test results of the ion source at 18 GHz are presented.