Effects of ammonium on growth, nitrogen and carbohydrate metabolism of Potamogeton maackianus A. Benn

Growth, nitrogen and carbohydrate metabolism in relation to eutrophication were studied for a submerged plant Potamogeton maackianus, a species common in East Asian shallow lakes. The plants were grown in six NH4+-N concentrations (0.05, 0.50, 1.00, 3.50, 5.00 and 10.00 mg/L) for six days. NH4+-N levels in excess of 0.50 mg/L inhibited the plant growth. The relationships between external NH4+-N availability and total nitrogen (TN), protein-N, free amino acid-N (FAA-N) and NH4+-N in plant tissues, respectively, conformed to a logarithmic model suggesting that a feedback inhibition mechanism may exist for ammonium uptake. The response of starch to NH4+-N was fitted with a negative, logarithmic curve. Detailed analysis revealed that the influx NH4+-N had been efficiently incorporated into organic-N and eventually stored as protein at the expense of starch accumulation. These data suggest that this species may be able to tolerate high levels of ammonium when dissolved oxygen is sufficient.

Status of sturgeon aquaculture and sturgeon trade in China: a review based on two recent nationwide surveys

The authors reviewed the aquacultural history of Acipenseriformes in China, related the legal status and examined the current status of the cultured species or hybrids, origins of seedlings, quantities of production, geographic distribution in farming, and the sustainability for both restocking programmes and human consumption. The census shows that since 2000, the production of cultured sturgeons in China appears to have become the largest in the world. As of 2000, the rapid growth of sturgeon farming in China mainly for commercial purposes has shifted harvests in the Amur River from caviar production to the artificial culture of sturgeon seedlings. This dramatic development has also caused a series of extant and potential problems, including insufficient market availability and the impact of exotic sturgeons on indigenous sturgeon species. Annual preservation of sufficient higher-age sturgeons should be a national priority in order to establish a sustainable sturgeon-culture industry and to preserve a gene pool of critically endangered sturgeon species to prevent their extinction.

Effect of CO2 concentrations on the activity of photosynthetic CO2 fixation and extracelluar carbonic anhydrase in the marine diatom Skeletonema costatum

The growth and activity of photosynthetic CO2 uptake and extracellular carbonic anhydrase (CA(ext)) of the marine diatom Skeletonema costatum were investigated while cultured at different levels of CO2 in order to see its physiological response to different CO2 concentrations under either a low (30 mumol . m(-2) . s(-1)) or high (210 mumol . m(-2) . s(-1)) irradiance. The changes in CO2 concentrations (4-31 mumol/L) affected the growth and net photosynthesis to a greater extent under the low than under the high light regime. CAext was detected in the cells grown at 4 mumol/L CO2 but not at 31 and 12 mumol/L CO2, with its activity being about 2.5-fold higher at the high than at the low irradiance. Photosynthetic CO2 affinity (1/K-1/2(CO2)) of the cells decreased with increased CO2 concentrations in culture. The cells cultured under the high-light show significantly higher photosynthetic CO2 affinity than those grown at the low-light level. It is concluded that the regulations of CA(ext) activity and photosynthetic CO2 affinity are dependent not only on CO2 concentration but also on light availability, and that the development of higher CA(ext) activity and CO2 affinity under higher light level could sufficiently support the photosynthetic demand for CO2 even at low level of CO2.

A global shallow water model using high order multi-moment constrained finite volume method and icosahedral grid

A novel accurate numerical model for shallow water equations on sphere have been developed by implementing the high order multi-moment constrained finite volume (MCV) method on the icosahedral geodesic grid. High order reconstructions are conducted cell-wisely by making use of the point values as the unknowns distributed within each triangular cell element. The time evolution equations to update the unknowns are derived from a set of constrained conditions for two types of moments, i.e. the point values on the cell boundary edges and the cell-integrated average. The numerical conservation is rigorously guaranteed. in the present model, all unknowns or computational variables are point values and no numerical quadrature is involved, which particularly benefits the computational accuracy and efficiency in handling the spherical geometry, such as coordinate transformation and curved surface. Numerical formulations of third and fourth order accuracy are presented in detail. The proposed numerical model has been validated by widely used benchmark tests and competitive results are obtained. The present numerical framework provides a promising and practical base for further development of atmospheric and oceanic general circulation models. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

氮杂环化合物的绿色合成研究

氮杂环化合物大多数都是具有生理活性的物质，例如喹喔啉化合物与苯二氮卓类化合物，因此研究氮杂环化合物骨架的构建方法具有一定意义。绿色化学的迅速发展迫切要求化学家发展清洁、经济和环境较友好条件下的有机合成方法。其中，水相反应与绿色固体酸催化剂的使用都是实现绿色有机合成的重要途径，它们非常具有潜力，近些年受到了广泛关注。本论文的主要工作是围绕水相及固体酸催化条件下两类具有生物活性的含氮杂环小分子的合成方法而开展的，具体包括以下内容： 1. 研究和探索出了两类绿色固体酸催化剂蒙脱土（Mont. K-10）和杂多酸(H4SiW12O40), 在水相条件下成功合成出喹喔啉化合物的有效方法。两个催化体系都以无毒无公害的水作反应溶剂，实验条件温和，操作安全简便，反应速度快，底物普适性强，产率高，且产物易分离收集。两类固体酸催化剂，对设备腐蚀性小，可回收循环使用，对环境无公害; 蒙脱土催化大部分底物能得到当量产率的产物，硅钨酸催化催化剂负载量小。 2. 实现了无溶剂条件下，以杂多酸（H3PW12O40）作催化剂，高效合成1,5-苯二氮卓衍生物的合成方法。该催化体系具有以下一些优势：实验条件温和，反应速度较快，底物普适性良好，产物易分离收集，反应过程中没有加入其它有机溶剂，绿色环保。 ‘Green Chemistry’ is currently a major issue of modern chemistry. It is widely acknowledged that there is a growing need for more environmentally acceptable processes in the chemical industry. New green catalysts and green reaction media are the important and efficient strategies in green chemistry. New green catalysts include solid acid catalysts, solid base catalysts, metal catalysts not only possess higher activity and selectivity, but also are easily separated from reaction system. Green reaction media include water, supercritical fluids and ionic liquids can not only substitute traditional toxic and harmed organic solvents, but also improve reaction activity and selectivity. Meanwhile water is a promising green reaction medium for use in modern chemistry because it has a number of advantages such as the cheapest solvent available on earth, being non-hazardous and non-toxic to the environment. Solid acids had also attracted much attention for realizing green chemistry due to their unique acidity, high activity and efficiency as organic catalysts. Nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds of different ring sizes such as quinoxaline and benzodiazepine are the important pharmacologically active compounds. Due to the wide biological significance of these compounds, the synthesis of these types of compounds have received a great deal of attention. Despite the large availability of methods to construct nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds, there is still a strong need to further explore green methods to efficiently and safely synthesize these compounds. Thus, we aim at developing efficient and green methodology for the synthesis of quinoxaline and benzodiazepine carried out under water condition with solid acid catalysts. The contents of this dissertation are listed as the following: 1. We have developed two catalytic systems for the synthesis quinoxaline via the condensation of an aryl 1,2-diamine with a 1,2-diketone compound in the presence of Mont. K-10 or H4SiW12O40 as a catalyst in water solvent. Both of these two methods can be applied to wide range of substrates, tolerating aryl 1,2-diamine/1,2-diketone with the electron donating/drawing substituent. Operational simplicity, the ambient conditions, use of an economically convenient catalyst, use of water as a desirable solvent, high yields and short reaction times are the key features of these two protocols. 2. We developed a convenient and efficient protocol for the synthesis of a variety of 1,5-benzodiazepines in high yields via condensation of aryl o-phenylenediamine derivatives with a variety of ketones using H3PW12O40 as a green recyclable and heterogeneous catalyst under solvent-free condition. The simple experiment procedure combined with ease of recovery and reuse of this catalyst make this procedure quite simple, more convenient and environmentally benign.

Analysis of specific gene by integration of isothermal amplification and electrophoresis on poly(methyl methacrylate) microchips

We have successfully achieved the integration of isothermal amplification and the subsequent analysis of specific gene fragments on poly(methyl methacrylate) microchips. In our experiments, loop-mediated isothermal amplification, which can offer higher specificity and efficiency than PCR, has been performed at a constant temperature (65 degreesC). After amplification, products could be either examined by the integrated microchip-based electrophoresis or directly observed by naked eye with SYBR Green I added into the reaction solution. By such an integrated microsystem, the amplification and the subsequent analysis of prostate-specific antigen gene with template concentration at 23 fg/muL could be finished within 15 min, which demonstrates its advantages of high specificity, good reproducibility, and fast speed in gene detection.

Modelling raindrop impact and splash erosion processes within a spatial cell: a stochastic approach

A new approach is proposed to simulate splash erosion on local soil surfaces. Without the effect of wind and other raindrops, the impact of free-falling raindrops was considered as an independent event from the stochastic viewpoint. The erosivity of a single raindrop depending on its kinetic energy was computed by an empirical relationship in which the kinetic energy was expressed as a power function of the equivalent diameter of the raindrop. An empirical linear function combining the kinetic energy and soil shear strength was used to estimate the impacted amount of soil particles by a single raindrop. Considering an ideal local soil surface with size of I m x I m, the expected number of received free-failing raindrops with different diameters per unit time was described by the combination of the raindrop size distribution function and the terminal velocity of raindrops. The total splash amount was seen as the sum of the impact amount by all raindrops in the rainfall event. The total splash amount per unit time was subdivided into three different components, including net splash amount, single impact amount and re-detachment amount. The re-detachment amount was obtained by a spatial geometric probability derived using the Poisson function in which overlapped impacted areas were considered. The net splash amount was defined as the mass of soil particles collected outside the splash dish. It was estimated by another spatial geometric probability in which the average splashed distance related to the median grain size of soil and effects of other impacted soil particles and other free-falling raindrops were considered. Splash experiments in artificial rainfall were carried out to validate the availability and accuracy of the model. Our simulated results suggested that the net splash amount and re-detachment amount were small parts of the total splash amount. Their proportions were 0.15% and 2.6%, respectively. The comparison of simulated data with measured data showed that this model could be applied to simulate the soil-splash process successfully and needed information of the rainfall intensity and original soil properties including initial bulk intensity, water content, median grain size and some empirical constants related to the soil surface shear strength, the raindrop size distribution function and the average splashed distance. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Fast Haar Transform Based Feature Extraction for Face Representation and Recognition

Subspace learning is the process of finding a proper feature subspace and then projecting high-dimensional data onto the learned low-dimensional subspace. The projection operation requires many floating-point multiplications and additions, which makes the projection process computationally expensive. To tackle this problem, this paper proposes two simple-but-effective fast subspace learning and image projection methods, fast Haar transform (FHT) based principal component analysis and FHT based spectral regression discriminant analysis. The advantages of these two methods result from employing both the FHT for subspace learning and the integral vector for feature extraction. Experimental results on three face databases demonstrated their effectiveness and efficiency.

A soluble nonionic surfactant as electron injection material for high-efficiency inverted bottom-emission organic light emitting diodes

A soluble nonionic surfactant, polyethylenimine 80% ethoxylated (PEIE) solution, was used as the electron injection material in inverted bottom-emission organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). The transparent PEIE film was formed on indium-tin-oxide cathode by simple spin-coating method and it was found that the electron injection was greatly enhanced. The devices with PEIE electron injection layer had achieved significant enhancement in luminance and efficiency. The maximum luminance reached 47 000 cd/m(2), and the maximum luminance efficiency and power efficiency arrived at 19.7 cd/A and 10.6 lm/W, respectively.

Synergetic Effect of Efficient Energy Transfer and 3D pi-pi Stack for White Emission Based on the Block Copolymers Containing Nonconjugated Spacer

A series of block copolymers containing nonconjugated spacer and 3D pi-pi stacking structure with simultaneous blue-, green-, and yellow-emitting units has been synthesized and characterized. The dependence of the energy transfer and electroluminescence (EL) properties of these block copolymers on the contents of oligo(phenylenevinylene)s has been investigated. The block copolymer (GEO8-BEO-YEO4) with 98.8% blue-emitting oligomer (BEO), 0.8% green-emitting oligomer (GEO), and 0.4% yellow-emitting oligomer (YEO) showed the best electroluminescent performance, exhibiting a maximum luminance of 2309 cd/m(2) and efficiency of 0.34 cd/A. The single-layer-polymer light-emitting diodes device based on GEO2-BEO-YEO4 emitted greenish white light with the CIE coordinates of (0.26, 0.37) at 10 V. The synergetic effect of the efficient energy transfer and 3D pi-pi stack of these block copolymers on the photoiuminescent and electroluminescent properties are investigated.

Microcavity effects on emissive color and electroluminescent performance in organic light-emitting diodes

Microcavity organic light-emitting diodes having a top metal mirror and a bottom dielectric mirror, which was distributed Bragg reflectors (DBR) fabricated by using TiO2-SiO2 alternative dielectric multilayer with a central stop-band and two sub-stop-bands, were fabricated. In the devices, the active layers consisted of a hole-transporting layer N,N'-di(naphthalene-1-yl)-N,N'-diphenylbenzidine (NPB) and an electron- transporting/emitting layer tris(8-hydroxy-quinoline) aluminum (Alq(3)). The relationship of the electroluminescent (EL) spectrum and efficiency with the thickness of the active layer and metal layer was studied. It was found that the EL emissive color did not strongly depend on the thickness of the organic layer and metal layer, which was attributed to the excellent photon confinement role of the narrow stop-band of the used dielectric mirror. Thus, high efficiency microcavity organic light-emitting diodes were achieved, and the peak wavelength and color purity were not obviously changed, via optimizing the thickness of organic layer and metal electrode.

Synthesis, characterization, photoluminescent and electroluminescent properties of new conjugated 2,2 '-(arylenedivinylene)bis-8-substituted quinolines

A series of new PPV oligomers containing 8-substituted quinoline, 2,2'-(arylenedivinylene) bis-8-quinoline derivatives, were designed and synthesized via a Knoevenagel condensation reaction of quinaldine, 8-hydroxy-or 8-methoxy-quinaldine with aromatic dialdehydes. These PPV oligomers were characterized by H-1 and C-13-NMR, X-ray diffraction, elemental analysis, UV-visible and fluorescence spectroscopies. The X-ray diffraction investigation showed that there are intermolecular pi...pi interactions in the solid state in 1 and 3. The optical and photoluminescent properties study demonstrated that the emission color of the resulting materials varies from blue to yellow and is dependent on the substituents (pi-donor and pi-acceptor groups) on both sides of the conjugated molecules and the aromatic core in the middle of the conjugated backbones. The electroluminescent devices using compounds 1-4 as the emitters and electron-transporting layers were fabricated with the structure ITO/NPB/emitter/LiF/Al. The best device performance with the maximum brightness of 5530 cd m(-2) and the luminous efficiency of 2.4 cd A(-1) is achieved by using compound 4, with intramolecular charge transfer character, as the emitter; these values represent a more than 5-fold improvement in brightness and efficiency compared to compound 3 without methoxy groups on the phenyl rings.

Improvement of luminescence efficiency by electrical annealing in single-layer organic light-emitting diodes based on a conjugated dendrimer

In this paper, we study the effects of electrical annealing at different voltages on the performance of organic light-emitting diodes. The light-emitting diodes studied here are single-layer devices based on a conjugated dendrimer doped with 2-(4-biphenylyl)-5-(4-tert-butylphenyl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole as the emissive layer. We find that these devices can be annealed electrically by applying a voltage. This process reduces the turn-on voltage and enhances the brightness and efficiency. We obtained an external electroluminescence quantum efficiency of 0.07% photon/electron and a brightness of 2900 cd m(-2) after 12.4 V electrical annealing, which are about 6 times and 9 times higher than un-annealing devices, respectively. The improved luminance and efficiency are attributed to the presence of a space charge field near the electrodes caused by charging of traps.

A comparison of future increased CO2 and temperature effects on sympatric Heterosigma akashiwo and Prorocentrum minimum

Very little is known about how global anthropogenic changes will affect major harmful algal bloom groups. Shifts in the growth and physiology of HAB species like the raphidophyte Heterosigma akashiwo and the dinoflagellate Prorocentrum minimum due to rising CO2 and temperature could alter their relative abundance and environmental impacts in estuaries where both form blooms, such as the Delaware Inland Bays (DIB). We grew semi-continuous cultures of sympatric DIB isolates of these two species under four conditions: (1) 20 degrees C and 375 ppm CO2 (ambient control), (2)20 degrees C and 750 ppm CO2 (high CO2),(3) 24 degrees C and 375 ppm CO2 (high temperature), and (4) 24 degrees C and 750 ppm CO2 (combined). Elevated CO2 alone or in concert with temperature stimulated Heterosigma growth, but had no significant effect on Prorocentrum growth. P-Bmax (the maximum biomass-normalized light-saturated carbon fixation rate) in Heterosigma was increased only by simultaneous CO2 and temperature increases, whereas P-Bmax in Prorocentrum responded significantly to CO2 enrichment, with or without increased temperature. CO2 and temperature affected photosynthetic parameters alpha, Phi(max), E-k, and Delta F/F'(m) in both species. Increased temperature decreased and increased the Chl a content of Heterosigma and M Prorocentrum, respectively. CO2 availability and temperature had pronounced effects on cellular quotas of C and N in Heterosigma, but not in Prorocentrum. Ratios of C:P and N:P increased with elevated carbon dioxide in Heterosigma but not in Prorocentrum. These changes in cellular nutrient quotas and ratios imply that Heterosigma could be more vulnerable to N limitation but less vulnerable to P-limitation than Prorocentrum under future environmental conditions. In general, Heterosigma growth and physiology showed a much greater positive response to elevated CO2 and temperature compared to Prorocentrum, consistent with what is known about their respective carbon acquisition mechanisms. Hence, rising temperature and CO2 either alone or in combination with other limiting factors could significantly alter the relative dominance of these two co-existing HAB species over the next century. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

CO2H2O and energy exchange of an Inner Mongolia steppe ecosystem during a dry and wet year

We used an eddy covariance technique to measure evapotranspiration and carbon flux over two very different growing seasons for a typical steppe on the Inner Mongolia Plateau, China. The rainfall during the 2004 growing season (344.7 mm) was close to the annual average (350.43 mm). In contrast, precipitation during the 2005 growing season was significantly lower than average (only 126 mm). The wet 2004 growing season had a higher peak evapotranspiration (4 mm day(-1)) than did the dry 2005 growing season (3.3 mm day(-1)). In 2004, latent heat flux was mainly a consumption resource for net radiation, accounting for similar to 46% of net radiation. However, sensible heat flux dominated the energy budget over the whole growing season in 2005, accounting for 60% of net radiation. The evaporative rate (LE/R-n) dropped by a factor of four from the non-soil stress to soil water limiting conditions. Maximum half-hourly CO2 uptake was -0.68 mg m(-2) s(-1) and maximum ecosystem exchange was 4.3 g CO2 m(-2) day(-1) in 2004. The 2005 drought growing stage had a maximum CO2 exchange value of only -0.22 mg m(-2) s(-1) and a continuous positive integrated-daily CO2 flux over the entire growing season, i.e. the ecosystem became a net carbon source. Soil respiration was temperature dependent when the soil was under non-limiting soil moisture conditions, but this response declined with soil water stress. Water availability and a high vapor pressure deficit severely limited carbon fixing of this ecosystem; thus, during the growing season, the capacity to fix CO2 was closely related to both timing and frequency of rainfall events. (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.