Characterization of airborne carbonate over a site near Asian dust source regions during spring 2002 and its climatic and environmental significance

IEECAS SKLLQG

Seasonal migration of cirrus clouds over the Asian Monsoon regions and the Tibetan Plateau measured from MODIS/Terra

IEECAS SKLLQG

Influence of iron promoter on catalytic properties of Rh-Mn-Li/SiO2 for CO hydrogenation

The effect of iron promoter on the catalytic properties of Rh-Mn-Li/SiO2 catalyst in the synthesis Of C-2 oxygenates from syngas was investigated by means of the following techniques: CO hydrogenation reaction, temperature-programmed reduction (TPR), temperature-programmed desorption and reaction of adsorbed CO (CO-TPD and TPSR) and pulse adsorption of CO. The results showed that the addition of iron promoter could improve the activity of the catalysts. Unexpectedly, the yield of C-2 oxygenates increased greatly from 331.6 up to 457.5 g/(kg h) when 0.05% Fe was added into Rh-Mn-Li/SiO2 catalyst, while no change in the selectivity to C-2 oxygenates was observed. However, the activity and selectivity Of C-2 oxygenates were greatly decreased if the Fe amount exceeded 1.0%. The existence of a little iron decreased the reducibility of Rh precursor, while the reduction of Fe component itself became easier. CO uptake decreased with increasing the quantity of Fe addition. This phenomenon was further confirmed by CO-TPD results. The CO-TPD and TPSR results showed that only the strongly adsorbed CO could be hydrogenated, while the weakly adsorbed CO was desorbed. We propose that Fe is highly dispersed and in close contact with Rh and Mn; such arrangements were responsible for the high yield Of C-2 oxygenates. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Genomic organization, nucleotide sequence analysis of the core histone genes cluster in Chlamys farreri and molecular evolution assessment of the H2A and H2B

This work represents the nucleotide sequence of the core histone gene cluster from scallop Chlamys farreri. The tandemly repeated unit of 5671 bp containing a copy of the four core histone genes H4, H2B, H2A and H3 was amplified and identified by the techniques of homology cloning and genomic DNA walking. All the histone genes in the cluster had the structures in their 3' flanking region which related to the evolution of histone gene expression patterns throughout the cell cycle, including two different termination signals, the hairpin structure and at least one AATAAA polyadenylation signal. In their 5' region, the transcription initiation sites with a conserved sequence of 5'-PyATTCPu-3' known as the CAP site were present in all genes except to H2B, generally 37-45 bp upstream of the start code. Canonical TATA and CAAT boxes were identified only in certain histone genes. In the case of the promoters of H2B and H2A genes, there was a 5'-GATCC-3' element, which had been found to be essential to start transcription at the appropriate site. After this element, in the promoter of H2B, there was another sequence, 5'-GGATCGAAACGTTC-3', which was similar to the consensus sequence of 5'-GGAATAAACGTATTC-3' corresponding to the H2B-specific promoter element. The presence of enhancer sequences (5'-TGATATATG-3') was identified from the H4 and H3 genes, matching perfectly with the consensus sequence defined for histone genes. There were several slightly more complex repetitive DNA in the intergene regions. The presence of the series of conserved sequences and reiterated sequences was consistent with the view that mollusc histone gene cluster arose by duplicating of an ancestral precursor histone gene, the birth-and-death evolution model with strong purifying selection enabled the histone cluster less variation and more conserved function. Meanwhile, the H2A and the H2B were demonstrated to be potential good marks for phylogenetic analysis. All the results will be contributed to the characterization of repeating histone gene families in molluscs.

Geometric Distortion Insensitive Image Watermarking in Affine Covariant Regions

Feature-based image watermarking schemes, which aim to survive various geometric distortions, have attracted great attention in recent years. Existing schemes have shown robustness against rotation, scaling, and translation, but few are resistant to cropping, nonisotropic scaling, random bending attacks (RBAs), and affine transformations. Seo and Yoo present a geometrically invariant image watermarking based on affine covariant regions (ACRs) that provide a certain degree of robustness. To further enhance the robustness, we propose a new image watermarking scheme on the basis of Seo's work, which is insensitive to geometric distortions as well as common image processing operations. Our scheme is mainly composed of three components: 1) feature selection procedure based on graph theoretical clustering algorithm is applied to obtain a set of stable and nonoverlapped ACRs; 2) for each chosen ACR, local normalization, and orientation alignment are performed to generate a geometrically invariant region, which can obviously improve the robustness of the proposed watermarking scheme; and 3) in order to prevent the degradation in image quality caused by the normalization and inverse normalization, indirect inverse normalization is adopted to achieve a good compromise between the imperceptibility and robustness. Experiments are carried out on an image set of 100 images collected from Internet, and the preliminary results demonstrate that the developed method improves the performance over some representative image watermarking approaches in terms of robustness.

Studies on alkaloids binding to GC-rich human survivin promoter DNA using positive and negative ion electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

Electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) was used to investigate the binding of 13 alkaloids to two GC-rich DNA duplexes which are critical sequences in human survivin promoter. Negative ion ESI-MS was first applied to screen the binding of the alkaloids to the duplexes. Six alkaloids (including berberine, jatrorrhizine, palmatine, reserpine, berbamine, and tetrandrine) show complexation with the target DNA sequences. Relative binding affinities were estimated from the negative ion ESI data, and the alkaloids show a binding preference to the duplex with higher GC content. Positive ion ESI mass spectra of the complexes were also recorded and compared with those obtained in negative ion mode.

Promoter effect of La3+ on the electrochemical reaction of microperoxidase-11

The effect of La3+ on the electrochemical behavior and structure of heme undecapeptide-microperoxidase-11 (MP-11)-in the aqueous solution was investigated using cyclic voltammetry, circular dichroism (CD) and UV-vis absorption spectrometry. It was found for the first time that La3+ would promote the electrochemical reaction of MP-11 at the glassy carbon (GC) electrode. This is mainly due to the fact that La3+ would induce more beta-turn and alpha-helical conformations from the random coil conformation of MP-11 and increase the non-planarity of the heme.

Promoter effects of rare earth ions on electrocatalytic oxidation of methanol

The promoter effects of rare earth ions on the electrocatalytic oxidation of methanol at the Pt electrode were studied using the cyclic voltammetry and stable polarization techniques. It was found for the first time that Eu, Ho, Dy ions could accelerate the electrocatalytic oxidation of methanol at the Pt electrode, while Lu, Pr, Yb, Sm ions showed inhibitor effects.