Modelling of XCO2 Surfaces Based on Flight Tests of TanSat Instruments.

The TanSat carbon satellite is to be launched at the end of 2016. In order to verify the performance of its instruments, a flight test of TanSat instruments was conducted in Jilin Province in September, 2015. The flight test area covered a total area of about 11,000 km² and the underlying surface cover included several lakes, forest land, grassland, wetland, farmland, a thermal power plant and numerous cities and villages. We modeled the column-average dry-air mole fraction of atmospheric carbon dioxide (XCO2) surface based on flight test data which measured the near- and short-wave infrared (NIR) reflected solar radiation in the absorption bands at around 760 and 1610 nm. However, it is difficult to directly analyze the spatial distribution of XCO2 in the flight area using the limited flight test data and the approximate surface of XCO2, which was obtained by regression modeling, which is not very accurate either. We therefore used the high accuracy surface modeling (HASM) platform to fill the gaps where there is no information on XCO2 in the flight test area, which takes the approximate surface of XCO2 as its driving field and the XCO2 observations retrieved from the flight test as its optimum control constraints. High accuracy surfaces of XCO2 were constructed with HASM based on the flight's observations. The results showed that the mean XCO2 in the flight test area is about 400 ppm and that XCO2 over urban areas is much higher than in other places. Compared with OCO-2's XCO2, the mean difference is 0.7 ppm and the standard deviation is 0.95 ppm. Therefore, the modelling of the XCO2 surface based on the flight test of the TanSat instruments fell within an expected and acceptable range.

Overexpression of MiR-633 Suppresses the Tumorigenicity of Gastric Cancer Cells and Induces Apoptosis by Targeting MAPK1.

OBJECTIVE: MicroRNA (miRNA/miR)-633 is dysregulated in several types of cancers and is involved in tumorigenesis. However, the function and role of this miRNA in gastric cancer (GC) are not fully understood. The aim of the present study was to evaluate miR-633 expression in GC cell lines and in GC tissue vs. adjacent normal tissue, and to determine its association with clinicopathological data. This work was extended to investigate the effects of miR-633 overexpression on tumor cells in vitro. METHODS: Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) was used to detect and compare the expression level of miR-633 in GC cells, as well as in GC and normal adjacent tissue samples. The clinical significance of miR-633 was also analyzed. MiR-633 lentivirus (LV-miR-633) and negative control lentivirus (LV-NC) were generated and used to transduce SGC-7901 and HGC-27 GC cells in order to analyze the effect of miR-633 on their phenotype. The effects of miR-633 overexpression on GC cell proliferation, apoptosis, migration and invasion were investigated. The target gene of miR-633 was predicted, then confirmed using a dual luciferase reporter gene assay, RT-qPCR and Western blotting. RESULTS: MiR-633 was significantly downregulated in GC cell lines, as well as in GC tissue compared with adjacent normal tissue. Moreover, miR-633 expression was associated with the tumor/node/metastasis (TNM) stage, invasion depth, Borrmann classification and lymph node metastasis (P<0.05). Compared with the LV-NC group, transduction with LV-miR-633 reduced the proliferation, the number of clones, the wound healing rate, the number of invading cells and the number of cells in the G1 phase of the cell cycle (P<0.01). LV-miR-633 also increased the apoptosis rate (P<0.01). The expression level of mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) 1, high-mobility group box 3 (HMGB3), claudin 1 (CLDN1) and MAPK13 were downregulated in LV-miR-633-transduced cells (P<0.01). The dual luciferase reporter assay confirmed that the 3'-untranslated region of MAPK1 was the target site of miR-633 (P<0.01). CONCLUSION: MiR-633 acts as a tumor suppressor in GC, and its expression level is associated with TNM stage, invasion depth, Borrmann type and lymph node metastasis. Overexpression of miR-633 inhibits the proliferation and migration of GC cells and induces apoptosis and cell cycle arrest at the in G1 phase. In addition, miR-633 negatively regulates the expression of MAPK1, HMGB3, CLDN1 and MAPK13 and directly targets MAPK1.

A comparison of satellite observations with the XCO2 surface obtained by fusing TCCON measurements and GEOS-Chem model outputs.

Ground observations can capture CO2 concentrations accurately but the number of available TCCON (Total Carbon Column Observing Network) sites is too small to support a comprehensive analysis (i.e. validation) of satellite observations. Atmospheric transport models can provide continuous atmospheric CO2 concentrations in space and time, but some information is difficult to generate with model simulations. The HASM platform can model continuous column-averaged CO2 dry air mole fraction (XCO2) surface taking TCCON observations as its optimum control constraints and an atmospheric transport model as its driving field. This article presents a comparison of the satellite observations with a HASM XCO2 surface obtained by fusing TCCON measurements with GEOS-Chem model results. We first verified the accuracy of the HASM XCO2 surface using six years (2010-2015) of TCCON observations and the GEOS-Chem model XCO2 results. The validation results show that the largest MAE of bias between the HASM results and observations was 0.85ppm and the smallest MAE was only 0.39ppm. Next, we modeled the HASM XCO2 surface by fusing the TCCON measurements and GEOS-Chem XCO2 model results for the period 9/1/14 to 8/31/15. Finally, we compared the GOSAT and OCO-2 observations with the HASM XCO2 surface and found that the global OCO-2 XCO2 estimates more closely resembled the HASM XCO2 surface than the GOSAT XCO2 estimates.

Surface modeling of soil antibiotics.

Large numbers of livestock and poultry feces are continuously applied into soils in intensive vegetable cultivation areas, and then some veterinary antibiotics are persistent existed in soils and cause health risk. For the spatial heterogeneity of antibiotic residues, developing a suitable technique to interpolate soil antibiotic residues is still a challenge. In this study, we developed an effective interpolator, high accuracy surface modeling (HASM) combined vegetable types, to predict the spatial patterns of soil antibiotics, using 100 surface soil samples collected from an intensive vegetable cultivation area located in east of China, and the fluoroquinolones (FQs), including ciprofloxacin (CFX), enrofloxacin (EFX) and norfloxacin (NFX), were analyzed as the target antibiotics. The results show that vegetable type is an effective factor to be combined to improve the interpolator performance. HASM achieves less mean absolute errors (MAEs) and root mean square errors (RMSEs) for total FQs (NFX+CFX+EFX), NFX, CFX and EFX than kriging with external drift (KED), stratified kriging (StK), ordinary kriging (OK) and inverse distance weighting (IDW). The MAE of HASM for FQs is 55.1 µg/kg, and the MAEs of KED, StK, OK and IDW are 99.0 µg/kg, 102.8 µg/kg, 106.3 µg/kg and 108.7 µg/kg, respectively. Further, RMSE simulated by HASM for FQs (CFX, EFX and NFX) are 106.2 µg/kg (88.6 µg/kg, 20.4 µg/kg and 39.2 µg/kg), and less 30% (27%, 22% and 36%), 33% (27%, 27% and 43%), 38% (34%, 23% and 41%) and 42% (32%, 35% and 51%) than the ones by KED, StK, OK and IDW, respectively. HASM also provides better maps with more details and more consistent maximum and minimum values of soil antibiotics compared with the measured data. The better performance can be concluded that HASM takes the vegetable type information as global approximate information, and takes local sampling data as its optimum control constraints.

[Relationship between donor renal graft quality and graft rejection].

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the correlation between the quality of donor renal grafts and graft rejection. METHODS: The cold ischemia time and the pathological findings by biopsies of the donor grafts in 87 cases were analyzed in conjunction with the occurrence of acute or chronic graft rejection after transplantation. RESULTS: After transplantation, acute rejection occurred in 28 cases, in which 5 (17.8%) had adverse changes in the donor grafts; chronic allograft nephropathy developed in 13 cases, in which 6 (46.1%) had adverse changes in the donor grafts. By binary logistic regression analysis, the cold ischemia time and acute renal tubular injury were identified as the factors affecting acute graft rejection, and cold ischemia time and glomeruloserosis as the risk factors for chronic rejection. CONCLUSION: High-quality donor kidney and minimization of the risk factors help reduce the occurrence of graft rejection after kidney transplantation.

[Establishment and application of a loop-mediated isothermal amplification method for rapid diagnosis of Vibrio cholerae].

OBJECTIVE: To establish a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method for rapid diagnosis of Vibrio cholerae. METHODS: Based on the ompW nucleic sequence of Vibrio cholerae, a pair of primers was designed for LAMP. The reaction conditions were optimized, and the specificity, sensitivity, and practicability of LAMP were tested using 47 bacterial strains and simulated contaminated sites. RESULTS: The results of viable bacterium count showed that LAMP was capable of detecting Vibrio cholerae at a level as low as 1.6x10(2) cfu/ml. The minimal detectable concentration was 1.6+10(3) cfu/ml for simulated contaminated samples such as feces and seawater, and 1.6+10(4) cfu/ml for contaminated milk. All the 21 strains of Vibrio cholerae yielded positive results in LAMP, and the 26 strains of other bacteria all showed negative results, with a detection specificity of 100%. CONCLUSION: The established LAMP method has high specificity and sensitivity for detecting Vibrio cholerae and is applicable in field monitoring and epidemiological study of Vibrio cholerae.