In this study Yan’an City, a typical hilly valley city, was considered as the study area in order to explain the relationships between the surface urban heat island (SUHI) and land use/land cover (LULC) types, the landscape pattern metrics of LULC types and land surface temperature (LST) and remote sensing indexes were retrieved from Landsat data during 1990–2015, and to find factors contributed to the green space cool island intensity (GSCI) through field measurements of 34 green spaces. The results showed that during 1990–2015, because of local anthropogenic activities, SUHI was mainly located in lower vegetation cover areas. There was a significant suburban-urban gradient in the average LST, as well as its heterogeneity and fluctuations. Six landscape metrics comprising the fractal dimension index, percentage of landscape, aggregation index, division index, Shannon’s diversity index, and expansion intensity of the classified LST spatiotemporal changes were paralleled to LULC changes, especially for construction land, during the past 25 years. In the urban area, an index-based built-up index was the key positive factor for explaining LST increases, whereas the normalized difference vegetation index and modified normalized difference water index were crucial factors for explaining LST decreases during the study periods. In terms of the heat mitigation performance of green spaces, mixed forest was better than pure forest, and the urban forest configuration had positive effects on GSCI. The results of this study provide insights into the importance of species choice and the spatial design of green spaces for cooling the environment. Full article

Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) commonly exhibit cognitive impairments (CI). However, the neural mechanisms underlying CI remain unclear. The current study applied diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and voxel-based morphometric (VBM) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to evaluate differences in white matter (WM) integrity and gray matter (GM) volume between MS patients with CI and MS patients with cognitive preservation (CP). Neuropsychological assessment and MRI were obtained from 39 relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) patients and 29 healthy controls (HCs). Patients were classified as CI or CP according to cognitive ability, and demographic characteristics and MRI images were compared. Compared with HCs, MS patients exhibited widespread damage in WM integrity, and GM loss in several regions. Compared with CP patients, CI patients exhibited more extensive WM impairments, particularly in the corpus callosum, cerebellar peduncle, corona radiata, optic radiation, superior longitudinal fasciculus, anterior limb of the internal capsule, and cingulate, as well as decreased GM volume in the bilateral caudate, left insula and right temporal lobe. MS patients with CI exhibited more significant structural abnormalities than those with CP. Widespread impairments of WM integrity and selective GM atrophy both appear to be associated with impaired cognition in RRMS. Full article

Remote sensing reflectance (R_rs) classification of coastal waters is a useful tool to monitor environmental processes and manage marine environmental resources. This study presents classification work for data sets that were collected in the Yellow Sea during six cruises (spring and autumn, 2003; summer and winter, 2006/2007; and spring and autumn, 2007). Specifically, we analyzed classification features of R_rs spectra and obtained spatio-temporal characteristics of reflectance and bio-optical properties in the coastal waters. Yellow Sea waters were classified into the following four typical regions based on their spatial distribution characteristics: middle of the Yellow Sea (MYS), north Yellow Sea (NYS), coastal Shandong (CS), and Jiangsu shoal (JS), and five water type categories consisting of Classes A–E were used to represent water colors from clear to very turbid. Application of this classification scheme to Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) imagery revealed seasonal variations in the data, which suggests that the water types have both significant temporal and spatial distributions. In particular, the area of Class E waters in the Jiangsu shoal tended to gradually shrink in summer and expand in winter. The spatio-temporal variability was due to the influence of various environmental factors such as currents, tidal activity, fresh water discharges, monsoon winds, and typhoons. Full article

Determining the dominant optically active substances in water bodies via classification can improve the accuracy of bio-optical and water quality parameters estimated by remote sensing. This study provides four robust centroid sets from in situ remote sensing reflectance (R_rs (λ)) data presenting typical optical types obtained by plugging different similarity measures into fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering. Four typical types of waters were studied: (1) highly mixed eutrophic waters, with the proportion of absorption of colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM), phytoplankton, and non-living particulate matter at approximately 20%, 20%, and 60% respectively; (2) CDOM-dominated relatively clear waters, with approximately 45% by proportion of CDOM absorption; (3) nonliving solids-dominated waters, with approximately 88% by proportion of absorption of nonliving particulate matter; and (4) cyanobacteria-composed scum. We also simulated spectra from seven ocean color satellite sensors to assess their classification ability. POLarization and Directionality of the Earth's Reflectances (POLDER), Sentinel-2A, and MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) were found to perform better than the rest. Further, a classification tree for MERIS, in which the characteristics of R_rs (709)/R_rs (681), R_rs (560)/R_rs (709), R_rs (560)/R_rs (620), and R_rs (709)/R_rs (761) are integrated, is also proposed in this paper. The overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient of the proposed classification tree are 76.2% and 0.632, respectively. Full article

Alismatis Rhizoma (AMR) is a well-known natural medicine with a long history in Chinese medicine and has been commonly used for treating a wide range of ailments related to dysuria, edema, nephropathy, hyperlipidaemia, diabetes, inflammation as well as tumors in clinical applications. Most beneficial effects of AMR are attributed to the presence of protostane terpenoids, the major active ingredients of Alismatis Rhizoma (AMR). In this study, a systematic high performance liquid chromatography/diode-array detector/quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (HPLC-DAD-Q-TOF MS) and ultra-performance liquid chromatography/triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UPLC-QqQ MS) method was developed for qualitative and quantitative analyses of the major AMR triterpenoids. First, a total of 25 triterpenoid components, including 24 known compounds and one new compound were identified by comparison with UV spectra, molecular ions and fragmentation behaviors of reference standards or the literature. Second, an efficient method was established for the rapid simultaneous determination of 14 representative triterpenoids by UPLC-QqQ MS. Forty-three batches of AMR were analyzed with linearity (r, 0.9980–0.9999), intra-day precision (RSD, 1.18%–3.79%), inter-day precision (RSD, 1.53%–3.96%), stability (RSD, 1.32%–3.97%), repeatability (RSD, 2.21%–4.25%), and recovery (98.11%–103.8%). These results indicated that new approaches combining HPLC-DAD-Q-TOF MS and UPLC-QqQ MS are applicable in the qualitative and quantitative analysis of AMR. Full article

In communication, the signal at the receiver end at time t is the signal from the transmitter side at time t −Τ (Τ ≥ 0 and it is the lag time) as the time lag of transmission. Therefore, lag synchronization (LS) is more accurate than complete synchronization to design communication scheme. Taking complex Lorenz system as an example, we design the LS controller according to error feedback. Using chaotic masking, we propose a communication scheme based on LS and independent component analysis (ICA). It is suitable to transmit multiple messages with all kinds of amplitudes and it has the ability of anti-noise. Numerical simulations verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the presented schemes. Full article

Embryonic stem cell (ESC) markers are molecules specifically expressed in ES cells. Understanding of the functions of these markers is critical for characterization and elucidation for the mechanism of ESC pluripotent maintenance and self-renewal, therefore helping to accelerate the clinical application of ES cells. Unfortunately, different cell types can share single or sometimes multiple markers; thus the main obstacle in the clinical application of ESC is to purify ES cells from other types of cells, especially tumor cells. Currently, the marker-based flow cytometry (FCM) technique and magnetic cell sorting (MACS) are the most effective cell isolating methods, and a detailed maker list will help to initially identify, as well as isolate ESCs using these methods. In the current review, we discuss a wide range of cell surface and generic molecular markers that are indicative of the undifferentiated ESCs. Other types of molecules, such as lectins and peptides, which bind to ESC via affinity and specificity, are also summarized. In addition, we review several markers that overlap with tumor stem cells (TSCs), which suggest that uncertainty still exists regarding the benefits of using these markers alone or in various combinations when identifying and isolating cells. Full article