Blumea balsamifera, also named Ainaxiang, is widely used as an ancient medicinal herb in tropical and subtropical Asia. It is rich in essential oils. In this work the essential oils of B. balsamifera from different plant organs and in different months were extracted, and then analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The results showed that essential oil yield of young leaves was the highest (0.65 mL/100 g), followed by mature leaves (0.57 mL/100 g), and the oil yield was higher in October (0.47 mL/100 g) than other months. A total of 44 compounds were identified, representing 92.64%–96.71% of the oil. Eighteen common chemical components were found among the six plant organs, representing >80% of the oil constituents. l-borneol was the main ingredient in leaves, and its content was the highest in senescent leaves and in December. In the essential oils of young shoots and young stems, the main component was dimethoxydurene. Antioxidant activity was also determined using the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and β-carotene bleaching (BCB) assays. The results indicated that the β-carotene bleaching activity was far stronger than the DPPH radical-scavenging capacity, and the young leaves and young shoots showed stronger antioxidant activity. Dimethoxydurene, β-caryophyllene, and α-caryophyllene play a positive role in good antioxidant activity, while β-eudesmol, phytol, and tetradecanal play a negative role. The antioxidant activity revealed in this study might help in developing this promising bioresource for use in the medicinal and cosmetic industries. Full article

With global conventional energy depletion, as well as environmental pollution, utilizing renewable energy for power supply is the only way for human beings to survive. Currently, distributed generation incorporated into a distribution network has become the new trend, with the advantages of controllability, flexibility and tremendous potential. However, the fluctuation of distributed energy resources (DERs) is still the main concern for accurate deployment. Thus, a battery energy storage system (BESS) has to be involved to mitigate the bad effects of DERs’ integration. In this paper, optimal scheduling strategies for BESS operation have been proposed, to assist with consuming the renewable energy, reduce the active power loss, alleviate the voltage fluctuation and minimize the electricity cost. Besides, the electric vehicles (EVs) considered as the auxiliary technique are also introduced to attenuate the DERs’ influence. Moreover, both day-ahead and real-time operation scheduling strategies were presented under the consideration with the constraints of BESS and the EVs’ operation, and the optimization was tackled by a fuzzy mathematical method and an improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO) algorithm. Furthermore, the test system for the proposed strategies is a real distribution network with renewable energy integration. After simulation, the proposed scheduling strategies have been verified to be extremely effective for the enhancement of the distribution network characteristics. Full article

Gross primary production (GPP) plays an important role in the net ecosystem exchange of CO₂ between the atmosphere and terrestrial ecosystems. It is particularly important to monitor GPP in Southeast Asia because of increasing rates of tropical forest degradation and deforestation in the region in recent decades. The newly available, improved, third generation Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI3g) from the Global Inventory Modelling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) group provides a long temporal dataset, from July 1981 to December 2011, for terrestrial carbon cycle and climate response research. However, GIMMS NDVI3g-based GPP estimates are not yet available. We applied the GLOPEM-CEVSA model, which integrates an ecosystem process model and a production efficiency model, to estimate GPP in Southeast Asia based on three independent results of the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation absorbed by vegetation (FPAR) from GIMMS NDVI3g (GPP_NDVI3g), GIMMS NDVI1g (GPP_NDVI1g), and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) MOD15A2 FPAR product (GPP_MOD15). The GPP results were validated using ground data from eddy flux towers located in different forest biomes, and comparisons were made among the three GPPs as well as the MOD17A2 GPP products (GPP_MOD17). Based on validation with flux tower derived GPP estimates the results show that GPP_NDVI3g is more accurate than GPP_NDVI1g and is comparable in accuracy with GPP_MOD15. In addition, GPP_NDVI3g and GPP_MOD15 have good spatial-temporal consistency. Our results indicate that GIMMS NDVI3g is an effective dataset for regional GPP simulation in Southeast Asia, capable of accurately tracking the variation and trends in long-term terrestrial ecosystem GPP dynamics. Full article