The earliest known eutherian mammal

The skeleton of a eutherian (placental) mammal has been discovered from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of northeastern China. We estimate its age to be about 125 million years (Myr), extending the date of the oldest eutherian records with skull and skeleton by about 40 50 Myr. Our analyses place the new fossil at the root of the eutherian tree and among the four other known Early Cretaceous eutherians, and suggest an earlier and greater diversification of stem eutherians that occurred well before the molecular estimate for the diversification of extant placental superorders (104 64 Myr). The new eutherian has limb and foot features that are known only from scansorial (climbing) and arboreal (tree-living) extant mammals, in contrast to the terrestrial or cursorial (running) features of other Cretaceous eutherians. This suggests that the earliest eutherian lineages developed different locomotory adaptations, facilitating their spread to diverse niches in the Cretaceous.     

Ultrafastly activated needle coke as electrode material for supercapacitors

The uniform porous structure makes activated porous carbons(APCs) superior electrode material.Traditionally,APCs are produced by a combination of time-consuming high-temperature heat treatment and activation,with a production time of up to several hours.The produced APCs have relatively low specific surface area(SSA) and porosity.Therefore,the electrochemical performance is poor,which limits its application in high-power energy storage devices.Here,APCs materials are directly synthesized by a hi...     

Enhancement of monacolin K production via intergeneric protoplast fusion between Aspergillus terreus and Monascus anka

Intergenric protoplast fusion between Aspergillus terreus CA99 and Monascus anka M-3, the high and low producers of monacolin K respectively,was performed for enhancement of monacolin K production. The 24-hour-old mycelia of A. terreus CA99 and M. anka M-3 were treated with 0.5% lywallzyme, 0.3% snailase and 0.3% cellulase at 34℃ for 5 h and at 30℃ for 3.5 h, and their protoplasts formation reached 1.76×107/mL and 1.68×107/mL respectively. Parental protoplasts were irradiated with a 30 W UV light away from 30 cm for 3 min and then mixed. The mixture was incubated with 30% PEG 6000 for 15 min. The reviving fusants were isolated on the regeneration plates. Of the 363 fusants isolated, over 100 showed enhanced monacolin K production compared with the parental strain M. anka M-3. Ten of them produced monacolin K about 1.6-fold of that M.anka M-3 does and the monacolin K titer of two fusants (F49 and F104) increased by about 1-fold. The monacolin K yields of F49 and F104 were 460 μg/mL and 457 μg/mL respectively. In optimized fermentation medium, the monacolin K titer of F49 reached 1216 μg/mL.     

Fabrication and properties of foam geopolymer using circulating fluidized bed combustion fly ash

In recent years, circulating fluidized bed combustion fly ash (CFA) is used as a raw material for geopolymer synthesis. Hydrogen peroxide was employed as a foaming agent to prepare CFA-based foam geopolymer. The particle distribution, mineral composition, and chemical composition of CFA were examined firstly. Geopolymerization products were characterized by mechanical testing, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and X-ray fluorescence (XRF). The CFA-based foam geopolymer was successfully fabricated with different contents of hydrogen peroxide and exhibited uncompleted alkali reaction and reasonable strength with relative low atomic ratios of Si/Al and Si/Na. Type-C CFA in this research could be recycled as an alternative source material for geopolymer production.     

Evaluation of Eco-Environmental Frangibility Based on Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System

The eco-environmental frangibility is studied by choosing the factors of land use class change and vegetation cover rate, and the equation of eco-environmental frangibility and its evaluation system are established based on remote sensing （RS） and geographic information system technology （GIS）. Four different years of TM images are selected to calculate land use change grads and vegetation cover rate, and the relationship between the two factors and eco-environment frangibility index are build, taking Fuzhou as an example. The character of times change and space distribution of eco-environment frangibility are described. The result indicates the area of eco-environment frangibility increased 2.6% in Fuzhou during twelve years, and expands from the region between infield and forest land to forest land in space distribution.     

Investigation of the interfacial water structure on poly[2-（dimethylamino）ethyl methacrylate] at the air/water interface by sum frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy

The effect of pH on the conformation of surface alkyl groups and the structure of interfacial water molecules on poly[2-(dime-thylamino)ethyl methacrylate](PDEM) at the air/water interface were investigated with sum frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy(SFG-VS).At pH 4.1,the hydrogen bonding SFG spectra were similar to that of the air/pure water interface.As the pH increased from 5.4 to 9.6,the SFG intensities of both highly ordered hydrogen bonding(3200 cm-1 band) and less-ordered hydrogen bonding(3400 cm-1 band) were enhanced because of the charge-induced effect of deprotonated PDEM.The free OH peak disappeared completely because it was replaced by interfacial PDEM molecules.At pH 11.5,a new spectral band appeared at about 3580 cm-1 in the ppp and sps spectra,and this could be assigned to the C2v asymmetric stretching mode of the water molecules through molecular symmetry simulation.These hydrogen bonding structures are fully consistent with the conformational change of PDEM alkyl groups,and PDEM molecules act as a Hofmeister solvent.PDEM molecules are kosmotropic when they are charged and become more chaotropic as the pH increases.     

Code Component Reuse Supporting Environment (CCRSE) and its design strategy

Code Component Reuse Supporting Environment (CCRSE), which has been developed by us, is an integrated development environment. CCRSE can provide comprehensive supports for the whole process of reusing code component in the manner of dynamic composition. The architecture and functionality of CCRSE are introduced in this paper.The key achievement of this paper is giving the three strategies that are vital to successfully design CCRSE. The three strategies include: (1) according to the three pivotal technologies ( encapsulation, composition and management) for supporting composition reuse of code component, design three tools respectively. (2) keep tool for supporting code component development independent of tool for supporting code component composition. (3) strictly restrict code component specification, provide the strong "plug and play" support for code component composition reuse, and furthest provide transparence to strictly restricted specification of code component in development of component itse     

Early scale effect and hemisphere superiority on the visual spatial attention: From the electrophysiological evidence of ERP

The visual attention mechanism in the brain was studied among 16 young subjects through the precue-target visual search paradigm using the event-related potentials (ERPs) technique, with the attentive ranges cued with different scales of Chinese words. The results showed that the response time was shortened as the cue scale was reduced, while the amplitudes of the P1 and N1 components of the ERPs increased. These results not only provided the electrophysiological evidence supporting the spotlight theory, but also indicated that the spotlight effect occurred during the early period of the selected attention. Two kinds of separation in the P2 effect were observed. One separation was between the P1 effect and P2 effect, which meant that additional computation was needed when the spatial scale of attention was enlarged; the other was between the left and right hemisphere of the P2 effect, which indicates that the attentive processing of the cue range mainly occurred in the left hemisphere.     

MRS study on lentiform nucleus in idiopathic Parkinson‘s disease with unilateral symptoms

OBJECTIVE: To investigate changes in magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) of lentiform nucleus during the early stage of Parkinson's disease. METHODS: Twenty-five patients with idiopathic Parkinson disease with unilateral symptoms (IPDUS) and 25 healthy volunteers were enrolled in this study. MRS of the lentiform nucleus in each patient was taken and then concentrations of N-acetylaspartate (NAA), Creatine (Cr) and Choline (Cho) were calculated. RESULTS: Compared to that in the control, NAA/ (Cho+Cr) was significantly lower in the lentiform nucleus contralateral to symptoms and even that in the ipsilateral side in IPDUS patients (all P<0.05); while there was no difference between the two sides in the healthy volunteer (P>0.05). The ratio of NAA/(Cho+Cr) ipsilateral to the sympatomatic side of the patient was also lower than that of the control (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: There might be some changes with MRS on the lentiform nucleus during the early stage of idiopathic Parkinson's disease with unilateral symptom. MRS may be one of the reliable methods for early or even sub-clinical diagnosis.