Elevated UV-B radiation reduces genome stability in plants

Long-term depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer contributes to an increase in terrestrial solar ultraviolet-B radiation. This has deleterious effects on living organisms, such as DNA damage. When exposed to elevated ultraviolet-B radiation (UV-B; 280-315 nm), plants display a wide variety of physiological and morphological responses characterized as acclimation and adaptation. Here we show, using special sun simulators, that elevated solar UV-B doses increase the frequency of somatic homologous DNA rearrangements in Arabidopsis and tobacco plants. Increases in recombination are accompanied by a strong induction of photolyase and Rad51 gene expression. These genes are putatively involved in major DNA repair pathways, photoreactivation and recombination repair. In mutant Arabidopsis plants that are deficient in photoreactivating ultraviolet-induced cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers, recombination under elevated UV-B regimes greatly exceeds wild-type levels. Our results show that homologous recombination repair pathways might be involved in eliminating UV-B-induced DNA lesions in plants. Thus, increases in terrestrial solar UV-B radiation as forecasted for the early 21st century may affect genome stability in plants.     

Functional Materials for Catalytic and Magnetic Applications

1 Introduction Metal, metal oxide and metal compound nanoparticles (NPs) received considerable attention due to their unique properties: catalytic, magnetic, optical, electronic, etc. We believe that for different applications, there are preferable morphologies of NP-stabilizing medium composites. For example, small (1-3 nm) nanoparticles formed in micro/mesoporous hypercrosslinked polystyrene demonstrate excellent catalytic properties in various hydrogenation and oxidation reactions due to high surface...     

Field trial of an HTS filter system on a CDMA base station

This paper presents the field trial results of a high temperature superconductor filter system (HTSFS) in a code division multiple access (CDMA) mobile communication base station (BTS) in Tangshan, China. The center frequency of the HTSFS is 830 MHz with 1.4% fractional bandwidth. The noise figure (NF) of the HTSFS, including connectors and cables, is 0.8 dB. The field trial results show that after the HTSFS was installed in the receiver front-end of a CDMA base station, the transmitting power of handset was decreased by 3.1 dB on average. Up to now, the HTSFS has been running steadily in the base station for more than 22 months, demonstrating the reliability and stability of the system.     

从土壤至人体的微量元素

了解微量元素经由土壤-植物-人体链的基本、性质与变化过程，大有助于人体健康与环境保护。本书集中过去30多年的知识，提供最新数据及有关食物链的基本内容，附有引证文献资料共有68页（P．451-518）之多。