Heteroalleles in Common Wheat: Multiple Differences between Allelic Variants of the Gli-B1 Locus

The Gli-B1-encoded γ-gliadins and non-coding γ-gliadin DNA sequences for 15 different alleles of common wheat have been compared using seven tests: electrophoretic mobility (EM) and molecular weight (MW) of the encoded major γ-gliadin, restriction fragment length polymorphism patterns (RFLPs) (three different markers), Gli-B1-γ-gliadin-pseudogene known SNP markers (Single nucleotide polymorphisms) and sequencing the pseudogene GAG56B. It was discovered that encoded γ-gliadins, with contrasting EM, had similar MWs. However, seven allelic variants (designated from I to VII) differed among them in the other six tests: I (alleles Gli-B1i, k, m, o), II (Gli-B1n, q, s), III (Gli-B1b), IV (Gli-B1e, f, g), V (Gli-B1h), VI (Gli-B1d) and VII (Gli-B1a). Allele Gli-B1c (variant VIII) was identical to the alleles from group IV in four of the tests. Some tests might show a fine difference between alleles belonging to the same variant. Our results attest in favor of the independent origin of at least seven variants at the Gli-B1 locus that might originate from deeply diverged genotypes of the donor(s) of the B genome in hexaploid wheat and therefore might be called “heteroallelic”. The donor’s particularities at the Gli-B1 locus might be conserved since that time and decisively contribute to the current high genetic diversity of common wheat.     

No-reference quality assessment of dynamic sports videos based on a spatiotemporal motion model

This paper proposes an approach to improve the performance of no-reference video quality assessment for sports videos with dynamic motion scenes using an efficient spatiotemporal model. In the proposed method, we divide the video sequences into video blocks and apply a 3D shearlet transform that can efficiently extract primary spatiotemporal features to capture dynamic natural motion scene statistics from the incoming video blocks. The concatenation of a deep residual bidirectional gated recurrent neural network and logistic regression is used to learn the spatiotemporal correlation more robustly and predict the perceptual quality score. In addition, conditional video block-wise constraints are incorporated into the objective function to improve quality estimation performance for the entire video. The experimental results show that the proposed method extracts spatiotemporal motion information more effectively and predicts the video quality with higher accuracy than the conventional no-reference video quality assessment methods.     

Investigation of bacterial and fungal communities in indoor and outdoor air of elementary school classrooms by 16S rRNA gene and ITS region sequencing

The advent of high-throughput sequencing methods allowed researchers to fully characterize microbial community in environmental samples, which is crucial to better understand their health effects upon exposures. In our study, we investigated bacterial and fungal community in indoor and outdoor air of nine classrooms in three elementary schools in Seoul, Korea. The extracted bacterial 16S rRNA gene and fungal ITS regions were sequenced, and their taxa were identified. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction for total bacteria DNA was also performed. The bacterial community was richer in outdoor air than classroom air, whereas fungal diversity was similar indoors and outdoors. Bacteria such as Enhydrobacter, Micrococcus, and Staphylococcus that are generally found in human skin, mucous membrane, and intestine were found in great abundance. For fungi, Cladosporium, Clitocybe, and Daedaleopsis were the most abundant genera in classroom air and mostly related to outdoor plants. Bacterial community composition in classroom air was similar among all classrooms but differed from that in outdoor air. However, indoor and outdoor fungal community compositions were similar for the same school but different among schools. Our study indicated the main source of airborne bacteria in classrooms was likely human occupants; however, classroom airborne fungi most likely originated from outdoors.     

Distributed two‐stage state estimation with event‐triggered strategy for multirate sensor networks

This paper investigates the state estimation issue for a class of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with the consideration of limited energy resources. First, a multirate estimation model is established, and then, a new event‐triggered two‐stage information fusion algorithm is developed based on the optimal fusion criterion weighted by matrices. Compared with the existing methods, the presented fusion algorithm can significantly reduce the communication cost in WSNs and save energy resources of sensors efficiently. Furthermore, by presetting a desired containment probability over the interval [0,1] with the developed event‐triggered mechanism, one can obtain a suitable compromise between the communication cost and the estimation accuracy. Finally, a numerical simulation for the WSN tracking system is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Adaptive finite-time tracking control for parameterized nonlinear systems with full state constraints

In this article, the issue of adaptive finite-time dynamic surface control (DSC) is discussed for a class of parameterized nonlinear systems with full state constraints. Using the property of logarithmic function, a one-to-one nonlinear mapping is constructed to transform a constrained system into an unconstrained system with the same structure. The nonlinear filter is constructed to replace the first-order linear filter in the traditional DSC, and the demand on the filter time constant is reduced. Based on finite-time stable theory and using modified DSC, the finite-time controller is designed via DSC. Theoretical analysis shows that all the signals in the closed-loop system are semiglobal practical finite-time stable. Furthermore, none of the states are outside the defined open set. In the end, simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control schemes with both linear filters and nonlinear filters.     

灾害孤岛潜势风险分群与降雨警戒值探讨

台湾本身地貌特性以及近年来强降雨事件发生频繁,促使山区地带发生复合式灾害,如崩塌、泥石流与山洪等,因此灾害孤岛效应有必要仿效泥石流以及洪水灾害,制定出参考警戒值以及警戒线,将有助于防灾决策、救难资源投入以及灾害风险判释。本文针对台湾发生过灾害孤岛效应的114个村进行分析,且着重于首次发生灾害的台风降雨事件。首先通过群集分析并依照各样本的6个灾因指标进行分类,群集结果显示可分为8个群,并再以象限分布描述各群的潜势相对风险。采用2004—2015年台风降雨事件的观测雨量数据,并利用距离反比权重法,得出各村的累积降雨量(R)与最大时雨量(I)。整合各群集样本雨量数据后,使用台湾水土保持局使用的RTI模式概念,计算出各群集之RTImin、RTI30、RTI50和RTI70,以绘制低风险区(0～30%)、中风险区(30～70%)和高风险区(70%～100%),其中着重探讨灾害孤岛事件的下限值RTImin,以便可得知最易发生灾害的群集。结果显示,各群的潜势风险反映RTImin的效果良好,如潜势风险越高则其RTImin值越低,即雨量驱动灾害发生的条件较低。群集中,第1与2群为低风险群、第3、5与6群为中风险群、第4、7与8群为高风险群,仅第5群无法透过RTImin验证潜势风险关系,故本文挑选的6项灾因指标,为辨别灾害孤岛效应潜势等级的重要因子。