Comparison of the Main Metabolites in Different Maturation Stages of Camellia vietnamensis Huang Seeds

Camellia vietnamensis Huang is an important woody oil crop in China, which has attracted much attention because of its abundant nutritional components and pharmaceutical value. Its seeds undergo a complex series of physiological and biochemical changes during maturation, with consequent alterations in metabolites. In order to investigate the endogenous metabolism of C. vietnamensis on Hainan Island during seed development, in this study, ultra-high-performance liquid tandem chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC/Q-TOF-MS) and multivariate statistical analysis (MSA) were used to analyze the differences in the chemical compounds of C. vietnamensis seeds among the four maturation stages. A total of 293 metabolites were identified from the methanol extract of the seeds of C. vietnamensis. Five metabolites, belonging to benzene and substituted derivatives, 5′-deoxyribonucleosides and linear 1,3-diarylpropanoids, were found in all three comparison groups, with consistently down-regulated trends. The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) results showed that phloretin and 5′-methylthioadenosine were the differentially expressed metabolites when seeds were in the growth periods of S2 and S3, and indole and L-tryptophan were the differentially expressed metabolites when seeds were in the growth periods of S3 and S4. In addition, 34 flavonoid metabolites were detected, of which 4 were differentially expressed. It was indicated that flavonoids dynamically change during all the oil-tea camellia seed development stages. The findings provide data for the better understanding of endogenous metabolic pathways during C. vietnamensis seed development.     

应用TG-FTIR技术研究黄土庙煤催化热解特性

用浸渍法制备过渡金属氧化物担载型催化剂MO_x/USY(M=Co、Mo、Co-Mo),用热重红外联用技术考察了MO_x/USY催化剂对黄土庙(HTM)煤热解失重特性和热解产物生成规律的影响。热重实验结果表明,MO_x/USY催化剂可使HTM煤热解的二次脱气条件更为温和,热解峰温分别提前14、23和9℃。动力学分析结果表明,MO_x/USY催化剂可降低HTM煤样热解的活化能。FT-IR研究表明,MO_x/USY催化剂可有效改善HTM煤热解产物的组成和分布,CoO_x/USY催化剂能显著提高HTM煤热解产物中高热值气体(CO、CH₄)和轻质芳烃以及脂肪烃类化合物的含量;MoO_x/USY催化剂没有明显改善HTM煤热解产物组成和分布;MoO_x-CoO_x/USY催化剂可促进CO、CH₄、轻质芳烃和脂肪烃类化合物的生成,却使热解产物的生成向高温区移动,说明USY负载的不同过渡金属氧化物对煤样热解行为和热解产物有较大影响。     

2-烷基-6-甲氧基-1,4-苯醌的全合成

3,5-二甲氧基苯甲醛经格氏、氧化反应制到3,5-二甲氧基苯基烷基酮, 然后在微波辐射下经黄鸣龙还原和选择性脱甲基化、Teuber氧化反应制得目标化合物, 产率均在50%以上. 产物结构经IR, 1H NMR, 元素分析等进行了表征.     

Optimal uncertainty size in distributionally robust inverse covariance estimation

In a recent paper, Nguyen et al. (2018) built a distributionally robust estimator for the precision matrix of the Gaussian distribution. The distributional uncertainty size is a key ingredient in the construction of this estimator. We develop a statistical theory which shows how to optimally choose the uncertainty size to minimize the associated Stein loss. Surprisingly, rather than the expected canonical square-root scaling rate, the optimal uncertainty size scales linearly with the sample size.     

Time-frequency analysis of transient dispersive waves: A comparative study

The goal in this work is to investigate the effectiveness of time-frequency representations for analysing dispersive waves by comparing the performance of three different methods. In particular, the smoothed pseudo-Wigner distribution, the continuous wavelet transform and the Hilbert-Huang transform are compared and evaluated in terms of their ability to analyse dispersive elastic waves. The waves under consideration are transient flexural ones generated by an impact in a beam. In view of the results of the comparative study, the advantages and shortcomings of each method are presented and discussed.     

Modeling of non-stationary ground motion using the mean reverting stochastic process

This paper presents a new method for modeling amplitude and frequency non-stationary earthquake ground motions using a scalar first order dynamic mean reverting stochastic differential equation driven by Brownian motion with parametric time varying coefficients. It determines the proper relationship between these time varying parametric coefficients and presents the statistical and probability distribution characteristics of the response solution. It demonstrates the applicability of the method by presenting some simulations of amplitude and frequency non-stationary earthquake ground motions. The verification of the amplitude and frequency non-stationary contents of the mean reverting stochastic ground motions is demonstrated using the Hilbert–Huang transform method. Also a corresponding interpretation between the coefficients of the proposed model and the coefficients of the usual oscillatory second order differential equation driven by white Gaussian noise is presented along with some comments how it can be applied to simulate ground motions consistent with acceleration target records such as boxcar, trapezoidal, other exponential functions, or compound and target records at source, near field, and far field distances.     

海外华人社群的分化与维新文人的文学记忆—以晚清驻新总领事黄遵宪的创作生活为讨论对象

黄遵宪从清光绪十七年（1891）到清光绪二十年（1894）出任首任驻新加坡总领事一职,此时正逢晚清洋务运动变法自强,以及中日战争爆发之前的政治危局,而作为英殖民地新加坡的驻外领事,黄遵宪的维新人士和外交人士的双重身份,也使得他置身于新旧时代的夹缝之中。本文以晚清时期黄遵宪在新马地区的活动及其与华人之间的关系为基础,在重新建构清末驻新领事南洋生活的历史大背景下,以海峡殖民地华人社群分化和传统知识分子视野的双重视角,探讨黄遵宪这一时期的社会和文学活动,期望能建构出清末新马华人社会的多元构成的特点,也试图钩沉出晚清知识分子在特定时代的心路历程。     

Cytotoxicity of benzophenanthridine alkaloids from the roots of Zanthoxylum nitidum (Roxb.) DC. var. fastuosum How ex Huang

This work aimed to investigate benzophenanthridine from the roots of Zanthoxylum nitidum (Roxb.) DC. var. fastuosum How ex Huang for the first time. Thirteen benzophenanthridines were isolated, and our results of the cytotoxic activities indicated that compound 6 exhibited the best potency against A549, Hela, SMMC-7721 and EJ, with the IC₅₀ values of 27.50, 37.50, 16.95 and 60.42 μM, respectively. Compounds 7 and 11 also showed strong cytotoxicity when tested against the four human cancer cell lines (A549, Hela, SMMC-7721 and EJ), while only compounds 12 and 13 displayed cytotoxicity in inhibiting BALL-1 proliferation among all the compounds. These results suggested that benzophenanthridines may become a valid alternative of potential basis for new anti-proliferative agents.     

Diffuse x-ray scattering near Bragg peaks from point defects in a general lattice

Using the continuum theory of linear elasticity, diffuse x-ray scattering has been calculated in the immediate neighbourhood of Bragg peaks from point defects in a lattice containing more than one atom in the unit cell. General expressions are obtained for the Debye-Waller factor, Huang diffuse scattering and the asymmetric scattering due to the defect. For lattices with one atom per unit cell, these expressions reduce to the well-known formulae of diffuse scattering.     

Empirical study of the scaling behavior of the amplitude–frequency distribution of the Hilbert–Huang transform and its application in sunspot time series analysis

Investigating long-range correlation by the Hurst exponent, H$H$, is crucial in the study of time series. Recently, empirical-mode-decomposition-based arbitrary-order Hilbert spectral analysis (EMD-HSA) has been proposed to numerically obtain without proof a scaling relationship, generated from the amplitude–frequency distribution, related to H$H$. We propose a formalism to empirically study EMD-HSA, to deduce its scaling exponent ξ(q)$\xi \left(q\right)$ from the perspective of EMD-based arbitrary-order Hilbert marginal spectrum (EMD-HMS), and to numerically compare the results with the expected H$H$. EMD-HSA and EMD-HMS experiments show that, by incompletely removing (quasi-)periodic trends, the sunspot series should have an H$H$ value around 0.12.