We aimed to investigate the association of metabolic obesity phenotypes with all-cause mortality risk in a rural Chinese population. This prospective cohort study enrolled 15 704 Chinese adults (38·86 % men) with a median age of 51·00 (interquartile range: 41·00–60·00) at baseline (2007–2008) and followed up during 2013–2014. Obesity was defined by waist circumference (WC: ≥ 90 cm for men and ≥ 80 cm for women) or waist-to-height ratio (WHtR: ≥ 0·5). The hazard ratio (HR) and 95 % CI for the risk of all-cause mortality related to metabolic obesity phenotypes were calculated using the Cox hazards regression model. During a median follow-up of 6·01 years, 864 deaths were identified. When obesity was defined by WC, the prevalence of participants with metabolically healthy non-obesity (MHNO), metabolically healthy obesity (MHO), metabolically unhealthy non-obesity (MUNO) and metabolically unhealthy obesity (MUO) at baseline was 12·12 %, 2·80 %, 41·93 % and 43·15 %, respectively. After adjusting for age, sex, alcohol drinking, smoking, physical activity and education, the risk of all-cause mortality was higher with both MUNO (HR = 1·20, 95 % CI 1·14, 1·26) and MUO (HR = 1·20, 95 % CI 1·13, 1·27) v. MHNO, but the risk was not statistically significant with MHO (HR = 0·99, 95 % CI 0·89, 1·10). This result remained consistent when stratified by sex. Defining obesity by WHtR gave similar results. MHO does not suggest a greater risk of all-cause mortality compared to MHNO, but participants with metabolic abnormality, with or without obesity, have a higher risk of all-cause mortality. These results should be cautiously interpreted as the representation of MHO is small.

Sugarcane brown rust, caused by Puccinia melanocephala, is one of the main diseases of sugarcane in China. The identification and discovery of new resistance genes have important theoretical and practical significance for preventing outbreaks of brown rust and ensuring the sustainable production of sugarcane. To screen for polymorphic simple-sequence repeat (SSR) molecular markers for localization of brown rust resistance genes, we used two populations that are suitable for genetic linkage map construction and mapping of new resistance genes to construct resistant and susceptible genetic pools. We then screened 449 pairs of primers to identify polymorphic SSR markers in the parental lines and the resistant/susceptible genetic pools. The results showed that 25 pairs of primers directed amplification of polymorphic DNA fragments between the parents of the cross combination ‘Yuetang 03-393’ × ‘ROC 24’, and 16 pairs of primers amplified polymorphic fragments between the parents of the cross combination ‘Liucheng 03-1137’ × ‘Dezhe 93-88’. Four pairs of primers (SMC236CG, SCESSR0928, SCESSR0636 and SCESSR2551) amplified polymorphic DNA fragments between the parental lines and the resistant/susceptible genetic pools in ‘Yuetang 03-393’ × ‘ROC 24’. The results of this study will establish a solid foundation for the mapping of new brown rust resistance genes, genetic linkage map construction and the development of closely-associated molecular markers in sugarcane.

We assessed inheritance of resistance to sugarcane brown rust (Puccinia melanocephala) in selfing F1 populations of wild sugarcane germplasm Erianthus rockii ‘Yundian 95-19’ and E. rockii ‘Yundian 95-20’. We tested parent and selfing F1 individuals for the brown rust resistance gene, Bru1, that has been shown to confer resistance to brown rust in sugarcane. The Bru1 gene was not detected in E. rockii ‘Yundian 95-19’, E. rockii ‘Yundian 95-20’ or their selfing F1 individuals, and we found there was segregation of resistance in the two selfing F1 populations (segregation ratio: 3:1). The results confirmed resistance in E. rockii ‘Yundian 95-19’ and E. rockii ‘Yundian 95-20’ to sugarcane brown rust is controlled by a novel, single dominant gene.

Left-invariant PDE-evolutions on the roto-translation group SE(2)(and their resolvent equations) have been widely studied in the fields of cortical modeling and image analysis. They include hypo-elliptic diffusion (for contour enhancement) proposed by Citti & Sarti, and Petitot, and they include the direction process (for contour completion) proposed by Mumford. This paper presents a thorough study and comparison of the many numerical approaches, which, remarkably, are missing in the literature. Existing numerical approaches can be classified into 3 categories: Finite difference methods, Fourier based methods (equivalent to SE(2)-Fourier methods), and stochastic methods (Monte Carlo simulations). There are also 3 types of exact solutions to the PDE-evolutions that were derived explicitly (in the spatial Fourier domain) in previous works by Duits and van Almsick in 2005. Here we provide an overview of these 3 types of exact solutions and explain how they relate to each of the 3 numerical approaches. We compute relative errors of all numerical approaches to the exact solutions, and the Fourier based methods show us the best performance with smallest relative errors. We also provide an improvement of Mathematica algorithms for evaluating Mathieu-functions, crucial in implementations of the exact solutions. Furthermore, we include an asymptotical analysis of the singularities within the kernels and we propose a probabilistic extension of underlying stochastic processes that overcomes the singular behavior in the origin of time-integrated kernels. Finally, we show retinal imaging applications of combining left-invariant PDE-evolutions with invertible orientation scores.

Filled skutterudites are one of the most promising materials for thermoelectric (TE) power generation applications at intermediate temperatures due to their superior TE and thermomechanical performance as compared to other materials. In the past, we have demonstrated that n-type skutterudites can be optimized so that their maximum TE figure of merit reaches 1.7 at 850 K. TE performance of the p-type, however, is lagging behind, which hinders the optimization of skutterudites-based TE module development. In this paper we reveal that the underlying reasons for inferior TE properties of the p-type root in their electronic band structures, which result in higher thermal conductivity at elevated temperatures due to bipolar lattice thermal conduction and lower power factor because of heavy valance bands induced strong electron-phonon interactions. We also identify means of improving the power factor and reducing bipolar effect.

In this paper we consider the discreteness of spectrum for higher-order differential operators in weighted function spaces. Using the method of embedding theorems of weighted Sobolev spaces Hnp in weighted spaces Ls,r, we obtain a new sufficient and necessary condition to ensure that the spectrum is discrete, which can be easily used to judge the discreteness of some differential operators.

Skutterudites are among the most exciting thermoelectric (TE) materials that could be used for various intermediate temperature applications. This study summarized our recent work on n-type partially filled skutterudites. By combining theoretical and experimental approaches, we revealed the underlying mechanism of void filling in the intrinsic lattice voids in CoSb3. With that, the electronegativity selection rule is established for the current stable filled skutterudites and further used for the discovery of a few novel filled CoSb3 compounds. The correlation between the thermal/electrical transport properties and impurity fillers in n-type partially filled skutterudites was also carefully investigated. Our results provide fundamental understanding to how those filler impurities affect electronic structures and lattice dynamics. Based on these basic understanding on transport mechanisms and sophisticated strategy in materials synthesis, TE figure of merit for n-type materials were continually increased from 1.1 to 1.4 and then to 1.7 for single-, double-, and triple-filled skutterudites.

We evaluate the probe forming capability of a JEOL 2200FS transmission electron microscope equipped with a spherical aberration (Cs) probe corrector. The achievement of a real space sub-Angstrom (0.1 nm) probe for scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) imaging is demonstrated by acquisition and modeling of high-angle annular dark-field STEM images. We show that by optimizing the illumination system, large probe currents and large collection angles for electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) can be combined to yield EELS fine structure data spatially resolved to the atomic scale. We demonstrate the probe forming flexibility provided by the additional lenses in the probe corrector in several ways, including the formation of nanometer-sized parallel beams for nanoarea electron diffraction, and the formation of focused probes for convergent beam electron diffraction with a range of convergence angles. The different probes that can be formed using the probe corrected STEM opens up new applications for electron microscopy and diffraction.

One-dimensional (1D) nano-materials have attracted a plenty of attention due to their novel structures and properties. Our group has carried out researches on synthesis, structure and property of 1D nano-materials, which are introduced in this paper. First, size effects on the crystal structure of Ag nanowires and on Young's modulus in [0001] oriented ZnO nanowires, respectively, have been revealed and modeled. The former is concerning the systemic energy of an individual Ag nanowire. The latter is caused by the surface stiffening effect arising from surface relaxation induced bond length contractions in the ZnO nanowires. Second, structures of 1D helical nano-materials including SWCNT (single-walled carbon nanotube), B-DNA and MWCNT (mutli-walled carbon nanotube) have been studied. It is shown that there is strong orientation dependence of diffraction intensities from SWCNT and B-DNA, which can even result in certain layer lines missing in their diffraction patterns. Also, it is demonstrated that high-resolution transmission electron microscope (TEM) images of sidewall regions of MWCNTs are not structural ones and from the interference of the {0002} and the {1011} diffraction waves. Third, arrays of four types of 1D heterojunctions have been synthesized. Among these 1D heterojunctions, the interfacial structures of the Ni/MWCNT/a-CNT(amorphous carbon nanotube) heterojunctions show that multiple outer walls in the MWCNTs can simultaneously participate in electrical transport. The electrical properties of the Ni/MWCNT/a-CNT and the Ag/a-CNT heterojunctions have been measured. As a result, it is found that the contacts between the Ag nanowires and the a-CNTs are ohmic ones with universal significance, and that each Ni/MWCNT/ a-CNT contains two diodes connected in series face-to-face. Moreover, most of the diodes have the most nearly ideal characteristics of Schottky contacts, indicated by quantitative analysis with the thermionic emission theory. Last, our group has developed a novel technique for rapidly producing large-area highly-oriented Si nanowire arrays on Si wafers by scratching the Si surface with metal nanoparticles near room temperature in HF solution. By this method, Si nanowires with desirable axial crystallographic directions, desirable doping characteristics and remarkable antireflection property can be readily obtained. The Si nanowire arrays have the potential applicability as an antireflective layer for photovoltaic devices and optical detectors. Furthermore, a combination of this method and the nanosphere lithography has been developed to fabricate large-scale Si and Si1−xGex quantum dot arrays with controllable height, diameter and center-to-center distance.

Electron microscopy was used to investigate microstructures of diamond single crystals prepared at high temperature and high pressure (HPHT) from the Fe–Ni–C system. Analysis through selected-area electron diffraction pattern suggests that the crystal structure of the HPHT-grown diamond is cubic; polycrystalline diamonds are contained in the diamond. Etch pits on the (111) surface of the diamond by scanning electron microscopy revealed the dislocation motion under the action of applied stress. An array of parallel dislocation lines taken with reflection of [110] was observed directly by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Fringe distortions and concentric dislocation loops were examined by rotation moiré images, which arose from two overlapping (111) close-packed planes rotated with respect to each other at a 5° angle. The parallel dislocation lines, distorted fringes, and concentric dislocation loops might have derived from the micro-inclusions. The parallel layers with growth cellular interface by TEM provided direct evidence that the diamond grew from solution of carbon in the molten catalyst at HPHT and the growth interface diamond was not stable.