Intra-national electricity transmission drives virtual water transfer from electricity production regions to electricity consumption regions. In China, the water-intensive thermoelectric power industry is expanding quickly in many water-scarce energy production hubs in northern and northwestern provinces. This study constructed a node-flow model of inter-province electricity transmission to investigate the virtual water and scarcity-adjusted virtual water (or virtual scarce water) embodied in the electricity transmission network. It is revealed that total inter-provincial virtual water transfer embodied in electricity transmission was 623 million m 3 in 2011, equivalent to 12.7% of the national total thermoelectric water consumption. The top three largest single virtual water flows are West Inner Mongolia-to-Beijing (44 million m 3), East Inner Mongolia-to-Liaoning (39 million m 3), and Guizhou-to-Guangdong (37 million m 3). If the actual volumes of consumptive water use are translated into scarcity-adjusted water consumption based on Water Stress Index, West Inner Mongolia (81 million m 3), Shanxi (63 million m 3) and Ningxia (30 million m 3) become the top three exporters of virtual scarce water. Many ongoing long-distance electricity transmission projects in China will enlarge the scale of scarce water outflows from northwestern regions and potentially increase their water stress.

This review provides an update on MFC-based wastewater treatment and energy harvesting research, and analyze various biocatalysts used in MFCs.

The flexible electronics has been deemed to be a promising approach to the wearable electronic systems. However, the mismatching between the existing flexible deices and the conventional computing paradigm results an impasse in this field. In this work, a new way to access to this goal is proposed by combining flexible devices and the neuromorphic architecture together. To achieve that, a high-performance flexible artificial synapse is created based on a carefully designed and optimized memristive transistor. The device exhibits high-performance which has near-linear non-volatile resistance change under 10,000 identical pulse signals within the 515% dynamic range, and has the energy consumption as low as 45 fJ per pulse. It also displays multiple synaptic plasticity features, which demonstrates its potential for real-time online learning. Besides, the adaptability by virtue of its threeterminal structure specifically contributes its improved uniformity, repeatability, and reduced power consumption. This work offers a very viable solution for the future wearable computing.

Extreme drought events can directly decrease productivity in perennial grasslands.However, for rhizomatous perennial grasses it remains unknown how drought events influence the belowground bud bank which determines future productivity. Ninetyday-long drought events imposed on Leymus chinensis, a rhizomatous perennial grass, caused a 41% decrease in the aboveground biomass and a 28% decrease in below- S U PP O RTI N G I N FO R M ATI O NAdditional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section at the end of the article. How to cite this article: Wang J, Shi Y, Ao Y, et al. Summer drought decreases Leymus chinensis productivity through constraining the bud, tiller and shoot production. J Agro Crop Sci. 2019;205:554-561. https ://doi.

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Triton X-100 was covalently bound to a surface of silica and acted as an anchor molecule to facilitate the adsorption of phosphatidylcholine (PC) in a purely aqueous solution. The silica-adsorbed PC obtained was successfully used for phospholipase D (PLD)-mediated transphosphatidylation in the production of phosphatidylserine (PS). Organic solvents were completely avoided in the whole production process. The PC loading and PS yield reached 98.9 and 99.0%, respectively. Two adsorption models were studied, and the relevant parameters were calculated to help us understand the adsorption and reaction processes deeply. In addition, the silica-adsorbed PC provides a promising way to continuously biosynthesize PS. A packed-bed reactor was employed to demonstrate the process flow of the continuous production of PS. The recyclability and stability of the Triton-X-100-modified silica were excellent, as demonstrated by its use 30 times during continuous operation without any loss of the productivity.

Background: Degeneration of ovarian function is an obvious feature of female aging. In addition, studies have shown that autophagy decreases with age, and DNA methylation is a hallmark epigenetic pattern during aging. However, it is not clear whether the expression and DNA methylation of autophagy genes are involved in the declines in ovarian function that occur during aging. Results: Three groups of rats were used: 6-month-old (6 M) rats, 12-month-old (12 M) rats and 24-month-old (24 M) rats. Serum E 2 levels and the mRNA and protein expression levels of Atg5, Atg12, Atg16L, Beclin1 and Lc3B were significantly decreased in aged rats. In addition, the methylation levels of the Atg5 gene were significantly increased in aged rats. The expression of the Dnmt1 and Dnmt2 genes decreased with aging; however, the expression of the Dnmt3A and Dnmt3B genes gradually increased with aging. Conclusions: Decreased autophagic activity was involved in the declines in ovarian function in aging rats. Upregulation of the DNA methyltransferases Dnmt3A and Dnmt3B may have led to methylation of the autophagy genes Atg5 and Lc3B to ultimately cause the observed decreases in autophagic activity.