Silver behenate, a possible low‐angle diffraction standard, was characterized using the powder diffraction technique. Diffraction patterns obtained with 1.54 Å synchrotron and Cu Kα radiations showed thirteen regularly spaced (00l) peaks in the range 1.5–20.0°2θ. With the National Institute of Standards and Technology's standard reference material silicon as an internal standard, the long spacing of silver behenate was accurately determined from the profile‐fitted synchrotron diffraction peaks, with d001 = 58.380 (3) Å. This result was in agreement with that obtained from the Cu Kα pattern. The profile widths of the silver behenate peaks were found to be consistently larger than those of the silicon peaks, indicating significant line broadening for silver behenate. The average crystallite size along the long‐spacing direction of silver behenate was estimated using the Scherrer equation, giving Davg = 900 (50) Å. Because silver behenate has a large number of well defined diffraction peaks distributed evenly in the 1.5–20.0°2θ range, it is suitable for use as an angle‐calibration standard for low‐angle diffraction. However, care must be taken if silver behenate is to be used as a peak‐profile calibration standard because of line broadening.

The bZIP transcription factor (TF) family plays an important role in the abscisic acid (ABA) signaling pathway of abiotic stress in plants. We here report the cloning and characterization of OsbZIP71, which encodes a rice bZIP TF. Functional analysis showed that OsbZIP71 is a nuclear-localized protein that specifically binds to the G-box motif, but has no transcriptional activity both in yeast and rice protoplasts. In yeast two-hybrid assays, OsbZIP71 can form both homodimers and heterodimers with Group C members of the bZIP gene family. Expression of OsbZIP71 was strongly induced by drought, polyethylene glycol (PEG), and ABA treatments, but repressed by salt treatment. OsbZIP71 overexpressing (p35S::OsbZIP71) rice significantly improved tolerance to drought, salt and PEG osmotic stresses. In contrast, RNAi knockdown transgenic lines were much more sensitive to salt, PEG osmotic stresses, and also ABA treatment. Inducible expression (RD29A::OsbZIP71) lines were significantly improved their tolerance to PEG osmotic stresses, but hypersensitivity to salt, and insensitivity to ABA. Real-time PCR analysis revealed that the abiotic stress-related genes, OsVHA-B, OsNHX1, COR413-TM1, and OsMyb4, were up-regulated in overexpressing lines, while these same genes were down-regulated in RNAi lines. Chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis confirmed that OsbZIP71 directly binds the promoters of OsNHX1 and COR413-TM1 in vivo. These results suggest that OsbZIP71 may play an important role in ABA-mediated drought and salt tolerance in rice.

OsbZIP52/RISBZ5 is a member of the basic leucine zipper (bZIP) transcription factor (TF) family in rice (Oryza sativa) isolated from rice (Zhonghua11) panicles. Expression of the OsbZIP52 gene was strongly induced by low temperature (4°C) but not by drought, PEG, salt, or ABA. The subcellular localization of OsbZIP52-GFP in onion (Allium cepa) epidermis cells revealed that OsbZIP52 is a nuclear localized protein. A transactivation assay in yeast demonstrated that OsbZIP52 functions as a transcriptional activator and can specifically bind to the G-box promoter motif. In a yeast two-hybrid (Y-2-H) experiment, OsbZIP52 was able to form homodimeric complexes. Rice plants overexpressing OsbZIP52 showed significantly increased sensitivity to cold and drought stress. Real-time PCR analysis revealed that some abiotic stress-related genes, such as OsLEA3, OsTPP1, Rab25, gp1 precursor, β-gal, LOC_Os05g11910 and LOC_Os05g39250, were down-regulated in OsbZIP52 overexpression lines. These results suggest that OsbZIP52/RISBZ5 could function as a negative regulator in cold and drought stress environments.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The aim of this paper is to construct a performance evaluation of banks with the stock market taken into consideration. Design/methodology/approach -Grey relation analysis (GRA), a concept borrowed from the study of industry and increasingly applied to commerce, is used to evaluate the relative performance of three major banks in Australia. The purpose of using GRA is to reduce the number of financial indicators by selecting representative indicators from financial statement analysis. Findings -Benchmarking performance indicators are essentially finding the representative indicator from the existing ratios most commonly used in financial analysis to assess business operational performance. The paper compares the GRA results from the financial statement analyses and shows the same result can be obtained. Research limitations/implications -This paper conducted a review of literature and five-power analysis to aggregate financial ratios appropriate for the analysis. This method may result in incompleteness in the aggregation of ratios, and requires adjustment when other issues for analysis are involved. Future research could set up a specific model for the preliminary selection of financial ratios with a new to make studies of this kind more complete. Originality/value -This paper introduced a new approach for performance evaluation -GRA. The major contribution of this paper is the use of GRA methodology to retrieve ratios most commonly used in financial analysis to tackle the problems of sample size and distribution uncertainty. This could avoid the waste of resources due to the uncertainty of relations among the ratios when using them for analysis.

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