CS System Research Articles

Abstract 2198: An integrated workflow for liquid biopsy of circulating multiple myeloma cells (CMMCs) with single cell resolution reveals tumor heterogeneity

Abstract Background: Multiple myeloma (MM) is a bone marrow derived cancer of plasma cells, which remains an incurable disease. Because of the invasive and painful nature of bone biopsy, an alternate tumor monitoring strategy is needed. We have previously shown that Circulating Multiple Myeloma Cells (CMMCs) isolated by CellSearch® (CS) are prognostic and indicative of disease burden through remission and relapse. Here we report, for the first time, the molecular characterization of pure single CMMCs isolated from a multiple myeloma patient, by integrating CS and DEPArray™ (DA) NxT systems, providing access to copy-number alteration (CNA) profiling. Methods: 4.0ml of peripheral blood from a patient with multiple myeloma was tested. On CS, target CMMCs were enriched using anti-CD138 for cell capture, and stained immunofluorescently with CD38-PE, CD19 and CD45-APC. Nuclei were stained with DAPI and detected target cells counted. The enriched sample was then analyzed using the DA NxT system: single CMMCs (CD38+/CD19- and CD45-/DAPI+), along with some single White Blood Cells (WBCs: CD38-/CD19+ or CD45+/DAPI+), were isolated. The DNA of each single cell was amplified using the Ampli1™ WGA kit and used for highly-multiplexed, genome-wide single-cell CNA analysis using a Ampli1™ LowPass kit (LPCNA) on Illumina® MiSeq. Results: CS identified 128 CMMCs. From DA NxT we harvested 20 individual CMMCs for LPCNA analysis. Copy-number profiles of CMMCs confirmed their tumor origin, showing a high-level of genome instability with several gains and few losses of chromosomal segments. Moreover, an unsupervised hierarchical cluster analysis highlighted a conserved pattern of alterations, enabling the separation between CMMCs and WBCs groups. A pattern of copy-number gains shared by all CMMCs, coupled with gains and losses shared by a subset of CMMCs, suggests a branched evolution of different tumor subclones. WBC profiles were flat as expected. Conclusions: Cell enrichment by CS followed by individual cell sorting using DA NxT, enabled the isolation of single CMMCs with 100% purity. Ampli1™ single-cell analysis demonstrated CMMC molecular heterogeneity suggestive of tumor subclones presence. This platform combination provides a reliable and non-invasive method for MM characterization enabling translational research and future clinical application. Citation Format: Mario Terracciano, Claudio Forcato, Edoardo Petrini, Alberto Ferrarini, Valentina del Monaco, Andrea Raspadori, Carrie Morano, Steven Gross, Chiara Bolognesi, Genny Buson, Thai Bui, Francesca Fontana, Gianni Medoro, Mark Connelly, Nicolò Manaresi. An integrated workflow for liquid biopsy of circulating multiple myeloma cells (CMMCs) with single cell resolution reveals tumor heterogeneity [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 2198.

Stimuli-responsive luminescent coumarin thiazole hybrid dye: Mechanism of excited-state intramolecular double proton transfer

Recently, a novel coumarin thiazole hybrid dye with azomethine linkage is synthesized. It is revealed that the symmetrical structures 3,3'-(5,5'-((1E,1'E)-hydrazine-1,2-diylidenebis(methanylylidene))bis(2-morpholinothiazole-5,4-diyl))bis(4-hydroxy-2H-chromen-2-one) (abbreviated as CS) takes shape two intramolecular hydrogen bonds and that excited-state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT) takes place with thiazole nitrogen atoms [Dyes Pigments. 142, 2017, 121]. However the corresponding reaction mechanisms are lacking. This study uses density functional and time-dependent density functional theory to calculate hydrogen-bond lengths, hydrogen-bond angles, infrared vibrational spectra and Mulliken charges of relevant groups, which confirm the excited-state hydrogen-bond strengthening mechanism. Enhanced hydrogen-bond strength facilitates the ESIPT process of the CS molecule. The absorption and fluorescence emission spectra of CS in dimethyl formamide (DMF) are calculated, which are consistent with the observed results in experiment. To further illustrate mechanism of excited-state double proton transfer (ESDPT) reactions, the potential energy surfaces of CS are constructed and analyzed, which demonstrate ESDPT more likely occur stepwise rather than concertedly. The frontier molecular orbitals of CS system are also calculated and display the nature of the charge redistribution, which demonstrate that CS system exhibits light fastness because ESIPT process inhibits intramolecular charge transfer.

Globally Accurate Potential Energy Surface for HCS(A2A″) by Extrapolation to the Complete Basis Set Limit.

A global potential energy surface (PES) representation of the C(3P) + SH(X 2Π) → H(2S) + CS(a 3Π) system is developed by fitting plenty of precise energies obtained through the ab initio calculation with aug-cc-pV QZ and aug-cc-pV5Z basis sets via extrapolation to the complete basis set limit. The topographical characteristics of the PES are examined in detail, and it is found that they agree well with previous calculations available in the literature. By utilizing the PES of HCS(A2A″), the corresponding reaction is investigated using the quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) method in the collision energy range of 0.08-1.0 eV. The minimum energy paths (MEPs) calculated on the basis of the present PES indicate that the C(3P) + SH(X 2Π) → H(2S) + CS(a 3Π) reaction is exothermic, with the exothermicity ∼0.204 eV. The calculation for the capture time indicates that the reaction is mainly governed by the indirect mechanism at the lower collision energy, while, for higher collision energy, the direct mechanism is in coexistence with the indirect mechanism, and the latter one plays a dominant role.

Hypertension Survey in Italy: Novel Findings from the Campania Salute Network.

The "Campania Salute" (CS) is a network system aimed at improving the management of essential hypertension by integrating the activity of general practitioners (GPs) with that of the hypertension specialists. It involves 23 outpatient hypertensive clinics distributed in different community hospitals of the Napoli's metropolitan area, 60 randomly selected GPs homogeneously distributed in the same area, and the Hypertension Clinic of the Federico II University in Naples (co-ordinating centre). Through the CS system it is possible to share clinical data collected during each visit at peripheral units (general practitioners and community hospitals hypertensive clinics), which manage low-risk hypertensive patients, and the co-ordinating centre, which mainly manages high-risk hypertensive patients. The co-ordinating centre works in co-operation with the peripheral units in the treatment and follow-up of all hypertensive patients. Since the first reports on the CS network activity, it has been evident the effectiveness of this network in ameliorating the clinical management of the hypertensive disease. CS network is also a large prospective registry that generated several scientific reports based on the longitudinal assessment of hypertensive patients during their treatment. Nowadays, as observed in the Health Search Database, the rate of BP control in Campania was 69.5%, almost reaching the "Objective 70%", a result that could be in part linked to the activity of the CS network.

A Low Abundance of 135Cs in the Early Solar System from Barium Isotopic Signatures of Volatile-depleted Meteorites

Abstract Precise knowledge of the abundances of short-lived radionuclides at the start of the solar system leads to fundamental information about the stellar environment of solar system formation. Previous investigations of the short-lived system (t 1/2 = 2.3 Ma) have resulted in a range of calculated initial amounts of 135Cs, with most estimates elevated to a level that requires extraneous input of material to the protoplanetary disk. Such an array of proposed 135Cs/133Cs initial solar system values has severely restricted the system’s use as both a possible chronometer and as an informant about supernovae input. However, if 135Cs was as abundant in the early solar system as previously proposed, the resulting deficits in its daughter product 135Ba would be easily detectable in volatile-depleted parent bodies (i.e., having sub-chondritic Cs/Ba) from the very early solar system. In this work, we show that angrites and eucrites, which were volatile-depleted within ∼1 million years of the start of the solar system, do not possess deficits in 135Ba compared to other planetary bodies. From this, we calculate an upper limit for the initial 135Cs/133Cs of 2.8 × 10−6, well below previous estimates. This significantly lower initial 135Cs/133Cs ratio now suggests that all of the 135Cs present in the early solar system was inherited simply from galactic chemical evolution and no longer requires an addition from an external stellar source such as an asymptotic giant branch star or SN II, corroborating evidence from several other short-lived radionuclides.

Probing sub-nano level molecular packing and correlated positron annihilation characteristics of ionic cross-linked chitosan membranes using positron annihilation spectroscopy.

Chitosan, CS, cross-linked with bivalent palladium has shown enhanced mechanical and thermal properties depending on the transformation of the structure at a microscopic scale. In the present study, CS directly cross-linked by palladium cation membranes (CS-cr-PM) was prepared through a solution-casting method. Mobility of chitosan chains were greatly reduced after crosslinking, making a great reduction in the swelling ratio studied by a water-swelling degree measurement, which led to an improvement in molecular chain rigidity. In order to investigate the chain packing at the molecular level in the ionic cross-linked CS system, the structure of chemically-crosslinked CS is investigated by means of the combined use of wide angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD) and infrared measurements, and a combination of positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) and simultaneous coincidence Doppler broadening (CDB) spectroscopy offers coherent information on both the free-volume related sub-nano level molecular packing and the chemical surrounding of free volume nanoholes in CS-cr-PM as a function of palladium salt loading. The variations in the free volume size and size distribution have been determined through the ortho-positronium (o-Ps) lifetime and its lifetime distribution. The studies showed that a strong interaction between CS molecules and palladium cations results in the change in crystallinity in formed CS-cr-PM leading to variational chain packing density. Meanwhile, significant inhibition effects on positronium formation due to doping are observed, which could be interpreted in terms of the existence of chloride ions. Applications of positron annihilation spectroscopy to study the microstructure and correlated positron annihilation characteristics of an ionic cross-linked CS system are systematically discussed.

Fractality in Manufacturing Industry

Fractal theory, a topic first introduced by Mandelbrot in 1970, has nevertheless witnessed a great boom in the field of science in this last decade. In this article, we analyze time series (TS), behavior of the variable, cost of that sold (CS), and we assume and demonstrate that there is fractality in the system for manufacturing companies in Mexico. We analyzed 30 companies that are listed on the Mexican stock exchange, obtaining 23 data for each organization, taking a period stretching from the first quarter of 2010 to the third quarter of 2015, and obtaining a total of 704 data. We only selected 512 for each one of the 30 TS, using fractal interpolation (FI) as the method for generating data in TS. TS 30 was characterized from the point of view of Visual Recurrence Analysis (VRA) software. It is apparent that in 80% of the companies analyzed, the dynamics of the CS system were elucidated using 4 variables.

Efficient Parameters for Compressed Sensing Recovery Algorithms

Compressed sensing CS has been an effective research area which it plays an efficient role in many applications such as cognitive radio, imaging, radar and many other applications. The main part of CS system is to recover an input signal by using minimum number of samples than used by conventional (Nyquist) sampling. In this paper, the minimum number of measurements and the number of sparsity level used to reconstruct the signal with minimum error, computational complexity and time will be optimized. Moreover, different recovery algorithms such as convex optimization, greedy algorithms, iterative hard thresholding and hard thresholding pursuit algorithms are used for optimal recovery of sparse signal from a small number of linear measurements. Furthermore, the effect of using CS as denosing will be investigated. Then comparisons study between CS as denoising and conventional denoising process will be made to reduce the effect of noise on the signal.

The decline in synaptic GluN2B and rise in inhibitory neurotransmission determine the end of a critical period.

Neuronal plasticity is especially active in the young, during short windows of time termed critical periods, and loss of a critical period leads to functional limitations in the adults. The mechanism that governs the length of critical periods remains unknown. Here we show that levels of the NMDA receptor GluN2B subunit, which functions as a Ca2+ channel, declines in spinal cord synapses toward the end of the critical period for activity-dependent corticospinal synapse elimination. This period could be prolonged by blocking the decline of GluN2B, and after its termination the critical period could be reopened through upregulation of GluN2B. It is known that inhibitory neural activity increases with development in the CNS including the spinal cord. Suppression of the increasing inhibitory activity using low-dose strychnine also prolonged this critical period. During the strychnine-widened time window, Ca2+ influx through GluN2B channels returned to a level comparable to that seen during the critical period, though the level of GluN2B was slightly reduced. These findings indicate that loss of GluN2B subunits and the associated reduction in Ca2+ influx determines the end of the critical period in our in vitro CS system.

The Sysmex CS-5100 coagulation analyzer offers comparable analytical performance and excellent throughput capabilities

ObjectivesThis study compared the new high-volume blood coagulation analyzer Sysmex CS-5100 System™ (Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, Erlangen, Germany) to the mid-volume blood coagulation analyzer Sysmex CS-2000i System™ (Siemens) for analytical performance. Additionally, the operational performance of the Sysmex CS-5100 System was compared with the blood coagulation analyzer ACL TOP 700 (Instrumentation Laboratory, Werfen Group, Kirchheim bei Munchen, Germany). Materials and methodsWe compared the Sysmex CS-5100 to the Sysmex CS-2000i and the ACL TOP analyzer for routine coagulation, chromogenic and immunological assays. Imprecision studies were performed for the Sysmex CS-5100 and Sysmex CS-2000i systems. A throughput and STAT analysis comparison of the CS-5100 and the ACL TOP was performed. A stress test was performed to characterize the robustness and the error rate of the CS-5100. We also performed correlation analysis between the CS-5100 and the CS-2000i or the ACL TOP in the measurement of patients’ samples. ResultsThe inter-assay precision using the CS systems was impressive (inter-assay CV generally <3.5%) and the correlation between the two Sysmex analyzers was excellent. In the throughput study, the CS-5100 completed the measurement of 100 samples (210 results) in less than 49min. ConclusionsOur results demonstrated that the CS-5100 is a robust high-throughput analyzer, well-suited for coagulation laboratories.

Commercial Separation Systems Designed for Preparation of Platelet-Rich Plasma Yield Differences in Cellular Composition.

The role of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) in the treatment of sport-related injuries is unclear, largely due to the heterogeneity of clinical results. This may relate to compositional differences in PRP from different separation systems. This study aims to compare the composition of PRP produced with five different commercially available systems, focusing on cellular concentrations and pH. Seven donors (41 ± 12years) provided blood for PRP preparation using five systems (Arthrex Angel, Emcyte Genesis CS, Arteriocyte Magellan, Harvest SmartPrep, and Biomet GPS III). Post processing, cellular composition was measured including platelets (PLT), white blood cells (WBC), neutrophils (NE), and red blood cells (RBC), as well as pH. Platelet concentration and capture efficiency were similar between systems, except the Angel 7% preparation had a greater concentration than Genesis CS (2310 ± 524 vs. 1129 ± 264k/μL). WBC concentration was variable between systems; however, significant differences were only found between the Angel 2% and GPS III preparations (11.0 ± 4.5, 27.3 ± 7.1k/μL). NE concentration was significantly lower in the Angel 2% and 7% preparations compared with GPS III (0.6 ± 0.6 and 1.8 ± 1.3k/μL vs. 9.4 ± 7.0k/μL). RBC concentration was highest in SmartPrep (3.2 ± 0.6M/μL) and Genesis CS systems (3.1 ± 0.6M/μL) compared with all other systems (≤1.1 ± 1.2M/μL). Finally, pH was significantly lower with the SmartPrep system (6.95 ± 0.06) compared with all others (≥7.26 ± 0.06). Aside from platelet concentration and capture efficiency, significant compositional differences were identified between preparation systems. Caution should be employed when interpreting clinical results of studies utilizing PRP, as the role of compositional differences and their effect on outcome are unknown. Further study is necessary to determine the clinical significance of these differences.

ITER Side Correction Coil Quench model and analysis

Previous thermohydraulic studies performed for the ITER TF, CS and PF magnet systems have brought some important information on the detection and consequences of a quench as a function of the initial conditions (deposited energy, heated length). Even if the temperature margin of the Correction Coils is high, their behavior during a quench should also be studied since a quench is likely to be triggered by potential anomalies in joints, ground fault on the instrumentation wires, etc. A model has been developed with the SuperMagnet Code (Bagnasco et al., 2010) for a Side Correction Coil (SCC2) with four pancakes cooled in parallel, each of them represented by a Thea module (with the proper Cable In Conduit Conductor characteristics). All the other coils of the PF cooling loop are hydraulically connected in parallel (top/bottom correction coils and six Poloidal Field Coils) are modeled by Flower modules with equivalent hydraulics properties. The model and the analysis results are presented for five quench initiation cases with/without fast discharge: two quenches initiated by a heat input to the innermost turn of one pancake (case 1 and case 2) and two other quenches initiated at the innermost turns of four pancakes (case 3 and case 4). In the 5th case, the quench is initiated at the middle turn of one pancake. The impact on the cooling circuit, e.g. the exceedance of the opening pressure of the quench relief valves, is detailed in case of an undetected quench (i.e. no discharge of the magnet). Particular attention is also paid to a possible secondary quench detection system based on measured thermohydraulic signals (pressure, temperature and/or helium mass flow rate). The maximum cable temperature achieved in case of a fast current discharge (primary detection by voltage) is compared to the design hot spot criterion of 150K, which includes the contribution of helium and jacket.

(885) - GLP In-Vivo Study and Durability Testing for Miniaturized EVAHEART KAIZEN (EVA-kai) System

The EVAHEART was developed by Sun Medical Technology Research Corporation (Nagano Japan) as an implantable left ventricular assist device and it was approved in 2010 by the Japanese Pharmaceuticals and Medical Device Agency (PMDA) for bridge to heart transplantation (BTT). CE Marking was also approved in 2012 and it is under IDE clinical trial in the U.S.A. The pump features are: high pump performance (over 10L/min/100mmHg), low share stress, low hemolysis rate (NIH 0.005g/100L), and excellent anti-thrombogenicity. Unique flat PQ curve pump performance generates superior pulsatile and high peak flow even with advanced heart failure. The EVAHEART has been implanted more than 120 patients, more than 750 days median support duration in Japan with excellent long-term survival rate; 89.8% for 1 year and 83.2% for 2 years. The clinical outcome shows excellent low risk free rate; 95.2% for 3 years GI bleeding free, 98.0% for 3 years Hemolysis free, less than 1 % pump failure exchange and superior low vWF multimer degradation. Purpose of this research is to develop a miniaturized EVAHEART, so called EVA Kai, to fit small patients with identical support capacity with current EVAHEART. The core technology, such as Impeller design, Pump chamber design, Blood contact surface anticoagulation coating (MPC coating), hydro-dynamic bearing, Mechanical seal and CS system are inherited from current EVAHERT to EVA Kai. The inflow cannula and the outflow graft are compatible. A newly designed small diameter and flexible driveline is equipped. A small and high power drive motor is also developed and it is compatible with current controller. Pump displacement volume is 97.3 mL which is 26.3% smaller than current EVAHEART. Drive line diameter is 7.5mm which is 36.7% reduction. The pump was fabricated titanium, the pump weight was 262 g which is 37.6 % lighter including a newly developed brushless DC motor. Four animal studies with endpoint POD 60 were successfully conducted under GLP at NCVC. At the autopsy, there was no thrombus on the pump surface, and no major thromboemboli in organs except very few small renal infarct. System durability test is conducting for more than six months and electrical safety test and EMC test had successfully been conducted. The miniaturized EVAHEART has been successfully developed and animal studies show excellent result.

Adaptive Selective Compressive Sensing based Signal Acquisition Oriented toward Strong Signal Noise Scene

This paper addresses the problem of signal acquisition with a sparse representation in a given orthonormal basis using fewer noisy measurements. The authors formulate the problem statement for randomly measuring with strong signal noise. The impact of white Gaussian signals noise on the recovery performance is analyzed to provide a theoretical basis for the reasonable design of the measurement matrix. With the idea that the measurement matrix can be adapted for noise suppression in the adaptive CS system, an adapted selective compressive sensing (ASCS) scheme is proposed whose measurement matrix can be updated according to the noise information fed back by the processing center. In terms of objective recovery quality, failure rate and mean-square error (MSE), a comparison is made with some nonadaptive methods and existing CS measurement approaches. Extensive numerical experiments show that the proposed scheme has better noise suppression performance and improves the support recovery of sparse signal. The proposed scheme should have a great potential and bright prospect of broadband signals such as biological signal measurement and radar signal detection.

Substitution of corn silage with sorghum silages in lactating cow diets: In vivo methane emission and global warming potential of milk production

A study was conducted to determine whether sorghum silage can be a valid alternative to corn silage in lactating cow rations in terms of enteric CH4 production and global warming potential (GWP) per milk unit. Diets containing corn (CS), whole plant grain sorghum (WPGS) or forage sorghum (FS) silages were fed to 6 primiparous Italian Friesian cows in a replicated 3 × 3 Latin square design. Diets were balanced to have 36.0 and 26.0% DM of NDF and starch, respectively. In each period cows were placed in individual respiration chambers to register CH4 production. The GWP of milk production in the three different forage systems was evaluated through a “cradle to farm-gate” Life Cycle Assessment. All the emissions related to on-farm activities (forage production, fuel and electricity consumptions, manure and livestock management), off-farm activities (production of fertilizers, pesticides, bedding materials, purchased forages, concentrate feed, replacement animals, electricity, fuel) and transportation were considered. The functional unit was 1 kg FPCM. Enteric emission of CH4 from cows was obtained with an in vivo experiment or predicted using an equation based on gross energy intake and on dietary NDF and ether extract.Dry matter intake (kg/day) tended to be higher for CS and WPGS (20.0 for both diets) than FS (18.2) (P = 0.07). Milk yield was 23.6, 24.6 and 25.4 kg/day for FS, WPGS and CS, respectively (P = 0.05 between CS and FS).On average, CH4 from enteric fermentation and manure storage was the major contributor (45.4%) to GHG emission of milk production and 71.1% of the CH4 was from enteric losses. Predicted CH4 emission was slightly lower than the emission measured from in vivo trials (323 vs 340 g/day per cow on average). In vivo CH4 production was not different among diets but intake energy lost as CH4 was higher (P = 0.04) for FS (5.8%) in comparison with CS and WPGS (5.1 and 5.2% for CS and WPGS, respectively). Contribution of on-farm crop production to GWP was lower for sorghum scenarios, particularly FS, due to the reduced use of water and fertilizers. On the contrary purchased concentrate feed showed a great load on GWP (30%), especially in the FS scenario, because of the greater amount of corn meal needed to compensate for the low starch content of the sorghum silages. In conclusion the CS forage system gave higher milk production, lower CH4 energy loss and lower GWP per kg FPCM than the sorghum forage systems.

Alternating Optimization of Sensing Matrix and Sparsifying Dictionary for Compressed Sensing

This paper deals with alternating optimization of sensing matrix and sparsifying dictionary for compressed sensing systems. Under the same framework proposed by J. M. Duarte-Carvajalino and G. Sapiro, a novel algorithm for optimal sparsifying dictionary design is derived with an optimized sensing matrix embedded. A closed-form solution to the optimal dictionary design problem is obtained. A new measure is proposed for optimizing sensing matrix and an algorithm is developed for solving the corresponding optimization problem. Experiments are carried out with synthetic data and real images, which demonstrate promising performance of the proposed algorithms and superiority of the CS system designed with the optimized sensing matrix and dictionary to existing ones in terms of signal reconstruction accuracy. Particularly, the proposed CS system yields in general a much improved performance than those designed using previous methods in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio for the application to image compression.

Anthropogenic stable cesium in water and sediment of a shallow estuary, St. Louis Bay, Mississippi

St. Louis Bay (SLB), Mississippi, is a small, shallow estuary with moderate local residential and industrial development. Dissolved, stable Cs (i.e., 133Cs) was significantly enriched in bay waters (up to 1570 nM) as compared to river (<1 nM) and ocean waters (2.3 nM). A TiO2 refinery, located on the north shore of the bay, is the likely source of the Cs, given that the highest Cs concentrations were found in waters and in surface sediments (up to 49 μg/g) near the refinery outfall. This setting presented a unique opportunity to study remobilization of Cs in a shallow estuarine system, where sediment resuspension is frequent. Remobilization (up to ∼3 fold increase) of dissolved Cs was observed during sediment resuspension events. A weak correlation between Cs and clay %; strong correlations among Cs, silt % and particulate organic carbon (POC); and simple numerical approaches indicate that desorption from resuspended particulate matter is the likely mechanism of Cs remobilization. Cs-enriched SLB waters can be traced to nearshore Mississippi Sound waters, but not into Mississippi Bight waters further offshore. The findings from this study also suggest that caution needs to be taken when interpreting the radio-cesium distribution in shallow estuarine and coastal systems.

A Novel Watermark Embedding Scheme using Compressive Sensing in Wavelet Domain

Most existing research achievements of digital watermarking techniques are in transform domain. In compari- son with spatial domain, its advantages are larger data volume, higher security and stronger robustness. But its limitations are also obvious: complex computing requirement, weak in resisting attack and anti-extraction. In this paper, a novel blind digital watermarking algorithm is proposed, which performs digital watermark embedding process in Compressive Sens- ing (CS) domain based on the characteristics of CS and Human Visual System (HVS). The sub-blocks with larger capac- ity are selected to embed the scrambled digital watermark, considering the non-uniformity of blocks. Besides that, suitable quantization steps are chose adaptively by using quantization method. Experimental results show that the algorithm ob- tains robust and invisible embedded watermark with larger capacity of data. At the same time, the ability of defending against attack or extraction of embedded watermark is greatly improved. Most important feature in our algorithm is that the watermark can be extracted without any reference to the original image. As a result, the cost of storing carrier data can be saved remarkably.

Tillage and rotation effects on community composition and metabolic footprints of soil nematodes in a black soil

Understanding the response of soil biota to tillage and rotation practices is useful for evaluating the effect of agricultural management. We investigated soil physiochemical properties, nematode community structure and composition and their metabolic footprints in different tillage and crop rotation systems in a 12-year old field experiment in a black soil. The experiment was based on a split-plot design with conventional tillage (CT) and no-tillage (NT) as main plots and corn-soybean rotation (CS) and continuous corn (CC) treatments as subplots. Soil samples were taken at 0–5 cm and 5–15 cm depths. The results showed that in comparison with CT, NT increased total soil organic carbon, soil moisture and microbial biomass carbon at 0–5 cm depth regardless of rotation system. Rotation effect on total nematode abundance was significant. The abundance of fungivores was significantly influenced by the tillage effect, with higher abundance found in CT systems. In total, fifty-eight nematode genera were identified. Acrobeloides dominated under CS and Filenchus under CC. In NT system, a bacterial-dominated decomposition pathway was dominant under CS, and fungal-based channel under CC at 0–5 cm depth. The interactive effect of tillage and rotation changed the decomposition channel. Under CS system, lower structure index (SI) and higher channel index (CI) were found in CT than in NT at 0–5 cm depth. At both depths, functional metabolic footprint was greater under CS than under CC in both tillage systems. Footprint of fungivores also suggested a greater flow of resources into the food web through fungivorous channels under CC. Redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that tillage and rotation influenced soil nematodes by changing soil physiochemical properties. Nematode community analysis indicated that corn-soybean rotation system increased nematode abundance and their functional metabolic footprint, and favored a more diverse residue resource entry into soil food webs.

Molecule‐adapted basis sets optimized with a quantum Monte Carlo method

The Monte Carlo simulated annealing method is adapted to optimize correlated Gaussian‐type functions in nonrelativistic molecular environments. Starting from an atom‐centered atomic Gaussian basis set, the uncontracted functions are reoptimized in the molecular environments corresponding to the H2O, CN−, N2, CO, BF, NO+, CO2, and CS systems. These new molecular adapted basis sets are used to calculate total energies, harmonic vibrational frequencies, and equilibrium geometries at a correlated level of theory. The present methodology is a simple and effective way to improve molecular correlated wave functions, without the need to enlarge the molecular basis set. Additionally, this methodology can be used to generate hierarchical sequences of molecular basis sets with increasing size, which are relevant to establish complete basis set limits. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.