Assessment of the impact of urban water system scheduling on urban flooding by using coupled hydrological and hydrodynamic model in Fuzhou City, China.

With climate change and urbanization development, urban areas are facing more serious floods. As a result, hydrological and hydrodynamic models have recently shown a broad application prospect in urban flood simulating and forecasting. For the area with rich inland rivers, urban water resources can be effectively regulated and redistributed through river networks and hydraulic structures scheduling.

Quantitative inference of population response properties across eccentricity from motion-induced maps in macaque V1.

Interpreting population responses in the primary visual cortex (V1) remains a challenge especially with the advent of techniques measuring activations of large cortical areas simultaneously with high precision. For successful interpretation, a quantitatively precise model prediction is of great importance. In this study, we investigate how accurate a spatiotemporal filter (STF) model predicts average response profiles to coherently drifting random dot motion obtained by optical imaging of intrinsic signals in V1 of anesthetized macaques.

Levels, distribution, and health risk of phthalate esters in urban soils of Beijing, China.

The content of phthalate esters (PAEs) was investigated in urban soil samples ( = 127, 0-20 cm) collected from a business area (BU), classical garden (CL), culture and educational area (CU), large public green space (LA), residential area (RE), and roadside area (RO) in Beijing. The sum of all PAE contents ranged from 1.9 to 3141.

Effects of suspended sediment on the biodegradation and mineralization of phenanthrene in river water.

High suspended sediment (SPS) concentration commonly exists in many Asian rivers. Furthermore, climate change can cause high floods and lead to the resuspension of sediments and soil erosion, resulting in high SPS concentration in many natural waters. This research studied the impact of the presence of SPS and organic C composition of SPS on the biodegradation and mineralization of phenanthrene (PHE).

Effect of combined Bacillus subtilis on the sorption of phenanthrene and 1,2,3-trichlorobenzene onto mineral surfaces.

In the natural environment, minerals are often associated with coexisting microorganisms. These interactions have profound impacts on the fate of a wide variety of contaminants. However, little information is available on the sorption of hydrophobic organic compounds (HOC), such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and chlorinated benzenes, onto the composites of minerals with bacteria, and knowledge of the influence of combined bacteria on HOC sorption to minerals is limited.

Polychlorinated biphenyls in urban lake sediments from wuhan, central China: occurrence, composition, and sedimentary record.

Nine surface sediments and a dated sediment core collected from urban lakes in Wuhan, Central China, were analyzed to investigate the concentrations, occurrence, composition, and depositional fluxes of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The concentrations of SigmaPCB (the sum of 39 congeners) in surface sediments ranged from 0.90 to 46.

Cluster number selection for a small set of samples using the Bayesian Ying-Yang model.

One major problem in cluster analysis is the determination of the number of clusters. In this paper, we describe both theoretical and experimental results in determining the cluster number for a small set of samples using the Bayesian-Kullback Ying-Yang (BYY) model selection criterion. Under the second-order approximation, we derive a new equation for estimating the smoothing parameter in the cost function.

Regularization parameter estimation for feedforward neural networks.

Under the framework of the Kullback-Leibler (KL) distance, we show that a particular case of Gaussian probability function for feedforward neural networks (NNs) reduces into the first-order Tikhonov regularizer. The smooth parameter in kernel density estimation plays the role of regularization parameter. Under some approximations, an estimation formula is derived for estimating regularization parameters based on training data sets.

Nitrogen contamination in the Yellow River basin of China.

Nitrogen contamination is one of the most serious problems in the Yellow River of China. This study was conducted to analyze monitoring data on nitrogen contamination for the Yellow River basin in the years 1980, 1990, 1997, and 1999. Several significant results have arisen from the study.

Simulating interactive effects of symbiotic nitrogen fixation, carbon dioxide elevation, and climatic change on legume growth.

The underlying mechanisms of interaction between the symbiotic nitrogen-fixation process and main physiological processes, such as assimilation, nutrient allocation, and structural growth, as well as effects of nitrogen fixation on plant responses to global change, are important and still open to more investigation. Appropriate models have not been adequately developed. A dynamic ecophysiological model was developed in this study for a legume plant [Glycine max (L.