Seroprevalence of <em>Lawsonia intracellularis</em> antibodies in intensive pig farms in China

BACKGROUND: Porcine proliferative enteropathy caused by Lawsonia intracellularis (L. intracellularis) is a major concern to the pig industry worldwide. Although 8.3 billion pigs are produced each year in China, few reports on the prevalence of L.intracellularis infection are available. The aim of the current study was to estimate the seroprevalence of L. intracellularis antibodies in intensive pig farms in China. RESULTS: A total of 1060 serum samples were collected from 14 commercial pig farms located throughout China. Animals from all age groups were sampled including pre-weaning piglets, weaners, fattening pigs, adult sows and boars. Antibodies against L. intracellularis were detected using a specific blocking ELISA. Of the 1060 serum samples, 602 were identified as positive using the ELISA test. The apparent seroprevalence of L. intracellularis seropositivity was 57% (95% CI 50 to 64%). The true prevalence (that is, prevalence corrected for the imperfect sensitivity and specificity of the testing method) was 77% (95% CI 70 to 83%). CONCLUSIONS: The highest true prevalence was observed in sows and boars, suggesting that within a herd these stock classes are a reservoir for infection. The prevalence of L. intracellularis seropositivity in local breed pigs was significantly less than that in imported breeds. A higher seroprevalence was found in pigs in herds in Central and Northern China, which may correspond to the greater use of the intensive production systems in these areas. We conclude that L. intracellularis is widely prevalent in commercial pigs in China

Simulations of summertime fossil fuel CO2 in the Guanzhong basin, China

Recent studies on fossil fuel CO2 simulation associated with Delta(CO2)-C-14 measurements is quite limited, particularly in China. In this study, the fossil fuel CO2 recently added to the atmosphere (delta CO(2)ff) over the Guanzhong basin, central China, during summer 2012 is simulated using a modified WRF-CHEM model constrained by measured CO2 mixing ratio and Delta(CO2)-C-14. The model well captures the temporal variation of observed CO2 mixing ratio and Delta(CO2)-C-14, and reasonably reproduces the distribution of observed Delta(CO2)-C-14. The simulation shows a significant variation of delta CO(2)ff during summertime, ranging from &lt;5 ppmv to similar to 100 ppmv and no remarkable trend of delta CO(2)ff is found for June, July, and August. The delta CO(2)ff level is closely associated with atmospheric diffusion conditions. The diurnal cycle of delta CO(2)ff presents a double-peak pattern, a nocturnal one and a rush-hour one, related to the development of planetary boundary layer and CO2 emission from vehicles. The spatial distributions of summertime delta CO(2)ff within the basin is clearly higher than the outside, reaching up to 40 ppmv in urban Xi&#39;an and 15 ppmv in its surrounding areas, indicative of large local fossil fuel emissions. Furthermore, we find that neglecting the influence of summer heterotrophic respiration in terrestrial biosphere would slightly underestimate the calculated delta CO(2)ff by about 0.38 ppmv in the basin. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Room-temperature multiferroic hexagonal LuFeO3_3 films

The crystal and magnetic structures of single-crystalline hexagonal LuFeO$_3$ films have been studied using x-ray, electron and neutron diffraction methods. The polar structure of these films are found to persist up to 1050 K; and the switchability of the polar behavior is observed at room temperature, indicating ferroelectricity. An antiferromagnetic order was shown to occur below 440 K, followed by a spin reorientation resulting in a weak ferromagnetic order below 130 K. This observation of coexisting multiple ferroic orders demonstrates that hexagonal LuFeO$_3$ films are room-temperature multiferroics

Stimuli-responsive 2D polyelectrolyte photonic crystals for optically encoded pH sensing.

A versatile photonic crystal sensing motif based on a twodimensional (2D) inverse opal monolayer of stimuli-responsive polyelectrolyte gel with tunable optical properties is reported. The photonic membrane shows prompt response to pH and can be readily read out from either its optical spectra or interference colours

Correlated states in twisted double bilayer graphene

Electron-electron interactions play an important role in graphene and related systems and can induce exotic quantum states, especially in a stacked bilayer with a small twist angle. For bilayer graphene where the two layers are twisted by a "magic angle", flat band and strong many-body effects lead to correlated insulating states and superconductivity. In contrast to monolayer graphene, the band structure of untwisted bilayer graphene can be further tuned by a displacement field, providing an extra degree of freedom to control the flat band that should appear when two bilayers are stacked on top of each other. Here, we report the discovery and characterization of such displacement-field tunable electronic phases in twisted double bilayer graphene. We observe insulating states at a half-filled conduction band in an intermediate range of displacement fields. Furthermore, the resistance gap in the correlated insulator increases with respect to the in-plane magnetic fields and we find that the g factor according to spin Zeeman effect is ~2, indicating spin polarization at half filling. These results establish the twisted double bilayer graphene as an easily tunable platform for exploring quantum many-body states

The Photometric System of Tsinghua-NAOC 80-cm Telescope at NAOC Xinglong Observatory

Tsinghua-NAOC (National Astronomical Observatories of China) Telescope (hereafter, TNT) is an 80-cm Cassegrain reflecting telescope located at Xinglong bservatory of NAOC, with main scientific goals of monitoring various transients in the universe such as supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, novae, variable stars, and active galactic nuclei. We present in this paper a systematic test and analysis of the photometric performance of this telescope. Based on the calibration observations on twelve photometric nights, spanning the period from year 2004 to year 2012, we derived an accurate transformation relationship between the instrumental $ubvri$ magnitudes and standard Johnson $UBV$ and Cousins $RI$ magnitudes. In particular, the color terms and the extinction coefficients of different passbands are well determined. With these data, we also obtained the limiting magnitudes and the photometric precision of TNT. It is worthwhile to point out that the sky background at Xinglong Observatory may become gradually worse over the period from year 2005 to year 2012 (e.g., $\sim$21.4 mag vs. $\sim$20.1 mag in the V band).Comment: 12 pages,9 figures, accepted by RA