Reproducibility of vegetation cover estimates in south‐central Alaska forests

Abstract. Reproducibility of vegetation measurements is critical for large‐scale or long‐term studies, where numerous observers collect data, but past studies have questioned repro‐ducibility of some techniques. Five methods of evaluating understory composition were appraised for reproducibility among six observers in two forest types in south‐central Alaska: ocular estimates in quadrats, overall community species rank and cover estimates, nested rooted frequency, horizontal‐vertical profiles, and pin drop (systematic points). One forest type was selected to represent structure of coastal communities, another to represent structure of interior Alaska communities. Three general methods of evaluating reproducibility were considered: standard deviations (precision among observers), components of variance (percentage of total variance attributable to observers), and analysis of variance (significance of observer variance). Observer variances were generally similar among techniques and significant in most cases. No technique stood out as being more reproducible than others. Features of techniques other than reproducibility may be more important when selecting a technique. Management decisions based on vegetation cover data should consider the observer errors involved as well as biological significance.     

Industrial Ecosystems as Food Webs

Colocated industries exchange products and by-products in ways reminiscent of the exchange of resources in biological ecosystems. To better understand these "industrial ecosys-tems", we have applied food-web theory to a set of 19 actual and hypothetical eco-industrial parks and integrated biosys-tems. We find a linear relationship between number of industrial tenants and number of linkages among them and connectance values of 0.5 to 0.6 (typical of biological ecosystems). The results may provide initial perspective on designing eco-industrial parks to maximize the utilization of resources and minimize the generation of wastes. Increased connectance in industrial ecosystems, however, does not necessarily imply increased stability or improved environmental performance.     

植保网络应用技术初步研究

ASP(Active Server Pages动态服务器网页）是Microsoft公司1997年推出的,WINDOWS面向WEB特征的,功能强大而成熟一种技术。2000年以来,笔对其应用于植保网络化、可视化与自动化方面作了一些探讨与开发,建立了我省第一个植保专业网站,网址www.fizb.com。阐述了植保在互联网上的初步应用研究。     

《农业植物病理学》课程网站的建设

在进行区级精品教材—《农业植物病理学》(华南本)的编著工作的同时,开展了《农业植物病理学》课程网站的开发设计,提出了网站的设计思路及网站建设的方法,并就其测试效果及性能进行了分析。     

Extensible open source content management systems and frameworks: a solution for many needs of a bioinformatics group

A common challenge for bioinformaticians, in either academic or industry laboratory environments, is providing informatic solutions via the Internet or through a web browser. Recently, the open source community began developing tools for building and maintaining web applications for many disciplines. These content management systems (CMS) provide many of the basic needs of an informatics group, whether in a small company, a group within a larger organisation or an academic laboratory. These tools aid in managing software development, website development, document development, course development, datasets, collaborations and customers. Since many of these tools are extensible, they can be developed to support other research-specific activities, such as handling large biomedical datasets or deploying bioanalytic tools. In this review of open source website management tools, the basic features of content management systems are discussed along with commonly used open source software. Additionally, some examples of their use in biomedical research are given.     

Approaches for Quantifying the Metabolism of Physical Economies: A Comparative Survey: Part II: Review of Individual Approaches

This article is the second of a two-part series that describes and compares the essential features of nine "physical economy" approaches for mapping and quantifying the material demands of the human economy upon the natural environ-ment. These approaches are critical tools in the design and implementation of industrial ecology strategies for greater eco-efficiency and reduced environmental impacts of human economic activity. Part I of the series provided an overview, meth-odological classification, and comparison of a selected set of major materials flow analysis (MFA) and related techniques. This sequel includes a convenient reference and overview of the major metabolism measurement approaches in the form of a more detailed summary of the key specific analytical and other features of the approaches introduced in part I. The surveyed physical economy related environmental analysis ap-proaches include total material requirement and output mod-els, bulk MFA (IFF (Department of Social Ecology, Institute for Interdiscplinary Studies of Austrian Universities) material flow balance model variant), physical input-output tables, substance flow analysis, ecological footprint analysis, environmental space, material intensity per unit service, life-cycle assessment (LCA), the sustainable process index, and company-level MFA.     

Website for avian flu information and bioinformatics

Highly pathogenic influenza A virus H5N1 has spread out worldwide and raised the public concerns. This increased the output of influenza virus sequence data as well as the research publication and other reports. In order to fight against H5N1 avian flu in a comprehensive way, we designed and started to set up the Website for Avian Flu Information () from 2004. Other than the influenza virus database available, the website is aiming to integrate diversified information for both researchers and the public. From 2004 to 2009, we collected information from all aspects, i.e. reports of outbreaks, scientific publications and editorials, policies for prevention, medicines and vaccines, clinic and diagnosis. Except for publications, all information is in Chinese. Till April 15, 2009, the cumulative news entries had been over 2000 and research papers were approaching 5000. By using the curated data from Influenza Virus Resource, we have set up an influenza virus sequence database and a bioinformatic platform, providing the basic functions for the sequence analysis of influenza virus. We will focus on the collection of experimental data and results as well as the integration of the data from the geological information system and avian influenza epidemiology. Contributed equally to this work Special Project of Informatization of Chinese Academy of Sciences in “the Eleventh Five-Year Plan”, E-Science Application of Research on Resources, Disease Monitoring and Risk Assessment of Important Wild Birds in Qinghai Lake Region (Grant No. INFO-115-D02), China International Science and Technology Cooperation of the Ministry of Science and Technology, China (MOST) (Grant Nos. 2006DFB32010 and 2007DFC30240), MOST Grant 2005CB523001 (Program 973), National Key Technologies Research & Development Program (Grant 2006BAD06A01), and a grant from NIH (Grant No. 3 U19 AI051915-05S1), the China Post-doctor fellowship (Grant No. 20070420542).     

Dial-a-mutant: web-based knockout collections for model organisms

Although much of eukaryotic cell biology is highly conserved, the most biomedically relevant organisms are often the most difficult or expensive to study. Non-vertebrate model organisms offer a practical and accessible alternative. Large collections of loss-of-function mutants have now been generated in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and the angiosperm Arabidopsis thaliana, which can be easily accessed via the Internet. The sites reviewed in the present article include those of the C. elegans Knockout Consortium (http://celeganskoconsortium.omrf.org/) and the C. elegans National Bioresource Project of Japan (http://shigen.lab.nig.ac.jp/c.elegans/index.jsp), and also the NemaGENETAG project (http://elegans.imbb.forth.gr/nemagenetag/) for the former and T-DNA Express (http://signal.salk.edu/cgi-bin/tdnaexpress) for the latter. These sites allow one to easily identify and request C. elegans strains bearing mutations in approximately half of predicted genes and for essentially every Arabidopsis gene. These tools greatly enhance the ability of non-specialists to conduct studies of gene function in vivo in these model species.