[1] Simultaneous measurements of atmospheric organic and elemental carbon (OC and EC) were taken during winter and summer seasons at 2003 in 14 cities in China. Daily PM 2.5 samples were analyzed for OC and EC by the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) thermal/optical reflectance protocol. Average PM 2.5 OC concentrations in the 14 cities were 38.1 mg m À3 and 13.8 mg m À3 for winter and summer periods, and the corresponding EC were 9.9 mg m À3 and 3.6 mg m À3 , respectively. OC and EC concentrations had summer minima and winter maxima in all the cities. Carbonaceous matter (CM), the sum of organic matter (OM = 1.6 Â OC) and EC, contributed 44.2% to PM 2.5 in winter and 38.8% in summer. OC was correlated with EC (R 2 : 0.56-0.99) in winter, but correlation coefficients were lower in summer (R 2 : 0.003-0.90). Using OC/EC enrichment factors, the primary OC, secondary OC and EC accounted for 47.5%, 31.7% and 20.8%, respectively, of total carbon in Chinese urban environments. More than two thirds of China's urban carbon is derived from directly emitted particles. Average OC/EC ratios ranged from 2.0 to 4.7 among 14 cities during winter and from 2.1 to 5.9 during summer. OC/EC ratios in this study were consistent with a possible cooling effect of carbonaceous aerosols over China.

No abstract

The public provision of welfare for the elderly often reflects a generational contract that defines the distribution of benefits and duties across generations, which has been institutionalized in the modern welfare state to meet the requirements of those in need, in accordance with the values of collectivism, altruism, fairness, and justice. In the case of pensions, the working population is expected to support the older generations through a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) arrangement (Prinzen, 2014; Rantanen, McLaughlin, & Toikko, 2015). As the elderly are generally less productive and have diminished physical capacity, they are accepted as dependents, in need of support from family and society. Historically, those who contribute to the support of the elderly are assured that they, in turn, will be supported by future generations. Generational solidarity has been commended for promoting cohesiveness through shared obligations and reciprocity (Bengtson & Oyama, 2010). Recently, there has been growing concern about the distribution of welfare resources across generations: A principle of "generational equity" has called into question the appropriation of resources in favor of the older generation. Younger generations, in particular, are disadvantaged because they contribute more during their productive years while the certainty of enjoying the benefits in their old age no longer exists: current systems are at risk, given the prospect of a "super-aged" society. The interests of different generations are presented as a zero-sum calculation in which a more self-centered approach could become popular (Higgs & Gilleard, 2010). Traditionally, Chinese society has been guided by the moral imperative of respect for the elderly and belief in communal values. Supporting public provisions for seniors is also motivated by a sense of compassion (Earley & Gibson, 1998). However, these values have been challenged as Chinese societies have modernized at a time their populations have increasingly aged. However, at the same time, social citizenship has been increasingly popular and supporting claims for public resources legitimately. While elderly provisions could be supported either by the

Numerous studies have shown that repetitive regions in genomes play indispensable roles in the evolution, inheritance and variation of living organisms. However, most existing methods cannot achieve satisfactory performance on identifying repeats in terms of both accuracy and size, since NGS reads are too short to identify long repeats whereas SMS (Single Molecule Sequencing) long reads are with high error rates. In this study, we present a novel identification framework, LongRepMarker, based on the global de novo assembly and k-mer based multiple sequence alignment for precisely marking long repeats in genomes. The major characteristics of LongRepMarker are as follows: (i) by introducing barcode linked reads and SMS long reads to assist the assembly of all short paired-end reads, it can identify the repeats to a greater extent; (ii) by finding the overlap sequences between assemblies or chomosomes, it locates the repeats faster and more accurately; (iii) by using the multi-alignment unique k-mers rather than the high frequency k-mers to identify repeats in overlap sequences, it can obtain the repeats more comprehensively and stably; (iv) by applying the parallel alignment model based on the multi-alignment unique k-mers, the efficiency of data processing can be greatly optimized and (v) by taking the corresponding identification strategies, structural variations that occur between repeats can be identified. Comprehensive experimental results show that LongRepMarker can achieve more satisfactory results than the existing de novo detection methods (https://github.com/BioinformaticsCSU/LongRepMarker).

Motivation Compared with the second generation sequencing technologies, the third generation sequencing technologies allows us to obtain longer reads (average ∼10kbps, maximum 900kbps), but brings a higher error rate (∼15% error rate). Nanopolish is a variant and methylation detection tool based on Hidden Markov Model (HMM), which uses Oxford Nanopore sequencing data for signal-level analysis. Nanopolish can greatly improve the accuracy of assembly, whereas it is limited by long running time since most executive parts of Nanopolish is a serial and computationally expensive process. Results In this paper, we present an effective polishing tool, Multithreading Nanopolish (MultiNanopolish), which decomposes the whole process of iterative calculation in Nanopolish into small independent calculation tasks, making it possible to run this process in the parallel mode. Experimental results show that MultiNanopolish reduces running time by 50% with read-uncorrected assembler (Miniasm) and 20% with read-corrected assembler (Canu and Flye) based on 40 threads mode compared to the original Nanopolish. Availability MultiNanopolish is available at GitHub: https://github.com/BioinformaticsCSU/MultiNanopolish Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.