The Chinese yam (Dioscorea polystachya Turcz.) is an underutilized orphan tuber crop. However, in China it has been used in traditional medicine and food for centuries due to the presence of high starch, protein, fiber, and biologically active compounds. Knowledge on the metabolomic profiles of Chinese yam varieties is needed to explore the underutilized metabolites and variety specific uses. Here, the metabolome of eight Chinese yam varieties that are cultivated in different Chinese regions was profiled. A total of 431 metabolites belonging to different biochemical classes was detected. The majority of detected metabolites were classified as amino acids and derivatives. The different yam varieties offer unique uses; e.g., Hebei Ma Yam, Henan Huai Yam, and Henan Wild Yam were the most metabolically enriched and suitable as food and medicine. Yams from Hubei region had comparable nutritional profiles, which is most probably due to their geographical origin. Specifically, Henan Wild Yam had the highest concentrations of diosgenin, vitamins, and polysaccharides. Overall, this study presents a metabolome reference for D. polystachya varieties.

The centipede Scolopendra has important medicinal value and high toxicity, making it to be an interesting subject for evolutionary studies. However, species identification in China is difficult because of limited resource exploration and lack of recent taxonomic revision. To improve the identification and taxonomy of the genus Scolopendra in China, an in-depth investigation was conducted, and an integrated method that combined morphological characteristics with molecular data was applied. The identification key was revised to show the main difference among species. Our results indicated that morphologically-delimited species were consistent with the molecular analysis inferred from the COI sequences with genetic distances and phylogenetic trees. Additional morphometrics of four characteristics provided criteria for shape variation. These results suggested that the members of the genus Scolopendra in China could be delineated as 14 separate species. A new species from Lufeng county, Yunnan province, was proposed according to its characteristics, which was named as S. lufengia sp. nov. Our results comprehensively ascertained the taxonomic status of Scolopendra species in China, explored their phylogenetic relationships, showed a high success in the identification of medicinal centipedes.

The problem of integration of folk art and, in particular, instrumental art, into the works of Chinese composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, in the light of the above-mentioned phenomena, is relevant, comprehensive and, to a certain extent, inexhaustible for the researchers of the world musicological science. This was a factor that prompted disclosure of the topic in the publication in question, which was at the same time the reason for writing the study. Its relevance stems from the importance of a deep understanding of such a phenomenon as folk instrumental art and its implementation in compositional practice. The purpose of this study is to investigate the process of integrating folklore (its instrumental branch) into professional academic music of China. The main methods for achieving this, are the principles and approaches chosen here to review, collect, study and a certain systematic compilation of sources relating to Chinese music in general, as well as its folk-instrumental field – in particular. The result of the activities undertaken is the categories of all the sectors of the problem under consideration, derived from the research process. They form a coherent structure of systems such as musical language (means of musical expression) and ways of processing folklore sources. The tables and the figure-chart illustrate this aspect. There is a considerable number of different scholarly judgments, perspectives of specialists who have addressed in their research activities the issue of integrating folk instrumental art into the works of Chinese composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. However, the problem of integrating folk instrumental art into the works of Chinese composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, as a holistic and comprehensive phenomenon, requires its own deep and comprehensive research. This fact determines the practical significance of the present study. It also demonstrates the promising nature of scientific knowledge in this field in the future.

To investigate the feasibility of rapid identification and quality evaluation of Chinese medicinal centipedes using NIR spectroscopy, the qualitative and quantitative analysis models were explored. A PCA-SVC model was optimized to differentiate five species of the genus Scolopendra. When the model was validated with the calibration and prediction sets, the prediction accuracy was 100% and 81.82%, respectively; it can meet the requirement for rapid and preliminary identification. Based on nitrogen content detected by the chemical method, and the dimensionality of spectral data reduced with PLS, the quantitative analysis models were successfully built by PLSR and SVR algorithms. After spectra were pretreated and parameters were optimized, the performance, rationality, and prediction ability of the models were validated and evaluated with RMSECV, RMSEP, RMSEE, R2, and RPD. Compared with the features and advantages of these two models, the PLS-SVR model had better performance and stronger prediction capacity, and it was finally regarded as the optimal quantitative analysis model to predict nitrogen content. The relative deviation between the predictive value and the reference was 2.69%, and the average recovery was 99.02%, which indicated it has potential for rapid prediction and evaluation of the quality of medicinal centipedes. This research suggested that NIR spectroscopy can be used as a rapid detection method to identify species and evaluate the quality of medicinal centipedes in China.