The resistance of soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.) cultivars varies with the different races of the soybean cyst nematode (SCN), Heterodera glycines, referred to as HG types (biotypes). Resistant cultivars with durable resistance are emphasized in recent years. The aim here was to identify quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for resistance to two SCN HG types (HG type 2.5.7, race 1; and HG type 1.2.3.5.7, race 4) in resistant cultivar L-10' and to analyse the additive and epistatic effects of the identified QTLs. A total of 140 F-5-derived F-10 recombinant inbred lines (F-5:10 RILs) were advanced via single-seed-descent from the cross between L-10' (broadly resistant to SCN) and Heinong 37 (SCN-susceptible). For SCN HG type 2.5.7 and HG type 1.2.3.5.7 resistance, three and six QTLs for resistance to SCN HG type 2.5.7 and HG type 1.2.3.5.7 were identified, respectively, most of which could explain <10% of the phenotypic variation. Among these QTLs, five were identified over 2years, while the other QTLs were detected in either 2009 or 2010. QSCN1-2, located near the SSR marker Sat_069 of linkage group D1b (Chromosome, 2), was responsible for the largest proportion of phenotypic variation (16.01% in 2009 and 18.94% in 2010), suggested that it could effectively be used as a candidate QTL for the marker-assisted selection (MAS) of soybean lines resistant to SCN. Additionally, for SCN HG type 2.5.7 and HG type 1.2.3.5.7 resistance, two and four QTLs showed an additive effect (a), respectively. One epistatic pair of QTLs (QSCN1-1-QSCN1-3) for SCN HG type 2.5.7 resistance and eight epistatic pairs of QTLs for SCN HG type 1.2.3.5.7 resistance were found to have significant aa effects, among which one pair of QTLs (QSCN4-4 and QSCN4-5) contributed a large proportion of aa effects (3%). The results indicated that additive and epistatic effects could significantly affect SCN resistance. Therefore, both of a and aa effects should be considered in MAS programmes.

Lighting constitutes a large proportion of the main energy consumption loads of a building; energy-efficient lighting control is an important topic to be addressed in achieving green building requirement. Within a building, huge amount of lights are being deployed in a distributed manner which poses great challenge in achieving energy saving and personalized lighting control. In this paper, the objective is to satisfy table illumination preference of each office user while minimize energy consumption of the overall lighting system by optimizing the illumination levels of the distributed luminaires. A holistic and scalable neural network model is developed to represent the complex relationship between dimming levels of luminaires and measured illuminance on the table. Based on the developed model, a lighting energy optimization algorithm is proposed to achieve energy saving while having personalized lighting control. The proposed model can serve as a base model for the improved artificial light and even daylight control system in the future study. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Emerging smart grid technologies aim to renovate traditional power grid by integrating intelligent devices and their communications for monitoring and automation of the power grid to enable efficient demand-side energy management. In this paper, energy management in smart dc building grid powered dc electrical appliances like lighting is investigated, in particular energy savings from proposed personal lighting management strategy. Unlike conventional fluorescent lamps powered mainly by ac grid, LED luminaires are dc in nature, thus results in significant power conversion losses, if operate on traditional ac powered system, are analyzed with proposed dc distribution building grid for LED lighting. This paper continues to explore the use of smart wireless sensors for personal control of the dc grid powered networked LED lighting. Experimental results show that the proposed smart LED lighting system with an energy saving mechanism incorporated is able to achieve similar lighting performance as the conventional lighting condition, while at the same time, able to attain about 44% energy saving as compared to the original ac fluorescent system. For a low voltage dc grid being implemented, the maximum power loss and voltage drop of the developed dc distribution building grid are 2.25% and 3% respectively.

Background Resistance of soybean ( Glycine max L. Merr.) cultivars to populations of cyst nematode (SCN; Heterodera glycines I.) was complicated by the diversity of HG Types (biotypes), the multigenic nature of resistance and the temperature dependence of resistance to biotypes. The objective here was to identify QTL for broad-spectrum resistance to SCN and examine the transcript abundances of some genes within the QTL. Results A Total of 140 F 5 derived F 7 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) were advanced by single-seed-descent from a cross between 'L-10' (a soybean cultivar broadly resistant to SCN) and 'Heinong 37' (a SCN susceptible cultivar). Associated QTL were identified by WinQTL2.1. QTL Qscn3-1 on linkage group (LG) E, Qscn3-2 on LG G, Qscn3-3 on LG J and Qscn14-1 on LG O were associated with SCN resistance in both year data (2007 and 2008). Qscn14-2 on LG O was identified to be associated with SCN resistance in 2007. Qscn14-3 on LG D2 was identified to be associated with SCN resistance in 2008. Qscn14-4 on LG J was identified to be associated with SCN resistance in 2008. The Qscn3-2 on LG G was linked to Satt309 (less than 4 cM), and explained 19.7% and 23.4% of the phenotypic variation in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Qscn3-3 was less than 5 cM from Satt244 on LG J, and explained 19.3% and 17.95% of the phenotypic variations in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Qscn14-4 could explain 12.6% of the phenotypic variation for the SCN race 14 resistance in 2008 and was located in the same region as Qscn3-3. The total phenotypic variation explained by Qscn3-2 and Qscn3-3 together was 39.0% and 41.3% in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Further, the flanking markers Satt275, Satt309, Sat_350 and Satt244 were used for the selection of resistant lines to SCN race 3, and the accuracy of selection was about 73% in this RIL population. Four genes in the predicted resistance gene cluster of LG J (chromosome 16) were successfully cloned by RT-PCR. The transcript encoded by the gene Glyma16g30760.1 was abundant in the SCN resistant cultivar 'L-10' but absent in susceptible cultivar 'Heinong 37'. Further, the abundance was higher in root than in leaf for 'L-10'. Therefore, the gene was a strong candidate to underlie part of the resistance to SCN. Conclusions Satt275, Satt309, Sat_305 and Satt244, which were tightly linked to the major QTL for resistance to SCN on LG G and J, would be candidates for marker-assisted selection of lines resistant to the SCN race 3. Among the six RLK genes, Glyma16g30760.1 was found to accumulate transcripts in the SCN resistance cultivar 'L-10' but not in 'Heinong 37'. The transcript abundance was higher in root than in leaf for L-10.

For some time, the modeling and verification of web services composition are focused on control flow. Recent years, data validation has gained researchers' attention too, as it is important to the correct execution of the composed web service. To verify data-related requirements of web services composition, we present a Petri net-based method for the data validation of web services composition developed with Web Service Business Process Execution Language. Data-flow related aspects of the WS-BPEL process are described with WS-CPN, which is a special kind of Colored Petri net supporting the description of XML Schema types. In WS-CPN, data types are described by CPN ML, a description language for Colored Petri net. We present WS-CPN models for various activities of a WS-BPEL process, which can be combined together to obtain the WS-CPN model for the entire composition process. Data validation problems in web services composition including redundant data, lost data, inconsistent data and misdirected data are discussed, and the methods for validating these problems are given based on WS-CPN.

Previous works on formal development for component-based systems usually equate refinement relations as behaviors containment. This setting facilitates verifying safety properties, but can't capture the intuition that a refined component should more easily react to the environment and is not convenient from a point view of design. To address this issue, we argue in favor of defining refinement of component models in terms of alternating simulation, which is a relation on game models with a game-theoretical interpretation. We investigate the refinement relations of component models in the framework of rCOS, which is a formal development method for component systems. We propose the refinement relations of rCOS contract models and specification models respectively and further prove they are alternating simulations. Finally, we define the composition operator on specifications and show the alternating refinement is compositional with respect to this operator.

The Sequence Diagram(SD) of UML2.0 enriches those of previous versions by two new operators, assert and negate, for specifying required and forbidden behaviors. The semantics of SD, however, being based on pairs of valid and invalid sets of traces, is inadequate, and prevents the new operators from being used effectively. The semantic confusions between assert and negate operators in UML SD are significant, since they pose great difficulty to the confirmation of the security of the system they designed. A new Petri-net model named LPNforSD is designed in this paper. Transformation rules from SD to LPNforSD are given out. We take fragment that described by assert or negate operator as independent part and transform it into LPNforSDs. An algorithm is also designed to check whether the SD is safe by comparing its traces with the traces getting from negate and assert fragments. By this way, we cannot only eliminate the semantic confusions between assert and negate operators, but also reduce the numbers of contingent traces. Thus, we can ensure the system more reliable

Models of software components at different levels of abstraction, component interfaces, contracts, implementations and publications are important for component-based design. Refinement relations among models at the same level and between different levels are essential for model-driven development of components. Classical refinement theories mainly focus on verification and put little attention on design. Therefore, most of them are not suitable for component-based model-driven development (CB-MDD). To address this issue, in this paper, we propose two refinement relations for CB-MDD, that is a trace-based refinement and a state-based refinement. Both are discussed in the framework of rCOS, which is a formal model of component and object systems. These refinement relations provide different granularity of abstraction and can capture the intuition that a refined component provides "more" and "better" services to the environment. We also show how to extend these refinement relations to allow us to compare contracts, components and publications with different interfaces by exploiting the primitive operator internalizing over contracts, components and publications.

Business Processing Execution Language (BPEL) and BPEL for People (BPEL4People) are two web services orchestration languages for composing web services. To describe formally their semantics, we introduce the Pi_it-calculus, a new variant of the pi-calculus, in this paper. The good feature of the Pi_it-calculus is that its execution can be interrupted and can handle timing events as well. We provide both syntax and semantics of the Pi_it-calculus and define a strong bisimulation relation that specifies when two processes can be considered as the same. With the new calculus, we then model the activities of BPEL and BPEL4People, and give their precise semantics. Our formal framework may facilitate the reliability and consistency analysis in a BPEL or BPEL4People design process.

The Sequence Diagram (SD) with time properties is frequently used in the preliminary developing phase of embedded real time system, however, it is not easy to verify due to its informal semantics. An extended time Petri net (TPN) with \emph{weak} semantics–TLOPNforSD–is defined and proved to be decidable as far as reach ability, boundedness and cover ability are concerned. A method for progressively refining the SD is also offered in the transformation phase. The SD with time properties are made to be more reliable in two aspects: (1) an enabled transitions generating algorithm based on \emph{weak} semantics is designed. Based on this algorithm, the verification of SD with time properties in qualitative aspect can be realized by dint of ROMEO, (2) using the state-class diagram obtained in qualitative analysis phase, a scheduling strategy satisfying all the time constraints specified in the SD is worked out. The strategy is used to get compelling time intervals which are more accurate than the static intervals predefined on the SD for every event.

The resistance of soybean cultivars to soybean cyst nematode(SCN) closely related with some agronomic traits.Therefore,studying the relationship between characters of SCN resistance and agronomic characters had great reference value for breeding practice.A recombinant inbred lines(RILs) population with 141 F2:8 individuals derived from the cross of L-10,a nonrace specific soybean line as male parent,and Heinong 37 as female parent,was taken as materials.Plastic bag method was introduced in greenhouse disease nursery to evaluate the resistance of soybean RILs,and correlation analysis between SCN resistance and main agronomic characters was conducted.Results showed the cysts parasitic index exhibited a negative correlation with plant height,pods number per plant and 100-seed weight;the cysts parasitic index had a correlation with flower color,and had a significant correlation with seed coat and hilum color.The high-resistance varieties exhibited the character of oval grains,black seed coat,black hilum and brown pubescence,and these qualitative traits can provide referable basis for selection of soybean varieties with high resistance to cyst nematode.

Quality of service (QoS) of workflows and workflow-based applications is given increasing attention by both industry and academic. In this paper, we propose a novel analytical framework to analyze QoS (metrics include make-span, cost, and reliability) of workflow systems based on GWF-net, which extends traditional workflow net by associating tasks with generally distributed firing delay and time-to-failure. The GFW-net model is used to model process structure and task organization of workflows at the process level. In contrast with prevailing QoS models based on Markovian process, we introduce a reduction technique to evaluate QoS of GWF-net process avoiding the state-explosion problem and tedious mathematical derivation of state-transition probabilities. Through a case study, we show that our framework is capable of modeling real-world workflow-based application effectively. Also, experiments and confidence-interval analysis in the case study indicate that the reduction methods are verified by real results. We also compare our approach with related research in the text. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.