Raman spectroscopy has been used to investigate the structure of coal tar pitch heat-treated up to 3000℃ by using 514.5 run Ar ion laser line. Four critical temperature ranges were found on pyrolyzing coal tar pitch, which correspond to four distinct processes from disordered carbons to the well-ordered graphite structure. The range of heat treat temperature (HTT) below 1000℃ corresponds to gas evolution during the pyrolysis of coal tar pitch. Above the HTT are correlated to rearrangements of enlarged molecules, growth of the molecules along the direction of plane, finally stacking in the normal direction of the plane, in the respective HTT ranges of 1000-2000, above 2000 and 2500-3000℃.

We have studied the response of molecular clouds in the Galactic disk to a rotating bar by conducting Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations for the Galaxy in order to understand the dynamical structures of the Galactic Center (GC) molecular clouds, and their implications. In our study it was found that the structures of GC molecular clouds could be induced by the combined effects of rotating bar potential, the hydrodynamic collisions and gravitational miss collisions between the clouds.

We have mapped the C 3 H 2 2 12 − 1 01 transition line toward the Sgr A molecular cloud on a 1' grid spacing and derived C 3 H 2 column densities of 3 \~ 7 × 10 14 c m − 2 for molecular clouds of Sgr A. The fractional abundances of C 3 H 2 relative to H 2 are obtained to be 3 \~ 6 × 10 − 9 , which are slightly lower than that for the cold dark cloud TMC-1 but are enhanced by factors of 5-60 compared to those for Sgr B2 and the Orion extended ridge. We also estimate from the C 3 H 2 column densities total masses of \~ 10 6 M ⨀ for two clouds (M - 0.13 - 0.08 and M - 0.02 - 0.07), which are thought to be close to the virial equilibrium. We suggest that the large abundance of C 3 H 2 in Sgr A may be partly due to the activities of the Galactic center.

In crop breeding program, information about genetic dissimilarity on breeding resources is very important to corroborate genealogical relationships and to predict the most heterozygotic hybrid combinations and inbred breeding. This study aimed to evaluate the genetic variation in Kenyan sunflower breeding lines based on simple sequence repeat (SSR). A total of 83 alleles were detected at 32 SSR loci. The allele number per locus ranged from 2 to 7 with an average of 2.7 alleles per locus detected from the 24 sunflower accessions and the average value of polymorphic information contents (PIC) were 0.384. A cluster analysis based on the genetic similarity coefficients was conducted and the 24 sunflower breeding resources were classified into three groups. The principal coordinates (PCoA) revealed 34% and 13.38% respectively, and 47.38% of total variation. It was found that the genetic diversity within the Kenyan sunflower breeding resources was narrower than that in other sunflower germplasm resources, suggesting the importance and feasibility of introducing elite genotypes from different origins for selection of breeding lines with broader genetic base in Kenyan sunflower breeding program.

"Early Valley", is an early maturing potato cultivar with high yield potential. "Early Valley" is a clonal selection resulting from the cross between 'Suncrisp' and 'A87109-10'. It has medium plant height and light green foliage. "Early Valley" has medium flowering habit and white flowers. Tubers are smooth, yellow skin, light yellow flesh, round tuber shape, medium eye depth, and medium dormancy and good keeping quality. It has stable yield under wide range of climatic conditions. "Early Valley" is resistance to late blight, but moderately susceptible to common scab and hollow heart. This cultivar is also resistant to potato rotting at harvesting during the raining season. "Early Valley" has high level of antioxidant activity (about three times higher) and vitamin C (higher by 40%) than the 'Superior'. This cultivar has high level of tuber uniformity and capable of yielding 36.56 t/ha which is 17.07% higher than the control potato cultivar 'Superior' under optimum agronomical practices.