Based on the event every year for selecting the annual top advances in science, technology and engineering held by Editorial Department of Science & Technology Review, top 10 scientific achievements, top 10 technological achievements and top 10 engineering achievements from China in 2015 during January 1 to December 31, are selected respectively from a lot of scientific researches published in influential academic journals and scientific newspapers. The selection procedure involved screening and recommending candidate internally, followed by appraisal from experts including editorial board members and external reviewers. These achievements are introduced as the time sequence of publishing.

On February 11, 2016 the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves. This discovery attracted public attention. In this paper, we try to answer the following questions: What are gravitational waves? How are gravitational waves produced? Why and how do scientists detect gravitational waves? Moreover, we introduce the current status and prospects of gravitational wave detections.

In order to eliminate the influence of remote sensing images from several days, scaled SMMI (S-SMMI) is constructed based on soil moisture monitoring index (SMMI) and scaled NDVI (S-NDVI). Based on S-SMMI, the reflectance of band3 and band4, derived from multi-temporal TM/ETM+/OLI and HJ-CCD images between 1989 and 2013, is applied to monitoring the spatio-temporal features of soil moisture in the Shendong mining area. The relationship between soil moisture, elevation and NDVI in the Shendong mining area are also evaluated. The results indicate that the soil moisture condition has been improved for twenty-five years and there is a positive relationship between soil moisture and the improvement of vegetation coverage. The distributions of soil moisture and NDVI are influenced by elevation. Soil moisture and NDVI, in the area with low elevation, are more sensitive to the change of elevation. Compared with the change of NDVI with soil moisture between 16% and 32%, NDVI is more sensitive to the change of soil moisture when it is less than 15%. Moreover, vegetation in low-lying area is more easily influenced by human activities.

To investigate the regulation role of Ad36 on PPARγ and CIDEC in Ad36 induced adipocyte differentiation,human adiposederived mesenchymal stem cells(hAMSC)are infected with adenovirus and the adipocyte induced by Ad36 are identified using RT-qPCR and oil red experiments. The expressions of PPARγ and CIDEC genes are determined by RT-qPCR and Western Blotting in Ad36 induced hAMSC. Using GW9662, the PPARγ inhibitor inhibits the expression of PPARγ, then the CIDEC gene expression is detected by Western Blotting in the Ad36 induced hAMSC. Ad36 induced hAMSC differentiates into human adipocyte in vitro, the glucose content in media is reduced and TG content in cells is increased significantly during the differentiation compared to the control group (P<0.05), and the expressions of PPARγ and CIDEC genes are upregulated gradually compared to the control group (P<0.05). CIDEC protein expression is downregulated after treating Ad36 induced human adipocyte by GW9662, the PPARγ specific inhibitor, compared to Ad36 induced group (P<0.05). In this study it is found that Ad36 upregulates CIDEC gene expression through PPARγ in Ad36 induced human adipocytes.