Impact of agro-farming activities on microbial diversity of acidic red soils in a Camellia Oleifera Forest

ABSTRACT The production of Camellia oleifera (oil tea), typically planted in acidic red soils in southern China, is limited by low soil fertility. Agro-farming is one way to promote soil fertility by increasing organic matter and microbial communities. To understand the impact of agro-farming activity on soil fertility, three types of agro-farming, namely, raising laying hens under forest (RLH), cultivating Lolium perenne grass under forest (LPG), and maintenance of native grass (MNG), were employed in an oil tea farm with acidic red soil in Changsha, China. Soil samples were collected from the farm to estimate microbial communities, pH, and total organic carbon (TOC) in different seasons. The results indicated that TOC and temperature were the dominant factors influencing the variations of bacterial communities, while temperature and pH affected the fungal communities in the soil. The most abundant bacterial phyla were Acidobacteria, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Chloroflexi , while the most abundant fungal phyla were Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, and Zygomycota . Regardless of treatment, the bacterial richness and diversity were both low in spring, and the fungal richness and diversity in summer and autumn were higher than in spring and winter. The TOC content and pH in LPG were significantly higher than in other treatments. Microbial communities in LPG and MNG were more stable than in RLH. In summary, cultivating grass under forest treatment was the best way to improve the microenvironment with the highest TOC content and fewer pathogenic microorganisms.</div

Selective Fusion, Solvent Dissolution, and Local Symmetry Effects in Inversion of Colloidal Crystals to Ordered Porous Films

Polystyrene−methacrylic core−shell nanospheres, self-assembled into face-centered-cube-like colloidal crystals with their (001) planes parallel to the substrate, have been transformed into ordered pore structures by a toluene treatment. Detailed analysis by transmission electron microscopy reveals that the morphological transformation is preceded by an internal neck formation due to selective fusion of the polystyrene-rich core material, at the contacts between the nanoparticles, followed by the selective dissolution of the polystyrene-rich cores. We have demonstrated the importance of local symmetry and compactness of the nanospheres assembly in determining the nature of the neck formation and the existence of multiscale ordered pore structures in the square facing colloidal crystals. The pseudo layer-by-layer nature of the selective dissolution of square arranged nanosphere multilayers is responsible for the observed three-dimensional pore structures

Gaussian process based optimization algorithms with input uncertainty

Metamodels as cheap approximation models for expensive to evaluate functions have been commonly used in simulation optimization problems. Among various types of metamodels, the Gaussian Process (GP) model is popular for both deterministic and stochastic simulation optimization problems. However, input uncertainty is usually ignored in simulation optimization problems, and thus current GP-based optimization algorithms do not incorporate input uncertainty. This article aims to refine the current GP-based optimization algorithms to solve the stochastic simulation optimization problems when input uncertainty is considered. The comprehensive numerical results indicate that our refined algorithms with input uncertainty can find optimal designs more efficiently than the existing algorithms when input uncertainty is present.</p

Aspirin versus Clopidogrel Mono-Therapy for the Treatment of Patients with Stable Coronary Artery Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

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DNA–Protein Cross-Linking Sequencing for Genome-Wide Mapping of Thymidine Glycol

Thymidine glycol (Tg) is the most prevalent form of oxidatively induced pyrimidine lesions in DNA. Tg can arise from direct oxidation of thymidine in DNA. In addition, 5-methyl-2′-deoxycytidine (5-mdC) can be oxidized to 5-mdC glycol, and its subsequent deamination also yields Tg. However, Tg's distribution in the human genome remains unknown. Here, we presented a DNA–protein cross-linking sequencing (DPC-Seq) method for genome-wide mapping of Tg in human cells. Our approach capitalizes on the specificity of a bifunctional DNA glycosylase, i.e., NTHL1, for the covalent labeling, as well as DPC pulldown, SDS-PAGE fractionation, and membrane transfer for highly efficient and selective enrichment of Tg-bearing DNA. By employing DPC-Seq, we detected thousands of Tg sites in the human genome, where dual ablation of NTHL1 and NEIL1, the major DNA glycosylases responsible for Tg repair, led to pronounced increases in the number of Tg peaks. In addition, Tg is depleted in genomic regions associated with active transcription but enriched at nucleosome-binding sites, especially at heterochromatin sites marked with H3K9me2. Collectively, we developed a DPC-Seq method for highly efficient enrichment of Tg-containing DNA and for genome-wide mapping of Tg in human cells. Our work offers a robust tool for future functional studies of Tg in DNA, and we envision that the method can also be adapted for mapping other modified nucleosides in genomic DNA in the future

Miniature atom bottle traps enabled by chiral doughnut light

A novel optical set-up which enables cold atoms to be trapped in a finite set of miniature (sub-wavelength) bottle traps is highlighted. These bottle traps are formed when the atoms interact with a tightly focused standing wave due to two-counter propagating optical vortex beams possessing the same winding number $\ell=\pm1$ and the same circular polarization ($\sigma=\mp 1)$. Tight focusing generates strong longitudinal field components which become responsible for an on-axis standing wave. The resulting optical potential leads to the axial confinement of far blue-detuned atoms. This completes the formation of the bottle trap, since the off-axis radial confinement is, as usual, provided by the optical potential due to the interference of the transverse components of the light. The main characteristics of the bottle traps are illustrated using typical experimentally-accessible parameters. Due to the spin-orbit coupling the trap parameters are tunable by changing the ellipicity of the light

Chirality-enabled optical dipole potential energy for two-level atoms

We consider the optical dipole potential energy, which arises from the interaction of a two-level atom with a circularly polarized Laguerre-Gaussian laser beam of small waist. The beam is characterized by the existence of a longitudinal electric field component which is responsible for the appearance of a chiral term in the optical dipole potential energy. This term reverses sign if either the winding number or the wave polarization of the beam reverses sign. We propose a scheme of a bi-chromatic vortex interaction with the two-level atom in which the resulting optical dipole potential is fully chiral

Parallel-Reaction-Monitoring-Based Proteome-Wide Profiling of Differential Kinase Protein Expression during Prostate Cancer Metastasis in Vitro

Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer in men, and kinases are heavily pursued as drug targets for anticancer therapy. In this study, we applied our recently reported parallel-reaction-monitoring (PRM)-based targeted proteomic method to examine the reprogramming of the human kinome associated with bone metastasis of prostate cancer in vitro. The method displayed superior sensitivity over the shotgun-proteomic approach, and it facilitated the quantification of the relative expression of 276 kinase proteins in a pair of bone metastatic prostate cancer cells. Among the differentially expressed kinases, mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase kinase kinase 4 (MAP4K4) stimulates the migration and invasion of cultured prostate cancer cells, partially by modulating the activity of secreted matrix metalloproteinases 9 (MMP-9). We also found that the upregulation of MAP4K4 in metastatic prostate cancer cells is driven by the MYC proto-oncogene. Cumulatively, we identify MAP4K4 as a potential promoter for prostate cancer metastasis in vitro

Synthesis of Fe-MOFs/h-CeO₂ hollow micro-spheres and their highly efficient photocatalytic degradation of RhB

A series of Fe-MOFs/h-CeO2 composite photocatalysts were synthesized by a hydrothermal method using cerium oxide hollow microspheres as carriers, naphthalene dicarboxylic acid as an organic ligand, and iron as a metal center. The obtained samples were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, UV-Vis, XPS, and PL. It shows that the samples contained hollow CeO2 microspheres with a diameter of about 500 nm as the carrier, and the surface was a burr-like shell coated with Fe-MOFs about 100 nm. The bandgap of Fe-MOFs/h-CeO2 was reduced to 1.62 eV; the photocatalytic performance was tested via RhB degradation. The results indicate that the Fe-MOFs/h-CeO2 composites show enhanced photocatalytic activity, in contrast with CeO2 hollow microspheres. All of this can be attributed to the that the MOFs fabricated could not only improve the light adsorption through the outer shells and provide more active sites but also enhance charge carriers. It is expected that this study could provide helpful results for fabricating and exploration of composite catalysts with tunable photocatalytic performance.</p

Super-chirality of paraxial higher order Poincare modes

We demonstrate that higher order Poincare modes of order m are super-chiral, displaying enhancement factors proportional to $m$ and $m^2$ in their helicity/chirality. With m having arbitrarily large integer values, such modes, in principle, possess unlimited super-chirality. These findings pave the way to applications, including the strong enhancements of optical interactions with chiral matter. The work indicates considerable flexibility in controlling the helicity of any higher order paraxial twisted light mode and it incorporates a very wide range of physical scenarios