Biodiversity shapes tree species aggregations in tropical forests

Spatial patterns of conspecific trees are considered as the consequences of biological interactions and environmental influences. They also reflect species interactions in plant communities. However, biological attributes are often neglected while deliberating the factors shaping species distributions. As rising attentions are paid to spatial patterns of tropical forest trees, we noticed that seven Center of Tropical Forest Sites and four Forest Dynamic Plots in Asia and America have presented analogously high proportions of species with aggregated conspecific individuals coincidently. This phenomenon is distinctive and repudiates fundamental ecology hypotheses which suggested dispersed distributions of conspecific tropical trees due to intensive density and natural enemy pressures in tropical forests. We believe that similar aggregation patterns shared by these tropical forests implies the existence of structuring forces in biogeographical scale instead of habitat heterogeneity in local community scales as scientists have considered. To approach the factors contributing to this cross-continent spatial pattern of trees, we obtained and reviewed ecosystem attributes, including topography, temperature, precipitation, biodiversity, density, and biomass, of these forests. Here we show that the proportions of aggregated species are actually constants independent of any ecosystem attributes regardless the nature of these tropical forests. However, local biodiversity are the major factor determining the number of aggregated species and the aggregation of large individuals of these forests. Aggregation of large trees declines along rising biodiversity, while the numbers of aggregated species increase permanently along lifting biodiversity. We propose a possible equilibrium and saturated status of the tropical forests in accommodating aggregated species. Furthermore, the tight correlations of biodiversity and species aggregation strongly imply the importance of overlooked biological interactions in shaping the spatial patterns in the tropical forests

Metagenomic Applications in Virus Discovery, Ecology, and the Surveillance of Australian Wildlife

Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS), particularly total RNA sequencing (“meta-transcriptomics”), has led to a revolution in virus discovery, veterinary diagnostics and virus evolution. Wildlife naturally harbour a diverse assemblage of infectious microorganisms and these can be a source of novel, and often poorly studied, diseases of humans and other animals. Many mortality and morbidity events in wildlife are long-standing, neglected and unsolved. These include wobbly possum disease, black and white bird disease, clenched claw syndrome and bearded dragon respiratory disease. To provide a new understanding of these diseases and identify pathogens in diseased wildlife with unknown aetiology across different taxa, I developed and applied a meta-transcriptomic-based pipeline that was used in combination with retrospective clinical metadata, histopathology, phylogeny, and molecular assays. Accordingly, novel viruses were identified from a wide range of virus families, including the Circoviridae, Chaphamaparvoviridae, Flaviviridae, Astroviridae, Picornaviridae, Paramixoviridae, Adenoviridae, and Polyomaviridae, greatly extending our knowledge of virus diversity in wildlife, including marsupials, birds, and reptiles from both the wild and captive environments. Similarly, through exploiting meta-transcriptomic approaches and mining the Sequence Read Archive, I discovered four novel hepatitis delta-like viruses from fish, amphibians and termites, thereby rejecting the concept that hepatitis delta viruses are only associated with humans. In sum, my work highlights a successful combination of metagenomics with traditional tools to transform veterinary clinical diagnostics and disease surveillance. In doing so, it sheds light on the enormous diversity of viruses, elucidating their origins and evolutionary history, and allowing the discovery of pathogens from wildlife biodiversity diseases within a One Health perspective

High and Increasing Oxa-51 DNA Load Predict Mortality in Acinetobacter baumannii Bacteremia: Implication for Pathogenesis and Evaluation of Therapy

BACKGROUND: While quantification of viral loads has been successfully employed in clinical medicine and has provided valuable insights and useful markers for several viral diseases, the potential of measuring bacterial DNA load to predict outcome or monitor therapeutic responses remains largely unexplored. We tested this possibility by investigating bacterial loads in Acinetobacter baumannii bacteremia, a rapidly increasing nosocomial infection characterized by high mortality, drug resistance, multiple and complicated risk factors, all of which urged the need of good markers to evaluate therapeutics. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We established a quantitative real-time PCR assay based on an A. baumannii-specific gene, Oxa-51, and conducted a prospective study to examine A. baumannii loads in 318 sequential blood samples from 51 adults patients (17 survivors, 34 nonsurvivors) with culture-proven A. baumannii bacteremia in the intensive care units. Oxa-51 DNA loads were significantly higher in the nonsurvivors than survivors on day 1, 2 and 3 (P=0.03, 0.001 and 0.006, respectively). Compared with survivors, nonsurvivors had higher maximum Oxa-51 DNA load and a trend of increase from day 0 to day 3 (P<0.001), which together with Pitt bacteremia score were independent predictors for mortality by multivariate analysis (P=0.014 and 0.016, for maximum Oxa-51 DNA and change of Oxa-51 DNA, respectively). Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed significantly different survival curves in patients with different maximum Oxa-51 DNA and change of Oxa-51 DNA from day 0 to day 3. CONCLUSIONS: High Oxa-51 DNA load and its initial increase could predict mortality. Moreover, monitoring Oxa-51 DNA load in blood may provide direct parameters for evaluating new regimens against A. baumannii in future clinical studies

The Role of Long Noncoding RNAs in Central Nervous System and Neurodegenerative Diseases

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) refer to a group of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) that has a transcript of more than 200 nucleotides in length in eukaryotic cells. The lncRNAs regulate gene expression at epigenetic, transcriptional, and post-transcriptional levels by multiple action modes. In this review, we describe the diverse roles reported for lncRNAs, and discuss how they could mechanistically be involved in the development of central nervous system (CNS) and neurodegenerative diseases. Further studies on the function of lncRNAs and their mechanism will help deepen our understanding of the development, function, and diseases of the CNS, and provide new ideas for the design and development of some therapeutic drugs

INTEGRATING TRA AND TOE FRAMEWORKS FOR CLOUD ERP SWITCHING INTENTION BY TAIWANESE COMPANY

ERP systems had played an important role in Taiwanese industry in the past. Nowadays, most of companies have already install traditional type of ERP. However, with the development of cloud computing recently, the scope of applying cloud computing have been gradually expanded to the enterprise information system, such as cloud CRM provided by Salesforce.com, Business by Design provided by SAP. The model in this study is based on TOE model combination of Theory of Reasoned Action(TRA). We try to develop a model and utilize this model to defines critical effect factors to company’s intention of switching to cloud ERP from traditional type of ERP. This study used quantitative research methods and survey questionnaire, dates were collected from the 283 employees in Taiwanese company whose companies have already install traditional type of ERP and for cloud ERP have a certain understanding. This research has adopted SPSS and AMOS to analyse the reliability and validity. Last, structural equation model (SEM) for the data analysis to investigate the causalities among all parameters constructed in the proposed model. The results of this study were summarized as follows： The attitude of switching to cloud ERP positively impacted the intention of switching to cloud ERP, system quality positively impacted the attitude of switching to cloud ERP, financial benefit positively impacted the attitude of switching to cloud ERP, the trust factor positively impacted the attitude of switching to cloud ERP, industries pressure positively impacted the intention of switching to cloud ERP, surprisingly, government support is not perceived significant impacted the intention of switching to cloud ERP. This study provides a well criteria for cloud ERP vender, not only system design but also system sales. In addition, business user can also utilize this criterion

Fabrication of multianalyte CeO2 nanograin electrolyte–insulator–semiconductor biosensors by using CF4 plasma treatment

Multianalyte CeO2 biosensors have been demonstrated to detect pH, glucose, and urine concentrations. To enhance the multianalyte sensing capability of these biosensors, CF4 plasma treatment was applied to create nanograin structures on the CeO2 membrane surface and thereby increase the contact surface area. Multiple material analyses indicated that crystallization or grainization caused by the incorporation of flourine atoms during plasma treatment might be related to the formation of the nanograins. Because of the changes in surface morphology and crystalline structures, the multianalyte sensing performance was considerably enhanced. Multianalyte CeO2 nanograin electrolyte–insulator–semiconductor biosensors exhibit potential for use in future biomedical sensing device applications

Microwave photonic signal generation in an optically injected discrete mode semiconductor laser

This article belongs to the Special Issue Microwave Photonics Applications.In this paper, microwave photonic signal generation based on the period-one dynamic of optically injected discrete mode (DM) semiconductor lasers has been experimentally demonstrated and numerically simulated. The results show that the frequency of the generated microwave increases linearly with the frequency detuning or optical injection ratio. In addition, a single optical feedback loop is sufficient to reduce the microwave linewidth without significantly deteriorating side mode suppression. The simulation results using a model considering the nonlinear dependencies of the carrier recombination agree well with the experimental results, which indicates that the nonlinear carrier recombination effect is important in determining the nonlinear dynamics of optically injected DM lasers.This research was funded in part by the DESTINI project (2017/COL/007) funded by the ERDF under the SMART Expertise scheme; in part by the DSP Centre (82085) funded by the ERDF through the Welsh Government; and in part by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain, under grant RTI2018-094118-B-C22 MCIN/AEI/FEDER, UE.Peer reviewe