Magnet bioreporter device for ecological toxicity assessment on heavy metal contamination of coal cinder sites

A novel magnet bioreporter device was developed in this research for soil toxicity assessment, via magnetic nanoparticles functionalized whole-cell bioreporters. The whole-cell bioreporter ADPWH-recA kept response capability to DNA damage after magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) functionalization, and could be harvested from soil samples by permanent magnet to reduce the soil particle disturbance. Compared to conventional treatments applying bioreporter directly in soil-water mixture (SW-M treatment) or supernatant (SW-S treatment), MNPs functionalized bioreporter via the magnet device (MFB) treatment achieved high sensitivity to evaluate the toxicity and bioavailability of chromium contamination in soils from 10 mg/kg to 5000 mg/kg soil dry weight. The MNPs functionalized bioreporter also achieved high reproducibility with pH value from 5.0 to 9.0, salinity from 0% to 3% and temperature from 20 °C to 37 °C. A case study was carried out on the ecological toxicity assessment of heavy metal contamination at the coal cinder site via the magnet bioreporter device. The heavy metal toxicity declined with the increasing distance to the coal cinder point, and a significant accumulation of heavy metal toxicity was observed along the vertical distribution. No direct link was found between the pollution load index (PLI) and heavy metal toxicity, and the results suggested the bioreporter test monitored the toxicity of heavy metals in soils and was an important approach for ecological risk assessment. Magnet bioreporter device also offered the high throughput biological measurement and was feasible for in situ monitoring

Multi-focus image fusion based on non-negative sparse representation and patch-level consistency rectification

Most existing sparse representation-based (SR) fusion methods consider the local information of each image patch independently during fusion. Some spatial artifacts are easily introduced to the fused image. A sliding window technology is often employed by these methods to overcome this issue. However, this comes at the cost of high computational complexity. Alternatively, we come up with a novel multi-focus image fusion method that takes full consideration of the strong correlations among spatially adjacent image patches with NO need for a sliding window. To this end, a non-negative SR model with local consistency constraint (CNNSR) on the representation coefficients is first constructed to encode each image patch. Then a patch-level consistency rectification strategy is presented to merge the input image patches, by which the spatial artifacts in the fused images are greatly reduced. As well, a compact non-negative dictionary is constructed for the CNNSR model. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed fusion method outperforms some state-of-the art methods. Moreover, the proposed method is computationally efficient, thereby facilitating real-world applications

Seismic modeling by optimizing regularized staggered-grid finite-difference operators using a time-space-domain dispersion-relationship-preserving method

The staggered-grid finite-difference (FD) method is widely used in numerical simulation of the wave equation. With stability conditions, grid dispersion often exists because of the discretization of the time and the spatial derivatives in the wave equation. Therefore, suppressing grid dispersion is a key problem for the staggered-grid FD schemes. To reduce the grid dispersion, the traditional method uses high-order staggered-grid schemes in the space domain. However, the wave is propagated in the time and space domain simultaneously. Therefore, some researchers proposed to derive staggered-grid FD schemes based on the time-space domain dispersion relationship. However, such methods were restricted to low frequencies and special angles of propagation. We have developed a regularizing technique to tackle the ill-conditioned property of the symmetric linear system and to stably provide approximate solutions of the FD coefficients for acoustic-wave equations. Dispersion analysis and seismic numerical simulations determined that the proposed method satisfies the dispersion relationship over a much wider range of frequencies and angles of propagation and can ensure FD coefficients being solved via a well-posed linear system and hence improve the forward modeling precision

Geochip: A high throughput genomic tool for linking community structure to functions

GeoChip is a comprehensive functional gene array that targets key functional genes involved in the geochemical cycling of N, C, and P, sulfate reduction, metal resistance and reduction, and contaminant degradation. Studies have shown the GeoChip to be a sensitive, specific, and high-throughput tool for microbial community analysis that has the power to link geochemical processes with microbial community structure. However, several challenges remain regarding the development and applications of microarrays for microbial community analysis

Open-pit mine soft rock slope internal row tracking pressure side control engineering：A case study at the south side of the first mining area of Hesigewula south open-pit coal mine

Slope stability control is crucial for safe and efficient coal mining in open-pit mines with soft rock. To address the challenge of stabilizing dip soft rock slope rock slopes, the treatment engineering of inner row tracking pressure side of dip soft rock slope in open-pit mine is proposed based on the analysis of the main controlling factors of slope stability. This study takes the south side of the first mining area of Hesigewula south open-pit coal mine as the engineering background and proposes a synergistic treatment scheme for the slope stability of the stope and inner dump, utilizing the combination of limit equilibrium method and numerical simulation to design the spatial form of the stope slope. This treatment scheme maximizes the safe recovery of the coal resources covered by the slope. The research results indicate that the length of exposed weak layer is the primary controlling factor of the stability in inclined soft rock slopes in open-pit mines. Controlling the tracking distance between the stope and the inner dump is an effective way to improve slope stability. With an increase in tracking distance, the slope damage mode transitions from the cut-layer-sublayer-shear-out sliding with an arc as the side interface and the weak layer as the bottom interface to cut-layer-sublayer sliding with an arc as the side interface and weak layer as the bottom interface, leading to a gradual decrease in slope stability. Moreover, the stability of the inner dump and its composite slope with the stope increases exponentially with an increase in the backfill rock range of the weak layer of the failure floor. The study sets the shallow slope of the south slope of the first mining area of Hesigewula coal mine to be 40 m transportation flat and 15 m security flat, and the deep slope angle of the bottom slope is 29°. When the tracking distance is controlled within 50 m, it can meet the safety requirements. When the weak layer of the inner dump base is destroyed, and the inclined length of the backfill rock is 60 m, it can also meet the safety requirements. The study provides new insights into slope stability control in soft rock open-pit coal mines

The dynamic change of microbial communities in crude oil contaminated soils from oilfields in China

To study the biodegradability of microbial communities in crude oil contamination, crude oil-contaminated soil samples from different areas of China were collected. Using polyphasic approach, this study explored the dynamic change of the microbial communities during natural accumulation in oilfield and how the constructed bioremediation systems reshape the composition of microbial communities. The abundance of oil-degrading microbes was highest when oil content was 3%–8%. This oil content is potentially optimal for oil-degrading bacteria proliferate. During a ∼12 months natural accumulation, the quantity of oil-degrading microbes increased from 105 to 108 cells/g of soil. A typical sample of Liaohe (LH, oil-contaminated site near Liaohe river, Liaoning Province, China) was remediated for 50 days to investigate the dynamic change of microbial communities. The average FDA (a fluorescein diacetate approach) activities reached 0.25 abs/h·g dry soil in the artificially enhanced repair system, 32% higher than the 0.19 abs/h·g dry soil in natural circumstances. The abundance of oil-degrading microbes increased steadily from 0.001 to 0.068. During remediation treatment, oil content in the soil sample was reduced from 6.0% to 3.7%. GC-MS analysis indicated up to 67% utilization of C10–C20 normal paraffin hydrocarbons, the typical compounds that undergo microbial degradation

A whole-cell bioreporter assay for quantitative genotoxicity evaluation of environmental samples

Whole-cell bioreporters have emerged as promising tools for genotoxicity evaluation, due to their rapidity, cost-effectiveness, sensitivity and selectivity. In this study, a method for detecting genotoxicity in environmental samples was developed using the bioluminescent whole-cell bioreporter Escherichia coli recA::luxCDABE. To further test its performance in a real world scenario, the E. coli bioreporter was applied in two cases: i) soil samples collected from chromium(VI) contaminated sites; ii) crude oil contaminated seawater collected after the Jiaozhou Bay oil spill which occurred in 2013. The chromium(VI) contaminated soils were pretreated by water extraction, and directly exposed to the bioreporter in two phases: aqueous soil extraction (water phase) and soil supernatant (solid phase). The results indicated that both extractable and soil particle fixed chromium(VI) were bioavailable to the bioreporter, and the solid-phase contact bioreporter assay provided a more precise evaluation of soil genotoxicity. For crude oil contaminated seawater, the response of the bioreporter clearly illustrated the spatial and time change in genotoxicity surrounding the spill site, suggesting that the crude oil degradation process decreased the genotoxic risk to ecosystem. In addition, the performance of the bioreporter was simulated by a modified cross-regulation gene expression model, which quantitatively described the DNA damage response of the E. coli bioreporter. Accordingly, the bioluminescent response of the bioreporter was calculated as the mitomycin C equivalent, enabling quantitative comparison of genotoxicities between different environmental samples. This bioreporter assay provides a rapid and sensitive screening tool for direct genotoxicity assessment of environmental samples

ProAgent: Building Proactive Cooperative Agents with Large Language Models

Building agents with adaptive behavior in cooperative tasks stands as a paramount goal in the realm of multi-agent systems. Current approaches to developing cooperative agents rely primarily on learning-based methods, whose policy generalization depends heavily on the diversity of teammates they interact with during the training phase. Such reliance, however, constrains the agents' capacity for strategic adaptation when cooperating with unfamiliar teammates, which becomes a significant challenge in zero-shot coordination scenarios. To address this challenge, we propose ProAgent, a novel framework that harnesses large language models (LLMs) to create proactive agents capable of dynamically adapting their behavior to enhance cooperation with teammates. ProAgent can analyze the present state, and infer the intentions of teammates from observations. It then updates its beliefs in alignment with the teammates' subsequent actual behaviors. Moreover, ProAgent exhibits a high degree of modularity and interpretability, making it easily integrated into various of coordination scenarios. Experimental evaluations conducted within the Overcooked-AI environment unveil the remarkable performance superiority of ProAgent, outperforming five methods based on self-play and population-based training when cooperating with AI agents. Furthermore, in partnered with human proxy models, its performance exhibits an average improvement exceeding 10% compared to the current state-of-the-art method. For more information about our project, please visit~\url{https://pku-proagent.github.io}.Comment: v3 is the AAAI'24 camera ready version, which polished abstract and introduction based on the reviewers' comments, and enriched related works. 7 pages of main content, 2 pages of references, 2 figures and 1 tabl