Multi-year succession of cyanobacteria blooms in a highland reservoir with changing nutrient status, Guizhou Province, China

Over the last 22 years significant phytoplankton changes in Hongfeng lake reservoir have been observed with multiple years of harmful cyanobacteria blooms (cHABs). Fish farming and other anthropogenic activities from 1994-2001 triggered the harmful blooms. Nine years after the cessation of aquaculture, a conversion from problematic species (Microcystis spp, Aphanizomenon flos-aquae) to the less problematic species P. limnetica and other associated non-cyanobacteria taxa was recorded. Through this period of change, trophic factors (bottom-up) were re-examined, and correlations between cHABs and selected environmental variables were observed. Higher temperatures, nutrients (TN, TP) and available light significantly favored the development of Microcystis spp blooms. With declining nutrient loads, and a decline in TP relative to TN there was a competitive shift from Microcystis summer blooms to the growth of Pseudanabaena limnetica and other non-cyanobacteria. Pseudanabaena limnetica was favored over Microcystis spp when temperatures were <20°C and TP was <0.03 mg L-1. The apparent species succession to P. limnetica was enhanced by a competitive advantage under varied light conditions. Multiple environmental and biotic conditions (not always nutrients) were driving cHABs. Although only a selected number of environmental variables were examined, the CCA analysis supports observations that temperature and nutrients were associated with the species shift. The replacement of cHABs with the growth of less toxic cyanobacteria like P. limnetica, and other algae creates an interesting scenario (new community condition) for the removal of problematic taxa in reservoir systems. Diverting or controlling blooms will have direct implications on water quality and economic remediation initiatives in reservoir and lake management

CIDO: The Community-Based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology

Current COVID-19 pandemic and previous SARS/MERS outbreaks have caused a series of major crises to global public health. We must integrate the large and exponentially growing amount of heterogeneous coronavirus data to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechanisms, in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs. Ontologies have emerged to play an important role in standard knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. We have initiated the development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO). As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is an open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. In this article, the general architecture and the design patterns of the CIDO are introduced, CIDO representation of coronaviruses, phenotypes, anti-coronavirus drugs and medical devices (e.g. ventilators) are illustrated, and an application of CIDO implemented to identify repurposable drug candidates for effective and safe COVID-19 treatment is presented

A comprehensive update on CIDO: the community-based coronavirus infectious disease ontology

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications

Carbothermic Reduction and Nitridation Mechanism of Vanadium-Bearing Titanomagnetite Concentrate

In this study, the carbothermic reduction and nitridation mechanism of vanadium-bearing titanomagnetite concentrate are investigated in terms of phase transformation, microstructure transformation, and thermodynamic analyses. The differences in the reaction behavior of titanomagnetite and ilmenite in vanadium-bearing titanomagnetite concentrate, as well as the distribution characteristic of V in the roasted products, are emphatically studied. It is observed that the reaction sequences of titanomagnetite and ilmenite transformations into nitride are as follows: Fe3−xTixO4→Fe2TiO4→FeTiO3→M3O5→(Ti, V)(N, C); FeTiO3→M3O5→Ti(N, C). The reduction of M3O5 to TiN is the rate-limiting step of the entire reaction, and metal iron is an important medium for transferring C for the reduction of M3O5. Titanomagnetite is faster to convert into nitride than ilmenite is, and the reasons for this are discussed in detail. During the entire roasting process, V mainly coexists with Ti and seems to facilitate the conversion of titanium oxides into (Ti, V)(N, C)

Effect of mechanical activation on carbothermic reduction and nitridation of titanomagnetite concentrates

The carbothermic reduction and nitridation process of titanomagnetite concentrates with the help of mechanical activation were investigated by particle size analysis, thermodynamic calculation, thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray diffraction analysis, scanning electron microscopy, and energy-dispersive spectroscopy analysis. The thermogravimetric and X-ray diffraction results indicated that either the reduction of iron oxide or the reduction and nitridation of M3O5 to TiN could be promoted significantly with the increase in activation time. The results obtained from scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive spectroscopy showed that, when samples were not activated, chunks of and thin M3O5 were derived from the reduction of ilmenite and titanomagnetite. They were severely sintered with impurities to form a dense structure. As a result, M3O5 was difficult to be converted to TiN, especially chunks of M3O5. However, when samples were activated, the sintering degrees of the impurity and M3O5 were mitigated, and the particle size of the iron as a medium for delivering C to M3O5 was decreased in the roasted product. This condition enhanced the diffusion of C to the surface of M3O5. Meanwhile, the bulk of ilmenite was broken in the activation process, which prevented the formation of chunks of M3O5. Thus, the conversion of M3O5 to TiN was promoted

Effect of Sodium Borate on the Preparation of TiN from Titanomagnetite Concentrates by Carbothermic Reduction–Magnetic Separation and Acid Leaching Process

Carbothermic reduction&ndash;magnetic separation and acid leaching processes were used to produce TiN and direct reduced iron (DRI) from titanomagnetite concentrates. The effects of sodium borate on the reduction behavior of TMCs, the magnetic separation of the reduced products, and the purification of the impure TiN by acid leaching were investigated. Results of x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and energy-dispersive spectroscopy analysis showed that magnesium aluminate spinel (MgAl2O4) was generated in the reduced products, which could hinder the purification of the TiN. Adding sodium borate not only inhibited the formation of MgAl2O4, but also promoted the formation of TiN by decreasing the roasting temperature and time. Adding sodium borate slightly affected the separation of metallic Fe and TiN. By adding 16% sodium borate, a DRI with 94.3% Fe, 0.6% Ti, and 0.1% V was obtained by magnetic separation. After HCl + HF leaching, the TiN product containing 74.1% Ti and 2.8% V was obtained with the Ti recovery of 94.6% and V recovery of 58.3%

Preparation of Direct Reduced Iron and Titanium Nitride from Panzhihua Titanomagnetite Concentrate Through Carbothermic Reduction-Magnetic Separation

A novel process for preparing direct reduction iron (DRI) and titanium nitride (TiN) from Panzhihua titanomagnetite concentrate is proposed. This process involves pelletizing, direct reduction roasting and magnetic separation. The effects of reduction temperature, coal dosage and reduction time on the phase transformation of composite pellets were investigated by X-ray diffraction. Results show that TiN formation proceeds less easily than metallic iron formation. Increasing the reduction temperature, reduction time and coal dosage can promote the transformation of titanium to TiN. Titanium was almost completely transformed into TiN under the conditions of 1300 °C reduction temperature, 26 wt % coal dosage and 90 min reduction time. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis showed that near-spherical metallic iron particles with diameters from dozens of microns to about 300 μm were formed in the reduced pellets, whereas the TiN particles generally measured less than 10 μm. The energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) results revealed that the TiN phase contains a certain amount of vanadium and carbon, and traces of other impurities. The reduced composite pellets under the optimum conditions were processed by grinding and subsequent magnetic separation. As a result, a DRI with 92.88 wt % Fe, 1.00 wt % Ti, and 0.13 wt % V was obtained, and the recoveries of Fe, Ti, and V were 92.85 wt %, 9.00 wt %, and 19.40 wt %, respectively. 91.00 wt % Ti and 80.60 wt % V were concentrated in the rough TiN concentrate

Table_1_Methylprednisolone is related to lower incidence of postoperative bleeding after flow diverter treatment for unruptured intracranial aneurysm.DOCX

Background and objectivesRegarding the anti-inflammatory effect, methylprednisolone is a candidate to prevent patients with unruptured intracranial aneurysms (UIAs) from postoperative bleeding (PB) after flow diverter (FD) treatment. This study aimed to investigate whether methylprednisolone is related to a lower incidence of PB after FD treatment for UIAs.MethodsThis study retrospectively reviewed UIA patients receiving FD treatment between October 2015 and July 2021. All patients were observed until 72  h after FD treatment. The patients receiving methylprednisolone (80  mg, bid, for at least 24 h) were considered as standard methylprednisolone treatment (SMT) users, otherwise as non-SMT users. The primary endpoint indicated the occurrence of PB, including subarachnoid hemorrhage, intracerebral hemorrhage, and ventricular bleeding, within 72 h after FD treatment. This study compared the incidence of PB between SMT users and non-SMT users and investigated the protective effect of SMT on PB after FD treatment using the Cox regression model. Finally, after controlling the potential factors related to PB, we performed subgroup analysis to further confirm the protective effect of SMT on PB.ResultsThis study finally included 262 UIA patients receiving FD treatment. PB occurred in 11 patients (4.2%), and 116 patients (44.3%) received SMT postoperatively. The median time from the end of surgery to PB was 12.3 h (range: 0.5–48.0 h). SMT users had a lower incidence of PB comparing with non-SMT users (1/116, 0.9% vs. 10/146, 6.8%, respectively; p = 0.017). The multivariate Cox analysis demonstrated that SMT users (HR, 0.12 [95%CI, 0.02–0.94], p = 0.044) had a lower risk of PB postoperatively. After controlling the potential factors related to PB (i.e., gender, irregular shape, surgical methods [FD and FD + coil] and UIA sizes), the patients receiving SMT still had a lower cumulative incidence of PB, comparing with patients receiving non-SMT (all p ConclusionSMT was correlated with the lower incidence of PB for patients receiving FD treatment and may be a potential method to prevent PB after the FD treatment.</p