45 research outputs found

    Kesesakan Dan Agresivitas Pada Remaja Di Kawasan Tambak Lorok Semarang

    Full text link
    Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui hubungan antara kesesakan dengan agresivitas pada remaja yang tinggal di Kawasan Tambak Lorok Semarang. Populasi dalam penelitian ini adalah remaja yang tinggal di Kawasan Tambak Lorok Semarang. Pengumpulan data menggunakan dua buah skala yaitu, Skala Agresivitas (22 aitem; α=0,864) dan Skala Kesesakan (16 aitem; α=0,828). Subjek penelitian berjumlah 230 remaja yang tinggal di Kawasan Tambak Lorok Semarang yang dipilih melalui teknik simple random sampling. Hasil analisis data menggunakan teknik analisis regresi sederhana menunjukkan terdapat hubungan positif antara kesesakan dengan agresivitas pada remaja yang tinggal Kawasan Tambak Lorok Semarang (r=0,578; p=0,000). Semakin tinggi kesesakan yang dirasakan subjek maka semakin tinggi agresivitas. Kesesakan memberikan sumbangan efektif sebesar 33,4% pada agresivitas dan sisanya sebesar 66,6% dipengaruhi oleh faktor lain yang tidak diteliti dalam penelitian ini

    Soil organic carbon stock and carbon efflux in deep soils of desert and oasis

    Get PDF
    An experiment was carried out in two soils of oasis farmland and the surrounding desert at the southern periphery of the Gurbantonggut Desert, in central Asia, to test the effects of land use on soil organic carbon (SOC) stock and carbon efflux in deep soil. The result showed that although SOC content in the topsoil (0-0.2 m) decreased by 27% after desert soil was cultivated, total carbon stock within the soil profile (0-2.5 m) increased by 57% due to the significant increase in carbon stock at 0.2- to 2.5-m depth, and carbon efflux also markedly increased at 0- to 0.6-m depth. In the topsoil, the carbon process of the oasis was mainly dominated by consumption; in the subsoil (0.2-0.6 m) it was likely to be co-dominated by storage and consumption, and the greatest difference in SOC stock between the two soils also lay in this layer; while in the deep layer (0.6-2.5 m) of the oasis, with a more stable carbon stock, there was carbon storage dominated. Moreover, carbon stocks in the deep layer of the two soils contributed about 65% of the total carbon stocks, and correspondingly, microbial activities contributed 71% to the total microbial activity in the entire soil profile, confirming the importance of carbon cycling in the deep layer. Desert cultivation in this area may produce unexpectedly high carbon stocks from the whole profile despite carbon loss in the topsoil

    Ecosystem multifunctionality, maximum height, and biodiversity of shrub communities affected by precipitation fluctuations in Northwest China

    Get PDF
    IntroductionDryland ecosystems face serious threats from climate change. Establishing the spatial pattern of ecosystem multifunctionality, maximum height and the correlation of biodiversity patterns with climate change is important for understanding changes in complex ecosystem processes. However, the understanding of their relationships across large spatial areas remains limited in drylands.MethodsAccordingly, this study examined the spatial patterns of ecosystem multifunctionality, maximum height and considered a set of potential environmental drivers by investigating natural shrub communities in Northwest China.ResultsWe found that the ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF) and maximum height of shrub communities were both affected by longitude, which was positively correlated with the precipitation gradient. Specifically, the EMF was driven by high precipitation seasonality, and the maximum height was driven by high precipitation stability during the growing season. Among the multiple biodiversity predictors, species beta diversity (SD-beta) is the most common in determining EMF, although this relationship is weak.DiscussionUnlike tree life form, we did not observe biodiversity-maximum height relationships in shrub communities. Based on these results, we suggest that more attention should be paid to the climatical fluctuations mediated biodiversity mechanisms, which are tightly correlated with ecosystem’s service capacity and resistance capacity under a rapid climate change scenario in the future

    The complex hexaploid oil‐Camellia genome traces back its phylogenomic history and multi‐omics analysis of Camellia oil biosynthesis

    Get PDF
    Summary: Oil‐Camellia (Camellia oleifera), belonging to the Theaceae family Camellia, is an important woody edible oil tree species. The Camellia oil in its mature seed kernels, mainly consists of more than 90% unsaturated fatty acids, tea polyphenols, flavonoids, squalene and other active substances, which is one of the best quality edible vegetable oils in the world. However, genetic research and molecular breeding on oil‐Camellia are challenging due to its complex genetic background. Here, we successfully report a chromosome‐scale genome assembly for a hexaploid oil‐Camellia cultivar Changlin40. This assembly contains 8.80 Gb genomic sequences with scaffold N50 of 180.0 Mb and 45 pseudochromosomes comprising 15 homologous groups with three members each, which contain 135 868 genes with an average length of 3936 bp. Referring to the diploid genome, intragenomic and intergenomic comparisons of synteny indicate homologous chromosomal similarity and changes. Moreover, comparative and evolutionary analyses reveal three rounds of whole‐genome duplication (WGD) events, as well as the possible diversification of hexaploid Changlin40 with diploid occurred approximately 9.06 million years ago (MYA). Furthermore, through the combination of genomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics approaches, a complex regulatory network was constructed and allows to identify potential key structural genes (SAD, FAD2 and FAD3) and transcription factors (AP2 and C2H2) that regulate the metabolism of Camellia oil, especially for unsaturated fatty acids biosynthesis. Overall, the genomic resource generated from this study has great potential to accelerate the research for the molecular biology and genetic improvement of hexaploid oil‐Camellia, as well as to understand polyploid genome evolution

    Increased CD45RA+FoxP3low Regulatory T Cells with Impaired Suppressive Function in Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

    Get PDF
    BACKGROUND: The role of naturally occurring regulatory T cells (Treg) in the control of the development of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) has not been well defined. Therefore, we dissect the phenotypically heterogeneous CD4(+)FoxP3(+) T cells into subpopulations during the dynamic SLE development. METHODLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: To evaluate the proliferative and suppressive capacities of different CD4(+) T cell subgroups between active SLE patients and healthy donors, we employed CD45RA and CD25 as surface markers and carboxyfluorescein diacetatesuccinimidyl ester (CFSE) dilution assay. In addition, multiplex cytokines expression in active SLE patients was assessed using Luminex assay. Here, we showed a significant increase in the frequency of CD45RA(+)FoxP3(low) naive Treg cells (nTreg cells) and CD45RA(-)FoxP3(low) (non-Treg) cells in patients with active SLE. In active SLE patients, the increased proportions of CD45RA(+)FoxP3(low) nTreg cells were positively correlated with the disease based on SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI) and the status of serum anti-dsDNA antibodies. We found that the surface marker combination of CD25(+)CD45RA(+) can be used to defined CD45RA(+)FoxP3(low) nTreg cells for functional assays, wherein nTreg cells from active SLE patients demonstrated defective suppression function. A significant correlation was observed between inflammatory cytokines, such as IL-6, IL-12 and TNFα, and the frequency of nTreg cells. Furthermore, the CD45RA(+)FoxP3(low) nTreg cell subset increased when cultured with SLE serum compared to healthy donor serum, suggesting that the elevated inflammatory cytokines of SLE serum may promote nTreg cell proliferation/expansion. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results indicate that impaired numbers of functional CD45RA(+)FoxP3(low) naive Treg cell and CD45RA(-)FoxP3(low) non-suppressive T cell subsets in inflammatory conditions may contribute to SLE development. Therefore, analysis of subsets of FoxP3(+) T cells, using a combination of FoxP3, CD25 and CD45RA, rather than whole FoxP3(+) T cells, will help us to better understand the pathogenesis of SLE and may lead to the development of new therapeutic strategies

    Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

    Get PDF
    Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

    Device engineering and degradation mechanism study of all-phosphorescent white organic light-emitting diodes

    No full text
    Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Materials Science Program, 2017.As a possible next-generation solid-state lighting source, white organic lightemitting diodes (WOLEDs) have the advantages in high power efficiency, large area and flat panel form factor applications. Phosphorescent emitters and multiple emitting layer structures are typically used in high efficiency WOLEDs. However due to the complexity of the device structure comprising a stack of multiple layers of organic thin films, ten or more organic materials are usually required, and each of the layers in the stack has to be optimized to produce the desired electrical and optical functions such that collectively a WOLED of the highest possible efficiency can be achieved. Moreover, device degradation mechanisms are still unclear for most OLED systems, especially blue phosphorescent OLEDs. Such challenges require a deep understanding of the device operating principles and materials/device degradation mechanisms. This thesis will focus on achieving high-efficiency and color-stable allphosphorescent WOLEDs through optimization of the device structures and material compositions. The operating principles and the degradation mechanisms specific to allphosphorescent WOLED will be studied. First, we investigated a WOLED where a blue emitter was based on a doped mixhost system with the archetypal bis(4,6-difluorophenyl-pyridinato-N,C2) picolinate iridium(III), FIrpic, as the blue dopant. In forming the WOLED, the red and green components were incorporated in a single layer adjacent to the blue layer. The WOLED efficiency and color were optimized through variations of the mixed-host compositions to control the electron-hole recombination zone and the dopant concentrations of the greenred layers to achieve a balanced white emission. Second, a WOLED structure with two separate blue layers and an ultra-thin red and green co-doped layer was studied. Through a systematic investigation of the placement of the co-doped red and green layer between the blue layers and the material compositions of these layers, we were able to achieve high-efficiency WOLEDs with controllable white emission characteristics. We showed that we can use the ultra-thin co-doped layer and two blue emitting layers to manipulate exciton confinement to certain zones and energy transfer pathways between the various hosts and dopants. Third, a blue phosphorescent dopant tris[1-(2,6-diisopropylphenyl)-2-phenyl-1Himidazole] iridium(III) (Ir(iprpmi)3) with a low ionization potential (HOMO 4.8 eV) and propensity for hole-trapping was studied in WOLEDs. In a bipolar host, 2,6-bis(3- (carbazol-9-yl)phenyl)-pyridine (DCzPPy), Ir(iprpmi)3 was found to trap holes at low concentrations but transport holes at higher concentrations. By adjusting the dopant concentration and thereby the location of the recombination zone, we were able to demonstrate blue and white OLEDs with external quantum efficiencies over 20%. The fabricated WOLEDs shows high color stability over a wide range of luminance. Moreover, the device lifetime has also been improved with Ir(iprpmi)3 as the emitter compared to FIrpic. Last, we analyzed OLED degradation using Laser Desorption Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (LDI-TOF-MS) technique. By carefully and systematically comparing the LDI-TOF patterns of electrically/optically stressed and controlled (unstressed) OLED devices, we were able to identify some prominent degradation byproducts and trace possible chemical pathways involving specific host and dopant material

    Distinguishing the Biomass Allocation Variance Resulting from Ontogenetic Drift or Acclimation to Soil Texture

    Get PDF
    <div><p>In resource-poor environments, adjustment in plant biomass allocation implies a complex interplay between environmental signals and plant development rather than a delay in plant development alone. To understand how environmental factors influence biomass allocation or the developing phenotype, it is necessary to distinguish the biomass allocations resulting from environmental gradients or ontogenetic drift. Here, we compared the development trajectories of cotton plants (<em>Gossypium herbaceum</em> L.), which were grown in two contrasting soil textures during a 60-d period. Those results distinguished the biomass allocation pattern resulting from ontogenetic drift and the response to soil texture. The soil texture significantly changed the biomass allocation to leaves and roots, but not to stems. Soil texture also significantly changed the development trajectories of leaf and root traits, but did not change the scaling relationship between basal stem diameter and plant height. Results of nested ANOVAs of consecutive plant-size categories in both soil textures showed that soil gradients explained an average of 63.64–70.49% of the variation of biomass allocation to leaves and roots. Ontogenetic drift explained 77.47% of the variation in biomass allocation to stems. The results suggested that the environmental factors governed the biomass allocation to roots and leaves, and ontogenetic drift governed the biomass allocation to stems. The results demonstrated that biomass allocation to metabolically active organs (e.g., roots and leaves) was mainly governed by environmental factors, and that biomass allocation to metabolically non-active organs (e.g., stems) was mainly governed by ontogenetic drift. We concluded that differentiating the causes of development trajectories of plant traits was important to the understanding of plant response to environmental gradients.</p> </div

    Particle size distribution of the two soil textures.

    No full text
    <p>(A) Sandy soil. (B) Clay soil. Data were obtained from particle size measurement by a laser diffraction system (Sympatec GmbH, System-Partikel-Technik, Clausthal- Zellerfeld, Germany).</p

    Relationships between plant size and <i>SLA</i>, <i>SRL</i> in the two soil textures.

    No full text
    <p>(A) <i>SLA</i> vs. plant size. (B) <i>SRL</i> vs. plant size. Data for individual slopes and intercepts are given in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0041502#pone-0041502-t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>. The SMA regression (using SMATR package of R) was used to test the slope and intercept heterogeneity at <i>α</i> = 0.05 (where slopes or intercepts non-heterogeneous, <i>P</i>>0.05) between the two soil textures: (A) Slopes non-heterogeneous, <i>P</i> = 0.12; Intercepts heterogeneous: <i>SLA</i> lower at a given plant size in clay soil treatment (<i>P</i><0.001). (B) Slopes non-heterogeneous, <i>P</i> = 0.28; Intercepts non-heterogeneous: <i>SRL</i> was equal at a given plant size between clay and sandy soil treatment (<i>P</i> = 0.77).</p
    corecore