Flood Routing Model Coupled with Dynamic Leakage Losses for Ephemeral Rivers with Large Potholes

Ephemeral rivers commonly occur in regions with a shortage of water resources, and their channel configuration tends to change substantially owing to long drying times and artificial sand extraction. During short-term water conveyance, water storage in large potholes and leakage along the dry riverbed retards the flow, which is detrimental for the river landscape and ecological water demand. The objective of this study is to evaluate the flow process corresponding to a certain release scheme. A coupled dynamic leakage loss and flood routing model was established to predict the flood routing distance for dry rivers with potholes and strong leakage. The model mainly includes three sub-models of flow dynamics, dynamic leakage loss and water balance along multiple cross sections of the river channel. The water head was dominated by flow velocity and the overflow from potholes. The model was applied to Yongding River, a typical ephemeral river in northern China, and the model parameters were calibrated and verified using monitoring data from ecological water releases into the Yongding River in 2019 and 2020, thus, making the model more stable and reliable. Finally, the model was used to evaluate the impact of cross section optimization and pothole treatment on the flow process. This study can provide scientific guidance for ecological water conveyance and the ecological restoration of ephemeral rivers

Indian-Ink Perfusion Based Method for Reconstructing Continuous Vascular Networks in Whole Mouse Brain

<div><p>The topology of the cerebral vasculature, which is the energy transport corridor of the brain, can be used to study cerebral circulatory pathways. Limited by the restrictions of the vascular markers and imaging methods, studies on cerebral vascular structure now mainly focus on either observation of the macro vessels in a whole brain or imaging of the micro vessels in a small region. Simultaneous vascular studies of arteries, veins and capillaries have not been achieved in the whole brain of mammals. Here, we have combined the improved gelatin-Indian ink vessel perfusion process with Micro-Optical Sectioning Tomography for imaging the vessel network of an entire mouse brain. With 17 days of work, an integral dataset for the entire cerebral vessels was acquired. The voxel resolution is 0.35×0.4×2.0 µm³ for the whole brain. Besides the observations of fine and complex vascular networks in the reconstructed slices and entire brain views, a representative continuous vascular tracking has been demonstrated in the deep thalamus. This study provided an effective method for studying the entire macro and micro vascular networks of mouse brain simultaneously.</p></div

Assessment of capillary continuity.

<p>Four ROIs (Columns A–D) with size of 200×200×100 µm³ at cortex, amygdaloid nucleus, thalamus, cerebellar lobule were selected and used to analyze the vascular continuity. The four ROIs were indicated sequentially with white arrows in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0088067#pone-0088067-g001" target="_blank">Figure 1D, F and G</a>. ROI A was taken as an example. On the top row, the MIP reconstruction of this ROI covered with vascular tracking results by using Amira was shown. The vascular terminal could be located through vascular tracking results projection on xy, yz and xz orthogonal planes (Rows 2–4). The vascular terminals inside the ROI were marked with red balls, while the terminals on the boundary were marked with blue balls. The panels on the bottom showed the details around the vascular terminals, most of which were caused by caliber narrowing.</p

Blood supply pathway tracking and analysis in the right thalamus.

<p>A: The right view of the brain. A clear blood pathway begins in the VA, passes through the BA and the thalamoperforating artery, enters the thalamus, and finally drains out through the thalamostriate vein, the great cerebral vein of Galen and the transverse sinus. B: The vessels with diameters larger than 5 µm in the thalamus, red for arteries and blue for veins. C: A vascular segment from the thalamoperforating artery to the thalamostriate vein through the capillary, colored by diameter. D: The capillaries in the pathway from the artery to the vein. E–F: ROIs from D and C, showing the narrowing in the capillaries. * Identifies the vascular narrowing sites in C, E and F.</p

Vessel acquisition and reconstruction in the whole mouse brain.

<p>A: The dorsal view of the gelatin-Indian ink perfused brain; after embedding with Spurr resin and imaging using MOST to acquire the three-dimensional cerebrovascular dataset, five 100-µm thick coronal planes were selected and MIP-reconstructed in the olfactory bulb (B), frontal (C), hippocampus (D), midbrain (E) and cerebellum (F); the results showed desirable perfusion in the whole brain, and no blank areas were found in the brain entity. G: ROI in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0088067#pone-0088067-g001" target="_blank">Figure 1D</a>; the capillary network was continuous, and no gaps were found. H: The left view of the whole brain; several major vessels were marked. I: The top view of the whole brain. cc: corpus callosum; hf: hippocampus; th: thalamus. B–F: Bar = 1 mm; G: Bar = 200 µm, H: Bar = 1 mm.</p

Inhibition of DYRK1A, via histone modification, promotes cardiomyocyte cell cycle activation and cardiac repair after myocardial infarction

BACKGROUND: While the adult mammalian heart undergoes only modest renewal through cardiomyocyte proliferation, boosting this process is considered a promising therapeutic strategy to repair cardiac injury. This study explored the role and mechanism of dual-specificity tyrosine regulated kinase 1A (DYRK1A) in regulating cardiomyocyte cell cycle activation and cardiac repair after myocardial infarction (MI). METHODS: DYRK1A-knockout mice and DYRK1A inhibitors were used to investigate the role of DYRK1A in cardiomyocyte cell cycle activation and cardiac repair following MI. Additionally, we explored the underlying mechanisms by combining genome-wide transcriptomic, epigenomic, and proteomic analyses. FINDINGS: In adult mice subjected to MI, both conditional deletion and pharmacological inhibition of DYRK1A induced cardiomyocyte cell cycle activation and cardiac repair with improved cardiac function. Combining genome-wide transcriptomic and epigenomic analyses revealed that DYRK1A knockdown resulted in robust cardiomyocyte cell cycle activation (shown by the enhanced expression of many genes governing cell proliferation) associated with increased deposition of trimethylated histone 3 Lys4 (H3K4me3) and acetylated histone 3 Lys27 (H3K27ac) on the promoter regions of these genes. Mechanistically, via unbiased mass spectrometry, we discovered that WD repeat-containing protein 82 and lysine acetyltransferase 6A were key mediators in the epigenetic modification of H3K4me3 and H3K27ac and subsequent pro-proliferative transcriptome and cardiomyocyte cell cycle activation. INTERPRETATION: Our results reveal a significant role of DYRK1A in cardiac repair and suggest a drug target with translational potential for treating cardiomyopathy. FUNDING: This study was supported in part by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81930008, 82022005, 82070296, 82102834), National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC1312700), Program of Innovative Research Team by the National Natural Science Foundation (81721001), and National Institutes of Health (5R01DK039308-31, 7R37HL023081-37, 5P01HL074940-11)

Ground-Level NO2 Surveillance from Space Across China for High Resolution Using Interpretable Spatiotemporally Weighted Artificial Intelligence

Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at the ground level poses a serious threat to environmental quality and public health. This study developed a novel, artificial intelligence approach by integrating spatiotemporally weighted information into the missing extra-trees and deep forest models to first fill the satellite data gaps and increase data availability by 49% and then derive daily 1 km surface NO2 concentrations over mainland China with full spatial coverage (100%) for the period 2019-2020 by combining surface NO2 measurements, satellite tropospheric NO2 columns derived from TROPOMI and OMI, atmospheric reanalysis, and model simulations. Our daily surface NO2 estimates have an average out-of-sample (out-of-city) cross-validation coefficient of determination of 0.93 (0.71) and root-mean-square error of 4.89 (9.95) μg/m3. The daily seamless high-resolution and high-quality dataset "ChinaHighNO2"allows us to examine spatial patterns at fine scales such as the urban-rural contrast. We observed systematic large differences between urban and rural areas (28% on average) in surface NO2, especially in provincial capitals. Strong holiday effects were found, with average declines of 22 and 14% during the Spring Festival and the National Day in China, respectively. Unlike North America and Europe, there is little difference between weekdays and weekends (within ±1 μg/m3). During the COVID-19 pandemic, surface NO2 concentrations decreased considerably and then gradually returned to normal levels around the 72nd day after the Lunar New Year in China, which is about 3 weeks longer than the tropospheric NO2 column, implying that the former can better represent the changes in NOx emissions