Table_1_Plant-insect interactions across the Triassic–Jurassic boundary in the Sichuan Basin, South China.xlsx

Plants and insects are the most diverse and ecologically important organisms in the terrestrial biosphere. Their interactions are also among the richest biotic relationships, and offer significant insights into the evolution of terrestrial ecosystem complexity through the geological record. This investigation of the late Rhaetian Xujiahe and the earliest Jurassic Zhenzhuchong floral assemblages provides the first data on foliar herbivory generated by terrestrial arthropods across the Triassic–Jurassic transition in the eastern Tethys (East Asia) region. The damage types from two fossil assemblages are collectively attributed to seven functional feeding and egg-laying categories (i.e., hole feeding, margin feeding, surface feeding, skeletonization, piercing and sucking, oviposition, and galling). Most feeding strategies are spread across the major plant groups and persist through the Triassic–Jurassic boundary, with the exception of skeletonization (a category of external foliage feeding), which was restricted to the latest Triassic within dipteridacean ferns. The survey reveals that the respective frequency and diversity of interactions between plants and insects prior to and following the end-Triassic mass extinction event are almost the same, despite a substantial turnover of floral components. This suggest that insect herbivores were largely able to transfer to alternative (but commonly related) plant groups during the dramatic floristic turnover and environmental changes at the end of the Triassic. Sporadic occurrences of foliar modifications, such as marginal cusps on pinnules of Pterophyllum and prominent ridges on the rachises of some ferns and bennettites are interpreted as adaptations for defense against insect herbivores. A few differences in taxonomic composition and herbivory representation between the latest Triassic Xujiahe flora and the earliest Jurassic Zhenzhuchong flora are more likely to be related to collection and preservational biases rather than reflecting palaeoecological changes. We encourage further investigations exploring the distribution of insect damage in fossil floras from other palaeolatitudinal zones and spanning other major extinction events to develop a better understanding of terrestrial ecosystem responses to major crises in Earth’s history.</p

Maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree of <i>Campylobacters</i> based on small subunit ribosomal RNA (SSU rRNA) sequences.

<p>The tree is rooted with SSU rRNA sequence of <i>Campylobacterales bacterium</i> GD 1, a member of the common order of <i>Campylobacterales</i> considered as a relative close outgroup. Absolute bootstrap values of 1000 simulations are shown beside the major branches to indicate the stability of the branching. Only bootstrap values greater than 500 are shown. The scale bar represents the 0.06 nucleic acid substitutions per site.</p

DataSheet1_Road grade estimation for vehicle emissions modeling using electronic atmospheric pressure sensors.doc

Vehicle specific power (VSP) is useful for estimation of vehicle emissions. Previous research has indicated that vehicle specific power and emissions are sensitive to variation of road grade. Several methods have been used for acquisition of road grade data in earlier studies, but all have certain limitations such as insufficient accuracy, complicated data processing, or requirements for devices or data that are not easily available. The objective of this study was to develop and verify a road grade measurement framework based on an electronic pressure sensor. The method includes atmospheric pressure acquisition using electronic sensors, determination of the pressure-altitude relationship based on meteorological station data, filtering of altitude data by Fourier transform, and grade calculation combined with the onboard diagnostics distance. Road grades and vehicle specific power calculated based on atmospheric pressure were found reliable and accurate, which also improved the accuracy of vehicle emission rates calculation.</p

Gene families of genus <i>Campylobacter</i>.

<p><i>Escherichia coli</i> (<i>E. coli</i>) str. K12 substr. DH108 (GenBank accession CP000948) was used as a control. The values above each bar (in percent) were calculated as the average number of gene families divided by the average number of total genes.</p

Comprehensive Genomic Characterization of <i>Campylobacter</i> Genus Reveals Some Underlying Mechanisms for its Genomic Diversification

<div><p><i>Campylobacter species.</i>are phenotypically diverse in many aspects including host habitats and pathogenicities, which demands comprehensive characterization of the entire <i>Campylobacter</i> genus to study their underlying genetic diversification. Up to now, 34 <i>Campylobacter</i> strains have been sequenced and published in public databases, providing good opportunity to systemically analyze their genomic diversities. In this study, we first conducted genomic characterization, which includes genome-wide alignments, pan-genome analysis, and phylogenetic identification, to depict the genetic diversity of <i>Campylobacter</i> genus. Afterward, we improved the tetranucleotide usage pattern-based naïve Bayesian classifier to identify the abnormal composition fragments (ACFs, fragments with significantly different tetranucleotide frequency profiles from its genomic tetranucleotide frequency profiles) including horizontal gene transfers (HGTs) to explore the mechanisms for the genetic diversity of this organism. Finally, we analyzed the HGTs transferred via bacteriophage transductions. To our knowledge, this study is the first to use single nucleotide polymorphism information to construct liable microevolution phylogeny of 21 <i>Campylobacter jejuni</i> strains. Combined with the phylogeny of all the collected <i>Campylobacter</i> species based on genome-wide core gene information, comprehensive phylogenetic inference of all 34 <i>Campylobacter</i> organisms was determined. It was found that <i>C. jejuni</i> harbors a high fraction of ACFs possibly through intraspecies recombination, whereas other <i>Campylobacter</i> members possess numerous ACFs possibly via intragenus recombination. Furthermore, some <i>Campylobacter</i> strains have undergone significant ancient viral integration during their evolution process. The improved method is a powerful tool for bacterial genomic analysis. Moreover, the findings would provide useful information for future research on <i>Campylobacter</i> genus.</p></div

Microstructure and Flight Behaviors of Droplet and its Solidification in Twin-Wire Arc Sprayed Ni-Al Composite Coatings

<div><p>Droplet flight and solidification behaviors during twin-wire arc sprayed (TWAS) composite coatings were systematically investigated. Both theoretical model and numerical method were established for calculating the droplet deformation, breakup and solidification process in air flow based on the volume of fluid (VOF) dual-phase flow model jointed with the standard k-ε model. The experimental simulation results indicate that TWAS droplet is broken through explosion or two steps breaking process. The calculation of TWAS gas flight dynamics demonstrates that the TWAS particles are accelerated at first and then slowed down. Microstructure of the TWAS prepared Ni-5wt.%Al and Ni-20wt.%Al composite coating was accordingly characterized by XRD, SEM and TEM, so the phase compositions of the Ni-Al composite coatings were obtained. TEM analysis also showed that an amorphous phase was formed according to the characteristic of diffraction ring in Ni matrix solid solution at an original state.</p></div

Abnormal composition fragment percentages of <i>Campylobacter</i> strains under different folds.

<p><i>M. thermautotrophicus</i> str. Delta H (NC_000916.1) was used as control. Fold values (see Methods) were logarithmically transformed. The red dashed line represents the cutoff set in this study for the identified abnormal composition fragments.</p

Neighbor-joining phylogeny of <i>C. jejuni</i> based on SNP data.

<p>The tree is rooted to the outgroup <i>Campylobacterales bacterium</i> GD 1. The node support (in percent) after 1000 bootstrap replications is indicated. The scale bar represents 0.06 nucleic acid substitutions per site.</p

Four-way Venn diagram for gene families of four <i>Campylobacters</i>.

<p><i>C. jejuni</i>, <i>C. coli</i>, <i>C. lari</i>, and <i>C.upsaliensis</i> from <i>jejuni</i> lineage (based on core gene tree) are shown. The absolute numbers of the core and the dispensable and unique gene families of the four species are all shown.</p

Source of abnormal composition fragments.

<p>The values (in percentage) above the bars were calculated as the total abnormal composition fragments divided by the total fragments of the genomes. C.u. = <i>Campylobacter upsaliensis</i>; C.j. = <i>Campylobacter jejuni</i>; C.g. = <i>Campylobacter gracilis</i>; C.j. ICDCCJ = <i>Campylobacter jejuni</i> ICDCCJ07001; C.j. <i>doylei</i> = <i>Campylobacter jejuni doylei</i> 269.97. Strain names of all the other species with only one strain were neglected for simplicity. “intraspecies” stands for abnormal composition fragments coming from other strains of the same species, intragenus means abnormal composition fragments derived from other species of the same genus and intergenus represents abnormal composition fragments originated from other genus.</p