Elemental data for Gonghai Lake sediments show significant effects of human activities on weathering processes after 1550 CE

The international Anthropocene Working Group has recognized the mid-20th centrury (ca. 1950 CE) as the onset of the Anthropocene, but human activities in China altered the land cover and influenced weathering processes much earlier. Changes in the elemental composition of sediment since 1000 CE from Gonghai Lake were studied, using X-ray Fluorescence element scanning (average time-resolution 3 years), to investigate the human impacts on weathering over time. We found that aluminum (Al) and calcium (Ca) containing minerals vary in the resistance to chemical weathering, and the concentrations of Al and Ca provide insights into the intensities of mechanical and chemical weathering respectively. The correlations between Al and Ca concentrations in these two periods, 1000–1550 CE and 1550–1950 CE changed from negative to positive, owing to that agricultural activities evidently enhanced both mechanical and chemical weathering during the latter stage. In addition, the Al and Ca concentrations recorded a border reclamation project in the 16th century and two catastrophic population decreases from 1630s to 1640s and 1850s–1870s. After 1950 CE, the concentrations of Al and Ca became uncorrelated, because weathering processes around Gonghai Lake were impacted by the enhanced anthropogenic perturbations in the Anthropocene

And-1 is required for homologous recombination repair by regulating DNA end resection

Homologous recombination (HR) is a major mechanism to repair DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). Although tumor suppressor CtIP is critical for DSB end resection, a key initial event of HR repair, the mechanism regulating the recruitment of CtIP to DSB sites remains largely unknown. Here, we show that acidic nucleoplasmic DNA‐binding protein 1 (And‐1) forms complexes with CtIP as well as other repair proteins, and is essential for HR repair by regulating DSB end resection. Furthermore, And-1 is recruited to DNA DSB sites in a manner dependent on MDC1, BRCA1 and ATM, down-regulation of And-1 impairs end resection by reducing the recruitment of CtIP to damage sites, and considerably reduces Chk1 activation and other damage response during HR repair. These findings collectively demonstrate a hitherto unknown role of MDC1→And-1→CtIP axis that regulates CtIP-mediated DNA end resection and cellular response to DSBs

Classification of Diabetic Foot Ulcers Using Class Knowledge Banks

Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are one of the most common complications of diabetes. Identifying the presence of infection and ischemia in DFU is important for ulcer examination and treatment planning. Recently, the computerized classification of infection and ischaemia of DFU based on deep learning methods has shown promising performance. Most state-of-the-art DFU image classification methods employ deep neural networks, especially convolutional neural networks, to extract discriminative features, and predict class probabilities from the extracted features by fully connected neural networks. In the testing, the prediction depends on an individual input image and trained parameters, where knowledge in the training data is not explicitly utilized. To better utilize the knowledge in the training data, we propose class knowledge banks (CKBs) consisting of trainable units that can effectively extract and represent class knowledge. Each unit in a CKB is used to compute similarity with a representation extracted from an input image. The averaged similarity between units in the CKB and the representation can be regarded as the logit of the considered input. In this way, the prediction depends not only on input images and trained parameters in networks but the class knowledge extracted from the training data and stored in the CKBs. Experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively improve the performance of DFU infection and ischaemia classifications

The role of electrochemical properties of biochar to promote methane production in anaerobic digestion

The electrochemical properties of biochar may be the key factor to promote anaerobic digestion, which has attracted extensive attention. However, the mechanism and the role of the electrochemical properties of biochar are remaining unclear. In this study, biochar with different electrochemical properties was prepared by pyrolysis at different temperatures (BC300/600/900) and oxidation or reduction modification (O/RBC300/600/900). The biochar was added as an additive to promote methanogenic performance of anaerobic digesters of glucose and food waste. In both anaerobic digestion systems, the cumulative methane production of food waste increased by 42.07% and the maximum methane production rate of glucose enhanced by 17.80% after BC900 treatment. RBC600 was inferior to BC900, but superior to BC600. Microbiological analysis suggests that biochar enriched the relative abundant Synergistia and Methanoculleus. This is conducive to the establishment of the direct interspecies electrons transfer (DIET). Results from correlation analysis, principal component analysis and machine learning confirmed that both of the electron donating capacities (EDC) and electrical conductivity (EC) are dominated factors affecting the cumulative methane yield. Through the analysis of electrochemical properties and preparation process of biochar, the results showed that the pyrolysis temperature increases and the content of phenolic hydroxyl decreases under medium temperature of biochar, which was beneficial to the methane production. This study found the key factors of the electrochemical properties of biochar in anaerobic digestion, provided new insights for the mechanism of biochar promoting anaerobic digestion and proposed novel directions for the preparation of biochar.acceptedVersio

Text Classification Using Novel Term Weighting Scheme-Based Improved TF-IDF for Internet Media Reports

With the rapid development of the internet technology, a large amount of internet text data can be obtained. The text classification (TC) technology plays a very important role in processing massive text data, but the accuracy of classification is directly affected by the performance of term weighting in TC. Due to the original design of information retrieval (IR), term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) is not effective enough for TC, especially for processing text data with unbalanced distributions in internet media reports. Therefore, the variance between the DF value of a particular term and the average of all DFs , namely, the document frequency variance (ADF), is proposed to enhance the ability in processing text data with unbalanced distribution. Then, the normal TF-IDF is modified by the proposed ADF for processing unbalanced text collection in four different ways, namely, TF-IADF, TF-IADF+, TF-IADFnorm, and TF-IADF+norm. As a result, an effective model can be established for the TC task of internet media reports. A series of simulations have been carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed methods. Compared with TF-IDF on state-of-the-art classification algorithms, the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed methods are confirmed by simulation results

Research on adjustable intelligent speed retarder

The existing speed bumps can reduce the number of traffi c accidents, but it will reduce the comfort of drivers and reduce the service life of passing vehicles. In order to reduce the number of traffi c accidents at the same ti me, to ensure the driver’s comfort according to the provisions of the driving, to prevent the service life of the vehicle to reduce, put forward a lifting speed belt, the speed belt by measuring subsystem, lifting power subsystem and deceleration plate device composed. The experimental results show that the device can maximize the driver’s comfort while reducing the speed of passing vehicles, reduce the number of traffi c accidents, improve traffi c safety, and protect people’s life and property safety

The linkages with fires, vegetation composition and human activity in response to climate changes in the Chinese Loess Plateau during the Holocene

Holocene paleo-records of the Chinese Loess Plateau loess-soil profiles were used to reconstruct wildfire patterns and landscape evolution. We examine black carbon and charcoal influx, combined with the Magnetic susceptibility, delta C-13 values of soil organic matter, pollen counts and other paleo-environmental proxies to discuss interactions with biomass-climate during the Holocene. The history of fires from the charcoal and black carbon (BC, char and soot) influx at the two sites demonstrates a transition from climate-controlled low amplitude variations with peaks during the Early and Middle Holocene (11-3.1kyearsB.P.) to higher amplitude variability in fire occurrence decoupled from climate and tied to human activities during the Late Holocene (3.1-0kyearsB.P.). The difference in fire patterns was attributed to regional effective moisture and human land use over the entre Loess Plateau; meanwhile, fire activities observed during the Holocene are consistent with variations in vegetation composition inferred from delta C-13 values in soil organic matter, pollen counts, and paleoclimate proxies. Regional wildfires rarely occurred on the desert steppe dominated by a weedy C-3 taxon (Artemisia, Compositae, and Chenopodiaceae dominated)during the late glacial period. A limited biomass would not meet fire propagation in the extreme colder and drier environment of the Loess Plateau during those periods, though. As the climate became ameliorated during the early Holocene, there was an increasing biomass and a sufficient contribution do to high fuel accumulation from C-4 taxon (Gramineae). As the middle Holocene progressed toward warmer and wetter conditions, fire events were less frequent on the steppe and forest-steppe (e.g. expansion of trees C-3,C- Quercus, Corylus) of the Loess Plateau. Subsequently, the number of local and regional fire events have largely increased with the colder and drier climate conditions (e.g. expansion of C-3 weedy), which have been decoupling with intensive anthropogenic burning for farming since the past 3kyr. These data suggests that the regional fire patterns vary strongly along environmental gradients in the effective moisture and regional fuel availability as well as the spatial and temporal distributions of Neolithic burning practices over the Loess Plateau in response to the weakening East Asian monsoon during the Holocene

The involvement of acidic nucleoplasmic DNA-binding protein (and-1) in the regulation of prereplicative complex (pre-RC) assembly in human cells

DNA replication in all eukaryotes starts with the process of loading the replicative helicase MCM2–7 onto chromatin during late mitosis of the cell cycle. MCM2–7 is a key component of the prereplicative complex (pre-RC), which is loaded onto chromatin by the concerted action of origin recognition complex, Cdc6, and Cdt1. Here, we demonstrate that And-1 is assembled onto chromatin in late mitosis and early G(1) phase before the assembly of pre-RC in human cells. And-1 forms complexes with MCM2–7 to facilitate the assembly of MCM2–7 onto chromatin at replication origins in late mitosis and G(1) phase. We also present data to show that depletion of And-1 significantly reduces the interaction between Cdt1 and MCM7 in G(1) phase cells. Thus, human And-1 facilitates loading of the MCM2–7 helicase onto chromatin during the assembly of pre-RC

Global distribution of oxygenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in mineral topsoils

Hazardous oxygenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (OPAHs) originate fromcombustion (primary sources) or postemission conversion of polycyclic aromatichydrocarbons (PAHs) (secondary sources). We evaluated the global distribution of up to 15 OPAHs in 195 mineral topsoils from 33 study sites (covering 52 ̊ N–47 ̊ S, 71 ̊ W–118 ̊E) to identify indications of primary or secondary sources of OPAHs.The sums of the (frequently measured 7 and 15) OPAH concentrations correlated with those of the Σ16EPA-PAHs. The relationship of the Σ16EPA-PAH concentrations with the Σ7OPAH/Σ16EPA-PAH concentration ratios (a measure of the variable OPAH sources) could be described by a power function with a negative exponent 400 ng g⁻¹, there was a nearly constant Σ7OPAH/Σ16EPA-PAH ratio (0.08 ± 0.005 [SE],n = 80)determined by their combustion sources