A semi-analytical model for estimating total suspended matter in highly turbid waters

Total suspended matter (TSM) is related to water quality. High TSM concentrations limit underwater light availability, thus affecting the primary productivity of aquatic ecosystems. Accurate estimation of TSM concentrations in various waters with remote sensing technology is particularly challenging, as the concentrations and optical properties vary greatly among different waters. In this research, a semi-analytical model was established for Hangzhou Bay and Lake Taihu for estimating TSM concentration. The model construction proceeded in two steps. 1) Two indices of the model were calculated by deriving absorption and backscattering coefficients of suspended matter (ap(λ) and bbp(λ)) from the reflectance signal using a semi-analytical method. 2) The two indices were then weighted to derive TSM. The performance of the proposed model was tested using in situ reflectance and Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) data. The derived TSM based on in situ reflectance and GOCI images both corresponded well with the in situ TSM with low mean relative error (32%, 41%), root mean square error (20.1 mg/L, 43.1 mg/L), and normalized root mean square error (33%, 55%). The model was further used for the slightly turbid Xin’anjiang Reservoir to demonstrate its applicability to derive ap(λ) and bbp(λ) in other water types. The results indicated that the form Rrs −1(λ1) − Rrs −1(λ2) could minimize the effect of CDOM absorption in deriving ap(λ) from the total absorption. The model exploited the different relationships between TSM concentration and multiband reflectance, thus improving the performance and application range in deriving TSM

Phylogenetic, Expression, and Bioinformatic Analysis of the ABC1

We studied 17 ABC1 genes in Populus trichocarpa, all of which contained an ABC1 domain consisting of about 120 amino acid residues. Most of the ABC1 gene products were located in the mitochondria or chloroplasts. All had a conserved VAVK-like motif and a DFG motif. Phylogenetic analysis grouped the genes into three subgroups. In addition, the chromosomal locations of the genes on the 19 Populus chromosomes were determined. Gene structure was studied through exon/intron organization and the MEME motif finder, while heatmap was used to study the expression diversity using EST libraries. According to the heatmap, PtrABC1P14 was highlighted because of the high expression in tension wood which related to secondary cell wall formation and cellulose synthesis, thus making a contribution to follow-up experiment in wood formation. Promoter cis-element analysis indicated that almost all of the ABC1 genes contained one or two cis-elements related to ABA signal transduction pathway and drought stress. Quantitative real-time PCR was carried out to evaluate the expression of all of the genes under abiotic stress conditions (ABA, CdCl2, high temperature, high salinity, and drought); the results showed that some of the genes were affected by these stresses and confirmed the results of promoter cis-element analysis

PromptStyle: Controllable Style Transfer for Text-to-Speech with Natural Language Descriptions

Style transfer TTS has shown impressive performance in recent years. However, style control is often restricted to systems built on expressive speech recordings with discrete style categories. In practical situations, users may be interested in transferring style by typing text descriptions of desired styles, without the reference speech in the target style. The text-guided content generation techniques have drawn wide attention recently. In this work, we explore the possibility of controllable style transfer with natural language descriptions. To this end, we propose PromptStyle, a text prompt-guided cross-speaker style transfer system. Specifically, PromptStyle consists of an improved VITS and a cross-modal style encoder. The cross-modal style encoder constructs a shared space of stylistic and semantic representation through a two-stage training process. Experiments show that PromptStyle can achieve proper style transfer with text prompts while maintaining relatively high stability and speaker similarity. Audio samples are available in our demo page

Isolation, characterization, and genomic analysis of a novel bacteriophage MA9V-1 infecting Chryseobacterium indologenes: a pathogen of Panax notoginseng root rot

Chryseobacterium indologenes is one of the primary causative agents of root rot of Panax notoginseng, which significantly affected plant growth and caused economic losses. With the increasing incidence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial phytopathogens, phage therapy has been garnered renewed attention in treating pathogenic bacteria. However, the therapeutic potential of phage therapy on root rot of P. notoginseng has not been evaluated. In this study, we isolated a novel lytic phage MA9V-1 infecting C. indologenes MA9 from sewage and monitored the formation of clear and round plaques with a diameter of approximately 0.5–1.5 mm. Phage MA9V-1 exhibited rapid absorption (>75% in 8 min), a latency period of 20 min, and a burst size of 10 particles per cell. Transmission electron microscopy indicated that the phage MA9V-1 is a new myovirus hosting C. indologenes MA9. Sequencing of phage genomes revealed that phage MA9V-1 contained a linear double-stranded DNA genome of 213,507 bp with 263 predicted open reading frames, including phage structure, host lysing, and DNA polymerase/helicase but no genes of tRNA, virulence, and antibiotic resistance. Our proteomic tree and genomic analysis revealed that phage MA9V-1 shares identity with Sphingomonas phage PAU and Tenacibaculum phage PTm1; however, they also showed apparent differences. Further systemic evaluation using phage therapy experiments on P. notoginseng suggested that phage MA9V-1 can be a potential candidate for effectively controlling C. indologenes MA9 infection. Thus, we have presented a novel approach to solving root rot in P. notoginseng

Ecological networks of dissolved organic matter and microorganisms under global change

Microbes regulate the composition and turnover of organic matter. Here we developed a framework called Energy-Diversity-Trait integrative Analysis to quantify how dissolved organic matter and microbes interact along global change drivers of temperature and nutrient enrichment. Negative and positive interactions suggest decomposition and production processes of organic matter, respectively. We applied this framework to manipulative field experiments on mountainsides in subarctic and subtropical climates. In both climates, negative interactions of bipartite networks were more specialized than positive interactions, showing fewer interactions between chemical molecules and bacterial taxa. Nutrient enrichment promoted specialization of positive interactions, but decreased specialization of negative interactions, indicating that organic matter was more vulnerable to decomposition by a greater range of bacteria, particularly at warmer temperatures in the subtropical climate. These two global change drivers influenced specialization of negative interactions most strongly via molecular traits, while molecular traits and bacterial diversity similarly affected specialization of positive interactions. Microbes are intimately linked with the fate of organic matter. Here the authors develop an ecological network framework and show how microbes and dissolved organic matter interact along global change drivers of temperature and nutrient enrichment via manipulative field experiments on mountains.Peer reviewe

Water clarity response to climate warming and wetting of the Inner Mongolia-Xinjiang Plateau: A remote sensing approach

Water clarity (generally quantified as the Secchi disk depth: SDD) is a key variable for assessing environmental changes in lakes. Using remote sensing we calculated and elucidated the SDD dynamics in lakes in the Inner Mongolia-Xinjiang Lake Zone (IMXL) from 1986 to 2018 in response to variations in temperature, rainfall, lake area, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and Palmer's drought severity index (PDSI). The results showed that the lakes with high SDD values are primarily located in the Xinjiang region at longitudes of 75°–93° E. In contrast, the lakes in Inner Mongolia at longitudes of 93°–118° E generally have low SDD values. In total, 205 lakes show significant increasing SDD trends (P < 0.05), with a mean rate of 0.15 m per decade. In contrast, 75 lakes, most of which are located in Inner Mongolia, exhibited significant decreasing trends with a mean rate of 0.08 m per decade (P < 0.05). Pooled together, an overall increase is found with a mean rate of 0.14 m per decade. Multiple linear regression reveals that among the five variables selected to explain the variations in SDD, lake area accounts for the highest proportion of variance (25%), while temperature and rainfall account for 12% and 10%, respectively. In addition, rainfall accounts for 52% of the variation in humidity, 8% of the variation in lake area and 7% of the variation in NDVI. Temperature accounts for 27% of the variation in NDVI, 39% of the variation in lake area and 22% of the variation in PDSI. Warming and wetting conditions in IMXL thus promote the growth of vegetation and cause melting of glaciers and expansion of lake area, which eventually leads to improved water quality in the lakes in terms of higher SDD. In contrast, lakes facing more severe drought conditions, became more turbid

The Reliability and Validity of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) for Chinese University Students

Aims: Depression is prevalent among university students worldwide, and the prevalence appears to be increasing. As an intermediate stage between being healthy and having depression, students with subthreshold depression could develop worsening depression or recover with intervention to prevent depression. The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) is a useful tool to assess subthreshold depression. The primary purpose of the current study was to evaluate the psychometric characteristics of CES-D in Chinese university students. Secondly, we aimed to describe the prevalence of subthreshold depression among the student sample and examine its demographic correlates.Methods: A total of 2,068 university students participated in the study, and they were asked to respond to the Chinese CES-D, Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). The factor structure was evaluated by conducting exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using a structural equation modeling approach. The reliability was assessed by calculating Cronbach’s alpha, inter-item correlation, and item-total correlation coefficients. The prevalence of subthreshold depression was calculated and demographic correlates of gender, grade, and major were examined by multiple regression.Results: The final sample included 1,920 participants. The EFA results suggested extraction of three factors (somatic symptoms, negative affect, and anhedonia) that account for 52.68% of total variance. The CFA results suggested that the newly derived model with 14 items was the best fit for our data. Six items were removed from the original scale (item 9, 10, 13, 15, 17, and 19). The Cronbach’s alpha of the 14-item CES-D was 0.87. The prevalence of subthreshold depression among university students reached 32.7% for the 20-item CES-D and 31% for the 14-item CES-D, although there was no significant difference of prevalence in gender, grade, and major.Conclusions: The CES-D has good reliability and validity for assessing subthreshold depression in Chinese university students

Regional and global elevational patterns of microbial species richness and evenness

8 páginas, 4 figurasAlthough elevational gradients in microbial biodiversity have attracted increasing attention recently, the generality in the patterns and underlying mechanisms are still poorly resolved. Further, previous studies focused mostly on species richness, while left understudied evenness, another important aspect of biodiversity. Here, we studied the elevational patterns in species richness and evenness of stream biofi lm bacteria and diatoms in six mountains in Asia and Europe. We also reviewed published results for elevational richness patterns for soil and stream microbes in a literature analysis. Our results revealed that even within the same ecosystem type (that is, stream) or geographical region, bacteria and diatoms showed contrasting patterns in diversity. Stream microbes, including present stream data, tend to show signifi cantly increasing or decreasing elevational patterns in richness, contrasting the fi ndings for soil microbes that typically showed nonsignifi cant or signifi cantly decreasing patterns. In all six mountains for bacteria and in four mountains for diatoms, species richness and evenness were positively correlated. Th e variation in bacteria and diatom richness and evenness were substantially explained by anthropogenic driven factors, such as total phosphorus (TP). However, diatom richness and evenness were also related to diff erent main drivers as richness was mostly related to pH, while evenness was most explained by TP. Our results highlight the lack of consistent elevational biodiversity patterns of microbes and further indicate that the two facets of biodiversity may respond diff erently to environmental gradients.JW was supported by NSFC grant 41273088, 41571058, 40903031 and CAS oversea visiting scholarship (2011-115). JS and JW were supported by Emil Aaltonen Foundation. JS and JW were supported by 973 Program (2012CB956100). Th e fi eld trips were partly supported by Air and Water Conservation Fund (GEFC12-14, National Geography of Science) to JW, and DISPERSAL 829/2013 from the Spanish National Parks Research Programme OAPNMAGRAMA to EOC.Peer reviewe

Association between allergic conditions and risk of prostate cancer: A Prisma-Compliant Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Association between allergic conditions and prostate cancer risk has been investigated for many years. However, the results from available evidence for the association are inconsistent. We conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the relationship between allergic conditions (asthma, atopy, hay fever and “any allergy”) and risk of prostate cancer. The PubMed and Embase databases were searched to screen observational studies meeting our meta-analysis criteria. Study selection and data extraction from included studies were independently performed by two authors. Twenty studies were considered eligible involving 5 case-control studies and 15 cohort studies. The summary relative risk (RR) for developing prostate cancer risk was 1.04 (95%CI: 0.92–1.17) for asthma, and 1.25 (95%CI: 0.74–2.10) for atopy, 1.04 (95%CI: 0.99–1.09) for hay fever, 0.96 (95%CI: 0.86–1.06) for any allergy. In the Subgroup and sensitivity analysis, similar results were produced. Little evidence of publication bias was observed. The present meta-analysis of observational studies indicates that no indication of an association between allergic conditions and risk of prostate cancer was found, and the meta-analysis does not support neither the original hypothesis of an overall cancer protective effect of allergic conditions, nor that of an opposite effect in the development of prostate cancer