The Effect of Different Laser Irradiation on Cyclophosphamide-Induced Leucopenia in Rats

Objective. To assess the effect of different lasers on cyclophosphamide- (CTX-) induced leucopenia in rats. Methods. 11 rats were normal control and 55 rats were injected with a dose of 80 mg/kg CTX for the first time and 40 mg/kg on the 6th and the 11th days to establish a leucopenia model. Rats of the irradiation groups received a 5-minute laser irradiation with either single 10.6 μm or 650 nm laser or alternatively 10.6 μm–650 nm laser irradiation, besides a sham treatment on acupoint Dazhui (DU 14) and acupoint Zusanli (ST 36) of both sides, 8 times for 16 days. Normal and model control group received no treatment. Results. On day 16 after the first CTX injection, the WBC counts from all the laser irradiation groups were significantly higher than those from the model control and the sham group (P<0.05), while there were no significant differences compared with the normal control (P>0.05). The TI of 10.6 μm–650 nm laser irradiation group was significantly higher than that of the model control group (P<0.05). Conclusions. The single and combined 10.6 μm and 650 nm laser irradiation on ST36 and DU14 accelerated the recovery of the WBC count in the rats with leucopenia

Effectiveness of moxibustion treatment as adjunctive therapy in osteoarthritis of the knee: a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial

INTRODUCTION: Our objective was to compare the effectiveness and safety of traditional Chinese moxibustion to that of sham moxibustion in patients with chronic knee osteoarthritis (KOA) pain. METHODS: We conducted a randomized placebo-controlled trial involving 110 patients with KOA who met the inclusion criteria. These patients randomly received either active moxibustion (n = 55) or sham moxibustion control (n = 55) at acupoints Dubi (ST 35), extra-point Neixiyan (EX-LE 4), and an Ashi (tender) point three times a week for 6 weeks. Effects were evaluated with Western Ontario and McMaster Universities’ Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC VA 3.1) criteria at the end of the course of treatment and 3, 12, and 24 weeks after the initial treatment. RESULTS: The WOMAC pain scores showed greater improvement in the active treatment group than in control at weeks 3 (P = 0.012), 6 (P <0.001), 12 (P = 0.002), and 24 (P = 0.002) as did WOMAC physical function scores of the active treatment group at week 3 (P = 0.002), 6 (P = 0.015), and 12 (P <0.001) but not 24 (P = 0.058). Patients and practitioners were blinded successfully, and no significant adverse effects were found during the trial. CONCLUSIONS: A 6-week course of moxibustion seems to relieve pain effectively and improve function in patients with KOA for up to 18 weeks after the end of treatment. Moxibustion treatment appears to be safe, and the usefulness of the novel moxa device was validated. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Current controlled trial: ISRCTN68475405. Registered 4 April 2014

DPS1 regulates cuticle development and leaf senescence in rice

AbstractLeaves are the primary food‐producing organs for a plant that carry out photosynthesis and contribute to biomass and grain yield. Leaf senescence is a developmentally regulated physiological process but early leaf senescence is known to negatively affect plant yield. The cuticle is an outer waxy protective layer on the leaf surface which protects plants from pathogens attack as well as dehydration. Our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying cuticle development and leaf senescence is still immature. The present study reports the role of the DEGENERATED PANICLE AND PARTIAL STERILITY 1 (DPS1) gene encoding a cystathionine β‐synthase (CBS) domain‐containing protein in cuticle development and leaf senescence in rice. The dps1 loss‐of‐function mutant showed leaf senescence phenotype with twisted leaves, significantly reduced chlorophyll content and degenerated chloroplasts characterized by a reduced number of starch granules and an abundance of osmiophilic bodies. Furthermore, dps1 leaves displayed defective cuticle development, reduced wax and cutin compounds, and lower relative water content as compared with wild type. Physiological assays showed significantly higher accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) accompanied by enhanced DNA fragmentation in dps1 leaves, which could be associated with chloroplast degeneration and defective cuticle development. Transcriptome analysis revealed altered expression of several critical genes related to photosynthesis and wax/cutin pathway. This study revealed a crucial role of DPS1 in regulating leaf cuticle development and senescence by affecting the expression of several genes. Thus, a moderate expression of DPS1 is necessary for better plant growth and productivity

Efficient residual network using hyperspectral images for corn variety identification

Corn seeds are an essential element in agricultural production, and accurate identification of their varieties and quality is crucial for planting management, variety improvement, and agricultural product quality control. However, more than traditional manual classification methods are needed to meet the needs of intelligent agriculture. With the rapid development of deep learning methods in the computer field, we propose an efficient residual network named ERNet to identify hyperspectral corn seeds. First, we use linear discriminant analysis to perform dimensionality reduction processing on hyperspectral corn seed images so that the images can be smoothly input into the network. Second, we use effective residual blocks to extract fine-grained features from images. Lastly, we detect and categorize the hyperspectral corn seed images using the classifier softmax. ERNet performs exceptionally well compared to other deep learning techniques and conventional methods. With 98.36% accuracy rate, the result is a valuable reference for classification studies, including hyperspectral corn seed pictures

Effects of nitrogen addition and plant litter manipulation on soil fungal and bacterial communities in a semiarid sandy land

The plant and soil microbial communities are influenced by variability in environmental conditions (e.g., nitrogen addition); however, it is unclear how long-term nitrogen addition and litter manipulation affect soil microbial communities in a semiarid sandy grassland. Therefore, we simulated the impact of N addition and litter manipulation (litter removal, litter doubling) on plant and soil microbial communities in Horqin grassland, northern China through an experiment from 2014 to 2019. Our results revealed that in the case of non-nitrogen (N0), litter manipulation significantly reduced vegetation coverage (V) (p &lt; 0.05); soil bacterial communities have higher alpha diversity than that of the fungi, and the beta diversity of soil fungi was higher than that of the bacteria; soil microbial alpha diversity was significantly decreased by nitrogen addition (N10) (p &lt; 0.05); N addition and litter manipulation had significantly interactive influences on soil microbial beta diversity, and litter manipulation (C0 and C2) had significantly decreased soil microbial beta diversity (p &lt; 0.05) in the case of nitrogen addition (N10) (p &lt; 0.05). Moreover, bacteria were mostly dominated by the universal phyla Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Acidobacteria, and fungi were only dominated by Ascomycota. Furthermore, the correlation analysis, redundancy analysis (RDA), and variation partitioning analysis indicated that the soil fungi community was more apt to be influenced by plant community diversity. Our results provide evidence that plant and soil microbial community respond differently to the treatments of the 6-year N addition and litter manipulation in a semiarid sandy land

Two ultraviolet radiation datasets that cover China

Ultraviolet (UV) radiation has significant effects on ecosystems, environments, and human health, as well as atmospheric processes and climate change. Two ultraviolet radiation datasets are described in this paper. One contains hourly observations of UV radiation measured at 40 Chinese Ecosystem Research Network stations from 2005 to 2015. CUV3 broadband radiometers were used to observe the UV radiation, with an accuracy of 5%, which meets the World Meteorology Organization's measurement standards. The extremum method was used to control the quality of the measured datasets. The other dataset contains daily cumulative UV radiation estimates that were calculated using an all-sky estimation model combined with a hybrid model. The reconstructed daily UV radiation data span from 1961 to 2014. The mean absolute bias error and root-mean-square error are smaller than 30% at most stations, and most of the mean bias error values are negative, which indicates underestimation of the UV radiation intensity. These datasets can improve our basic knowledge of the spatial and temporal variations in UV radiation. Additionally, these datasets can be used in studies of potential ozone formation and atmospheric oxidation, as well as simulations of ecological processes

Dominant plant species shape soil bacterial community in semiarid sandy land of northern China

Plant species affect soil bacterial diversity and compositions. However, little is known about the role of dominant plant species in shaping the soil bacterial community during the restoration of sandy grasslands in Horqin Sandy Land, northern China. We established a mesocosm pots experiment to investigate short-term responses of soil bacterial diversity and composition, and the related soil properties in degraded soils without vegetation (bare sand as the control, CK) to restoration with five plant species that dominate across restoration stages: Agriophyllum squarrosum (AS), Artemisia halodendron (AH), Setaria viridis (SV), Chenopodium acuminatum (CA), and Corispermum macrocarpum (CM). We used redundancy analysis (RDA) to analyze the association between soil bacterial composition and soil properties in different plant species. Our results indicated that soil bacterial diversity was significantly lower in vegetated soils independent of plant species than in the CK. Specifically, soil bacterial species richness and diversity were lower under the shrub AH and the herbaceous plants AS, SV, and CA, and soil bacterial abundance was lower under AH compared with the CK. A field investigation confirmed the same trends where soil bacteria diversity was lower under AS and AH than in bare sand. The high-sequence annotation analysis showed that Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes were the most common phyla in sandy land irrespective of soil plant cover. The OTUs (operational taxonomic units) indicated that some bacterial species were specific to the host plants. Relative to bare sand (CK), soils with vegetative cover exhibited lower soil water content and temperature, and higher soil carbon and nitrogen contents. The RDA result indicated that, in addition to plant species, soil water and nitrogen contents were the most important factors shaping soil bacterial composition in semiarid sandy land. Our study from the pot and field investigations clearly demonstrated that planting dominant species in bare sand impacts bacterial diversity. In semiarid ecosystems, changes in the dominant plant species during vegetation restoration efforts can affect the soil bacterial diversity and composition through the direct effects of plants and the indirect effects of soil properties that are driven by plant species

Dominant plant species shape soil bacterial community in semiarid sandy land of northern China

Plant species affect soil bacterial diversity and compositions. However, little is known about the role of dominant plant species in shaping the soil bacterial community during the restoration of sandy grasslands in Horqin Sandy Land, northern China. We established a mesocosm pots experiment to investigate short-term responses of soil bacterial diversity and composition, and the related soil properties in degraded soils without vegetation (bare sand as the control, CK) to restoration with five plant species that dominate across restoration stages: Agriophyllum squarrosum (AS), Artemisia halodendron (AH), Setaria viridis (SV), Chenopodium acuminatum (CA), and Corispermum macrocarpum (CM). We used redundancy analysis (RDA) to analyze the association between soil bacterial composition and soil properties in different plant species. Our results indicated that soil bacterial diversity was significantly lower in vegetated soils independent of plant species than in the CK. Specifically, soil bacterial species richness and diversity were lower under the shrub AH and the herbaceous plants AS, SV, and CA, and soil bacterial abundance was lower under AH compared with the CK. A field investigation confirmed the same trends where soil bacteria diversity was lower under AS and AH than in bare sand. The high-sequence annotation analysis showed that Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes were the most common phyla in sandy land irrespective of soil plant cover. The OTUs (operational taxonomic units) indicated that some bacterial species were specific to the host plants. Relative to bare sand (CK), soils with vegetative cover exhibited lower soil water content and temperature, and higher soil carbon and nitrogen contents. The RDA result indicated that, in addition to plant species, soil water and nitrogen contents were the most important factors shaping soil bacterial composition in semiarid sandy land. Our study from the pot and field investigations clearly demonstrated that planting dominant species in bare sand impacts bacterial diversity. In semiarid ecosystems, changes in the dominant plant species during vegetation restoration efforts can affect the soil bacterial diversity and composition through the direct effects of plants and the indirect effects of soil properties that are driven by plant species

Impact of Precipitation Fluctuation on Desert-Grassland ANPP

Precipitation change has significantly influenced annual net primary productivity (ANPP) at either annual or seasonal scales in desert steppes in arid and semi-arid regions. In order to reveal the process of precipitation driving ANPP at different time scales, responses of different ANPP levels to the inter-annual and intra-annual precipitation fluctuations were analyzed. ANPP was reversed by building a ground reflectance spectrum model, from 2000 to 2015, using the normalized differential vegetation index of the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS-NDVI) data at 250 m × 250 m spatial resolution. Since the description of the differently expressing forms of precipitation are not sufficient in former studies in order to overcome the deficiency of former studies, in this study, intra-annual precipitation fluctuations were analyzed not only with precipitation of May–August, June–August, July–August, and August, respectively, which have direct influence on vegetation productivity within the year, but quantitative description, vector precipitation (R), concentration ratio (Cd), and concentration period (D), were also used to describe the overall characteristics of intra-annual precipitation fluctuations. The concentration ratio and the maximum precipitation period of the intra-annual precipitation were represented by using monthly precipitation. The results showed that: (1) in the period from 1971 to 2015, the maximum annual precipitation is 3.76 times that of the minimum in the Urat desert steppe; (2) vector precipitation is more significantly related to ANPP (r = 0.7724, p = 0.000) compared to meteorological annual precipitation and real annual precipitation influence; and (3) annual precipitation is almost concentrated in 5–8 months and monthly precipitation accumulation has significantly effected ANPP, especially in the period of June–August, since the vegetation composition in the study area was mainly sub-shrubs and perennial grasses, which were more sensitive to precipitation accumulation. These findings suggest that: (1) In the desert steppe, the inter-annual fluctuation and the intra-annual distribution of precipitation have a direct impact on ANPP; (2) the annual vector precipitation showed an extremely significant regression relationship with ANPP; and (3) monthly precipitation fluctuations (May–August) possess the accumulative effect on ANPP during the growing period in the desert steppe, while precipitation accumulation from June to August shows the most significant impact