Mechanisms linking plant diversity to large herbivore performance

There is established concern that loss of biodiversity will affect ecosystem productivity, nutrient cycling, carbon storage, stability and other properties^1,2^. Interactions between trophic levels are thought to link changes to biodiversity and ecosystem processes^3-6^. However, there is a lack of empirical studies linking plant diversity with altered trophic levels^7,8^, especially for large herbivores, the important but often neglected, controlling trophic level in terrestrial systems. Here we examine responses in performance of the large generalist herbivore to changes in plant diversity, using an indoor cafeteria trial and a field experiment. Our results show that increased plant diversity improves herbivore performance but it is depressed at highest plant diversity levels. We propose the Disturbance Selection Hypothesis for explaining plant diversity effects on primary consumers. Increasing the number of plant species in grassland, increases consumption and enhances nutrient intake (presumably improving animal fitness) by modifying nutrient balance, toxin dilution and taste modulation. High plant diversity simultaneously intensifies animal diet switching frequency, and weakens the herbivore's ability to select food, thereby increasing foraging cost and disturbing the herbivore's selection of forage. Thus, the consequence of plant diversity for large herbivore performance depends on the trade-off between the positive and negative effects. At highest plant diversity the positive effects weaken and negative effects strengthen. We suggest knowledge of the mechanisms is the means for understanding relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and the management of large herbivores on rangelands used for conservation and grazing

A Semantic-Based Knowledge Management Platform

We describe the development of a semantic-based knowledge management platform for web-enabled environments featuring intelligence and insight capabilities. The main objective of the platform is to semantically search, analyze and present information retrieved from the web (or any other type of document) as well as allows domain ontology to evolve periodically. This is achieved through the use of Multi-Agent Systems and ontologies, one for building distributed systems and the other for knowledge representation. The most important feature of the SKMP lie in that the information retrieved from the web is the source of ontology evolving, while the periodical ontology evolving that will enrich domain ontologies by adding more semantics in return significantly improves efficiency of the semantic retrieval, i.e., the two are mutually reinforcing relationship. We test and verify the feature through three domain ontology from different domain

Product Fuzzy Recommendation of Online Reviews Based on Consumer Psychological Motives

Sentiment analysis of online comments and their application has become a hot topic. Meanwhile the evaluation and emotion method has challenged researchers and practitioners. This paper proposes a fuzzy modeling for the evaluation and emotion of online review texts by means of the theory of consumption motivation type and establishes corresponding fuzzy corpus. A calculation method of comprehensive evaluation and emotion with respect to the consumer‟s preference for product attributes provide reasoning antecedents. Establishment of fuzzy inference rules give results of recommendation to consumers of four different motivations. Experimental results prove the validity of the proposed method

Identity Change through Affordances Actualization: Evidence from Healthcare Workers

As more and more digital technologies are used in healthcare organizations, the way healthcare workers work and doctor-patient communication are changing. These changes will lead to identity change of healthcare workers. Some scholars try to understand technological changes in terms of the affordance theory. However, there are few relevant studies that incorporate specific application scenarios. In this paper, we explore the specific performance of the digital technology affordance and the impact on healthcare workers’ identity in China. We conducted in-depth interviews with 14 healthcare workers and used grounded theory to summarize three kinds of digital technology affordance, namely functional affordance, process affordance and performance affordance. The findings suggest that on the one hand, digital technology affordance increase the efficiency of healthcare workers and enhance collaboration among colleagues, thus reinforcing the healthcare workers’ identity. On the other hand, over-reliance on digital technology may also lead to unnecessary hassles that worsen healthcare workers’ identity. Our study enriches the affordance theory and identity theory, and has constructive implications for the quality of healthcare services in a digital context

5′-Methyl­sulfanyl-4′-oxo-7′-phenyl-3′,4′-dihydro-1′H-spiro­[cyclo­hexane-1,2′-quinazoline]-8′-carbonitrile dimethyl­formamide monosolvate

In the title compound, C21H21N3OS·C3H7NO, the carbonitrile mol­ecule is built up of two fused six-membered rings and one six-membered ring linked through a spiro C atom. The 1,3-diaza ring adopts an envelope conformation and the cyclo­hexane ring adopts a chair conformation. The dihedral angle between the aromatic rings is 46.7 (3)°. In the crystal, the components are linked by N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

FOXA1 mutations alter pioneering activity, differentiation and prostate cancer phenotypes.

Mutations in the transcription factor FOXA1 define a unique subset of prostate cancers but the functional consequences of these mutations and whether they confer gain or loss of function is unknown1-9. Here, by annotating the landscape of FOXA1 mutations from 3,086 human prostate cancers, we define two hotspots in the forkhead domain: Wing2 (around 50% of all mutations) and the highly conserved DNA-contact residue R219 (around 5% of all mutations). Wing2 mutations are detected in adenocarcinomas at all stages, whereas R219 mutations are enriched in metastatic tumours with neuroendocrine histology. Interrogation of the biological properties of wild-type FOXA1 and fourteen FOXA1 mutants reveals gain of function in mouse prostate organoid proliferation assays. Twelve of these mutants, as well as wild-type FOXA1, promoted an exaggerated pro-luminal differentiation program, whereas two different R219 mutants blocked luminal differentiation and activated a mesenchymal and neuroendocrine transcriptional program. Assay for transposase-accessible chromatin using sequencing (ATAC-seq) of wild-type FOXA1 and representative Wing2 and R219 mutants revealed marked, mutant-specific changes in open chromatin at thousands of genomic loci and exposed sites of FOXA1 binding and associated increases in gene expression. Of note, ATAC-seq peaks in cells expressing R219 mutants lacked the canonical core FOXA1-binding motifs (GTAAAC/T) but were enriched for a related, non-canonical motif (GTAAAG/A), which was preferentially activated by R219-mutant FOXA1 in reporter assays. Thus, FOXA1 mutations alter its pioneering function and perturb normal luminal epithelial differentiation programs, providing further support for the role of lineage plasticity in cancer progression