The hyperaccumulator Sedum plumbizincicola harbors metal-resistant endophytic bacteria that improve its phytoextraction capacity in multi-metal contaminated soil

Endophyte-assisted phytoremediation has recently been suggested as a successful approach for ecological restoration of metal contaminated soils, however little information is available on the influence of endophytic bacteria on the phytoextraction capacity of metal hyperaccumulating plants in multimetal polluted soils. The aims of our study were to isolate and characterize metal-resistant and 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) utilizing endophytic bacteria from tissues of the newly discovered Zn/Cd hyperaccumulator Sedum plumbizinci cola and to examine if these endophytic bacterial strains could improve the efficiency of phytoextraction of multi-metal contaminated soils. Among a collection of 42 metal resistant bacterial strains isolated from the tissues of S. plumbizinci cola grown on Pb/Zn mine tailings, five plant growth promoting endophytic bacterial strains (PGPE) were selected due to their ability to promote plant growth and to utilize ACC as the sole nitrogen source. The five isolates were identified as Bacillus pumilus E2S2, Bacillus sp. E1S2, Bacillus sp. E4S1, Achromobacter sp. E4L5 and Stenotrophomonas sp. E1L and subsequent testing revealed that they all exhibited traits associated with plant growth promotion, such as production of indole-3-acetic acid and siderophores and solubilization of phosphorus. These five strains showed high resistance to heavy metals (Cd, Zn and Pb) and various antibiotics. Further, inoculation of these ACC utilizing strains significantly increased the concentrations of water ektractable Cd and Zn in soil. Moreover, a pot experiment was conducted to elucidate the effects of inoculating metal-resistant ACC utilizing strains on the growth of S. plumbizincicola and its uptake of Cd, Zn and Pb in multi-metal contaminated soils. Out of the five strains, B. pumilus E2S2 significantly increased root (146%) and shoot (17%) length, fresh (37%) and dry biomass (32%) of S. plumbizincicola as well as plant Cd uptake (43%), whereas Bacillus sp. E1S2 significantly enhanced the accumulation of Zn (18%) in plants compared with non-inoculated controls. The inoculated strains also showed high levels of colonization in rhizosphere and plant tissues. Results demonstrate the potential to improve phytoextraction of soils contaminated with multiple heavy metals by inoculating metal hyperaccumulating plants with their own selected functional endophytic bacterial strains.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Real-time Monitoring for the Next Core-Collapse Supernova in JUNO

Core-collapse supernova (CCSN) is one of the most energetic astrophysical events in the Universe. The early and prompt detection of neutrinos before (pre-SN) and during the SN burst is a unique opportunity to realize the multi-messenger observation of the CCSN events. In this work, we describe the monitoring concept and present the sensitivity of the system to the pre-SN and SN neutrinos at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), which is a 20 kton liquid scintillator detector under construction in South China. The real-time monitoring system is designed with both the prompt monitors on the electronic board and online monitors at the data acquisition stage, in order to ensure both the alert speed and alert coverage of progenitor stars. By assuming a false alert rate of 1 per year, this monitoring system can be sensitive to the pre-SN neutrinos up to the distance of about 1.6 (0.9) kpc and SN neutrinos up to about 370 (360) kpc for a progenitor mass of 30$M_{\odot}$ for the case of normal (inverted) mass ordering. The pointing ability of the CCSN is evaluated by using the accumulated event anisotropy of the inverse beta decay interactions from pre-SN or SN neutrinos, which, along with the early alert, can play important roles for the followup multi-messenger observations of the next Galactic or nearby extragalactic CCSN.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figure

Potential of Core-Collapse Supernova Neutrino Detection at JUNO

JUNO is an underground neutrino observatory under construction in Jiangmen, China. It uses 20kton liquid scintillator as target, which enables it to detect supernova burst neutrinos of a large statistics for the next galactic core-collapse supernova (CCSN) and also pre-supernova neutrinos from the nearby CCSN progenitors. All flavors of supernova burst neutrinos can be detected by JUNO via several interaction channels, including inverse beta decay, elastic scattering on electron and proton, interactions on C12 nuclei, etc. This retains the possibility for JUNO to reconstruct the energy spectra of supernova burst neutrinos of all flavors. The real time monitoring systems based on FPGA and DAQ are under development in JUNO, which allow prompt alert and trigger-less data acquisition of CCSN events. The alert performances of both monitoring systems have been thoroughly studied using simulations. Moreover, once a CCSN is tagged, the system can give fast characterizations, such as directionality and light curve

Detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with JUNO

As an underground multi-purpose neutrino detector with 20 kton liquid scintillator, Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is competitive with and complementary to the water-Cherenkov detectors on the search for the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB). Typical supernova models predict 2-4 events per year within the optimal observation window in the JUNO detector. The dominant background is from the neutral-current (NC) interaction of atmospheric neutrinos with 12C nuclei, which surpasses the DSNB by more than one order of magnitude. We evaluated the systematic uncertainty of NC background from the spread of a variety of data-driven models and further developed a method to determine NC background within 15\% with {\it{in}} {\it{situ}} measurements after ten years of running. Besides, the NC-like backgrounds can be effectively suppressed by the intrinsic pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) capabilities of liquid scintillators. In this talk, I will present in detail the improvements on NC background uncertainty evaluation, PSD discriminator development, and finally, the potential of DSNB sensitivity in JUNO

Phaseless Terahertz Coded-Aperture Imaging Based on Deep Generative Neural Network

As a promising terahertz radar imaging technology, phaseless terahertz coded-aperture imaging (PL-TCAI) has many advantages such as simple system structure, forward-looking imaging and staring imaging and so forth. However, it is very difficult to recover a target only from its intensity measurements. Although some methods have been proposed to deal with this problem, they require a large number of intensity measurements for both sparse and extended target reconstruction. In this work, we propose a method for PL-TCAI by modeling target scattering coefficient as being in the range of a generative model. Theoretically, we analyze and model the system structure, derive the matrix imaging equation, and then study the deep phase retrieval algorithm. Numerical tests based on different generative models show that the targets with the different spareness can achieve high resolution reconstruction when the number of intensity measurements are smaller than the number of target grids. Also, we find that the proposed method has good anti-noise and stability

The Analysis of Correlative Factors of Visual Acuity with Intravitreal Conbercept Injection in Macular Edema Associated with Branch Retinal Vein Occlusion

Purpose. To evaluate the correlative factors of best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) with intravitreal conbercept injection in macular edema secondary to branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO). Methods. This is a self-controlled retrospective study. 35 eyes of 35 patients with macular edema secondary to BRVO were enrolled. After an initial intravitreal injection of conbercept (0.5 mg/0.05 ml) monthly up to 3 months, a pro re nata (PRN) strategy was adopted based on the increase in central foveal thickness (CFT). Data collected at various time points include BCVA, CFT, photoreceptor layer thickness (PLT), and outer nuclear layer thickness (ONLT) on optical coherence tomography. The correlation between CFT, PLT, ONLT, and BCVA before and after injections was analyzed. Results. Compared with baseline, in months 1, 3, and 6 after injection, the improvement of BCVA was 20.63, 22.94, and 21.06 ETDRS letters, respectively (F=195.843, P<0.01), and the decrease of CFT was 217.37 μm, 224.57 μm, and 224.06 μm, respectively (F=148.522, P<0.01). The PLT in months 1, 3, and 6 after therapy has significant improvement of 11.14 μm, 13.03 μm, and 13.49 μm (F=64.116, P<0.01), while the ONLT has a significant decrease of 225.29 μm, 237.66 μm, and 239.11 μm, respectively (F=145.231, P<0.01). The changes in the treatment group were significant in different periods. The mean number of injections was 3.26 ± 0.50 from baseline to month 6. Conclusions. Intravitreal injection of conbercept provides an effective treatment for macular edema due to BRVO. With six-month treatment, there were a positive correlation between BCVA and PLT (r=0.592, P<0.001), a negative correlation between BCVA and ONLT (r=−0.480, P=0.005), and no correlation between BCVA and CFT (P=0.506)

Fast Terahertz Coded-Aperture Imaging Based on Convolutional Neural Network

Terahertz coded-aperture imaging (TCAI) has many advantages such as forward-looking imaging, staring imaging and low cost and so forth. However, it is difficult to resolve the target under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the imaging process is time-consuming. Here, we provide an efficient solution to tackle this problem. A convolution neural network (CNN) is leveraged to develop an off-line end to end imaging network whose structure is highly parallel and free of iterations. And it can just act as a general and powerful mapping function. Once the network is well trained and adopted for TCAI signal processing, the target of interest can be recovered immediately from echo signal. Also, the method to generate training data is shown, and we find that the imaging network trained with simulation data is of good robustness against noise and model errors. The feasibility of the proposed approach is verified by simulation experiments and the results show that it has a competitive performance with the state-of-the-art algorithms