Microbial Communities in Long-Term, Water-Flooded Petroleum Reservoirs with Different in situ Temperatures in the Huabei Oilfield, China

The distribution of microbial communities in the Menggulin (MGL) and Ba19 blocks in the Huabei Oilfield, China, were studied based on 16S rRNA gene analysis. The dominant microbes showed obvious block-specific characteristics, and the two blocks had substantially different bacterial and archaeal communities. In the moderate-temperature MGL block, the bacteria were mainly Epsilonproteobacteria and Alphaproteobacteria, and the archaea were methanogens belonging to Methanolinea, Methanothermobacter, Methanosaeta, and Methanocella. However, in the high-temperature Ba19 block, the predominant bacteria were Gammaproteobacteria, and the predominant archaea were Methanothermobacter and Methanosaeta. In spite of shared taxa in the blocks, differences among wells in the same block were obvious, especially for bacterial communities in the MGL block. Compared to the bacterial communities, the archaeal communities were much more conserved within blocks and were not affected by the variation in the bacterial communities

Phototrophic biofilms and their potential applications

Phototrophic biofilms occur on surfaces exposed to light in a range of terrestrial and aquatic environments. Oxygenic phototrophs like diatoms, green algae, and cyanobacteria are the major primary producers that generate energy and reduce carbon dioxide, providing the system with organic substrates and oxygen. Photosynthesis fuels processes and conversions in the total biofilm community, including the metabolism of heterotrophic organisms. A matrix of polymeric substances secreted by phototrophs and heterotrophs enhances the attachment of the biofilm community. This review discusses the actual and potential applications of phototrophic biofilms in wastewater treatment, bioremediation, fish-feed production, biohydrogen production, and soil improvement

Monitoring of microbial hydrocarbon remediation in the soil

Bioremediation of hydrocarbon pollutants is advantageous owing to the cost-effectiveness of the technology and the ubiquity of hydrocarbon-degrading microorganisms in the soil. Soil microbial diversity is affected by hydrocarbon perturbation, thus selective enrichment of hydrocarbon utilizers occurs. Hydrocarbons interact with the soil matrix and soil microorganisms determining the fate of the contaminants relative to their chemical nature and microbial degradative capabilities, respectively. Provided the polluted soil has requisite values for environmental factors that influence microbial activities and there are no inhibitors of microbial metabolism, there is a good chance that there will be a viable and active population of hydrocarbon-utilizing microorganisms in the soil. Microbial methods for monitoring bioremediation of hydrocarbons include chemical, biochemical and microbiological molecular indices that measure rates of microbial activities to show that in the end the target goal of pollutant reduction to a safe and permissible level has been achieved. Enumeration and characterization of hydrocarbon degraders, use of micro titer plate-based most probable number technique, community level physiological profiling, phospholipid fatty acid analysis, 16S rRNA- and other nucleic acid-based molecular fingerprinting techniques, metagenomics, microarray analysis, respirometry and gas chromatography are some of the methods employed in bio-monitoring of hydrocarbon remediation as presented in this review

Performance assessment of noise reduction methods applied to underwater acoustic signals

International audienceThis paper presents an objective evaluation of state-of-the-art single channel noise reduction algorithms. The evaluation is performed on a representative real data set of underwater acoustic records. Rationales used to process the proposed evaluation are mean squared error, global signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), segmental SNR and mean squared spectral error. Moreover, this first quantitative evaluation is followed by a perceptual evaluation based on the scores obtained from peoples ranking the quality of each record, with a simple rating rule running from one (poor) to five (perfect). Finally, the results obtained with the denoising methods selected in this study are described to establish the pros and cons of each method, when compared, according to our proposed evaluation criteria

Hippocampal LTP modulation and glutamatergic receptors following vestibular loss

International audienceVestibular dysfunction strongly impairs hippocampus-dependent spatial memory performance and place cell function. However, the hippocampal encoding of vestibular information at the synaptic level, remains sparsely explored and controversial. We investigated changes in in vivo long-term potentiation (LTP) and NMDA glutamate receptor (NMDAr) density and distribution after bilateral vestibular lesions (BVL) in adult rats. At day 30 (D30) post-BVL, the LTP of the population spike recorded in the dentate gyrus (DG) was higher in BVL rats, for the entire 3 h of LTP recording, while no difference was observed in the fEPSP slope. However, there was an increase in EPSP–spike (E–S) potentiation in lesioned rats. NMDArs were upregulated at D7 and D30 predominantly within the DG and CA1. At D30, we observed a higher NMDAr density in the left hippocampus. NMDArs were overexpressed on both neurons and non-neuronal cells, suggesting a decrease of the entorhinal glutamatergic inputs to the hippocampus following BVL. The EPSP–spike (E–S) potentiation increase was consistent with the dorsal hippocampus NMDAr upregulation. Such an increase could reflect a non-specific enhancement of synaptic efficacy, leading to a disruption of memory encoding, and therefore might underlie the memory deficits previously reported in rats and humans following vestibular loss

Two abyssal sites in the Southern Ocean influenced by different organic matter inputs: Environmental characterization and preliminary observations on the benthic foraminifera

The abundance and diversity of the deep-sea benthos are intimately linked to inputs of organic matter from the euphotic zone. However, it is often difficult to isolate the influence of surface productivity on benthic ecosystems from other environmental factors. To this end, two abyssal sites (4200 m water depth) located under contrasting productivity regimes around the Crozet Plateau, in the Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean, were sampled during the austral summer of 2004/2005. One site (M5), east of the Crozet Isles, was located beneath an area where there was an enduring seasonal phytoplankton bloom. The second site (M6) was located in an oligotrophic high-nutrient low-chlorophyll (HNLC) region to the south of the islands. Organic fluxes to the seafloor at these sites are thought to reflect the overlying productivities, so that the benthic environment to the east of the islands was more eutrophic than at the southerly station. All other environmental variables were similar at the two sites, which are located just 460 km apart. The concentrations of chlorophyll-a and total organic carbon in the surficial sediments were significantly greater at the relatively eutrophic site, east of the islands (M5), than at the southerly site (M6). Total nitrogen, however, was similar at both sites. Significantly higher phytopigment concentrations were observed in the surficial sediments at the eutrophic site; in particular, the concentration of chlorophyll-a was 3 times greater than at the southern site, although the freshness of the labile component, as measured by chlorophyll-a to pheophorbide ratio, was not different between sites. These results confirm that fluxes of organic matter to the seafloor were higher at the site located beneath the bloom region. This was reflected in the abundance and diversity of live (stained) and dead benthic foraminifera (>125 μm), which were greater at the eutrophic site. The species composition of the dead foraminiferal assemblages were similar at both sites, however, and were dominated by Nuttallides umbonifera, Pullenia bulloides, and Melonis pompiloides. An exception was the “phytodetritus species” Epistominella exigua, which was more abundant at the eutrophic site, indicating a larger seasonal component to the export under the bloom region. Differences in the organic matter input regimes at the two sites appear to influence the abundance and diversity, but not the overall species composition, of the foraminiferal assemblages