Macrophyte identity shapes water column and sediment bacterial community

By assembling mesocosms and utilizing high-throughput sequencing, we aim to characterize the shifts of the bacterial community in freshwaters driven by two contrasting submerged macrophyte species, Ceratophyllum demersum L. and Vallisneria spiralis L. Although the microbe in both the water column and sediment were largely modulated by the macrophyte, the effect varied considerably depending on bacterial locations and macrophyte species. Actinobacteria was the most abundant taxa in the water column of all the three treatments, but its abundances were significantly higher in the two planted treatments. Moreover, Alphaproteobacteria showed high abundance only in the unplanted control. For bacterial taxa in the sediment, C. demersum significantly increased the relative abundance of Anaerolineae but reduced the relative abundance of Betaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria, while V. spiralis increased the relative abundance of Deltaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria. Additionally, in the C. demersum treatment, the water column bacterial community increased more dramatically in richness, alpha diversity, and the relative abundance of the dominant taxa than those in the V. spiralis treatment. Taken together, the findings from this study reveal that the two species of submerged macrophyte modified the bacterial community in waters, despite the obvious interspecific performance differences

Spatial identification of conservation priority areas for urban ecological land: An approach based on water ecosystem services

How to effectively prevent land degradation and ecosystem deterioration in the process of urbanization has been the focus of land degradation researches in urban areas. Urban ecological land can be defined as the natural base on which a city relies to ecologically survive. It closely links the social economy with the natural eco‐environment, providing an important integrated approach to resolve the contradiction between urban expansion and natural ecosystems conservation in the process of urbanization. The research question addressed in this study is how to accurately identify the conservation priority areas for urban ecological land. Taking Zhuhai City, located in China, as an example, an approach based on seven kinds of water ecosystem services was put forward, combining social demand and natural supply for the services to determine service targets and conservation priority areas. The results showed that the conservation priority areas in Zhuhai City covered 868 km2, accounting for 51.03% of the total land area, which were mainly covered by woodlands or paddy fields and fish ponds. In addition, by synthesizing ecological importance and ecological sensitivity, management zones for urban ecological land were delineated, including 510 km2 of primary control areas and 358 km2 of secondary control areas. In the supply and demand view of water ecosystem services, this study put forward an integrated ecosystem‐based approach for conservation priority area identification of urban ecological land, aiming to prevent land degradation and achieve urban ecological sustainability

The therapeutic role and potential mechanism of EGCG in obesity-related precocious puberty as determined by integrated metabolomics and network pharmacology

Objective(-)-Epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) has preventive effects on obesity-related precocious puberty, but its underlying mechanism remains unclear. The aim of this study was to integrate metabolomics and network pharmacology to reveal the mechanism of EGCG in the prevention of obesity-related precocious puberty.Materials and methodsA high-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization ion-trap tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS/MS) was used to analyze the impact of EGCG on serum metabolomics and associated metabolic pathways in a randomized controlled trial. Twelve weeks of EGCG capsules were given to obese girls in this trail. Additionally, the targets and pathways of EGCG in preventing obesity-related precocious puberty network pharmacology were predicted using network pharmacology. Finally, the mechanism of EGCG prevention of obesity-related precocious puberty was elucidated through integrated metabolomics and network pharmacology.ResultsSerum metabolomics screened 234 endogenous differential metabolites, and network pharmacology identified a total of 153 common targets. These metabolites and targets mainly enrichment pathways involving endocrine-related pathways (estrogen signaling pathway, insulin resistance, and insulin secretion), and signal transduction (PI3K-Akt, MAPK, and Jak-STAT signaling pathways). The integrated metabolomics and network pharmacology indicated that AKT1, EGFR, ESR1, STAT3, IGF1, and MAPK1 may be key targets for EGCG in preventing obesity-related precocious puberty.ConclusionEGCG may contribute to preventing obesity-related precocious puberty through targets such as AKT1, EGFR, ESR1, STAT3, IGF1, and MAPK1 and multiple signaling pathways, including the estrogen, PI3K-Akt, MAPK, and Jak-STAT pathways. This study provided a theoretical foundation for future research

Peer-to-peer multimedia communication over wifi network system

With the high availability of mobile phones nowadays, multimedia communication technology through wireless network has become more and more popular. However wireless communication relies heavily on commercial service provider using GSM or 3G networks. The general purpose of this project is to design and develop an integrated mobile solution which is capable of providing communication services through the WI-FI network on Symbian Phones. In this project, Nokia phones with Symbian OS v9.3 operating system are used to communicate with each other using WI-FI network operating at 2.4 GHz. The communication services can be in the form of chatting, image, audio and video files. The design and development process follows the methodology of modular design; different functions are developed individually. There are three phrases of the project. In the first phrase, basic functions such as taking picture, recording audio and video, composing text message, browsing file directory are implemented. In the second phrase, the main focus is on the transmission of data. It is initially developed to be able to transmit plain text messages over UDP. The students proceeded to transmit small size file over the network. Subsequently it continued to explore the possibilities to handle transmission of files of larger sizes which need fragmentation. Finally, this project involves integration of all the modules. Together with the development by a fellow student, the integrated solution has been produced with the capabilities of chatting, sending picture and audio as well as video data. This enables mobile phone users to stay wirelessly connected without the involvement of the commercial telecommunications provider.Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Engineering

Is Social Capital Productive? An Occupational Heterogeneous Observation

In this article, we focus on the role of social capital on productivity, in which social capital is defined as resource embedded in personal networks on the individual level (Brass, et. al, 2004). The productiveness mechanism of social capital has rarely been discussed by researchers, and most of them state the information transmitting as the key channel that social capital takes effects. In this paper, however, we conjecture that social capital has a direct effect on productivity, with theoretical support from organizational, management and marketing literature. Specifically, we build a test whether return to social capital is higher in the occupations with higher interpersonal task orientation. With a unique dataset on social capital of Chinese migrant workers, we find relatively robust results with OLS and IV approach. Finally we adopt several robust checks, checking for alternative of the basic test, ruling out the reverse causality story and dealing with the outliers

Surface net heat flux estimated from drifter observations

The ocean mixed layer temperature equation is used to estimate the surface net heat flux from drifter measurements. The net heat flux is determined for both the climatologic and tropical cyclone (TC) conditions. The spatial distributions of the drifter-derived heat fluxes under both the two conditions are similar to those derived from satellite observations. However, the drifter-derived climatologic heat flux appears to be weaker in magnitude than that derived from satellites, and performs better in closing the energy budget with a global mean value of 3.9 W m ^−2 . The drifter-derived heat flux also performs better than the satellite-derived heat flux under TCs, using the buoy observations as a reference considering metrics such as the meen error, mean absolute error, root mean-square error and percent bias. The spatially averaged mean net heat flux derived from drifters under TCs is −124 W m ^−2 at 10° N, and decreases to −85 W m ^−2 at 30° N, however, these values are much larger than those obtained from satellites (−63 W m ^−2 and −21 W m ^−2 , respectively). As additional components for the mixed layer temperature equation, both the entrainment velocity and eddy diffusivity in climatology show large amplitudes in regions with strong currents such as the Western Boundary Current and Antarctic Circumpolar Current. However, under TC conditions large values of the entrainment velocity and eddy diffusivity mostly appear in regions with strong winds