| 11. |
- He, Haoran, et al.
(author)
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Deciphering microbiomes dozens of meters under our feet and their edaphoclimatic and spatial drivers
- 2024
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In: Global Change Biology. - 1354-1013. ; 30:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Microbes inhabiting deep soil layers are known to be different from their counterpart in topsoil yet remain under investigation in terms of their structure, function, and how their diversity is shaped. The microbiome of deep soils (>1 m) is expected to be relatively stable and highly independent from climatic conditions. Much less is known, however, on how these microbial communities vary along climate gradients. Here, we used amplicon sequencing to investigate bacteria, archaea, and fungi along fifteen 18-m depth profiles at 20–50-cm intervals across contrasting aridity conditions in semi-arid forest ecosystems of China's Loess Plateau. Our results showed that bacterial and fungal α diversity and bacterial and archaeal community similarity declined dramatically in topsoil and remained relatively stable in deep soil. Nevertheless, deep soil microbiome still showed the functional potential of N cycling, plant-derived organic matter degradation, resource exchange, and water coordination. The deep soil microbiome had closer taxa–taxa and bacteria–fungi associations and more influence of dispersal limitation than topsoil microbiome. Geographic distance was more influential in deep soil bacteria and archaea than in topsoil. We further showed that aridity was negatively correlated with deep-soil archaeal and fungal richness, archaeal community similarity, relative abundance of plant saprotroph, and bacteria–fungi associations, but increased the relative abundance of aerobic ammonia oxidation, manganese oxidation, and arbuscular mycorrhizal in the deep soils. Root depth, complexity, soil volumetric moisture, and clay play bridging roles in the indirect effects of aridity on microbes in deep soils. Our work indicates that, even microbial communities and nutrient cycling in deep soil are susceptible to changes in water availability, with consequences for understanding the sustainability of dryland ecosystems and the whole-soil in response to aridification. Moreover, we propose that neglecting soil depth may underestimate the role of soil moisture in dryland ecosystems under future climate scenarios.
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| 12. |
- Nookuea, Worrada, et al.
(author)
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Viscosity Data of Aqueous MDEA-[Bmim][BF4] Solutions Within Carbon Capture Operating Conditions
- 2017
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In: 8th International Conference on Applied Energy, ICAE2016, 8-11 October 2016, Beijing, China. - : Elsevier. ; 105, s. 4581-4586
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Post-combustion capture with chemical absorption shows higher potential for commercial scale application compared with other technologies. To capture CO2 from the industrial and power plant's flue gases, aqueous alkanolamine solutions are widely used. However, several drawbacks from utilizing the aqueous alkanolamines such as MEA still need to be solved. For example, alkanolamine solutions require intensive energy for regeneration and cause severe corrosion to the equipment though they have high reactivity in capturing CO2. Ionic liquids have been of interest in the recent development of chemical absorption according to their unique characteristics including wide liquid range, negligible volatility and thermal stability. However, due to their high price, high viscosity and low absorption capacity compared to alkanolamines, ionic liquids are still non-desirable for industrial applications. One possible solution to improve the performance of ionic liquids is to use mixtures of ionic liquids and alkanolamines. For a better understanding of the absorption using the mixture of aqueous alkanolamines and ionic liquids, the knowledge of thermo-physical properties of the solutions, especially the viscosity and density are of importance. This paper reports the measured viscosity of MDEA-[Bmim][BF4] aqueous mixtures at various temperatures and concentrations. It was found that the viscosity increase with an increase in [Bmim][BF4] concentration, but decrease with an increase in temperature. Moreover, the impact of temperature on the viscosity is more significant at low temperature range.
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| 13. |
- Ren, Weixi, et al.
(author)
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An intelligent optimization method for the facility environment on rural roads
- 2024
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In: Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering. - 1093-9687 .- 1467-8667. ; In Press
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This study develops an intelligent optimization method of the facility environment (i.e., road facilities and surrounding landscapes) from drivers’ visual perception to adjust operation speeds on rural roads. Different from previous methods that heavily rely on expert experience and are time-consuming, this method can rapidly generate optimized visual images of the facility environment and promptly verify the optimization effects. In this study, a visual road schema model is established to quantify the facility environment from drivers’ visual perception, and an automated optimization scheme determination approach considering the original facility environment characteristics is proposed using self-explaining theory. Then, Cycle-consistent generative adversarial network is used to automatically generate optimized facility environment images. To verify the optimization effect, operation speeds of the optimized facility environments are predicted using random forest. The case study shows that this method can effectively optimize the facility environment where original operation speeds are more than 20% over the speed limits, and the whole process only takes 1 h far less than several months or years in previous ways. Overall, this study advances the intelligence level in optimizing the facility environment and enhances rural road safety.
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| 14. |
- Tian, Shangjie, et al.
(author)
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Magnetic topological insulator MnBi6 Te10 with a zero-field ferromagnetic state and gapped Dirac surface states
- 2020
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In: Physical Review B. - 2469-9950. ; 102:3
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Magnetic topological insulators (TIs) with nontrivial topological electronic structure and broken time-reversal symmetry exhibit various exotic topological quantum phenomena. The realization of such exotic phenomena at high temperature is one of the central topics in this area. We reveal that MnBi6Te10 is a magnetic TI with an antiferromagnetic ground state below 10.8 K whose nontrivial topology is manifested by Dirac-like surface states. The ferromagnetic axion insulator state with Z4=2 emerges once spins are polarized at a field as low as 0.1 T, accompanied with saturated anomalous Hall resistivity up to 10 K. Such a ferromagnetic state is preserved even with an external field down to zero at 2 K. Theoretical calculations indicate that the few-layer ferromagnetic MnBi6Te10 is also topologically nontrivial with a nonzero Chern number. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy experiments further reveal three types of Dirac surface states arising from different terminations on the cleavage surfaces, one of which has insulating behavior with an energy gap of ∼28 meV at the Dirac point. These outstanding features suggest that MnBi6Te10 is a promising system to realize various topological quantum effects at zero field and high temperature.
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| 15. |
- Wang, Damao, et al.
(author)
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Recent Advances in Screening Methods for the Functional Investigation of Lytic Polysaccharide Monooxygenases
- 2021
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In: Frontiers in Chemistry. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2296-2646. ; 9
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Lytic polysaccharide monooxygenase (LPMO) is a newly discovered and widely studied enzyme in recent years. These enzymes play a key role in the depolymerization of sugar-based biopolymers (including cellulose, hemicellulose, chitin and starch), and have a positive significance for biomass conversion. LPMO is a copper-dependent enzyme that can oxidize and cleave glycosidic bonds in cellulose and other polysaccharides. Their mechanism of action depends on the correct coordination of copper ions in the active site. There are still difficulties in the analysis of LPMO activity, which often requires multiple methods to be used in concert. In this review, we discussed various LPMO activity analysis methods reported so far, including mature mass spectrometry, chromatography, labeling, and indirect measurements, and summarized the advantages, disadvantages and applicability of different methods.
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| 16. |
- Xie, Zhe, et al.
(author)
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Combined effect of salinity and hypoxia on digestive enzymes and intestinal microbiota in the oyster Crassostrea hongkongensis
- 2023
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In: Environmental Pollution. - 0269-7491 .- 1873-6424. ; 331
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Anthropologic activities caused frequent eutrophication in coastal and estuarine waters, resulting in diel-cycling hypoxia. Given global climate change, extreme weather events often occur, thus salinity fluctuation frequently breaks out in these waters. This study aimed to evaluate the combined effects of salinity and hypoxia on intestinal microbiota and digestive enzymes of Crassostrea hongkongensis. Specifically, we sequenced 16 S rRNA of intestinal microbiota and measured the digestive enzymes trypsin (TRS), lipase (LPS) and amylase (AMY) in oysters exposed for 28 days to three salinities (10, 25 and 35) and two dissolved oxygen conditions, normoxia (6 mg/L) and hypoxia (6 mg/L for 12 h, 2 mg/L for 12 h). Oysters in normoxia and salinity of 25 were treated as control. After 28-day exposure, for microbial components, Fusobacteriota, Firmicutes, Bacteroidota, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteriota comprised the majority for all experimental groups. Compared with the control group, the diversity and structure of intestinal microbiota tended to change in all treated groups. The species richness in C. hongkongensis intestine also changed. It was the most significant that high salinity increased Proteobacteria proportion while low salinity and hypoxia increased Fusobacteriota but decreased Proteobacteria, respectively. Additionally, Actinobacteriota was sensitive and changed under environmental stressor (P < 0.01). The prediction results on intestinal microbiota showed that, all functions of oysters were up-regulated to distinct degrees under low/high salinity with hypoxia. According to the KEGG prediction, cellular processes were more active and energy metabolism upregulated, indicating the adaptation of C. hongkongensis to environmental change. Periodical hypoxia and low/high salinity had complex effect on the digestive enzymes, in which the activity of TRS and LPS decreased while AMY increased. High/low salinity and periodical hypoxia can change the secretion of digestive enzymes and influence intestinal microbial diversity and species richness of C. hongkongensis, deducing the chronic adverse effects on the digestive physiology in long-term exposure.
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| 17. |
- Xu, Linghui, et al.
(author)
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Machine-learning-based children’s pathological gait classification with low-cost gait-recognition system
- 2021
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In: Biomedical engineering online. - : Springer Nature. - 1475-925X. ; 20:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: Pathological gaits of children m:y lead to terrible diseases, such as osteoarthritis or scoliosis. By monitoring the gait pattern of a child, proper therapeutic measures can be recommended to avoid the terrible consequence. However, low-cost systems for pathological gait recognition of children automatically have not been on market yet. Our goal was to design a low-cost gait-recognition system for children with only pressure information. Methods: In this study, we design a pathological gait-recognition system (PGRS) with an 8 × 8 pressure-sensor array. An intelligent gait-recognition method (IGRM) based on machine learning and pure plantar pressure information is also proposed in static and dynamic sections to realize high accuracy and good real-time performance. To verifying the recognition effect, a total of 17 children were recruited in the experiments wearing PGRS to recognize three pathological gaits (toe-in, toe-out, and flat) and normal gait. Children are asked to walk naturally on level ground in the dynamic section or stand naturally and comfortably in the static section. The evaluation of the performance of recognition results included stratified tenfold cross-validation with recall, precision, and a time cost as metrics. Results: The experimental results show that all of the IGRMs have been identified with a practically applicable degree of average accuracy either in the dynamic or static section. Experimental results indicate that the IGRM has 92.41% and 97.79% intra-subject recognition accuracy, and 85.78% and 78.81% inter-subject recognition accuracy, respectively, in the static and dynamic sections. And we find methods in the static section have less recognition accuracy due to the unnatural gesture of children when standing. Conclusions: In this study, a low-cost PGRS has been verified and realize feasibility, highly average precision, and good real-time performance of gait recognition. The experimental results reveal the potential for the computer supervision of non-pathological and pathological gaits in the plantar-pressure patterns of children and for providing feedback in the application of gait-abnormality rectification.
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| 18. |
- Yeh, Yu-Te, et al.
(author)
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Restoration of PITPNA in Type 2 diabetic human islets reverses pancreatic beta-cell dysfunction
- 2023
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In: Nature Communications. - : Springer Nature. - 2041-1723. ; 14:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Defects in insulin processing and granule maturation are linked to pancreatic beta-cell failure during type 2 diabetes (T2D). Phosphatidylinositol transfer protein alpha (PITPNA) stimulates activity of phosphatidylinositol (PtdIns) 4-OH kinase to produce sufficient PtdIns-4-phosphate (PtdIns-4-P) in the trans-Golgi network to promote insulin granule maturation. PITPNA in beta-cells of T2D human subjects is markedly reduced suggesting its depletion accompanies beta-cell dysfunction. Conditional deletion of Pitpna in the beta-cells of Ins-Cre, Pitpnaflox/flox mice leads to hyperglycemia resulting from decreasing glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) and reducing pancreatic beta-cell mass. Furthermore, PITPNA silencing in human islets confirms its role in PtdIns-4-P synthesis and leads to impaired insulin granule maturation and docking, GSIS, and proinsulin processing with evidence of ER stress. Restoration of PITPNA in islets of T2D human subjects reverses these beta-cell defects and identify PITPNA as a critical target linked to beta-cell failure in T2D.
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| 19. |
- Zhang, Daquan, et al.
(author)
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Large-scale planar and spherical light-emitting diodes based on arrays of perovskite quantum wires
- 2022
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In: Nature Photonics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1749-4885 .- 1749-4893. ; 16:4, s. 284-290
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Halide perovskites are enticing candidates for highly efficient planar light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with commercial potential in displays and lighting. However, it remains a challenge for conventional solution fabrication processes to fabricate large-scale or non-planar LEDs due to the non-uniformity of perovskite films in conjunction with material stability issues. Here large-area highly uniform arrays of crystalline perovskite quantum wires are grown with emission spectra covering the whole visible range. Photoluminescence quantum yield of up to 92% and 5,644 hours as the time for photoluminescence to degrade down to its 50% of the initial value under ambient conditions are achieved for MAPbBr3 quantum wires. LEDs based on these quantum wires on rigid and flexible planar substrates are fabricated up to a four-inch wafer size and also unique three-dimensional spherical LEDs with outstanding uniformity are reported. The results suggest that the approach developed here can be generalized to other unconventional three-dimensional LEDs in the future.
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