Potassium (K+) is an essential macronutrient involved in regulating plant growth and development. K+ homeostasis in plant cells is modulated to facilitate plant adaptation to K+-deficiency stress. Argonaute1 (AGO1) interacts with miR-168a to modulate the small RNA regulatory pathway in tomatoes. However, the roles of AGO1 and miR-168a in modulating K+ deficiency stress in tomatoes have not been elucidated. Accordingly, in this study, we examined the interactions between AGO1 and miR-168a in mediating low-K+ stress in tomato plants. SlmiR-168a and its target SlAGO1 were differentially expressed between low-K+ tolerant JZ34 and low-K+ sensitive JZ18 tomato plants. Transgenic tomato plants constitutively expressing SlmiR-168a and rSlAGO1 (SlmiR-168a-resistant) showed different root hair development, leaf phenotypes, and K+ contents in roots under K+-deficiency stress. Sequencing analyses showed that 446 microRNAs (miRNAs) and 541 miRNAs were differentially expressed in 35S:SlmiR-168a compared with wild-type (WT) tomatoes and in 35S:rSlAGO1 compared with WT tomatoes, respectively. Twelve miRNA/mRNA pairs were identified, and the root growth and cytokinin (CTK)/abscisic acid (ABA) pathways were shown to be involved in SlmiR-168a-mediated SlAGO1 regulatory network in response to K+-deficiency stress. Thus, SlAGO1 regulated by SlmiR-168a may influence downstream miRNA pathways in response to low-K+ stress though modulating root growth and CTK/ABA pathways.

Green infrastructures within sprawling cities provide essential ecosystem services, increasingly undermined by environmental stress. The main objective in this study was to relate the allocation patterns of NaCl contaminants to injury within foliage of lime trees mechanistically and distinguish between the effects of salt and other environmental stressors. Using field material representative of salt contamination levels in the street greenery of Riga, Latvia, the contribution of salt contaminants to structural and ultrastructural injury was analyzed, combining different microscopy techniques. On severely salt-polluted and dystrophic soils, the foliage of street lime trees showed foliar concentrations of Na/Cl up to 13600/16750 mg kg-1 but a still balanced nutrient content. The salt contaminants were allocated to all leaf blade tissues and accumulated in priority within mesophyll vacuoles, changing the vacuolar ionic composition at the expense of especially K and Ca. The size of mesophyll cells and vacuoles was increased as a function of NaCl concentration, suggesting impeded transpiration stream. In parallel, the cytoplasm showed degenerative changes, suggesting indirect stress effects. Hence, the lime trees in Riga showed tolerance to the dystrophic environmental conditions enhanced by salt pollution but their leaf physiology appeared directly impacted by the accumulation of contaminants within foliage.

Although species delimitation can be highly contentious, the development of reliable methods to accurately ascertain species boundaries is an imperative step in cataloguing and describing Earth’s quickly disappearing biodiversity. Spider species delimitation remains largely based on morphological characters; however, many mygalomorph spider populations are morphologically indistinguishable from each other yet have considerable molecular divergence. The focus of our study, Antrodiaetus unicolor species complex which contains two sympatric species, exhibits this pattern of relative morphological stasis with considerable genetic divergence across its distribution. A past study using two molecular markers, COI and 28S, revealed that A. unicolor is paraphyletic with respect to A. microunicolor. To better investigate species boundaries in the complex, we implement the cohesion species concept and employ multiple lines of evidence for testing genetic exchangeability and ecological interchangeability. Our integrative approach includes extensively sampling homologous loci across the genome using a RADseq approach (3RAD), assessing population structure across their geographic range using multiple genetic clustering analyses that include STRUCTURE, PCA, and a recently developed unsupervised machine learning approach (Variational Autoencoder). We evaluate ecological similarity by using large-scale ecological data for niche-based distribution modeling. Based on our analyses, we conclude that this complex has at least one additional species as well as confirm species delimitations based on previous less comprehensive approaches. Our study demonstrates the efficacy of genomic-scale data for recognizing cryptic species, suggesting that species delimitation with one data type, whether one mitochondrial gene or morphology, may underestimate true species diversity in morphologically homogenous taxa with low vagility.

We investigate the ability of mechanical and electronic density functional theory (DFT)-based embedding approaches to describe the solvent effects on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) shielding constants of the ⁹⁵Mo nucleus in the molybdate ion in aqueous solution. From the description obtained from calculations with two- and four-component relativistic Hamiltonians, we find that for such systems spin-orbit coupling effects are clearly important for absolute shielding values, but for relative quantities a scalar relativistic treatment provides a sufficient estimation of the solvent effects. We find that the electronic contributions to the solvent effects are relatively modest yet decisive to provide a more accurate magnetic response of the system, when compared to reference supermolecular calculations. We analyze the errors in the embedding calculations by statistical methods as well as through a real-space representation of NMR shielding densities, which are shown to provide a clear picture of the physical processes at play.

Carbon dioxide has attracted considerable attention owing to its physics and abundant polymorphs. Despite decades of extensive experiments and theoretical simulations, the structure and properties of carbon dioxide under extreme pressures and temperatures are yet to be properly understood. Particularly, the intermediate phase IV of solid carbon dioxide, which separates the molecular phases at low pressures from the non-molecular phases at high pressures, has not been fully investigated, and its structure remains controversial. Here, based on the second-order Møller−Plesset perturbation (MP2) theory and the embedded fragment method, we study the crystal structure, equation of state, and Raman spectra of solid carbon dioxide phase IV at high pressures and temperatures. We demonstrate that the solid carbon dioxide phase IV is a molecular structure that remains in a molecular state rather than the bent state shown in other literatures, which is consistent with the experimental work by Datchi et al. and denies the observed results by Park et al. The proposed work is of great significance in determining the structure of the high-pressure phases of carbon dioxide and further exploring the new phase of molecular crystals.

In this paper we investigate the size of a bi-dimensional fragmentation process. A rectangle of dimensions x and y is considered, it is split into four sub-rectangles with some probability that depends on x and y, we iterate until the stop of the process. The total number of the all the obtained rectangles at the end of the process satisfies some equality in distribution which is resolved , using some tools on integral equations, via the contraction method.

In this paper, we consider a viscoelastic kirchhoff equation with a delay term in the internal feedback. By using the Faedo-Galarkin approximation method we prove the well-posedness of the global solutions. Introducing suitable energy, we prove the general uniform decay results

A 2-dimension linguistic lattice implication algebra (2DL-LIA) can build a bridge for logical algebras and 2-dimension fuzzy linguistic information. In this paper, the notion of a Boolean element is proposed in a 2DL-LIA and some properties of Boolean elements are discussed. Then derivations on 2DL-LIAs are introduced and the related properties of derivations are investigated. Moreover, it proves that the derivations on 2DL-LIAs can be constructed by Boolean elements.

In this paper, we study the solvability of a nonlinear two-parametric quantum difference equation Dirichlet boundary value problem. At first, we provide and prove the formula of changing the order of integration for (p,q)-double integral. Second, We obtain the existence and uniqueness criteria of solutions for this kind of boundary value problem by using Banach contraction mapping principle, Leray-Schauder nonlinear alternative theorem and Leray-Schauder continuation theorem. At last, we give two examples to illustrate our results.

Backgroud: A long-term hepatic inflammatory response is a risk factor for liver cancer initiation and progression. Interleukin (IL)-35 is the newest member of the IL-12 cytokine family, and has been reported to play an essential role in the immunosuppressive liver microenvironment. Herein we focus on the expression profiles of IL-35 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and the effect on local immune status. Methods: HCC transcriptome array data were downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus. The bioinformatics analysis was performed by the BRB array tools and online Ingenuity Pathway Analysis software. The serum IL-35 level was detected by AimPlet bead-based immunoassay. In situ IL-35 expression detection was performed by immunohistochemical staining and western blot. Results: Our results showed that there were large amounts of IL-35 expressed in HCC serum and tumor tissues. IL-35 expression affects the transcript of thousands of genes, most of which correlated with T-cell immunity. This study proved that enhancement of regulatory T cells (Tregs) and impairment of cytolytic T cells are prominent effects of IL-35. Conclusions: Elevated IL-35 played critical roles in HCC patients through affecting the balance between Tregs and cytotoxic T cells. Dissection of the precise targets and the underlying molecular mechanisms will lead to alternative treatments for HCC patients.

Habitat disturbance, a common consequence of anthropogenic land use practices, creates human-animal interfaces where humans, wildlife, and domestic species can interact. These altered habitats can influence host-microbe dynamics, leading to potential downstream effects on host physiology and health. Here, we explored the effect of ecological overlap with humans and domestic species and infection with the protozoan parasite Giardia duodenalis on the bacteria of black and gold howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya), a key sentinel species, in northeastern Argentina. Fecal samples were screened for Giardia duodenalis infection using a nested PCR reaction, and the gut bacterial community was characterized using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Habitat type was correlated with variation in A. caraya gut bacterial community composition but did not affect gut bacterial diversity. Giardia presence did not have a universal effect on A. caraya gut bacteria across habitats, perhaps due to the high infection prevalence across all habitats. However, some bacterial taxa, such as Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Lachnospiraceae, were found to vary with Giardia infection. While A. caraya’s behavioral plasticity and dietary flexibility allow them to exploit a range of habitat conditions, habitats are generally becoming more anthropogenically disturbed, and thus, less hospitable. Alterations in gut bacterial community dynamics are one possible indicator that A. caraya may be reaching its physiological limits for plasticity since changes in host-microbe relationships due to stressors from habitat disturbance may lead to negative repercussions for host health. These dynamics are likely relevant for understanding organism responses to environmental change in other mammals.

Crowd-based hydrological observations can supplement existing monitoring networks and allow data collection in regions where otherwise no data would be available. In the citizen science project CrowdWater, repeated water level observations using a virtual staff gauge approach result in time series of water level classes. To investigate the quality of these observations, we compared the water level class data for a number of locations where water levels were also measured and assessed when these observations were submitted. We analysed data for nine locations where citizen scientists reported multiple observations using a smartphone app and stream level data were also available. At twelve other locations, signposts were set up to ask citizens to record observations on a form that could be left in a letterbox. The results indicate that the quality of the data collected with the app was higher than for the forms. A possible explanation is that for each app location, most contributions were made by a single person, whereas at the locations of the forms almost every observation was made by a new contributor. On average, more contributions were made between May and September than during the other months. Observations were submitted for a range of flow conditions, with a higher fraction of high flow observations for the data collected with the app. Overall, the results are encouraging for citizen science approaches in hydrology and demonstrate that the smartphone application with its virtual staff gauge is a promising approach for crowd-based water level class observations.

Tissue constructs of physiologically relevant scale require a vascular system to maintain cell viability. However, in vitro vascularization of engineered tissues is still a major challenge. Successful approaches are based on a feeder layer (FL) to support vascularization. Here, we investigated whether the supporting effect on the self-assembled formation of vascular-like structures by microvascular endothelial cells (mvECs) originates from the FL itself or from its extracellular matrix (ECM). Therefore, we compared the influence of ECM, either derived from adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) or adipogenic differentiated ASCs, with the classical approaches based on a cellular FL. All cell-derived ECM (cdECM) substrates enable mvEC growth with high viability. Vascular-like structure formation was visualized by immunofluorescence staining of endothelial surface protein CD 31 and can be observed on all cdECM and FL substrates but not on control substrate collagen I. On adipogenic differentiated ECM longer and higher branched structures can be found compared to stem cell cdECM. An increased concentration of pro-angiogenic factors can be found in cdECM substrates and FL approaches compared to controls. Finally, expression of proteins associated with tube formation (E-selectin and thrombomodulin) was confirmed. These results highlight cdECM as promising biomaterial for in vitro vascularization in adipose tissue engineering.

In general, fatigue performance of welded structures are evaluated according to design codes based on theoretical and experimental investigations under uniaxial loading conditions. This study highlights the biaxial cyclic loading with different phases. The fracture mechanics approach toward fatigue life evaluation can obtain the fatigue crack growth history. This paper proposes a numerical simulation method for obtaining the fatigue crack propagation histories of a cracked plate subjected to biaxial loads with a phase difference for each loading component. The fatigue surface crack growth behavior of a flat plate and an out-of-plane gusset welded joint under biaxial cyclic loadings with different phases was investigated by extending the applicability of the proposed method to a through thickness crack. Comparisons between the measured crack evolution and the numerical simulation results were carried out to validate our fatigue crack growth simulation for flat plane and welded joints.

Competitive interactions between distantly related clades could cause complementary diversity patterns of these clades over large spatial scales. One such example might be ants and birds in the eastern Himalaya; ants are very common at low elevations but almost absent at mid-elevations where the abundance of other arthropods and insectivorous bird diversity peaks. Here, we ask if ants at low elevations could compete with birds for arthropod prey. Specifically, we studied the impact of the Asian weaver ant (Oecophylla smaragdina), a common aggressive ant at low elevations. Diet analysis using molecular methods demonstrate extensive diet overlap between weaver ants and songbirds at both low and mid-elevations. Trees without weaver ants have greater non-ant arthropod abundance and leaf damage. Experimental removal of weaver ants results in an increase in the abundance of non-ant arthropods. Notably, numbers of Coleoptera and Lepidoptera were most affected by removal experiments and were prominent components of both bird and weaver ant diets. Our results suggest that songbirds and weaver ants might potentially compete with each other for arthropod prey at low elevations, thereby contributing to lower insectivorous bird diversity at low elevations in eastern Himalaya. Competition with ants may shape vertebrate diversity patterns across broad biodiversity gradients.

Western Ghats, known for its biodiversity, once well covered with dense forest, has been severely felled for cultivation of coffee, covering an area of 3.81 lakh ha and production of 3.27 lakh tonnes. To evaluate the effects of conversion from natural forests to coffee plantation on land quality, the changes in soil physical and chemical properties and soil organic carbon stock were assessed in selected hot per-humid, hot moist sub-humid and hot humid forest and coffee ecosystems of Chikmagalur district of Karnataka, Wayanad and Idukki districts of Kerala in the Western Ghats. Sixty sites were studied to understand the soil quality of which 46 sites were located in coffee plantations and 14 in forests adjacent to coffee plantations. In this study, six typifying pedons representing Chikmagalur district of Karnataka, Wayanad and Idukki districts of Kerala in the Western Ghats are explained by comparing the existing natural forest with that of coffee plantation ecosystem. The increase in soil organic carbon stocks (16.32-16.38 kg m-2 in forests to 14.32-19.28 kg m-2 in coffee system), the most reliable indicator of land quality and other soil properties like clay content, pH, exchangeable bases, CEC, available nutrients like N, P, Ca, Mg, S, Zn and Cu in the study area revealed that there was an improvement in land quality, owing to lesser disturbance and better management in coffee plantation compared to forests on its conversion which indicates the restoration of land.

Diapause is an adaptive dormancy strategy by which arthropods endure extended periods of adverse climatic conditions. Seasonal variation in larval diapause initiation and duration in the Asian corn borer, Ostrinia furnacalis, influences adult mating generation number (voltinism) across local environmental conditions. Degree of mating period overlap between sympatric voltine ecotypes influence hybridization level, but impact on O. furnacalis population genetic structure and evolution of divergent adaptive phenotypes remains uncertain. Genetic differentiation was estimated between voltine ecotypes collected from 8 locations in Jilin Province, China [3 single generation (univoltine), 3 two generation (bivoltine), and 2 sympatric locations] in 2014. Mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) haplotypes were partitioned into groups corresponding to historically allopatric univoltine or bivoltine population origins using Bayesian and phylogenetic clustering methods. Haplotypes from sympatric locations were clustered more-closely to bivoltine locations, but influenced by local demographics. Despite this COI haplotype divergence between ecotypes, results were confounded by significant adherence to an isolation-by-distance model. Additionally, analyses of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotype data implicate voltinism, as opposed to geographic distance, as contributing to low but significant levels of variation among locations. Regardless, only 11 of 257 SNP loci were predicted to be under selection, suggesting population genetic homogenization except at loci proximal to factors putatively responsible for locally adaptive or voltinism-specific traits. These findings provide evidence that divergent voltine ecotypes may be maintained in allopatric and sympatric areas despite relatively high rates of nuclear gene flow, yet influence of voltinism on maintaining observed haplotype divergence remains unresolved.

Complementarity in resource use leading to increased resource partitioning is the most commonly proposed mechanism for explaining the positive relationship between plant diversity and productivity. However, we still have a poor understanding of the relationship between plant diversity and root biomass. We used molecular method to identify tree species and to estimate the biomass of fine root (≤ 2 mm in diameter) for each tree species in soil cores sampled from the plots along a tree species gradient elaborated in subtropical forests. Our objectives were to examine whether spatial resource partitioning and symmetric proliferation are responsible for the relationship between aboveground tree species richness (SRA) and fine root biomass. We found that increasing SRA led to higher fine root biomass and a support for symmetric proliferation strategies, but this pattern only appeared in nutrient-rich upper soil layer. Structural equation modelling (SEM) indicated that stand density was the dominant factor to mediate SRA effects on fine root biomass. Specifically, fine root biomass depended on the SRA × stand density interaction, with lower biomass at lower density and low richness, and this effect disappeared in higher density forests. Overall, we found inconsistent support for the vertical niche partitioning, indicating that greater soil volume filling is not the reason for belowground overyielding pattern. Alternatively, density-dependent biotic interactions affecting tree recruitment are an important driver affecting productivity in diverse subtropical forests but the usual root distribution patterns in line with the resource partitioning hypothesis are unrealistic in contexts where soil nutrients are heterogeneously distributed.

We synthesized 1323 combinations of phospholipid fatty acid-derived fungal biomass C (FBC), bacterial biomass C (BBC), and fungi:bacteria (F:B) ratio in topsoil, spanning 11 major biomes. We found that the FBC, BBC, and F:B ratio display clear biogeographic patterns along latitude and environmental gradients including mean annual temperature, mean annual precipitation, net primary productivity, root C density, soil temperature, soil moisture, and edaphic properties. At the biome level, the highest FBC and BBC densities are observed in tundra, at 3684 (95% confidence interval: 1678~8084) mg kg-1 and 428 (237~774) mg kg-1, respectively. The lowest FBC and BBC densities were found in deserts, at 16.92 (14.4~19.89) mg kg-1 and 6.83 (6.1~7.65) mg kg-1, respectively. While the F:B ratio ranges from 1.8 (1.6~2.1) in savanna to 8.6 (6.7~11.0) in tundra. Combining an empirical model of F:B ratio with the global dataset of soil microbial biomass C, we then produced global maps for FBC and BBC in 0-30 cm topsoil. Global stock of C was estimated to be 12.6 (6.6~16.4) Pg C in FBC and 4.3 (0.5~10.3) Pg C in BBC in topsoil. This work creates a benchmark for explicit use of microbial data in modelling biosphere-atmosphere feedbacks in a changing environment.

WHAT IS LATEX? LaTeX is a programming language that can be used for writing and typesetting documents. It is especially useful to write mathematical notation such as equations and formulae. HOW TO USE LATEX TO WRITE MATHEMATICAL NOTATION There are three ways to enter “math mode” and present a mathematical expression in LaTeX: 1. _inline_ (in the middle of a text line) 2. as an _equation_, on a separate dedicated line 3. as a full-sized inline expression (_displaystyle_) _inline_ Inline expressions occur in the middle of a sentence. To produce an inline expression, place the math expression between dollar signs ($). For example, typing $E=mc^2$ yields E = mc². _equation_ Equations are mathematical expressions that are given their own line and are centered on the page. These are usually used for important equations that deserve to be showcased on their own line or for large equations that cannot fit inline. To produce an inline expression, place the mathematical expression between the symbols \[! and \verb!\]. Typing \[x=}{2a}\] yields \[x=}{2a}\] _displaystyle_ To get full-sized inline mathematical expressions use \displaystyle. Typing I want this $\displaystyle ^{\infty} {n}$, not this $^{\infty} {n}$. yields: I want this $\displaystyle ^{\infty}{n}$, not this $^{\infty}{n}.$ SYMBOLS (IN _MATH_ MODE) The basics As discussed above math mode in LaTeX happens inside the dollar signs ($...$), inside the square brackets \[...\] and inside equation and displaystyle environments. Here’s a cheatsheet showing what is possible in a math environment: -------------------------- ----------------- --------------- _description_ _command_ _output_ addition + + subtraction - − plus or minus \pm ± multiplication (times) \times × multiplication (dot) \cdot ⋅ division symbol \div ÷ division (slash) / / simple text text infinity \infty ∞ dots 1,2,3,\ldots 1, 2, 3, … dots 1+2+3+\cdots 1 + 2 + 3 + ⋯ fraction {b} ${b}$ square root $$ nth root \sqrt[n]{x} $\sqrt[n]{x}$ exponentiation a^b ab subscript a_b ab absolute value |x| |x| natural log \ln(x) ln(x) logarithms b logab exponential function e^x=\exp(x) ex = exp(x) deg \deg(f) deg(f) degree \degree $\degree$ arcmin ^\prime ′ arcsec ^{\prime\prime} ′′ circle plus \oplus ⊕ circle times \otimes ⊗ equal = = not equal \ne ≠ less than < < less than or equal to \le ≤ greater than or equal to \ge ≥ approximately equal to \approx ≈ -------------------------- ----------------- ---------------

We develop a novel approach to trophic metacommunities which allows us to explore how progressive habitat loss affects food webs. Our method combines classic metapopulation models on fragmented landscapes with a Bayesian network representation of trophic interactions for calculating local extinction rates. This means we can repurpose known results from classic metapopulation theory for trophic metacommunities, such as ranking the habitat patches of the landscape with respect to their importance to the persistence of the metacommunity as a whole. We use this to study the effects of habitat loss, both on model communities and the plant-mammal Serengeti food web dataset as a case study. Combining straightforward parameterizability with computational efficiency, our method permits the analysis of species-rich food webs over large landscapes, with hundreds or even thousands of species and habitat patches, while still retaining much of the flexibility of explicit dynamical models.

Once again, we look back at a case of a maternal who died five years ago with severe preeclampsia combined with PAH. We thought if we were familiar with the special pathophysiological mechanism of PAH and adopt proper treatment methods at that time, her death might be avoided.

In this study, we firstly introduce a different type of directional Fermi-Walker transportations along with vortex lines of a non-vanishing vector field in three-dimensional space. Thus we conclude that geometric quantities, which are used to characterize vortex lines, are also associated with the geometric phase and angular velocity vector (Darboux vector) of the system. Then we present directional magnetic vortex lines by computing the Lorentz force. Hence, we reach a remarkable relation between directional magnetic vortex lines and angular velocity vector of vortex lines with a non-rotating frame. We later determine the directional electric vortex lines by considering the electromagnetic force equation. We finally investigate the conditions of being uniform for magnetic fields of directional magnetic vortex lines and we improve a remarkable approach to find the electromagnetic curvature, which contains many geometrical features belonging to directional electric vortex line.

This is Draft #3