We examined methane (CH₄) oxidation pathways and associated methanotrophic communities in the water column of Lake Kivu using abundance and isotopic compositions of CH₄ and phospholipid fatty acids ...(PLFA), distributions of glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers, and catalyzed reporter deposition fluorescence in situ hybridization (CARD–FISH) analysis. The carbon isotopic data of CH₄ indicate that aerobic CH₄ oxidation is the predominant pathway of microbial CH₄ consumption with an isotopic fractionation factor (α) of 1.022–1.038. A small amount of CH₄ is oxidized anaerobically, with an α of 1.002–1.006. Aerobic CH₄ oxidation is mediated by type II methane–oxidizing bacteria (type II MOB) based on the 13C depletion (δ
13C of −40.5‰ to −43.7‰) of diagnostic C18:1ω7 fatty acids in the surface waters. CARD–FISH images and PLFA components C16:1ω7 and C16:1ω5 indicate the presence of type I MOB in the methane and nutrient–rich deep–water region. 13C depletion of C16:1ω7 and C16:1ω5 (δ
13C, ∼ −40‰ to −50.6‰) in the lake water below 52 m suggests the involvement of type I MOB in methane oxidation in the anoxic deep–water regions of the lake. A novel cluster of anaerobic methane–oxidizing archaea (ANME) rather than the known ANME–1 and ANME–2 appear to be involved in anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM). Sulfate reducing bacteria are associated with AOM in the lake based on the 13C depletion (δ
13C, −38.2‰ to −45.0‰) of anteiso–methyl–C15:0 fatty acid. Methane constitutes an important carbon and energy source (up to 38%) for the heterotrophic and autotrophic communities in the lake.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NMLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The causes of violence in Ghana, lie in inequality, exclusion and exploitation brought by both internal and international factors. The emergence of new socio-economic disparities and global trends ...towards pluralisation and politicisation has brought with it violence which has the tendency to result in the instability of the state. Justice is a fundamental pre-requisite of peaceful societies. The lack of access to legal justice and hence the recourse to violent, extra-legal means to redress grievances or pursue political and economic power threatens human security and sustainable peace in Ghana. Injustice, whether real or perceived is a cause, symptom and consequence of conflict. Legal justice and the rule of law are the essential basis of governance and human security. The paper addresses the interlinked issues of peace, justice and human security in a holistic, integral and multi-disciplinary fashion to identify and understand both the factors that underpin peace and those that might cause violence. It uses the human security methodology to demonstrate that, educating the citizenry in the values of peace through peace education can help promote sustainable peace in Ghana. The aims of peace education as related to human security and justice which encompasses the preserve of social, economic and political justice which are essential to the notion of positive peace are also examined. The paper then concludes with recommendations on how to ensure sustainable peace in the Ghanaian society.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Background
Traditional research methods often involve a lengthy process, but the emergence of flash mobs as an innovative data collection method offers the potential to gather substantial data within ...a short time frame. Flash mobs draw inspiration from the concept of large groups organizing through the internet or mobile devices to perform a prearranged action in public. In healthcare research, flash mobs serve as research organizing method to investigate clinically relevant questions on a large scale within a limited period.
Aims
This study aims to present a study protocol for a scoping review that comprehensively maps the existing literature on the use of flash mobs as a data collection method in healthcare research.
Methods
The review will follow established guidelines and include steps such as identifying the research question, identifying relevant studies, selecting studies, charting the data, and collating and summarizing the results. The review will utilize databases, manual screening of additional sources, and covidence for study selection and data charting. The findings will be summarized using descriptive statistics and a descriptive synthesis of qualitative data. The review protocol has been registered with the Open Science Framework.
Results
The results of this scoping review will provide insights into different flash mob designs, motivations, and the data collection process, contributing to the development of high‐quality flash mob data collections in healthcare research.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Ultra-high-temperature ceramics are required for many aerospace applications. In this work, HfB
2
-30 vol.% HfC and HfB
2
-26 vol.% HfC-43 vol.% MoB high-density composites were prepared by one-step ...in-situ reactive spark plasma sintering (R-SPS) using Hf, B
4
C and Mo powders as starting materials. The influences of sintering temperature on the densification mechanism, microstructural evolution, mechanical properties and oxidation resistance of the composites were thoroughly investigated. The results demonstrate that the raw materials undergo a complete chemical reaction to form new binary HfB
2
-HfC and ternary HfB
2
-HfC-MoB composite structures at a temperature of 1300°C. The HfB
2
-HfC and HfB
2
-HfC-MoB composites prepared at the optimal conditions (pressure = 50 MPa, temperature = 1800°C, holding time = 5 min) had highre densities of 97% and 98%, respectively. The Vickers hardness, Young's modulus and fracture toughness of the HfB
2
-HfC composite were 18.3 GPa, 525 GPa and 6.34 MPa·m
1/2
, respectively. However, after molybdenum was added, the Vickers hardness of the ternary HfB
2
-HfC-MoB composite increased to 19.4 GPa but its fracture toughness decreased slightly to 6.1 MPa·m
1/2
. Compared with the binary composite, the ternary composite exhibited a low and thermally stable oxidation rate up to a temperature of 1400°C, and the test was conducted in air atmosphere.
Plasmids are genetic elements that enable rapid adaptation and evolution by transferring genes conferring selective advantages to their hosts. Conjugative plasmids are predominantly responsible for ...the global dissemination of antimicrobial resistance, representing an important threat to global health. As the number of plasmid sequences grows exponentially, it becomes critical to depict the global diversity and decipher the distribution of circulating plasmids in the bacterial community. To this end, we created COMPASS, a novel and comprehensive database compiling 12,084 complete plasmids with associated metadata from 1571 distinct species isolated worldwide over more than 100 years. The curation of the database allowed us to identify identical plasmids across different bacteria revealing mainly intraspecies dissemination and rare cases of horizontal transmission. We outlined and analyzed all relevant features, plasmid properties, host range and characterized their replication and mobilization systems. After an exhaustive comparison of PlasmidFinder and MOB-typer, the MOB-typer-based analysis revealed that the current knowledge embedded in the current typing schemes fails to classify all the plasmid sequences collected in COMPASS. We were able to categorize 6828 and 5229 plasmids by replicon and MOB typing, respectively, mostly associated with
and
We then searched for the presence of multiple core genes involved in replication and propagation. Our results showed that 2403 plasmids carried multiple replicons that were distributed in 206 bacterial species. The co-integration of replicon types from different incompatibility (Inc) groups is an adaptive mechanism, which plays an important role in plasmid survival and dissemination by extending their host range. Our results highlight the crucial role of IncF alleles (present in 56% of all multireplicons) and revealed that IncH, IncR, and IncU replicons were also frequently carried in multireplicons. Here, we provided a comprehensive picture of the different IncF subtypes by identifying 20 different profiles in 849 IncF multireplicons, which were mostly associated with
. These results could provide the basis for a novel IncF plasmid nomenclature based on different allelic profiles.
In the social psychology literature, crowds are classified as audiences and mobs. Audiences are passive crowds, whereas mobs are active crowds with emotional, irrational and seemingly homogeneous ...behavior. In this study, we aim to create a system that enables the specification of different crowd types ranging from audiences to mobs. In order to achieve this goal we parametrize the common properties of mobs to create collective misbehavior. Because mobs are characterized by emotionality, we describe a framework that associates psychological components with individual agents comprising a crowd and yields emergent behaviors in the crowd as a whole. To explore the effectiveness of our framework we demonstrate two scenarios simulating the behavior of distinct mob types.
Highly active and low-cost co-catalysts have a positive effect on the enhancement of solar H2 production. Here, we employ two-dimensional (2D) MBene as a noble-metal-free co-catalyst to boost ...semiconductor for photocatalytic H2 production. MoB MBene is a 2D nanoboride, which is directly made from MoAlB by a facile hydrothermal etching and manual scraping off process. The as-synthesized MoB MBene with purity >95 wt % is treated by ultrasonic cell pulverization to obtain ultrathin 2D MoB MBene nanosheets (∼0.61 nm) and integrated with CdS via an electrostatic interaction strategy. The CdS/MoB composites exhibit an ultrahigh photocatalytic H2 production activity of 16,892 μmol g–1 h–1 under visible light, surpassing that of pure CdS by an exciting factor of ≈1135%. Theoretical calculations and various measurements account for the high performance in terms of Gibbs free energy, work functions, and photoelectrochemical properties. This work discovers the huge potential of these promising 2D MBene family materials as high-efficiency and low-cost co-catalysts for photocatalytic H2 production.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM
Because of the high theoretical capacity of lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries and the relatively low cost of sulfur, these batteries have been regarded as one of the most promising types of energy ...storage systems. The severe shuttle effect of the polysulfide deteriorates the cycle stability, and the inferior conductivity of the sulfur and polysulfide also lead to sluggish electrochemical kinetics. Herein, we use a facile molten salt method to synthesize the heterostructure Mo–MoB, which is coated on a commercial PP separator for the Li–S batteries. Experimental analysis and theoretical calculation results show that the heterostructure Mo–MoB can serve as a physical barrier and chemical absorbent to hinder the shuttle effect, as well as be a bidirectional catalyst to simultaneously accelerate the conversion of polysulfides into Li2S and decomposition of Li2S with the synergistically catalytic effect of Mo and MoB. Consequently, the cell with the heterostructure Mo–MoB-modified separator demonstrates superior cycle performance (capacity fading rate of ∼0.07% per cycle during 300 cycles at 0.5 C) as well as increased rate capability (670 mAh g–1 at 2 C). This work indicates that heterostructure metal borides could be adsorption-catalysis material to functionalize the separator, which can be a new strategy to design the high-performance Li–S batteries.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM
. Various plasmid-mediated resistance genes have been reported in
, but little is known about their global distribution features, evolution pattern and spread.
. The potential mobilization mechanisms ...of resistance plasmids in
have been poorly explored.
. The aim of the study was to investigate the prevalence and diversity of plasmid-mediated resistance genes among
isolates, and focus on the analysis of the features of the resistance plasmids from
.
. The plasmids tested were sequenced using the Illumina HiSeq platform in conjunction with PCR and inverted PCR. The susceptibility of the host strains was determined by broth microdilution. The transfer of plasmids tested was conducted by electroporation. The sequence data were compared using bioinformatics tools and the data from our laboratory and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database.
. Nineteen plasmids were identified from our laboratory and these resistance plasmids were functional and transferable. Moreover, we clustered five types of genetic backbones of plasmids from
and revealed the global distribution features of the plasmid-mediated resistance genes.
. This is the first report of the coexistence of
(H)-bearing type I plasmid and
(C)-bearing type II plasmid in one
clinical isolate. In addition, this study provides the first view of the global distribution of plasmid-mediated resistance genes and classifies the plasmids in
according to their backbone regions.
In recent months, masses of Hong Kong citizens have taken part in a remarkable wave of protests, known as the Water Revolution. Ignited by the Hong Kong government's attempt to pass a bill that would ...have allowed extradition to mainland China, and later in response to numerous incidents of police brutality and human rights abuses, hundreds of thousands of protestors abruptly gathered in various parts of the city to rise up against the encroachment of the incumbent regime. Through novel uses of social media and mobile technology, they acted in concert to confront riot police in wildcat actions. In effect, they exhibit a contemporary type of smart mob, as digitally savvy citizens engage with each other in largely ad hoc and networked forms of pop-up protest. This profile illustrates both the continuity and changes in the recent development of a nascent smart mob in Hong Kong. It fleshes out how its protest repertoires and movement objectives have emerged and evolved vis-à-vis state suppression that has turned the global city of East Asia into a despotic police state. With a focus on changing contours, this profile brings to the fore the pragmatic and temporally emergent properties of the smart mob to consider the widespread and protracted movement in Hong Kong.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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