Understanding the hydrogen and oxygen stable isotope composition and characteristics of different water bodies in soil-plant-atmosphere continuum is of significance for revealing regional ...hydrological processes and water cycle mechanisms. In this study, we analyzed the stable isotopic composition, relationship and indicative significance of precipitation, soil water (0∼l00 cm depth) and xylem water of Qinghai spruce (
Picea crassifolia
) forest in the eastern Qilian Mountains, and explored the circulation process among different water bodies. The results show that the stable isotopes of precipitation vary greatly during the entire observation period. The values of δ
2
H and δ
18
O in the precipitation in the warm season are richer than those in the cold season, and the slope and intercept of local meteoric water line (LMWL, δ
2
H = 6.79δ
18
O+7.13) are both smaller than global meteoric water line (GMWL, δ
2
H=8.17δ
18
O+10.56). The stable isotopes of soil water at different depths underwent different degrees of evaporative fractionation, and the δ
18
O and δ
2
H of shallow soil water varied greatly, while the deep soil water tended to be similar. The topsoil (0∼10 cm) can respond quickly to precipitation, and the response of the deep soil has a time lag. In the whole growing season, 0∼30 cm and 60∼100 cm soil water are the main water sources of Qinghai spruce. The water source of Qinghai spruce was from all soil layers in May and September, mainly from the shallow soil layer (0∼30 cm) in August and October, and mainly from the deep soil layer (60∼100 cm) in June and July.
•Fruit characteristics differed significantly in the different canopy parts.•Microclimate in various growing periods lead to different in fruit quality.•Light intensity in fruit developing and ...maturity periods affected fruit quality most.•Regression equations could be used to evaluate the fruit yield and quality.
This study investigated the relationship between environmental factors and the fruit yield, quality, and tree structure of Camellia oleifera by studying the relationship between the canopy microclimate, fruit yield, and fruit quality. The distributions of environmental factors over a year, and fruit yield and quality at fruit maturity in the canopy were investigated by measuring the differences between the inner canopy of the lower layer, outer canopy of the lower layer, inner canopy of the middle layer, outer canopy of the middle layer, inner canopy of the upper layer, and outer canopy of the upper layer. Light intensity was significantly different in the various layers, but there were no significant changes in temperature and relative humidity. Fruit yield and quality were related to light intensity, which improved from bottom to top and from the inner to outer canopy. They had positive correlations with the annual average light intensity and temperature, but were inversely associated with the annual average relative humidity. The fruit yield and oil content ratio in fresh fruit varied between the inside of the bottom to the outside of the top canopy. Yield and quality of fruit between July and October had higher mean correlation coefficients with light intensity (r = 0.807), temperature (r = 0.812) and relative humidity (r = −0.863). Additionally, regression equations between fruit characteristics and the canopy microclimate between July and October could be used evaluate the fruit yield and quality.
Toughening of thermoplastics with a one‐phase impact modifier generally results in significant reduction in stiffness, whereas core‐shell rubber modifiers have extra structural parameters such as ...core rigidity and shell flexibility, by controlling which the stiffness and impact toughness of their composites can be better balanced. In this study, three kinds of polyethylene (PE) with different rigidity are used respectively to prepare polypropylene/ethylene–propylene rubber/polyethylene (PP/EPR/PE) ternary composites by melt blending, in which the EPR‐to‐PE ratio is 1:1. Atomic force microscopy‐infrared (AFM−IR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results indicate that core‐shell rubber particles with a PE core and an EPR shell are formed in situ and uniformly dispersed in the PP matrix. Mechanical measurements show that at the same modifier content the PP composites toughened with these core‐shell rubber particles exhibit higher toughness and stiffness than that with EPR alone, and the more rigid the PE core, the greater the effects. These results are in quantitative agreement with a recent theoretical model, providing solid experimental evidence in support of the latter. Furthermore, this work demonstrates an economical approach to toughening PP by partial substitution of the EPR with the much cheaper PE for better performance.
The effect of core rigidity and core‐shell structure on the toughness and stiffness of the PP composites was quantitatively studied. The experimental results showed that core‐shell rubber particles toughened PP composites had higher toughness and stiffness than one phase modifier (such as POE, EPR, etc.), and the more rigid the PE core, the greater the effects. These results were in quantitative agreement with the recent theoretical model. More specifically, Partial substitution of EPR with cheaper PE could reduce the cost and improve the toughness and stiffness simultaneously, killing three birds with one stone.
Disease relapse occurs in patients with leukemia even hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) was performed with human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-matched donors. As revealed previously by ...Petersdorf et al., there are nine single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located in the HLA region that potentially modulate the efficacy of HSCT. In this study, we investigated whether or not the genomic variants 500 base pairs flanking the nine transplantation-related SNPs were related to the risk of post-HSCT relapse for patients with leukemia (n = 141). The genomic DNAs collected from 85 patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), 56 patients with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), and their respective HLA-matched donors were subject to SNPs analysis, conferred by the mode of mismatch between donor-recipient pair or by recipient or donor genotype analysis. Seven SNPs were revealed to associate with the risk of relapse post-HSCT. For patients with AML, the increased risk of post-HSCT relapse was associated with the donor SNP of rs111394117 in the intron of NOTCH4 gene, and the recipient SNPs of rs213210 in the ring finger protein 1 (RING1) gene promoter, and rs17220087 and rs17213693 in the intron of HLA-DOB gene. For patients with ALL, the increased risk of post-HSCT relapse was associated with the donor SNP of rs213210 in the RING1 gene promoter, and the recipient SNPs of rs79327197 in the HLA-DOA gene promoter, rs2009658 in the telomeric end of lymphotoxin-alpha (LTA) gene, rs17220087 and rs17213693 in the intron of HLA-DOB gene, and rs2070120 in the 3'-UTR of HLA-DOB gene. This study sheds new insight into selecting better candidate donors for performing HSCT in patients with AML and ALL.
Diastolic dysfunction (DD) has shown to be a hallmark pathological intermediate in the development of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). We aim to establish age- and ...sex-stratified normal reference values of diastolic indices and to explore racial-differences.
We explored age- and sex-related structural/functional alterations from 6023 healthy ethnic Asians (47.1 ± 10.9 years, 61.3% men) according to 2016 American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) diastolic dysfunction (DD) criteria. Racial comparisons were made using data from London Life Sciences Prospective Population (LOLIPOP) study.
Age- and sex-based normative ranges (including mean, median, 10% and 90% lower and upper reference values) were extracted from our large healthy population. In fully adjusted models, advanced age was independently associated with cardiac structural remodeling and worsened diastolic parameters including larger indexed LA volume (LAVi), lower e’, higher E/e’, and higher TR velocity; all p < 0.001), which were more prominent in women (P interaction: <0.05). Broadly, markedly lower e’, higher E/e’ and smaller LAVi were observed in ethnic Asians compared to Whites. DD defined by 2016 ASE criteria, despite at low prevalence (0.42%) in current healthy population, increased drastically with advanced age and performed perfectly in excluding abnormal NT-proBNP (≥125 pg/mL) (Specificity: 99.8%, NPV: 97.6%).
This is to date the largest cohort exploring the normative reference values using guideline-centered diastolic parameters from healthy Asians, with aging played as central role in diastolic dysfunction. Our observed sex and ethnic differences in defining healthy diastolic cut-offs likely impact future clinical definition for DD in Asians.
Stretchable light-emitting materials are the key components for realizing skin-like displays and optical biostimulation. All the stretchable emitters reported to date, to the best of our knowledge, ...have been based on electroluminescent polymers that only harness singlet excitons, limiting their theoretical quantum yield to 25%. Here we present a design concept for imparting stretchability onto electroluminescent polymers that can harness all the excitons through thermally activated delayed fluorescence, thereby reaching a near-unity theoretical quantum yield. We show that our design strategy of inserting flexible, linear units into a polymer backbone can substantially increase the mechanical stretchability without affecting the underlying electroluminescent processes. As a result, our synthesized polymer achieves a stretchability of 125%, with an external quantum efficiency of 10%. Furthermore, we demonstrate a fully stretchable organic light-emitting diode, confirming that the proposed stretchable thermally activated delayed fluorescence polymers provide a path towards simultaneously achieving desirable electroluminescent and mechanical characteristics, including high efficiency, brightness, switching speed and stretchability as well as low driving voltage.
To gauge the effectiveness of supplementing native populations of dolphinfish
Coryphaena hippurus
, we compared farm-raised and wild fish in terms of their horizontal and vertical movement patterns, ...habitat preferences and thermal niche using pop-up satellite archival tags (PSATs) deployed in two disparate locations: the sub-tropical southeastern coast of Taiwan (wild,
n
= 4), and temperate Kagoshima Bay, Japan (farm-raised,
n
= 3). Tagged fish were tracked for periods of 7–40 days, reached depths > 100 m, and experienced temperatures of 15–30 °C in Taiwan, and 20–23 °C in Kagoshima Bay. Fish tagged in Taiwan made primarily northward movements during early summer but changed to a southward course in early winter. In Kagoshima Bay, tagged fish undertook southward excursions along the coast and movements were confined to the bay. Dolphinfish spent > 50% of their time near the surface and made more extensive vertical movements during the night than during the day; vertical movements were largely confined to the mixed layer. Depth distributions appeared to be limited by a Δ6 °C change in temperature relative to sea surface temperature (i.e., > 90% of movements were within 6 °C of the warmest water available).
Black carbon (BC) plays an important role in the climate system because of its strong warming effect, yet the magnitude of this effect is highly uncertain owing to the complex mixing state of ...aerosols. Here we build a unified theoretical framework to describe BC's mixing states, linking dynamic processes to BC coating thickness distribution, and show its self-similarity for sites in diverse environments. The size distribution of BC-containing particles is found to follow a universal law and is independent of BC core size. A new mixing state module is established based on this finding and successfully applied in global and regional models, which increases the accuracy of aerosol climate effect estimations. Our theoretical framework links observations with model simulations in both mixing state description and light absorption quantification.
The two-harvest-per-year farming system allow table grape to be harvested a year both in summer and winter in southern China. Herein, we used high-throughput sequencing to investigate the diversity ...of fungi on grape fruits surface during the ripening process in summer and winter at subtropical Nanning region, Guangxi, China. The results showed that 23 fungal species existed in all samples. Among them, the five most dominant species were Cladosporium ramotenellum, Pseudozyma aphidis, Gyrothrix spp., Gibberella intricans and Acremonium alternatum, with abundance from 61.62 % to 91.26 %. Analysis using the student's t-test for Shannon index indicated that components of fungal community varied significantly between the two ripening seasons. The dominant genera of core fungal community were Cladosporium, Gyrothrix, Paramycosphaerella, Acremonium, Penicillium and Tilletiopsis in the summer and Cladosporium, Pseudozyma, Gibberella, Colletotrichum, Sporobolomyces, Rhodosporidium, Alternaria and Aspergillus in the winter. Overall, fungi diversity on grape fruits surface at Nanning showed significantly differences between different ripening seasons. Our results ennrich the understanding of epiphytic communities of grape fruits in subtropics.
•Epiphytic fungal diversity of grape berries from southwest China were firstly studied.•Difference of harvest time influence epiphytic fungal diversity of the same vineyard significantly.•Epiphytic fungal community of grape berries in southwest China varied notably from other regions.
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