•Deficit irrigation (DI) affected soil water availability and decreased water absorption in each soil layer.•Moderate DI could increase the absorption of deep water by roots.•DI decreased total soil ...water evaporation and increased E/ETa.•The threshold SWC for defining when maize was subjected to water stress was 22.0% (72% of FC) and 18.0% (60% of FC) during stages V3–V12 and V12–R1, respectively.•Treatment T1 (moderate DI, 80% ETa) decreased yield by 3.3%–8.0%; increased WUE by 5.5%–7.5%; and decreased irrigation amount by 12.3–14.5%.
Continuously increasing the utilization efficiency of agricultural water resources is vital to ensuring future water and food security. Deficit irrigation (DI) could provide a solution to optimize crop water productivity. Research on the spatio-temporal dynamics of soil water coupled with evapotranspiration partitioning is important for clarifying summer maize (Zea mays L.) water utilization characteristics and crop water productivity under different DI strategies, especially in semi-arid regions. Consequently, a three-year field experiment with full irrigation (CK) and eight DI treatments (T1–T8, comprised of combinations of 100 %, 80 %, and 60 % of crop evapotranspiration) was conducted. Data from large-scale weighing lysimeters, micro-lysimeters, and TDR sensors were combined to assess daily root water absorption at different soil depths, actual evapotranspiration (ETa) partitioning into plant transpiration (T) and soil water evaporation (E), and water use efficiency (WUE). Results showed that soil water consumption mainly occurred in the 0–40 cm, 0–60 cm, and 0–80 cm soil layers during the maize growth stages of planting–V6, V6–V12, and V12–R6, respectively. Water absorption above the 60-cm soil depth accounted for more than 92 % of the total water consumption. The appropriate irrigation wetting depth for summer maize could be controlled in the top 80-cm layer to avoid deep percolation. DI affected soil water distribution and availability, and thus decreased soil water consumption rate (WCR) and root water absorption amount. Under moderate water deficit conditions, WCR was rapidly restored to the non-water-stressed irrigation treatment level, and even exceeded that level in the deeper layers after a subsequent irrigation was applied, especially in the early maize growth stages. E/ETa was 31.0–32.5 % under full irrigation. DI decreased total soil water evaporation amount, but increased the E/ETa ratio. The threshold soil water value for defining when maize was subjected to water stress was 22.0 % (72 % of FC) during V3–V12, and 18.0 % (60 % of FC) during V12–R1. Our results suggest that less water was used in T1 (moderate DI) than with the full irrigation treatment. WUE increased by 5.5 %–7.5 % as irrigation amount decreased by 12.3–14.5 % and yield decreased by 3.3 %–8.0 %. These results improve our understanding of maize water consumption characteristics with regard to soil water absorption in different soil layers and evapotranspiration partitioning, and provide implications for efficient water management in arid areas of northwest China.
•Ulinastatin can effectively reduce acute lung injury in diabetic sepsis rats.•Its mechanism may be related to inhibiting inflammatory response, reducing oxidative stress, regulating hypoxia response ...pathway, and improving pulmonary microvascular permeability.
This study explored the protective effect and its possible mechanism of ulinastatin (UTI) on acute lung injury (ALI) in type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) sepsis rats. Following treatment with UTI, the wet/dry weight (W/D) ratio, pathological changes, hypoxia-inducible factor-1ɑlpha (HIF-1ɑ) protein and Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) mRNA expression of lung tissues, the expression levels of interleukin-1beta (IL-1ß), IL-18, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-ɑ), the contents of malondialdehyde (MDA) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) in serum were detected in type 2 DM sepsis rats. It was found that rats with type 2 DM and sepsis showed obvious damage in lung tissues with significantly increased inflammatory cells, necrosis, and swelling of alveolar epithelial cells, but UTI decreased the lung damage induced by DM and sepsis. In addition, compared with the control, the W/D ratio, serum IL-1ß, IL-18 and TNF-ɑ contents, HIF-1ɑ protein expression, TLR4 mRNA expression, pulmonary microvascular permeability, MDA content in serum in type 2 DM and sepsis groups were significantly increased in type 2 DM sepsis rats (p < 0.05). However, compared with the groups with type 2 DM sepsis, the W/D ratio, serum IL-1ß, IL-18, TNF-ɑ contents, HIF-1ɑ protein expression, TLR4 mRNA expression, and pulmonary microvascular permeability in UTI-treated group were significantly decreased, but the activity of SOD increased (p < 0.05). This study indicates that UTI can effectively reduce ALI induced by diabetic sepsis in rats through inhibiting inflammatory response, reducing oxidative stress, regulating hypoxia response pathway, and improving pulmonary microvascular permeability.
•Ridge with plastic mulch-furrow irrigation method reduced deep percolation amount and soil salt accumulation.•Compared with the conventional border irrigation, ridge with plastic mulch-furrow ...irrigation with acceptable irrigation amount increased irrigation water use efficiency and maize yield.•Ridge with plastic mulch-furrow irrigation with about 300 mm of irrigation water can be recommended as the effective soil and water management practice in the Hetao Irrigation District.
The inadequate soil and water management has resulted in ecological and environmental problems in Hetao Irrigation District, which is characterized by low precipitation, high evaporation and soil salinity issues. A two-year field experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of the combined application of irrigation methods, irrigation amounts and plastic mulching modes on soil moisture, soil salinity, and water use efficiency of spring maize. This experiment included four treatments: (i) border irrigation partially mulched by plastic film with full irrigation amount (CK), (ii) ridge-furrow irrigation not mulched by plastic film with high irrigation amount (NRF), (iii) ridge with plastic mulch-furrow irrigation with high irrigation amount (PRF), (iv) ridge with plastic mulch-furrow irrigation with low irrigation amount (PRL). The results demonstrated that soil water and soil salinity mainly changed in the upper 80 cm soil layer. The proportion of the amount of deep percolation in the total growing season ranged from 9.3% to 29.5% and the highest deep percolation amount appeared in CK. Less irrigation amount generally resulted in a higher salt accumulation in the upper 40 cm soil layer. At harvest, the highest salt accumulation appeared in PRL and the lowest salt accumulation appeared in PRF among the three ridge-furrow irrigation treatments. Compared with the CK treatment, the average grain yields in the PRF, PRL and NRF treatments were increased by 29.6%, 12.2% and 14.4% in 2015, and increased by 5.5%, 4.2% and 2.5% in 2016, respectively. The highest water use efficiency was found in the treatment with PRF in 2015 growing season, and in the treatment with PRL in 2016 growing season. Irrigation water use efficiency was lower in PRF than in PRL, whereas higher than in CK and NRF. Fully considering maize yield, soil water storage, soil salt balance and water use efficiency in the Hetao Irrigation District, ridge with plastic mulch-furrow irrigation with about 300 mm of irrigation water can be recommended as the effective soil and water management practice.
The supply and demand of ecosystem services and their mutual feedback are important for the formulation of basin ecological environmental policies. Simulation of the spatial flow of ecosystem ...services can clarify the division of areas and can support policy development. This paper takes the Jinghe Basin in the Loess Plateau of China as the case-study area to simulate the spatial flow of soil conservation service on different scales. The results showed that (1) soil erosion situations in Jinghe Basin improved overall, with a trend of first aggravating and then recovering between 2005 and 2015; (2) the amount of annual soil conservation in the basin accounted for more than 75% of the potential soil erosion and showed a trend of first increasing and then decreasing; and (3) using digital elevation model (DEM) data and ArcGIS software, the experiment divided the basin into sub-basins (58 in total) and hydrological response units (HRUs) (e.g., 2181 HRUs in sub-basin #1), which were used to quantify the spatial flow direction and the corresponding amount of soil conservation service on the “HRU—river-sub-basin” scale. The divided supply and demand helped quantify the spatial flow pattern of soil conservation services from HRU to the sub-basin.
Purpose
Drawing from social capital theory and resource dependence theory, this paper aims to test the relationship between top management team (TMT) government social capital and firm’s innovation ...performance via firm’s network prestige, and the moderating effect of TMT academic social capital.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected data from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research Database as well as A-share listed firms’ annual reports, and finally generated a sample of 922 firms and 2,464 firm-years from 2008 to 2014. UCINET 6.0 was used to analyze the data.
Findings
The authors find that the government social capital of TMT is positively related to firms’ innovation performance and firms’ network prestige plays a mediating role in this relationship. In addition, TMT academic social capital can strengthen the links between TMT government social capital and innovation performance through firms’ network prestige.
Originality/value
This paper not only contributes to literatures on the mechanism in the relationship between government social capital and firms’ innovation, but also to literatures on the effectiveness of the heterogeneity of firm’s social capital.
•Responses of tomato yield, WUE and quality to nitrogen rate varied in different subgroups.•The recommended nitrogen input for tomato was 236–354 kg ha−1 based on tomato yield and quality.•Average ...annual temperature between 12 and 23°C could improve tomato yield and most of the quality.
Nitrogen, one of the essential nutrients for tomato growth, has significant influence on tomato cultivation. Yield, water use efficiency (WUE) and fruit quality are widely considered as the most important indicators in the production of tomato. However, reported effects of nitrogen application on tomato yield, WUE and fruit quality vary greatly, mainly due to differences in experimental and environmental factors. Besides, until now, there is no systematic analysis to discuss the effects of nitrogen application on tomato yield, WUE and fruit quality. Therefore, we adopted a global meta-analysis of tomato yield, WUE and fruit quality, including 1096 data pairs from 76 publications from eight countries. We concluded that the optimal nitrogen rate was between 236 and 354 kg ha−1 with the potential of significantly increasing tomato yield by 59.9%, enhancing Vitamin C (VC), sugar/acid ratio (SAR), soluble sugar (SS) and total soluble solids (TSS) by 18.8%, 33.5%, 23.5% and 11.9%, respectively, but decreasing lycopene by 10.8% and increasing nitrate content by 60.4%. Namely, the optimal nitrogen rate could obtain relatively higher tomato yield, VC, SAR, SS and TSS compared with no nitrogen supply. Tomato yield and SS were not significantly different between greenhouse/pot and field at the optimal nitrogen rate. Average annual temperature of 12–23 °C improved most tomato quality indicators (TSS, VC, SS, SAR, nitrate content and lycopene) and yield at the optimal nitrogen rate. There was no significant effect of soil pH on TSS and SS at the optimal nitrogen rate, and tomato yield, VC, SAR and nitrate content were improved more in soils with pH<7, while organic acid (OA) showed the opposite result. Our meta-analysis offered greater understandings of the effects of nitrogen supply on tomato yield, WUE and fruit quality in various experiment sites, average annual temperatures, soil textures, pH and irrigation water depths to produce higher tomato yield and fruit quality as much as possible.
FAT10, an ubiquitin-like protein, functions as a potential tumor promoter in several caners. However, the function and clinical significance of FAT10 in breast cancer (BC) remains unclear. Here, we ...found that high FAT10 expression was detected frequently in primary BC tissues, and was closely associated with malignant phenotype and shorter survival among the BC patients. Multivariate analyses also revealed that FAT10 overexpression was independent prognostic factors for poor outcome of patients with BC. Function assay demonstrated that FAT10 knockdown significantly inhibited the metastasis abilities and the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) of breast cancer cell. Further investigation revealed that FAT10 directly bound ZEB2 and decreased its ubiquitination to enhance the protein stability of ZEB2 in BC cells. Moreover, our data shown that the pro-metastasis effect of FAT10 in BC is partially dependent on ZEB2 enhancement. Collectively, our data suggest that FAT10 plays a crucial oncogenic role in BC metastasis, and we provide a novel evidence that FAT10 may be serve as a prognostic and therapeutic target for BC patients.
•High FAT10 level was closely associated with the malignant phenotype and shorter survival in the BC patients.•FAT10 knockdown suppressed the metastasis abilities and the EMT of breast cancer cell.•FAT10 directly interacts with ZEB2 and stabilizes its expression in breast cancer cells.•The pro-metastasis role of FAT10 in breast cancer is dependent on ZEB2 enhancement.
This paper explores and concludes the features and semantic prosodies of adverbs in public speaking setting by native English speakers through a corpus-driven approach. The corpus used is a ...sub-corpus (CES_C) from the self-built corpus (CES) comprising of 177 texts (type token) that are original and authentic speeches delivered by celebrities from UK and US. The speakers of these speeches are varied from all walks of life including presidents, business elites and etc. In terms of research methodology, this study is conducted both the quantitative approach of corpus linguistics and the qualitative approach of observation. By annotated part-of-speech (POS) with Treetagger tool, the study examined the occurrence frequency of adverbs and listed top 30 high-frequency adverbs employed in the corpus. Then different categories of adverbs were analyzed in terms of semantic function, and the frequency of occurrence was calculated respectively. The results shows the use of adverbs only accounts for 5% of all the words which is relatively lower than the use of other part of speech. Besides, some adverbs have certain semantic orientations based on different categorized adverbs, which provides intuitive reference resources for English public speaking teaching and learning in ESL/ EFL community. In addition, the combination of research focuses such as corpus, semantic prosody, public speaking and adverbs can be used as reference to enlarge the scope of corpus study and enhance the level of public speaking research.
Background. CYP26A1 has been reported in multiple cancers. However, the role of CYP26A1 in pancreatic cancer (PC) has not been explored. Method. The public data used for this study was obtained from ...The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), and Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE) cell lines. CCK8, colony formation, and EdU assay were used to assess the proliferation ability of cancer cells. Transwell and wound healing assays were used to evaluate the invasion and migration ability of cancer cells. qRT-PCR and western blot assays were used to analyze the RNA and protein level of genes. Survival package was used for prognosis analysis. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) was used to identify biological pathway differences between two groups. ssGSEA analysis was used to quantify the immune microenvironment in PC tissue. GDSC and TIDE analyses were used for sensitivity analysis of chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Results. Our results showed that CYP26A1 was overexpressed in PC tissue and cell lines. Meanwhile, metastatic PC cell lines tend to have a higher CYP26A1 level compared with the primary PC cell lines based on CCLE data. Moreover, CYP26A1 was associated with worse clinical features. Also, we found that CYP26A1 had a satisfactory efficiency in predicting overall survival, disease-specific survival, and progression-free interval of PC patients, independent of other clinical features. In vitro experiments indicated that CYP26A1 could significantly facilitate the proliferation, invasion, and migration ability of PC cells. GSEA showed that the pathways of angiogenesis, E2F target, MYC target, mTORC signaling, G2M checkpoint, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition were activated in high CYP26A1 patients. Immune infiltration analysis showed that CYP26A1 was positively correlated with macrophages, Th1 cells, and Treg cells, but negatively correlated with Th17 cells. TIDE analysis showed that non_responder patients had a higher CYP26A1 level compared with predicted responder patients of immunotherapy. Drug sensitivity analysis and assay showed that CYP26A1 could increase the chemotherapy sensitivity of gemcitabine. Conclusions. In summary, CYP26A1 promotes PC progression and is a novel biomarker of PC, with potential for clinical application.
Microbes play an essential role in soil biogeochemical processes and maintenance of soil nutrients, but not all microbial taxa contribute equally, and their functions in soil nutrient cycling and ...microbial network stability are unclear in arid fertigation agricultural ecosystems.
In this study, a 4‐year field experiment was conducted in an irrigation district in China using three levels of irrigation high (400 mm), medium (300 mm) and low (200 mm) and two levels of fertilization high (600 kg/ha P2O5 + 300 kg/ha urea) and low (300 kg/ha P2O5 + 150 kg/ha urea) to reveal the ecological roles of core and noncore taxa in maintaining soil nutrient cycling and their associations with microbial network stability.
Our results showed that combining medium irrigation with low fertilization resulted in higher levels of soil organic C, inorganic N, available P, multinutrient cycling and noncore bacterial diversity compared with the other treatments. Soils supporting a higher diversity of noncore bacterial taxa had a high soil multinutrient cycling index, while soils harbouring highly diverse core taxa exhibited a more stable bacterial network. The soil multinutrient cycling index was also significantly positively related to the subnetwork modularity of noncore taxa. Moreover, noncore taxa could serve as diverse pools that turn into core taxa in response to changes in the external environment. Acinetobacter, Flavobacterium, Gemmatimonas and Salinimicrobium, which belong to the noncore taxa, were involved in soil C and N cycling in the arid agricultural ecosystem.
Synthesis and applications. Our results suggest that soil microbiota contribute differently to ecosystem functions. Changes in soil nutrient cycling were more closely related to variations in noncore taxa, while bacterial network stability was more associated with core taxa. Our study emphasized the role of noncore microbiota, which has been neglected in previous studies. Furthermore, our findings suggested that combining medium irrigation with low fertilization is effective for enhancing soil nutrients and bacterial diversity, providing guidance for managing arid agricultural ecosystems.
Our results suggest that soil microbiota contribute differently to ecosystem functions. Changes in soil nutrient cycling were more closely related to variations in noncore taxa, while bacterial network stability was more associated with core taxa. Our study emphasized the role of noncore microbiota, which has been neglected in previous studies. Furthermore, our findings suggested that combining medium irrigation with low fertilization is effective for enhancing soil nutrients and bacterial diversity, providing guidance for managing arid agricultural ecosystems.
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