Phytoplankton communities have been changed recently in the giant and dynamical China's Yangtze Estuary primarily due to intensifying human activities and climate warming. A large amount of riverine ...material fluxes into the estuary has been significantly altered in their balances, leading to a change of phytoplankton from siliceous- to non-siliceous-dominated communities. We established inter-linkages of changing phytoplankton communities to various controlling factors and revealed that this bio-transformation occurred around 2000. Before this time, there were fewer dominant diatom taxa, but since then more have emerged as the variation, along with many dinoflagellates driven by the altered riverine nutrient ratios of N:P:Si delivered to the estuary, averagely from 75:1:946 (1960s–1970s) to 86:1:272 (1980s–1990s) and to 102:1:75 (2000s–2010s). Excessive nitrogen and lowering dissolved silicate (DSi) has exerted the key environmental stress on such a bio-transformation. Skeletonema spp. the most popular in diatoms has lost its dominance by ca 50% since the early 2000s. We further convinced the long-increasing dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) (presently, 150 μmol L−1, maxi., ca 3.5 folds more than that of 1960s–1980s) to meet the long-decreasing DSi (ca 60% off since 1960s) at 110 μmol L−1, around 2004 (Redfield ratio balance 1:1) as a threshold. Since then, this balance has broken, serving as an engine for driving the bio-transformation. Phytoplankton development did not fully follow the Redfield ratio, especially during the algal blooming season, as revealed by the scattered distribution of dinoflagelate:diatom vs. DIN:DSi when DIN:DSi >1. This implies a much more eutrophic setting attributable to over-loaded nitrogen concentration in the Yangtze Estuary. Besides, the lowering sediment flux in the estuary (lowest after 2003 when the Three Gorges Dam closed) and the rising sea surface temperature (SST) in recent decades has enhanced the bio-transformation. Consequently, the estuarine water tends to be more acidic than before, manifested by continuously lowering of pH and dissolved oxygen (DO) in the study area.
•The change of phytoplankton community occurs in Yangtze Estuary in the end of 1990s due to the Global Change.•Bio-transformation occurs in response to altered terrestrial material fluxes and SST increase.•110 μmol L−1 both DIN and DSi intersects serves as a threshold for bio-transformation.•Study sheds lights on ecological regime shift of mega-estuary not only in the Yangtze, but also in the world.
Face identification and resolution technology is crucial to ensure the identity consistency of humans in physical space and cyber space. In the current Internet of Things (IoT) and big data ...situation, the increase of applications based on face identification and resolution raises the demands of computation, communication, and storage capabilities. Therefore, we have proposed the fog computing-based face identification and resolution framework to improve processing capacity and save the bandwidth. However, there are some security and privacy issues brought by the properties of fog computing-based framework. In this paper, we propose a security and privacy preservation scheme to solve the above issues. We give an outline of the fog computing-based face identification and resolution framework, and summarize the security and privacy issues. Then the authentication and session key agreement scheme, data encryption scheme, and data integrity checking scheme are proposed to solve the issues of confidentiality, integrity, and availability in the processes of face identification and face resolution. Finally, we implement a prototype system to evaluate the influence of security scheme on system performance. Meanwhile, we also evaluate and analyze the security properties of proposed scheme from the viewpoint of logical formal proof and the confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) properties of information security. The results indicate that the proposed scheme can effectively meet the requirements for security and privacy preservation.
A series of novel nanosheet array-like catalysts Pdx/rGO@CoAl-LDH (x = 0.0098-1.9, refers to Pd loading in wt % on ICP, rGO: reduced graphene oxide, LDH: layered double hydroxide) were first prepared ...via a simple and green lattice atomic-confined in situ reduction of oxidative Pd precursors by the evenly atomic-dispersed reductive Co2+ sites on LDH layers of a nanohybrid rGO@CoAl-LDH with hexagonal LDH nanoplates (∼73 × 7 nm) interdigitated vertical to the surfaces of rGO layer in both sides, fabricated through a simple citric acid-assisted aqueous-phase coprecipitation method. The as-obtained Pd catalysts possess clean Pd nanoclusters (NCs) with tunable sizes in 1.3-1.8 nm on varied Pd loadings. All the Pdx/rGO@CoAl-LDH catalysts show excellent activities for the Heck reaction, and the Pd0.0098/rGO@CoAl-LDH with the ultrafine Pd NCs of 1.3 ± 0.2 nm yields a maximum turnover frequency of 160 000 h-1 over a heterogeneous catalyst so far. The excellent activities can be attributed to the ultrasmall Pd NCs with high dispersion and clean Pd surfaces, increased electron transfer capacity and surface area, and remarkable Pd-CoAl-LDH-rGO three-phase synergistic effect of the present unique nanosheet array-like Pd NCs catalysts. Moreover, the catalyst Pd0.33/rGO@CoAl-LDH shows a broad range of substrate applicability and can be reused more than five runs without obvious loss of activity, giving the present catalysts long-term stability. These findings make the rGO@CoAl-LDH hybrid prepared by a facile and scalable synthesis route a universal green platform to support other noble or nonprecious metal NCs via lattice atomic-confined in situ reduction strategy to construct more desired heterogeneous catalysts.
The phenol-containing phthalonitrile resin is a kind of self-curing phthalonitrile resin with high-temperature resistance and excellent properties. However, the onefold phthalonitrile resin is ...unattainable to cured completely, and the brittleness of the cured product is non-negligible. This paper focuses on solving the above problems by blending novolac resin into phenol-containing phthalonitrile. Under the action of abundant hydroxyl group, the initial curing temperature and gelation time at 170 °C decrease by 88 °C and 2820 s, respectively, monitored by DSC and rheological analysis. FT-IR spectra of copolymers showed that the addition of novolac increased the conversion rate of nitrile. When the novolac mass fraction is 10%, the peak of nitrile group disappears, which means the complete reaction. The mechanical test of blends composites shows that the maximum fracture strain of 10 wt% novolac addition is 122% higher than those of neat phthalonitrile composites on account of the introduction of flexible novolac chain segments. The mechanical properties are sensitive to elevated post-cured temperature; this is consistent with the result of morphological investigation using SEM. Finally, the dynamic mechanical analysis indicated that the glass transition temperature heightened with the increase of novolac content and post-curing temperature.
Cutaneous melanoma (CM) is one of the most aggressive skin tumors with a poor prognosis. Ferroptosis is a newly discovered form of regulated cell death that is closely associated with cancer ...development and immunotherapy. The aim of this study was to establish and validate a ferroptosis-related gene (FRG) DNA methylation signature to predict the prognosis of CM patients using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. A reliable four-FRG DNA methylation prognostic signature was constructed via Cox regression analysis based on TCGA database. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that patients in the high-risk group tended to have a shorter overall survival (OS) than the low-risk group in both training TCGA and validation GEO cohorts. Time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed the areas under the curve (AUC) at 1, 3, and 5 years were 0.738, 0.730, and 0.770 in TCGA cohort and 0.773, 0.775, and 0.905 in the validation cohort, respectively. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses indicated that the signature was an independent prognostic indicator of OS in patients with CM. Immunogenomic profiling showed the low-risk group of patients had a higher immunophenoscore, and most immune checkpoints were negatively associated with the risk signature. Functional enrichment analysis revealed that immune response and immune-related pathways were enriched in the low-risk group. In conclusion, we established and validated a four-FRG DNA methylation signature that independently predicts prognosis in CM patients. This signature was strongly correlated with the immune landscape, and may serve as a biomarker to guide clinicians in making more precise and personalized treatment decisions for CM patients.
•We evaluate the Fisher Vector with linear classifier for character recognition.•Experimental results show that FV outperforms most methods on eight datasets.•FV could even outperform CNN based ...methods given limited amount of training samples.•We show that spatial information is very useful for character representation.•The results also imply the potential of FV to represent unseen categories.
Fisher vector (FV), which could be seen as a bag of visual words (BOW) that encodes not only word counts but also higher-order statistics, works well with linear classifiers and has shown promising performance for image categorization. For character recognition, although standard BOW has been applied, the results are still not satisfactory. In this paper, we apply Fisher vector derived from Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) based visual vocabularies on character recognition and integrate spatial information as well. We give a comprehensive evaluation of Fisher vector with linear classifier on a series of challenging English and digits character recognition datasets, including both the handwritten and scene character recognition ones. Moreover, we also collect two Chinese scene character recognition datasets to evaluate the suitability of Fisher vector to represent Chinese characters. Through extensive experiments we make three contributions: (1) we demonstrate that FV with linear classifier could outperform most of the state-of-the-art methods for character recognition, even the CNN based ones and the superiority is more obvious when training samples are insufficient to train the networks; (2) we show that additional spatial information is very useful for character representation, especially for Chinese ones, which have more complex structures; and (3) the results also imply the potential of FV to represent new unseen categories, which is quite inspiring since it is quite difficult to collect enough training samples for large-category Chinese scene characters.
The well-14C–dated sediment core HM retrieved from the Yangtze River mouth was used to reconstruct the Holocene sedimentary–ecological complex of its incised valley. The complete Holocene sedimentary ...facies that were exclusively formed in the valley and evidenced by bio-geochemical measurement, showed the Latest Pleistocene fluvial facies to the Early-Holocene marine facies, and the Middle-Late Holocene deltaic facies. The established Holocene stratigraphic framework consists of 3 (I-III) infilling phases, of which phase I demonstrated the most rapidly infilling with coastal sediments into the valley (1.0 cm/yr), driven by the Early Holocene marine transgression. The remarkably low sedimentation rate of 0.1 cm/yr of phase II to the relatively low rate of 0.7 cm/yr of phase III occurred during the Middle-Late Holocene, reflecting sediments transported from river basin to directly fill in the valley along with deltaic depocenter shifted seawards as retrogressive processes. In addition, our microfossil (foraminifera and diatom) spectra displayed 3 distinctive biological stages with related sedimentary–ecological implications. During the Early Holocene, there were remarkably high numbers of diatom communities but few foraminifera, then followed a zone of less abundant microfossils between ca. 9.0–5.0 ka. After this time, richer foraminiferal communities appeared but diatoms were less abundant. The massive sediment infilling in the Early Holocene in the deeper (>60 m) incised valley would suppress benthic foraminiferal development, most likely due to anaerobic conditions in the lower water column. However, the flourishing diatom communities persisted in the brackish marine water associated with sea-level rise. The zone with fewer microfossils corresponded generally with the Middle Holocene sandy ridge formation at the core site, leading to poorer bio–preservation. After ca. 5.0 ka, foraminiferal communities gradually became adapted to the reduced salinity of the estuarine water associated with the deltaic progradation, though this appears not to have supported the diatom communities.
•A paleo-sedimentary-ecological complex in the Yangtze incised valley was established.•The Holocene sediment strata recorded marine transgression and deltaic progradation.•Mid-Holocene sediment shortage from catchment was unable to feed the mid-outer valley.•Foraminifera-diatom assemblages were integrated to show valley's ecological setting.•Massive Early Holocene sedimentation caused valley bottom-water to be anaerobic.
China’s pharmaceutical industry has enormous potential. With the launch of relevant state policies and the innovations being made on the financial front, the country’s medical industry has a closer ...tie with its financial institutions in the supply chain. On the other hand, the booming of supply chain finance provides excellent platforms for financial institutions, pharmaceutical companies and third-part logistics to interact with each other. Nevertheless, supply chain finance in a traditional sense is still facing many challenges. Taking Jixiangtian, a blockchain and medical service platform as an example, this paper illustrated the problems faced by the traditional pharmaceutical supply chain, and analyzed pharmaceutical supply chain platforms using blockchain technology to propose solutions to tackle the financial challenges faced by traditional supply chains.
With the rapid development of domestic automobile consumption, the financing problem of upstream and downstream enterprises in the automobile industry has become the focus of the industry. As an ...innovative financial tool, automotive supply chain finance provides a solution for small and medium-sized enterprises in the industrial chain. From the perspective of the automotive industry chain, this paper analyzes the supply side and demand side of the capital, summarizes the problems existing in the automotive supply chain finance, and finally puts forward solutions from the aspects of the industry side and the technology side to provide suggestions for the development of the industry.
Purpose The aim of the present study was to investigate the prognostic value of tumor-infiltrated lymphocytes (TILs), especially the prognostic value of Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (Tregs), CD8+ CTLs ...and Tregs/CD8+ ratios in gastric cancer patients after R0 resection. Patients and methods From 133 patients, CD4+, CD8+ and Foxp3+ TILs were assessed by immunohistochemistry in tissue microarrays and N1 regional lymph nodes sections containing gastric cancer. The prognostic effects of low- or high-density TIL subsets were evaluated by Cox regression and Kaplan-Meier analysis using median values as cutoff, while the effects of Foxp3+/CD8+ ratios were evaluated using the value determined by ROC cure analysis as cutoff. Results It was found that CD4+ and CD8+ TILs were not associated with overall survival (OS). In the tumor sites, higher Foxp3+ Tregs/CD8+ ratio was an independent factor for worse OS (multivariate analysis HR = 2.827, P = 0.037). The 1-year, 2-year and 3-year OS rates were 90, 77.5 and 70% for the group with intratumoral high Tregs/CD8+ ratio, compared with 100, 94.3 and 90.5% for the group with intratumoral low ratio. At the same time, the presence of intratumoral high Foxp3+ Tregs was also associated with worse OS (log rank test, P = 0.025); however, it was not an independent predictor and correlated with intratumoral Foxp3+ Tregs/CD8+ ratio (χ ² test, P < 0.001). Although the infiltration of Foxp3+ Tregs in N1 regional lymph nodes was associated with lymph node metastasis (P = 0.028), it was not associated with prognosis (P = 0.458). Conclusions Intratumoral high Foxp3+ Tregs/CD8+ ratio was an independent predictor for the prognosis of gastric cancer. It can be inferred that a combination of deletion of Tregs and stimulation of CD8+ effector T cells may be an effective immunotherapy to prolong survival after surgery.
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