Summary
The overuse of veterinary antibiotics in animal production and the subsequent land applications of manures contribute to the elevated antibiotic resistance in the soil environment. To ...minimize the risk of antibiotic resistance, it is important to understand the fate of antibiotics and the spread of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) from animal production systems to soil. In this paper, we review recent studies on veterinary antibiotic use, the concentrations of antibiotics and the abundance and diversity of AGRs in animal manures and in soil that receives manures or manure composts. The mechanisms of ARG dissemination in the environment are also discussed. Although we focus on China where around 3 billion tons of animal manures are produced and more than 84 000 tons of antibiotics are consumed annually in animal production industries, the problem is worldwide. Approximately 58% of the veterinary antibiotics consumed are excreted into the environment, more than half of which end up in the soil. The abundance of ARGs in manures can reach up to 10−1 of the 16S rRNA genes. Applications of manures or manure composts can enrich soil ARGs in at least three ways: (i) by the direct introduction of manure‐derived ARGs, (ii) by elevating the intrinsic soil ARGs and (iii) by imposing a selection of ARGs with the antibiotics in the manures. We also discuss the need for more stringent regulations on the use of veterinary antibiotics and future research directions on the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and resistance management.
Highlights
Soil is a natural reservoir of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs).
Manure applications introduce antibiotics and enrich soil ARGs through different mechanisms.
Horizontal gene transfer plays an important role in the spread of ARGs from manures.
More stringent regulations are needed to reduce the spread of ARG from animal sources.
Diabetes is usually associated with inflammation. Inflammation contributes to the development of diabetes. Traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) play an important role in lowering blood glucose and ...controlling inflammation. Many studies show that TCM with hypoglycaemic effects, for example Radix Astragali, Radix Rehmanniae, Radix Trichosanthis, Panax Ginseng, Fructus Schisandrae, Radix Ophiopogonis, Rhizoma Anemarrhenae, Radix Puerariae, Fructus Lycii, Poria, Rhizoma Coptidis, Rhizoma Dioscoreae, Rhizoma Polygonati, Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae, Radix Glycyrrhizae, Semen Trigonellae, Momordica charantia, Allium sativum, Opuntia stricta, Aloe vera, Cortex Cinnamomi, Rhizoma Curcumae Longae, and so on, have nearly independent anti-inflammatory action. Antihyperglycaemic compounds, for example berberine, puerarin, quercetin, ferulic acid, astragaloside IV, curcumin, epigallocatechin gallate, resveratrol, tetrandrine, glycyrrhizin, emodin and baicalin, used in TCM also have anti-inflammatory effects. These studies suggest that TCM might exert hypoglycaemic effects that are partly mediated by the anti-inflammatory mechanisms. However, small amounts of TCM with potent anti-inflammatory action does not have any hypoglycaemic effect. This indirectly indicates that diabetes may be a low-grade inflammatory disease and potent regulation of inflammatory mediators may not be required. Studies of TCM add new evidences, which indicate that diabetes may be an inflammatory disease and slight or moderate inhibition of inflammation might be useful to prevent the development of diabetes. Through this review, we aim to develop more perspectives to indicate that diabetes may be an inflammatory disease and diverse TCM may share a common antidiabetic property: anti-inflammatory action. Further studies should focus on and validate inflammation-regulating targets of TCM that may be involved in inhibiting the development of diabetes.
Many breakthroughs in the laboratories often do not bridge the gap between research and commercialization. However, silicon photonics bucked the trend, with industry observers estimating the ...commercial market to close in on a billion dollars in 2020 <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref45">45 . Silicon photonics leverages the billions of dollars and decades of research poured into silicon semiconductor device processing to enable high yield, robust processing, and most of all, low cost. Silicon is also a good optical material, with transparency in the commercially important infrared wavelength bands, and is a suitable platform for large-scale photonic integrated circuits. Silicon photonics is therefore slated to address the world's ever-increasing needs for bandwidth. It is part of an emerging ecosystem which includes designers, foundries, and integrators. In this paper, we review most of the foundries that presently enable silicon photonics integrated circuits fabrication. Some of these are pilot lines of major research institutes, and others are fully commercial pure-play foundries. Since silicon photonics has been commercially active for some years, foundries have released process design kits (PDK) that contain a standard device library. These libraries represent optimized and well-tested photonic elements, whose performance reflects the stability and maturity of the integration platforms. We will document the early works in silicon photonics, as well as its commercial status. We will provide a comprehensive review of the development of silicon photonics and the foundry services which enable the productization, including various efforts to develop and release PDK devices. In this context, we will report the long-standing efforts and contributions that previously IME/A * STAR and now AMF has dedicated to accelerating this journey.
Solar energy concentration technology using Fresnel lens is an effective way to make full use of sunlight. This paper makes a review about the recent development of the concentrated solar energy ...applications using Fresnel lenses. The ongoing research and development involves imaging systems and non-imaging systems. Compared with imaging systems, non-imaging systems have the merits of larger accept angles, higher concentration ratios with less volume and shorter focal length, higher optical efficiency, etc. Concentrated photovoltaics is a major application and the highest solar-to-electric conversion efficiency based on imaging Fresnel lens and non-imaging Fresnel lens are reported as over 30% and 31.5
±
1.7%, respectively. Moreover, both kinds of systems are widely used in other fields such as hydrogen generation, photo-bio reactors as well as photochemical reactions, surface modification of metallic materials, solar lighting and solar-pumped laser. During the recent two decades, such applications have been built and tested successfully to validate the practicality of Fresnel lens solar concentration systems. Although the present application scale is small, the ongoing research and development works suggest that Fresnel lens solar concentrators, especially non-imaging Fresnel lenses, will bring a breakthrough of commercial solar energy concentration application technology in the near future. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of two systems are also summarized.
•Fundamental theory of adsorption desalination systems is summarized.•Porous adsorbents available for adsorption desalination system are summarized.•Thermodynamic cycle configurations of adsorption ...desalination system are analyzed.•Future development directions of adsorbents and efficient system are prospected.
Adsorption desalination is an emerging desalination technology with low energy consumption, which is based on the principle of desalination by using the adsorption and desorption characteristics of porous adsorbents for water vapor. Compared with the traditional distillation and membrane methods, adsorption desalination can use renewable energy sources such as solar energy, geothermal energy, or industrial low-grade waste heat as the driving heat source, and thus has the excellent characteristics of being green and pollution-free. However, as a newly developed desalination technology, there is relatively little theoretical and experimental research on adsorption desalination, and it is still at the stage of small-scale experiments. This paper firstly introduces the adsorption theory and circulation process to clarify the key elements of this desalination method. Further, based on the available results, the related researches are analyzed and summarized according to the critical elements of the adsorption desalination system, i.e., preparation of adsorbents, optimization of system configuration, cyclic operating conditions, and combination systems. Finally, the future directions to be focused on for future research prediction are discussed, which will be useful for related studies in this field.
The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of methionine supplementation when reducing fishmeal levels in diets for white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei). Tested diets consisted of a ...positive control with 260 g/kg fishmeal (D1), two negative controls with 100 g/kg fishmeal and no amino acid (AA) supplementation (D2) or supplemented with lysine but not methionine (D3), and four additional diets with 100g/kg fishmeal supplemented with increasing levels of DL‐Met (1.0, 2.0 or 3.0 g/kg) (D4, D5, D6) or Met‐Met (1.0 g/kg) (D7). Each diet was fed to four groups of 30 shrimp for 8 weeks at a daily rate of 70 g/kg body weight. Reduction in fishmeal from 260 g/kg down to 100 g/kg did not significantly affect survival rate, feed conversion ratio (FCR), protein efficiency ratio (PER) or protein retention efficiency (PR%) of white shrimp. However, growth performance (final body weight, FBW; weight gain, WG; specific growth rate, SGR) was reduced when dietary fishmeal level was reduced from 260 g/kg (D1) to 100 g/kg without methionine supplementation (D2). The growth performance (FBW, WG and SGR) of shrimp was significantly increased by supplementation of the 100 g/kg fishmeal diet with increasing levels of DL‐Met (p < .05). Same performance as positive control (D1) was achieved with diets containing 100 g/kg fishmeal and supplemented with 3.0 g/kg DL‐Met or 1.0 g/kg Met‐Met. The highest values of growth performance (FBW, WG and SGR) were found in shrimp fed D6 and D7 diets, which were significantly higher than those of shrimp fed D2 and D3 diets (p < .05) but without statistical differences with shrimp fed D1, D4 and D5 diets (p > .05). The highest values of whole‐body and muscle protein contents were found in shrimp fed D1 diet, which were significantly higher than those of shrimp fed all other diets (p < .05). The highest value of intestinal tract proteolytic enzyme activity was found in shrimp fed Met‐Met‐supplemented diet (D7) and followed by the positive control diet (D1) and 3 g/kg DL‐Met‐supplemented diet (D6) (p < .05). The highest values of apparent digestibility coefficients (ADCs) of dry matter and crude protein were found in Met‐Met‐supplemented diet (D7) and followed by the positive control diet (D1) (p < .05). Shrimp fed the D1 diet showed the highest value of total essential amino acid (EAA) and was significantly higher than shrimp fed D2–D3 (p < .05) but without significant difference with shrimp fed D4–D7 (p > .05). In conclusion, results showed that same performance can be achieved with diets containing 260 or 100 g/kg fishmeal supplemented with 3.0 g/kg DL‐Met or 1.0 g/kg Met‐Met. Moreover, supplementation of limiting methionine in low‐fishmeal diets seems to improve the digestive proteolytic activity, improving digestibility of dry matter and protein, and eventually to promote growth of juvenile white shrimp in fishmeal reduction diets.
Our understanding of when and how humans adapted to living on the Tibetan Plateau at altitudes above 2000 to 3000 meters has been constrained by a paucity of archaeological data. Here we report data ...sets from the northeastern Tibetan Plateau indicating that the first villages were established only by 5200 calendar years before the present (cal yr B.P.). Using these data, we tested the hypothesis that a novel agropastoral economy facilitated year-round living at higher altitudes since 3600 cal yr B.P. This successful subsistence strategy facilitated the adaptation of farmers-herders to the challenges of global temperature decline during the late Holocene.
Abstract Ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) and autophagy lysosome pathway (ALP) are the two most important routes for degradation of aggregated/misfolded proteins. Additionally, ALP is so far the ...only known route to clear entire organelles, such as mitochondria. We proposed that enhancement of ALP may be beneficial for some neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson's disease (PD), in which the accumulation of aggregated/misfolded proteins and the dysfunction of mitochondria are the two major pathogenesis. Mitochondrial complex I inhibitor rotenone, which causes dysfunction mitochondria and UPS, has been considered as one of the neurotoxins related to PD. In this study, rotenone-exposed human neuronal SH-SY5Y cells were used as an in vitro model for us to determine whether autophagy enhancer rapamycin could protect against rotenone-induced injury and its underlying mechanisms. The observed results showed that rapamycin alleviated rotenone-induced apoptosis, whose effects were partially blocked when autophagy related gene 5 ( Atg5 ) was suppressed by Atg5 small interference RNA (siRNA) transfection. Additionally, the results showed that rapamycin pretreatment diminished rotenone-induced accumulation of high molecular weight ubiquitinated bands, and reduced rotenone-induced increase of cytochrome c in cytosolic fraction and decreased mitochondrial marker cytochrome oxidase subunit IV (COX IV) in mitochondrial fraction. The changes in cytochrome c and COX IV indicated that the decreased translocation of cytochrome c from mitochondria to cytosol was probably due to the turn over of entire injured mitochondria. The results that lysosome and mitochondria were colocolized within the cells pretreated with rapamycin and that the mitochondria could be found within autophagy double membrane structures further supported that the damaged mitochondria might be cleared through autophagy, which process has been termed as “mitophagy.” Our studies suggested that autophagy enhancer rapamycin is neuroprotective against rotenone-induced apoptosis through autophagy enhancement. We concluded that pharmacologically induction of autophagy by rapamycin may represent a useful therapeutic strategy as disease-modifiers in PD.
The PL spectra and schematic illustration of the charge separation between the ZnO nanorods and TiO2 nanoparticles. Display omitted
ZnO nanorods/TiO2 nanoparticles composites were synthesized and the ...effects of TiO2 concentrations on the NO2 sensing properties were studied in detail. The as-prepared composites were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, PL, I-V and gas sensing measurements. The gas sensing results demonstrated that all the sensors based on ZnO/TiO2 nanocomposites exhibited much higher response than that of sensors based on pure ZnO nanorods. At the optimum operating temperature of 180°C, the response values of the sensors based on ZnO/TiO2 nanocomposites decorated with TiO2 concentrations of 0, 3, 5, 8 and 10wt% were 50, 140, 310, 350 and 258, respectively. The PL and I-V results indicated that the increased charge transfer between the ZnO nanorods mediated by TiO2 nanoparticles enhanced the conductivity of the ZnO/TiO2 nanocomposites. The gas sensing mechanism was also carefully analyzed. The attachment of TiO2 nanoparticles onto ZnO nanorods induced more active sites for the adsorption of oxygen molecules (O2) and O2 which can be more easily adsorbed on the surface of ZnO nanorods. Furthermore, the conduction channel of ZnO/TiO2 was much narrower as a result of the formation of heterojunction which may further contribute to the enhanced NO2 sensing properties.
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