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Background: Breast cancer poses a significant health risk to women worldwide, with approximately 30% being diagnosed annually in the United States. The identification of cancerous mammary tissues from non-cancerous ones during surgery is crucial for the complete removal of tumors., Results: Our study innovatively utilized machine learning techniques (Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)) alongside Raman spectroscopy to streamline and hasten the differentiation of normal and late-stage cancerous mammary tissues in mice. The classification accuracy rates achieved by these models were 94.47% for RF, 96.76% for SVM, and 97.58% for CNN, respectively. To our best knowledge, this study was the first effort in comparing the effectiveness of these three machine-learning techniques in classifying breast cancer tissues based on their Raman spectra. Moreover, we innovatively identified specific spectral peaks that contribute to the molecular characteristics of the murine cancerous and non-cancerous tissues., Conclusions: Consequently, our integrated approach of machine learning and Raman spectroscopy presents a non-invasive, swift diagnostic tool for breast cancer, offering promising applications in intraoperative settings., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Tooth cracks, one of the most common dental diseases, can result in the tooth falling apart without prompt treatment; dentists also have difficulty locating cracks, even with X-ray imaging. Indocyanine green (ICG) assisted near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) dental imaging technique can solve this problem due to the deep penetration of NIR light and the excellent fluorescence characteristics of ICG. This study extracted 593 human cracked tooth images and 601 non-cracked tooth images from NIR imaging videos. Multiple imaging analysis methods such as classification, object detection, and super-resolution were applied to the dataset for cracked image analysis. Our results showed that machine learning methods could help analyze tooth crack efficiently: the tooth images with cracks and without cracks could be well classified with the pre-trained residual network and squeezenet1_1 models, with a classification accuracy of 88.2% and 94.25%, respectively; the single shot multi-box detector (SSD) was able to recognize cracks, even if the input image was at a different size from the original cracked image; the super-resolution (SR) model, SR-generative adversarial network demonstrated enhanced resolution of crack images using high-resolution concrete crack images as the training dataset. Overall, deep learning model-assisted human crack analysis improves crack identification; the combination of our NIR dental imaging system and deep learning models has the potential to assist dentists in crack diagnosis., (© 2024. The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Biomedical Engineering Society.)

Microplastics (MPs) are ubiquitous in freshwater ecosystems and their accumulation has been considered an emerging threat. Early research on the effects of MPs on macrophytes primarily focused on the toxicological impacts on individual macrophytes, with several studies suggesting that lower concentrations of MPs have little impact on macrophytes. However, the ecological implications of lower MP concentrations on macrophyte communities remain largely unexplored. Here, we experimented to assess the effects of lower concentrations including 25 mg/L, 50 mg/L, 75 mg/L, and 100 mg/L of polyethylene (PE) microplastics on Spirodela polyrhiza and Lemna minor, and their community. Our results also indicated that PE concentrations below 100 mg/L had no significant effect on relative growth rate, specific leaf area, Chlorophyll a, Chlorophyll b, Chlorophyll a + b, carotenoid, malondialdehyde (MDA), catalase, and soluble sugar of monocultural S. polyrhiza. However, a lower concentration of PE significantly decreased the MDA of monocultural L. minor and significantly affected the comprehensive index of S. polyrhiza. These findings suggested that lower concentrations of PE can influence interactions between macrophytes maybe due to the cumulative effects of many weak interactions. Additionally, our study showed that 75 mg/L and 100 mg/L PE additions decreased the competitive balance index value of two macrophytes under mixed-culture condition. This result implied that the ecological influence of lower concentration MPs on macrophytes may manifest at the community level rather than at the population level, due to species-specific responses and varying degrees of sensitivity of macrophytes to PE concentrations. Thus, our study emphasizes the need to closely monitor the ecological consequences of emerging contaminants such as MPs accumulation on macrophyte communities, rather than focusing solely on the morphology and physiology of individual macrophytes., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) emitted by plants serve crucial biological functions and potentially impact atmospheric environment and global carbon cycling. Despite their significance, BVOC emissions from aquatic macrophytes have been relatively understudied. In this study, for the first time we identified there were 68 major BVOCs released from 34 common aquatic macrophytes, and these compounds referred to alcohols, aldehydes, alkanes, alkenes, arenes, ethers, furans, ketones, phenol. For type of BVOC emissions from different life form and phylogenetic group of aquatic macrophytes, 34 of the 68 BVOCs from emergent and submerged macrophytes are classified into alkene and alcohol compounds, over 50% BVOCs from dicotyledon and monocotyledon belong to alcohol and arene compounds. Charophyte and pteridophyte emitted significantly fewer BVOCs than dicotyledon and monocotyledon, and each of them only released 12 BVOCs. These BVOCs may be of great importance for the growth and development of macrophytes, because many BVOCs, such as azulene, (E)-β-farnesene, and dimethyl sulfide are proved to play vital roles in plant growth, defense, and information transmission. Our results confirmed that both life form and phylogenetic group of aquatic macrophytes had significantly affected the BVOC emissions form macrophytes, and suggested that the intricate interplay of internal and external factors that shape BVOC emissions from aquatic macrophytes. Thus, further studies are urgently needed to investigate the influence factors and ecological function of BVOCs released by macrophytes within aquatic ecosystem., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest All authors declare that No conflict of interest exists., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Microplastics (MPs) and antibiotics are ubiquitous in aquatic ecosystems, and their accumulation and combined effects are considered emerging threats that may affect biodiversity and ecosystem function. The particle size of microplastics plays an important role in their combined effects with antibiotics. Submerged macrophytes are crucial in maintaining the health and stability of freshwater ecosystems. However, little is known about the combined effects of different particle size of MPs and antibiotics on freshwater plants, particularly their effects on submerged macrophyte communities. Thus, there is an urgent need to study their effects on the macrophyte communities to provide essential information for freshwater ecosystem management. In the present study, a mesocosm experiment was conducted to explore the effects of three particle sizes (5 µm, 50 µm, and 500 µm) of polystyrene-microplastics (PSMPs) (75 mg/L), tetracycline (TC) (50 mg/L), and their co-pollutants on interactions between Hydrilla verticillata and Elodea nuttallii. Our results showed that the effects of MPs are size-dependent on macrophytes at the community level rather than at the population level, and that small and medium sized MPs can promote the growth of the two test macrophytes at the community level. In addition, macrophytes at the community level have a stronger resistance to pollutant stress than those at the population level. Combined exposure to MPs and TC co-pollutants induces species-specific responses and antagonistic toxic effects on the physio-biochemical traits of submerged macrophytes. Our study provides evidence that MPs and co-pollutants not only affect the morphology and physiology at the population level but also the interactions between macrophytes. Thus, there are promising indications on the potential consequences of MPs and co-pollutants on macrophyte community structure, which suggests that future studies should focus on the effects of microplastics and their co-pollutants on aquatic macrophytes at the community level rather than only at the population level. This will improve our understanding of the profound effects of co-pollutants in aquatic environments on the structure and behavior of aquatic communities and ecosystems., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Invasion and eutrophication are considered to pose serious threats to freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem function. However, little is known about the synergistic effects of invasion density and nutrient concentration on native submerged macrophytes. Here, we selected a common invasive species (Elodea nuttallii) and two native plants (Hydrilla verticillata and Potamogeton maackianus) to elucidate the effects of invasion density and eutrophication on native submerged plants. We found that (1) high nutrient concentrations inhibited the growth of both invasive and native species, but E. nuttallii, with a wide ecological niche, was more tolerant to eutrophication than the two native species. (2) High invasion density had a remarkable negative effect on the growth of the two native species under the medium and high nutrient concentrations. (3) Medium and high invasion densities of E. nuttallii made native macrophytes more susceptible to eutrophication. (4) The two native macrophytes had species-specific responses to medium and high invasion densities under medium and high nutrient concentrations. Specifically, a high invasion density of E. nuttallii significantly delayed the growth of H. verticillata rather than P. maackianus. Thus, it is necessary to consider the synergistic effects of invasion with eutrophication when assessing invasion in freshwater ecosystems. And our results implied that invasion with eutrophication was a powerful factor determining the results of interspecific competition among submerged macrophytes, which could change the biodiversity, community structure and functions of freshwater ecosystems., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The application of appropriate references such as CMIP6 climate scenarios for benchmarking studies of climate change on ecosystems can promote consistency among different climate change research. However, the use of CMIP6 climate scenarios is not common among experiments on the effects of climate change on freshwater ecosystems. Also, little is known about the impact of ecological factor such as allelopathy of alien species on macrophyte germination and seedling growth under different climate scenarios. In our study, by simulating three annual mean temperature changes at global warming levels of 1.5 °C (low warming scenario), 2 °C (medium warming scenario) and 4 °C (high warming scenario) corresponding to CMIP6 multi-model mean change at the corresponding global warming level, we conducted a mesocosm experiment to investigate their possible effects of different climate scenarios and allelopathy co-stressors on macrophyte germination and seedling growth. Our study showed that three warming scenarios all can facilitate macrophyte propagule germination and seedling growth, but the effect paths vary with CMIP6 warming scenarios and there are more influence pathways under high warming scenarios than under low and medium warming scenarios. Higher aqueous extract concentrations of Eichhornia crassipes can significantly stimulate macrophyte propagule germination and seedling growth. And the medium and high warming scenarios may exacerbate the impacts of allelopathic substances on macrophyte germination and seedling growth, and their effects depend on the combination of the two stressors. These results indicated that medium- and high-temperature scenarios may have greater ecological effects on macrophytes than low-temperature scenarios. Thus, our results highlighted that future climate studies need proper benchmarks such as CMIP6 warming scenarios, because it can provide relatively more accurate and realistic simulations, valid comparative results, comprehensive understanding and supportive coordination among researchers., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest I declare that authors have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper, and the manuscript is approved by all authors for publication. I would like to declare on behalf of my co-authors that the work described was original research that has not been published previously, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Ion exchange resin process is a widely used process in wastewater treatment plants, but its waste brine is characterized by high salinity and nitrate concentration, leading to costly treatment. This study innovatively explored the use of an up-flow anaerobic sludge bed (USB) for the treatment of waste brine from ion exchange resin process, following a pilot-scale ion exchange resin process. Specifically, the D890 ion exchange resin was employed for nitrate removal from secondary effluent, with resin regeneration using 4% NaCl solution. The USB was inoculated with anaerobic granular sludge and acclimated under various single-factor conditions, which revealed the optimal pH range of 6.5-9, salt concentration of 2%, hydraulic retention time of 12 h, C/N ratio of 3.3, and up-flow velocity of 1.5 m/h for reactor operation. This study provides a novel approach for the cost-effective treatment of waste brine from ion exchange resin process. The study found that the denitrification efficiency was highest when the NO 3 - -N concentration was around 200 mg/L, with NO 3 - -N and TN removal rates exceeding 95% and 90%, respectively, under optimal operating conditions. Characterization of the granular sludge during different phases of the operation revealed a significant increase in proteobacteria and gradually became the dominant species over time. This study presents a novel, cost-effective approach to treat waste brine from ion exchange resin process, and the long-term stable operation of the reactor offers a reliable option for resin regeneration wastewater treatment., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Medical diagnosis heavily relies on the use of bio-imaging techniques. One such technique is the use of ICG-based biological sensors for fluorescence imaging. In this study, we aimed to improve the fluorescence signals of ICG-based biological sensors by incorporating liposome-modified ICG. The results from dynamic light scattering and transmission electron microscopy showed that MLM-ICG was successfully fabricated with a liposome diameter of 100-300 nm. Fluorescence spectroscopy showed that MLM-ICG had the best properties among the three samples (Blank ICG, LM-ICG, and MLM-ICG), as samples immersed in MLM-ICG solution achieved the highest fluorescence intensity. The NIR camera imaging also showed a similar result. For the rat model, the best period for fluorescence tests was between 10 min and 4 h, where most organs reached their maximum fluorescence intensity except for the liver, which continued to rise. After 24 h, ICG was excreted from the rat's body. The study also analyzed the spectra properties of different rat organs, including peak intensity, peak wavelength, and FWHM. In conclusion, the use of liposome-modified ICG provides a safe and optimized optical agent, which is more stable and efficient than non-modified ICG. Incorporating liposome-modified ICG in fluorescence spectroscopy could be an effective way to develop novel biosensors for disease diagnosis., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature.)

Improper discharge of slag from mining will pollute the surrounding soil, thereby affecting the ecology and becoming an important global problem. The available copper (ACu) content in polluted soil is an important factor affecting plant growth and development. When investigating a large area of soil with ACu, manual sampling by points and inspection are mainly used, due to the heterogeneity of soil, the efficiency and accuracy are lower. The Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a hyperspectral sensor as a remote sensing technology is widely used in soil indicator monitoring because of its rapid and convenience. Meanwhile, using the relationship between soil organic matter and available copper has the potential to predict available copper. In this study, we selected the study area with tailings area in the Jianghan Plain of China and used a UAV equipped with a hyperspectral sensor to predict ACu and soil organic matter (SOM) in the soil with two datasets. Firstly, 74 soil samples were collected in the study area, and the ACu and SOM of the soil samples were determined. Second, a hyperspectral image of the study area is obtained using a UAV equipped with a hyperspectral sensor. Thirdly, we combine hyperspectral data with competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS) to obtain feature bands and utilize simulated annealing deep neural network (SA-DNN) to generate estimation models. Finally, maps of the distribution of ACu and SOM in the area were generated using the model. In two datasets, the model of ACu with R 2 values both are 0.89, and R 2 on the model of SOM is 0.89 and 0.88. The results show that the combination of UAV hyperspectral imagery with the SA-DNN model has good performance in the prediction of organic matter and available copper, which is helpful for soil environmental monitoring., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Microplastic and antibiotic contamination are considered an increasing environmental problem in aquatic systems, while little is known about the impact of microplastics and co-pollutant with antibiotics on freshwater vascular plants, particularly the effects of interactions between macrophytes. Here, we performed a mesocosm experiment to evaluate the impact of polyethylene-microplastics and their co-pollutants with ciprofloxacin on the growth and physiological characteristics of Spirodela polyrhiza and Lemna minor and the interactions between these two macrophytes. Our results showed that microplastics alone cannot significantly influence fresh weight and specific leaf area of the two test free-floating macrophytes, but the effects on photosynthetic pigments, malondialdehyde, catalase and soluble sugar contents were species-specific. Ciprofloxacin can significant adverse effects on the growth and physiological traits of the two test macrophytes and microplastic mitigated the toxicity of ciprofloxacin on the two free-floating plants to a certain extent. In addition, our studies showed that microplastics and co-pollutants can influence relative yield and competitiveness of S. polyrhiza and L. minor by directly or indirectly influencing their physiology and growth. Therefore our findings suggest that species-specific sensibility to microplastic and its co-pollutant among free-floating macrophytes may influence macrophyte population dynamics and thereby community structure and ecosystem functioning. And microplastics altered other contaminant behaviours and toxicity, and may directly or indirectly influence macrophytes interactions and community structure. The present study is the first experimental study exploring the effects of microplastics alone and with their co-pollutants on interactions between free-floating macrophytes, which can provide basic theoretical guidance for improving the stability of freshwater ecosystems., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is becoming one of the largest, unprecedented health crises, and chest X-ray radiography (CXR) plays a vital role in diagnosing COVID-19. However, extracting and finding useful image features from CXRs demand a heavy workload for radiologists., Objective: The aim of this study was to design a novel multiple-inputs (MI) convolutional neural network (CNN) for the classification of COVID-19 and extraction of critical regions from CXRs. We also investigated the effect of the number of inputs on the performance of our new MI-CNN model., Methods: A total of 6205 CXR images (including 3021 COVID-19 CXRs and 3184 normal CXRs) were used to test our MI-CNN models. CXRs could be evenly segmented into different numbers (2, 4, and 16) of individual regions. Each region could individually serve as one of the MI-CNN inputs. The CNN features of these MI-CNN inputs would then be fused for COVID-19 classification. More importantly, the contributions of each CXR region could be evaluated through assessing the number of images that were accurately classified by their corresponding regions in the testing data sets., Results: In both the whole-image and left- and right-lung region of interest (LR-ROI) data sets, MI-CNNs demonstrated good efficiency for COVID-19 classification. In particular, MI-CNNs with more inputs (2-, 4-, and 16-input MI-CNNs) had better efficiency in recognizing COVID-19 CXRs than the 1-input CNN. Compared to the whole-image data sets, the efficiency of LR-ROI data sets showed approximately 4% lower accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and precision (over 91%). In considering the contributions of each region, one of the possible reasons for this reduced performance was that nonlung regions (eg, region 16) provided false-positive contributions to COVID-19 classification. The MI-CNN with the LR-ROI data set could provide a more accurate evaluation of the contribution of each region and COVID-19 classification. Additionally, the right-lung regions had higher contributions to the classification of COVID-19 CXRs, whereas the left-lung regions had higher contributions to identifying normal CXRs., Conclusions: Overall, MI-CNNs could achieve higher accuracy with an increasing number of inputs (eg, 16-input MI-CNN). This approach could assist radiologists in identifying COVID-19 CXRs and in screening the critical regions related to COVID-19 classifications., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest: None declared., (©Zhongqiang Li, Zheng Li, Luke Yao, Qing Chen, Jian Zhang, Xin Li, Ji-Ming Feng, Yanping Li, Jian Xu. Originally published in JMIR Bioinformatics and Biotechnology (https://bioinform.jmir.org), 04.10.2022.)

The early detection of laryngeal cancer significantly increases the survival rates, permits more conservative larynx sparing treatments, and reduces healthcare costs. A non-invasive optical form of biopsy for laryngeal carcinoma can increase the early detection rate, allow for more accurate monitoring of its recurrence, and improve intraoperative margin control. In this study, we evaluated a Raman spectroscopy system for the rapid intraoperative detection of human laryngeal carcinoma. The spectral analysis methods included principal component analysis (PCA), random forest (RF), and one-dimensional (1D) convolutional neural network (CNN) methods. We measured the Raman spectra from 207 normal and 500 tumor sites collected from 10 human laryngeal cancer surgical specimens. Random Forest analysis yielded an overall accuracy of 90.5%, sensitivity of 88.2%, and specificity of 92.8% on average over 10 trials. The 1D CNN demonstrated the highest performance with an accuracy of 96.1%, sensitivity of 95.2%, and specificity of 96.9% on average over 50 trials. In predicting the first three principal components (PCs) of normal and tumor data, both RF and CNN demonstrated high performances, except for the tumor PC2. This is the first study in which CNN-assisted Raman spectroscopy was used to identify human laryngeal cancer tissue with extracted feature weights. The proposed Raman spectroscopy feature extraction approach has not been previously applied to human cancer diagnosis. Raman spectroscopy, as assisted by machine learning (ML) methods, has the potential to serve as an intraoperative, non-invasive tool for the rapid diagnosis of laryngeal cancer and margin detection., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Significance: X-ray imaging serves as the mainstream imaging in dentistry, but it involves risk of ionizing radiation., Aim: This study presents the feasibility of indocyanine green-assisted near-infrared fluorescence (ICG-NIRF) dental imaging with 785-nm NIR laser in the first (ICG-NIRF-I: 700 to 1000 nm) and second (ICG-NIRF-II: 1000 to 1700 nm) NIR wavelengths., Approach: Sprague Dawley rats with different postnatal days were used as animal models. ICG, as a fluorescence agent, was delivered to dental structures by subcutaneous injection (SC) and oral administration (OA)., Results: For SC method, erupted and unerupted molars could be observed from ICG-NIRF images at a short imaging time (<1  min). ICG-NIRF-II could achieve a better image contrast in unerupted molars at 24 h after ICG injection. The OA could serve as a non-invasive method for ICG delivery; it could also cause the glow-in-dark effect in unerupted molars. For erupted molars, OA can be considered as mouthwash and exhibits outstanding performance for delivery of ICG dye; erupted molar structures could be observed at a short imaging time (<1  min) and low ICG dose (0.05  mg  /  kg)., Conclusions: Overall, ICG-NIRF with mouthwash could perform in-vivo dental imaging in two NIR wavelengths at a short time and low ICG dose.

Background: It is common for children to accidentally ingest chemical drugs with different degrees of toxicity. Meperfluthrin is a highly effective and easy-to-use pyrethroid pesticide with low toxicity. It is widely used in electric mosquito coils. This type of electric mosquito coil is used in daily life, which increases the chance of exposure among children and, consequently, may lead to accidental ingestion. There are only few reports of meperfluthrin poisoning causing lung injury in children. We report a rare clinical case of lung injury wherein a child ingested meperfluthrin orally., Case Presentation: We report the case of a 1-year-old boy who accidentally swallowed an electric mosquito coil containing meperfluthrin and developed cough and fever. The patient's parents observed him swallowing the electric mosquito coil (Qiangshou®). Although he was stopped, the child had already swallowed approximately 10 ml of the liquid. According to the instructions, it contained 9 mg/ml of meperfluthrin, thus, it was assumed that he ingested meperfluthrin at a dose of approximately 90 mg. Computed tomography (CT) of his lungs showed uneven brightness in both lungs with multiple spots, scaly shadows, and mesh. Density of the shadows indicated lung parenchymal and interstitial lung disease. Lung tidal function tests indicated obstructive ventilation dysfunction. After evaluation and treatment, his cough drastically reduced, his fever disappeared, and his lung CT findings showed improvement. Therefore, accidental ingestion of meperfluthrin led to acute lung injury in a paediatric patient. Because of prompt treatment, his lung lesions recovered well., Conclusions: Meperfluthrin causes airway mucosal damage and hypersensitivity. Lung CT and lung tidal function measurements can be used to monitor changes in the condition. Presently, there is a lack of specific detoxification drugs for meperfluthrin poisoning. Thus, the focus of treatment is to protect the airway mucosa and reduce inflammatory reactions., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Pancreatic cancer is the deadliest cancer type with a five-year survival rate of less than 9%. Detection of tumor margins plays an essential role in the success of surgical resection. However, histopathological assessment is time-consuming, expensive, and labor-intensive. We constructed a lab-designed, hand-held Raman spectroscopic system that could enable intraoperative tissue diagnosis using convolutional neural network (CNN) models to efficiently distinguish between cancerous and normal pancreatic tissue. To our best knowledge, this is the first reported effort to diagnose pancreatic cancer by CNN-aided spontaneous Raman scattering with a lab-developed system designed for intraoperative applications. Classification based on the original one-dimensional (1D) Raman, two-dimensional (2D) Raman images, and the first principal component (PC1) from the principal component analysis on the 2D image, could all achieve high performance: the testing sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were over 95%, and the area under the curve approached 0.99. Although CNN models often show great success in classification, it has always been challenging to visualize the CNN features in these models, which has never been achieved in the Raman spectroscopy application in cancer diagnosis. By studying individual Raman regions and by extracting and visualizing CNN features from max-pooling layers, we identified critical Raman peaks that could aid in the classification of cancerous and noncancerous tissues. 2D Raman PC1 yielded more critical peaks for pancreatic cancer identification than that of 1D Raman, as the Raman intensity was amplified by 2D Raman PC1. To our best knowledge, the feature visualization was achieved for the first time in the field of CNN-aided spontaneous Raman spectroscopy for cancer diagnosis. Based on these CNN feature peaks and their frequency at specific wavenumbers, pancreatic cancerous tissue was found to contain more biochemical components related to the protein contents (particularly collagen), whereas normal pancreatic tissue was found to contain more lipids and nucleic acid (particularly deoxyribonucleic acid/ribonucleic acid). Overall, the CNN model in combination with Raman spectroscopy could serve as a useful tool for the extraction of key features that can help differentiate pancreatic cancer from a normal pancreas., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In addition to a rise in global air and water mean temperatures, extreme climate events such as heat waves are increasing in frequency, intensity, and duration in many regions of the globe. Developing a mechanistic understanding of the impacts of heat waves on key ecosystem processes and how they differ from just an increase in mean temperatures is therefore of utmost importance for adaptive management against effects of global change. However, little is known about the impact of extreme events on freshwater ecosystem processes, particularly the decomposition of macrophyte detritus. We performed a mesocosm experiment to evaluate the impact of warming and heat waves on macrophyte detrital decomposition, applied as a fixed increment (+4 °C) above ambient and a fluctuating treatment with similar energy input, ranging from 0 to 6 °C above ambient (i.e., simulating heat waves). We showed that both warming and heat waves significantly accelerate dry mass loss of the detritus and carbon (C) release but found no significant differences between the two heated treatments on the effects on detritus dry mass loss and C release amount. This suggests that moderate warming indirectly enhanced macrophyte detritus dry mass loss and C release mainly by the amount of energy input rather than by the way in which warming was provided (i.e., by a fixed increment or in heat waves). However, we found significantly different amounts of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) released between the two warming treatments, and there was an asymmetric response of N and P release patterns to the two warming treatments, possibly due to species-specific responses of decomposers to short-term temperature fluctuations and litter quality. Our results conclude that future climate scenarios can significantly accelerate organic matter decomposition and C, N, and P release from decaying macrophytes, and more importantly, there are asymmetric alterations in macrophyte-derived detrital N and P release dynamic. Therefore, future climate change scenarios could lead to alterations in N/P ratios in the water column via macrophyte decomposition processes and ultimately affect the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems, especially in the plankton community.

Analysis of stable isotope composition is an important tool in research on plant physiological ecology. However, large-scale patterns of leaf-stable isotopes for aquatic macrophytes have received considerably less attention. In this study, we examined the spatial pattern of stable isotopes of carbon (δ 13 C) and nitrogen (δ 15 N) of macrophytes leaves collected across the arid zone of northwestern China (approximately 2.4 × 10 6  km 2 ) and attempted to illustrate its relationship with environmental factors (i.e., temperature, precipitation, potential evapotranspiration, sediment total carbon and nitrogen). Our results showed that the mean values of the leaf δ 13 C and δ 15 N in the macrophytes sampled from the arid zone were -24.49‰ and 6.82‰, respectively, which were far less depleted than those measured of terrestrial plants. The order of averaged leaf δ 13 C from different life forms was as follows: submerged > floating-leaved > emergent. Additionally, our studies indicated that the values of foliar δ 13 C values of all the aquatic macrophytes were only negatively associated with precipitation, but the foliar δ 15 N values were mainly associated with temperature, precipitation, and potential evapotranspiration. Therefore, we speculated that water-relation factors are the leaf δ 13 C determinant of macrophytes in the arid zone of northwestern China, and the main factors affecting leaf δ 15 N values are the complex combination of water and energy factors., Competing Interests: None declared., (© 2021 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Cracked teeth are the third most common cause of tooth loss, but there is no reliable imaging tool for the diagnosis of cracks. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility of indocyanine green near-infrared fluorescence (ICG-NIRF) dental imaging for the detection of enamel cracks and enamel-dentin cracks in vitro in the first (ICG-NIRF-I, 700-950 nm) and second (ICG-NIRF-II, 950-1700 nm) imaging windows with transmission excitation light, and compared ICG-NIRF with conventional NIR illumination-II (NIRi-II) and X-ray imaging. Dentin cracks were detected by CT scan, while most enamel cracks, undetectable under X-ray imaging, were clearly visible in NIR images. We found that ICG-NIRF-II detected cracks more effectively than NIRi-II, and that light orientation is an important factor for crack detection: an angled exposure obtained better image contrast of cracks than parallel exposure, as it created a shadow under the crack. Crack depth could be evaluated from the crack shadow in ICG-NIRF and NIRi-II images; from this shadow we could determine crack depth and discriminate enamel-dentin cracks from craze lines. Cracks could be observed clearly from ICG-NIRF images with 1-min ICG tooth immersion, although longer ICG immersion produced images with greater contrast. Overall, our data show that ICG-NIRF dental imaging is a useful tool for diagnosing cracked teeth at an early stage., (© 2020 New York Academy of Sciences.)

In this study, we used rat animal model to compare the efficiency of indocyanine green (ICG)-assisted dental near-infrared fluorescence imaging with X-ray imaging, and we optimized the imaging window for both unerupted and erupted molars. The results show that the morphology of the dental structures was observed clearly from ICG-assisted dental images (especially through the endoscope). A better image contrast was easily acquired at the short imaging windows (<10 minutes) for unerupted and erupted molars. For unerupted molars, there is another optimized imaging window (48-96 hours) with a prominent glow-in-the-dark effect: only the molars remain bright. This study also revealed that the laser ablation of dental follicles can disrupt the molar development, and our method is able to efficiently detect laser-treated molars and acquire the precise morphology. Thus, ICG-assisted dental imaging has the potential to be a safer and more efficient imaging modality for the real-time diagnosis of dental diseases., (© 2020 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

Cell-laden printing is the most commonly used approach in 3D bioprinting. One of the major drawbacks of cell-laden printing is that cell viability is highly affected by the extrusion pressure and shear force in the printing process. We present a new cell-deposition method by using the superabsorbent capability of 3D printed scaffolds with four ink formations: 20:10 nanocrystal/alginate (NCA 20/10), 20:10 nanofiber/alginate (NFA 20/10), 20:02 nanocrystal/alginate (NCA 20/02) and 20:02 nanofiber/alginate (NFA 20/02). Limited pores were observed from the surface of inherent NCA and NFA scaffolds, which may limit the numbers of cells to enter into the scaffolds. Therefore, we designed a dual-porous (DP) structure to connect the inherent pores (IPs) to the scaffold surface. Due to these porous structures, NCA and NFA scaffolds exhibit an excellent capability to absorb cell suspension, which may be used for depositing cells to 3D-printed scaffolds, namely self-absorbent (SA) deposition. Compared to the conventional top-loading (TL) method, the SA method had more uniform cell distributions in the entire 3D-printed scaffolds and higher efficiency of cell deposition. For the TL method, DP scaffold exhibited a more uniform cell distribution, which may provide a better microenvironment for the cells in comparison to the IP scaffold. For both cell loading methods, a rapid increase of cell number was observed in the first 4 days of culture in the 3D-printed NCA and NFA structures. NFA 20/02 exhibits the best cell viability compared to the other three inks. In conclusion, the SA method may serve as a new approach for loading cells in cell-free 3D-bioprinting, and DP design could improve the efficiency of the cell deposition.

Indocyanine green (ICG) has been widely used in medical imaging, such as in retinal angiography. Here, we describe a pilot ex vivo study of ICG-assisted near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) dental imaging in the first (700-950 nm for ICG-NIRF-I) and second (1000-1700 nm for ICG-NIRF-II) NIR windows using human extracted teeth; our study is compared with the traditional prevalent X-ray imaging and NIR II illumination (NIRi-II, 1310 nm) without ICG enhancement. The results show that ICG fluorescence has much better imaging contrast in both windows compared with NIRi-II (by quantitatively comparing NIR intensity of the critical neighboring structures, such as enamel and dentin). Cracked teeth, notoriously hard to diagnose by dental X-ray and computed tomography, were clearly profiled in NIRF dental imaging. An insidious occlusal caries, missing in X-ray imaging, became a bright dot that was readily observed in ICG-NIRF-I images. For dental decay, NIRF imaging with ICG enhancement could clearly delineate the decay boundary. NIRF in both windows distinguished interproximal and occlusal superficial caries. Overall, ICG-assisted NIRF dental imaging has unique advantages in identifying cracked teeth and insidious caries. The two NIR imaging windows used in our study might one day serve as noninvasive and nonionizing-radiation methods for the diagnosis of critical dental diseases in situ., (© 2019 New York Academy of Sciences.)

X-ray-based imaging, including computed tomography, plays a crucial role in the diagnosis and surgery of impacted teeth that affects over 25% of the human population. But the greatest disadvantage of this technique is ionizing radiation risk to the patients. Here we describe a completely ionizing-radiation-free in vivo near-infrared (NIR) fluoresence dental imaging with indocyanine green (ICG) agent that has rarely been applied in dental imaging. Our method can acquire dental structure images within a short period (only 10 minutes after injection) without ionizing radiation risk. NIR enables the observation of dental structures that are not distinguishable under visible conditions. At prolonged 72 hours, only molar regions remained highlighted; the contrast between molar regions and surrounding tissues was prominent; this is particularly useful for in vivo dental imaging. Using the quantitative spectral analysis, we found the peak wavelengths of ICG fluorescence shifted along with the injection time: the peak wavelength shifted 8 nm (from 819 nm to 811 nm) in 0~72 hours. The injection methods of tail vein v.s. intradermal injections caused ~3 nm shift. ICG-assisted NIR fluorescence imaging can serve as a useful tool for in vivo real-time diagnosis in dental clinics and surgeries without ionizing radiation risk.

Ecological stoichiometry is a powerful indicator for understanding the adaptation of plants to environment. However, understanding of stoichiometric characteristics of leaf carbon (C%), nitrogen (N%), and phosphorus (P%) for aquatic macrophytes remains limited. In this study, 707 samples from 146 sites were collected to study the variations in leaf C%, N%, and P%, and tried to explore how different environmental conditions affect leaf C, N, and P stoichiometry. Results showed that the mean values of leaf C%, N%, P%, and N:P ratios were 39.95%, 2.12%, 0.14%, and 16.60% of macrophytes across the arid zone of northwestern China, respectively. And the mean values of leaf P% were lower than those from the Tibetan Plateau and eastern China, which maybe due to an adaptation strategy of the plants to the unique conditions in the arid zone in the long-term evolutionary process. The higher N:P ratios suggested that P was established as the limiting factor of the macrophytes communities in the arid zone of northwestern China. There were significant differences in leaf C%, N%, P%, and their ratios among different life forms. Our results also showed strong relationships between leaf N% and N:P ratios and longitude, leaf N%, P%, and N:P ratios and latitude, and leaf N% and P% and altitude, respectively. In addition, the results showed that pH can significantly influence leaf C%. Our results supported the temperature-plant physiology hypothesis owing to a negative relationship between leaf N% and P% of macrophytes and mean annual temperature in the arid zone of northwestern China. The different patterns of leaf stoichiometry between the arid zone of northwestern China and eastern China indicated that there were different physiological and ecological adaptability of macrophytes to environmental gradients in different climatic zones.

Current dental diagnosis, especially tooth abnormalities, relies largely on X-ray-based imaging, a technique that requires specialized skills and suffers from ionizing radiation. Here, we present a pilot study in rats of an efficient, ionizing-radiation-free and easy-to-use alternative for dental imaging. Postnatal rats at different ages were injected with indocyanine green and molars were imaged by a laboratory-designed endoscopic near-infrared (NIR) dental imaging system. The results indicate that the endoscopic NIR dental imaging can be used to observe the morphology of postnatal rat molars, especially at early postnatal stages when morphology of the molar is indistinguishable under visible conditions. A small abnormal cusp was observed and distinguished from the normal cusps by the NIR dental imaging system. Dental structures, such as unerupted molars, can be imaged as soon as 10 min after the injection of indocyanine green; imaging after 24 h shows improved imaging contrast. Overall, the endoscopic NIR fluorescence dental imaging system described here may be useful in dental research; this technique may serve as a safe, real-time imaging tool for dental diagnosis and treatment beyond experimental systems in the future., (© 2018 New York Academy of Sciences.)

Ecological processes are generally scale-dependent and there is little consensus about the relative importance of deterministic versus stochastic processes in driving patterns of biological diversity. We investigated how the relationship between functional dispersion and environmental gradients changes with spatial scale in subtropical freshwater lakes. The functional alpha and beta dispersions of all the tested traits were significantly under-dispersed across spatial scales and along environmental gradients. Results showed more functional similarity within communities in leaf dry mass content and flowering duration but less functional turnover among communities in all the tested traits at regional scales (Yunnan-Guizhou plateau and the middle and low reaches of the Yangtze River). The strengths and directions of environmental effects on the functional alpha and beta dispersions depended on the selected traits, diversity metrics and spatial scales. Surprisingly, broad-scale factors - elevation and water transparency - decreased the functional turnover for most traits along the gradients, whereas fine-scale factors - water depth - produced the opposite patterns along the gradient, depending on the trait selected. Our study highlights the dominant role of deterministic assembly processes in structuring the local functional composition and governing the spatial functional turnover of macrophyte communities across multiple spatial scales.

Extreme climatic events, such as heat waves, are predicted to increase in frequency and intensity during the next hundred years, which may accelerate shifts in hydrological regimes and submerged macrophyte composition in freshwater ecosystems. Since macrophytes are profound components of aquatic systems, predicting their response to extreme climatic events is crucial for implementation of climate change adaptation strategies. We therefore performed an experiment in 24 outdoor enclosures (400 L) separating the impact of a 4 °C increase in mean temperature with the same increase, that is the same total amount of energy input, but resembling a climate scenario with extreme variability, oscillating between 0 °C and 8 °C above present conditions. We show that at the moderate nutrient conditions provided in our study, neither an increase in mean temperature nor heat waves lead to a shift from a plant-dominated to an algal-dominated system. Instead, we show that species-specific responses to climate change among submerged macrophytes may critically influence species composition and thereby ecosystem functioning. Our results also imply that more fluctuating temperatures affect the number of flowers produced per plant leading to less sexual reproduction. Our findings therefore suggest that predicted alterations in climate regimes may influence both plant interactions and reproductive strategies, which have the potential to inflict changes in biodiversity, community structure and ecosystem functioning., (© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Understanding how aleurone layer (AL) affects rice cooking behaviour is important for rice processing. Individual effects of AL on rice cooking behaviour were evaluated and histological characters of AL before and after cooking were investigated. AL slightly affected rice cooking quality (optimum cooking time, water absorption, volume expansion ratio and total solids loss) while remarkably affected rice texture (hardness and adhesiveness) and peak viscosity. Histological investigation showed that channels were formed in AL during cooking. The channels facilitated the penetration of water, which could explain why AL exhibited slight effects on rice cooking quality. In addition, thick cell walls and thermally stable aleurone grains were widely distributed in AL. Leached components accumulated on them and formed a reinforced coated film on rice surface during cooking, which may be a possible mechanism accounting for the remarkable effect of AL on rice texture. Histological characters of AL are closely related with rice cooking behaviour., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Variation in seed weight is common within and among plant species, but few studies have attempted to document the pattern of seed weight and germination attributes for aquatic macrophytes at a large scale. This study examined within-species variation in seed weight and germination attributes and the effects of environmental factors on seed traits of the submerged plant Potamogeton pectinatus in the arid zone of northwest China. Our results showed that the average seed weight was 0.24 g per 100 seeds with a coefficient of variation (CV) of 28.4% among the eight P. pectinatus populations. The total germination fraction of seeds of P. pectinatus was relatively poor, less than 35% in seven P. pectinatus populations, and the lowest germination percentage found was only 2%. There were significant differences in seed weight, time to onset of germination, and total germination fraction among the eight different populations. Hierarchical partitioning analysis showed a strongly positive correlation between seed weight and water temperature and pH. Seed weight and the maternal environmental factors significantly affected both time to initiation of germination and total germination fraction. Our results suggest that (1) seed weight variation in P. pectinatus primarily is the result of temperature variation during fruit development; (2) relatively poor germination fraction suggests that seeds are relatively unimportant in the short-term survival of populations and that it may be another adaptive trait allowing plants to take place in the right place and at the right time, especially in harsh environment; and (3) variation in seed germination traits should be determined by local environmental and intrinsic factors that interact in a complex fashion.

The present study aims to evaluate the antiparasitic activity of active components from Costus speciosus against Ichthyophthirius multifiliis. Bioassay-guided fractionation was employed to identify active compounds from C. speciosus yielding 2 bioactive compounds: Gracillin and Zingibernsis newsaponin. In-vitro assays revealed that Gracillin and Zingibernsis newsaponin could be 100% effective against I. multifiliis at concentrations of 0.8 and 4.5 mg L(-1), with median effective concentration (EC50) values of 0.53 and 3.2 mg L(-1), respectively. All protomonts and encysted tomonts were killed when the concentrations of Gracillin and Zingibernsis newsaponin were 1.0 and 5.0 mg L(-1). In-vivo experiments demonstrated that fish treated with Gracillin and Zingibernsis newsaponin at concentrations of 1.0 and 5.0 mg L(-1) carried significantly fewer parasites than the control (P<0.05). Mortality of fish did not occur in the treatment group (Zingibernsis newsaponin at 5.0 mg L(-1)) during the trial, although 100% of untreated fish died. Acute toxicities (LD50) of Gracillin and Zingibernsis newsaponin for grass carp were 1.64 and 20.7 mg L(-1), respectively. These results provided evidence that the 2 compounds can be selected as lead compounds for the development of new drugs against I. multifiliis.

In order to meet the requirements of the multi-physiological signal measurement of the 3D-TV health assessment, try to find the suitable biological acquisition chips and design the hardware system which can detect different physiological signals in real time. The systems mainly uses ARM11/S3C6410 microcontroller to control the EEG/EOG acquisition chip RHA2116 and the ECG acquisition chip ADS1298, and then the microcontroller transfer the data collected by the chips to the PC software by the USB port which can display and save the experimental data in real time, then use the Matlab software for further processing of the data, finally make a final health assessment. In the meantime, for the different varieties in the different brain regions of watching 3D-TV, developed the special brain electrode placement and the experimental data processing methods, then effectively disposed the multi-signal data in the multilevel.

The plant homeodomain (PHD) finger is identified in many chromatin-binding proteins, and functions as a 'reader' that recognizes specific epigenetic marks on histone tails, bridging transcription factors and their associated complexes to chromatin, and regulating gene expression. PHD finger-containing proteins perform many biological functions and are involved in many human diseases including cancer. PHF14 is predicted to code for a protein with multiple PHD fingers. However, its function is unidentified. The aim of this study is to characterize PHF14 and investigate its biological significance by employing multiple approaches including mouse gene-targeting knockout, and molecular cloning and characterization. Three transcripts of PHF14 in human cell lines were identified by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. Two isoforms of PHF14 (PHF14α and PHF14β) were cloned in this study. It was found that PHF14 was ubiquitously expressed in mouse tissues and human cell lines. PHF14α, the major isoform of PHF14, was localized in the nucleus and also bound to chromatin during cell division. Interestingly, co-immunoprecipitation results suggested that PHF14α bound to histones via its PHD fingers. Strikingly, gene-targeting knockout of PHF14 in mice resulted in a neonatal lethality due to respiratory failure. Pathological analysis revealed severe disorders of tissue and cell structures in multiple organs, particularly in the lungs. These results indicated that PHF14 might be an epigenetic regulator and play an important role in the development of multiple organs in mouse.

Stable isotopic turnover with isotopic change due to growth and metabolic tissue replacement associated with a change in environmental conditions is a critical aspect of the use of stable isotope analyses as time-integrating tracers of resource-consumer interactions. However, stable isotopic turnover in plants remains poorly understood compared with those of animals, and here we used continuous flow elemental analyzer-isotopic ratio mass spectrometry (EA-IRMS) to analyse the turnover of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in a submersed macrophyte (Vallisneria natans) after transplantation to hypereutrophic and mesoeutrophic treatments in a field mesocosm experiment. The direction and magnitude of the isotopic shifts of V. natans were suggested to be determined by the inorganic nutrient availability and its isotopic content in the different treatments. Based on the modelling results of turnover, the contribution of growth to the isotopic turnover was as high as those observed in various aquatic ectotherms. However, the contribution of metabolism was also considerable, especially for nitrogen in the hypereutrophic treatment, which was argued to be a response, co-occurring with growth inhabitation and biochemical disorder of V. natans, to the stress induced by the eutrophication. Our results indicated that isotope turnover in a macrophyte is a feasible technique for estimating its ecophysiological conditions in the natural environment, and that it may facilitate understanding of isotopic data in field studies of food web and habitat restoration under eutrophic conditions., (Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Objective: To evaluate the results of operative treatment of acetabular fractures and to investigate its influence factors., Methods: The clinical data were analyzed retrospectively from 82 patients with acetabular fractures treated between September 2004 and June 2009. Of 82 patients, 65 were male and 17 were female, aged 26-72 years (mean, 38 years). Fractures were caused by traffic accident in 62 cases, by crush in 13 cases, and by falling from height in 7 cases. The time from injury to admission was 30 minutes to 12 days (median, 7.6 hours) in 70 cases, 12 cases were transferred because poor result after 34-67 days of conservative treatment. According to Judet classification, there were 24 cases of posterior wall fracture, 3 cases of posterior column fracture, 1 case of anterior wall fracture, 2 cases of anterior column fracture, 6 cases of transverse fracture, 16 cases of transverse and posterior wall fracture, 4 cases of posterior column and posterior wall fracture, 5 cases of T-type fracture, 3 cases of anterior and posterior hemitransverse fracture, and 18 cases of complete both-column fracture; 24 cases combined with dislocation of the hip. During operation, Kocher-Langenbeck approach was used in 49 cases, anterior ilioinguinal approach in 19 cases, and the combination of anterior and posterior approaches in 14 cases. Reconstructive plate (74 cases) and hollow lag screw (8 cases) internal fixation were used. The function of the hip was evaluated according to the modified Merled'Aubigne-Postel hip score system postoperatively. According to fracture type, age, lower extremity fracture before operation, quality of reduction, timing of surgery, hip dislocation and time of reduction, operative approach, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), and heterotopic ossification (HO), the patients were divided into the groups and the results were compared., Results: Accordance with the Matta X-ray evaluation criteria, anatomic reduction was achieved in 21 cases, good reduction in 37 cases, fair reduction in 16 cases, and poor reduction in 8 cases, and the excellent and good rate was 71%. All the cases were followed up 12-52 months (mean, 34 months). Iatrogenic sciatic nerve injury occurred in 8 cases, infection in 3 cases, HO in 16 cases, DVT in 3 cases, hip posttraumatic arthritis in 12 cases, and avascular necrosis of the femoral head in 9 cases. X-ray examination showed that 80 cases achieved fracture union at 10-24 weeks after operation (mean, 14 weeks) and 2 cases had fracture delayed union at 10 months and 12 months after operation. According to the modified Merled'Aubigne-Postel hip score system, the function of the hip was rated as excellent in 26 cases, good in 32, fair in 20, and poor in 4 at 6 months after operation; the excellent and good rate was 71%. The affecting factors of clinical results of acetabular fractures were fracture type, age, lower extremity fracture before operation, quality of reduction, timing of surgery, hip dislocation and time of reduction (P < 0.05). However the operative approach, DVT, and HO were not affecting factor of the acetabular fractures (P > 0.05)., Conclusion: Operative treatment of acetabular fractures has a satisfying therapeutic effect. Fracture type, age, lower extremity fracture before operation, quality of reduction, timing of surgery, hip dislocation, and time of reduction are risk factors affecting postoperative results.

The submersed macrophyte, Vallisneria natans L., was cultured in laboratory with NH (4) (+) -enriched tap water (1 mg L(-1) NH(4)-N) for 2 months and the stressful effects of high ammonium (NH (4) (+) ) concentrations in the water column on this species was evaluated. The plant growth was severely inhibited by the NH (4) (+) supplement in the water column. The plant carbon and nitrogen metabolisms were disturbed by the NH (4) (+) supplement as indicated by the accumulation of free amino acids and the depletion of soluble carbohydrates in the plant tissues. The results suggested that high NH (4) (+) concentrations in the water column may hamper the restoration of submersed vegetation in eutrophic lakes.