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The impacts of global warming on the grassland carbon cycle are increasingly severe. To explore the spatiotemporal variation in grassland soil organic carbon (SOC) and its response to climate change in Gansu Province, in this study, we designed five future-climate-scenario simulations (2019–2048), based on the baseline (1989–2018), according to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. The CENTURY biogeochemistry model was used to estimate the SOC of Gansu Province. One-way ANOVA and an error analysis were used to verify the model. Meanwhile, a Pearson coefficient diagram was used to analyze the main influencing factors of SOC. The results revealed that there was a good agreement between the observed and predicted SOC. The quarterly and inter-annual SOC trends of the five future-climate-scenario simulations were similar to those of the baseline simulation. The most extensive SOC storage occurred in the central Gannan region, in the simulation B scenario (temperature increase of 2 °C, no change in precipitation, and double the CO2 concentration). Temperature had a significant negative effect on SOC. Precipitation had a weak impact on SOC. The results indicate that SOC was more sensitive to temperature than to precipitation.

Background Genomic imprinting is an epigenetic phenomenon mainly occurs in endosperm of flowering plants. Genome-wide identification of imprinted genes have been completed in several dicot Cruciferous plant and monocot crops. Results Here, we analyzed global patterns of allelic gene expression in developing endosperm of sunflower which belongs to the composite family. Totally, 691 imprinted loci candidates were identified in 12 day-after-pollination sunflower endosperm including 79 maternally expressed genes (MEG) and 596 paternally expressed genes (PEG), 6 maternally expressed noncoding RNAs (MNC) and 10 paternally expressed noncoding RNAs (PNC). And a clear clustering of imprinted genes throughout the rapeseed genome was identified. Generally, imprinting in sunflower is conserved within a species, but intraspecific variation also was detected. Limited loci in sunflower are imprinted in other several different species. The DNA methylation pattern around imprinted genes were investigated in embryo and endosperm tissues. In CG context, the imprinted genes were significantly associated with differential methylated regions exhibiting hypomethylation in endosperm and hypermethylation in embryo, which indicated that the maternal demethylation in CG context potentially induce the genomic imprinting in endosperm. Conclusion Our study would be helpful for understanding of genomic imprinting in plants and provide potential basis for further research in imprinting in sunflower.

Additional file 1: Supplementary material, including a detailed example of the TCRhom calculation, the proof of independence of score statistics and more simulation studies.

Zicheng Hu,1–3 Songhua Fan,1–3 Meiling Liu,1–3 Jiaju Zhong,1–3 Du Cao,1–3 Peng Zheng,1–3 Ying Wang,1–3 Youdong Wei,1–3 Liang Fang,1–3 Peng Xie1–31Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, People’s Republic of China; 2Institute of Neuroscience and the Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Science, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, People’s Republic of China; 3Chongqing Key Laboratory of Neurobiology, Chongqing, People’s Republic of ChinaBackground: Post-stroke depression (PSD) is a frequent and serious complication of stroke. However, the underlying molecular basis of PSD remains largely unknown, and no empirical laboratory tests were available to diagnose this disorder.Materials and methods: A proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR)-based metabonomic approach was employed to profile plasma samples from 32 PSD, 35 stroke patients and 35 healthy comparison subjects (the training set) in order to identify metabolite biomarkers for PSD. Then, 10 PSD, 11 stroke patients and 11 healthy comparison subjects (test set) were used to validate the diagnostic performance of these biomarkers.Results: The multivariate statistical analysis demonstrated that PSD group was significantly distinguishable from non-PSD groups (non-depression stroke patients and healthy comparison group). Five plasma metabolites (phenylalanine, tyrosine, 1-methylhistidine, 3-methylhistidine and LDL CH3-(CH2)n-) were identified responsible for distinguishing PSD from non-PSD subjects. These metabolites were mainly involved in neurotransmitter metabolism and oxidative stress. The biomarker panel composing of these metabolites was capable of distinguishing test samples with a sensitivity of 100.0% and a specificity of 95.5%.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that plasma disturbances of neurotransmitter levels and oxidative stress were implicated in the onset of PSD; these disturbed metabolites biomarkers facilitate to the development of diagnostic tool for PSD.Keywords: post-stroke depression, stroke, metabonomics, diagnosis, NMR

Additional file 12: Fig. S6. The bulk DNA methylation levels in embryo and endosperm.

Additional file 11: Fig. S5. The expression levels of imprinted genes in hybrid endosperm.

Additional file 9: Fig. S3. The density plot of distance (bp) between imprinted transcripts.

Additional file 1. Table S1. Correlation between scores of PHQ-9, GAD-7, PHQ-15, PSQI, and 8 domains of SF-36. Table S2. Correlation between scores of PSQI and its 7 domains. Table S3. The impact of disease on scores of PHQ-9, GAD-7, PSQI, PHQ-15, and SF-36. Fig. S1. Attitude of patients and care-givers towards patient organizations, information needs, and government.

Additional file 1: Table S1. The summary of sequencing data.

Additional file 7: Fig. S1. The expression ratio between the 398A and 138A alleles at all SNP site in in 398A and 138A endosperm.

Additional file 4: Table S4. The summary of imprinting conservation between sunflower imprinted genes and those in other species.

Additional file 6: Table S6. The summary of imprinted genes overlapped with DMRs.

Feifei Sun,1,2,* Suying Lu,1,2,* Zijun Zhen,1,2 Jia Zhu,1,2 Juan Wang,1,2 Junting Huang,1,2 Yu Zhang,1,3 Hui Li,1,4 Ruiqing Cai,1,2 Meiling Liu,1,2 Liuhong Wu,1,2 Xiaofei Sun,1,2 Yizhuo Zhang1,2 1State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Pediatric Oncology, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Pathology, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Imaging, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Xiaofei Sun; Yizhuo Zhang Email sunxf@sysucc.org.cn; zhangyzh@sysucc.org.cnBackground: The prognosis of recurrent or refractory advanced childhood solid tumor patients is very poor and new therapeutic strategies are in urgent need. This study aimed to determine the efficacy and safety of apatinib in pediatric refractory/relapse advanced solid tumor patients.Patients and Methods: The study retrospectively reviewed recurrent or refractory advanced pediatric solid tumor patients who were treated with apatinib, an oral small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) that targets vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2 (VEGFR2), at the Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center (China) from January 2016 to March 2019.Results: Fifty-six patients were included in the safety evaluation and 49 patients were included in the efficacy evaluation. The objective responses rate (ORR) was 26.5% (95% CI 15– 41): 0 CR (complete response) and 13 PR (partial response). Disease control rate (DCR) (CR+PR+SD) was 79.6% (95% CI 65– 90). The median progression-free survival (PFS) was 4.0 months (95% CI 2.6– 5.4). There was no significant difference for ORR or PFS between the A (apatinib monotherapy), A+MT (apatinib combined with oral metronomic therapy) and A+SC (apatinib combined with salvage combination chemotherapy) group (p> 0.05). The most common grade 3 or 4 adverse events were neutropenia (9[16.1%]), thrombocytopenia (8[14.3%]), hand-foot syndrome (3[5.4%]), hypertension (3[5.4%]), anaemia (3[5.4%]) and mucositis (2[3.6%]). Hypertension was the most serious adverse event and one death that occurred was considered as drug-related.Conclusion: Apatinib showed promising clinical activity in heavily treated recurrent or refractory advanced childhood solid tumor patients. However, it is necessary to pay special attention to monitoring blood pressure when using apatinib in children. Prospective randomized controlled clinical trial is warranted.Keywords: apatinib, angiogenesis, cancer, pediatric, vascular endothelial growth factor receptor

Thallium (Tl) has been identified as a priority contaminant because of its severe toxic effects. Exact measurement of Tl is a challenge because it is difficult to avoid altering the element’s chemical speciation during sampling, transport, and storage. In situ measurement may be a good choice. Based on the in situ technique of diffusive gradients in thin films (DGT), new DGT devices equipped with novel laboratory-synthesized manganese oxide (δ-MnO2) binding gels were developed and systematically validated for the measurement of Tl, including Tl(I) and Tl(III) species, in water. Comparison between Chelex binding gel and δ-MnO2 gel on the uptake kinetics of Tl demonstrated that δ-MnO2 binding gels could adsorb Tl rapidly and effectively. Removal of Tl from the δ-MnO2 gels was achieved by use of 1 mol·L–1 oxalic acid, yielding elution efficiencies of 1.0 for Tl(I) and 0.86 for TI(III). Theoretical responses from DGT devices loaded with δ-MnO2 gel (δ-MnO2-DGT) were obtained irrespective of pH (4–9) and ionic strength (0.1–200 mmol·L–1 NaNO3). δ-MnO2-DGT showed good potential for long-term monitoring of Tl due to its high adsorption capacity of 27.1 μg·cm–2 and the stable performance of δ-MnO2 binding gel kept in solution, containing only 10 mmol·L–1 NaNO3, for at least 117 days. Field deployment trials confirmed that δ-MnO2-DGT can accurately measure the time-averaged concentrations of Tl in fluvial watercourses. In summary, the newly developed δ-MnO2-DGT technique shows potential for environmental monitoring and biogeochemical investigation of Tl in waters.

Rationale: This is the first known report to describe a case of advanced non-smoking lung adenocarcinoma with no epidermal growth factor receptor mutation after comprehensive epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitor-based therapy that survived for nearly 12 years. Patient concerns: A 48-year-old Chinese woman that came to our hospital with a left supraclavicular mass. Diagnosis: The final diagnosis was left lung adenocarcinoma with left supraclavicular lymph node metastasis, cT1N3M0 IIIB (International association for the Study of lung cancer 6th version). Interventions: After 4 months of 4 cycles of chemotherapy, gefitinib was administered alone for 5.5 years. Local radiotherapy (40GY/20F) was administered for 1 month, and osimertinib alone was followed for 4.5 years. A combination of pemetrexed with oxaliplatin and hyperthermia at the same time was administered for 4 cycles. Toripalimab and anlotinib were administered for 3 months. Since then, the patient had been taking a double dose of icotinib herself. Outcomes: The patient has survived for nearly 12 years since diagnosis of lung cancer. Lessons: Our case is of significant importance to clinicians involved in the treatment of patients with advanced nonsmoking lung adenocarcinoma and no epidermal growth factor receptor mutations.

Insecticide resistance is inevitable if an insecticide is widely used to control insect pests. Fortunately, the resistance-associated fitness costs often give chances to manage resistances. In most cases, the fitness cost in resistant insects is often evaluated under the laboratory condition for insect development, which limits its practical application in pest control in fields. In a laboratory population R9 with 253-fold resistance to chlorpyrifos after 9-generation selection with chlorpyrifos, the relative fitness was only 0.206 under the laboratory condition (25 °C, humidity 70%–80% and 16 h light/8 h dark photoperiod), when compared to S9, a susceptible counterpart (resistance ratio = 2.25-fold) from the same origin as R9 but without any selection with insecticides. Temperatures varied the resistance-associated fitness costs, with enhanced costs at high temperatures and reduced costs at low temperatures, such as 0.174 at 32 °C and 0.527 at 18 °C. The copulation rate and fecundity were two key factors for the reduced costs at low temperatures. Another finding was that R9 individuals needed much more time to recover from heat-shock than that of S9, but R9 and S9 individuals were similarly sensitive to cold-shock. The low fitness cost at low temperatures would increase the overwintering population, which might further increase risks of the rapid development and widespread distribution of chlorpyrifos resistance in N. lugens. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Polyploidy is a widespread phenomenon throughout eukaryotes. Due to the coexistence of duplicated genomes, polyploids offer unique challenges for estimating gene expression levels, which is essential for understanding the massive and various forms of transcriptomic responses accompanying polyploidy. Although previous studies have explored the bioinformatics of polyploid transcriptomic profiling, the causes and consequences of inaccurate quantification of transcripts from duplicated gene copies have not been addressed. Using transcriptomic data from the cotton genus (Gossypium) as an example, we present an analytical workflow to evaluate a variety of bioinformatic method choices at different stages of RNA-seq analysis, from homoeolog expression quantification to downstream analysis used to infer key phenomena of polyploid expression evolution. In general, EAGLE-RC and GSNAP-PolyCat outperform other quantification pipelines tested, and their derived expression dataset best represents the expected homoeolog expression and co-expression divergence. The performance of co-expression network analysis was less affected by homoeolog quantification than by network construction methods, where weighted networks outperformed binary networks. By examining the extent and consequences of homoeolog read ambiguity, we illuminate the potential artifacts that may affect our understanding of duplicate gene expression, including an overestimation of homoeolog co-regulation and the incorrect inference of subgenome asymmetry in network topology. Taken together, our work points to a set of reasonable practices that we hope are broadly applicable to the evolutionary exploration of polyploids.

Fresh leachate, generated in municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) plants, contains various pollutants with extremely high strength organics, which usually requires expensive and complex treatment processes. This study investigated the feasibility of blending treatment of MSWI leachate with municipal wastewater. Fresh MSWI leachate was pretreated by coagulation-flocculation with FeCl3 2 g/L and CaO 25 g/L, plate-and-frame filter press, followed by ammonia stripping at pH above 12. After that, blending treatment was carried out in a full-scale municipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) for approximately 3 months. Different operational modes consisting of different pretreated leachate and methanol addition levels were tested, and their performances were evaluated. Results showed that throughout the experimental period, monitored parameters in the WWTP effluent, including COD (60 mg/L), BOD5 (20 mg/L), ammonium (8 mg/L), phosphorus (1.5 mg/L) and heavy metals, generally complied with the Chinese sewage discharged standard. Under the experimental conditions, a certain amount of methanol was needed to fulfill TN removal. An estimation of the operation cost revealed that the expenditure of blending treatment was much lower than the total costs of respective treatment of MSWI leachate and municipal wastewater. The outcomes indicated that blending treatment could not only improve the treatability of the MSWI leachate, but also reduce the treatment cost of the two different wastewaters.

There is a growing corpus of research showing that children can lie convincingly and that adults’ accuracy in identifying children’s deceit is not terribly impressive (Vrij, 2002). However, it should be acknowledged that many studies on adults’ ability in detecting children’s lies are of rather limited forensic relevance. For example, children are seldom asked to lie about self-experienced events. Furthermore, the paradigmatic task for the adult liecatcher is a rather static one; to assess a short video clip showing a child being interviewed once about a fictitious event.

A compound control method taking reactive power compensation into account for single-phase photovoltaic(PV) inverter is proposed. According to the power balance principle of single-phase PV, the output third harmonic current of photovoltaic inverter can be corrected and eliminated by deducing the value of DC-side secondary ripple voltage. Based on the steady-state mathematical model of the single-phase inverter, the feed forward fundamental modulation signal of inverter can be calculated, and then the output current closed-loop control by using deadbeat controller is realized. As a result, the feed forward-feedback compound control method can achieve a fast and zero-error tracking of output current. The simulation results show that the compound control can effectively improve the dynamic performance of the single-phase PV inverter and perfect the power quality of the distribution grid.

Based on the data from the mortality per million tons of the coal safety production accident in China during recent ten years, the corresponding grey system model is established. And it uses the statistics software to program, realize the data fitting and forecasting whose results are analyzed by the posterior residual test. The results show that the mortality per million tons of China's coal mining has the yearly decreasing trend. In addition, the grey system model not only has high precision accuracy but also scientific and effective, which can be used to manage the coal safety production accident.

The cockroach, Periplaneta americana, is an obnoxious and notorious pest of the world, with a strong ability to adapt to a variety of complex environments. However, the molecular mechanism of this adaptability is mostly unknown. In this study, the genes and microbiota composition associated with the adaptation mechanism were studied by analyzing the transcriptome and 16S rDNA pyrosequencing of the P. americana midgut, respectively. Midgut transcriptome analysis identified 82,905 unigenes, among which 64 genes putatively involved in digestion (11 genes), detoxification (37 genes) and oxidative stress response (16 genes) were found. Evaluation of gene expression following treatment with cycloxaprid further revealed that the selected genes (CYP6J1, CYP4C1, CYP6K1, Delta GST, alpha-amylase, beta-glucosidase and aminopeptidase) were upregulated at least 2.0-fold at the transcriptional level, and four genes were upregulated more than 10.0-fold. An interesting finding was that three digestive enzymes positively responded to cycloxaprid application. Tissue expression profiles further showed that most of the selected genes were midgut-biased, with the exception of CYP6K1. The midgut microbiota composition was obtained via 16S rDNA pyrosequencing and was found to be mainly dominated by organisms from the Firmicutes phylum, among which Clostridiales, Lactobacillales and Burkholderiales were the main orders which might assist the host in the food digestion or detoxification of noxious compounds. The preponderant species, Clostridium cellulovorans, was previously reported to degrade lignocellulose efficiently in insects. The abundance of genes involved in digestion, detoxification and response to oxidative stress, and the diversity of microbiota in the midgut might provide P. americana high capacity to adapt to complex environments.

microRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNA molecules of 21-24 nt that regulate the expression of other genes by transcriptional inhibition or translational repression. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that miRNAs play important roles in tumor development and progression. We identified 24 miRNAs markedly and aberrantly expressed in human cervical cancer. The most significantly deregulated was miR-143 as determined by miRNA microarray analysis. miR-143 was introduced into HeLa cells and it was found that the overexpression of miR-143 significantly inhibited HeLa cell proliferation and promoted apoptosis; anti-miR-143 rescued the effects. HeLa cells transfected with pre-miR-143, pre‑anti-miR-143 or control miRNA precursor were injected subcutaneously into the flanks of female athymic nude mice, and the overexpression of miR-143 suppressed the formation of tumors. Compared with normal cervical tissues, the levels of Bcl-2 were increased in miR-143-downregulated tissues. Sustained overexpression of miR-143 in HeLa cells resulted in suppression of Bcl-2 expression, and knockdown of miR-143 by anti-miR-143 increased Bcl-2 expression. In addition, overexpression of Bcl-2 partially reversed the inhibition of proliferation and promotion of apoptosis in the HeLa cells caused by miR-143. Furthermore, miR-143 suppressed the activity of a luciferase reporter carrying the 3'-UTR of Bcl-2, which was abolished by mutation of the predicted miR-143-binding site, indicating that Bcl-2 is a miR-143 target gene. Our study revealed a molecular link between miR-143 and Bcl‑2. Direct involvement in the regulation of Bcl-2 may be one of the mechanisms through which miR-143 may play a role in the pathogenesis of cervical cancer.

The research of land use and land cover changes is a core and focal point for the study on the global changes. Land cover changes are also the leading factor of the regional ecological environment changes. This paper assessed the land use and land cover changes in the transboundary area of Yunnan province in China from 1970's to 2004 by applying remote sensing data including MSS in the 1970s, TM in the 1980s and TM in 2004. The maximum likelihood of supervised classification was used to extract LUCC information from remote sensing image. The total precision is 82.5% and Kappa index is 0.7436. The analysis result of remote sensing showed that most of the surface features are forest and naked rock, and the third is waters. High vegetation cover, serious stony desertification phenomenon, low farmland and scattered grassland are the main characteristic of this area. The driven factors in the transboundary area of Yunnan province in China are analyzed. Conclusions can be drawn as follows: (1) Natural factor (2) Human activity factor (3) Scientific and Technological factor (4) Governmental policy factor (5) Market driven factor (6) Increasing population factor.

As one of the most important part of spatial analysis, spatial direction relationships acts as the most valuable rule in the process of automated simplification of spatial points cluster. In this paper spatial point cluster are divided into two parts. One is the boundary points, the other are the focus points. Leaving the boundary points alone, only the focus points are considered. The influence of spatial direction relationships to the automated simplification of focus points is discussed. The method keeping the direction relationships of focus points during the automated simplification is put forward. At the end the further research of direction relationships to the automated simplification of points cluster is proposed.