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Fe3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) have potential effects on the anaerobic digestion of excess sludge. The effects of different concentrations of Fe3O4 NPs (0, 100, 200, 400 and 600 mg/L) on enzymes and microorganisms in anaerobic digestion were studied to explore the mechanism of the effect of Fe3O4 NPs on anaerobic digestion. The results showed that 100, 200 and 400 mg/L Fe3O4 NPs could promote anaerobic digestion, and 200 mg/L Fe3O4 NPs had the most obvious promoting effect. The activities of protease, cellulase, dehydrogenase, acetic kinase and coenzyme F420 in the 200 mg/L Fe3O4 NPs group reached 120 U/mg VS, 71.75 U/g VS, 135 U/mL, 94 mol/L, 1.37 umol/g VSS, respectively, which were 3.8, 1.5, 1.2, 1.2 and 1.6 times of the blank group, respectively. However, when the concentration of Fe3O4 NPs reached 600 mg/L, the activities of cellulase, dehydrogenase and acetic kinase were lower than those of the blank group, and anaerobic digestion was inhibited. The above conclusions can also be confirmed by high-throughput sequencing. The abundance of longilinea and ornatilina in the 200 mg/L Fe3O4 NPs group was 8.8% and 4.1% respectively, and methanthrix abundance was 69%, which was more conducive to decomposition acetic acid into CH4. Highlights To explore the effects of Fe3O4 NPS on enzyme activity and microorganisms. 200mg/L Fe3O4 NPs could significantly promote the activity of enzyme. 200mg/L Fe3O4 NPs could promote the diversity of bacterial and archaeal communities. 600mg/L Fe3O4 NPs could inhibit some enzyme activities and microbial community diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the high cost and complex operation of the traditional chemical method for the determination of the anaerobic digestion (AD) process, this study investigated the feasibility of using electrochemistry analysis to determine the effect of Fe3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) on the AD process. The quantity of electric charge of Fe3O4 NPs modified graphite electrode in sodium acetate electrolyte was higher than that of graphite electrode. The addition of Fe3O4 NPs was beneficial to improve the electrochemical activity of the electrode. On this basis, enzymes and microorganisms were extracted from anaerobic reactors containing different concentrations of Fe3O4 NPs to make electrodes respectively to further investigate the effects of Fe3O4 NPs on enzyme and microbial activities in AD. The electrochemical analysis results of the enzyme electrodes and microbial electrodes showed that the quantity of electric charge produced by the group of 200 mg/L Fe3O4 NPs was the highest. The cumulative biogas production of 200 mg/L Fe3O4 NPs was 809 mL/g VS, and better than other groups. These results showed that 200 mg/L Fe3O4 NPs was the best dosage, and the electrochemical analysis has higher sensitivity in the AD detection. Highlight Electrochemistry was used to investigate the activities of enzymes and microorganisms in anaerobic digestion. The effects of Fe3O4 nanoparticles on different stages of anaerobic digestion were analyzed by electrochemical method. The feasibility of electrochemical analysis was verified from the perspective of microbiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The psychological mechanisms underlying the relationship between schizotypal personality traits and suicidality are not understood. This study investigated the association of schizotypal personality traits with suicidality and explored the mediating role of cognitive appraisal and depression in the relationship between those two variables in a sample of Chinese college students. Participants (N = 2457) completed the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire, the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire, the Zung Self-rating Depression Scale, and three questions related to suicidality. The cognitive reappraisal score was lower in the students with suicidality than the students without suicidality, whereas scores for depression and schizotypal personality traits were higher in the students with suicidality than the students without suicidality. Schizotypal personality traits and depression were risk factors for suicidality. Depression mediated the association between schizotypal personality traits and suicidality. Cognitive reappraisal negatively affected symptoms of depression and had a significant mediating effect on the association between schizotypal personality traits and suicidality. Schizotypal personality traits and depression are risk factors for suicidality. Cognitive reappraisal and depression mediate the association between schizotypal personality traits and suicidality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seventeen trilobite species belonging to 16 genera and 13 families are systematically documented from the Houping Formation (upper Dapingian-lower Darriwilian, Middle Ordovician) at the Datangkou and Dacao sections, Chengkou, northern Chongqing. Of these, a new species, Mioptychopyge chengkouensis sp. nov., is established and described. New morphological information is provided for previously known species on the basis of new specimens. Two trilobite associations based on faunal composition and dominant forms are distinguished from the Houping Formation, in ascending order, the Agerina Association (from the lower and middle members) and the Nileus-Illaenus Association (from the upper member). The Agerina Association lived in an inner shelf margin environment with carbonate substrate above storm wave base (<70 m deep), whereas the Nileus-Illaenus Association developed in a shallow outer shelf environment below storm wave base (>70 m deep), indicating a rise of relative sea level corresponding to the early Darriwilian transgression. The cluster and nonmetric multidimensional scaling analyses of the trilobites in the formation show that the fauna had a strong endemicity to South China and a close biogeographic connection with east Peri-Gondwana, especially Tarim, Annamia and central Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The amelioration of saline-sodic soil and the rational utilization of irrigation water resources are important environmental problems worldwide, particularly in the arid and semi-arid regions. In order to study the water-salt dynamics and reclamation effects of CaCl2-amended brackish ice on saline-sodic soils, we conducted a laboratory experiment to study the salinity fractionation of brackish ice and the amelioration effects in different saline-sodic soils (ESP 20, 40, and 70) under four salinity levels (1, 1.6, 2.2, and 2.8 g/L) of brackish ice. Based on the analysis of soil pH, electrical conductivity (EC), sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), alkalinity, infiltration depth, and ionome, the results showed that the pH, SAR, and alkalinity of ESP 20 soil with a higher salinity (2.2 g/L, Na/Ca ≤ 1.14) of brackish ice could be improved. However, for high ESP soils (ESP 40 and 70), there was no significant difference among brackish ice treatments of 1, 1.6, 2.2, and 2.8 g/L, the 0–12 cm soil layer could be desalted, but more salts accumulated at the lower layer of the soil profile. We further determined an optimal brackish ice concentration to improve different ESP soils: 2.2 g/L brackish ice for ESP 20 soil, 1.6 g/L for ESP 40 soil, and 1 g/L for ESP 70 soil. CaCl2-amended brackish ice can be used to ameliorate saline-sodic soil, this study provides invaluable supporting information on saline-sodic soil reclamation by optimizing brackish ice salinity and sodicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the photocatalytic performance of m-BiVO4 materials, iridium doping in m-BiVO4(0 0 1) crystal was studied using CAmbridge Serial Total Energy Package calculation module based on density functional theory. By calculating the formation energy of Ir doped in m-BiVO4 crystal at different doping positions and different content, model of Bi atom substituted by 6.25% Ir with the Ef of 0.887 eV was selected as a research object. The splitting and transferring of Ir 5d orbit from high localised state to two peaks of state density distributed on sides of conduction band (CB) and valence band (VB) are benefitted for electron transfer and charges redistribution. The band gap value decreased from 2.218 to 1.203 eV after doping Ir element and three hybrid energy bands arised between the VB and CB. The energy range of VB and CB is −5.68∼0.40 eV and 1.90∼7.42 eV, which is mainly the contribution of interaction between O 2p orbit and V 3d orbit, V 3d orbit and Bi 6p orbit, respectively. The iridium doping introduced the impurity levels near the Fermi energy level (EF), narrowed the band gap and reduced the transition energy barrier of photo-generated electrons and made the electrons transition process more easily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, suicidal behavior among doctors has gained increasing research attention. The main effects of job stress and social support on suicidal ideation (SI) have been publicly documented, but their interactive effects on SI have not been well studied, particularly among clinicians of county hospitals in China. A cross-sectional study with a sample of 352 clinicians of county hospitals in Guangxi was thus conducted, measuring their SI, job stress, and social support. Results indicated that 56 (15.9%) individuals reported SI during the previous week, with males accounting for 6.8% and females 9.1%. Job stress was positively correlated with SI, whereas family, friend, and colleague supports were negatively correlated with SI. Multiple hierarchical regression analysis showed that colleague support was a significant moderator on the relationship between job stress and SI among clinicians, but family and friend supports were not. In conclusion, SI among clinicians of county hospitals is common and should become a target of prevention. Perceived support from colleagues is more important than that from family and friends in alleviating the influence of job stress on SI. The results also suggested that social support programs encouraging the participation of superiors and colleagues may be greatly effective in the prevention of clinicians' stress and SI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soy sauce residue needs drying to avoid fermentation and oxidation during storage and transportation, and its reutilization as a useful resource is expected. Superheated steam drying was applied to investigate the effects of drying conditions on the drying characteristics and the content changes of salt and protein. The results showed that the inversion temperature was about 130°C, beyond which superheated steam drying was faster than hot air-drying. The drying time approaching equilibrium moisture content was reduced with elevated drying temperature as well as higher steam mass flow rate in the present experimental conditions. The effect of bed thickness on drying time was not obvious when drying temperature increased. Interestingly, the salt content of soy sauce residue could be decreased by 34.8% due to condensate water in the initial drying period (wetting), while protein content had no significant loss (p < 0.05) after superheated steam drying. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Curcumin has been reported as a radiosensitizer in prostate cancer. But the underlying mechanism is not well understood. In this study, we firstly assessed how curcumin affects the expression of miR-143/miR-145 cluster. Then, we investigated whether miR-143 is involved in regulation of radiosensitivity and its association with autophagy in prostate cancer cells. Our data showed that PC3, DU145 and LNCaP cells treated with curcumin had significantly restored miR-143 and miR-145 expression. Curcumin showed similar effect as 5-AZA-dC on reducing methylation of CpG dinucleotides in miR-143 promoter. In addition, curcumin treatment reduced the expression of DNMT1 and DNMT3B, which contribute to promoter hypermethylation of the miR-143/miR-145 cluster. Therefore, we infer that curcumin can restore miR-143 and miR-145 expression via hypomethylation. MiR-143 overexpression and curcumin pretreatment enhanced radiation induced cancer cell growth inhibition and apoptosis. MiR-143 and curcumin remarkably reduced radiation-induced autophagy in PC3 and DU145 cells. MiR-143 overexpression alone also reduced the basal level of autophagy in DU145 cells. Mechanistically, miR-143 can suppress autophagy in prostate cancer cells at least via downregulating ATG2B. Based on these findings, we infer that curcumin sensitizes prostate cancer cells to radiation partly via epigenetic activation of miR-143 and miR-143 mediated autophagy inhibition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite continuous improvements in microwave sensors and retrieval algorithms, our understanding of precipitation uncertainty is quite limited, due primarily to inconsistent findings in studies that compare satellite estimates toin situobservations over different parts of the world. This study seeks to characterize the temporal and spatial properties of uncertainty in the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Microwave Imager surface rainfall product over tropical ocean basins. Two uncertainty analysis frameworks are introduced to qualitatively evaluate the properties of uncertainty under a hierarchy of spatiotemporal data resolutions. The first framework (i.e. ‘climate method’) demonstrates that, apart from random errors and regionally dependent biases, a large component of the overall precipitation uncertainty is manifested in cyclical patterns that are closely related to large-scale atmospheric modes of variability. By estimating the magnitudes of major uncertainty sources independently, the climate method is able to explain 45–88% of the monthly uncertainty variability. The percentage is largely resolution dependent (with the lowest percentage explained associated with a 1° × 1° spatial/1 month temporal resolution, and highest associated with a 3° × 3° spatial/3 month temporal resolution). The second framework (i.e. ‘weather method’) explains regional mean precipitation uncertainty as a summation of uncertainties associated with individual precipitation systems. By further assuming that self-similar recurring precipitation systems yield qualitatively comparable precipitation uncertainties, the weather method can consistently resolve about 50% of the daily uncertainty variability, with only limited dependence on the regions of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Due to advances in satellite and sensor technology, the number and size of Remote Sensing (RS) images continue to grow at a rapid pace. The continuous stream of sensor data from satellites poses major challenges for the retrieval of relevant information from those satellite datastreams. The Bag-of-Words (BoW) framework is a leading image search approach and has been successfully applied in a broad range of computer vision problems and hence has received much attention from the RS community. However, the recognition performance of a typical BoW framework becomes very poor when the framework is applied to application scenarios where the appearance and texture of images are very similar. In this paper, we propose a simple method to improve recognition performance of a typical BoW framework by representing images with local features extracted from base images. In addition, we propose a similarity measure for RS images by counting the number of same words assigned to images. We compare the performance of these methods with a typical BoW framework. Our experiments show that the proposed method has better recognition performance than that of the BoW and requires less storage space for saving local invariant features. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents various limitations of the current remote sensing data distribution models and proposes a new concept called the location-based instant satellite image service for a new generation of remote sensing image distribution system. The essential feature of the service is that customers can subscribe to data based on the location of interest and satellite image data received by antenna will be distributed to customer's terminal devices instantly after imaging over the subscribed area. The workflow, architecture, and key technologies of the new generation data distribution system are described. The system is composed of four parts: data comprehensive processing component, data management component, product distribution component, and data display component. Based on this, a prototype system is developed, which demonstrates the promising service model with great potential for increased usage in many applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of satellite remote sensing technology and an ever-increasing number of Earth observation satellites being launched, the global volume of remotely sensed imagery has been growing exponentially. Processing the variety of remotely sensed data has increasingly been complex and difficult. It is also hard to efficiently and intelligently retrieve what users need from a massive database of images. This paper introduces an improved support vector machine (SVM) model, which optimizes the model parameters and selects the feature subset based on the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method and genetic algorithm (GA) for remote sensing image retrieval. The results from an image retrieval experiment show that our method outperforms traditional methods such as GRID, PSO, and GA in terms of consistency and stability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The China Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station was established in 1986. It currently has three receiving stations in the north, west, and south of China, with the capacity to receive data from 15 international and domestic Earth observation satellites covering the entire Chinese territory and 70% of Asia. Meanwhile, a systematic, integrated, and standardized spatial information service system has been built. A data-sharing project for medium-resolution Earth observation satellites has been conducted and plays an important role in land, ocean, and atmospheric resource investigation and environmental monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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A method for the quantitative analysis of lead ores by wavelength-dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (WD-XRF) using sepharose was proposed. The sample was decomposed with aqua regia and then the solution was mixed with sepharose. The mixture was heated to boiling and became a quasi-solid gel at ambient temperature. The quasi-solid gel was detected by WD-XRF. This method was adapted in detecting high content ores, because it avoided the risk of using platinum crucible. In addition, cobalt was used as an internal standard to reduce the matrix effects caused by the loss of water in dissolving samples. Analytical characteristics of the methods used were compared, and their reliability tested against several certified geological reference materials. The results showed high precision and accuracy. This method has been applied to the determination of lead in lead concentrates successfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chlorinated alicyclic insecticides are believed to antagonize the action of the neuro transmitter -aminobutyric acid (GABA) at its receptor in vertebrates. Binding of the specific GABA A receptor ligand [35S]-t-butylbicyclophosphorothionate (TBPS) to channel catfish brain P2 membranes suggested a single population of receptors with a Kd (56.6 +/- 2.6 nM) and Bmax (2435 +/- 276 fmol/mg protein) that are similar to published values for other fish species. The competition of several chlorinated compounds for TBPS binding was investigated. The most potent inhibitors of TBPS binding were 12-ketoendrin, photoheptachlor epoxide, photoheptachlor, telodrin, and endrin, respectively, with IC50s of 20-90 nM. Photooxychlordane, photo -chlordane, and oxychlordane were intermediate in potency (122-219 nM), as were isodrin, dihydroisodrin, heptachlor epoxide, and -chlordane, which were similar in potency (311-397 nM). Dieldrin, lindane, and dihydroaldrin were much less potent (592-1103 nM). Heptachlor, aldrin, and -chlordane were weak inhibitors of TBPS binding (2073-2738 nM). Chlordene and chlordecone had the lowest potency of all compounds studied (10,201-21,178 nM) with the exception of mirex, which did not inhibit binding at a concentration of 50 muM. There is a good correlation between binding potency and the available toxicity data for several of these compounds in channel catfish. There is also a good correlation between the inhibitory potency in channel catfish by these types of compounds with that in rats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]