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Widespread implementation of on-site water reuse is hindered by the limited availability of monitoring approaches that ensure microbial quality during operation. In this study, we developed a methodology for monitoring microbial water quality in on-site water reuse systems using inexpensive and commercially available online sensors. An extensive dataset containing sensor and microbial water quality data for six of the most critical types of disruptions in membrane bioreactors with chlorination was collected. We then tested the ability of three typological machine learning algorithms – logistic regression, support-vector machine, and random forest – to predict the microbial water quality as “safe” or “unsafe” for reuse. The main criteria for model optimization was to ensure a low false positive rate (FPR) – the percentage of safe predictions when the actual condition is unsafe – which is essential to protect users health. This resulted in enforcing a fixed FPR ≤ 2%. Maximizing the true positive rate (TPR) – the percentage of safe predictions when the actual condition is safe – was given second priority. Our results show that logistic-regression-based models using only two out of the six sensors (free chlorine and oxidation–reduction potential) achieved the highest TPR. Including sensor slopes as engineered features allowed to reach similar TPRs using only one sensor instead of two. Analysis of the occurrence of false predictions showed that these were mostly early alarms, a characteristic that could be regarded as an asset in alarm management. In conclusion, the simplest algorithm in combination with only one or two sensors performed best at predicting the microbial water quality. This result provides useful insights for water quality modeling or for applications where small datasets are a common challenge and a general advantage might be gained by using simpler models that reduce the risk of overfitting, allow better interpretability, and require less computational power., Water Research, 240, ISSN:0043-1354, ISSN:1879-2448

Background: The clinical outcomes of prostate cancer (PC) may involve changes in immune profiles. Whether long-term prognosis of PC is related to circulating lymphocytes is still uncertain. Therefore, we investigated the long-term prognostic value of different lymphocyte populations in PC. Materials: Patients with a pathological diagnosis of PC, at the Gleason Grades of 5 to 10 were included in the prospective cohort study. Lymphocyte count was evaluated in peripheral blood by flow cytometry. The prognostic value of different lymphocytes was analyzed in the whole cohort and the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression models were used for survival curves and multivariate analysis, respectively. Results: Between January 2001 and June 2021, 94 evaluable patients with prostate cancer were prospectively enrolled. The median follow-up duration of the study was 98 months. The levels of the CD4(+)/CD8(+) ratio, CD19(+), and CD19(+)CD5(−) B lymphocytes in non-survivors were lower than those in survivors. Grouping by each cutoff point of the lymphocytes respectively, the lower level of total CD3(+) T cells, CD3(+)CD4(+) T cells, the CD4(+)/CD8(+) ratio, total CD19(+) B cells, CD19(+)CD5(+) B cells, CD19(+)CD5(-) B cells showed poor survival. Multivariate Cox regression analysis confirmed the worse prognosis associated with higher PSA (HR=2.493, 95%CI: 1.356-4.584, P=0.003), lower CD3(+)CD4(+) T lymphocytes (HR=0.379, 95%CI: 0.170-0.843, P=0.017), lower total CD19(+) B cell (HR=0.398, 95%CI:0.187-0.845, P=0.016) and higher CD3(-)CD16(+)CD56(+) NK cells(HR=2.355, 95%CI: 1.175-4.723, P=0.016). Conclusion: Our results showed that low level of CD4(+) T lymphocytes, decreased CD19(+) B cell and high level of NK cells were correlated with poor survival, which indicates that B lymphocytes, CD4(+) T lymphocytes and NK cells might involve in prostate cancer and associated with the long-term prognosis of this elderly patients.

R-spondin1 (RSPO1) is a potential female-determining gene in human (Homo sapiens) and mouse (Mus musculus). Its differential expression in these mammals is correlated with signaling for sex determination. As a way of studying sex determination in fish we cloned and analyzed a RSPO1 gene in zebrafish (Danio rerio). Using real-time PCR, we observed that RSPO1 is expressed more strongly in ovaries than in testes, suggesting that RSPO1 may have a role in gonad differentiation. High RSPO1 expression was detected in some non-gonadal organs like muscle and kidneys. In situ hybridization results demonstrate that RSPO1 is expressed in premature germ cells, in oogonia and primary oocytes in ovaries and in spermatogonia and spermatocytes in testes. It is also expressed in gonad somatic cells during gonadal development: in granulosa cells and theca cells of early and late cortical-alveolar stage follicles in ovaries, and in Leydig cells in testes. This differential expression may indicate that RSPO1 has a role(s) in zebrafish gonad development and differentiation. By fusing zebrafish RSPO1 with a green fluorescent protein gene, we found that RSPO1 is located in the cytosol and Golgi apparatus but not the nucleus of fish epithelioma papulosum cyprinid (EPC) cells. These preliminary findings suggest some aspects of RSPO1 like differential expression linked to sex determination may be conserved in fish while other aspects like subcellular localization differ from the mammalian RSPO1.

To investigate the characters of repetitive DNA sequence in the sex chromosomes of the spiny eel (Mastacembelus aculeatus), the X chromosomal library was screened and a family of repetitive sequence, consisting of Ma 1-Ma 6, was isolated. The fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) result confirmed that Ma 1 - Ma 5 dispersed over sex chromosomes and all autosomes, whereas, Ma 6 is sex chromosome-specific and distributed only on the C-band positive regions of X chromosome, and Ma 6 maybe the main components of the heterochromatic regions of X chromosome. This study provides additional information about the evolution of sex chromosomes in lower vertebrates such as fish.

IN our previous studies, we have used in situ nick translation techniques for analysis of DNaseⅠ sensitivity and restriction enzymes in situ cleavage on pachytene bivalents of rice-field eels ( Monopterus albus Zuiew). A characteristic construction of bivalents——"the lampbrush-likechromosome", which has not been reported yet, was detected in some pachytene bivalents...

Human sex chromosome-specific probes were hybridized to metaphase spreads of three fish species, Monopterus albus Zuiew, Danio rerio and Mastacembelus aculeatus Basilewsky, to reveal evolutionary conservation of sex chromosomal segments between distantly related species of vertebrates. The human X chromosomal paint disclosed 4, 8, and 6 conserved syntenic segments in the karyotypes of the three fish species respectively, which were scattered in several pairs of homologous chromosomes. But no conserved segment was identified in our experiments when the human Y chromosomal probes were used. The evolution of the X chromosome of vertebrates is discussed.

Well spread pachytene bivalents with high-resolution multiple bands of zebrafish were obtained after the testes were treated with alkaline hypotonic solution and high chloroform fixative solution. This might be the pattern with the largest number of multiple bands obtained from fish chromosomes so far published. Both the number and character of the bands in each bivalent were stable. According to the principles of ISCN (1978) and ISCN (1981), an idiogram of 599 bands was set up, and the detailed description of the landmark system and the band positions were given.

The chromosomes 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10 and 12 of rice field eel (Monopterus albus Zuiew) have been microdissected successfully from meiosis I diakinesis spreads by using glass microneedle under an inverted microscope. And the DOP-PCR products of the single chromosome dotted on the nylon membrane as “specific chromosomal DNA pool”, have been hybridized with 6 probes to map these genes. The mapping results show that Zfa has been mapped to chromosome 1, rDNA to chromosomes 3 and 7, both Gh and Pdegy to chromosome 10, Hsl to chromosome 5 and Hox genes have been detected on chromosomes 1, 3, 6 and 10 meantime. It has initiatively been suggested that chromosome 10 of rice field eel might possess the commom conserved synteny to that on chromosome 17 of human, chromosome 11 of mouse, chromosome 12 of pig and chromosome 19 of bovine. And so chromosome 3 of rice field eel might also contain the commom conserved synteny to that on chromosome 2 of zebrafish. Our study is an attempt to establish a new and feasible method to advance the study of gene mapping and chromosome evolution in fish, and also to provide a new idea to distinguish each chromosome on the base of molecular markers for fish.