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In this study biology-eco microplate culture technology was used to study the differences in carbon source utilization of soil microorganisms in land use patterns along the Yellow River in China. At the same time, physical and chemical indices of soil such as soil organic carbon and alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen contents, three soil enzyme activities and two secondary metabolites contents were measured to explore the relationship between soil microbial carbon source utilization and soil characteristics. The results showed that farmland was the best carbon source utilization land use pattern, followed by poplar forest land, Ligustrum lucidum land and grassland. The consumption of carbon sources by the soil microorganisms in the four land use patterns were mainly carbohydrates and amino acids. The farmland showed the highest diversity of microorganisms. Furthermore, redundancy analysis (RDA) analysis showed that the metabolic functions and activities of four land use patterns microbial were mostly affected by the contents of organic carbon, alkali-hydrolyzed nitrogen and sucrase activity. Significant differences were observed among the physicochemical properties and microbial carbon source utilization of the four land use patterns along the Yellow River. Organic carbon, phosphatase and sucrase activities were the main factors affecting microbial diversity. This study provided a theoretical basis for future research on planning land use and helping soil ecological restoration along the Yellow River. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a confinement model and study numerically the structural properties of particles with competing interactions in logarithmic traps (i.e., the confinement potential is a logarithmic function). A rich variety of cluster structures are observed as a function of trap steepness, trap size, and particle density. In addition to the consistent results with previous studies for a harmonic confinement, we observe some new stable structures, including a hybrid cluster structure consisting of clumps surrounded by a circular stripe, parallel stripes, or homogeneous voids surrounded by a ringlike arrangement of clumps, and a gear-like cluster with fringed outer rims evenly arranged along the circumference. Our work reveals that such self-organized structures arise due to the radial density reconfiguration in a finite confined system corresponding to the unconstrained systems, which is controlled by the interplay between the long-range repulsions and the attractions to the minimum of the confinement potential. Such results are likely relevant in understanding the structural properties of confined mermaid systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]