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Infectious gastroenteritis is the major cause for diarrhea in piglets. The protection of spray-dried plasma (SDP) on viral gastroenteritis during the progression of rotavirus (RV) infection remain unclear. In this study, 64 weanling piglets were randomly assigned to control diets (n = 40) and SDP diets (n = 24) for 14 days, and then pigs were challenged with RV on day 15. Pigs were sacrificed on day 14 (normal condition), day 18 (manifestation stage), and day 21 (convalescent stage) of the trial. Prior to RV infection, SDP increased ADG, M1 macrophages and CD4+ T cells in different organs without increasing proinflammatory cytokines, indicating a more robust immunity with less inflammation. During the manifestation of infection, SDP enhanced mucosal immunity by increasing M1 macrophages, M1/M2 ratio and cytokines in mucosa and increasing intraepithelial CD8+ T cells for RV clearance. During the convalescence, SDP promoted M2 macrophage polarization and reduced pro-inflammatory cytokines to facilitate intestinal repair and prevent prolonged inflammation. Collectively, SDP enhanced mucosal immunity to promote viral clearance and maintained immune homeostasis to prevent long-lasting inflammation as a therapeutically approach for infectious gastroenteritis.

[Introduction] The growth of wind power industry is accelerating faster than ever worldwide, at the same time, the waste generation from end-of-life wind turbine blades is expected to peak in recent years. Efficient recycling of end-of-life wind turbine blades has become a key issue affecting the sustainable development of the wind power industry and its low-carbon-footprint target. [Method] Traditionally, majority of the end-of-life blades were either buried or incinerated after being dismantled, causing resources wasting and severe environmental problems. In this context, this paper reviewed the mainstream domestic and international recycling processes of end-of-life wind turbine blades such as mechanical recycling, pyrolysis, chemical recycling and comprehensive recycling, and analyzed their corresponding advantages and disadvantages. [Result] By summarizing the industrial recycling application scenarios, this paper provides suggestions and prospects for the prospective recycling market of the end-of-life wind turbine blades. [Conclusion] Wind power industry plays an important role in realizing the "carbon-peaking and carbon-neutrality" goals through assisting in implementation of the energy-conservation and emission-reduction strategy. However, the wind turbine blade recycling market is currently in the exploratory stage with medium and small-size, there is an urgent need for policies, standards and technology development to help with its large scale industrialization. This paper illustrates current status and development trend of domestic and international recycling technology and application scenarios of end-of-life wind turbine blades, and aims to provide the scientific references for the sustainable and low-carbon development of the wind power industry.

Measurement(s) river • stream • drainage basin • watershed Technology Type(s) computational modeling technique Sample Characteristic - Environment freshwater river Sample Characteristic - Location Earth (Planet)

The key to dealing with extreme problems at watershed or region scales in the context of climate change is the “de-extremalization” of hydrological processes. The foundation lies in how to optimize the allocation of ecological restoration on slopes to mitigate the extreme impacts of climate change on hydrological processes and improve ecological service functions. Previous studies focused on analyzing the direct effects of slope land use, vegetation distribution, or historical pattern of ecological restoration on runoff processes. This study developed a slope ecological restoration evaluation system to evaluate the naturalness, functional types, and functional coordination of slope ecological restoration at different historical stages and quantitatively identified the mitigation effect on climate change in the future, which was applied to the Huangshui River Basin (above Minhe County) in Qinghai Province, China. Based on the land suitability evaluation methods, a set of layout schemes were constructed. The runoff mutation and ecological function of different schemes under climate change were evaluated, and the highly suitable scheme was selected as the optimal scheme. Compared with the current situation, the coupling coordination degree index of the scheme would increase from 0.32 to 0.59. Meanwhile, the runoff and coefficient of variation would decrease by 30% and 60%, respectively, during the wet season under the high-emission scenario RCP8.5. This study closely links the ecological construction of slopes with the response to extreme climates, which provides technical methods and practical support for the optimization of regional ecological patterns and scientific water governance modes.

Water and soil losses from sloping farmlands potentially contribute to water eutrophication and land degradation. However, few studies explored the combined effects of ridge direction and ridge width on surface runoff and soil losses of sloping farmlands. Twenty-seven experimental plots (8 m long and 4 m wide) with nine treatments (three ridge direction: cross ridge, longitudinal ridge, and oblique ridge; and three ridge width: 40, 60, and 80 cm) were adopted under natural rainfall conditions for two years in the Luanhe River Basin of China. Results indicated that ridge direction had significant effects on runoff and sediment yield (p < 0.05). The ridge width had no significant effect on runoff and sediment yield. No significant interaction effect was found between ridge direction and width on runoff and sediment yield of the sloping farmland based on statistical analyses. Compared with cross-ridge (CR) tillage and oblique-ridge (OR) tillage, longitudinal-ridge (LR) tillage significantly decreased runoff by 78.9% and 64.9% and soil losses by 88.2 and 83.5%, respectively (p < 0.05). The effects of ridge directions on runoff and sediment yield were related to rainfall grade. When the rainfall grade reached rainstorm, the runoff yield under CR, LR, and SR had significant differences (p < 0.05). The runoff under LR and OR treatment was 5.16 and 3.3 times, respectively, of that under CR. When the rainfall level was heavy rain or rainstorm, the sediment yield under LR was significantly greater than that under CR. The sediment yield was 13.45 times of that under CR. Cross-ridge tillage with a ridge width of 40 cm is an optimally effective measure of soil and water conservation on sloping farmland in arid and semiarid regions of China.

Climate change, topographical evolution and human activities are the main driving factors of NDVI spatiotemporal evolution. Quantitative identification of the driving mechanism can provide support for water conservation, artificial forest construction and soil erosion control. Taking Huangshui River Basin as an example, accumulated temperature, accumulated precipitation and NDVI of 16-days from 2000 to 2018 were collected and manipulated based on slope trend analysis, correlation analysis and other methods to identify the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of NDVI in this study. The impact mechanisms of climate factors, topography and land use on spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of NDVI were quantitatively analyzed as well. The results show that: (1) the annual average growth rate of NDVI in Huangshui River Basin from 2000 to 2018 is 0.28%/a. NDVI in spring, summer and autumn also showed an increasing trend. The increasing area accounts for 38.04% of the whole basin, which was mainly distributed in the middle and lower reaches and northwest of Huangshui River Basin. (2) NDVI was positively correlated with accumulated temperature, accumulated precipitation and effective accumulated precipitation of 16 days, and the areas with (extreme) significant positive correlation accounted for 77.89%, 86.52% and 86.18% of the whole basin respectively. However, the correlation between NDVI and 16-days accumulated temperature increased first and then decreased from southeast to northwest in Huangshui River Basin. While the correlation between NDVI and accumulated precipitation (or effective accumulated precipitation) gradually increased from southeast to northwest. (3) NDVI is affected not only by altitude and aspect, but also by surface conditions and human factors. The areas with high NDVI are mainly distributed above 2700m above sea level. Compared with other slope aspect, NDVI on the semi-shady slope is higher, the growth rates of NDVI on semi-sunny slope and shady slope are the fastest, and the growth rate on sunny slope is the slowest. The growth of NDVI on shady slope in spring and autumn is the fastest, that on semi-sunny slope in summer is the fastest, and that on sunny slope in autumn, spring and summer is the slowest. (4) The annual average growth rate of NDVI in arable land, woodland, grassland, water area and unused land are 0.36%, 0.27%, 0.28%, 0.24% and 0.17% respectively. The annual average decrease rate of NDVI in urban land use is 0.13%. Large area increase of plantation forest is an important factor for increase of NDVI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of climate change, the extreme precipitation events over most of the mid-latitude land masses and over wet tropical regions will very likely become more intense and more frequent, which may cause increases in the intensity and frequency of extreme drought or flood events. To explore the mechanism of dynamic and functional changes in ecosystems driven by extreme drought and flood events (EDFEs) in the future and the interaction between the two, this study focuses on the mutual feedback relationship between EDFEs and the ecological succession of vegetation. To accomplish this target, we reviewed relevant studies of the impacts of EDFEs on vegetation ecology (including growth status and living states) and that of feedback of ecological succession of vegetation to EDFEs. This study is of great significance for accurately predicting the future dynamic succession of plant communities, and the circulation of materials of future ecosystem with ongoing climate change, which provides fundamental and scientific basis for the establishment of ecological protection and restoration strategies in response to frequent climate extremes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]