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Soil microorganisms play a key role in the provision of plant-bioavailable nutrients, which is crucial for ecosystem functioning and plant productivity. Fairy rings are widespread features in grasslands accompanied by lush dark-green vegetation bands. This enigmatic feature is caused by increased soil bioavailable nitrogen (N) due to the expansion of fairy ring fungi (FRF). However, little is known about how FRF enhance soil bioavailable N concentrations. Here, we conducted a survey of 35 fairy rings in temperate grasslands to reveal the role of FRF in regulating soil microorganisms and N cycling using amplicon and metagenomic sequencing. The presence of FRF accelerated organic N mineralization via promoting extracellular enzyme (β-1,4- N -acetylglucosaminidase) activity, leading to a 455% increase in ammonium-N. This further stimulated nitrification to enhance nitrate-N concentration by favoring ammonia-oxidizing archaea. Concomitantly, the increased nitrate-N did not promote denitrification or affect the potential risk of N loss. Furthermore, the relative abundance of other saprotrophic and symbiotrophic fungi was significantly reduced by FRF but the changes in these fungi did not affect the activity of extracellular enzymes involved in N mineralization. Our results suggest that FRF can act as ecosystem engineer species shaping fairy rings by driving soil N cycling without the involvement of other microbial functional groups of saprotroph and symbiotroph to boost plant productivity. Thus, due to the stronger N mobilizing ability, FRF show great potential to be exploited as beneficial microorganisms in plant production and sustainable agricultural development. [Display omitted] ● Fairy ring fungi act as ecosystem engineers that drive soil bioavailable nitrogen dynamics to boost plant productivity. ● The presence of fairy ring fungi accelerates organic nitrogen mineralization and nitrification to accumulate bioavailable nitrogen. ● Fairy ring fungi temporarily dominate soil fungal communities and substantially affect microbial functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To systematically evaluate the effectiveness of five-element music therapy on anxiety, depression, quality of life (QoL), sleep quality and Karnofsky performance score (KPS) in cancer patients. We searched English databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, Web of Science) and Chinese databases (CNKI, WanFang, CBM and VIP database) from the inception to December 25, 2020. Two investigators independently screened literature, extracted data, and assessed risk of bias according to the eligibility criteria. The RevMan 5.3 software was used to perform the meta-analysis. A total of 22 studies, 2053 people with cancer were included. Meta-analysis showed that five-element music therapy had a significant difference for relieving depression (SMD = −1.11, 95% CI: 1.41 to −0.82, P < 0.00001), QoL (SMD = 1.41, 95% CI:0.58 to 2.23, P = 0.0008), sleep quality (MD = −1.73, 95% CI: 2.34 to −1.12, P < 0.00001), and KPS (MD = 4.75, 95% CI:2.31 to 7.18, P = 0.0001). And five-element music therapy did not show a positive effect on anxiety (SMD = −0.60, 95% CI: 1.47 to 0.27, P = 0.17). Five-element music therapy had a positive effect on depression, QoL, sleep quality, and KPS in cancer patients, while did not show a positive effect on anxiety. Future researchers need to optimize the research program and conduct more high-quality, large sample, multi-center randomized controlled studies. Besides, it would be helpful for future researchers to explain the five-element music therapy being examined and how it is potentially useful in western contexts. • Based on an evidence-based method to explore the efficacy of five-element music. • Providing a new perspective for relieving discomfort of cancer patients. • Five-element music therapy is worth popularizing in clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The boost of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) has promoted the development of face recognition. Recently, the emergence of margin-based loss functions has further significantly improved the performance of face recognition. However, these methods sharply degrade in performance when dealing with large intra-class variations, including age, pose, illumination, resolution, and occlusion. Unlike most methods that target specific variations, our proposed approach, HAMFace, addresses the problems uniformly from the perspective of hard positive examples. To mitigate the intra-class variance, we argue that hard positive examples prefer larger margins, which can push them closer to their corresponding class centers. First, we design a hardness adaptive margin function to adjust the margin according to the hardness of the hard positive examples. Then, to enhance performance for unconstrained face recognition with various intra-class variations, we introduce a novel loss function named Hardness Adaptive Margin (HAM) Softmax Loss. This loss function allocates larger margins to hard positive examples during training based on their level of hardness. The proposed HAMFace is evaluated on nine challenging face recognition benchmarks and exhibits its superiority compared with other state-of-the-arts. • Hard positive example. • Hardness Adaptive margin loss. • SOTA results 9 benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The temperature sensitivity (Q 10 values) of soil respiration (Rs) has been a source of much debate given the potential feedbacks between soil carbon pools and global warming. Many studies have been conducted to investigate monthly variations in Q 10 values. However, few studies have focused on the underlying causes of the variations, and it no clear how seasonal variation in soil physicochemical properties could affect Q 10 . The fairy rings (FRs) caused by basidiomycete fungi can change soil physiochemical properties. Therefore, we collected a series of soils over five months (June–October) from three zones impacted by FRs: outside (OUT), on (ON) and inside (IN) the rings to explore the relationship between soil physicochemical properties and Q 10 values. We observed significantly higher plant biomass, plant nitrogen content and soil available phosphorus (P) in the ON zone than the OUT and IN zones ( p  < 0.05). Soil total carbon, nitrogen and water content decreased significantly from the OUT zone to the IN zone. In contrast, soil pH increased significantly from the OUT zone to the IN zone. The Q 10 values increased significantly as months passed, different zones followed the order IN > OUT > ON ( p  < 0.05), and the response of Rs to the zones and progression through the months was the opposite to that of Q 10 values. Our study suggest that soil available P and water content were two dominant factors influencing temporal patterns in Q 10 , and that soil pH was closely related to Rs, which can also affect Q 10 indirectly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A large sample of papers are reviewed by a citation network analysis. • Subjective analysis of 43 papers is employed to replenish the citation analysis. • Case studies primary focus on macro systems by modeling approaches. • The development trajectory and future research directions are identified. The water-energy nexus has gained great attention to both academe and practitioners in the past decade. In order to help expand the understanding in this field, we conduct a comprehensive literature review on water-energy nexus by using citation-based approach. A directional network is established in terms of citation relationships among 1185 related papers published in journals indexed by the Web of Science database from 2007 to 2019. Specifically, we first draw the citation chronological graph and main path analysis to show a complete picture of literature development trajectory since 2007. It is found that the current key route focuses on the understanding of coupling relations in macroscopic national systems, while the study of microscopic systems such as enterprises, families and individuals is lacked. In addition, considering that the citation-based approach may ignore the newest papers, 43 latest highly relevant papers are further analyzed in terms of study background, data source and modeling methods. To be specific, the main advantages and major limitations of existing approaches are identified. Finally, future research challenges and prospects are identified, including the shifts of research object: from macro systems to micro systems, the challenge of modeling: from analysis to analytics of big data, and the deepening of decision support: from knowing to doing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water and energy resource are inextricably linked. Rapid industrialization has led to severe water and energy shortage as well as environmental issues in China. In industrial sector, industrial production and wastewater treatment are two interdependent subsystems. Accordingly, understanding the internal operation performance of the two subsystems as well as assessing their coordination level are of great importance for sustainable water and energy usage. From the perspective of production efficiency, this paper aims to explore industrial water-energy nexus in China by proposing an interactive meta-frontier network DEA approach. The proposed approach is applied to assess the industrial water and energy utilization efficiency in the processes of industrial production and wastewater treatment from 2011 to 2015 in China. The results show that although eastern and central regions have high industrial production efficiency, most regions have relatively low wastewater treatment efficiency. In addition, the nexus degree of eastern region maintains a relatively high level and shows a stable improvement, while the rest two regions perform relatively worse. Comparing the central and western region, the industrial production technology of central region is better yet the wastewater treatment efficiencies of western region are higher, which results in higher nexus degree of western region. Based on the empirical results, policy implications are given in terms of national level, regional level and provincial level, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The total forage yield of perennial legume and grass intercropping system were higher than monoculture. • Interspecific interactions and P application contributed to transgressive overyielding. • The legume: Grass seeding ratio 3:7 under 80 kg ha−1 P fertilization had the highest intercropping advantage. • Alfalfa and orchardgrass were more competitive than sainfoin and tall fescue in this fully mixed intercropping system. • Adequate P application facilitated the forage yield and competitive ability but excessive P fertilizer suppressed. Although intercropping is a common technique that has been widely applied, the effect of phosphorus (P) fertilization on productivity of a fully-mixed perennial intercropping system composed of four species, including two legumes and two grasses, has rarely been studied. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of interspecific interactions on forage yield and the influence of P application on interspecific competitiveness and yield in a fully-mixed intercropping system of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.), sainfoin (Onobrychis viciifolia Scop.), orchardgrass (Dactylis glomerata L.) and tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.). A three-year (2016–2018) field experiment was conducted in central China with an annual rainfall and temperature of 456 mm and 9.5 ℃, respectively. Five legume and grass seeding ratios (L: G) of 5:5, 4:6, 3:7, 6:4, and 7:3 were included, with four monocultures used as the control. The total forage yield was measured when 20% of the alfalfa flowers had opened (BBCH 62). Competitiveness indices, including the land equivalent ratio (LER), aggressivity (A), relative crowding coefficient (K values), competitive ratio (CR), and actual yield loss (AYL), were assessed. The total forage yield increased under fully-mixed intercropping in 2017–2018 when a transgressive overyielding advantage was attained, which was contributed by the interspecific interactions and P application. Moreover, the maximum yield and highest intercropping advantage appeared in L: G 3:7 and L: G 5:5 under 80 kg ha−1 P application in 2017–2018. Additionally, adequate P (80 kg ha−1) contributed to higher A values, K values, CR, and AYL of alfalfa and orchardgrass than in sainfoin and tall fescue, which suggested greater interspecific benefits and land-use efficiency. The fully-mixed intercropping system of alfalfa, sainfoin, orchardgrass, and tall fescue realized these potential advantages by coordinating interspecific interactions and environmental resources, which were manipulated by P application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]