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The activator protein-1 (AP-1) plays an important role in inducing the immune effector production in response to cellular stress and bacterial infection. In the present study, an AP-1 was identified from Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas (designed as CgAP-1) and its function was investigated in response against lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation. CgAP-1 was consisted of 290 amino acids including a Jun domain and a basic region leucine zipper (bZIP) domain. CgAP-1 shared 98.6% similarities with ChAP-1 from oyster C. hongkongensis, and assigned into the branch of invertebrates in the phylogenetic tree. The mRNA transcripts of CgAP-1 gene were detected in all tested tissues with highest expression level in hemocytes, especially in granulocytes. The mRNA expression level of CgAP-1 gene in hemocytes was significantly up-regulated (8.53-fold of that in PBS group, p

Several ecological restoration techniques have been used to enhance the levels of available organic matter in mine tailings. However, the effect of organic carbon on nitrogen fixation remains poorly understood. In this study, nitrogen fixation in two mine tailings treated with glucose was analyzed using 15N isotope labeling, pyrosequencing and DNA-based stable isotope probing (SIP) to identify nitrogen fixers and their activity under organic carbon addition (0.8 mg glucose-C/g soils). Following glucose addition, the total nitrogen content increased significantly (1.6–5.4% of initial N content), and the 15N content increased from 0.89 ± 0.20 mg·kg−1 to 37.08 ± 3.34 mg·kg−1 during a 28-day incubation period. In addition, glucose-stimulated nitrogen fixation in dark conditions was 8.53-fold (Shuimuchong) and 1.22-fold (Yangshanchong) higher than that in light conditions. At the same time, the addition of glucose led to distinctly different phylotypes of the bacterial communities and an increase in the abundance of the nifH gene in the two mine tailings. 13C-glucose SIP showed that the highest copy number of the 16S rRNA and nifH genes in the 13C-glucose-labeled treatment peaked in the heavy fraction, with a buoyant density of 1.737 g·mL−1. However, the pyrosequencing results revealed that the vast majority of the nifH genes were unique and belonged to yet uncultured bacteria, while the potentially known groups were associated with Azotobacter, acidophilic Leptospirillum and Pseudanabaena, accounting for 13.83% of all the total nifH genes. These results indicate that the addition of organic carbon may increase the nitrogen content by stimulating nitrogen fixers, highlighting the vital roles of organic carbon in increasing nitrogen accumulation during the restoration of mine tailings.

P38 mitogen-activated protein kinases are serine/threonine protein kinases reportedly involved in the innate immunity of vertebrates and invertebrates. In the present study, a P38 homolog (CgP38) was characterized from the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas. The full-length cDNA of CgP38 was of 1515 bp containing a 1101 bp open reading frame. A serine/threonine protein kinase (S_TKc) domain with a conserved Thr–Gly–Tyr motif and an ATRW substrate-binding site was found in the deduced amino acid sequence of CgP38. CgP38 shared a close evolutionary relationship with ChP38 from the Hong Kong oyster Crassostrea hongkongensis. The transcript levels of CgP38 in hemocytes increased significantly from 12 h to 48 h after lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation and from 12 h to 24 h after Vibrio splendidus stimulation. The phosphorylation level of CgP38 in oyster hemocytes increased significantly at 2 h after LPS stimulation. CgP38 positively regulated the expression of interleukins, such as CgIL17-1, CgIL17-2, CgIL17-3, CgIL17-4 and CgIL17-6, and tumor necrosis factor CgTNF after LPS or V. splendidus stimulation. These results suggested that CgP38 participated in oyster immune response by regulating the expressions of inflammatory cytokines.

This study is the first to show the response of bacterial communities with primary carbon and nitrogen fixers to elevated CO2 (eCO2) in light and dark conditions based on 6 months of culture growth. Carbon sequestration and nitrogen fixation were analyzed by 13C and 15N isotope labeling using 13C-labeled CO2 and 15N-labeled N2, followed by pyrosequencing and DNA-based stable isotope probing (SIP) to identify carbon fixers and nitrogen fixers. The results indicated that eCO2 decreased the Chao 1 richness, and the eCO2-light treatment exhibited the highest Shannon diversity. In addition, eCO2 (in either light or dark conditions) greatly increased the relative abundances of bacteria belonging to the classes Betaproteobacteria and Alphaproteobacteria. The 13C atom % in the mine tailings increased from 1.108 to 1.84 ± 0.11 under light conditions and 1.52 ± 0.17 under dark conditions after 6 months of culture growth. Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RubisCO) form I-coding gene (cbbL) copy numbers were 164.30-fold and 40.36-fold higher than RubisCO form II-coding gene (cbbM) copy numbers in the heavy fractions with a buoyant density of 1.7388 g·mL−1 relative to the buoyant density gradients of DNA fractions obtained under eCO2-light and eCO2-dark treatment, respectively. The Proteobacteria-like cbbL genes were dominant in the carbon fixers. In addition, the 15N atom % in the mine tailings increased from 0.366 to 0.454 ± 0.021 in light conditions and 0.437 ± 0.018 in dark conditions. Furthermore, uncultured nitrogen-fixing bacteria were the dominant nitrogen fixers in light conditions, and bacteria harboring the Bradyrhizobium-like nifH and Leptospirillum-like nifH genes were the dominant nitrogen fixers in dark conditions. These first data for a mine tailing ecosystem are inconsistent with those obtained for a range of other ecosystems, in which the effects of CO2 were limited to several nonphotoautotrophic communities and different nitrogen fixers.

In compressive sensing framework, the results of image reconstruction are sometimes not accurate enough due to the downsampled measurements, especially when the sampling rate is relatively small. This paper proposes a novel edge guided compressive sensing (EGCS) algorithm for natural image reconstruction based on two-stage l 0 minimization, aiming to improve the reconstruction performance. Firstly, wavelet transform is utilized to provide sparsity and multiple sampling scheme is employed to acquire the down-sampled measurements. Then, in the first stage, we design an edge-preserving smoothing method by l 0 gradient minimization to extract the important edge prior accurately, which can not only contribute a lot to improve the reconstruction accuracy of image structures but also reduce the computational complexity remarkably. Also, the use of multiple sampling scheme is beneficial to enhancing the guidance accuracy of multiple edge prior. In the second stage, under the guidance of multiple edge prior, the intelligent searching strategies are designed by taking advantages of intelligent optimization algorithms in solving combinatorial optimization problems and utilizing the superior performance of greedy algorithm on reconstruction speed, which is conductive to solve the joint sparse reconstruction based on l 0 minimization essentially. The better reconstruction performance can be achieved based on the fact that it is more likely to find the global optimal solution accurately by the designed intelligent searching strategies, especially when the sampling rate is relatively small. Experimental results on natural image reconstruction demonstrate that our proposed method EGCS is superior to the state-of-the-art reconstruction algorithms, and can well preserve the important image structures at the same time.

We propose a novel low rank and spatial spectral total variation based HSI mixed denoising model.The reason of undesirable jagged distortion caused by the band by band TV regularization is analyzed.The model can jointly utilize global low rank and local spatial spectral smooth properties of HSI.The iterations based on the ADMM are carried out to solve the optimization problem effectively.The proposed model can effectively suppress the jagged distortion while removing the noise. Due to the environmental and instrumental factors, the hyperspectral image (HSI) is corrupted by various noise, which inevitably affects the subsequent HSI-based applications. Several band by band Total Variation(TV)-regularized low rank based models have been proposed for HSI mixed denoising. However, these methods only utilize the spatial smooth constraint in a separated way, but ignore the local spectral smooth property, which may cause the undesirable jagged spectral distortion. To cope with this problem, we propose a novel low rank constraint and spatial spectral total variation regularization model. First, we adopt the weighted nuclear norm to restore the clean HSI from the mixed noise based on the low rank property. Then, the spatial spectral total variation is modeled as a special regularization to further remove the Gaussian noise and enhance the local spatial and spectral smoothness. Finally, an iterative strategy based on the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers is designed to solve the derived optimization problem. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of the proposed model in terms of mean PSNR, mean SSIM, mean spectral angle distance and visual quality. Especially, the proposed model is very effective for suppressing the jagged spectral distortion while removing the noise.

Density (ρ) and dynamic viscosity (η) for the binary system of tetraethylene glycol (TeEG) and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) were measured at T = (293.15 to 318.15) K with the step of 5 K and surrounding ambient pressure. From experimental ρ and η values, the excess molar volumes (VmE), apparent molar volumes (Vφ,1 and Vφ,2), partial molar volumes ( V 1 ¯ and V 2 ¯ ), viscosity deviations (∆ η) and the thermal expansion coefficient (αp) were calculated. The pure solvents and other concentrations were characterized using UV–Vis, fluorescence, FTIR, and 1H NMR spectral technologies, and the spectral results illuminated that hydrogen bonds were formed between TeEG and DMSO.

SnO2 has attracted great attention at energy storage due to the high capacity. The electrochemical conversion behavior of SnO2 as well as its influence on the lithium-storage performance remains unclear because of its pulverization and aggregation. In this paper, SnO2-carbon aerogel (CA) composites were characterized by TEM, SEM, XRD, XPS, FTIR, TG/DTG and BET. SnO2-CA anode materials exhibit excellent cycling stability and a strong rate capacity. The nanostructural evolution of SnO2-CA as anode material were studied by in situ electrochemical-grazing incidence small angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) technique. The GISAXS results demonstrate that the multihierarchical scatterers in the SnO2-CA as anode material can be roughly divided into interspace, SnO2 nanoparticles, nanopores and so on during the first lithiation. The nanostructural evolution of SnO2 nanoparticles are observed and subsequently some cracks occur that result from the existence of tension stress during the first discharge process. At the same time, the volumes of interspaces and nanopores also expand slightly during Li-ion intercalation process. A schematic model has been tentatively proposed to describe the first lithiation of SnO2-CA anode. It is firmly believed that these results will help further understanding of the complicated reaction mechanism of nanostructured Sn-based anode materials and provide a valuable insight into designing new electrode materials.

Several band-by-band TV-regularized low rank based models have been proposed for Hyperspectral image (HSI) mixed denoising, which can exploit the spectral and spatial information simultaneously. However, these methods may lead to large fluctuations due to the noise and also create oil painting effects. Moreover, they only exploit the spatial information in a separated manner, which may negatively affect the performance of removing the noise with obvious structure, e.g., the deadline noise. To cope with the above problems, a novel Structure tensor Total Variation (STV)-regularized Weighted Nuclear Norm Minimization (STWNNM) model is proposed. To obtain the desired performance, three issues are included. First, the Weighted Nuclear Norm Minimization (WNNM) is adopted to utilize the spectral information by shrinking different eigenvalues with different weights. Second, the structure tensor is used to exploit the global spatial structure information within all bands simultaneously. Third, a convolution kernel is incorporated to obtain more local structure information from neighborhood pixels. Then, two different optimization strategies are proposed to solve the derived optimization problem. Both simulated and real data experiments illustrate the higher performance of the proposed STWNNM for HSI mixed denoising, by comparing with other state-of-the-art TV-regularized low rank based methods. HighlightsProposed a STWNNM model to exploit global gradient information from all bands.Use a non-negative, rotationally symmetric kernel to capture local information.Two different strategies based on ADMM are proposed to solve the STWNNM model. Validate effectiveness of the STWNNM for HSI mixed denoising.

Nanostructure of CuO plays a critical role in Li-ion battery (LIB) applications of CuO/graphene oxide (GO) nanocomposites. Morphological evolution of CuO/GO anode material provides essential information for developing the performance of LIBs. But, the nanostructural evolution of the CuO/GO anode materials have not been previously studied by in situ electrochemical-synchrotron radiation techniques. In this paper, different CuO morphology in preparation of CuO/GO nanocomposites could be controlled by increasing the reactive time at 83 °C. In situ synchrotron X-ray diffraction and small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) are employed to characterize the structural behavior of CuO/GO samples during the first cycle. The CuO(-511) Bragg peak demonstrates a more significant shift toward higher angles due to the incorporation of Li+ in the CuO crystal lattice. SAXS indicates that the formation and growth of SEI are observed with lithiation dose, and subsequently some cracks occur. The in situ electrochemical-synchrotron techniques could be implemented to help further understand the electrochemical behaviors and conversion mechanism of anode materials.

Density ( ρ ) and viscosity ( η ) data for the binary system of polyethylene glycol 400 (PEG) + 1.2-ethanediamine (EDA) over the whole concentration range as a function of composition were measured at T = (293.15, 298.15, 303.15, 308.15, 313.15, and 318.15) K under atmospheric pressure. Based on experimental density and viscosity data, the excess properties of the PEG (1) + EDA (2) mixtures, including excess molar volume ( V m E ) and viscosity deviation (∆ η ), excess free energies of activation (∆ G * E ), apparent molar volume ( V φ ,1 and V φ ,2 ), and partial molar volumes ( V 1 and V 2 ), were calculated respectively. Meanwhile, the results of V m E , ∆ η and ∆ G * E were fitted by a Redlich–Kister equation to obtain coefficients and to evaluate the standard deviations ( σ ) between the experimental and calculated quantities. Additionally, based on FTIR and UV–Vis spectral results of PEG (1) + EDA (2) mixtures with various concentrations, intermolecular interaction of PEG with EDA was discussed.

Liquid Ga could be used as a flexible heat-transfer medium or contact medium in the synchrotron-radiation-based instruments. The chemical stability of liquid Ga on other metal surface determines the serviceability of liquid Ga. In this paper, the oxidation evolutions of liquid Ga on Ni and Cu substrates have been investigated by in-situ grazing incidence small angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) as a function of substrate temperature. The liquid Ga on Ni and Cu substrates shows different oxidation behaviors. A successive and slower oxidation from oxide clusters to oxide layer takes place with temperature increasing from 25 to 190 degrees C on the surface of the Ga/Ni/Si specimen, but a quick oxidation occurs on the entire surface of the Ga/Cu/Si specimen at the initial 25 degrees C. The subsequent heating increases the surface roughness of both liquid Ga, but increases simultaneously the surface curvature of the Ga/Cu/Si specimen. The understanding of the substrate-dependent oxidation behavior of liquid Ga is beneficial to its application as a heat-transfer medium. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Dynamic viscosity (v), density (ρ), and surface tension (γ) of the 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PDO) (1) + 1,2-propanediamine (1,2-PDA) (2) binary system with different ratios were studied at the temperature range of 293.15 to 318.15 K and atmospheric pressure. After that, the corresponding viscosity (η) values were calculated from the experimental v and ρ values. From these basic data, viscosity deviation (∆η), surface tension deviation (∆γ), excess molar volume (VmE), apparent molar volume (Vφ,1 and Vφ,2), partial molar volume ( V 1 ¯ and V 2 ¯ ), and isostatic thermal expansion coefficient (αp) were calculated. The VmE, ∆η, and ∆γ values were used to assess the standard deviations (σ) by using the Redlich-Kister (R-K) equation. In addition, combined with FTIR, UV–Vis, FLS, and 1H NMR technologies, the interaction analysis between 1,3-PDO and 1,2-PDA concluded that the intermolecular hydrogen bonding in the system existed as the possible form of -O-H···N-.

Akirin, a recently discovered nuclear factor, participates in regulating various processes, including cell proliferation and differentiation, embryonic development, and immunity. In the present study, a novel Akirin was identified from Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis (designated as EsAkirin), and its primary functions in regulating antimicrobial peptides were explored. The open reading frame of EsAkirin was of 615 bp, encoding a polypeptide of 204 amino acid residues. The deduced amino acid sequence of EsAkirin shared high similarities ranging from 44.1% to 89.2% with other Akirins. In the phylogenetic tree, EsAkirin was firstly clustered with Akirins from shrimp and then assigned into the invertebrate branch. The mRNA transcripts of EsAkirin were constitutively expressed in all the tested tissues, with the highest expression level (5.07-fold compared to the stomach, p 0.01) in hepatopancreas. The mRNA expression of EsAkirin in hemocytes was significantly increased at 6 h, and reached the maximum level at 24 h post stimulations with either lipopolysaccharide (LPS) (5.04-fold, p 0.01) or Aeromonas hydrophila (3.10-fold, p 0.01). After the injection of EsAkirin-dsRNA, the mRNA expressions of EsALF2, EsLYZ, EsCrus2 and EsDWD1 were significantly decreased (p 0.01) upon LPS stimulation. EsAkirin protein was prominently distributed in the nucleus of E. sinensis hemocytes after LPS and A. hydrophila stimulations. The relative luciferase reporter system analysis revealed that the activity of nuclear factor-κB was significantly up-regulated (2.64-fold, p 0.01) in human embryonic kidney (HEK293T) cells after the over-expression of EsAkirin. Collectively, these results suggested that EsAkirin might play an important role in the immune responses of E. sinensis by regulating the expression of antimicrobial peptides.

The Nanfei River, located in Hefei City, Anhui Province, subjected to increased nutrient loads from point and/or non-point source. Little is known about the indicators indicating heterogeneity of surface sediments. We aimed to identify the suitable indicators that can reflect the sediment heterogeneity by analyzing the sensitivity of sediment physicochemical properties group, microbial communities and diversity indices group and C, N, S-functional genes group to seasonal and regional changes. River sediments from different areas (urban area, urban-rural fringe and rural area) were collected in the level, dry and wet seasons, respectively. The chemical parameters had most significant regional heterogeneity, but no seasonal differences. Seasons had a greater impact on the overall microbial community structure than the areas. Specifically, the relative abundance of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes were more sensitive to seasonal changes. Overall, seasonal changes showed the greatest impact on the functional genes group, with the S-functional genes (dsrB and aprA) group providing the clearest seasonal variation. Considering the seasonal distribution of functional genes and their sensitivity to environmental factors, we speculated that the sulfate-reducing gene (dsrB), the methanogenic gene (mcrA) and the anammox gene (hzo) could be identified as sensitive indicators to indicate the seasonal heterogeneity of surface sediments in different river sections of the same river in the short term. We also concluded that environmental variables were more conducive to indicating the regional heterogeneity of sediments. This study provided a valuable reference for assessing the heterogeneity or ecological stress of river sediments.

The size and distribution of silver nanoparticles in ion-exchanged silicate glass induced by thermal treatments in air at different temperatures were investigated by means of grazing incidence small angle X-ray scattering technique, X-ray diffraction and optical absorption spectra. Silver sodium ion exchange of soda-lime silicate glasses was done at 350 degrees C for 240 min, then the samples were treated by thermal annealing in air at different temperatures 400, 500 and 550 degrees C, respectively, for 1 h. After the annealing treatment above 400 degrees C for 1 h, smaller Ag nanoparticles occurred, together with bigger ones. Both dissolution of smaller Ag nanoparticles and diffusion of larger ones are discussed in these stages of annealing in this contribution. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.

In this article, some facts of the value distribution theory for meromorphic functions with maximal deficiency sum in the plane will be considered in the punctured plane, and also the relationship between the deficiency of meromorphic function in the punctured plane and that of their derivatives is studied.

Silver-doped silicate composite glass had been synthesized with an ion-exchanged method. Grazing incidence small angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) technique was used to investigate the size and distribution evolutions of Ag nanoparticles in the glass matrix in a subsequent thermal treatment process. GISAXS experiment reveals a change of size distribution of Ag nanoparticles from bimodal distribution to one-size distribution in annealing at 300 degrees C. The results demonstrate that the normalized volume fraction of smaller particles with average diameter of 6.4 nm almost no changed, but the bigger metastable ones dissolved gradually in an exponential decay way during the annealing process. It can be concluded that a multilayer nanostructure composed of silver nanoparticles was formed in the thermal process. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The impact of anoxic heating on the nanostructure of the Red pine specimen was studied by small angle X-ray scattering from room temperature to 350 °C. A tangent-by-tangent method was used to analyze the SAXS data. The results demonstrated that the multihierarchical scatterers in the Red pine specimen can be roughly divided into one sharp component and one wide component. The sharp component (Scatterer A) is mainly corresponding to the cellulose microfibrils (CMFs), whereas the wide component includes CMF bundles, hemicellulose–lignin matrix (HLM), nanopores, and so on. The scatterer sizes in the wide component can be further divided into five different sizes (B, C, D, E, F). The scatterer size changes with heating temperature or time have been extracted. The diameters of single CMF is about 2.8 nm, the diameter of CMF bundle is about 18.3 nm. The surrounding thickness around CMF bundles is about 7.1 nm. A schematic model has been tentatively proposed to describe the assembly of HLM and CMFs in the Red pine specimen. A detailed discussion about the structural changes with the heating temperature has been given in this paper.

The author proves that if f : ℂ → ℂ n is a transcendental vector valued meromorphic function of finite order and assume ∑ a ∈ ℂ n ∪ ∪ { ∞ } δ ( a ) = 2 , then, 1 - δ ( ∞ ) 2 - δ ( ∞ ) ≤ K ( f ′ ) ≤ 2 ( 1 - δ ( ∞ ) ) 2 - δ ( ∞ ) , where K ( f ′ ) = lim sup r → + ∞ N ( r , f ′ ) + N ( r , 0 , f ′ ) T ( r , f ′ ) . This result extends the related results for meromorphic function by Singh and Kulkarni.

Hair, a high-nitrogen energetic material, is utilized as a precursor for nitrogen-doped porous carbon. The preparation procedures for obtaining carbon from hair are very simple, namely, reductant or deionized water activation process followed by hair carbonization under argon atmosphere at 800 °C for 2 h. The samples are characterized through scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, nitrogen adsorption, and X-ray photoelectron microscopy. The carbon samples are tested as electrode materials in supercapacitors in a three-electrode system. The carbon (soaked in deionized water at 80 °C) presents relatively low specific surface areas (441.34 m 2 g −1 ) and shows higher capacitance (154.5 F g −1 ) compared with nitrogen-free commercial activated carbons (134.5 F g −1 ) at 5 A g −1 . The capacitance remains at 130.5 F g −1 even when the current load is increased to 15 A g −1 . The capacitance loss is only 5% in 6 M KOH after 10,000 charge and discharge cycles at 5 A g −1 . It is the unique microstructure after activation processing and electroactive nitrogen functionalities that enable the carbon obtained through a simple, ecological, and economical process to be utilized as a potential electrode material for electrical double-layer capacitors.

In this paper, the sectorial oscillation of the solutions of higher order homogeneous linear differential equations f ( k ) + A n - 2 ( z ) f ( k - 2 ) + ⋯ + A 1 ( z ) f / + A 0 ( z ) f = 0 with infinite order entire function coefficients is studied. Results are obtained to extend some results in [19] and [18].

National Natural Science Foundation of China [10704064]; key S & T Projects of Fujian Province [2009N0050]; Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province [D0810027]

By applying Ahlfors' theory of covering surface, we establish a fundamental inequality for quasimeromorphic mapping in an angular domain. As an application, we prove the existence of a new singular direction for quasimeromorphic mapping f , namely, aprecise S direction, for which the spherical characteristic function S(r, f) is used as a comparison function.