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For ultrafiltration, and membrane filtration more generally, the quantitative determination of the modes of fouling remains a subject of great interest. Herein an integral method for determining the modes from a time series of volumetric flux J t is given and illustrated with previously published filtration data of bergamot juice (Ruby-Figueroa et al (J Membr Sci 524:108-116, 2017)). The integral method of fouling analysis has the potential to become the cornerstone of a robust empirical process. In addition to determining, in a clear-cut manner, the point at which there is a switch from one mode to another, the robust methodology yields characteristic J t equation for each mode that are an excellent fit to the data. The emphasis is upon the creation of a robust methodology which is best viewed as being a semi-empirical method that is indicative of the modes of fouling. For the example chosen, the initial 4 L/m2 generates some pore blocking after which the main mode of fouling is cake build-up. The variation of overall resistance with time is also informative and analysis of this series was used to check the result for the initial phase of fouling as determined from the time series of volumetric flux. A comparison against the ARIMA (Autoregressive integrated moving average) method, which has never been previously undertaken, is given herein. The integral method of fouling analysis was found to be superior, in part because of the quality of fit to the data and in part because it enables one to establish whether the initial fouling is different in character from the subsequent fouling. Having this information can improve membrane selection and overall membrane filtration performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lily-of-the-valley Convallaria (Asparagaceae) consists of three herbaceous perennial species. The plants are commonly found in northern hemisphere, and are best-known for their ornamental and pharmaceutical value. In order to assess the genetic structure, diversity and demographic history of Convallaria species, 19 novel microsatellite markers were developed based on transcriptome data of C. keiskei. Polymorphism and cross-amplification of the markers were tested in three populations of C. keiskei and one population each of C. majalis and C. montana. The transferability rate in two species was both 89.5%. The average number of alleles detected per locus was 7.7, 3.3 and 2.7 in C. keiskei, C. majalis and C. montana, respectively, and the polymorphism information content correspondingly varied from 0.067 to 0.730, from 0.071 to 0.637 and from 0.195 to 0.680 at the population level. The observed and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.000 to 1.000 and from 0.000 to 0.833, respectively. Seven of the 19 loci showed significant deviation from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium. The availability of these markers will provide a useful molecular tool for further population genetics, phylogeographic and breeding studies of Convallaria species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual dimorphism is widespread in fish species. The red-tail catfish (Mystus wyckioides) is a commercially important catfish in the lower reaches of the Lancang River and the Mekong basin, and it shows a growth advantage in males. Here, RNA-seq was for the first time used to explore the gene expression difference between the sexes in the hypothalamus and pituitary of red-tail catfish, respectively. In the hypothalamus, 5732 and 271 unigenes have significantly higher and lower expressions, respectively, in males compared with females. KEGG analysis showed that 212 DEGs were annotated to 216 signaling pathways, and enrichment analysis suggested different levels of cAMP and glutamatergic synapse signaling between male and female hypothalami and some of the DEGs appear involved in gonad development and growth. In the pituitary, we found only 19 differentially expressed unigenes, which were annotated to 32 signaling pathways, most of which play important roles in gonad development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil respiration (SR) is one of the largest contributors of terrestrial CO to the atmosphere. Environmental as well as physicochemical parameters influence SR and thus, different land use practices impact the emissions of soil CO. In this study, we measured SR, bi-monthly, over a one-year period in a terrace tea plantation, a forest tea plantation and a secondary forest, in a subtropical mountain area in Xishuangbanna, China. Along with the measurement of SR rates, soil characteristics for each of the land use systems were investigated. Soil respiration rates in the different land use systems did not differ significantly during the dry season, ranging from 2.7±0.2 jumol m s to 2.8±0.2 jumol m s. During the wet season, however, SR rates were significantly larger in the terrace tea plantation (5.4±0.5 umol m s) and secondary forest (4.9±0.4 umol m s) than in the forest tea plantation (3.7±0.2 umol m s). This resulted in significantly larger annual soil CO emissions from the terrace tea and secondary forest, than from the forest tea plantation. It is likely that these differences in the SR rates are due to the 0.5 times lower soil organic carbon concentrations in the top mineral soil in the forest tea plantation, compared to the terrace tea plantation and secondary forest. Furthermore, we suggest that the lower sensitivity to temperature variation in the forest tea soil is a result of the lower soil organic carbon concentrations. The higher SR rates in the terrace tea plantation were partly due to weeding events, which caused CO emission peaks that contributed almost 10% to the annual CO flux. Our findings suggest that moving away from heavily managed tea plantations towards low-input forest tea can reduce the soil CO emissions from these systems. However, our study is a case-study and further investigations and upscaling are necessary to show if these findings hold true at a landscape level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting beta-cell survival is crucial for the prevention of beta-cell failure in diabetes. Thiazolidinediones, a widely used drug to improve insulin sensitivity in clinical practice, is found to have a protective effect on islet beta-cell. To date, the mechanism underlying the protective role of thiazolidinedione on beta-cell survival remain largely unknown. Activation of autophagy was detected by transmission electron microscopy, western blot, and GFP-LC3 transfection. Cell viability was examined by WST-8. Cell apoptosis was demonstrated by DAPI and Annexin V/PI staining. Colony formation assay was used to detect long-term cell viability. We demonstrated that rosiglitazone-treated beta-cells were more resistant to palmitate-induced apoptosis. The conversion of LC3-I to LC3-II and accumulated autophagosomes were found to be upregulated in rosiglitazone-treated cells. Inhibition of autophagy augmented palmitate-induced apoptosis with rosiglitazone treatment, suggesting that autophagy plays an important role in the survival function of rosiglitazone on beta-cells. Furthermore, we showed that rosiglitazone could induce AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) phosphorylation and reduce p70S6 kinase phosphorylation. Inhibition of AMPK impaired autophagy activation and enhanced palmitate-induced apoptosis during rosiglitazone treatment. These findings reveal that rosiglitazone-induced autophagy contributes to its protective function on beta-cells during palmitate treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widening gap between processor and memory speeds makes cache an important issue in the computer system design. Compared with work set of programs, cache resource is often rare. Therefore, it is very important for a computer system to use cache efficiently. Toward a dynamically reconfigurable cache proposed recently, DOOC (Data-Object Oriented Cache), this paper proposes a quantitative framework for analyzing the cache requirement of data-objects, which includes cache capacity, block size, associativity and coherence protocol. And a kind of graph coloring algorithm dealing with the competition between data-objects in the DOOC is proposed as well. Finally, we apply our approaches to the compiler management of DOOC. We test our approaches on both a single-core platform and a four-core platform. Compared with the traditional caches, the DOOC in both platforms achieves an average reduction of 44.98% and 49.69% in miss rate respectively. And its performance is very close to the ideal optimal cache. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Osmosis is the movement of solvent across a permselective membrane induced by a solute-concentration gradient. Now in 'Forward Osmosis' it is empirically observed that the diffusion of the solute is counter to that of the solvent i.e. there is so-called "reverse salt diffusion". However it has been recently suggested, in a theoretical paper, that if allowance is made for minor deviations from ideal semi-permeability then operation in an overlooked mode of "breakthrough" osmosis would be possible and importantly it would yield relatively large rates of osmosis. A consequential prediction was that in "breakthrough mode", Pressure-Retarded Osmosis (PRO) would generate very high power densities exceeding those in the conventional mode by one order of magnitude. The practicality of this suggestion was explored and necessarily questions were then raised regarding the foundation of the Spiegler-Kedem-Katchalsky model. Arising from: Yaroshchuk, A., Sci. Rep. 7, 45168 (2017); 10.1038/srep45168 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organic heterostructures (OHSs) integrating the intrinsic heterostructure characters as well as the organic semiconductor properties have attracted intensive attention in material chemistry. However, the precise bottom-up synthesis of OHSs is still challenging owing to the general occurrence of homogeneous-nucleation and the difficult manipulation of noncovalent interactions. Herein, we present the rational synthesis of the longitudinally/horizontally-epitaxial growth of one-dimensional OHSs including triblock and core/shell nanowires with quantitatively-manipulated microstructure via a hierarchical self-assembly method by regulating the noncovalent interactions: hydrogen bond (−15.66 kcal mol−1) > halogen bond (−4.90 kcal mol−1) > π-π interaction (−0.09 kcal mol−1). In the facet-selective epitaxial growth strategy, the lattice-matching and the surface-interface energy balance respectively facilitate the realization of triblock and core/shell heterostructures. This hierarchical self-assembly approach opens up avenues to the fine synthesis of OHSs. We foresee application possibilities in integrated optoelectronics, such as the nanoscale multiple input/out optical logic gate with high-fidelity signal. Organic heterostructures attract attention in material chemistry but the precise bottom-up synthesis is still challenging. Herein the authors present a hierarchical self-assembly approach to synthesize one-dimensional organic heterostructures by regulating the noncovalent interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]