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Periodic climatic oscillations and species dispersal during the postglacial period are two important causes of plant assemblage and distribution on the Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau (QTP). To improve our understanding of the bio‐geological histories of shrub communities on the QTP, we tested two hypotheses. First, the intensity of climatic oscillations played a filtering role during community structuring. Second, species dispersal during the postglacial period contributed to the recovery of species and phylogenetic diversity and the emergence of phylogenetic overdispersion. To test these hypotheses, we investigated and compared the shrub communities in the alpine and desert habitats of the northeastern QTP. Notably, we observed higher levels of species and phylogenetic diversity in the alpine habitat than in the desert habitat, leading to phylogenetic overdispersion in the alpine shrub communities versus phylogenetic clustering in the desert shrub communities. This phylogenetic overdispersion increased with greater climate anomalies. These results suggest that (a) although climate anomalies strongly affect shrub communities, these phenomena do not act as a filter for shrub community structuring, and (b) species dispersal increases phylogenetic diversity and overdispersion in a community. Moreover, our investigation of the phylogenetic community composition revealed a larger number of plant clades in the alpine shrub communities than in the desert shrub communities, which provided insights into plant clade‐level differences in the phylogenetic structures of alpine and desert shrub communities in the northeastern QTP., In this manuscript, we studied the phylogenetic community composition of shrub in the northeastern Qinghai‐Tibetan Plateau and found that existing significant difference in phylogenetic community composition of shrub communities from different habitats (desert and alpine), which interpreted phylogenetic community structure from perspective of phylogenetic community composition, enhanced our knowledge of shrub, and helped us to obtain further interpretation for present‐day community structure from historical processes.

There are two important allocation hypotheses in plant biomass allocation: allometric and isometric. We tested these two hypotheses in an alpine steppe using plant biomass allocation under nitrogen (N) addition and precipitation (Precip) changes at a community level. An in situ field manipulation experiment was conducted to examine the two hypotheses and the responses of the biomass to N addition (10 g N m−2 y−1) and altered Precip (±50% precipitation) in an alpine steppe on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau from 2013 to 2016. We found that the plant community biomass differed in its response to N addition and reduced Precip such that N addition significantly increased aboveground biomass (AGB), while reduced Precip significantly decreased AGB from 2014 to 2016. Moreover, reduced Precip enhanced deep soil belowground biomass (BGB). In the natural alpine steppe, the allocation between AGB and BGB was consistent with the isometric hypotheses. In contrast, N addition or altered Precip enhanced biomass allocation to aboveground, thus leading to allometric growth. More importantly, reduced Precip enhanced biomass allocation into deep soil. Our study provides insight into the responses of alpine steppes to global climate change by linking AGB and BGB allocation., In summary, we demonstrated that altered precipitation and N addition led to changes in the relationship between aboveground and belowground biomass allocation. Moreover, we demonstrated that reduced precipitation had little impacts on aboveground and belowground biomass allocation, while it enhanced more biomass into deep soil. Therefore, our finding provides a novel insight into N and precipitation‐induced changes in the aboveground and belowground biomass allocation in the alpine steppe.

Autophagy has been demonstrated to be vital for kidney homeostasis and is centrally implicated in the pathogenesis of cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury (AKI). Lithium is a potent autophagy inducer in a number of cell types. However, it remains uncertain whether its autophagic activity is associated with a beneficial effect on renal tubular cells in AKI. This study aimed to examine the effect of lithium on renal autophagy in cisplatin-induced AKI. Mice or renal proximal tubular epithelial cells in culture were exposed to cisplatin-induced acute injury in the presence or absence of lithium treatment. AKI or tubular cell injury was evaluated, and cell signaling associated with autophagy was examined. Lithium pretreatment prominently ameliorated acute renal tubular damage in mice exposed to cisplatin insult, associated with enhanced autophagy in renal tubules, as assessed by measuring microtubule-associated protein 1A/1B-light chain 3 (LC3)BII/I expression and autophagosome formation. Consistently, in cisplatin-injured renal tubular cells

Aim To investigate the prevalence and predictors of sexual frequency, sexual desire in midlife partnered Chinese women. Methods Sexual frequency, sexual desire over the past 3 months, menopausal symptoms and other socioeconomic information were assessed for women aged 40-65 years in the Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital. Results Among 3485 eligible partnered participants, the prevalence of low sexual frequency (less than once per week) and low sexual desire (less than 5 scores) were 72.74% (95% confidence interval (CI) = 71.16%-74.23%) and 71.79% (95% CI = 70.30-73.17%), respectively. Multivariable logistic regression analysis revealed that age (odds ratio (OR) = 1.20, 95% CI = 1.17-1.23), more educated (>15 years) (compared with Conclusion Low sexual frequency and low sexual desire were quite prevalent in midlife Chinese partnered women. Some factors, such as sleep disorder, obesity are modifiable or can be prevented or treated with safe and effective therapies.

Climate change and land use/cover change (LUCC) are two factors that produce major impacts on hydrological processes. Understanding and quantifying their respective influence is of great importance for water resources management and socioeconomic activities as well as policy and planning for sustainable development. In this study, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was calibrated and validated in upper stream of the Heihe River in northwest China. The reliability of the SWAT model was corroborated in terms of the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), the correlation coefficient (R) and the relative bias error (BIAS). The findings proposed a new method employing statistical separation procedures using a physically based modeling system for identifying the individual impacts of climate change and LUCC on hydrology processes, in particular on the aspects of runoff and evapotranspiration. The results confirmed that SWAT was a powerful and accurate model for diagnosis of a key challenge facing the Heihe River basin. The model assessment metrics, NSE, R and BIAS in the data were, respectively, 0.91, 0.95 and 1.14% for the calibration period and 0.90, 0.96 and -0.15%, respectively, for the validation period. An assessment of climate change possibility showed that precipitation, runoff and air temperature exhibited upward trends with a rate of 15.7 mm, 6.1 mm and 0.38 °C per decade for the 1980 to 2010 period, respectively. Evaluation of LUCC showed that the changes in growth of vegetation, including forestland, grassland and the shrub area has increased gradually while the barren area has decreased. The integrated effects of LUCC and climate change increased runoff and ET values by 3.2% and 6.6% of the total runoff and ET, respectively. Climate change outweighed the impact of LUCC, thus showing respective increases in runoff and ET of about 107.3% and 81.2% of the total changes. The LUCC influence appeared to be modest by comparison, and showed about -7.3% and 18.8% changes relative to the totals, respectively. The increase in runoff caused by climate change factors are more than the offsetting decreases resulting from LUCC. The outcomes of this study show that the climate factors accounted for the notable effects more significantly than LUCC on hydrological processes in the upper stream of the Heihe River.

Converging evidence points to glycogen synthase kinase (GSK) 3 as a key player in the pathogenesis of podocytopathy and proteinuria. However, it remains unclear if GSK3 is involved in podocyte autonomous injury in glomerular disease. In normal kidneys, the β isoform of GSK3 was found to be the major GSK3 expressed in glomeruli and intensely stained in podocytes. GSK3β expression in podocytes was markedly elevated in experimental or human proteinuric glomerulopathy. Podocyte-specific somatic ablation of GSK3β in adult mice attenuated proteinuria and ameliorated podocyte injury and glomerular damage in experimental adriamycin (ADR) nephropathy. Mechanistically, actin cytoskeleton integrity in podocytes was largely preserved in GSK3β knockout mice following ADR insult, concomitant with a correction of podocyte hypermotility and lessened phosphorylation and activation of paxillin, a focal adhesion-associated adaptor protein. In addition, GSK3β knockout diminished ADR-induced NFκB RelA/p65 phosphorylation selectively at serine 467; suppressed de novo expression by podocytes of NFκB-dependent podocytopathic mediators, including B7-1, cathepsin L, and MCP-1; but barely affected the induction of NFκB target pro-survival factors, such as Bcl-xL. Moreover, the ADR-elicited podocytopenia and podocyte death were significantly attenuated in GSK3β knockout mice, associated with protection against podocyte mitochondrial damage and reduced phosphorylation and activation of cyclophilin F, a structural component of mitochondria permeability transition pores. Overall, our findings suggest that the β isoform of GSK3 mediates autonomous podocyte injury in glomerulopathy by integrating multiple podocytopathic signalling pathways.

Thus far, measurements and estimations of actual evapotranspiration (ET) from high-altitude grassland ecosystems in remote areas like the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau are still insufficient. To address these issues, a comparison between the results of the eddy covariance (EC) measurements and the estimates, considering the Katerji and Perrier (KP), the Todorovic (TD) and the Priestley-Taylor (PT) models, was carried out over an alpine grassland (38(o)03'1.7'' N, 100(o) 27' 26'' E; 3032 m a.s.l.) during the growing seasons in 2008 and 2009. The results indicated that the KP model after a particularly simple calibration gave the most effective ET values in different time scales, the PT model slightly underestimate ET at night and the TD model significantly overestimated ET at noon. In addition, the canopy resistance calculated by the TD model was completely different from that calculated using the inverted EC-measured data and the KP model, which may be due to some unrealistic assumptions made by the TD model. The KP parameters were a=0.17 and b=1.50 for the alpine grassland and appeared to be interannually stable. However, the PT parameter showed some interannual variations (= 0.83 and 0.74 for 2008 and 2009, respectively). Therefore, the KP model was preferred to estimate the actual ET at both hourly and daily time scales. The PT model, being the simplest approach and field condition dependent, was recommended when available weather data were rare. On the contrary, the TD model always overestimated the actual ET and should be avoided in case of the alpine grassland ecosystems. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.