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Aims Supratidal zones of sandy coastlines are occasionally influenced by storm surges, and they contain distinctive plant communities and some unique species. Our objective was to solve the questions: 1) how sandy coast plants are grouped into plant communities and 2) how such anthropogenic disturbances as tourist trampling and pond fishery affect such communities. Methods Three long sandy coasts were investigated for species composition and abundances, representing three typical states of human disturbances: nearly original state, tourist trampling and pond fishery. Each coast was investigated with 20 sampling lines of 50 m. Their species abundance patterns were compared and analyzed via four classic models of species abundance patterns: the neutral theoretical model, geometric series model, overlapping niche model and broken stick model. Important findings The neutral theoretical and geometric series models fit the species abundance patterns of the coastal plant communities well, and the broken stick and overlapping niche models were not reliable. The disturbances could decrease vegetation cover and cause local extinction of some rare species. Some evidence suggests that plant species on sandy coasts are variable, thus that stochastic establishment of plant individuals may well play a major role in community assembling, as the neutral theory describes. However, these species have very small differences in their traits and resource capturing, and their integrative effects are supposed to take many years to accumulate for ultimately causing evident differences, which can be fitted via the geometric series model at times. Local governments ought to control anthropogenic disturbances, so as to conserve the rare plants.

Driving environment is a complex acoustic environment with a variety of noises. It requires more precise speech enhancement of noisy signals, for speech recognition when driving. In this paper, a new two-stage neural network speech enhancement algorithm is proposed. First, the feature vector of noisy signals is used to training BP network and RBP network. And then, the BP and RBP networks are merged for denoising model. In order to improve the robustness of the algorithm, the paper also introduces voice activity detection algorithm based on Energy Statistical Complexity at enhanced stage, which judged the intensity of noise through the algorithm to classify denoising. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has better performance on both SNR and intelligibility metrics.

Doxorubicin (DOX) remains the most effective anticancer agent which is widely used in several adult and pediatric cancers, but its application is limited for its cardiotoxicity and hepatotoxicity. Hydrogen, as a selective antioxidant, is a promising potential therapeutic option for many diseases. In this study, we found that intraperitoneal injection of hydrogen-rich saline (H2 saline) ameliorated the mortality, cardiac dysfunction, and histopathological changes caused by DOX in rats. Meanwhile, serum brain natriuretic peptide (BNP), aspartate transaminase (AST), alanine transaminase (ALT), albumin (ALB), tissue reactive oxygen species (ROS), and malondialdehyde (MDA) levels were also attenuated after H2 saline treatment. What is more, we further demonstrated that H2 saline treatment could inhibit cardiac and hepatic inflammation and apoptosis relative proteins expressions by western blotting test. In conclusion, our results revealed a protective effect of H2 saline on DOX-induced cardiotoxicity and hepatotoxicity in rats by inhibiting inflammation and apoptosis.

Artemisia ordosica is an under-shrub species, which dominates the vegetation of the Mu Us sandy land in North China. The spatial patterns of the A. ordosica population in different sandy lands were compared with the methods of Spatial Auto-correlation Analysis, Semi-variance Analysis and Nine-Term Local Quadrat Variance (9TLQV). The results show that, by contrast with the A. ordosica population in fixed sandy land, the population in semi-fixed sandy land is of stronger auto-correlation and greater spatial heterogeneity, and meanwhile it presents more intense differentiation between patches and gaps. The spatial patterns of the A. ordosica population in semi-fixed sandy land are probably governed by drifting sand caused by strong winds. Drifting sand can easily put A. ordosica shrubs to death unless they live together in form of A. ordosica patches, where the distances between shrubs are short. In semi-fixed sandy land, patches are not only the form of the A. ordosica population to survive drifting sand, but also the foundation of the A. ordosica population to develop and broaden the area. The A. ordosica population is supposed to broaden the area through edge extending out from the patches scattering in semi-fixed sandy land. The spatial patterns of the A. ordosica population in fixed sandy land are possibly affected by intra-specific competition related to high plant coverage. This study is ecologically useful to improve the practice of vegetation restoration in sandy land. When transplanting A. ordosica shrubs to bare sandy land, one had better arrange them in form of patches separated by gaps, which can promote the survival of transplanted shrubs, and also help to take advantage of A. ordosica patches to revegetate bare gaps.