Advances in the study of gut microbes in pediatric epilepsy.

Epilepsy a prevalent childhood neurological disorder, arises from chronic brain dysfunction caused by oversynchronized firing of neurons. Frequent seizures often lead to both physical and intellectual damage in children, seriously affecting their growth and development, life and health. Recent research studies have shown that the intestinal microbes in pediatric epilepsy is significantly different from that of healthy children, characterised by changes in the abundance of specific microbe communities and a reduction in diversity. These alterations may influence epileptic seizures through various pathways, including the microbiota-gut-brain axis by modulating neurotransmitters metabolism, affecting gut barrier function and immune responses, and directly impacting brain activity via the vagus nerves. This review highlights the alterations in gut microbes and their metabolites in epileptic children, analyzes their impact on seizures, and explores potential associations.

Local environmental legislation and employment growth: evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms.

In China, there exists a huge debate for a long time on whether a double dividend, reducing pollution emissions and boosting employment, can be achieved by intensifying environmental regulations. In this paper, we use two data sets on provincial environmental legislation and Chinese manufacturing firms during 1998-2013, to estimate the impact of provincial environmental legislation on the firms' employment growth with a difference-in-difference (DID) model. Results showed that (1) after the implementation of environmental legislation, the employment growth of regulated manufacturing firms decreases significantly by 3.07%, and this result is robust to alternative tests. (2) Local environmental legislation reduces employment growth mainly via the influencing mechanism of the firm's entry and exit, export, and innovation. (3) The local environmental legislation has heterogeneous impacts on employment growth in different industries and different regions, and the estimated effect is more obvious in high-pollution industries and areas with strong enforcement. (4) Environmental legislation significantly improves job destruction and reduces job creation, resulting in a - 3.86% job net increase. Due to the long-term implementation of extensive economic growth mode, China's ecological environment has been deteriorating since the 1990s, and environmental pollution has attracted more and more social attention. Until 2013, the Communist Party of China put forward 'ecological civilization', and building a beautiful new China with harmonious coexistence between man and nature has become an important development strategy. Meanwhile, starting from the implementation of the Two-Control-Zone policy in 1998, China has implemented numerous environmental policies in just ten years. These environmental policies have greatly improved the quality of China's ecological environment, but their economic effects have been controversial. Given the special historical period, this paper helps assess the impact of Chinese environmental policies on employment and provides a more objective policy evaluation and implications for improving existing laws and regulations to achieve higher social welfare. To achieve this goal of balancing the improvement of the ecological environment and high employment level, environmental policies firstly should be flexible to ensure that the environmental standards follow the firm's characteristics and regional characteristics to avoid "one size fits all". Particularly, for regions with poor economic development or having a single industrial structure, the implementation cycle of the environmental policies should be extended to ensure that they have enough time to achieve industrial restructuring and complete the environmental protection goals. Secondly, we find that environmental legislation hurts employment growth by limiting export decisions, so the government should use multiple channels to stabilize export when implementing environmental legislation. Thirdly, technological R&D and innovation play an important role in the effect of environmental legislation on firms' employment growth. Therefore, the government should provide a more flexible environment for firms' R&D and innovation with appropriate fiscal policies and technical support.

Rapid start-up and advanced nutrient removal of simultaneous nitrification, endogenous denitrification and phosphorus removal aerobic granular sequence batch reactor for treating low C/N domestic wastewater.

The rapid start-up and advanced nutrient removal of simultaneous nitrification, endogenous denitrification, and phosphorus (P) removal aerobic granular sequence batch reactor (SNEDPR-AGSBR) is a challenge in the treatment of low carbon/nitrogen (C/N) domestic sewage. In this study, the feasibility of the SNEDPR-AGSBR process was examined in an exceedingly single-stage anaerobic/aerobic/anoxic sequencing batch reactor for treating low C/N ratio (3.3-5.0) domestic sewage. The initial results showed that accompanied by the rapid formation of the mature aerobic granular sludge based on the selection for slow-growing organisms, the rapid start-up (38 d) of the SNEDPR-AGSBR process was successfully realized. The formed mature aerobic granules had a dense structure with an average diameter of 667.7 µm and SVI30 of 30.0 mL/g. Two conditions for achieving the competitive balance between phosphorus-accumulating organisms/denitrifying phosphorus-accumulating organisms (PAOs/DPAOs) and glycogen accumulating organisms/denitrifying glycogen accumulating organisms (GAOs/DGAOs) were revealed by the long-term operation results. First, the dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration needed to be decreased to 3.0 mg/L in the aerobic phase, and then, the aerobic and anoxic phase hydraulic retention time (HRT) should be increased to 3.0 h. Notably, high removal efficiencies for NH4+-N (100%), total nitrogen (84.3%), and P (91.8%) of the SNEDPR-AGSBR process were stably obtained with a low C/N ratio of 3.9 domestic sewage. Simultaneous nitrification and endogenous denitrification (SNED) efficiency of 61.6% was achieved during a long-term operation of 142 days. Finally, microbial community analysis confirmed that GAOs (Defluviicoccus)/DGAOs (Candidatus_Competibacter) were responsible for the removal N, and PAOs (Acinetobacter, Candidatus_Accumulibacter, Hypomicrobinm)/DPAOs (Pseudomonas and Dechloromonas) ensured P removal.

Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis and Epilepsy.

Epilepsy is a recurrent, transient seizure disorder of the nervous system that affects the intellectual development, life and work, and psychological health of patients. People with epilepsy worldwide experience great suffering. Stressful stimuli such as infection, mental stress, and sleep deprivation are important triggers of epilepsy, and chronic stressful stimuli can lead to frequent seizures and comorbidities. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is the most important system involved in the body's stress response, and dysfunction thereof is thought to be associated with core epilepsy symptoms and related psychopathology. This article explores the intrinsic relationships of corticotropin-releasing hormone, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and glucocorticoids with epilepsy in order to reveal the role of the HPA axis in the pathogenesis of epilepsy. We hope that this information will yield future possible directions and ideas for fully understanding the pathogenesis of epilepsy and developing antiepileptic drugs.

Non-filamentous bulking of activated sludge induced by graphene oxide: Insights from extracellular polymeric substances.

Widespread use of nanomaterials raises concerns. The underlying mechanism by which graphene oxide (GO) nanoparticles causes poor settleability of activated sludge remains unclear. To explore this mechanism, three reactors with different GO concentrations were established. Extended Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek theory indicated that GO destroyed the property of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), increasing the energy barrier between bacteria. Low levels of uronic acid and hydrogen bonding in exopolysaccharide weakened the EPS gelation increasing aggregation repulsion. Lager amounts of hydrophilic amino acid and looser structure of extracellular proteins for exposing inner hydrophilic groups significantly contributed to the hydrophilicity of EPS. Both changes implied deterioration in EPS structure under GO stress. Metagenome demonstrated a decrease in genes responsible for capsular polysaccharide colonization and genes regulated the translocation of loose proteins were increased, which increased repulsion between bacteria. This study elucidated that changes in EPS secretion under GO exposure are the underlying causes of poor settleability.

Effect of dissolved oxygen on high C/N wastewater treatment in moving bed biofilm reactors based on heterotrophic nitrification and aerobic denitrification: Nitrogen removal performance and potential mechanisms.

In this study, it was investigated the nitrogen removal (NR) performance and potential mechanism for high C/N wastewater treatment under different dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations. The results showed that DO concentration significantly affected the removal efficiency of total nitrogen (TN). When the initial DO increased from 0.5 to 1.5 mg/L, TN removal efficiency significantly increased from 65 % to 85 %. However, a further DO increase did not promote TN removal, and the NR was only 80 % with an initial DO concentration of 3.5 mg/L. The effect of DO concentration on NR was influenced by the combined action of functional bacteria and electron flow. Excessive DO concentration did not positively affect NR efficiency but promoted electron utilization and respiratory proliferation. When the DO concentration was 1.5 mg/L, more electrons generated by sodium acetate metabolism were transferred to the aerobic denitrification process, compared to when the DO concentration was 3.5 mg/L.