Involvement of the gut microbiota in the metabolic phenotypes of two sympatric gerbils.

Temporal niche partitioning is a crucial strategy for sympatric species to avoid predation and competition for habitat space and food resources. This study investigated the effect of the gut microbiota on the metabolic rhythms of two sympatric gerbil species (Meriones unguiculatus and Meriones meridianus) to test the hypothesis that the oscillatory patterns of microbiota may not fully mirror those of the host's metabolism. Experiment 1 compared the circadian metabolic and gut microbiota rhythms of M. unguiculatus (n = 12) and M. meridianus (n = 12) and measured the subjects' body temperatures and environmental temperature preferences. In Experiment 2.1, six M. meridianus gerbils were treated with antibiotics, and in Experiment 2.2, 21 M. unguiculatus gerbils (seven per treatment) were randomly gavaged with saline or a gut microbiota suspension from either M. unguiculatus or M. meridianus; their metabolic rhythms were subsequently measured. The results showed that the two gerbils had different metabolic phenotypes that determined activity heterogeneity and contributed to their coexistence. The relative abundances of Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, and Cyanobacteria in M. meridianus varied rhythmically in parallel with the daily metabolic rate, which was significantly higher at night than during the day. The rhythm of the metabolic rate was not noticeable in M. unguiculatus. However, in M.unguiculatus, the relative abundances of Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, and Verrucomicrobia were significantly higher during the day than at night, while Cyanobacteria exhibited the opposite pattern. Antibiotic treatment significantly weakened the metabolic rhythms of M. meridianus, and the circadian rhythms slowly recovered after stopping antibiotic gavage. However, after transplanting M. meridianus' gut microbiota into M. unguiculatus, the metabolic rate of M. unguiculatus was not significantly different from that of the control groups. Our hypothesis was partly supported: the microbiota was only partially involved in regulating the metabolic rhythms of gerbils, and other factors could compensate for the effect of the gut microbiota on host metabolic rhythms. This finding underscores the complexity of host-microbiota interactions and highlights the need for further exploration into the multifaceted mechanisms governing host metabolic regulation.

Vegetation structural shift tells environmental changes on the Tibetan Plateau over 40 years.

Structural information of grassland changes on the Tibetan Plateau is essential for understanding alterations in critical ecosystem functioning and their underlying drivers that may reflect environmental changes. However, such information at the regional scale is still lacking due to methodological limitations. Beyond remote sensing indicators only recognizing vegetation productivity, we utilized multivariate data fusion and deep learning to characterize formation-based plant community structure in alpine grasslands at the regional scale of the Tibetan Plateau for the first time and compared it with the earlier version of Vegetation Map of China for historical changes. Over the past 40 years, we revealed that (1) the proportion of alpine meadows in alpine grasslands increased from 50% to 69%, well-reflecting the warming and wetting trend; (2) dominances of Kobresia pygmaea and Stipa purpurea formations in alpine meadows and steppes were strengthened to 76% and 92%, respectively; (3) the climate factor mainly drove the distribution of Stipa purpurea formation, but not the recent distribution of Kobresia pygmaea formation that was likely shaped by human activities. Therefore, the underlying mechanisms of grassland changes over the past 40 years were considered to be formation dependent. Overall, the first exploration for structural information of plant community changes in this study not only provides a new perspective to understand drivers of grassland changes and their spatial heterogeneity at the regional scale of the Tibetan Plateau, but also innovates large-scale vegetation study paradigm.

Bandgap control in two-dimensional semiconductors via coherent doping of plasmonic hot electrons.

Bandgap control is of central importance for semiconductor technologies. The traditional means of control is to dope the lattice chemically, electrically or optically with charge carriers. Here, we demonstrate a widely tunable bandgap (renormalisation up to 550 meV at room-temperature) in two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors by coherently doping the lattice with plasmonic hot electrons. In particular, we integrate tungsten-disulfide (WS2) monolayers into a self-assembled plasmonic crystal, which enables coherent coupling between semiconductor excitons and plasmon resonances. Accompanying this process, the plasmon-induced hot electrons can repeatedly fill the WS2 conduction band, leading to population inversion and a significant reconstruction in band structures and exciton relaxations. Our findings provide an effective measure to engineer optical responses of 2D semiconductors, allowing flexibilities in design and optimisation of photonic and optoelectronic devices.

Revealing Strong Plasmon-Exciton Coupling between Nanogap Resonators and Two-Dimensional Semiconductors at Ambient Conditions.

Strong coupling of two-dimensional semiconductor excitons with plasmonic resonators enables control of light-matter interaction at the subwavelength scale. Here we develop such strong coupling in plasmonic nanogap resonators, which allows modification of exciton strength by altering electromagnetic environments in nearby semiconductor monolayers. Using this system, we not only demonstrate a large vacuum Rabi splitting up to 163 meV and splitting features in photoluminescence spectra but also reveal that the effective exciton number contributing to the coupling can be reduced down to the single-digit level (N<10), which is 2 orders lower than that of previous systems, close to single-exciton based strong coupling. In addition, we prove that the strong coupling process is not affected by the large exciton coherence size that was previously believed to be detrimental to the formation of plasmon-exciton interaction. We provide a deeper understanding of strong coupling in two-dimensional semiconductors, paving the way for room-temperature quantum optics applications.

Tunable Valley Polarized Plasmon-Exciton Polaritons in Two-Dimensional Semiconductors.

Monolayers of transition-metal dicalcogenides have emerged as two-dimensional semiconductors with direct bandgaps at degenerate but inequivalent electronic "valleys", supporting distinct excitons that can be selectively excited by polarized light. These valley-addressable excitons, when strongly coupled with optical resonances, lead to the formation of half-light half-matter quasiparticles, known as polaritons. Here we report self-assembled plasmonic crystals that support tungsten disulfide monolayers, in which the strong coupling of semiconductor excitons and plasmon lattice modes results in a Rabi splitting of ∼160 meV in transmission spectra as well as valley-polarized photoluminescence at room temperature. More importantly we find that one can flexibly tune the degree of valley polarization by changing either the emission angle or the excitation angle of the pump beam. Our results provide a platform that allows the detection, control, and processing of optical spin and valley information at the nanoscale under ambient conditions.

Study on the influence of coconut oil on flow pattern and pressure drop of two-phase swirl flow.

In view of the widespread existence of swirl flow in surfactant systems in oil drilling, gas gathering, and gathering pipelines, surfactants can affect interfacial tension and thus change the flow pattern. In order to further study and master the swirl flow characteristics in surfactant systems, this experimental investigation was presented, focused on gas-liquid flow during swirl flow, and aiming to evaluate the effect of surfactant in flow patterns. The experimental medium was air and water, the swirler was a vane and the surfactant was natural coconut oil. The purity of coconut oil was 99.9%, and the concentration was 100-900 ppm. The surface tension of the surfactant solution was measured using a surface tension meter to determine the concentration of the coconut oil solution at the minimum surface tension. By analyzing the flow characteristics of the gas-liquid interface with a high-resolution camera, the flow pattern of the gas-liquid two-phase swirl flow under the surfactant system was divided into the swirl linear flow, the swirl wave stratified flow, the swirl axial flow, and the swirl dispersed flow. Compared with the gas-liquid two-phase flow swirl flow pattern without surfactant, it was found that the swirl bubble flow and the swirl slug flow were not present, which was related to the stability of the gas-liquid interface weakened by the decrease of surface tension between the gas and liquid. The effects of flow pattern, gas content, vane parameters, surfactant concentration and flow rate on pressure drop were systematically investigated. Finally, based on the experimental data, we modified the pressure drop model of the gas-liquid two-phase swirl flow under the surfactant system with the vane as the spinner. The calculated value of the pressure drop model agrees well with the experimental data. This model can provide technical support for the safe operation of oil and gas pipelines.

Thermal biology of two sympatric gerbil species: The physiological basis of temporal partitioning.

Sympatric species can coexist through ecological resource partitioning as for example for habitat, food or time. However, a detailed understanding of the basic thermal physiology, crucial for temporal partitioning, is currently lacking, especially for the desert rodents. Here, we compare the physiological performance with regard to thermal energetics and morphological traits of two sympatric gerbils from the Gobi desert of Inner Mongolia, China. The diurnally active Meriones unguiculatus and the nocturnally active M. meridianus. The diurnal M. unguiculatus had more brown adipose tissue (BAT) mass and capacity for non-shivering thermogenesis (NST), a higher resting metabolic rate (RMR) at low ambient temperatures (Ta) and a higher upper critical temperature of the thermal neutral zone (TNZ) than the nocturnal M. meridianus. The overall thermal conductance and lower critical temperatures of M. unguiculatus were also higher than that of M. meridianus, permitting the former to maintain a stable body temperature (Tb) when exposed to high Ta. Laboratory-bred M. meridianus also showed higher daily water intake. We found no differences in body mass, and total evaporative water loss (TEWL) between the two species captured from the natural environment. These results suggest that the diurnal M. unguiculatus have a higher tolerance of high Tas, whereas M. meridianus can save more energy at low Tas. Therefore, from the view point of energy conservation, our results suggest that the nocturnal ecophenotype in M. meridianus is constrained by a lower ability for heat resistance, but this is not the case for the diurnal M. unguiculatus.

Mode Modification of Plasmonic Gap Resonances Induced by Strong Coupling with Molecular Excitons.

Plasmonic cavities can be used to control the atom-photon coupling process at the nanoscale, since they provide an ultrahigh density of optical states in an exceptionally small mode volume. Here we demonstrate strong coupling between molecular excitons and plasmonic resonances (so-called plexcitonic coupling) in a film-coupled nanocube cavity, which can induce profound and significant spectral and spatial modifications to the plasmonic gap modes. Within the spectral span of a single gap mode in the nanocube-film cavity with a 3 nm wide gap, the introduction of narrow-band J-aggregate dye molecules not only enables an anticrossing behavior in the spectral response but also splits the single spatial mode into two distinct modes that are easily identified by their far-field scattering profiles. Simulation results confirm the experimental findings, and the sensitivity of the plexcitonic coupling is explored using digital control of the gap spacing. Our work opens up a new perspective to study the strong coupling process, greatly extending the functionality of nanophotonic systems, with the potential to be applied in cavity quantum electrodynamic systems.

Manipulating light absorption in dye-doped dielectric films on reflecting surfaces.

We experimentally and numerically developed a tunable absorbing nanoscale thin-film system, comprising of dye molecules doped dielectric coatings on reflecting surfaces, the absorption behaviors of which can be flexibly tuned by adjusting the system parameters, i.e. the coating thickness and the doping concentration of dye molecules. Specifically, with appropriate system parameters, our absorbing thin-film system exhibits very directional and polarization dependent absorption properties, which can be significantly altered if applied with different parameters. Calculations demonstrate the unique absorption behaviors are a result of coupling between molecular absorption and Fabry-Perot resonances in the thin-film cavity. In addition, we theoretically show that both the spectral and directional range of the absorption in the thin-film system can be intentionally regulated by doping dyes with different absorption band and setting proper excitation conditions of Fabry-Perot resonances.

The complete mitochondrial genome of one band-winged grasshopper, Bryodema luctuosum luctuosum Stoll (Orthoptera: Acridoidea).

The complete mitochondrial genome of Bryodema luctuosum luctuosum, which was collected from the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau of China, is reported here. It is 15,946 bp in length and contains 74.9% AT. All B. luctuosum luctuosum protein-coding sequences start with a typical ATN codon. The usual termination codon (TAA) and incomplete stop codons (T and TA) were found from 13 protein-coding genes. All tRNA genes could be folded into the typical cloverleaf secondary structure, excluding trnS(AGN) which forms another structure. The sizes of the large and small ribosomal RNA genes are 1316 and 835 bp, respectively. The AT content of the A+T-rich region is 84.8%.

Spectral and directional reshaping of fluorescence in large area self-assembled plasmonic-photonic crystals.

Spectral and directional reshaping of fluorescence from dye molecules embedded in self-assembled hybrid plasmonic-photonic crystals has been examined. The hybrid crystals comprise two-dimensional hexagonal arrays of dye-doped dielectric nanospheres, capped with silver semishells. Comparing the reshaped fluorescence spectra with measured transmission/reflection spectra and numerical calculations reveals that the spectral and directional reshaping of fluorescence is the result of its coupling to photonic crystal Bloch modes and to void plasmons localized inside the silver caps.

Dye-doped spheres with plasmonic semi-shells: Lasing modes and scattering at realistic gain levels.

We numerically simulate the compensation of absorption, the near-field enhancement as well as the differential far-field scattering cross section for dye-doped polystyrene spheres (radius 195 nm), which are half-covered by a silver layer of 10-40 nm thickness. Such silver capped spheres are interesting candidates for nanoplasmonic lasers, so-called spasers. We find that spasing requires gain levels less than 3.7 times higher than those in commercially available dye-doped spheres. However, commercially available concentrations are already apt to achieve negative absorption, and to narrow and enhance scattering by higher order modes. Narrowing of the plasmonic modes by gain also makes visible higher order modes, which are normally obscured by the broad spectral features of the lower order modes. We further show that the angular distribution of the far-field scattering of the spasing modes is by no means dipole-like and is very sensitive to the geometry of the structure.