Effect of phytohormones on the carbon sequestration performance of CO2 absorption-microalgae conversion system under low light restriction.

Microalgae have the potential to fix CO2 into valuable compounds. Low photosynthetic efficiency caused by low light was one of the challenges faced by microalgae carbon sequestration. In this study, Melatonin (MT) and indole-propionic acid (IPA) were used to alleviate the growth inhibition of Spirulina in CAMC system under low light restriction. The results showed that MT and IPA increased biomass and carbon fixation capacity. 10 mg/L IPA group achieved the maximum biomass and carbon fixation capacity, which were 17.11% and 21.46% higher than control. MT and IPA promoted the synthesis of chlorophyll, which in turn captured more light energy for microalgae growth. The increase of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione reductase (GR) activities enhanced the resistance of microalgae to low light stress. MT and IPA promoted the secretion of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) which was benefit to protect cells. The maximum phycocyanin content and yield was found in 10 mg-IPA group, which was 20.67% and 46.67% higher than control. MT and IPA improved the synthesis of carbohydrates and proteins and increased carbohydrates and proteins yield. This indicated that adding phytohormones was an effective method to alleviate the growth of microalgae restricted by low light stress, which provided a theoretical guidance for the application of CAMC system in CO2 capture and resource utilization.

Assessing Complex Emotion Recognition in Children. A Preliminary Study of the CAM-C: Argentine Version / Evaluación del reconocimiento de emociones complejas en niños. Un estudio preliminar del CAM-C: versión argentina

Facial emotion recognition is one of the psychological processes of social cognition that begins during the first year of life, though the accuracy and speed of emotion recognition improves throughout childhood. The objective of this study was to carry out a preliminary study for the adaptation and validation of the CAM-C FACE test in Argentine children from 9 to 14 years old, by measuring hit rates and reaction times. The results of this study show that the unidimensional model is more appropriate when assessing the speed of performance (reaction times), with a satisfactory reliability (ρ = .950). Results also indicated that girls presented more correct answers compared to boys, while boys had longer reaction times. In addition, the group of children from 12 to 14 years old presented more correct answers compared to the group from 9 to 11 years old, while no differences were observed between groups in terms of reaction times. (AU)

El reconocimiento facial de emociones es uno de los procesos psicológicos de la cognición social que comienza durante el primer año de vida, aunque la precisión y la velocidad de reconocimiento emocional mejora a lo largo de la infancia. El objetivo de esta investigación fue realizar un estudio preliminar de la adaptación y validación del test CAM-C FACE en niños argentinos de 9 a 14 años de edad, evaluando las respuestas correctas y los tiempos de reacción. Los resultados mostraron que el modelo unidimensional es el más apropiado cuando se mide la velocidad de ejecución (tiempos de reacción), con una confiabilidad satisfactoria (ρ = .950). Los resultados también indicaron que las niñas presentan más respuestas correctas que los niños, mientras que estos tienen tiempos de reacción más largos. Asimismo, el grupo de niños de 12 a 14 años presentan más respuestas correctas que el de 9 a 11 años, mientras que no se observan diferencias entre grupos de edad en el tiempo de reacción. (AU)

Insight into the potential mechanism of bicarbonate assimilation promoted by mixotrophic in CO2 absorption and microalgae conversion system.

CO2 absorption-microalgae conversion (CAMC) system is a promising carbon capture and utilization technology. However, the use of HCO3- as a carbon source often led to a slower growth rate of microalgae, which also limited the application of CAMC system. In this study, the assimilation efficiency of HCO3- in CAMC system was improved through mixotrophic, and the potential mechanism was investigated. The HCO3- assimilation efficiency and biomass under mixotrophic were 34.79% and 31.76% higher than that of control. Mixotrophic increased chlorophyll and phycocyanin content, which were beneficial to capture more light energy. The content of ATP and NADPH reached 566.86 µmol/gprot and 672.86 nmol/mgprot, which increased by 31.83% and 27.67% compared to autotrophic. The activity of carbonic anhydrase and Rubisco increased by 18.52% and 22.08%, respectively. Transcriptome showed that genes related to photosynthetic and respiratory electron transport were up-regulated. The synergy of photophosphorylation and oxidative phosphorylation greatly improved energy metabolism efficiency, thus accelerating the assimilation of HCO3-. These results revealed a potential mechanism of promoting the HCO3- assimilation under mixotrophic, it also provided a guidance for using CAMC system to serve carbon neutrality.

Cactus-sorghum intercropping combined with management interventions of planting density, row orientation and nitrogen fertilisation can optimise water use in dry regions.

Some strategies can optimise the use of water in crops under deficit, either by increasing yield or by reducing actual crop evapotranspiration (ET), to promote the sustainable intensification of production systems. The objective was to evaluate how the spacing, planting orientation, nitrogen fertilisation and intercropping strategies impact the dynamics of water in the soil, ET partitioning, and water use indicators for forage cactus and cactus-sorghum intercropping. Four experiments were conducted between 2018 and 2020 in the Brazilian semi-arid region. In the first two sites (I and II), the cladodes of the intercropped forage cactus and sorghum were spaced at 0.10, 0.20, 0.30, 0.40 and 0.50 m with rows-oriented east-west and north-south. In site III, the intercropped rows were spaced at 1.00, 1.25, 1.50 and 1.75 m. Site IV, which contained the forage cactus crop exclusively, was treated with four nitrogen levels (50, 150, 300 and 450 kg N ha-1). The management interventions improved water use more by increasing dry matter than by reducing ET in the cropping system. Intercropping promoted the greatest increase in water productivity (130 %). Increasing N doses in the forage cactus-only crop reduced ET by up to 39 % but increased deep drainage losses by up to 365 %. The most promising management practices for optimising water resources were as follows: spacing of 0.10 m between cactus plants in the intercropping trial under east-west row orientation, as it promoted greater water use efficiency (76 %); spacing of 0.30 m in the north-south orientation; and row spacing of 1.50 m, as it improved water productivity (6.89 kg m-3). Thus, interventions in management should be adopted to optimise water use in intercropping systems with forage cactus, aiming at sustainable intensification in dry environments.

Improving the growth of Spirulina in CO2 absorption and microalgae conversion (CAMC) system through mixotrophic cultivation: Reveal of metabolomics.

Mixotrophic cultivation was proposed to enhance the biomass and carbon sequestration efficiency of Spirulina in CO2 absorption and microalgae conversion (CAMC) system, and the underlying metabolic mechanism was also explored. The result showed that mixotrophic enhanced the performance of CAMC system, the maximum biomass, total carbon conversion capacity and efficiency was obtained at 0.5 g/L acetate group, which was 60.47 %, 63.06 % and 59.77 % higher than control. Adding 0.5 g/L acetate enhanced the activities of Rubisco and Acetyl-CoA, arrived at 89.59 U/g and 5.16 nmol/g, respectively. Metabolomics analyses suggested that mixotrophic changed metabolic flux and affected intracellular composition. Mixotrophic up-regulated Calvin cycle, glycolysis, and tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, induced more carbon fluxes into central carbon metabolism for the growth of Spirulina. These results suggested that mixotrophic could supply effective energy and carbon skeleton for rapid growth of Spirulina, and provided a theoretical basis for large-scale application of CAMC system.

Novel Cooperative Automatic Modulation Classification Using Vectorized Soft Decision Fusion for Wireless Sensor Networks.

Cooperative automatic modulation classification (CAMC) using a swarm of sensors is intriguing nowadays as it would be much more robust than the conventional single-sensing-node automatic modulation classification (AMC) method. We propose a novel robust CAMC approach using vectorized soft decision fusion in this work. In each sensing node, the local Hamming distances between the graph features acquired from the unknown target signal and the training modulation candidate signals are calculated and transmitted to the fusion center (FC). Then, the global CAMC decision is made by the indirect vote which is translated from each sensing node's Hamming-distance sequence. The simulation results demonstrate that, when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was given by η ≥ 0dB, our proposed new CAMC scheme's correct classification probability Pcc could reach up close to 100%. On the other hand, our proposed new CAMC scheme could significantly outperform the single-node graph-based AMC technique and the existing decision-level CAMC method in terms of recognition accuracy, especially in the low-SNR regime.

Effect of different nitrogen ratio on the performance of CO2 absorption and microalgae conversion (CAMC) hybrid system.

CO2 absorption hybrid with microalgae conversion (CAMC) could be a promising alternative for the conventional CO2 capture technologies. The hybrid process could avoid the challenges of thermal energy consumption in the conventional desorption process and nutrition consumption in the typical algae cultivation process. In this work, the influence of different nitrogen ratio (NH4HCO3:NaNO3) on the performance of the proposed hybrid CAMC process was investigated. Experimental results indicated that adding NH4HCO3 into cultivation solution could promote Spirulina platensis growth. When the ratio of NH4HCO3 and NaNO3 was set at 1:4, carbon utilization efficiency of the hybrid process could achieve 40.45%, which was higher than the conventional microalgae CO2 fixation processes (around 10%-30%). In addition, carbon sequestration capacity increased to 178.46 mg/L/d. It could be observed that CO2 absorption-microalgae conversion (CAMC) hybrid system has the potential for cost-effective CO2 capture and utilization.

Video-augmented fluoroscopy for distal interlocking of intramedullary nails decreased radiation exposure and surgical time in a bovine cadaveric setting.

BACKGROUND: We aimed to assess the feasibility of a video-augmented fluoroscopy (VAF) technique using a camera-augmented mobile C-arm (CamC) for distal interlocking of intramedullary nails. METHODS: Three surgeons performed distal interlocking on seven pairs of cadaveric bovine carpal bones using the VAF system and conventional fluoroscopy. We compared radiation exposure, procedure time, and drilling quality between the VAF system and conventional fluoroscopic guidance. RESULTS: Distal interlocking using VAF significantly reduced the number of fluoroscopic images compared with conventional fluoroscopy (P < 0.05). No significant difference in overall procedure time (P = 0.96) or drilling quality (P = 0.12) was detected. VAF demonstrated improvement in radiation exposure when used by a less experienced surgeon (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: VAF is a feasible technique for distal interlocking. Overlaid visualization of the osseous anatomy in relation to the surgical field of view appears to improve surgeons' perception of relevant structures and their spatial orientation for the use of surgical instruments.

Camera-augmented mobile C-arm (CamC): A feasibility study of augmented reality imaging in the operating room.

BACKGROUND: In orthopaedic trauma surgery, image-guided procedures are mostly based on fluoroscopy. The reduction of radiation exposure is an important goal. The purpose of this work was to investigate the impact of a camera-augmented mobile C-arm (CamC) on radiation exposure and the surgical workflow during a first clinical trial. METHODS: Applying a workflow-oriented approach, 10 general workflow steps were defined to compare the CamC to traditional C-arms. The surgeries included were arbitrarily identified and assigned to the study. The evaluation criteria were radiation exposure and operation time for each workflow step and the entire surgery. The evaluation protocol was designed and conducted in a single-centre study. RESULTS: The radiation exposure was remarkably reduced by 18 X-ray shots 46% using the CamC while keeping similar surgery times. CONCLUSIONS: The intuitiveness of the system, its easy integration into the surgical workflow, and its great potential to reduce radiation have been demonstrated.

Canadian Military Nurse Deaths in the First World War.

This paper examines the lives of sixty-one Canadian Nursing Sisters who served during the First World War, and whose deaths were attributed, more or less equally, to three categories: general illness, Spanish Influenza, and killed in action. The response by Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC) physicians to the loss of these early female officers who were, in fact, Canada's first female war casualties, suggests a gendered construction of illness at work in the CAMC. While nurses tried to prove themselves good soldiers, military physicians were quick to attribute their illnesses and deaths to horrific war conditions deemed unsuitable for women. This gendered response is particularly evident in how CAMC physicians invoked a causal role for neurasthenia or shell shock for the nurses' poor health. The health profile of these women also suggests that some of these deaths might have occurred had these women stayed in Canada, and it encourages future comparative research into death rates among physicians and orderlies.

A novel method for contributing to composting start-up at low temperature by inoculating cold-adapted microbial consortium.

Low temperature climate presented a technical challenge to start-up composting in northern region of China. This study investigated if the cold-adapted microbial consortium (CAMC) could promote composting start-up at low temperature. In this work, the CAMC was inoculated when food waste was composted at 10°C. The results showed that inoculating CAMC accelerated the piles temperature effectively, the piles passed through the start-up period within 37h. Moreover, the inoculants could enhance the abundances of dominant strains related to organic matters degradation rate. Redundancy analysis (RDA) indicated that the relationships among indigenous bacteria, organic substrates degradation and temperature evolution were influenced by the inoculants. Furthermore, the heat generation value and degradation rate of the hydrolysable carbohydrate, lipids and protein were significantly enhanced with CAMC inoculated. This work demonstrated that inoculating CAMC was beneficial to composting self-heating, it provided a novel biotechnology support to ensure the normal start-up of winter composting.

Differentiation among populations of Sedum wrightii (Crassulaceae) in response to limited water availability: water relations, CO2 assimilation, growth and survivorship.

Sedum wrightii is one of only a few species in the Crassulaceae for which there is evidence for a high degree of variability in the ratio of daytime to nighttime CO2 assimilation. There are both environmental and genetic components to this variability. S. wrightii grows over a wide altitudinal gradient. The purpose of this study was to compare low, intermediate, and high altitude populations with respect to the degree of CAM expression and the capability to tolerate limited water availability. We utilized clonallyreplicated genotypes of plants from each population in common environment greenhouse experiments. Genetic differences among the populations were found in long-term water use efficiency, in 24 hour CO2 exchange patterns, in biomass δ13C values, in carbon allocation, and in water status and ultimately survival during prolonged drought. The differences among the populations appear to be closely related to differences in the native habitats. The low altitude, desert plants had the greatest ability to grow and survive under conditions of limited water availability and appear to have the greatest shift to nighttime CO2 uptake during periods without water, while the high altitude plants had the poorest performance under these conditions and appear to shut down net carbon uptake when severely water limited.