Reconciling patterns of long-term topographic growth with coseismic uplift by synchronous duplex thrusting.

How long-term changes in surface topography relate to coseismic uplift is key to understanding the creation of high elevations along active mountain fronts, and remains hotly debated. Here we investigate this link by modeling the development of growth strata and the folding of river terraces above the Pishan duplex system in the southern Tarim Basin. We show that synchronous duplex thrusting of two neighboring faults with varying slip rates, associated with in-sequence propagation of the Pishan thrust system, is required to explain the presence of opposite-dipping panels of growth strata on the duplex front, and basinward migration of terrace fold crests. Importantly, this process of synchronous thrusting within the duplex reconciles the discrepancy between the deformation of terrace folds at the 10-1-100 million-year timescale and the maximum coseismic uplift of the 2015 Mw 6.4 Pishan earthquake on the frontal thrust. These results suggest that topography mismatch at different time scales can reflect the long-term kinematic evolution of fault systems. Thus, our study highlights the importance of characterizing complex subsurface fault kinematics for studying topographic growth, and motivates rethinking of the mountain building process in worldwide active fold-and-thrust belts, from short-term to long-term timescales.

Role of coke media strategy in an adsorption-biological coupling technology for wastewater treatment performance, microbial community, and metabolic pathways features.

With the increase of wastewater discharge, the requirement of wastewater treatment technology is gradually increased. How to treat wastewater economically, while making the treatment process short, easy to manage and low running cost, is the focus of attention. Adsorption-biological coupling technology could make adsorption and biodegradation complement each other, which has coupled accumulation effect. In this study, with coke as the adsorbent, the efficiency of the adsorption-biological coupling reactor on the treatment of total phosphorus (TP), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N) in domestic wastewater under different influent modes was investigated. Meanwhile, microbial community and metabolic pathways analysis of the reactor were carried out. Results showed that when the influent modes of the coupling reactor was once a day and the daily sewage treatment capacity was 2 L, the treatment efficiency of TP, COD, and NH3-N was the best. The removal rate of TP and NH3-N was 87.96% and 96.14%, respectively. The dominant phylum was Proteobacteria (39.84-44.49%), and the dominant genus was Sphingomonas (4.27-7.16%), and Gemmatimonas (1.27-3.58%). According to the metagenomic analysis, carbon metabolism process was evenly distributed in U (upper), M (middle), and L (lower) layers of the coupling reactor. Phosphate metabolism was mainly in the U layer at first, then in the M and L layers gradually. Carbon metabolism and phosphate metabolism provided sufficient energy for microbial degradation of pollutants. Nitrogen removal in the reactor mainly happened in the S and Z layers by nitrification (M00528) and denitrification (M00529), respectively.

Effect of hydraulic retention time on the denitrification performance and metabolic mechanism of a multi-chambered bio-electrochemical system.

The effects of hydraulic retention time (HRT) on the denitrification performance of the multi-chambered bio-electrochemistry system and the metabolic mechanism of the microbial community were investigated. Results indicated that the NO3--N and NO2--N removal efficiency was up to 99.5% and 99.9%, respectively. The electricity generation performance of the system was optimum at 24 h HRT, with the maximum power density and output voltage of the fourth chamber to be 471.2 mW/m3 and 602.4 mV, respectively. With the decrease of HRT from 24 h to 8 h, the protein-like substance in extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) of granular sludge was reduced and the fluorescence intensities were weakened. Besides, the abundance of metabolism pathway was the highest at 50.0% and 49.9%, respectively, and the methane metabolism (1.8% and 2.0%, respectively) and the nitrogen metabolism (0.8% and 0.9%, respectively) in Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway played important roles in providing guaranteed stability and efficient removal of organic matter and nitrogen from the system.

Evaluation of characteristics and microbial community of anaerobic granular sludge under microplastics and aromatic carboxylic acids exposure.

The influences of polyether sulfone (PES) microplastics and different structures aromatic carboxylic acids such as benzoic acid (BA), phthalic acid (PA), hemimellitic acid (HA), and 1-naphthoic acid (1-NA) on the performances and characteristics of anaerobic granular sludge as well as the microbial community were investigated. The chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency was the highest in the experimental group with 40 mg/L BA, reaching 90.1%. The inhibitory effect of aromatic carboxylic acids addition on the 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) activity was more obvious than that on 2-para (iodo-phenyl)-3(nitrophenyl)-5(phenyl) tetrazolium chloride (INT) activity. Compared with the control group (only 0.5 g/L PES microplastics, 60.6 mg TF·g TSS·h-1), the inhibition effect of TTC activity was 32.5 mg TF·g TSS·h-1 and 44.3 mg TF·g TSS·h-1 in the 40 mg/L HA and 40 mg/L 1-NA experimental groups, respectively. When aromatic carboxylic acids were added, the activities of acetate kinase and coenzyme F420 in the anaerobic granular sludge decreased. The excitation-emission matrix (EEM) fluorescence spectra indicated that loosely bound extracellular polymeric substances (LB-EPS) began to decay. After the addition of different aromatic carboxylic acids, the CC and CH functional groups of the anaerobic granular sludge increased, suggesting that aromatic carboxylic acids migrated to the surface of anaerobic granular sludge, such a transfer would lead to changes in anaerobic granular sludge performance. High-throughput sequencing technology showed that the dominant microbial communities in the anaerobic granular sludge were Proteobacteria, Methanothrix, and Methanomicrobia. After the addition of aromatic carboxylic acids, the relative abundances of Proteobacteria, Methanobacterium, and Methanospirillum increased. In the presence of PES, 1-NA had the most serious toxicity to the anaerobic granular sludge.

The in vivo chondrogenesis of cartilage stem/progenitor cells from auricular cartilage and the perichondrium.

Bone marrow-derived stem cells are commonly studied for cartilage tissue engineering and regeneration medicine applications, but their ossification tendency and their limited capacity for chondrogenic differentiation depending on the donor age limit their clinical application. Cartilage stem/progenitor cells are ideal seeding cells, as cartilage stem/progenitor cells from auricular cartilage and the perichondrium have the inherent advantages of chondrogenesis capacity and an easy and nontraumatic harvesting process, displaying promise for applications. The identification and comparison of cartilage stem/progenitor cells from auricular cartilage and the perichondrium in vitro were explored in our previous study, but the in vivo chondrogenesis of these cells has not been fully examined. In the current study, we explored the ectopic chondrogenesis of cartilage stem progenitor/cells from auricular cartilage and the perichondrium after chondrogenic induction in vitro. Our results suggest that stem/progenitor cells from auricular cartilage exhibit significantly better chondrogenesis than those from the perichondrium in vivo, with upregulated chondrogenic genes and a stable cartilage phenotype, as well as good mechanical properties, indicating that stem/progenitor cells from auricular cartilage could be one type of ideal seeding cells for cartilage tissue engineering.

The second fat graft has significantly better outcome than the first fat graft for Romberg syndrome: A study of three-dimensional volumetric analysis.

BACKGROUND: Patients with congenital or acquired deformities always need fat graft at least twice to remodel facial contour. The purpose of this study was to objectively evaluate the outcomes of the first and second fat grafts for Romberg syndrome by using three-dimensional (3D) volumetric analysis. METHOD: A retrospective study was conducted using the medical records of 13 patients with Romberg disease who were treated with fat graft twice for facial filling. Patient and surgeon satisfactions were evaluated by comparing the preoperative and postoperative two-dimensional (2D) photographs. The preoperative and postoperative 3D images were analyzed with professional analysis software to calculate the volume discrepancy between them. RESULT: According to the 2D photographs, both patients and the surgeon were more satisfied with the cosmetic results of the second fat graft. There was no significant statistical difference in the injection volumes between the two surgeries (p = 0.1); however, the survival rate of the second fat graft (75.1% ± 7.7%) was much higher than that of the first (43.3% ± 11.1%) with a significant difference (p < 0.01). CONCLUSION: In this study, 3D images were used to objectively evaluate the survival rate of fat graft. The results showed that the second fat graft without any sophisticated procedures could acquire better cosmetic result and volume retention in Romberg syndrome. This study result could serve as a guide for clinical surgeons to forecast the outcome of sequential fat graft for patients with congenital or acquired deformities.