Platymonas helgolandica-driven nitrogen removal from mariculture wastewater under different photoperiods: Performance evaluation, enzyme activity and transcriptional response.

The nitrogen removal performance and biological mechanism of Platymonas helgolandica var. Tsingtaoensis (P. helgolandica) were investigated in treating mariculture wastewater under different light: dark (L:D) photoperiods. The growth of P. helgolandica was positively correlated with the photoperiods from 6L:18D to 15L:9D, and the highest photosynthetic activity appeared under 6L:18D photoperiod on day 3. P. helgolandica exhibited the highest removal efficiencies of total nitrogen and COD at 89 % and 93 % under 15L:9D photoperiod, respectively. NH4+-N assimilation was proportional to the photoperiods from 6L:18D to 15L:9D and longer illumination promoted NO2--N removal. However, the highest NO3--N reduction rate was achieved under 12L:12D photoperiod. The different nitrogen-transformed enzymatic activities were affected by photoperiod. Transcriptome revealed that unigenes were enriched in nitrogen metabolism and photosynthesis pathways, of which the functional gene expression was up-regulated significantly. This study provides insights into the optimization of photoperiod for mariculture wastewater treatment by P. helgolandica.

High Quality-Factor and Spectrum-Clean AlN Lamb-Wave Resonators with Optimized Lateral Reflection Boundary Conditions and Transducer Design.

This paper presents a high quality-factor (Q) and spectrum-clean AlN Lamb-wave resonator (LWR). The width of its lateral reflection boundary was optimized to weaken the transverse modes' coupling and wave guiding, and then to improve the LWR's Q value and spectral purity, which was verified by finite element analysis and experimental characterization. In addition, the series resonance quality factor (Qs) value of the interdigitated (IDT)-Ground LWR is similar to that of the IDT-Floating LWR, but its parallel resonance quality factor (Qp) is nearly doubled, due to the reduction of the electrical loss induced by its static capacitance (C0). The measured results show that the designed LWR with optimized boundary reflection conditions and IDT-Ground structure exhibit Qs and Qp values as high as 4019.8 and 839.5 at 401.2 MHz and 402.9 MHz, respectively, meanwhile, it has good spectral purity. Moreover, the influence of the metal ratio and material of the LWR's IDT electrodes on the device's performance was also studied by theoretical analysis and experimental verification.

Application of artificial intelligence based on synchrosqueezed wavelet transform and improved deep extreme learning machine in water quality prediction.

Water quality prediction is the basis for the prevention and control of water pollution. In this paper, to address the problem of low prediction accuracy of existing empirical models due to the non-smoothness and nonlinearity of water quality series, a novel water quality forecasting model integrating synchrosqueezed wavelet transform and deep extreme learning machine optimized with the sparrow search algorithm (SWT-SSA-DELM) was proposed. First, the water quality series was denoised by SWT to reduce the non-stationarity and randomness of water quality series. Then, construct DELM by combining ELM and an autoencoder, and an innovative metaheuristic algorithm, SSA, was used to optimize the hyperparameters of the DELM. Finally, the constructed feature vector was used as the input of the DELM, and the proposed water quality prediction model SWT-SSA-DELM was trained and tested with the data sets of Xinchengqiao and Xiaolangdi in the Yellow River Basin, China. Models such as ELM and DELM alone, as well as their improved form based on ensemble learning, long short-term memory network (LSTM), autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) were adopted as comparison models. The results make it evident that the model presented, linking the ability to ensure convergence to the global optima of the SSA with the nonlinear mapping of the DELM, outperforms similar models in terms of predictive performance, with average MAE, MAPE, and RMSE of 0.15, 2.02%, and 0.21 in the test stage, which is 72.82%, 72.88%, and 74.32% lower than the baseline ELM model, respectively.

DGTR: Dynamic graph transformer for rumor detection.

Social media rumors have the capacity to harm the public perception and the social progress. The news propagation pattern is a key clue for detecting rumors. Existing propagation-based rumor detection methods represent propagation patterns as a static graph structure. They simply consider the structure information of news distribution in social networks and disregard the temporal information. The dynamic graph is an effective modeling tool for both the structural and temporal information involved in the process of news dissemination. Existing dynamic graph representation learning approaches struggle to capture the long-range dependence of the structure and temporal sequence as well as the rich semantic association between full graph features and individual parts. We build a transformer-based dynamic graph representation learning approach for rumor identification DGTR to address the aforementioned challenges. We design a position embedding format for the graph data such that the original transformer model can be utilized for learning dynamic graph representations. The model can describe the structural long-range reliance between the dynamic graph nodes and the temporal long-range dependence between the temporal snapshots by employing a self-attention mechanism. In addition, the CLS token in transformer may model the rich semantic relationships between the complete graph and each subpart. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our model when compared to the state of the art.

Impact of carbon/nitrogen ratio on the performance and microbial community of sequencing batch biofilm reactor treating synthetic mariculture wastewater.

The differences of cultured organism species, aquaculture model and supervisor mode lead to different carbon/nitrogen ratios in mariculture wastewater. Therefore, the performance, microbial community and enzymatic activity of sequencing batch biofilm reactor were compared in treating synthetic mariculture wastewater at different chemical oxygen demand/nitrogen (COD/N) ratios. Compared with COD/N ratio of 6, the ammonia-oxidizing rate and nitrite-oxidizing rate at COD/N ratio of 5, 4 and 3 increased by 3.66 % and 3.08 %, 11.19 % and 14.95 %, and 24.50 % and 32.54 %, respectively. Similarly, the ammonia monooxygenase and nitrite oxidoreductase activities increased by 3.50 % and 6.76 %, 11.09 % and 16.22 %, and 25.43 % and 39.19 % at COD/N ratio at 5, 4 and 3, respectively. However, the denitrifying rate and denitrification enzymatic activity declined with the decrease of C/N ratio from 6 to 3. The production, protein content and polysaccharide content of loosely bound extracellular polymeric substances (LB-EPS) and tightly bound EPS (TB-EPS) reduced with the decrease of COD/N ratio from 6 to 3. The abundance of nitrifying genera increased with the decrease of COD/N ratio from 6 to 3, whereas most of denitrification genera displayed a decreasing trend. The microbial co-occurrence pattern, keystone taxa and significant difference were altered with the decrease of COD/N ratio. Among the keystone taxa, Thauera, Denitromonas, Nitrosomonas and Denitratisoma had a close link with nitrogen transformation. The present results can provide some theoretical basis for evaluating the effect of carbon/nitrogen ratio on the nitrogen removal of biological wastewater treatment systems.

A MEMS Fabrication Process with Thermal-Oxide Releasing Barriers and Polysilicon Sacrificial Layers for AlN Lamb-Wave Resonators to Achieve fs·Qm > 3.42 × 1012.

This paper presents a micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) processing technology for Aluminum Nitride (AlN) Lamb-wave resonators (LWRs). Two LWRs with different frequencies of 402.1 MHz and 2.097 GHz by varying the top interdigitated (IDT) periods were designed and fabricated. To avoid the shortcomings of the uncontrollable etching of inactive areas during the releasing process and to improve the fabrication yield, a thermal oxide layer was employed below the platted polysilicon sacrificial layer, which could define the miniaturized release cavities well. In addition, the bottom Mo electrode that was manufactured had a gentle inclination angle, which could contribute to the growth of the high-quality AlN piezoelectric layer above the Mo layer and effectively prevent the device from breaking. The measured results show that the IDT-floating resonators with 12 µm and 2 µm electrode periods exhibit a motional quality factor (Qm) as high as 4382 and 1633. The series resonant frequency (fs)·Qm values can reach as high as 1.76 × 1012 and 3.42 × 1012, respectively. Furthermore, Al is more suitable as the top IDT material of the AlN LWRs than Au, and can contribute to achieving an excellent electrical performances due to the smaller density, smaller thermo-elastic damping (TED), and larger acoustic impedance difference between Al and AlN.

A water quality prediction model based on variational mode decomposition and the least squares support vector machine optimized by the sparrow search algorithm (VMD-SSA-LSSVM) of the Yangtze River, China.

Accurate and reliable water quality forecasting is of great significance for water resource optimization and management. This study focuses on the prediction of water quality parameters such as the dissolved oxygen (DO) in a river system. The accuracy of traditional water quality prediction methods is generally low, and the prediction results have serious autocorrelation. To overcome nonstationarity, randomness, and nonlinearity of the water quality parameter data, an improved least squares support vector machine (LSSVM) model was proposed to improve the model's performance at two gaging stations, namely Panzhihua and Jiujiang, in the Yangtze River, China. In addition, a hybrid model that recruits variational mode decomposition (VMD) to denoise the input data was adopted. A novel metaheuristic optimization algorithm, the sparrow search algorithm (SSA) was also implemented to compute the optimal parameter values for the LSSVM model. To validate the proposed hybrid model, standalone LSSVM, SSA-LSSVM, VMD-LSSVM, support vector regression (SVR), as well as back propagation neural network (BPNN) were considered as the benchmark models. The results indicated that the VMD-SSA-LSSVM model exhibited the best forecasting performance among all the peer models at Panzhihua station. Furthermore, the model forecasting results applied at Jiujiang were consistent with those at Panzhihua station. This result further verified the accuracy and stability of the VMD-SSA-LSSVM model. Thus, the proposed hybrid model was effective method for forecasting nonstationary and nonlinear water quality parameter series and can be recommended as a promising model for water quality parameter forecasting.

Comparative proteomic analysis provides insight into the key proteins as potential targets underlying the effect of malachite green against Ichthyophthirius multifiliis.

Target identification is important for drug discovery. Unfortunately, no drug targets have been found in Ichthyophthirius multifiliis until now and further limited development of the novel drug for Ichthyophthiriasis. In this study, an iTRAQ-based quantitative proteomic analysis was used to find the target of malachite green (MG), exhibiting greater efficacy than the existing drugs, against I. multifiliis trophonts in situ. We also verified the proteomic results by RT-qPCR, TEM and cell apoptosis assay. Our results showed that major variations in protein abundance were found among many of the ribosome proteins, indicating ribosome might be a candidate target. Furthermore, GO and KEGG pathway analyses of differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) revealed that ribosome and PI3K-Akt signalling pathway were remarkably enriched. Taken together, the above DEPs were also verified by RT-qPCR and morphological observations. This study provides insights into the key proteins enriched in PI3K-Akt signal pathway and ribosome pathway as potential targets of MG killing I. multifiliis, which could be served as targets for other less toxic drugs and be tested as potential treatments for I. multifiliis.

Ageing deformation of tailings dams in seasonally frozen soil areas under freeze-thaw cycles.

The freeze-thaw cycle is one of the important factors in inducing a dam-break in the permafrost region, so it is of great practical significance to study the mechanism of the failure deformation of tailings dams under freeze-thaw cycles. In this paper, the water-heat-force coupling model of a tailings dam considering frost-thaw damage is established, and the freeze-thaw cyclic ageing deformation of a tailings dam in a seasonally frozen soil area is studied. The correctness of the model is validated by numerical calculation. The research shows under the same water content, the compressive strength and modulus of deformation decrease with an increase in the number of freeze-thaw cycles, the cohesion and internal friction angle decrease, and the amplitude gradually decreases before becoming stable. In the process of cooling, the pore water pressure first increases and then decreases, and the pore water pressure first decreases and then increases during the heating process. The research results can provide a theoretical basis and reference values for the stability analysis of tailings dams in seasonally frozen soil areas.

lncITPF Promotes Pulmonary Fibrosis by Targeting hnRNP-L Depending on Its Host Gene ITGBL1.

The role of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is poorly understood. We found a novel lncRNA-ITPF that was upregulated in IPF. Bioinformatics and in vitro translation verified that lncITPF is an actual lncRNA, and its conservation is in evolution. Northern blot and rapid amplification of complementary DNA ends were used to analyze the full-length sequence of lncITPF. RNA fluorescence in situ hybridization and nucleocytoplasmic separation demonstrated that lncITPF was mainly located in the nucleus. RNA sequencing, chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP)-qPCR, CRISPR-Cas9 technology, and promoter activity analysis showed that the fibrotic function of lncITPF depends on its host gene integrin ß-like 1 (ITGBL1), but they did not share the same promoter and were not co-transcribed. Luciferase activity, pathway inhibitors, and ChIP-qPCR showed that smad2/3 binds to the lncITPF promoter, and TGF-ß1-smad2/3 was the upstream inducer of the fibrotic pathway. Furthermore, RNA-protein pull-down, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), and protein-RNA immunoprecipitation showed that lncITPF regulated H3 and H4 histone acetylation in the ITGBL1 promoter by targeting heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein L. Finally, sh-lncITPF was used to evaluate the therapeutic effect of lncITPF. Clinical analysis showed that lncITPF is associated with the clinicopathological features of IPF patients. Our findings provide a therapeutic target or diagnostic biomarker for IPF.

Novel formononetin-7-sal ester ameliorates pulmonary fibrosis via MEF2c signaling pathway.

Pulmonary fibrosis is a progressive disorder with poor prognosis and limited treatment options. Therefore, novel therapeutic drugs should be developed in preclinical studies. In this study, we designed and synthesized a novel compound named formononetin-7-sal ester (FS). We also investigated its anti-pulmonary fibrosis ability on transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-ß1)-stimulated pulmonary epithelial cells and fibroblasts in vitro and on bleomycin (BLM)-induced pulmonary fibrosis in vivo. FS strongly blocked cell proliferation and migration, which were activated by TGF-ß1, thereby reducing the expression of lung fibrosis markers, such as vimentin, alpha-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), Snail, and collagen I and III, and increasing the expression of the epithelial cell marker E-cadherin. FS ameliorated BLM-induced pulmonary fibrosis in mice and decreased histopathologic fibrosis scores and collagen deposition. A low expression of hydroxyproline, vimentin, α-SMA, and Snail and a high expression of E-cadherin were found in FS-treated lungs compared with BLM-instilled lungs. Using the Cignal Finder 45-Pathway Reporter Array, we tested the regulation of FS in pulmonary fibrosis-associated signaling pathways and observed that FS significantly inhibited the myocyte enhancer factor-2c (MEF2c) signaling pathway. Gain- and loss-of-function studies, rescue experiments and promoter activity testing were designed to further confirm this result in vivo and in vitro. Collectively, our results demonstrated that FS prevents pulmonary fibrosis via the MEF2c signaling pathway.

Astilbin ameliorates pulmonary fibrosis via blockade of Hedgehog signaling pathway.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The nature of pulmonary fibrosis involves inadequate repair of the epithelial cell barrier accompanied by impaired regulation of the fibroblast. Moreover, pulmonary fibrosis currently lacks an effective therapeutic drug. This study targets the protection of the epithelial cell and fibroblast to identify a novel, potentially therapeutic drug (i.e., astilbin). METHODS: In this study, the cytotoxicity of astilbin was firstly detected using CCK-8. A real-time proliferation/migration analysis system was used to test the inhibitory proliferation and migration of astilbin in vitro. The expression of mesenchymal markers and the loss of epithelial cell markers were analyzed to evaluate the antifibrotic activity of astilbin on TGF-ß1-treated AEC-II and L929 cells and bleomycin-treated mice. Then, in fibrosis-associated signaling pathways, the regulation of astilbin was tested using RNA sequencing and Cignal Finder 45-Pathway system. Rescue and other experiments were used to confirm this pathway regulation further. RESULTS: The data showed that astilbin inhibited proliferation and migration of cell samples. Its treatment resulted in the reduction of pathological score and collagen deposition, with a decrease in α-SMA and Snail and an increase in E-cadherin and SP-C in vivo and in vitro. The fibrosis-associated aberrant genes are some of the most notable components of the Hedgehog signaling pathway. CONCLUSIONS: Astilbin ameliorates pulmonary fibrosis via blockade of Hedgehog signaling pathway and has potential therapeutic value for lung fibrosis treatment.

Effects of oral administration of whole plants of Artemisia annua on Ichthyophthirius multifiliis and Aeromonas hydrophila after parasitism by I. multifiliis.

Since the use of malachite green was banned, it is desirable to search for alternative drug to control Ichthyophthirius multifiliis infection. Moreover, route of administration which is easy to implement and less stressful to fish is important to treat infection of fish with this parasite. It is also important to enhance protective effect against Aeromonas hydrophila infection after parasitism by I. multifiliis. The present study evaluated the protective effect of diet supplemented with Artemisia annua against I. multifiliis and A. hydrophila infection after the parasitism. The results showed that oral administration with A. annua at a concentration of 20 g/kg feed for 45 days can provide strong protection against I. multifiliis infection. The incidence of infestation and mean number of trophonts on fish fins on day 3 post-challenge (15,000 theronts/fish) were significantly reduced compared with the control, and the survival rate of fish during 15-day period was also increased by nearly 30 %. But, this diet provided very limited protection against higher infection dose. Besides, this study demonstrated that this diet enhanced protective effect against A. hydrophila after the fish were infected with I. multifiliis. On the basis of the above results, oral administration with A. annua can be used as a potential strategy for control I. multifiliis infection and increasing fish survival after parasitism by I. multifiliis.

Preliminary study on the relationship between dexamethasone and pathogen susceptibility on crucian carp (Carassius auratus).

Dexamethasone, a known immunosuppressant, can inhibit the immune response and increase the amount of pathogen in body, but the role of dexamethasone affecting susceptibility of crucian carp (Carassius auratus) to pathogen is unclear. The effects of dexamethasone on susceptibility of crucian carp to Aeromonas hydrophila were investigated in this study. The fish were divided into four groups randomly and injected intraperitoneally by dexamethasone for 0 day (group D), 3 days (group C), 6 days (group B), and 9 days (group A), respectively. The serum lysozyme activity was significantly declined in group A, B and C. Relative immune gene expression such as il-1ß, cxcl-8, tnfα and crp in kidney were down-regulation compared to group D. After that crucian carp were infected with A. hydrophila, crucian carp treated by dexamethasone had higher mortality (group A 95%, group B 76%, group C 31%) when compared to group D (4% mortality); the amount of pathogen in was significantly increased (P < 0.05) in liver, kidney and spleen of fish in group A-C compared to group D. These results implicated that higher susceptibility caused by dexamethasone may be induced by the decrease of lysozyme activity and the down-regulation of some immune genes.