Ecological science focuses on the structure and function of the natural environment. However, the study of ecological environments primarily focuses on single-element research and lacks a comprehensive perspective. To examine ecological environmental trends on different scales, the present paper selected Yunnan Province as the study area. Chemical oxygen demand, rocky desertification, forest coverage, natural disaster data and spatial analysis methods were used to obtain the ecological environmental characteristics of each county and construct a comprehensive evaluation method of the ecological environment. The present paper revealed that the environmental capacity in Yunnan Province was at a moderate level, the ecological environment fragility was remarkable, the significance of the ecological environment was very high, natural disasters occurred frequently, and spatial differentiation between ecological environments was obvious. The province may be divided into three functional areas: the comprehensive-balanced area, the efficiency-dominated area and the environment-dominated area. Central Yunnan was a key development zone and the main area for the manufacturing and service industries, which were built as a modern industrial system in Yunnan Province. The ecological environment in northwestern Yunnan and southern Yunnan is of high significance, and this region was an ecological environment protection area that was important area for the construction of the modern agricultural system in Yunnan Province. To achieve sustainable development of the ecological environment, the spatial characteristics of the ecological environment must be determined at the county scale.

Brucellosis is a natural epidemic zoonotic disease. Liaoning province, north-east of China, has been among the top 10 provinces with highest brucellosis incidence. In this study, the spatial and temporal distribution of brucellosis in Liaoning Province from 2006 through 2017 was analysed using the Bayesian theory of space-time modelling. The study found that in Liaoning Province, (a) all regions of the entire study area were stable counties; (b) the risk of brucellosis declined slowly with time without an obvious trend; (c) the declining trend of disease risk in three sub-hot-spot counties was faster than the overall trend, whereas in other counties, the trend was similar to the overall trend. Furthermore, the time and spatial trends of brucellosis incidence in Liaoning Province were calculated and analysed. These results may provide a theoretical and scientific basis for the public health department to develop targeted effective prevention and control measures for the disease.

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dBrucella melitensis is the most common Brucella species causing human brucellosis. B. melitensis is divided into 3 biovars. Here, we report the complete genome sequence of B. melitensis strain 128, a strain of biovar 3 of sequence type 8, which is prevalent in China. Brucellosis is one of the most common zoonoses caused by the pathogenic bacterium Brucella. Brucellae are Gram-negative, facultative, intracellular bacteria that infect a wide range of animals and humans (6). Based on differences in pathogenicity, host preference, and phenotypic characteristics, six classical species, B. melitensis, B. abortus, B. suis, B. canis, B. ovis, and B. neotomae, are defined. Of the six species, the first four species are pathogenic for humans with reduced virulence. Brucella melitensis has the highest pathogenicity for humans and causes a large proportion of human cases (7). Brucellosis is epidemic in China, and human cases have been reported in all provinces. B. melitensis is the most prominent species causing human brucellosis in China (3). From the 1960s to the 2000s, a major change in the incidence and prevalent biovar of B. melitensis occurred. Genotyping of isolates by multilocus sequence typing showed that sequence type 8 (ST8) is the most frequent sequence type of B. melitensis in China (2). Here, we report the genome sequence of B. melitensis strain 128, a strain of biovar 3 of the prevalent sequence type, ST8.The genomic DNA of strain 128 was sequenced with an Illumina HighSeq 2000 sequencer with the paired-end protocol. All low-quality bases were trimmed from the sequence reads, and the remaining reads were assembled with CLC Bio Genomics Workbench version 5.5 by the de novo assembly method. About 600 Mb of clear data were obtained. The approximate coverage was about 150ϫ. A total of 123 contigs covering a total of 3,276,288 bp was generated. Sixty-seven of the contigs were Ͼ10 kb, and 110 were Ͼ1 kb in length. The average length of all the contigs was 26.63 kb.After assembly, the genome sequence was annotated with different tools. Open reading frames (ORFs) were predicted by using RAST (Rapid Annotation using Subsystem Technology) (1). The rRNA and tRNA were identified by using RNAmmer (4) and tRNAscan-SE 1.21 (5). The total genome has a GϩC content of 57.28% and is composed of 3,278 coding sequences (CDS), including 3,227 potential protein coding sequences, 47 tRNA, one copy of 5S RNA, two copies of large-subunit rRNA, and one copy of small-subunit rRNA. The genome sequence was compared with that of B. melitensis 16 M. A total of 182 small deletions and 102 insertions were identified. Sequencing reads were mapped to the reference sequence of 16 M, and a total of 2,836 single nucleic acid polymorphisms (SNPs) were predicted. Strain 128 belonged to biovar 3 in terms of its biotype and sequence type, ST8. The genome sequence of strain 128 is valuable for genome comparison of Brucella strains from different species and biovars. Further detailed analysis will be included in our future publication, with the resul...