Case studies of extreme weather and climate events are pivotal to understanding their societal impact in the context of sustainability science. To avoid being constrained by the idiosyncrasy of an individual event, a case study must  Ice-coated forest with decapitated trees in southern China.

The mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways are important signal transduction pathways conserved in essentially all eukaryotes, but haven't been subjected to functional studies in the most important cellulase-producing filamentous fungus Trichoderma reesei. Previous reports suggested the presence of three MAPKs in T. reesei: Tmk1, Tmk2, and Tmk3. By exploring the phenotypic features of T. reesei Δtmk3, we first showed elevated NaCl sensitivity and repressed transcription of genes involved in glycerol/trehalose biosynthesis under higher osmolarity, suggesting Tmk3 participates in high osmolarity resistance via derepression of genes involved in osmotic stabilizer biosynthesis. We also showed significant downregulation of genes encoding chitin synthases and a β-1,3-glucan synthase, decreased chitin content, ‘budded’ hyphal appearance typical to cell wall defective strains, and increased sensitivity to calcofluor white/Congo red in the tmk3 deficient strain, suggesting Tmk3 is involved in cell wall integrity maintenance in T. reesei. We further observed the decrease of cellulase transcription and production in T. reesei Δtmk3 during submerged cultivation, as well as the presence of MAPK phosphorylation sites on known transcription factors involved in cellulase regulation, suggesting Tmk3 is also involved in the regulation of cellulase production. Finally, the expression of cell wall integrity related genes, the expression of cellulase coding genes, cellulase production and biomass accumulation were compared between T. reesei Δtmk3 grown in solid state media and submerged media, showing a strong restoration effect in solid state media from defects resulted from tmk3 deletion. These results showed novel physiological processes that fungal Hog1-type MAPKs are involved in, and present the first experimental investigation of MAPK signaling pathways in T. reesei. Our observations on the restoration effect during solid state cultivation suggest that T. reesei is evolved to favor solid state growth, bringing up the proposal that the submerged condition normally used during investigations on fungal physiology might be misleading.

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In this paper, an approximation-based adaptive tracking control approach is proposed for a class of multiinput multioutput nonlinear systems. Based on the method of neural network, a novel adaptive controller is designed via backstepping design process. Furthermore, by introducing Nussbaum function, the issue of unknown control directions is handled. In the backstepping design process, the dynamic surface control technique is employed to avoid differentiating certain nonlinear functions repeatedly. Moreover, in order to reduce the number of adaptation laws, we do not use the neural networks to directly approximate the unknown nonlinear functions but the desired control signals. Finally, we provide two examples to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

This article aims to analyze the frequency and clinical characteristics of peripheral neuropathy (PN) in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).A total of 4924 SLE patients admitted to the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing, China, from January 1995 to September 2013 were included in this retrospective analysis. The individuals designated as control patients were selected from the pool of SLE patients without PN using the systematic sampling method of 1:2 during the same time.The prevalence of SLE-associated PN (SLE-PN) in SLE patients was 1.5% (73/4924). Seventy-nine cases of PN affected 73 patients and 6 of these patients (8.2%) presented with 2 types of PN. Among the 7 types of PN, polyneuropathy was the most frequent and was diagnosed in 47 cases (59.5%); the remaining patients suffered from mononeuropathy (13.9%), cranial neuropathy (12.7%), myasthenia gravis (10.1%), autonomic neuropathy (2.5%), or acute inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (1.3%). Five patients developed PN before the onset of SLE (3 out of 5 patients had myasthenia gravis). The most common PN-related symptoms were myasthenia and numbness (50.6%), followed by pain in affected regions (35.9%). PN symptoms were relieved in a majority of the patients (76.7%) after treatment. Compared with non-SLE-PN patients, patients with SLE-PN had a higher frequency of fever (65.8% vs 45.9%, P < 0.01), mucocutaneous involvement (73.9% vs 36.3%, P < 0.01), arthritis (42.5% vs 28.1%, P < 0.05), myositis (17.8% vs 5.5%, P < 0.01), and central nervous system involvement (38.4% vs 21.9%, P < 0.05) as well as being positive for the anti-Sm antibody (31.4% vs 18.8%), immunoglobulin G (IgG) elevation (53.6% vs 37.1%, P < 0.01), and reduction in complement 3 (54.8% vs 36.9%, P < 0.05). A statistically significant difference was found between the Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index scores in SLE-PN patients compared with the non-SLE-PN patients (P < 0.05). Multivariate logistic regression showed that the only risk factor for PN was IgG elevation (odds ratio = 2.553, 1.224–5.327, P = 0.012).The prevalence of PN in SLE occurs more frequently in patients with an active form of the disease. IgG elevation is a risk factor for SLE-PN and should be assessed in these patients. Young female patients with myasthenia gravis should be closely monitored for the development of SLE.

There is increasing evidence that Special AT-rich sequence-binding protein 1 (SATB1) is aberrantly expressed in several cancers and is correlated with clinicopathologic parameters in these tumors. In this study, we showed over-expression of SATB1 in 80 cases of colorectal cancer and in 3 colorectal cancer cell lines and found expression levels were strongly associated with tumor differentiation and stage. Expression levels of SATB1 protein were higher in poorly-differentiated as compared with well-differentiated cell lines, and both quantity and distribution patterns of SATB1 were associated with tumor differentiation and pTNM stage. Strikingly, we further investigated the effect of down regulation of SATB1 expression on malignant phenotypic features in colorectal cancer cells in vitro, and showed that SABT1 down-regulation negatively affected growth potential, anchorage-independent colony formation and cancer cell invasion, and resulted in increased apoptosis. SATB1 expression was positively associated with the expression of various biological and genetic markers, including Cyclin D1, MMP-2, NF-κB, and PCNA, and was associated with loss of APC and BRAFV600E. These findings suggest that SATB1 is involved in the carcinogenesis, development and progression of colorectal cancer.

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Exposure to 110 dB white noise for 2 h induced TTS in mice, with the maximal ABR threshold elevations seen on the 4(th) day after noise exposure. There were no significant morphological changes in the cochlea. Paralleled changes of pre-synaptic ribbons in both the number and post-synaptic density (PSDs) during this noise exposure were detected. The number of pre-synaptic ribbon, post-synaptic density (PSDs), and co-localized puncta correlated with the shifts of ABR thresholds. Moreover, a complete recovery of ABR thresholds and synaptic puncta was seen on the 14(th) day after the noise stimulations.