The algal blooming in the inland lakes has become a critically important issue for its impacts not only on local natural and social environments, but also on global human community. However, the occurrences of blooming on larger spatial scale and longer time scale have rarely been studied. As the third largest freshwater lake in China, Lake Taihu has drawn increasing attention from both public and scientific communities concerning its degradation. Using available satellite images, we reconstructed the spatial and temporal patterns of algal blooms in Lake Taihu through the pasttwo decades. The blooming characteristics over the past two decades were examined with the dynamic of initial blooming date being highlighted. The initial blooming dates were gradually becoming later and later from 1987 to 1997. Since 1998, however, the initial blooming date came earlier and earlier year by year, with approximately 11.42 days advancement per year. From 1987 to 2007, the annual duration of algal blooms lengthened year by year, in line with the substantial increases in the occurrences of algal blooms in spring and summer months. The algal blooms usually occur in northern bays and spread to center and south parts of Lake Taihu. The increases in previous winter's mean daily minimum temperature partially contributed to the earlier blooming onset. However, human activities, expressed as total gross domestic product (GDP) and population, outweighed the climatic contribution on the initial blooming date and blooming duration. This study may provide insights for the policy makers who try to curb the algal blooming and improve the water quality of inland freshwater lakes.
A method with pulsed electric or magnetic field to reduce the viscosity of crude oil is developed. Specifically, for paraffin-base crude oil, a magnetic field pulse can effectively reduce its viscosity for several hours, while, for asphalt-base crude oil or mixed-base crude oil, an electric field pulse can do the same. The method does not change the temperature of the crude oil; instead, it temporary aggregates paraffin particles or asphaltene particles inside the crude oil into large ones. This particle aggregation changes the rheological property of the crude oil and leads to the viscosity reduction. While this viscosity reduction is not permanent, it is suitable for many important applications, such as oil transport via deepwater pipelines, since it lasts for several hours and is repeatable.
Cardiac hypertrophy is a common pathophysiological process in various cardiovascular diseases, which still has no effective therapies. Irisin is a novel myokine mainly secreted by skeletal muscle and is believed to be involved in the regulation of energy metabolism. In the present study, we found that irisin expression was elevated in hypertrophic murine hearts and serum. Moreover, angiotension II-induced cardiomyocyte hypertrophy was attenuated after irisin administration and aggravated after irisin knockdown in vitro. Next, we generated transverse aortic constriction (TAC)-induced cardiac hypertrophy murine model and found that cardiac hypertrophy and fibrosis were significantly attenuated with improved cardiac function assessed by echocardiography after irisin treatment. Mechanistically, we demonstrated that FNDC5 was cleaved into irisin, at least partially, in a disintegrin and metalloproteinase (ADAM) family-dependent manner. ADAM10 was the candidate enzyme responsible for the cleavage. Further, we found irisin treatment activated AMPK and subsequently inhibited activation of mTOR. AMPK inhibition ablated the protective role of irisin administration. In conclusion, we find irisin is secreted in an ADAM family-dependent manner, and irisin treatment improves cardiac function and attenuates pressure overload-induced cardiac hypertrophy and fibrosis mainly through regulating AMPK-mTOR signaling.
over decades. Oxychalcogenides, which can be regarded as mixing and bridging chalcogenides and oxides together, reactivate their research booms for the remarkable phenomena such as high carrier mobility, [9] thermoelectricity, [10][11][12] ferroelectricity, [13] and superconductivity. [14] Bi 2 O 2 Se, a representative of oxychalcogenides family, emerged as an air-stable highmobility layered semiconductor, which holds promise for next-generation digital devices and optoelectronics. [2,9,13,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] For example, the bulk Bi 2 O 2 Se crystals show an ultrahigh Hall mobility of ≈280 000 cm 2 V −1 s −1 at low temperature [9] and robust bandgap (immune to Se vacancies) after cleavage. [17] Nanoplates and thin films of Bi 2 O 2 Se were successfully prepared by chemical vapor deposition (CVD), [9,15,21,23] displaying excellent switching behavior of I on /I off and high Hall mobility (up to 450 cm 2 V −1 s −1 ) at room temperature. Outstanding optoelectronic properties were recently observed in CVD-grown Bi 2 O 2 Se nanoplates. [16,18,[23][24][25] The present research is mainly focused on the bulk crystals and few-layer or multiplayer samples due to the challenge to faithfully achieve the growth of atomically thin Bi 2 O 2 Se films. The atomically thin counterpart down to one-unit-cell (1-UC) Atomically thin oxychalcogenides have been attracting intensive attention for their fascinating fundamental properties and application prospects. Bi 2 O 2 Se, a representative of layered oxychalcogenides, has emerged as an air-stable high-mobility 2D semiconductor that holds great promise for next-generation electronics. The preparation and device fabrication of high-quality Bi 2 O 2 Se crystals down to a few atomic layers remains a great challenge at present. Here, molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) of atomically thin Bi 2 O 2 Se films down to monolayer on SrTiO 3 (001) substrate is achieved by co-evaporating Bi andSe precursors in oxygen atmosphere. The interfacial atomic arrangements of MBE-grown Bi 2 O 2 Se/SrTiO 3 are unambiguously revealed, showing an atomically sharp interface and atom-to-atom alignment. Importantly, the electronic band structures of one-unit-cell (1-UC) thick Bi 2 O 2 Se films are observed by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), showing low effective mass of ≈0.15 m 0 and bandgap of ≈0.8 eV. These results may be constructive to the synthesis of other 2D oxychalcogenides and investigation of novel physical properties. Ultrathin FilmsThanks to their rich physics and fascinating application prospects, atomically thin metal oxides/chalcogenides (sulfide, selenide, or telluride) and their heterostructures, such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), [1,2] superconducting β-phase FeSe, [3,4] topological insulator (Bi 2 Se 3 , Bi 2 Te 3 ), [5,6] and LaAlO 3 /SrTiO 3 , [7,8] have been attracting tremendous interest
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