An innovative method based on Gaussian cloud distribution and sample information richness for eutrophication assessment of Yangtze's lakes and reservoirs under uncertainty.

The precise assessment of a water body's eutrophication status is essential for making informed decisions in water environment management. However, conventional approaches frequently fail to consider the randomness, fuzziness, and inherent hidden information of water quality indicators. These would result in an unreliable assessment. An enhanced method was proposed for the eutrophication assessment under uncertainty in this study. The multi-dimension gaussian cloud distribution was introduced to capture the randomness and fuzziness. The Shannon entropy based on various sample size and trophic levels was proposed to maximize valuable information hidden in the datasets. Twenty-seven significant lakes and reservoirs located in the Yangtze River Basin were selected to demonstrate the proposed method. The sensitivity and consistency were used to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed method. Results indicate that the proposed method has the capability to effectively assess the eutrophication status of lakes and reservoirs under uncertainty and that it has a better sensitivity since it can identify more than 33-50% trophic levels compared to the traditional methods. Further scenario experiments analysis revealed that the sample information richness, i.e., sample size and the number of trophic levels is of great significance to the accuracy/robustness of the method. Moreover, a sample size of 60 can offer the most favorable balance between accuracy/robustness and the monitoring expenses. These findings are crucial to optimizing the eutrophication assessment.

Ameliorating Mitochondrial Dysfunction for the Therapy of Parkinson's Disease.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is currently the second most incurable central neurodegenerative disease resulting from various pathogenesis. As the "energy factory" of cells, mitochondria play an extremely important role in supporting neuronal signal transmission and other physiological activities. Mitochondrial dysfunction can cause and accelerate the occurrence and progression of PD. How to effectively prevent and suppress mitochondrial disorders is a key strategy for the treatment of PD from the root. Therefore, the emerging mitochondria-targeted therapy has attracted considerable interest. Herein, the relationship between mitochondrial dysfunction and PD, the causes and results of mitochondrial dysfunction, and major strategies for ameliorating mitochondrial dysfunction to treat PD are systematically reviewed. The study also prospects the main challenges for the treatment of PD.

Transcriptomic comparison of seeds and silique walls from two rapeseed genotypes with contrasting seed oil content.

Silique walls play pivotal roles in contributing photoassimilates and nutrients to fuel seed growth. However, the interaction between seeds and silique walls impacting oil biosynthesis is not clear during silique development. Changes in sugar, fatty acid and gene expression during Brassica napus silique development of L192 with high oil content and A260 with low oil content were investigated to identify key factors affecting difference of their seed oil content. During the silique development, silique walls contained more hexose and less sucrose than seeds, and glucose and fructose contents in seeds and silique walls of L192 were higher than that of A260 at 15 DAF, and sucrose content in the silique walls of L192 were lower than that of A260 at three time points. Genes related to fatty acid biosynthesis were activated over time, and differences on fatty acid content between the two genotypes occurred after 25 DAF. Genes related to photosynthesis expressed more highly in silique walls than in contemporaneous seeds, and were inhibited over time. Gene set enrichment analysis suggested photosynthesis were activated in L192 at 25 and 35 DAF in silique walls and at both 15 and 35 DAF in the seed. Expressions of sugar transporter genes in L192 was higher than that in A260, especially at 35 DAF. Expressions of genes related to fatty acid biosynthesis, such as BCCP2s, bZIP67 and LEC1s were higher in L192 than in A260, especially at 35 DAF. Meanwhile, genes related to oil body proteins were expressed at much lower levels in L192 than in A260. According to the WGCNA results, hub modules, such as ME.turquoise relative to photosynthesis, ME.green relative to embryo development and ME.yellow relative to lipid biosynthesis, were identified and synergistically regulated seed development and oil accumulation. Our results are helpful for understanding the mechanism of oil accumulation of seeds in oilseed rape for seed oil content improvement.

Natural hazard triggered technological risks in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China.

With the continuous occurrence of natural disasters, natural hazard triggered technological accident (Natech) risks also follow. At present, many countries have performed much research on Natech risks. However, there is still a lack of Natech research at the regional or watershed level in China. The Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is not only an industrially intensive development area but also an area with frequent natural disasters. In this study, we selected the YREB as a typical case to study the Natech risk triggered by floods, geological disasters, and typhoons at the regional or watershed level. Four types of risk indicators representing risk sources, natural hazard factors, control levels, and vulnerabilities were developed to assess the spatial patterns of the Natech risks of the YREB. The results show that the Natech risk triggered by floods and typhoons is more serious in eastern area and central area than in western zone and that the Natech risk triggered by geological disasters is more serious in the west part. Approximately 7.85% of the areas are at relatively high-risk and above the Natech risk level based on the comprehensive assessment of three types of Natech risks. The combined population of these areas accounts for approximately 15.67% of the whole YREB, and the combined GDP accounts for approximately 25.41%. It can be predicted that the occurrence of Natech risks in these areas will cause serious harm to both the people and the economy. This work will provide the basis and key management direction for Natech risk management in the YREB.

Auditory Noise Leads to Increased Visual Brain-Computer Interface Performance: A Cross-Modal Study.

Noise has been proven to have a beneficial role in non-linear systems, including the human brain, based on the stochastic resonance (SR) theory. Several studies have been implemented on single-modal SR. Cross-modal SR phenomenon has been confirmed in different human sensory systems. In our study, a cross-modal SR enhanced brain-computer interface (BCI) was proposed by applying auditory noise to visual stimuli. Fast Fourier transform and canonical correlation analysis methods were used to evaluate the influence of noise, results of which indicated that a moderate amount of auditory noise could enhance periodic components in visual responses. Directed transfer function was applied to investigate the functional connectivity patterns, and the flow gain value was used to measure the degree of activation of specific brain regions in the information transmission process. The results of flow gain maps showed that moderate intensity of auditory noise activated the brain area to a greater extent. Further analysis by weighted phase-lag index (wPLI) revealed that the phase synchronization between visual and auditory regions under auditory noise was significantly enhanced. Our study confirms the existence of cross-modal SR between visual and auditory regions and achieves a higher accuracy for recognition, along with shorter time window length. Such findings can be used to improve the performance of visual BCIs to a certain extent.

Performance Evaluation of Visual Noise Imposed Stochastic Resonance Effect on Brain-Computer Interface Application: A Comparison Between Motion-Reversing Simple Ring and Complex Checkerboard Patterns.

Adding noise to a weak input signal can enhance the response of a non-linear system, a phenomenon known as stochastic resonance (SR). SR has been demonstrated in a variety of diverse sensory systems including the visual system, where visual noise enhances human motion perception and detection performance. The SR effect has not been extensively studied in brain-computer interface (BCI) applications. This study compares the performance of BCIs based on SR-influenced steady-state motion visual evoked potentials. Stimulation paradigms were used between a periodically monochromatic motion-reversing simple ring and complex alternating checkerboard stimuli. To induce the SR effect, dynamic visual noise was masked on both the periodic simple and complex stimuli. Offline results showed that the recognition accuracy of different stimulation targets followed an inverted U-shaped function of noise level, which is a hallmark of SR. With the optimal visual noise level, the proposed visual noise masked checkerboard BCI paradigm achieved faster and more stable detection performance due to the noise-enhanced brain responses. This work demonstrates that the SR effect can be employed in BCI applications and can achieve considerable performance improvements.

Seasonal Characteristics of the Chemical Composition of Fine Particles in Residences of Nanjing, China.

Indoor fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and its chemical composition is important for human exposure as people spend most of their time indoors. However, few studies have investigated the multiseasonal characteristics of indoor PM2.5 and its chemical composition in China. In this study, the chemical composition of PM2.5 samples in residences was analyzed over four seasons in Nanjing, China. Indoor water-soluble ions exhibited similar seasonal variations (winter > autumn > summer > spring) to those from outdoors (winter > autumn > spring > summer) except in summer. Whereas, indoor metallic elements exhibited a different seasonal pattern from that of outdoors. The highest concentrations of indoor metallic elements were observed in summer when the outdoor concentrations were low. The different seasonal variations of the chemical composition between indoor and outdoor PM2.5 indicated that people should consider both indoor and outdoor sources to reduce their exposure to air pollutants in different seasons. The carcinogenic risks for metallic elements were within the acceptable levels, while manganese (Mn) was found to have potential noncarcinogenic risk to humans. More attention should be paid to the pollution of Mn in the study area in the future. Moreover, the cumulative effect of noncarcinogenic PM2.5-bound elements should not be ignored.

Environmental incidents in China: Lessons from 2006 to 2015.

Environmental incidents are among the most significant environmental challenges in China. Hundreds of environmental incidents occur every year, endangering human health and ecosystems. In this paper, we conducted an analytical study of environmental incidents from 2006 to 2015 in China. We first examined the spatiotemporal characteristics of the total 5213 incidents based on the statistical data collected from the China Statistical Yearbook on Environment. We then examined the characteristics of the sources of risk, causes of harm and resulting damage of environmental incidents based on first-hand data from 1369 cases collected by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) of China, which obtains detailed incident information. The results show that (1) there was a significant downward trend in the overall number of environmental incidents between 2006 and 2015, and developed eastern regions were high incidence areas; (2) hazardous chemicals were the main risk stressors; (3) production safety accidents and traffic accidents were the two major causes, and (4) most of these incidents resulted in polluted water and air. This paper is the first to provide a longitudinal analysis of the full scope of environmental incidents across the different regions of China, which has useful implications for policy-making and environmental management.