[Effects of socioeconomic factors on urban plant diversity of residential areas in Shanghai, China]. / ç¤¾ä¼šç»æµŽå› ç´ å¯¹ä¸Šæµ·å¸‚å± ä½åŒºæ¤ç‰©å¤šæ ·æ€§çš„å½±å“.

Residential area, usually consisting of buildings and vegetation, is one of the dominant land use types and an important kind of habitat in the urban area. Therefore, it plays an important role in urban biodiversity conservation. Previous studies found that plant diversity abroad in urban residential areas was influenced by socioeconomic factors. However, it is not clear whether this result hold for Chinese cities which have completely different urban management regime. In this study, we investigated plant species diversity in 39 residential neighborhoods in Shanghai. Biodiversity indexes, regression analysis, and partial least square regression analysis were employed to estimate the relationships between plant diversity and socioeconomic factors of population density, house price, house age and greenspace coverage. Our results showed that socioeconomic factors did affect plant diversity in urban residential areas in Shanghai. The effects varied with plant species, population density, house price, house age, and greenspace coverage. The house age had the strongest effect on most plant taxa, then followed by population density, house price, and greenspace coverage. We tested the hypotheses of "luxury effect" and "legacy effect", and found that they only partially explained the spatial distribution of plant taxa in Shanghai. These results could provide insights for management and conservation of plant diversity, as well as urban landscape planning and design in Shanghai.

[Gender-dependent expression of ERalpha in arsenic exposed mice offspring's lung tissue].

OBJECTIVE: To observe theexpression variations of estrogen receptor alpha (ERalpha) in different periods of mice offspring and the gender-dependent differences in the lung tissue with parental arsenic exposure. METHODS: Parental female mice were exposed to arsenic by gavage from gestational day 8th to offspring infancy, and offspring were exposed to arsenic by drinking water after infancy. The expression level of ERalpha mRNA and protein in lung tissue of the male and female offspring in different developmental periods and different doses (low, middle, high) of sodium arsenite exposure were detected by real-time PCR and Western blot. RESULTS: ERalpha mRNA expression in female lung tissue was lower than male in embryonic period (P<0.05); ERalpha mRNA expression in female lung tissue was higher than that of male in infant and adult periods (middle dose of infancy P<0.05, middle and high doses of adulthood P<0.05); No statistical significances were observed in embryo, infancy and adulthood control groups. ERalpha mRNA expression in female lung tissue of infancy and adulthood was higher than that in embryonic period (low, middle and high dose groups P<0.05). ERa protein expression in arsenic exposed female lung tissue was higher than that of male in infant and adult periods, it was also increased by compared with corresponding control groups (P<0.05). The expression level of ERalpha protein in exposed adult female and male offspring were higher than that of infancy. CONCLUSION: Arsenic infected during pregnancy can increase the lung tissue's ERalpha expression level of female offspring in infancy and adulthood. This result is significant to elucidate the role of environment pollutants in gender difference of lung cancer's occurrence.