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Hendriksen Jernigan opublikował 5 miesięcy, 1 tydzień temu
Based on the findings, we highlight the importance of studying insular freshwater biota to better understand diversification mechanisms in fresh waters as well as the origin of studied Aegean freshwater taxa.The topological classification of geochemical elements is widely used as a reference for regional prospecting prediction. In this study, we analyze the topological correlation structures of 39 representative geochemical elements from the Nanling area of South China by implementing the complex networks theory. The topological correlation structures of geochemical elements have a high clustering coefficient (0.8120-0.8880), but the magnitude of the shortest path (1.2950-2.3600) is small. In combination with the analysis of complex networks characteristics, we report that the topological correlation structures of the geochemical elements in this area have small-world characteristics, which reveals the self-organized criticality. As shown in the topological network, two random elements have some level of associations, which present a specific community feature. Our preliminary result shows that with changing the control parameter (k) of „coarse-graining”, the topological correlation structures undergo two critical phase transitions. As the control parameter (k) reaches 0.44, the entire element system evolves into two parts. When the control parameter (k) reaches 0.63, the system forms three „communities”. It is worth noting that the three „communities” are basically consistent with the Goldschmidt’s geochemical classification of the elements, which are lithophile, siderophile, and chalcophile groups, respectively. In these „communities”, we also found that a small level of component units is nested.The influence of waste glass and red mud addition as alternative source of aluminosilicate precursors on the microstructural, mechanical, and leaching properties of bottom ash-based geopolymer was studied in this work through mineralogical, morphological, and spectroscopic analysis, as well as by conducting compressive strength and leaching tests. The bottom ash-based geopolymer composites were synthesized by adding a constant amount of waste glass (10% by weight) and increasing amounts of red mud (up to 30% by weight). The results derived from FTIR, 29Si and 27Al MAS NMR, and SEM-EDX revealed that adding up to 10% (by weight) red mud to the synthesis mixes leads to an increase in the degree of geopolymerization of the activated mixes. The compressive strength followed the same trend. An increase of more than 10% (by weight) red mud added to the synthesis mixes results in a significant decrease of compressive strength of the geopolymer composites. A low leachability of geopolymer composites in regard with their contaminants was revealed especially for those with good compressive strength.Immune regulation status may indicate immunological remission in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This cross-sectional study aimed to determine the Regulatory T cell (Treg) properties, together with 14 plasma cytokines levels between active RA and clinical remission patients. Peripheral blood (PB) Foxp3+ Treg was collected from RA patients for determination of Treg inhibitory activity using a co-culture system. Other PB T cell types and plasma cytokines were determined by flow-cytometry. The Treg results were analyzed according to the disease activity score-28 (DAS28). Then sensitivity and specificity were calculated for the indication of the remission status. The number and inhibitory activity of Treg are higher in the clinical remission as compared to the active RA (p value less then 0.0001). Also, Treg CD4+CD25+CD127+ cell ratio demonstrates the similar result (p value less then 0.05). Treg inhibitory activity is inversely correlated with the DAS28. Specificity and positive likelihood ratio of inhibitory activity for indicating remission status are 92.31% (95% CI 63.97-99.81) and 11.14 (95% CI 1.67-74.14), respectively. Treg inhibitory activity is a promising prognostic marker and probably represents the immunological remission status in RA.We investigated the evolution and transformation of scientific knowledge in the early modern period, analyzing more than 350 different editions of textbooks used for teaching astronomy in European universities from the late fifteenth century to mid-seventeenth century. These historical sources constitute the Sphaera Corpus. By examining different semantic relations among individual parts of each edition on record, we built a multiplex network consisting of six layers, as well as the aggregated network built from the superposition of all the layers. The network analysis reveals the emergence of five different communities. The contribution of each layer in shaping the communities and the properties of each community are studied. The most influential books in the corpus are found by calculating the average age of all the out-going and in-coming links for each book. A small group of editions is identified as a transmitter of knowledge as they bridge past knowledge to the future through a long temporal interval. Our analysis, moreover, identifies the most impactful editions. These books introduce new knowledge that is then adopted by almost all the books published afterwards until the end of the whole period of study. The historical research on the content of the identified books, as an empirical test, finally corroborates the results of all our analyses.Mixed species infections of Theileria spp. are common in nature. Experimental and epidemiological data suggest that mixed species infections elicit cross-immunity that can modulate pathogenicity and disease burden at the population level. The present study examined within-host interactions, over a period of 13 months during natural infections with two Theileria spp., pathogenic (T. lestoquardi) and non-pathogenic (T. ovis), amongst a cohort of naive sheep in Oman. In the first two months after exposure to infection, a high rate of mortality was seen among sheep infected with T. lestoquardi alone. However, subsequently mixed-infections of T. lestoquardi and T. ovis prevailed, and no further death occurred. The overall densities of both parasite species were significantly higher as single infection vs mixed infection and the higher relative density of pathogenic T. lestoquardi indicated a competitive advantage over T. ovis in mixed infection. The density of both species fluctuated significantly over time, with no difference in density between the very hot (May to August) and warm season (September to April). A high degree of genotype multiplicity was seen among T. lestoquardi infections, which increased with rising parasite density. Our results illustrate a potential competitive interaction between the two ovine Theileria spp., and a substantial reduction in the risk of mortality in mixed parasite infections, indicating that T. ovis confers heterologous protection against lethal T. lestoquardi infection.This systematic review and meta-analysis investigated the comorbidities, symptoms, clinical characteristics and treatment of COVID-19 patients. Epidemiological studies published in 2020 (from January-March) on the clinical presentation, laboratory findings and treatments of COVID-19 patients were identified from PubMed/MEDLINE and Embase databases. Studies published in English by 27th March, 2020 with original data were included. Primary outcomes included comorbidities of COVID-19 patients, their symptoms presented on hospital admission, laboratory results, radiological outcomes, and pharmacological and in-patient treatments. 76 studies were included in this meta-analysis, accounting for a total of 11,028 COVID-19 patients in multiple countries. A random-effects model was used to aggregate estimates across eligible studies and produce meta-analytic estimates. The most common comorbidities were hypertension (18.1%, 95% CI 15.4-20.8%). The most frequently identified symptoms were fever (72.4%, 95% CI 67.2-77.7%) and cough (55.5%, 95% CI 50.7-60.3%). For pharmacological treatment, 63.9% (95% CI 52.5-75.3%), 62.4% (95% CI 47.9-76.8%) and 29.7% (95% CI 21.8-37.6%) of patients were given antibiotics, antiviral, and corticosteroid, respectively. Notably, 62.6% (95% CI 39.9-85.4%) and 20.2% (95% CI 14.6-25.9%) of in-patients received oxygen therapy and non-invasive mechanical ventilation, respectively. This meta-analysis informed healthcare providers about the timely status of characteristics and treatments of COVID-19 patients across different countries.PROSPERO Registration Number CRD42020176589.Nowadays, millions of people use Online Social Networks (OSNs) like Twitter, Facebook and Sina Microblog, to express opinions on current events. The widespread use of these OSNs has also led to the emergence of social bots. What is more, the existence of social bots is so powerful that some of them can turn into influential users. In this paper, we studied the automated construction technology and infiltration strategies of social bots in Sina Microblog, aiming at building friendly and influential social bots to resist malicious interpretations. Firstly, we studied the critical technology of Sina Microblog data collection, which indicates that the defense mechanism of that is vulnerable. Then, we constructed 96 social bots in Sina Microblog and researched the influence of different infiltration strategies, like different attribute settings and various types of interactions. Finally, our social bots gained 5546 followers in the 42-day infiltration period with a 100% survival rate. The results show that the infiltration strategies we proposed are effective and can help social bots escape detection of Sina Microblog defense mechanism as well. The study in this paper sounds an alarm for Sina Microblog defense mechanism and provides a valuable reference for social bots detection.In community ecology, it is important to understand the distribution of communities along environmental and spatial gradients. However, it is common for the residuals of models investigating those relationships to be very high (> 50%). It is believed that species’ intrinsic characteristics such as rarity can contribute to large residuals. The objective of this study is to test the relationship among communities and environmental and spatial predictors by evaluating the relative contribution of common and rare species to the explanatory power of models. Our hypothesis is that the residual of partition the variation of community matrix (varpart) models will decrease as rare species get removed. We used several environmental variables and spatial filters as varpart model predictors of fish and Zygoptera (Insecta Odonata) communities in 109 and 141 Amazonian streams, respectively. We built a repetition structure, in which we gradually removed common and rare species independently. After the repetitions and removal of species, our hypothesis was not corroborated. In all scenarios, removing up to 50% of rare species did not reduce model residuals. Common species are important and rare species are irrelevant for understanding the relationships among communities and environmental and spatial gradients using varpart. Therefore, our findings suggest that studies using varpart with single sampling events that do not detect rare species can efficiently assess general distributional patterns of communities along environmental and spatial gradients. However, when the objectives concern conservation of biodiversity and functional diversity, rare species must be carefully assessed by other complementary methods, since they are not well represented in varpart models.