Impact Analysis of Coastal Engineering Projects on Mangrove Wetland Area Change with Remote Sensing

In the past decades, two large scale coastal engineering projects have been carried out in the Deep Bay surrounded by Shenzhen City and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. One project is Shenzhen River channel regulation and the other is the sea reclamation along the seashore on the Shenzhen side. The two projects are very close to the two national nature reserves, specifically Futian in Shenzhen and Mai Po in Hong Kong, which are important wetland ecosystems worldwide. This paper aims to identify and monitor the mangrove wetland changes with time series of Landsat Thematic Mapper images pre and post to the two engineering projects being launched. Coupled analysis of the image interpretation results and tidal data acquired at the same time in the context of the two works reveals that the mangrove wetland area has increased from year 1989 to 1994, and has changed little from year 1994 to 2002. Binary coding is applied to reveal the distribution image of mangrove at each phase, and the coding image shows that the construction of the two coastal engineering projects has caused frequent changes in mangrove spatial distribution. The study also shows that the change is not significant regarding to the precision of the method and the natural evolution of mangrove wetland, and the projects do not cause apparently influences upon the two national mangrove conservation zones at least for the research time period.

Mechanisms involved in antineuralgic effects of Paeonia Lactiflora: prediction based on network pharmacology

Objective: The analgesic effect of Paeonia Lactiflora has been widely accepted in traditional Chinese medicine. But little is known about the potential mechanism. This study aims to elucidate the effective components and analgesic mechanism based on network pharmacology. Methods: TCMSP was screened to collect the possible active ingredients and their CAS and SMILES was searched in Pubchem and further be used for reverse molecular docking in Swiss Target Prediction database to obtain potential targets. Pain-related molecules were obtained from GeenCards database, and the predicted targets of Paeonia Lactiflora for pain treatment were selected by Wayne diagram. For mechanism analysis, the protein-protein interactions were constructed by String, the GO analysis and KEGG analysis were conducted in DAVID. Results: Through GO analysis and KEGG analysis, we found that the pain related signaling pathways mainly involved in serotonergic synapse, calcium signaling pathway, inflammatory mediator TRP channels. Using network-based systems biology and molecular docking analyses, we predicted that 11 active ingredients in Paeonia Lactiflora has the analgesic effects with 97 potential targets. PRKCA, CASP3, ALOX15, SLC6A4, PRKCG, ALOX5, PRKCB, ALOX12, EGFR, ADRB2, RYR3, RYR1, NOS2, PTAFR, PRKCQ, and PRKCD were involved in the analgesic effects of Paeonia Lactiflora. Conclusion: Paeonia Lactiflora may alleviate pain through inflammatory mediator regulation of TRP channels, Ca2+ signaling pathway and 5-HT receptor. PRKCA, PRKCB, PRKCD,PRKCQ, and PRKCG may be new targets for pain treatment.

Channel regulation of TFC membrane with hydrophobic carbon dots in forward osmosis

Zero-dimensional carbon dots have emerged as important nanofillers for the separation membrane due to their small specific size and rich surface functional groups.This study proposed a strategy based on hydrophobic carbon dots(HCDs)to regulate water channels for an efficient forward osmosis(FO)membrane.Thin-film composite(TFC)membranes with superior FO performance are fabricated by introducing HCDs as the nanofiller in the polyacrylonitrile support layer.The introduction of HCDs promotes the formation of the support layer with coherent finger-like hierarchical channels and micro-convex structure and an integrated polyamide active layer.Compared to the original membrane,TFC-FO membrane with 10 wt%HCDs exhibits high water flux(15.47 L m^(-2)h^(-1))and low reverse salt flux(2.9 g m^(-2)h^(-1))using 1 mol/L Na Cl as the draw solution.This improved FO performance is attributed to the lower structural parameters of HCDs-induced water channels and alleviated internal concentration polarization.Thus,this paper provides a feasible strategy to design the membrane structure and boost FO performance.

Ryanodine receptor-protein regulator interaction revealed a general molecular mechanism of channel inhibition

Ryanodine receptors (RyR) are the major Ca2+ release channels in both cardiac and skeletal muscle, they play a crucial role in the Ca2+ signaling pathway that govern the