Effects of foraging site distances on the intestinal bacterial community compositions of the sympatric wintering Hooded Crane(Grus monacha)and Domestic Duck(Anas platyrhynchos domesticus)

Background:The composition of intestinal microflora in animals is affected by cross-species transmission.In a nature reserve,the foraging sites of waterbirds are relatively fixed,but frequently close to residential areas and can also be visited by domestic fowls.It is easy to result in the trans-species-flock dispersal of gut microbes between the wild birds and domestic fowls.The effects of the variable foraging site distances on the gut microbe structures of the waterbirds and the sympatric domestic fowls are currently unclear,and further research is required to evaluate the impacts of geographic location on cross-infection.Methods:Illumina high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics analysis software were utilized to compare and analyze the composition of gut microbes from the fecal samples of Hooded Cranes(HC;Grus monacha)and two groups of Domestic Ducks(Anas platyrhynchos domesticus)that foraged at 1 km(ducks in near areas,D-N),and 4 km(ducks in far areas,D-F)away from the habitats of the Hooded Cranes at Shengjin Lake,China.Results:The results showed that there were significant differences in the alpha-diversity of the gut bacteria in the HC,D-N,and D-F samples under the interspecific distance factor.The dominant bacterial phyla,Cyanobacteria and Proteobacteria,showed correlations with distance for each host.The D-N group had more diverse intestinal flora than the D-F,as they were physically closer to the HC and had more indirect contact and cross-transmission of their gut microbes.More potentially pathogenic bacterial sequences,and Operational Taxonomic Units(OTUs)were found in the D-N than in HC and D-F.Conclusions:Hooded Cranes and the Domestic Duck populations at variable distances from the cranes showed significant differences in their intestinal bacteria and potentially pathogenic bacteria.The closer the foraging sites were,the easier the intestinal flora spread across species.The results provide a basis for determining the safe distance between wild birds and domestic fowls in a nature reserve.

Experimental cloning of embryos through human-rabbit inter-species nuclear transfer

Therapeutic cloning,which is based on human somatic cell nuclear transfer,is one of our major research objectives.Though inter-species nuclear transfer has been introduced to construct human somatic cell cloned embryos,the effects of type,passage,and preparation method of donor cells on embryo development remain unclear.In our experiment,cloned embryos were reconstructed with different passage and preparation methods of ossocartilaginous cell,skin fibroblast,and cumulus cells.The cumulus cell embryos showed significantly higher development rates than the other two(P<0.05).The development rate of embryos reconstruct-ed with skin fibroblasts of different passage number and somatic cells of different chilling durations showed no significant difference.Also,fluorescence in situ hybridization(FISH)was conducted to detect nuclear derivation of the embryos.The result showed that the nuclei of the inter-species cloned embryo cells came from human.We conclude that(1)cloned embryos can be constructed through human-rabbit interspecies nuclear transfer;(2)different kinds of somatic cells result in different efficiency of nuclear transfer,while in vitro passage of the donor does not influence embryo development;(3)refrigeration is a convenient and efficient donor cell preparation method.Finally,it is feasible to detect DNA genotype through FISH.

Data Classification Using Combination of Five Machine Learning Techniques

Data clustering plays a vital role in object identification. In real life we mainly use the concept in biometric identification and object detection. In this paper we use Fuzzy Weighted Rules, Fuzzy Inference System (FIS), Fuzzy C-Mean clustering (FCM), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to distinguish three types of Iris data called Iris-Setosa, Iris-Versicolor and Iris-Virginica. Each class in the data table is identified by four-dimensional vector, where vectors are used as the input variable called: Sepal Length (SL), Sepal Width (SW), Petal Length (PL) and Petal Width (PW). The combination of five machine learning methods provides above 98% accuracy of class identification.

Global trends in water and sediment fluxes of the world’s large rivers

Water and sediment transport from rivers to oceans is of primary importance in global geochemical cycle.Against the background of global change,this study examines the changes in water and sediment fluxes and their drivers for 4307 large rivers worldwide(basin area!1000 km2)based on the longest available records.Here we find that 24%of the world’s large rivers experienced significant changes in water flux and 40%in sediment flux,most notably declining trends in water and sediment fluxes in Asia’s large rivers and an increasing trend in suspended sediment concentrations in the Amazon River.In particular,nine binary patterns of changes in water-sediment fluxes are interpreted in terms of climate change and human impacts.The change of precipitation is found significantly correlated to the change of water flux in 71%of the world’s large rivers,while dam operation and irrigation rather control the change of sediment flux in intensively managed catchments.Globally,the annual water flux from rivers to sea of the recent years remained stable compared with the long-time average annual value,while the sediment flux has decreased by 20.8%.

Humans identify negative （but not positive） arousal in silver fox vocalizations： implications for the adaptive value of interspecific eavesdropping

The ability to identify emotional arousal in heterospecific vocalizations may facilitate behaviors that increase survival opportunities. Crucially, this ability may orient inter-species interactions, par- ticularly between humans and other species. Research shows that humans identify emotional arousal in vocalizations across multiple species, such as cats, dogs, and piglets. However, no previ- ous study has addressed humans＂ ability to identify emotional arousal in silver foxes. Here, we adopted low- and high-arousal calls emitted by three strains of silver fox--Tame, Aggressive, and Unselected--in response to human approach. Tame and Aggressive foxes are genetically selected for friendly and attacking behaviors toward humans, respectively. Unselected foxes show aggres- sive and fearful behaviors toward humans. These three strains show similar levels of emotional arousal, but different levels of emotional valence in relation to humans. This emotional information is reflected in the acoustic features of the calls. Our data suggest that humans can identify high- arousal calls of Aggressive and Unselected foxes, but not of Tame foxes. Further analyses revealed that, although within each strain different acoustic parameters affect human accuracy in identifying high-arousal calls, spectral center of gravity, harmonic-to-noise ratio, and F0 best predict humans＇ ability to discriminate high-arousal calls across all strains. Furthermore, we identified in spectral center of gravity and F0 the best predictors for humans＇ absolute ratings of arousal in each call. Implications for research on the adaptive value of inter-specific eavesdropping are discussed.

Porcine circovirus type 2(PCV2)and Campylobacter infection induce diarrhea in piglets:Microbial dysbiosis and intestinal disorder

Diarrhea is considered to be associated with microbial dysbiosis caused by infection of pathogens but poorly understood.We herein characterized the colonic microbiota of diarrheal early-weaning piglets infected with porcine circovirus type 2(PCV2)and Campylobacter.Campylobacter infection significantly decreased species richness and Shannon diversity index of colonic microbiota together with a significant increase in the proportion of Campylobacter and Enterobacteriaceae,whereas no significant difference on the above indexes was observed in piglets infected with PCV2 compared with healthy piglets,PCV2 and Campylobacter infection could disturb the homeostasis of colonic microbiota through deterioration of ecological network within microbial community,and specially Campylobacter performed as a module hub in ecological networks.The microbial dysbiosis caused metabolic dysfunction and led to a remarkable reduction in production of short chain fatty acids,following by a higher pH level in colon cavity.Campylobacter infection disturbed the function of colonic tract barrier observed in terms of significant lower relative expression of claudin-1,occluding,and zonula occludens protein-1 genes,and PCV2 infection induced intestinal inflammation together with a higher permeability of colon.Generally,these results suggested that PCV2 and Campylobacter infection could induce microbial dysbiosis and metabolic dysfunction,and cause intestinal disorder,all of which finally were associated to contribute to the diarrhea of early-weaning piglets.

Is Pain Representation？

The argument given by strong representationalists about phenomenal consciousness usually has two steps. The first is to identify all phenomenal consciousness with representation. The second is to identify all phenomenal aspects of phenomenal consciousness with certain representational content. Pain is often thought to be a counterexample torepresentationalism. However, current objections from this perspective mostly focus on the second step and try to show that pains have some special qualities that representational content cannot explain. This paper objects to representationalism with regard to pain （that pain is not representation） by way of a focus on the first step. First, it shows that by borrowing the notion of ＂representation＂ from the causal co-variation theory of representation, representationalists are not able to demonstrate that pain is representation. Second, by laying out some well-accepted criteria for what counts as representation, it argues that pains do not satisfy them. Thus, pain is not representation.

Determination of specificity influencing residues for key transcription factor families

Transcription factors （TFs） are major modulators of transcription and subsequent cellular processes. The binding of TFs to specific regulatory elements is governed by their specificity. Considering the gap between known TFs sequence and specificity, specificity prediction frameworks are highly desired. Key inputs to such frameworks are protein residues that modulate the specificity of TF under consideration. Simple measures like mutual information （MI） to delineate specificity influencing residues （SIRs） from alignment fail due to structural constraints imposed by the three-dimensional structure of protein. Structural restraints on the evolution of the amino-acid sequence lead to identification of false SIRs. In this manuscript we extended three methods （direct information, PSICOV and adjusted mutual information） that have been used to disentangle spurious indirect protein residue-residue contacts from direct contacts, to identify SIRs from joint alignments of amino-acids and specificity. We predicted SIRs for homeodomain （HI））, helix-loop-helix, LacI and GntR families of TFs using these methods and compared to MI. Using various measures, we show that the performance of these three methods is comparable but better than MI. Implication of these methods in specificity prediction framework is discussed. The methods are implemented as an R package and available along with the alignments at http：//stormo.wustl.edu/SpecPred.