暖温带乔木和灌木物候变化及对气候变化的响应

根据2003-2014年气象数据和暖温带3种乔木(辽东栎、五角枫和核桃楸)和3种灌木(土庄绣线菊、毛叶丁香和六道木)的物候观测数据资料, 采用气候倾向率和回归分析等方法, 观察乔木和灌木物候变化特征的差异, 分析温度、降水以及乔木、灌木的物候变化趋势, 同时对气象因子与乔木和灌木物候期的相关关系进行研究。结果表明: ①研究期间, 北京东灵山平均气温呈不显著的上升趋势, 气候倾向率为0.200℃·10a–1, 春季(3–5月)和夏季(6-8月)温度显著上升; 降水量呈下降趋势, 平均减少71.630 mm·10a–1, 总体呈暖、干的趋势。②3种乔木的生长季长度都缩短, 辽东栎、五角枫和核桃楸平均生长季长度分别缩短50.70 d·10 a–1、29.83 d·10a–1和22.36 d·10a–1。3种灌木的生长季长度也都缩短, 土庄绣线菊、毛叶丁香和六道木的平均生长季长度分别缩短42.55 d·10a–1、42.76 d·10a–1和38.15 d·10a–1。乔木和灌木的物候变化趋势相同, 整体表现为春季物候推迟, 秋季物候提前, 生长季长度都缩短且生长季长度相差不大。乔木和灌木都表现出芽期推迟最明显, 每10年推迟达19天以上。③乔木和灌木各物候期与气温总体表现为负相关, 即气温升高, 物候期提前, 其相关性显示出夏季(6-8月)温度对植被物候期影响较大, 夏季温度与各物候期表现为正相关, 即夏季温度升高, 物候期推迟。同时乔木和灌木与总体降水没有明显的相关关系, 但秋季物候与不同时段降水表现不同的相关性, 由此可知夏季温度变化对木本植物春季物候(出芽期、展叶期和首花期)的影响更大, 而秋季物候(叶变色期和落叶期)受温度和降水共同影响。     

Vitamin D level and its relation to muscle and fat mass in adult male Arabs

Low levels of vitamin D have been linked with increased adiposity and diminished muscle strength. Whether it is also related to fat deposition in muscle tissues is not studied well. This study explored the associations between circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) and fat deposition in muscle tissues of adult Arab males. A total 465 adult Saudi males were included in this cross-sectional study. Anthropometrics, body composition and muscle strength were assessed. Serum 25(OH)D was determined and quantified enzymatically. They were grouped according to vitamin D status: deficient (25(OH)D < 50 nmol/l) N = 325 (69.9%) and sufficient (25(OH)D > 50 nmol/l)140 (30.1%). Mean level of lean/height², lean-arm-legs and lean-arms-legs/height² were significantly higher in 25(OH)D deficient participants (p-values 0.03; 0.05 and 0.01 respectively). Thigh strength was significantly higher in 25(OH)D sufficient participants than their deficient counterparts (p = 0.02). In all participants, a significant correlation between 25(OH)D was observed with age and thigh-strength (p-values < 0.05), while a significant inverse correlation between 25(OH)D and lean/height², lean-arms-legs, lean-arms-legs/height², fat (%) region, fat arms, fat legs, fat trunk, lean legs were noted. In conclusion, low circulating 25(OH)D is associated with enhanced fat infiltration in muscle tissues of adult Arab males.     

Roadsides provide refuge for orchids: characteristic of the surrounding landscape

Seminatural habitats are declining throughout the world; thus, the role of small anthropogenic habitats in the preservation of plants is becoming increasingly appreciated. Here, we surveyed the orchid flora of roadside verges in five Central European countries (Austria, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia) and tested how the surrounding landscape matrix affects the overall number of species and individuals, and also different functional groups of orchids. We found more than 2,000 individuals of 27 orchid species during our surveys. According to our results, the increasing coverage of agricultural and urban areas negatively affects both the number of orchid species and individuals on roadsides. Our study further suggests that differences in the surrounding habitats affect which species are found on roadsides, since the increasing coverage of grasslands or forested areas around orchid occurrences had a significant positive effect on the number of grassland or forest‐dwelling species and individuals, respectively. Most variance in orchid numerosity and diversity was explained by the cover of the suitable habitat types of the respective taxa in the surrounding landscape of the sampling points. This highlights the importance of roadsides acting as refugia for numerous species and valuable plant communities as well as in supporting biodiversity in general.     

猪流行性腹泻病毒S蛋白胞内区线性B细胞表位最小基序鉴定

[背景] S蛋白是猪流行性腹泻病毒（Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus,PEDV）的主要结构蛋白和免疫原性蛋白,在前期的研究中,本课题组在S蛋白的胞内区鉴定到2个包含线性B细胞表位的短肽。[目的] 鉴定PEDV S蛋白胞内区线性B细胞表位的最小基序。[方法] 原核表达2个短肽的每次后移1个氨基酸的系列8肽,以兔抗S蛋白血清为一抗,通过Western Blot筛选阳性反应8肽,鉴定S蛋白胞内区线性B细胞表位的最小基序。[结果] S蛋白胞内区的2个包含线性B细胞表位的短肽共享一个表位,该表位的最小基序为¹³⁷¹QPYE¹³⁷⁴。同源性分析显示该B细胞表位基序为保守性表位。[结论] 确定了S蛋白胞内区线性B细胞表位的最小基序为¹³⁷¹QPYE¹³⁷⁴;S蛋白抗原表位的鉴定有助于提高对其结构和功能的理解。     

漓江流域生态系统服务价值最大化的土地利用结构优化

土地利用结构优化是促进生态系统可持续发展的重中之重,而生态管理的最终目标是优化生态系统服务,使生态系统提供的服务达到最大化。选择典型生态脆弱区漓江流域为研究区,将整个生态系统服务价值的最大化作为研究目标,首先结合野外实验和五期Landsat高分遥感影像获取基础数据,对研究区1998-2018年各项生态系统服务价值进行估算,然后结合灰色线性模型对2018-2028年价值进行预测,借助Lingo软件提出生态效益最大化的土地结构优化方案,进而对优化前后研究区生态系统服务价值进行比较与分析。结果表明：（1）近20年间研究区主要土地利用类型一直以林地与耕地为主,所占比例保持在整个流域的95%。水域与耕地面积逐年减少,林地、建设用地及未利用地面积持续增加。此外,未利用地面积发生的变化最为显著,增加了近30倍,主要由林地与耕地转变而来。（2）研究区生态系统服务价值总体约减少了19.55×10⁶元,呈现先上升后下降趋势,并将长期处于下降趋势,至2028年时流域生态系统服务价值将减少至8067.43×10⁶元。在流域整体生态系统中,林地价值最高,在历年约占流域总价值的86%,其次是水域及耕地,分别占比8%、6%。（3）对研究区进行优化后,漓江流域总生态系统服务价值增长了2%,其中主要来源于林地与水域面积的增加,提高了生态系统调节服务的供给能力,耕地、建设用地面积略微增加,未利用地面积显著减少,基本与2008年水平持平。本研究通过优化喀斯特地区关键生态系统服务价值,为该区域生态管理提供科学支撑。     

Efficient screening of predictive biomarkers for individual treatment selection

The development of molecular diagnostic tools to achieve individualized medicine requires identifying predictive biomarkers associated with subgroups of individuals who might receive beneficial or harmful effects from different available treatments. However, due to the large number of candidate biomarkers in the large‐scale genetic and molecular studies, and complex relationships among clinical outcome, biomarkers, and treatments, the ordinary statistical tests for the interactions between treatments and covariates have difficulties from their limited statistical powers. In this paper, we propose an efficient method for detecting predictive biomarkers. We employ weighted loss functions of Chen et al. to directly estimate individual treatment scores and propose synthetic posterior inference for effect sizes of biomarkers. We develop an empirical Bayes approach, namely, we estimate unknown hyperparameters in the prior distribution based on data. We then provide efficient screening methods for the candidate biomarkers via optimal discovery procedure with adequate control of false discovery rate. The proposed method is demonstrated in simulation studies and an application to a breast cancer clinical study in which the proposed method was shown to detect the much larger numbers of significant biomarkers than existing standard methods.     

A Bayes factor approach with informative prior for rare genetic variant analysis from next generation sequencing data

The discovery of rare genetic variants through next generation sequencing is a very challenging issue in the field of human genetics. We propose a novel region‐based statistical approach based on a Bayes Factor (BF) to assess evidence of association between a set of rare variants (RVs) located on the same genomic region and a disease outcome in the context of case‐control design. Marginal likelihoods are computed under the null and alternative hypotheses assuming a binomial distribution for the RV count in the region and a beta or mixture of Dirac and beta prior distribution for the probability of RV. We derive the theoretical null distribution of the BF under our prior setting and show that a Bayesian control of the false Discovery Rate can be obtained for genome‐wide inference. Informative priors are introduced using prior evidence of association from a Kolmogorov‐Smirnov test statistic. We use our simulation program, sim1000G, to generate RV data similar to the 1000 genomes sequencing project. Our simulation studies showed that the new BF statistic outperforms standard methods (SKAT, SKAT‐O, Burden test) in case‐control studies with moderate sample sizes and is equivalent to them under large sample size scenarios. Our real data application to a lung cancer case‐control study found enrichment for RVs in known and novel cancer genes. It also suggests that using the BF with informative prior improves the overall gene discovery compared to the BF with noninformative prior.     

Parameter estimation for discretely observed linear birth‐and‐death processes

Birth‐and‐death processes are widely used to model the development of biological populations. Although they are relatively simple models, their parameters can be challenging to estimate, as the likelihood can become numerically unstable when data arise from the most common sampling schemes, such as annual population censuses. A further difficulty arises when the discrete observations are not equi‐spaced, for example, when census data are unavailable for some years. We present two approaches to estimating the birth, death, and growth rates of a discretely observed linear birth‐and‐death process: via an embedded Galton‐Watson process and by maximizing a saddlepoint approximation to the likelihood. We study asymptotic properties of the estimators, compare them on numerical examples, and apply the methodology to data on monitored populations.