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Light use efficiency (LUE) is a crucial determinant of plant productivity, while leaf functional traits directly affect ecosystem functions. However, it remains unclear how climate warming affects LUE and leaf functional traits of dominant species in alpine meadows. We conducted a 4-year in-situ field warming experiment to investigate the eco-physiological characteristics for a dominant species ( ) and a common species ( ) on the Tibetan Plateau. The leaf traits, photosynthesis and fluorescence characteristics were measured, along with the soil physical-chemical properties associated with the two species. Experimental warming increased the leaf LUE, maximum photochemical efficiency, non-photochemical quenching, relative water content and specific leaf area for both species. However, there was a decrease in leaf and soil element content. Different species exhibit varying adaptability to warming. Increasing temperature significantly increased the photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate, total water content, and specific leaf volume of ; however, all these traits exhibited an opposite trend in . Warming has a direct negative impact on leaf LUE and an indirectly enhances LUE through its effects on leaf traits. The impact of warming on plant photosynthetic capacity is primarily mediated by soil nutrients and leaf traits. These results indicate that the two different species employ distinct adaptive strategies in response to climate change, which are related to their species-specific variations. Such changes can confer an adaptive advantage for plant to cope with environmental change and potentially lead to alterations to ecosystem structure and functioning.

The item and pod storage assignment problems, two critical issues at the strategic level in robotic mobile fulfillment systems, have a strong correlation and should be studied together. Moreover, the workload balance in each picking aisle needs to be considered in the storage assignment problems to avoid robots’ congestion within picking aisles. Motivated by these, the joint optimization of item and pod storage assignment problems (J-IPSAP) with picking aisles’ workload balance is studied. The mixed integer programming model of the J-IPSAP with the workload balance constraint is formulated to minimize the robots’ movement distance. The improved genetic algorithm (IGA) with the decentralized pod storage assignment strategy is designed to solve the J-IPSAP model. The experimental results show that the IGA can obtain high-quality solutions when compared with Gurobi and the two-stage heuristic algorithms. The robots’ movement distance is smallest when the width-to-length ratio of the storage area is close to 1, and the robots’ movement distance will increase with more stringent workload balance constraints.

In this study, a novel type of multi-armed polymer (poyltehylene glycol, PEG) magnetic graphene oxide (GO) composite (GO@Fe3O4@6arm-PEG-NH2) has been synthesized as a support for immobilization of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) for the first time. The loading amount of HRP was relatively high (186.34 mg/g) due to the surface of carrier material containing a large amount of amino groups from 6arm-PEG-NH2, but degradation rate of phenols was also much higher (95.4 %), which is attributed to the synergistic effect between the free HRP (45.4 %) and the support material of GO@Fe3O4@6arm-PEG-NH2 (13.6 %). Compared with the free enzyme, thermal, storage and operational stability of the immobilized HRP improved. The immobilized HRP still retained over 68.1 % activity after being reused 8 times. These results suggest that the multi-armed magnetic composite has good application prospect for enzyme immobilization.

Identifying the mechanisms that underlie the assembly of plant communities is critical to the conservation of terrestrial biodiversity. However, it is seldom measured or quantified how much deterministic versus stochastic processes contribute to community assembly in alpine meadows. Here, we measured the decay in community similarity with spatial and environmental distance in the Zoige Plateau. Furthermore, we used redundancy analysis (RDA) to divide the variations in the relative abundance of plant families into four components to assess the effects of environmental and spatial. Species assemblage similarity liner declined with geographical distance (p < .001, R2 = .6388), and it decreased significantly with increasing distance of total phosphorus (TP), alkali‐hydrolyzable nitrogen (AN), available potassium (AK), nitrate nitrogen (NO3+–N), and ammonia nitrogen (NH4+–N). Environmental and spatial variables jointly explained a large proportion (55.2%) of the variation in the relative abundance of plant families. Environmental variables accounted for 13.1% of the total variation, whereas spatial variables accounted for 11.4%, perhaps due to the pronounced abiotic gradients in the alpine areas. Our study highlights the mechanism of plant community assembly in the alpine ecosystem, where environmental filtering plays a more important role than dispersal limitation. In addition, a reasonably controlled abundance of Compositae (the family with the highest niche breadth and large niche overlap value with Gramineae and Cyperaceae) was expected to maintain sustainable development in pastoral production. These results suggest that management measures should be developed with the goal of improving or maintaining suitable local environmental conditions. Environmental filtering dominated plant community assembly in the Zoige Plateau.

Desert plants evolve different photosynthetic organs to adapt to the extreme environment. We studied the leaf and canopy gas exchange, chlorophyll content, fluorescence parameters, and anatomical structure of different photosynthetic organs (leaf and assimilating stem) on four desert plants (Nitraria sphaerocarpa, Caragana korshinskii, Haloxylon ammodendron, and Calligonum mongolicum). The results showed a higher net photosynthetic rate (PN) in the assimilating stems of H. ammodendron and C. mongolicum, which also had a higher light saturation point and a lower light compensation point than leaves (N. sphaerocarpa and C. korshinskii), suggesting more efficient solar energy utilization in the former. Within each species, canopy apparent photosynthetic rate (CAP) was significantly lower than PN, and the daily average CAP of the assimilating stems was significantly higher than leaves. These findings indicated that the photosynthetic response of desert plants was specific to photosynthetic organs. We concluded that the assimilating stem was a superior adaption for desert plants to survive the arid environments.

Background Peritoneal dialysis-associated peritonitis is the primary cause of technical failure and infection-related mortality in PD patients. Culture-negative peritonitis poses unique management challenges. The reported incidence of culture-negative peritonitis varies substantially across regions and centers, likely reflecting differences in patient characteristics, microbiological practices, and treatment protocols. In this study, we aimed to investigate the risk factors, treatment strategies, and clinical outcomes of culture-negative peritonitis in a large peritoneal dialysis center in northern China. Methods In this single-center retrospective cohort study, we included consecutive peritonitis episodes from January 2013 to December 2023. We assessed patient demographics, medical history, peritonitis presentation, antibiotic use, and treatment pathways. The primary outcomes were culture-negativity and outcomes of medical cure. Logistic regression was used to identify independent risk factors for culture negativity and failure to achieve a medical cure. Results The overall incidence of peritonitis during the study period was 0.15 episodes per patient-year and the culture-negative peritonitis rate was 25.5%. Patients with culture-negative peritonitis were more likely to have a smoking history ( P  = 0.026) and to have used antibiotics before culture collection (47.6% vs. 9.2%, P  < 0.0001). A higher proportion of culture-negative cases experienced a delay of over a day from hospital presentation to obtaining a culture (27.0% vs. 8.7%, P  = 0.0009). Multivariate analysis revealed that only antibiotic use before culture independently predicted culture negativity (OR = 12.40, 95% CI = 3.80 to 40.20, P  < 0.0001). Culture-negative peritonitis had a medical cure rate of 76.2%, similar to Gram-positive infections (76.2% vs. 67.3%, P  = 0.229) and better than Gram-negative, polymicrobial, fungal, or tuberculosis-related peritonitis. In multivariate analysis, longer dialysis vintage, culture positivity, and higher post-peritonitis hsCRP levels were associated with a failure to achieve a medical cure. Conclusion Culture-negative peritonitis had favorable outcomes compared to Gram-negative and polymicrobial peritonitis. Increased patient awareness and an optimized treatment pathway can enhance a timely and standardized culture collection and reduce the culture-negative rate.

Alpine grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau rank among Earth's ecologically critical yet vulnerable ecosystems. These ecosystems sustain pastoral livelihoods and preserve nomadic cultural traditions. However, climate warming combined with intensified anthropogenic pressures is accelerating shrub encroachment in these ecosystems. For centuries, Tibetan pastoralists have counteracted this process through targeted interventions: manual uprooting of dominant shrubs, controlled patch burning during dormant seasons, and rotational grazing systems coupled with strategic herbivore deployment to suppress woody seedlings. Despite their shrub management efficacy, the scientific rationale underlying Tibetan traditional ecological knowledge—the role of shrub‐herbaceous interaction variability in driving encroachment dynamics—remains understudied. We quantified shrub encroachment patterns across alpine meadows of the Zoige Plateau. Shrub encroachment dynamics were monitored across the elevation gradient (3400–3900 m), spanning the core elevational range of shrub encroachment. To identify shrub‐herbaceous interactions in driving encroachment dynamics, we conducted a manipulative experiment with four shrub treatments: shrub removal, canopy restriction, root exclusion, and ambient control. Our analysis identified that elevation imposed a strong linear constraint on short‐term encroachment rates (RSEIThree = −0.06E + 0.28, R2 = 0.83, p < 0.001; E (elevation, km)). No significant elevational effect was observed on long‐term encroachment rates (RSEIOutset; p > 0.05). Canopy competition (RIICanopy = 0.06E − 0.41, R2 = 0.81, p < 0.001) mainly explained 60.6% of the variation in encroachment dynamics, while root competition (RIIRoot = −0.05E + 0.05, R2 = 0.76, p < 0.001) accounted for 2.8%. Our findings highlight that canopy‐mediated suppression of herbaceous plants is the primary pathway driving encroachment, while root‐driven processes act as secondary mechanisms dependent on canopy architecture. Tibetan traditional methods directly disrupt key ecological drivers of shrub encroachment. By targeting shrub canopy removal, reducing herbaceous communities' light limitation, and weakening shrub competitive advantages that drive shrub encroachment, we promote the recovery of understory herbaceous communities. Rationale of Tibetan traditional ecological knowledge in mitigating shrub encroachment of alpine grasslands.

We report a rare case of peritoneal dialysis (PD)-associated peritonitis caused by Coxiella burnetii , an intracellular pathogen typically associated with Q fever. A 28-year-old female with lupus nephritis and end-stage kidney disease on PD presented with cloudy effluent and abdominal pain after consuming undercooked lamb. Despite initial empirical broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy (cefazolin/ceftazidime protocol), clinical symptoms persisted. Conventional bacterial, fungal, and mycobacterial cultures were negative. Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) of the peritoneal effluent identified C. burnetii DNA. The treatment was transitioned to doxycycline and hydroxychloroquine resulted in clinical improvement and normalization of inflammatory markers. This case underscores the diagnostic value of mNGS in culture-negative peritonitis and emphasizes C. burnetii as an emerging pathogen in immunocompromised PD patients, particularly with zoonotic exposure histories.

Myosin light chain kinase (MLCK) induces contraction of the perijunctional apical actomyosin ring in response to phosphorylation of the myosin light chain. Abnormal expression of MLCK has been observed in respiratory diseases, pancreatitis, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and inflammatory bowel disease. The signaling pathways involved in MLCK activation and triggering of endothelial barrier dysfunction are discussed in this review. The pharmacological effects of regulating MLCK expression by inhibitors such as ML-9, ML-7, microbial products, naturally occurring products, and microRNAs are also discussed. The influence of MLCK in inflammatory diseases starts with endothelial barrier dysfunction. The effectiveness of anti-MLCK treatment may depend on alleviation of that primary pathological mechanism. This review summarizes evidence for the potential benefits of anti-MLCK agents in the treatment of inflammatory disease and the importance of avoiding treatment-related side effects, as MLCK is widely expressed in many different tissues.

Naringin has been shown to exert protective effects in an animal model of ulcerative colitis, but detailed mechanisms remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate function and signaling mechanisms underlying naringin-induced therapeutic effects on colitis. Two mouse models were established to mimic human Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) by treating drinking water with dextran sodium sulphate or intra-colonic administration of 2, 4, 6-trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid. Transcriptomics combined with functional experiments were used to investigate underlying mechanisms. Colitis symptoms, including weight loss and high disease activity index were significantly reversed by naringin. The inflammatory response, oxidative reactions, and epithelial cell apoptosis that occur with colitis were also alleviated by naringin. After naringin treatment, transcriptomics results identified 753 differentially expressed mRNAs that were enriched in signaling pathways, including the neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction, calcium signaling, and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) signaling. The naringin-induced alleviation of colitis was significantly inhibited by the PPAR-γ inhibitor BADGE. In IEC-6 and RAW264.7 cells incubated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), NF-κB-p65, a downstream protein of PPAR-γ, was significantly increased. Naringin suppressed LPS-induced high expression of NF-κB-p65, which was inhibited by small interfering RNA targeting PPAR-γ. Our study clarifies detailed mechanisms underlying naringin-induced therapeutic effects on mice colitis, and PPAR-γ was found to be the main target of naringin by functional experiments both in vivo and in vitro . Our study supplies new scientific information for the use of naringin in colitis treatment.