Antiangiogenic activity of low-temperature lysozyme from a marine bacterium <Emphasis Type="Italic">in vivo</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">in vitro</Emphasis>

We extracted marine low-temperature lysozyme (MLTL), a novel lysozyme, from a marine microorganism through fermentation. Our previous study suggested that a low molecular weight (16 kDa) may exert anti-tumor activity through antiangiogenesis. In this study, we extracted a high weight (39 kDa) and investigated its antiangiogenic activity in vivo and in vitro. Using zebrafish embryos as an in vivo study model, we found that treatment with MLTL significantly inhibited the growth of subintestinal vessels (SIVs) in a dose-dependent manner and that 400 μg/ml MLTL was sufficient to block the growth of SIVs. An in vitro study conducted using human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) revealed that MLTL suppressed the proliferation, migration and tube formation of HUVECs in a dose-dependent manner. Interestingly, assays by flow cytometry and DNA electrophoresis indicated that MLTL was able to induce apoptosis of HUVECs. Moreover, further study demonstrated that the disruption of intracellular Ca²⁺ homeostasis may play an important role in MLTL induced apoptosis of HUVECs. Taken together, the results of this study demonstrate for the first time that MLTL inhibits angiogenesis through its pleiotropic effects on vascular endothelial cells and induces apoptosis through regulation of cellular Ca²⁺ levels. The results of this study also revealed a possible mechanism underlying the antiangiogenic effect of MLTL and suggested that MLTL may be a promising new antiangiogenic agent for use in cancer therapy.     

Age-related changes of leaf traits and stoichiometry in an alpine shrub (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Rhododendron agglutinatum</Emphasis>) along altitudinal gradient

Leaf morphological and stoichiometric characteristics are considered to represent both the interior inheritable characters in the plant and its adaptations to specific exterior environments. Rhododendron agglutinatum, an evergreen alpine shrub species, occupies a wide range of habitats above timberline in the Miyaluo Natural Reserve, southwestern China. Along an altitudinal gradient ranging from 3700 to 4150 m, we measured leaf morphological characters including leaf dry matter content (LDMC), leaf dry mass per unit area (LMA), and one leaf area (OLA), as well as carbon (C) and nutrient (N, P) contents in leaves of three different age groups (juvenile leaves, mature leaves and senescent leaves). We also calculated the stoichiometric relationships among carbon and nutrients (C/N, C/P and N/P). Results showed that both age and altitude affected the leaf morphological and stoichiometric properties of R. agglutinatum. Mature leaves possessed the highest LDMC, LMA and C contents both on a dry mass basis and on a unit area basis. Younger leaves possessed higher contents of nutrients. OLA as well as ratios between carbon and nutrients (C/N, C/P) increased with ages. Juvenile leaves possessed lowest ratio between nitrogen and phosphorus. In juvenile leaves, nutrients increased with altitudinal elevation, whereas other traits decreased. In mature leaves, nutrients and their ratios with carbon showed consistent trends with juvenile leaves along increasing altitude, whereas LMA and carbon on a unit area basis showed opposite trends with juvenile leaves along increasing altitude. In senescent leaves, only content of phosphorus on a unit area basis and N/P were found linearly correlated with altitude. Our results demonstrated a clear pattern of nutrient distribution with aging process in leaves and indicated that a high possibility of N limitation in this region. We also concluded that younger leaves could be more sensitive to climate changes due to a greater altitudinal influence on the leaf traits in younger leaves than those in elder leaves.     

Long-term monitoring of the individual self-feeding behavior of rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss

Self-feeding device is extensively used in aquaculture farms, but for salmonids the individual feeding behavior has seldom been continuously observed. In this article, the individual self-feeding behavior of 10 rainbow trout was continuously monitored with a PIT tag record for 50 days with three replicates. The fish fell into three categories according to their feeding behavior, i.e. high triggering fish (trigger behavior more than 25% of the group, HT), low triggering fish (1%–25%, LT) and zero triggering fish (less than 1%). The results showed that in a group of 10 individual 1–2 HT fish accounted for most of the self-feeding behavior (78.19%–89.14%), which was far more than they could consume. The trigger frequency of the fish was significantly correlated with the initial body weight (P <0.01), however, no significant difference in growth rate among the HT, LT, and ZT fish was observed (P >0.05). Cosinor analysis showed that the two HT fish in the same group had similar acrophase. Though some of the HT fish could be active for 50 d, there were also HT fish decreased triggering behavior around 40 d and the high trigger status was then replaced by other fish, which was first discovered in salimonds. Interestingly, the growth of the group was not affected by the alternation triggering fish. These results provide evidence that in the self-feeding system the HT fish didn’t gain much advantage by their frequent self-feeding behavior, and high trigger status of the HT fish is not only an individual character but also driven by the demand of the group. In the self-feeding system, the critical individual should be closely monitored.

     

Be／X射线双星的多波段观测

简要地回顾了Ｂｅ／Ｘ射线双星２０多年来在红外、可见光、紫外和Ｘ射线波段所取得的观测结果，着重介绍了多波段联合观测对探讨双星间的相互作用如中子星的吸积方式和Ｘ射线产生的原因等方面的意义，对这些观测结果的分析研究，将是人们了解Ｂｅ／Ｘ射线双星的轨道参数和双星的物理参数、建立理论模型的基础。     

人造卫星数据库管理系统中ORACLE FORMS的应用

ＯＲＡＣＬＥ ＦＯＲＭＳ是ＯＲＡＣＬＥ数据库系统应用程序重要的开发工具之一,它具有良好的窗口,模拟块以及触发器等功能,同时它作为ＯＲＡＣＬＥ大家族中的一员,与ＯＲＡＣＬＥ的其他应用工具又是分不开的。本文结合实例详细地介绍了ＯＲＡＣＬＥ ＦＯＲＭＳ在开发人造卫星数据库管理系统中的应用。     

Dynamics of the Jupiter Trojans with Saturn’s perturbation when the two planets are in migration

In a previous paper (Hou et al. in Celest Mech Dyn Astron 119:119–142, 2014a), the problem of dynamical symmetry between two Jupiter triangular libration points (TLPs) with Saturn’s perturbation in the present configuration of the two planets was studied. A small short-time scale spatial asymmetry exists but gradually disappears with the time going, so the planar stable regions around the two Jupiter TLPs should be dynamically symmetric from a longtime perspective. In this paper, the symmetry problem is studied when the two planets are in migration. Several mechanisms that can cause asymmetries are discussed. Studies show that three important ones are the large short-time scale spatial asymmetry when Jupiter and Saturn are in resonance, the changing orbits of Jupiter and Saturn in the planet migration process, and the chaotic nature of Trojan orbits during the planet migration process. Their joint effects can cause an observable difference to the two Jupiter Trojan swarms. The thermal Yarkovsky effect is also found to be able to cause dynamical differences to the two TLPs, but generally they are too small to be practically observed.     

Magnetic Disconnections at the Boundary of a Small Interplanetary Magnetic Flux Rope Associated with a Reconnection Exhaust

A local current sheet and a subsequent small interplanetary magnetic-flux rope were observed on 1 April 2003 by Wind and the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE). A Petschek reconnection-like exhaust crossing of the local current sheet was identified using the Walén test. The Wind spacecraft re-entered the reconnection exhaust after the main exhaust encounter, and the reentry may be due to a spatial fold of the current-sheet surface itself. The absence of parallel strahls and the presence of antiparallel strahls on either side of the current sheet suggest that the magnetic-field lines before the exhaust and in the subsequent small flux rope are all open. The \(180^{\circ}\) pitch-angle strahls were clearly absent, and halo-suprathermal electron pitch-angle distributions were observed in the exhaust. This finding means that the open field lines of the magnetic-flux rope were reconnecting to the adjacent open field lines to produce U-shaped field lines disconnected from the Sun. These observations provide direct evidence that the magnetic fields of the interplanetary small magnetic-flux rope were disconnecting from the Sun through magnetic reconnection. This type of disconnected event potentially has important implications for the magnetic-flux budget of the heliosphere.     

Investigations into the thermal non-equilibrium of W UMa-type contact binaries

Traditionally, some physical details(e.g., magnetic braking, energy transfer, angular momentum loss, etc.) have to be taken into consideration during investigations into the evolution of contact binaries. However, the real evolutionary processes which usually contain several of these physical mechanisms are very complicated as a result of strong interaction between components. To avoid dealing with these factors, a linear relationship is applied to the temperatures of components. It is found that the higher the mass ratio(M_2/M_1) of a contact system, the weaker the deviation from thermal equilibrium.On this basis, a variation trend of fill-out factor(f) changing with mass ratio can be inferred, which is consistent with observations. Moreover, if we stick to this point of view, it should be natural that the number of semi-detached binaries in the predicted broken-contact phase of relaxation oscillations is less than the number in the contact phase.     

Solar GLAO and TAO:performance comparisons

Multi-conjugate adaptive optics(MCAO),consisting of several deformable mirrors(DMs),can significantly increase the adaptive optics(AO)correction field of view.Current MCAO can be realized by either star-oriented or layer-oriented approaches.For solar AO,ground-layer adaptive optics(GLAO)can be viewed as an extreme case of layer-oriented MCAO in which the DM is conjugated to the ground,while solar tomography adaptive optics(TAO)that we proposed recently can be viewed as star-oriented MCAO with only one DM.Solar GLAO and TAO use the same hardware as conventional solar AO,and therefore it will be important to see which method can deliver better performance.In this article,we compare the performance of solar GLAO and TAO by using end-to-end numerical simulation software.Numerical simulations of TAO and GLAO with different numbers of guide stars are conducted.Our results show that TAO and GLAO produce the same performance if the DM is conjugated to the ground,but TAO can only generate better performance when the DM is conjugated to the best height.This result has important application in existing one-DM solar AO systems.     

Direct constraint on cosmic neutrino mass using observational Hubble parameter data

In order to explore the properties of cosmic neutrinos, i.e. sum of the neutrino mass(∑m_ν) and the effective number of neutrino species(N_(eff)), which affects the Hubble expansion rate H(z)and the power of observational Hubble parameter data(OHD) in constraining cosmological parameters under the ΛCDM model, we utilize OHD to constrain the properties of cosmic neutrinos and apply an accurate H(z) function with mνand Neff. First, we simulate new OHD beyond the existing 43 OHD. According to the predictions of measurements of H_0(the current H(z) value), baryon acoustic oscillations(BAO) peaks, Sandage-Loeb(SL) test and cosmic microwave background(CMB), we assume observational accuracy up to 2% and redshift 0 z ≤5. With simulated H(z) data obtained from the fiducial model, we constrain the parameters including mνand Neff. When all parameters are set free, mν 0.196 eV(95%) and N_(eff)= 2.984 ± 0.826(68%) are obtained, and when fixing Neff as the standard baseline 3.046, we attain ∑m_ν 0.240 eV(95%). These constrained results are much tighter than the ones obtained by the current OHD, which makes the prospect of OHD in constraining cosmological parameters more promising as its accuracy and quantity grow.