Description: A new indicator of drought induced water stress is introduced and applied at the county level in USA. Unlike most existing drought metrics, we directly consider current daily water demands and renewable daily water supply to estimate the potential stress. Water stress indices developed include the Normalized Deficit Cumulated (NDC) to represent multi-year droughts by computing the maximum cumulative deficit between demand and supply over the study period (1949-2009) and the Normalized Deficit Index (NDI) representing drought associated with maximum cumulative deficit each year. These water stress indices map directly to storage requirements needed to buffer multi-year and within-year climate variability, and can reveal the dependence on exogenous water transferred by rivers/canals to the area. Future climate change and variability can be also incorporated into this framework to inform climate-driven drought for additional storage development and potential applications of water trading across counties.

Description: Hand-foot syndrome (HFS) is the most common adverse effect of capecitabine-containing chemotherapy. The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacies of various prevention and treatment strategies for capecitabine-induced HFS. Searches of the PubMed and Embase databases were performed to identify relevant studies. The risk ratio (RR) with the corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI) was used as an effect measure to evaluate the efficacies of these prevention and treatment strategies. Publication bias was evaluated using Begg's and Egger's tests. Overall and subgroup analyses were conducted. All statistical analyses were conducted with Stata software version 12.0. Seventeen eligible studies were included. Our results indicated that celecoxib was significantly associated with a lower incidence of grade ≥2 capecitabine-induced HFS without heterogeneity (RR=0.43, 95% CI=0.23–0.81, I 2 =0.0%). However, pyridoxine and topical urea/lactic acid were not effective toward preventing capecitabine-induced grade 1, 2, 3, ≥1, or ≥2 HFS. Moreover, pyridoxine was not effective in treating capecitabine-induced HFS. Similar results were obtained by subgroup analysis. Our results indicate that celecoxib has potential prophylactic efficacy for capecitabine-induced HFS. However, pyridoxine and topical urea/lactic acid are not associated with a decrease in the incidence of capecitabine-induced HFS. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Description: Global climate change is likely to affect reference evapotranspiration (ET 0 ) and the use of water resources for vegetation management. Our goals were to identify spatio-temporal characteristics of ET 0 and factors controlling the change in ET 0 and to project spatio-temporal changes in the Qilian Mountains of China under the future climate conditions. Changes in ET 0 were estimated by the Penman–Monteith method for 22 meteorological stations from 1960 to 2015. We quantified the attributions of climatic factors with the differentiation equation method. Then, we assessed the spatio-temporal changes in projected ET 0 with CanESM2 model outputs and statistical downscaling model for three representative concentration pathways (RCP) scenarios for years 2016–2100. We found that annual ET 0 averaged across the region was 1001.5 mm, with an insignificant decrease of −0.43 mm/year during 1960–2015. The lowest values were present in the alpine region in the central area, while the highest ET 0 was detected in the western region. An annual and seasonal “evaporation paradox” existed in the Qilian Mountains during the past few decades. Mean daily air temperature measured ( T mean ) and wind speed ( U 2 ) were the dominant factors in ET 0 change. However, the decreasing trend in ET 0 may be due to a diminished effect of T mean triggered by short-wave radiation ( R s ), actual vapour pressure ( e a ), and wind speed ( U 2 ), but especially by the substantial reduction in U 2 at most stations. Compared with the baseline, ET 0 is likely to increase by 6.31–7.20, 6.11–10.41, and 6.58–17.66%, respectively, under RCP scenarios of 2.6 (very low forcing scenario), 4.5 (medium stabilization scenario), and 8.5 (very high emission scenario), but RCP2.6 ET 0 rates level off and even decline after 2050 while RCP4.5 rates climb only marginally after 2050. Thus, ET 0 projected with the CanESM2 model displayed an upwards trend in the Qilian Mountains, especially the central alpine region. ET 0 showed insignificant decreasing trends with increasing significant air temperature. Wind speed was the most important factor influencing ET 0 changes. Projected ET 0 displayed an upwards trend in the Qilian Mountains, especially the central alpine region. Increasing of evapotranspiration in the future may raise ecological water demand and aggravate water shortage.

Description: Insects cannot synthesize sterols and must obtain them from plants. Therefore, reducing plant sterol content or changing sterol type might be an effective pest control strategy. However, the impacts of these changes on pests’ natural predators remain unknown. Here, we fed artificial diets with reduced sterol content to Mythimna separata (Walker) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) and investigated the effects on its natural predator, Arma chinensis (Fallou) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae). Reduced sterol content in M. separata (MS1, MS2, and MS5) was achieved by feeding them artificial diets prepared from a feed base subjected to one, two, or five cycles of sterol extractions, respectively. The content of most substances increased in A. chinensis (AC) groups feeding on MS2 and MS5. The content of eight substances (alanine, betaine, dimethylamine, fumarate, glutamine, glycine, methylamine, and sarcosine) differed significantly between the control (AC0) and treated (AC1, AC2, and AC5) groups. Metabolic profiling revealed that only AC5 was significantly distinct from AC0; the major substances contributing to this difference were maltose, glucose, tyrosine, proline, O -phosphocholine, glutamine, allantoin, lysine, valine, and glutamate. Furthermore, only two metabolic pathways, that is, nicotinate and nicotinamide metabolism and ubiquinone and other terpenoid-quinone biosynthesis, differed significantly between AC1 and AC5 and the control, albeit with an impact value of zero. Thus, the sterol content in the artificial diet fed to M. separata only minimally affected the metabolites and metabolic pathways of its predator A. chinensis , suggesting that A. chinensis has good metabolic self-regulation with high resistance to sterol content changes.

Description: Knowledge of air permeability ( k a ) at dry conditions is critical for the use of air flow models in porous media; however, it is usually difficult and time consuming to measure k a at dry conditions. It is thus desirable to estimate k a at dry conditions from other readily obtainable properties. In this study, the feasibility of using information derived from grain-size distributions (GSDs) for estimating k a at dry conditions was examined. Fourteen GSD-based equations originally developed for estimating saturated hydraulic conductivity were tested using k a measured at dry conditions in both undisturbed and disturbed river sediment samples. On average, the estimated k a from all the equations, except for the method of Slichter, differed by less than ± 4 times from the measured k a for both undisturbed and disturbed groups. In particular, for the two sediment groups, the results given by the methods of Terzaghi and Hazen-modified were comparable to the measured k a . In addition, two methods (e.g., Barr and Beyer) for the undisturbed samples and one method (e.g., Hazen-original) for the undisturbed samples were also able to produce comparable k a estimates. Moreover, after adjusting the values of the coefficient C in the GSD-based equations, the estimation of k a was significantly improved with the differences between the measured and estimated k a less than ±4% on average (except for the method of Barr). As demonstrated by this study, GSD-based equations may provide a promising and efficient way to estimate k a at dry conditions.

Description: In filamentous fungi, many gene clusters for the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites often stay silent under laboratory culture conditions because of the absence of communication with its natural environment. Epigenetic processes have been demonstrated to be critical in the expression of the genes or gene clusters. Here, we report the identification of a B-type histone acetyltransferase, Hat1, and demonstrate its significant roles in secondary metabolism, conidiation, and the cell wall integrity in the fungus Pestalotiopsis microspora . An hat1 deletion strain shows a dramatic decrease of SMs in this fungus, suggesting hat1 functions as a global regulator on secondary metabolism. Moreover, the mutant strain hat1Δ delays to produce conidia with significantly decreased number of conidia, while shows little effect on vegetative growth, suggesting that it plays a critical role in conidiation. The hypersensitivity of hat1Δ to Congo red demonstrates that disruption of hat1 impairs the integrity of cell wall. Overexpression of the wild-type hat1 allele enhances conidiation by boosting the number of conidia. This is the first report on the role of a B-type histone acetyltransferase in fungal secondary metabolism and cell wall integrity.