Description: CD4+ T cells play an important role in regulating silica-induced inflammation and fibrosis. Recent studies showed that Wnt/β-catenin pathway could modulate the function and the differentiation of CD4+ T cells. Therefore, Wnt/β-catenin pathway may participate in the development and progress of silicosis. To investigate the role of Wnt/β-catenin pathway, we used lentivirus expressing β-catenin shRNA to block the Wnt/β-catenin pathway by intratracheal instillation to the mice model of silicosis. Treatment of lentivirus could significantly aggravate the silica-induced lung inflammation and attenuated the fibrosis at the late stage. By analyzing CD4+ T cells, we found that blockade of Wnt/β-catenin pathway suppressed regulatory T cells (Tregs). Reciprocally, enhanced Th17 response was responsible for the further accumulation of neutrophils and production of proinflammatory cytokines. In addition, blockade of Wnt/β-catenin pathway delayed the Th1/Th2 polarization by inhibiting Tregs and Th2 response. These results indicated that Wnt/β-catenin pathway could regulate Tregs to modulate Th immune response, which finally altered the pathological character of silicosis. Our study suggested that Wnt/β-catenin pathway might be a potential target to treat the silica-induced inflammation and fibrosis.

Description: Model reuse is an essential means to meet the demand of model development in complex simulation. An effective approach to realize the model reusability is to establish standard model specification including interface specification and representation specification. By standardizing model’s external interfaces, Reusable Component Model Framework (RCMF) achieves the model reusability acting as an interface specification. However, the RCMF model is presently developed just through manual programing. Besides implementing model’s business logic, modeler should also ensure the model strictly following the reusable framework, which is very distracting. And there lacks model description information for instructing model reuse or integration. To address these issues, we first explored an XML-based model description file which completed RCMF as the model representation and then proposed a RCMF model development tool—SuKit. Model description file describes a RCMF model and can be used for regenerating a model and instructing model integration. SuKit can generate a skeleton RCMF model together with a model-customized description file with the configured information. Modeler then just needs to concentrate on the model processing logic. The case study indicates that SuKit has good capability of developing RCMF models and the well-formed description file can be used for model reuse and integration.

Description: Forests, Vol. 9, Pages 227: Responses of the Carbon Storage and Sequestration Potential of Forest Vegetation to Temperature Increases in Yunnan Province, SW China Forests doi: 10.3390/f9050227 Authors: Ruiwu Zhou Wangjun Li Yiping Zhang Mingchun Peng Chongyun Wang Liqing Sha Yuntong Liu Qinghai Song Xuehai Fei Yanqiang Jin Jinbo Gao Youxing Lin John Grace Shusen Wang The distribution of forest vegetation and forest carbon sequestration potential are significantly influenced by climate change. In this study, a map of the current distribution of vegetation in Yunnan Province was compiled based on data from remote sensing imagery from the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) from 2008 to 2011. A classification and regression tree (CART) model was used to predict the potential distribution of the main forest vegetation types in Yunnan Province and estimate the changes in carbon storage and carbon sequestration potential (CSP) in response to increasing temperature. The results show that the current total forest area in Yunnan Province is 1.86 × 107 ha and that forest covers 48.63% of the area. As the temperature increases, the area of forest distribution first increases and then decreases, and it decreases by 11% when the temperature increases from 1.5 to 2 °C. The mean carbon density of the seven types of forest vegetation in Yunnan Province is 84.69 Mg/ha. The total carbon storage of the current forest vegetation in Yunnan Province is 871.14 TgC, and the CSP is 1100.61 TgC. The largest CSP (1114.82 TgC) occurs when the temperature increases by 0.5 °C. Incremental warming of 2 °C will sharply decrease the forest CSP, especially in those regions with mature coniferous forest vegetation. Semi-humid evergreen broad-leaved forests were highly sensitive to temperature changes, and the CSP of these forests will decrease with increasing temperature. Warm-hot coniferous forests have the greatest CSP in all simulation scenarios except the scenario of a 2 °C temperature increase. These results indicate that temperature increases can influence the CSP in Yunnan Province, and the largest impact emerged in the 2 °C increase scenario.