Building partnerships — the Ohio Materials Exchange

This paper discusses a method by which individuals working in government, private business, not-for-profit and educational organizations developed a collaborative statewide program involving the exchange of materials from manufacturers, commercial business and not-for-profit organizations in Ohio.     

外源NO对NaCl胁迫下黄瓜幼苗生长和根系膜脂过氧化作用的影响

采用营养液水培,研究外源NO对NaCl胁迫下黄瓜幼苗生长、根系膜脂过氧化作用的影响.结果表明,100 μmol·L-1NO供体硝普钠(SNP)能显著缓解50 mmol·L-1NaCl胁迫对黄瓜植株造成的伤害,提高幼苗生长量,增强幼苗根系抗氧化酶活性,提高根系脯氨酸(Pro)含量,缓解根系膜脂过氧化作用,从而提高植株耐盐性.     

黑麦草根际强化微生物净化甲苯

采用在普通生物反应器上种植黑麦草的方法,研究了黑麦草根系强化微生物净化甲苯污染气体的作用,及甲苯入口浓度、填料深度、温度对反应器净化甲苯速率的影响。结果表明,在生物反应器相同的填料深度,细菌数量的水平分布为黑麦草根际区>过渡区>非根际,与相同位置的甲苯浓度分布呈负相关,说明黑麦草根系通过促进细菌的活性进而增加甲苯的降解。在相同的甲苯入口浓度下,甲苯的净化速率随着填料深度的增加而增加,在甲苯入口浓度不高于500 mg/m3条件下,相同的填料深度,反应器对甲苯的净化速率随着甲苯浓度的增加而增加。在5~35℃范围内,温度升高有助于提高微生物活性,促进微生物对甲苯的降解,且有黑麦草处理的甲苯净化速率大于同等条件下无黑麦草处理。     

The effects of pruning and nodal adventitious roots on polychlorinated biphenyl uptake by Cucurbita pepo grown in field conditions

Two cultivation techniques (i-pruning and ii-nodal adventitious root encouragement) were investigated for their ability to increase PCB phytoextraction by Cucurbita pepo ssp pepo cv. Howden (pumpkin) plants in situ at a contaminated industrial site in Ontario (Aroclor 1248, mean soil [PCB] = 5.6 μg g⁻¹). Pruning was implemented to increase plant biomass close to the root where PCB concentration is known to be highest. This treatment was found to have no effect on final shoot biomass or PCB concentration. However, material pruned from the plant is not included in the final shoot biomass. The encouragement of nodal adventitious roots at stem nodes did significantly increase the PCB concentration in the primary stem, while not affecting shoot biomass. Both techniques are easily applied cultivation practices that may be implemented to decrease phytoextraction treatment time.     

Evaluating weather effects on interannual variation in net ecosystem productivity of a coastal temperate forest landscape: A model intercomparison

Forest productivity is strongly affected by seasonal weather patterns and by natural or anthropogenic disturbances. However weather effects on forest productivity are not currently represented in inventory-based models such as CBM-CFS3 used in national forest C accounting programs. To evaluate different approaches to modelling these effects, a model intercomparison was conducted among CBM-CFS3 and four process models (ecosys, CN-CLASS, Can-IBIS and 3PG) over a 2500 ha landscape in the Oyster River (OR) area of British Columbia, Canada. The process models used local weather data to simulate net primary productivity (NPP), net ecosystem productivity (NEP) and net biome productivity (NBP) from 1920 to 2005. Other inputs used by the process and inventory models were generated from soil, land cover and disturbance records. During a period of intense disturbance from 1928 to 1943, simulated NBP diverged considerably among the models. This divergence was attributed to differences among models in the sizes of detrital and humus C stocks in different soil layers to which a uniform set of soil C transformation coefficients was applied during disturbances. After the disturbance period, divergence in modelled NBP among models was much smaller, and attributed mainly to differences in simulated NPP caused by different approaches to modelling weather effects on productivity. In spite of these differences, age-detrended variation in annual NPP and NEP of closed canopy forest stands was negatively correlated with mean daily maximum air temperature during July-September (T_amax) in all process models (R² = 0.4-0.6), indicating that these correlations were robust. The negative correlation between T_amax and NEP was attributed to different processes in different models, which were tested by comparing CO₂ fluxes from these models with those measured by eddy covariance (EC) under contrasting air temperatures (T_a). The general agreement in sensitivity of annual NPP to T_amax among the process models led to the development of a generalized algorithm for weather effects on NPP of coastal temperate coniferous forests for use in inventory-based models such as CBM-CFS3: NPP′ = NPP − 57.1 (T_amax − 18.6), where NPP and NPP′ are the current and temperature-adjusted annual NPP estimates from the inventory-based model, 18.6 is the long-term mean daily maximum air temperature during July-September, and T_amax is the mean value for the current year. Our analysis indicated that the sensitivity of NPP to T_amax was nonlinear, so that this algorithm should not be extrapolated beyond the conditions of this study. However the process-based methodology to estimate weather effects on NPP and NEP developed in this study is widely applicable to other forest types and may be adopted for other inventory based forest carbon cycle models.     

Anatomical Structure of Ectomycorrhiza in Abies sibirica Ledeb. and Picea obovata Ledeb. under Conditions of Forest Ecosystems Polluted with Emissions from Copper-Smelting Works

Changes in the anatomical characters of ectomycorrhiza in Siberian fir and Siberian spruce were studied in natural forests polluted with heavy metals (Cu, Zn, Cd, Pb, As, and Fe) and sulfur dioxide. As technogenic load increased, the total radius of mycorhiza terminals and plant roots included in them increased in the organic horizon and decreased in the mineral part of the soil. The absolute thickness of fungal mycorhiza caps and their relative contribution to the total volume of consuming organs increased under pollution. The observed responses were regarded as adaptive, aimed at compensating the adverse effects caused by technogenic pollution.     

The Northern Mole Vole: Is It a Hibernator?

Based on the results of long-term field studies (1980–1997) and published data on the ecology of the northern mole vole (Ellobius talpinusPall.), it is assumed that these animals living in the Southern Urals and the Transural region do hibernate. The factors that cause their hibernation (freezing of the ground, the resultant unavailability of food, and hypoxia), some indirect evidence for hibernation (the cessation of tooth root growth from autumn to spring and a long life span), and characteristic signs of the preparation for hibernation (a decrease in body weight and an increase in liver weight) are considered. A hypothetical scheme of the active and dormant periods is proposed.     

草原生态系统植物群落地下特征表达的新方法

本研究首次采用拍摄、标记根密度的方法来研究内蒙古自治区锡林郭勒盟典型草原区草原生态系统不同恢复阶段植物群落根系的垂直分布特征,并对群落地下生物量及根密度进行了比较研究。结果表明,地下生物量表现出由表层至深层急剧下降的倒金字塔形,而根密度表现出下降→上升→下降状态,并且群落不同恢复阶段上升的深度不同,表现出与地下生物量不同的地下生态过程。通过本研究发现,标记根密度方法可以作为更深入的了解植物地下部分、研究根系的一个新方法。     

Comparative proteomic study and functional analysis of translationally controlled tumor protein in rice roots under Hg2+ stress

So far, very little is known about mercury stress-induced intercellular metabolic changes in rice roots at the proteome level. To investigate the response of rice roots to mercury stress, changes in protein expression in rice roots were analyzed using a comparative proteomics approach. Six-leaf stage rice seedlings were treated with 50 μmol/L HgCl₂ for 3 hr; 29 protein spots showed a significant changes in abundance under stress when compared with the Hg²⁺-tolerant rice mutant and wild type (Zhonghua 11). Furthermore, all these protein spots were identified by mass spectrometry to match 27 diverse protein species. The identified proteins were involved in several processes, including stress response, redox homeostasis, signal transduction, regulation and metabolism; some were found to be cellular structure proteins and a few were unknown. Among the up-regulated proteins, OsTCTP (translationally controlled tumor protein) was chosen to perform hetereologous expression in yeast which was presumed to participate in the Hg²⁺ tolerance of rice, providing evidence for its role in alleviating Hg²⁺ damage. Among the many tests, we found that OsTCTP-overexpressed yeast strains were more resistant to Hg²⁺ than wild-type yeast. Thus, we propose that OsTCTP contributes to Hg²⁺ resistance. Here we present, for the first time, the functional characterization of OsTCTP in connection with Hg²⁺ stress in plants.     

Genotoxic Effect of Phenol on the Cells of Onion (Allium cepa) Roots

The roots of onion (Allium cepa) stand out for having cells with large size and small number of chromosomes.These characteristics make them useful in bioassays for the measurement of a variety of cytogenetic and morphological parameters , in which they can be used as toxicity indicators of the induction and formation of micronuclei and chromosomal aberrations.Based on this background , the potential genotoxic effect of phenol concentration on cells of A.ceparoots was investigated either in terms of induced aberrations or micronuclei formation.The results demonstrated that the higher the concentration of phenol , the higher the incidence of abnormalities , thus confirming the genotoxicity of this pollutant.