Effects of sulphuric acid and acidifying ammonium deposition on water quality and vegetation of simulated soft water ecosystems

In a greenhouse, seven identical mini-ecosystems, simulating soft water ponds, were exposed to different types of artificial rain water. The effects of rain water containing H₂SO₄ and nitrate, and rain water containing ammonium sulphate on water quality and vegetation were studied and compared. Causal relations were established between rain water quality, water chemistry and changes in floristic composition. Ammonium sulphate deposition, particularly, strongly affected water quality and vegetation development. Although ammonium sulphate deposition was only slightly acid, due to nitrification it acted as an important acid source, causing acidification to pH=3.8. Under acidified conditions, ammonium sulphate deposition lead to a luxuriant growth ofJuncus bulbosus andAgrostis canina. In the mini-ecosystems, H₂SO₄ deposition with a pH of 3.5 only decreased the pH of the water to 5.1 within 1 yr. The acidification of water appeared to be coupled with changes in alkalinity, sulphate, Al, Cd, Ca, Mg, K and inorganic-N. It is concluded that in NH₃-affected regions in The Netherlands, the high atmospheric deposition of ammonium sulphate probably contributes to a large extent in the acidification, eutrophication and floristic changes of oligotrophic soft waters.     

Optimization of hydrostatic pressure,timing, and duration parameters for the induction of tetraploidy in turbot,Scophthalmus maximus

Aquaculture International - Tetraploid fish are the key source of diploid gametes in polyploid breeding, and they can be induced by disrupting the first mitotic cell cleavage. In this study, the...     

汉代制茶法探考

王褒的《僮约》最早记载了我国西汉时期的饮茶风尚、茶叶商贸和饮用的干茶。中国第一部中草药专著《神农本草经》,不仅记载了茶叶的起源,还列明了300多种中草药及其炮制方法,其中"阴干暴干"是全草和叶类中药材的初加工方法,也可能为古代早期制作干茶的原始制茶法。我国汉代及之前的科技发展与进步,似有可能推动制茶技术的发展和革新。然而,现有与茶叶相关的文献记载太过简单,使汉代的制茶法之谜,仍是待解。     

Metagenomic analysis shows diverse,distinct bacterial communities in biofilters among different marine recirculating aquaculture systems

While biofilters are widely used to metabolize ammonia and other metabolic waste products in recirculating aquaculture systems, their microbial communities are not thoroughly characterized. While inroads have been made characterizing microbial communities within single biofilters, replicated comparisons across biofilters and facilities have been lacking. We hypothesized that microbial communities might differ among filter types and facilities. We characterized and compared the bacterial communities of nine nitrification biofilters in five commercial recirculating marine aquaculture operations by amplifying and sequencing the 16S rRNA gene using the Illumina-MiSeq DNA sequencing platform. Our results demonstrated the usefulness of the approach for elucidating bacterial community structure in aquaculture biofilters; among almost 249,000 usable DNA sequence reads—a mean of 27,663 for each biofilter—we detected a mean of 682 operational taxonomic units. Higher species diversity was observed in the submerged biofilters at farms 3 and 4 (HF_SB1, HF_SB2, HF_SB3, MB_SB1, MB_SB2, and MB_SB3), and a bead filter at farm 2 (XYF-MBBR) than in a bead filter at farm 1 (DF_MBBR) and a fluidized sand filter at farm 5 (TY_FSF). At the phylum level, Proteobacteria were the most frequently observed taxa (representing 36–50 % of reads in the overall data set for a given filter); other frequently observed phyla were Bacteroidetes (13–34 %), Chloroflexi (2–23 %), Nitrospirae (1–7 %), Planctomycetes (1–4 %), and Actinobacteria (2–5 %). However, in fluidized sand filters, after Proteobacteria, the subdominant phyla were Bacteroidetes (19 %), Nitrospirae (17 %), and Planctomycetes (11 %). At the genus level, the nitrite-oxidizing genus Nitrospira was frequently observed in sand filter TY_FSF (16.4 %), bead filter DF_MBBR (7.6 %), submerged biofilter MB_SB1 (7 %), and bead filter XHF_MBBR (7.36), and less frequently in submerged biofilters HF_SB3 (1.94), HF_SB2 (1.77 %), and HF_SB1 (1.63 %), and bead filters MB_SB2 (0.8 %) and MB_SB1 (0.2 %). Observations of the ammonia-oxidizing genus Nitrosomonas varied widely within and among filter types, ranging from 0.06 % in submerged bed filter HF_SB3 to 2.82 % in bead filter DF_MBBR. Principal components and cluster analyses classified the bacterial communities in the nine biofilters into groups corresponding to the respective recirculating marine aquaculture operations and the associated filter types.