Chitosan as a wall material for a microencapsulated delivery system for Macrobrachium rosenbergii (de Man) larvae

Chitosan has been widely accepted as a wall material for preparing microcapsules of various purposes in human medicine. The possibility of using chitosan as a wall material for microencapsulating nutrients and drugs for aquaculture purposes, specifically to Macrobrachium rosenbergii larvae was evaluated in this study. Two types of chitosan-coated microcapsules were prepared using either acetone (MEC-A) or NaOH (MEC-N) as the cross-linking agents. They were compared with a microbound diet relative to total leaching of nutrients and free amino acids (FAA). Among the microcapsules, MEC-N showed the lowest level of total leaching of nutrients (23.3%) during 5 h of immersion in seawater and released 65% FAA after 60 min. During laboratory trials, 75% larvae had accepted the MEC-N capsule. The results of the study suggest that chitosan can be used as a wall material for preparing microcapsules to deliver drugs and nutrients to M. rosenbergii larvae.     

Forest succession and climate variability interacted to control fire activity over the last four centuries in an Alaskan boreal landscape

Context

The boreal forest is globally important for its influence on Earth’s energy balance, and its sensitivity to climate change. Ecosystem functioning in boreal forests is shaped by fire activity, so anticipating the impacts of climate change requires understanding the precedence for, and consequences of, climatically induced changes in fire regimes. Long-term records of climate, fire, and vegetation are critical for gaining this understanding.

Objectives

We investigated the relative importance of climate and landscape flammability as drivers of fire activity in boreal forests by developing high-resolution records of fire history, and characterizing their centennial-scale relationships to temperature and vegetation dynamics.

Methods

We reconstructed the timing of fire activity in interior Alaska, USA, using seven lake-sediment charcoal records spanning CE 1550–2015. We developed individual and composite records of fire activity, and used correlations and qualitative comparisons to assess relationships with existing records of vegetation and climate.

Results

Our records document a dynamic relationship between climate and fire. Fire activity and temperature showed stronger coupling after ca. 1900 than in the preceding 350 yr. Biomass burning and temperatures increased concurrently during the second half of the twentieth century, to their highest point in the record. Fire activity followed pulses in black spruce establishment.

Conclusions

Fire activity was facilitated by warm temperatures and landscape-scale dominance of highly flammable mature black spruce, with a notable increase in temperature and fire activity during the twenty-first century. The results suggest that widespread burning at landscape scales is controlled by a combination of climate and vegetation dynamics that together drive flammability.

     

Implications of future climate- and land-change scenarios on grassland bird abundance and biodiversity in the Upper Missouri River Basin

Landscape Ecology - Over the past decades, numerous threats from climate- and land-use change to ecosystems have been identified. Grassland ecosystems are among the most endangered in the world and...     

A quantitative method for measuring regional economic resilience to the great recession

Regional economic resilience can be defined as an economy’s ability to withstand and recover quickly from shocks. The ability to measure resilience is necessary to developing our understanding of what influences resilience. In this paper, we develop a new, two‐dimensional quantitative measure of resilience using observed differences between expected and actual employment in a region following a shock and distinguish the response to the shock from random variation. We demonstrate one application of this metric to US county‐level employment data to compare county responses to the 2007–2009 national recession and discuss how different regions of the United States responded to the shock of the Great Recession in terms of resilience.     

小麦EST—SSRs分子标记的特性及其遗传作图

为了解普通小麦EST来源的微卫星的多样性,从大约1000个包含微卫星的ESTs中设计了300对引物,研究和评估了它们的多态性水平,并且将多态性标记加入到现有的遗传图谱中。在五种不同类型的重复单元中,三个碱基的重复单元出现最多,占到77％。几乎所有的EST—SSRs标记（99．3％）的重复单元都含有G-C碱基对。37．4％的微卫星都是四次重复。对于扩增和多态性,300对引物中有60对没有扩增,21．3％的扩增引物没能产生预期的扩增片断。58％的标记至少在所用8个材料的一个中显示出多态性。W7984和Opata组合表现出最高的多态性水平。大多数普通小麦EST—SSRs标记的重复次数小于10,并且4次重复是最为普遍的。81个新的EST—SSR位点被添加到两个已有的参照遗传图谱中（62个加到ITMI,19个加到CTCS）。研究结果表明小麦EST-SSRs标记展示了一些不同于基因组微卫星的特异特征,在标记发展和其他遗传应用中,这就使得它们能够成为一种非常有价值的资源。     

Journal of Soils and Sediments: the first 20 years

Journal of Soils and Sediments -