Correlated evolution of beak and braincase morphology is present only in select bird clades.

Complex morphological structures, such as skulls or limbs, are often composed of multiple morphological components (e.g., bones, sets of bones) that may evolve in a covaried manner with one another.

Temperature fluctuation promotes the thermal adaptation of soil microbial respiration.

The magnitude of the feedback between soil microbial respiration and increased mean temperature may decrease (a process called thermal adaptation) or increase over time, and accurately representing this feedback in models improves predictions of soil carbon loss rates. However, climate change entails changes not only in mean temperature but also in temperature fluctuation, and how this fluctuation regulates the thermal response of microbial respiration has never been systematically evaluated. By analysing subtropical forest soils from a 2,000 km transect across China, we showed that although a positive relationship between soil microbial biomass-specific respiration and temperature was observed under increased constant incubation temperature, an increasing temperature fluctuation had a stronger negative effect.

Influence of Internet Use on Commercial Health Insurance of Chinese Residents.

As a necessary supplement to social medical insurance, commercial health insurance is an important part of the Healthy China strategy. This study, based on the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data in 2017, uses the probit model to analyze and study the internal relationship between Internet use and commercial health insurance purchase of urban and rural residents. The research results show that the use of the Internet significantly promoted commercial health insurance purchases of residents, and the promotion effect for rural residents is apparently better than that among urban residents.

Soil phosphorus drives plant trait variations in a mature subtropical forest.

Earth system models are implementing soil phosphorus dynamic and plant functional traits to predict functional changes in global forests. However, the linkage between soil phosphorus and plant traits lacks empirical evidence, especially in mature forests. Here, we examined the soil phosphorus constraint on plant functional traits in a mature subtropical forest based on observations of 9943 individuals from 90 species in a 5-ha forest dynamic plot and 405 individuals from 15 species in an adjacent 10-year nutrient-addition experiment.

Nocturnal warming accelerates drought-induced seedling mortality of two evergreen tree species.

Extreme drought is one of the key climatic drivers of tree mortality on a global scale. However, it remains unclear whether the drought-induced tree mortality will increase under nocturnal climate warming. Here we exposed seedlings of two wide-ranging subtropical tree species, Castanopsis sclerophylla and Schima superba, with contrasting stomatal regulation strategies to prolonged drought under ambient and elevated night-time temperature by 2 °C.

LncRNA MIAT Inhibits MPP-Induced Neuronal Damage Through Regulating the miR-132/SIRT1 Axis in PC12 Cells.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is an age-related neurodegenerative disease caused by the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. LncRNA MIAT has been shown to be critical in Alzheimer's disease, but its role and mechanism in PD are still unknown. Differentiated PC12 cells were treated with 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium (MPP) to establish in vitro cell injury model of PD.

Different impacts of external ammonium and nitrate addition on plant growth in terrestrial ecosystems: A meta-analysis.

Terrestrial plant growth is strongly limited by the availability of nitrogen (N). Atmospheric deposition of N has been rapidly increasing since the industrial revolution, associated with fast compositional shifts between ammonium- (NH) and nitrate-N (NO) globally. However, whether and how such composition changes of deposition will affect the response of terrestrial plant growth to N deposition remains unclear.

PlantNE: a global database of plant biomass from nitrogen-addition experiments.

The growth of terrestrial plants and the production of terrestrial ecosystems are highly dependent on the availability of nitrogen (N). During the past decades, the rate of global atmospheric N deposition has shown an increasing trend, greatly relieving N limitation on terrestrial plant growth. Thus, whether and how plant biomass will respond to increasing N deposition in the future is particularly important with regard to the function of terrestrial ecosystems.

Enhanced peak growth of global vegetation and its key mechanisms.

The annual peak growth of vegetation is critical in characterizing the capacity of terrestrial ecosystem productivity and shaping the seasonality of atmospheric CO concentrations. The recent greening of global lands suggests an increasing trend of terrestrial vegetation growth, but whether or not the peak growth has been globally enhanced still remains unclear. Here, we use two global datasets of gross primary productivity (GPP) and a satellite-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to characterize recent changes in annual peak vegetation growth (that is, GPP and NDVI).