[Characteristics and Dominant Influencing Factors of the Fungal Community Structure in Soils Co-contaminated with Rare Earth Elements and Heavy Metals].

Rare earth elements (REEs) have been listed as emerging pollutants and are often enriched together in soils with heavy metals (HMs), which results in ecological crises. The ecological effects caused by REEs have been attracting increasing amounts of attention, but most studies neglect the synergistic effect of REEs and HMs. The soil fungal community plays an important role in maintaining ecosystem functions, and understanding the fungal community structure and its dominant influencing factors in the co-contaminated soils will help to develop soil remediation strategies that could reduce or remedy the impacts of human production activities on the environment.

Multiple factors influence bacterial community diversity and composition in soils with rare earth element and heavy metal co-contamination.

The effects of long-term rare earth element (REE) and heavy metal (HM) contamination on soil bacterial communities remains poorly understood. In this study, soil samples co-contaminated with REEs and HMs were collected from a rare-earth tailing dam. The bacterial community composition and diversity were analyzed through Illumina high-throughput sequencing with 16S rRNA gene amplicons.

Enrichment of Type I Methanotrophs with nirS Genes of Three Emergent Macrophytes in a Eutrophic Wetland in China.

The pmoA gene, encoding particulate methane monooxygenase in methanotrophs, and nirS and nirK genes, encoding bacterial nitrite reductases, were examined in the root and rhizosphere sediment of three common emergent macrophytes (Phragmites australis, Typha angustifolia, and Scirpus triqueter) and unvegetated sediment from eutrophic Wuliangsuhai Lake in China. Sequencing analyses indicated that 334 out of 351 cloned pmoA sequences were phylogenetically the most closely related to type I methanotrophs (Gammaproteobacteria), and Methylomonas denitrificans-like organisms accounted for 44.4% of the total community.

[Moderate grazing increases the abundance of soil methane-oxidizing bacteria and CH uptake rate in a typical steppe of Inner Mongolia, China].

Microbial oxidation is the only biological sink of atmospheric methane (CH). It is essential to understand the variation of CH fluxes among different grassland use types for developing low-emission management system. Here, we measured the CH flux and the soil methane-oxidizing bacteria abundance in a typical steppe under grazing, mowing and fencing management in central Inner Mongolia, with the aims to determine the effects of these grassland use types on CH flux, and to test the hypothesis that pmoA functional gene abundance regulates CH fluxes.

Differential surface plasmon polaritons transmission line with controllable common mode rejection.

In this paper, a spoof surface plasmon polarions (SPPs) transmission line is designed by patterning thin metal film in open-cross shape arranged in array. Numerical simulations show the proposed open-cross array can support spoof SPPs with enlarged propagation constant and hence enhanced confinement at metal/dielectric interface as compared to the reported ultra-thin plasmonic waveguide with the rectangular groove or solid-cross. Furthermore, a differential transmission line pair is built with such two close plasmonic arrays.

[An improved method for inversion of particle size distribution from scattering spectrum].

To reduce noise in the inversion for diffraction measurement of particle size distribution from scattering spectrum, an improved method was proposed. A regulate function was induced in the Chin-Shrine integral transform that led to the noise disappearing and didn't affect the peak of inversion spectrum. The improved method was tested using linear CCD detector array.