Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Radan Huth, Martin Dubrovsky
Summary: This study focuses on the statistical significance of trends in climate elements defined at a regional scale, comparing different detection methods. The sign test and extended Mann-Kendall test perform slightly better under low autocorrelation conditions, while all tests show similar performance under high autocorrelation conditions.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2021)
Article
Genetics & Heredity
Boas C. L. van der Putten, C. Mendes, Brooke M. Talbot, Jolinda De Korne-Elenbaas, Rafael Mamede, Pedro Vila-Cerqueira, Luis Pedro Coelho, Christopher A. Gulvik, Lee S. Katz
Summary: This research report presents seven recommendations for implementing software testing in microbial bioinformatics, based on the experience of a collaborative hackathon event. The report also provides a repository hosting examples and guidelines for testing.
MICROBIAL GENOMICS
(2022)
Article
Microbiology
Monika Opalek, Bogna Smug, Michael Doebeli, Dominika Wloch-Salamon
Summary: Phenotypic heterogeneity in starved populations of microorganisms, including quiescent (Q) and nonquiescent (NQ) cells, can enhance survival rates in different environmental conditions. Experimental and modeling results suggest that Q cells have advantages in long starvation and resupply of rich medium, while NQ cells perform better in short starvation periods with the possibility of nutrient recycling.
MICROBIOLOGY SPECTRUM
(2022)
Article
Medical Laboratory Technology
Rui P. L. Neves, Wim Ammerlaan, Kiki C. Andree, Sebastian Bender, Laure Cayrefourcq, Christiane Driemel, Claudia Koch, Merlin Verena Luetke-Eversloh, Marianne Oulhen, Elisabetta Rossi, Catherine Alix-Panabieres, Fay Betsou, Francoise Farace, Sabine Riethdorf, Thomas Schlange, Harriet Wikman, Rita Zamarchi, Klaus Pantel, Leon W. M. M. Terstappen, Nikolas H. Stoecklein
Summary: This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of multiple technologies for detecting circulating tumor cells, establishing a multi-center evaluation platform. Results showed significant differences in the performance of different technologies in detecting cell lines, which will help in establishing standards for future clinical applications.
CLINICAL CHEMISTRY
(2021)
Article
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Ji Hwan Park, Jeong Min Choi
Summary: This study examines the mediating role of social withdrawal in the relationship between smartphone overdependence and quality of life in college students. It was found that social withdrawal completely mediates the relationship between smartphone overdependence and quality of life in college students. Several means of improving the quality of life of college students are identified based on this finding.
FRONTIERS IN PUBLIC HEALTH
(2022)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
J. Andrew DeWoody, Avril M. Harder, Samarth Mathur, Janna R. Willoughby
Summary: The importance of genetic diversity in conservation biology cannot be overstated, as it is closely tied to evolutionary fitness and crucial for conservation efforts. In the Anthropocene, responsible management should prioritize the conservation of ecosystems, communities, populations, individuals, and their underlying genetic diversity.
Editorial Material
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Pingzhu Zhou, William T. Pu
Summary: A fatty acid in the milk of nursing mice initiates a metabolic shift in newborn heart muscle cells, promoting their rapid maturation.
Review
Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology
Sha Liu, Kaixuan Zhao, Meiyuan Huang, Meimei Zeng, Yan Deng, Song Li, Hui Chen, Wen Li, Zhu Chen
Summary: The global burden of foodborne disease is significant, with foodborne pathogens being the primary cause. The detection of foodborne pathogenic bacteria has rapidly developed in recent years, with methods such as immunoassay, molecular biology, microfluidic chip, metabolism, biosensor, and mass spectrometry being the main techniques. This study provides a comprehensive review of various rapid detection methods and discusses their limitations, advantages, and future development direction for accurate and rapid diagnosis and control of diseases in point-of-care testing (POCT) applications.
FRONTIERS IN BIOENGINEERING AND BIOTECHNOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Business
David Trafimow, Michael R. Hyman, Alena Kostyk, Cong Wang, Tonghui Wang
Summary: Null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) has a negative impact on marketing research, leading to a recommendation from ASA to abandon it. It is important for researchers to prefer larger sample sizes in order to achieve more precise results.
JOURNAL OF BUSINESS RESEARCH
(2021)
Article
Engineering, Biomedical
Malebogo N. Ngoepe, Elsabe Cloete, Claire van den Berg, Nonhlanhla P. Khumalo
Summary: Cyclic testing of human hair provides insights into the behavior of fibers over multiple loading cycles, showing that curly fibers exhibit a characteristic toe-region during tensile tests which disappears as the number of cycles increase. This observation supports the hypothesis that the toe-region in curly fibers is due to a hydrogen bonding mechanism present only in curly fibers.
JOURNAL OF THE MECHANICAL BEHAVIOR OF BIOMEDICAL MATERIALS
(2021)
Editorial Material
Obstetrics & Gynecology
Philip M. Sedgwick, Anne Hammer, Ulrik Schioler Kesmodel, Lars Henning Pedersen
Summary: Traditional null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) is widely used in obstetric and gynecological research, but its application in inferring clinical significance is controversial. Misinterpretation of statistical significance and ignorance of NHST limitations may lead to false claims and dismissal of important factors.
ACTA OBSTETRICIA ET GYNECOLOGICA SCANDINAVICA
(2022)
Editorial Material
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Philip Ball
Summary: Some researchers argue that lab-grown structures capable of developing into fetuses should be classified and regulated as embryos.
Review
Agronomy
Zhaohong Wang, Laurence A. Mound, Mubasher Hussain, Steven P. Arthurs, Runqian Mao
Summary: This paper assesses the diversity and diet breadth of predatory thrips and suggests further research to enhance their utilization in pest management.
PEST MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Lucy S. Martin, J. Reuben Shipway, Marc A. Martin, Graham P. Malyon, Mou Akter, Simon M. Cragg
Summary: Wood-boring invertebrates cause significant damage to marine timbers and coastal infrastructure. Due to restrictions on broad spectrum biocides, there is a need for research on naturally durable timber species and novel preservation methods. Laboratory testing offers advantages over costly and long-term marine field trials for investigating durable timber species or wood preservative treatments. The crustacean Limnoria is an ideal species for laboratory testing of wood biodegradation, as they can be easily reared in aquaria and their feeding rates on wood can be measured.
JOVE-JOURNAL OF VISUALIZED EXPERIMENTS
(2022)
Article
Endocrinology & Metabolism
Paul J. Newey
Summary: Establishing a genetic diagnosis is beneficial, but accurate interpretation of test results is crucial. Uncertain VUS results pose challenges for clinicians and patients. This article provides a decision-making framework, emphasizing the importance of evaluating VUS results.
CLINICAL ENDOCRINOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Joerg Mueller, Oliver Mitesser, Marc W. Cadotte, Fons van der Plas, Akira S. Mori, Christian Ammer, Anne Chao, Michael Scherer-Lorenzen, Petr Baldrian, Claus Baessler, Peter Biedermann, Simone Cesarz, Alice Classen, Benjamin M. Delory, Heike Feldhaar, Andreas Fichtner, Torsten Hothorn, Claudia Kuenzer, Marcell K. Peters, Kerstin Pierick, Thomas Schmitt, Bernhard Schuldt, Dominik Seidel, Diana Six, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter, Simon Thorn, Goddert von Oheimb, Martin Wegmann, Wolfgang W. Weisser, Nico Eisenhauer
Summary: Intensification of land use by humans has led to a homogenization of landscapes and decreasing resilience of ecosystems globally due to a loss of biodiversity, including the majority of forests. Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) research has provided compelling evidence for a positive effect of biodiversity on ecosystem functions and services at the local (alpha-diversity) scale, but we largely lack empirical evidence on how the loss of between-patch beta-diversity affects biodiversity and multifunctionality at the landscape scale (gamma-diversity).
GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Biology
Leland K. Werden, Colin Averill, Thomas W. Crowther, Erick Calderon-Morales, Laura Toro, J. Pedro Alvarado, L. Milena Gutierrez, Danielle E. Mallory, Jennifer S. Powers
Summary: This study investigated the role of traits in mediating seedling survival and the coordination of traits across plant structures in tropical dry forest restoration. The results highlight the importance of below-ground traits in determining early restoration outcomes and show little coordination between above- and below-ground traits.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Ecology
Laura Marques, Koen Hufkens, Christof Bigler, Thomas W. Crowther, Constantin M. Zohner, Benjamin D. Stocker
Summary: Leaf phenology plays a crucial role in regulating mass and energy fluxes during the growing season. The timing of leaf unfolding has been observed to occur earlier in Northern Hemisphere forests over the long-term. Phenological dates vary between years, with end-of-season dates correlating positively with start-of-season dates and negatively with net CO2 assimilation. This indicates the impact of leaf longevity constraints or premature carbon sink saturation on long-term phenology projections. However, multidecadal observations show a decadal trend towards later leaf senescence, along with increasing net carbon assimilation, contradicting the interannual scale relationship.
NATURE ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION
(2023)
Letter
Ecology
Ethan T. Addicott, Eli P. Fenichel, Mark A. Bradford, Malin L. Pinsky, Stephen A. Wood
FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
(2023)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Joao Pedro Saraiva, Alexander Bartholomaeus, Rodolfo Brizola Toscan, Petr Baldrian, Ulisses Nunes da Rocha
Summary: Most eukaryotic genomes remain unsequenced, limiting our understanding of their role in ecosystem processes. This study aimed to recover eukaryotic genomes from metagenomes using the EukRep pipeline. Out of 6000 metagenomes, only 215 yielded eukaryotic bins, with Streptophytes and fungi being the most represented clades. The completeness and contamination estimates of the recovered bins were obtained and highlighted the need for long-read sequencing and improved reference genomes databases.
MOLECULAR ECOLOGY RESOURCES
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Feng Tao, Yuanyuan Huang, Bruce A. Hungate, Stefano Manzoni, Serita D. Frey, Michael W. I. Schmidt, Markus Reichstein, Nuno Carvalhais, Philippe Ciais, Lifen Jiang, Johannes Lehmann, Ying-Ping Wang, Benjamin Z. Houlton, Bernhard Ahrens, Umakant Mishra, Gustaf Hugelius, Toby D. Hocking, Xingjie Lu, Zheng Shi, Kostiantyn Viatkin, Ronald Vargas, Yusuf Yigini, Christian Omuto, Ashish A. Malik, Guillermo Peralta, Rosa Cuevas-Corona, Luciano E. Di Paolo, Isabel Luotto, Cuijuan Liao, Yi-Shuang Liang, Vinisa S. Saynes, Xiaomeng Huang, Yiqi Luo
Summary: Soils store more carbon than other terrestrial ecosystems, but how soil organic carbon (SOC) forms and persists remains uncertain, making it challenging to predict its response to climate change. This study investigates the role of microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) in SOC persistence and finds that it is at least four times more important than other factors in determining SOC storage. Understanding the environmental dependence of microbial processes underlying CUE may help predict SOC feedback to a changing climate.
Review
Microbiology
Petr Baldrian, Ruben Lopez-Mondejar, Petr Kohout
Summary: Forests are influenced by global change factors such as carbon dioxide increases, warming, drought, fire, pest outbreaks, and nitrogen deposition. Microorganisms, particularly fungi and bacteria, play a crucial role in mediating the response of forests to these changes. Different climatic zones, including boreal, temperate, and tropical forests, exhibit varying effects of global change. Understanding plant-microorganism interactions is essential in predicting the future of forests and developing management strategies to enhance ecosystem stability and mitigate climate change effects.
NATURE REVIEWS MICROBIOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Agronomy
Cristhian dos Santos Teixeira, Buck T. Castillo, Lukas Bernhardt, Nicholas D. Warren, Claudia Petry, Jessica G. Ernakovich, Richard G. Smith, Serita D. Frey
Summary: This study found that frequent defoliation can increase soil carbon storage, and the relative abundance of legumes to grasses also affects soil carbon storage.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, Pablo Garcia-Palacios, Mark A. Bradford, David J. Eldridge, Miguel Berdugo, Tadeo Saez-Sandino, Yu-Rong Liu, Fernando Alfaro, Sebastian Abades, Adebola R. Bamigboye, Felipe Bastida, Jose L. Blanco-Pastor, Jorge Duran, Juan J. Gaitan, Javier G. Illan, Tine Grebenc, Thulani P. Makhalanyane, Durgesh Kumar Jaiswal, Tina U. Nahberger, Gabriel F. Penaloza-Bojaca, Ana Rey, Alexandra Rodriguez, Christina Siebe, Alberto L. Teixido, Wei Sun, Pankaj Trivedi, Jay Prakash Verma, Ling Wang, Jianyong Wang, Tianxue Yang, Eli Zaady, Xiaobing Zhou, Xin-Quan Zhou, Cesar Plaza
Summary: This study compared soil samples from urban and natural ecosystems and found that the soil microbiome is an essential driver of soil carbon in urban greenspace under warming. This research is significant in highlighting the importance of considering the soil microbiome in urban management strategies to maintain soil carbon and related ecosystem services.
NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
M. A. Taylor, M. A. Bradford, W. Arnold, D. Takahashi, T. Colgan, V. Davis, D. Losos, J. Peccia, P. A. Raymond
Summary: Northern wetlands and bogs are significant sources of biogenic methane (CH4) emissions, which affect climate. Quantifying the effects of controls on bog CH4 emissions is challenging due to their spatial and temporal heterogeneity. To address this, we established 55 measurement plots with extensive spatial and temporal coverage in an ombrotrophic bog. Our data showed that temperature had the strongest control on CH4 emissions, while water table depth (WTD) and vegetation composition had smaller effects. Despite the large effect of temperature, the controls we measured explained only about 29% of the variance in CH4 fluxes. Highly-replicated, local designs can provide valuable data for refining our understanding of wetland CH4 emissions.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-BIOGEOSCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Anh Vu Le, Tomas Vetrovsky, Denis Barucic, Joao Pedro Saraiva, Priscila Thiago Dobbler, Petr Kohout, Martin Pospisek, Ulisses Nunes da Rocha, Jiri Klema, Petr Baldrian
Summary: Metagenomics is a useful tool for assessing the functional potential of microbiomes, but gene prediction is limited for eukaryotic organisms, resulting in underrepresentation of eukaryotic genes in metagenomics datasets. This study developed an algorithm that predicts fungal introns in environmental DNA and improves the annotation of metagenomes. The proportion of newly predicted genes increased with the share of eukaryotic genes and the number of introns per gene. The approach provides a tool for improved annotation of microbiomes with a high proportion of eukaryotes.
MOLECULAR ECOLOGY RESOURCES
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Pengfa Li, Leho Tedersoo, Thomas W. Crowther, Baozhan Wang, Yu Shi, Lu Kuang, Ting Li, Meng Wu, Ming Liu, Lu Luan, Jia Liu, Dongzhen Li, Yongxia Li, Songhan Wang, Muhammad Saleem, Alex J. Dumbrell, Zhongpei Li, Jiandong Jiang
Summary: This study builds a global atlas of phytopathogenic fungi using over 20,000 globally distributed samples, and predicts that their diversity and invasion potential will increase globally by the end of this century, especially in forest and cropland ecosystems.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2023)
Article
Microbiology
Andrea Moravcova, Florian Barbi, Vendula Brabcova, Tomas Cajthaml, Tijana Martinovic, Nadia Soudzilovskaia, Lukas Vlk, Petr Baldrian, Petr Kohout
Summary: A study of alpine ecosystems in Europe shows that temperature increases can lead to changes in plant and fungal communities, resulting in loss of fungal biomass and topsoil carbon content. Ongoing warming-induced tree encroachment and vegetation shifts are affecting alpine tundra ecosystems. Understanding the effects of climate change on shifts within alpine vegetation and its impact on soil microorganisms and carbon storage is crucial.
FEMS MICROBIOLOGY ECOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Microbiology
Jason Bosch, Ema Nemethova, Vojtech Tlaskal, Vendula Brabcova, Petr Baldrian
Summary: In this study, amplicon sequencing was used to compare fungal and bacterial communities sampled with traditional composite samples or small 1 cm(3) cylinders from a discrete location. The results showed that bacterial richness and evenness were lower in small samples compared to composite samples. There was no significant difference in fungal alpha diversity between different sampling scales, suggesting that visually defined fungal domains are not restricted to a single species. Composite sampling may obscure variation in community composition and affect the understanding of detected microbial associations.
FEMS MICROBIOLOGY ECOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Soil Science
Sarah Piche-Choquette, Vojtech Tlaskal, Tomas Vrska, Lucie Jiraska, Tomas Vetrovsky, Petr Baldrian
Summary: Forests, the largest terrestrial ecosystem, harbor diverse fungal communities that play crucial roles in ecosystem processes. This study investigates the impact of microhabitats on fungal diversity and community structure, with a particular focus on the predictive power of environmental filters. Results reveal that environmental factors significantly shape fungal communities between microhabitats, and soil acts as a crossroad for local fungal interactions and accumulation.
SOIL BIOLOGY & BIOCHEMISTRY
(2023)
