Green plants (Viridiplantae) include around 450,000-500,000 species1,2 of great diversity and have important roles in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Here, as part of the One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative, we sequenced the vegetative transcriptomes of 1,124 species that span the diversity of plants in a broad sense (Archaeplastida), including green plants (Viridiplantae), glaucophytes (Glaucophyta) and red algae (Rhodophyta). Our analysis provides a robust phylogenomic framework for examining the evolution of green plants. Most inferred species relationships are well supported across multiple species tree and supermatrix analyses, but discordance among plastid and nuclear gene trees at a few important nodes highlights the complexity of plant genome evolution, including polyploidy, periods of rapid speciation, and extinction. Incomplete sorting of ancestral variation, polyploidization and massive expansions of gene families punctuate the evolutionary history of green plants. Notably, we find that large expansions of gene families preceded the origins of green plants, land plants and vascular plants, whereas whole-genome duplications are inferred to have occurred repeatedly throughout the evolution of flowering plants and ferns. The increasing availability of high-quality plant genome sequences and advances in functional genomics are enabling research on genome evolution across the green tree of life.
Several racial and ethnic identities are widely understood to be under-represented within academia, however, actual quantification of this under-representation is surprisingly limited. Challenges include data availability, demographic inertia and identifying comparison points. We use de-aggregated data from the U.S. National Science Foundation to construct a null model of ethnic and racial representation in one of the world’s largest academic communities. Making comparisons between our model and actual representation in academia allows us to measure the effects of retention (while controlling for recruitment) at different academic stages. We find that, regardless of recruitment, failed retention contributes to mis-representation across academia and that the stages responsible for the largest disparities differ by race and ethnicity: for Black and Hispanic scholars this occurs at the transition from graduate student to postdoctoral researcher whereas for Native American/Alaskan Native and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander scholars this occurs at transitions to and within faculty stages. Even for Asian and Asian-Americans, often perceived as well represented, circumstances are complex and depend on choice of baseline. Our findings demonstrate that while recruitment continues to be important, retention is also a pervasive barrier to proportional representation. Therefore, strategies to reduce mis-representation in academia must address retention. Although our model does not directly suggest specific strategies, our framework could be used to project how representation in academia might change in the long-term under different scenarios.
Background: Intestinal parasitic infections pose great public health challenges in school children in developing countries. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of A. lumbricoides, T. trichiura and Cryptosporidium among elementary school children in rural southwestern China. Methods: A school-based cross-sectional study involving 321 elementary school children was conducted in 2014 in the southwest of China. They were invited to provide a stool sample and interviewed about the sanitary situation and hygiene behavior. Stool specimens were examined for A. lumbricoides and T. trichiura using the Kato-Katz fecal thick-smear technique. The presence of Cryptosporidium was determined using a modified acid-fast staining method. Results: The prevalence of infection was 10.0% (95% CI: 6.9⁻13.8%) for A. lumbricoides, 25.2% (95% CI: 20.6⁻30.4%) for T. trichiura and 2.4% for (95% CI: 1.1⁻4.9%) Cryptosporidium. The prevalence of co-infection was 3.7% (95% CI: 1.9⁻6.4%) for A. lumbricoides/T. trichiura, 0.3% (95% CI: 0⁻1.7%) for A. lumbricoides/Cryptosporidium and 0.9% (95% CI: 0.2⁻2.7%) for T. trichiura/Cryptosporidium. Children from households using well or river water were associated with a greater odds of A. lumbricoides infection (aOR = 2.61, 95% CI: 1.12⁻6.05). Having a household lavatory was associated with a lower odds of T. trichiura infection (aOR = 0.50, 95% CI: 0.30⁻0.84). Children who had three meals at the school canteen on week days were at a lower risk of Cryptosporidium infection. The use of spring water as a water source was associated with lower odds of any intestinal infection (aOR = 0.56, 95% CI: 0.35⁻0.91). Conclusions: Our study calls for an intervention program of school-based deworming combined with health education, hygiene promotion and provision of safe water and improved sanitation.
Serum vitamin D levels are associated with exposure to air pollution, however, the lagged effect of exposure to air pollution remains unknown in pregnant women.Pregnant women who delivered at a maternity center in Shanghai, China, from 2015 to 2019 were included in the present study. The concentration of particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) before 25-Hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] detection was estimated using the satellite-based grid models. The distributed lag non-linear models were performed to examine the lagged association between weekly-specific PM2.5 exposure and vitamin D deficiency (VDD) or serum 25(OH)D levels.Among the 58,025 pregnant women included in the study (mean age at conception, 30.77 ± 3.75 years; mean prepregnancy BMI, 21.09 ± 2.55 kg/m2), 61.32% were diagnosed with VDD. Weekly-specific PM2.5 exposure at weeks 1-10 before the detection of 25(OH)D was significantly associated with an increased incidence of VDD (p < 0.05). For every 10 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5 exposure, the serum 25(OH)D level decreased by 1.346 nmol/L (95%CI: 1.183-1.508 nmol/L). The association between average PM2.5 exposure and VDD at 1-10 weeks was more significant in weather conditions with low mean sunshine hours (OR: 1.246, 95%CI: 1.221-1.271).Our study provided suggestive evidence that PM2.5 exposure at 1-10 weeks before the 25(OH)D detection may decrease the circulating 25(OH)D levels in pregnant women and increase VDD risk in pregnant women. More attention should be paid to the long-term impact of PM2.5, in particular, during weather conditions with a relatively short duration of sunshine.
Over the several decades, China has been incessantly optimizing control strategies in response to the varying epidemic situations of schistosomiasis. We evaluated continuously the changing prevalence under different control strategies of two villages, Sanlian and Guifan, in China through five phases lasting 37 years. We tested residents, calculated prevalence and discussed change causes. We found the prevalence in Sanlian did not differ significant from that of Guifan (p = 0.18) in 1981, but decreased to 2.66%, much lower than Guifan’s 11.25%, in 1984 (p = 0). Besides, prevalence in Guifan increased to 21.25% in 1987, while in Sanlian it rose to 20.78% until 1989. Those data confirmed that praziquantel combined with snail control could better reduce the prevalence. From 1992 to 1994, the prevalence in the two villages displayed downtrends, which showed the World Bank Loan Project worked. From 1995 to 2004, repeated oscillations with no obvious change trend was seen. Since 2005, the prevalence in both villages has shown a significant downtrend (p < 0.05), which suggests the integrated strategy is effective. We considered the control strategies were implemented suitably in the study area under changing social circumstances. Adjusting the strategy in consideration of social transformations is necessary and vital. The experience may be useful for policy making of other epidemic areas with an analogous situation.
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