Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of severe drought events followed by heavy rainfall, which will influence growth and activity of soil microorganisms, through osmotic stress and changes in nutrient concentration. There is evidence of rapid recovery of processes and adaptation of communities in soils regularly experiencing drying/rewetting and lower resistance and resilience ...

We report on the first study trialling a newly-developed, functional gene microarray (FGA) for characterising bacterial and archaeal ammonia oxidisers in activated sludge. Mixed liquor (ML) and media biofilm samples from a full-scale integrated fixed-film activated sludge (IFAS) plant were analysed with the FGA to profile the diversity and relative abundance of ammonia-oxidising archaea and bac...

Both ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) play an important role in nitrification in terrestrial environments. Most often AOA outnumber AOB, but the relative contribution of AOA and AOB to nitrification rates remains unclear. The aim of this experiment was to test the hypotheses that high nitrogen availability would favor AOB and result in high gross nitrificatio...

Oxidative stress through the changes in the levels of reactive oxygen species and antioxidative parameters can cause various neurological disorders. The aim of the present study was to show antioxidant activity (AOA) and malondialdehyde (MDA) levels in affected people with Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) and multiple sclerosis (MS). A total of 15 GBS patients, 13 MS patients, and 15 age and sex m...

In bilinguals, native (L1) and second (L2) languages are processed by the same neural resources that can be modulated by age of second language acquisition (AOA), proficiency level, and daily language exposure and usage. AOA seems to particularly affect grammar processing, where a complete neural convergence has been shown only in bilinguals with parallel language acquisition from birth. Despit...

Senescence and stresses have been documented to promote ethylene synthesis in ethylene-sensitive flower such as carnations. Thus the inhibition of ethylene evolution might lead to activation of other metabolic reactions. Present experiments were undertaken with cut at bud stage spray-carnation (D. caryophyllus f. spray, Hort.) flowers, cv. Regina and cv. Naslada. Tested cultivars are a new bree...

A three-dimensional simulation of hovering flapping wings was performed using an immersed boundary method. This was done to investigate the effects of chordwise wing deformation on three important unsteady aerodynamic mechanisms found in flapping flight, namely Leading Edge Vortex (LEV) shedding, wake capture and clap and fling. A wing was modeled as a flat plate, flapping close to a symmetry p...

Nitrification, the microbial oxidation of ammonia to nitrite and nitrate, occurs in a wide variety of environments and plays a central role in the global nitrogen cycle. Catalyzed by the enzyme ammonia monooxygenase, the ability to oxidize ammonia was previously thought to be restricted to a few groups within the beta- and gamma-Proteobacteria. However, recent metagenomic studies have revealed ...

The microbial ecology of the nitrogen cycle in agricultural soils is an issue of major interest. We hypothesized a major effect by farm management systems (mineral versus organic fertilizers) and a minor influence of soil texture and plant variety on the composition and abundance of microbial nitrifiers. We explored changes in composition (16S rRNA gene) of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA), bact...

This study investigated the influence of salinity and ammonium levels on ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and archaea (AOA) by monitoring their amo subunit A (amoA) messenger RNA (mRNA) expression. The aerobic mini-continuous stirred-tank reactors (mini-CSTRs) were operated for 48 h under different salinity or ammonium levels. Quantification of archaeal and bacterial amoA mRNA levels using real...