User recommended papers

User-recommended papers allows you to suggest a paper you would like to see on Nature China. When these papers appear on our site, users may comment and vote on them. To recommend a paper please use this form. Please note that you cannot recommend a paper you have authored. The editors will reject any self-recommendations. All comments and recommendation are checked by the editors and may be edited prior to publication on the site.

  • 32 votes

    Ecology & Evolution

    • Differences in soil bacterial diversity: driven by contemporary disturbances or historical contingencies?

      • Yuan Ge, Ji-zheng He, Yong-guan Zhu, Jia-bao Zhang, Zhihong Xu, Li-mei Zhang, Yuan-ming Zheng
        Original article citation: ISME J doi:10.1038/ismej.2008.2 (2008)

      • Categories: Ecology & Evolution, Earth & Environment, and Cell & Molecular Biology
      • Recommended by : James Moir on 02/14/2008 09:54PM GMT

        It is an open debate in microbial ecology that if there is any distribution pattern for soil microbial diversity. Professor Ji-Zheng He and colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences provided strong evidence that the bacterial diversity variation is mainly controlled by the soil historical contingencies across a regional scale (1000 km), while contemporary disturbances contribute much less variations of the bacterial diversity, according to their paper published in The ISME Journal by the Nature Publishing Group (published online 31 January 2008). They used a large set of manipulated field-based molecular data and advanced statistical analyses to elucidate quantitatively the contributions of the historical contingencies and the contemporary disturbances to the variations of soil bacterial diversity. This study is the first quantitative examination of the relative importance of contemporary disturbances (~20%) and historical contingencies (~60%) in influencing large-scale soil bacterial diversity. Moreover, this paper showed an important approach for accessing soil microbial biogeography by using latest molecular techniques, advanced statistical analyses and ecological theories. The findings of this study indicated that there are some aspects of biogeography that might be common to all life, which would extend our understanding of the biogeography of organisms.
      • Comment on this subject: 5 comments made

  • 26 votes

    Ecology & Evolution

    • Quantitative analyses of the abundance and composition of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and ammonia-oxidizing archaea of a Chinese upland red soil under long-term fertilization practices

      • Ji-zheng He, Ju-pei Shen, Li-mei Zhang, Yong-guan Zhu, Yuan-ming Zheng, Ming-gang Xu, Hongjie Di
        Original article citation: Environ Microbiol 9," 2364 - 2374, (2007).

      • Categories: Ecology & Evolution, Earth & Environment, and Cell & Molecular Biology
      • Recommended by : James Moir on 01/18/2008 03:59AM GMT

        Nitrification, the process of conversion of ammonium to nitrate in the soil is a microbial process which is fundamentally important for nitrogen cycling in the terrestrial ecosystem. It also has environmental and economic implications as the process produces nitrate which can be leached and contaminate groundwater and surface waters. The leaching of nitrate also reduces the efficiency of nitrogen for plant growth. However, the microbes involved in performing the nitrification process are poorly understood mainly because of difficulties of studying them using conventional techniques. The latest advances in molecular techniques and real-time PCR have provided new approaches to studying the abundance and diversity of these microbes. To this end, the publication of the paper by Jizheng He et al., titled, Quantitative analyses of the abundance and composition of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and ammonia-oxidizing archaea of a Chinese upland red soil under long-term fertilization practices Published in Environmental Microbiology (2007) 9(9): 2364-2374 represents a major milestone in this area using the latest molecular techniques to study these ammonium oxidizing microbes. This work makes major advances in this subject area by providing quantitative information on the relative abundance and diversity of the ammonium oxidizing bacteria and archaea in soils that had been under long-term fertilizer applications. These research findings provide important insights into the role that these different microbes play in nitrification and the impact of human activities on the population abundance and diversity of these microbes. These findings have implications on the sustainable management of terrestrial ecosystems. I therefore would strongly recommend the paper for the website of Nature China as I am confident that many researchers around China and the world would find it an interesting and important paper.
      • Comment on this subject: 4 comments made

  • 25 votes

    Earth & Environment

  • 26 votes

    Biotechnology

    • A novel redox-potential-based screening strategy for rapid isolation of Klebsiella pneumoniae mutants with enhanced 1,3-propanediol producing capability

      • C. Du, Y. Zhang, Y. Li, Z. Cao
        Original article citation: Applied and Environmental Microbiology doi:10.1128/AEM.02857-06 (2007)

      • Categories: Biotechnology and Genetics
      • Recommended by : Zheng-Hong Xu on 06/06/2007 09:42AM GMT

        In many years the Chinese Industrial Biotechnologists spent a lot of energy on increasing the production level of useful metabolites. However, they rarely develop new methodology which would result in a revolutionary development of a certain biotechnological process. Du et al. describes a novel redox-potential-based screening strategy for rapid isolation of Klebsiella pneumoniae mutants with enhanced 1,3-propanediol (a bulk chemical) production capability. The result provides a novel screening strategy which could be helpful to screen/develop strains involved in the oxidoreduction biosynthesis, which is of great potential for industrial biotechnology. The other significance of this study is that it is a typical hypothesis-driven research, which is rarely found in the industrial biotechnology research field in China. The acceptance of this nice article by Applied & Environmental Microbiology symbolizes that the industrial biotechnologists are more focusing on the fundamental research area, e. g. development of novel methodologies. This is important for achieving a bright future for China’s bioeconomy.
      • Comment on this subject: 1 comment made

  • 15 votes

    Physics

  • 12 votes

    Materials

    • Technique for Preparing Ultrafine Nanocrystalline Bulk Material of Pure Rare-Earth Metals

      • X. Song, J. Zhang, M. Yue, E. Li, H. Zeng, N. Lu, M. Zhou, T. Zuo
        Original article citation: Adv. Mater. 18," (2006).

      • Categories: Materials, Chemistry, and Physics
      • Recommended by : Baoquan Sun on 06/10/2007 03:22PM GMT

        Nowadays to prepare pure metal nanoparticles and pure nanocrystalline metal bulk materials is still very hard. Especially, to prepare pure rare-earth nanoparticles and nanocrystalline bulks is a big challenge in the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology. This paper proposed a novel technique to prepare ultra-fine nanocrystalline RE bulks with advanced properties. The essential importance is that the proposed route and techniques can be extended to prepare any nano-metallic materials that are active in the open air, thus it makes possible to study structures and properties of many metallic nanomaterials that could be hardly prepared before.
      • Comment on this subject: 2 comments made

  • 7 votes

    Clinical Medicine

  • 9 votes

    Physics

    • Parameter identification of dynamical systems from time series

      • Wenwu Yu, Guanrong Chen, Jinde Cao, Jinhu Lü, Ulrich Parlitz
        Original article citation: Phys. Rev. E 75," (2007).

      • Categories: Physics
      • Recommended by : Lingling Yao on 07/28/2007 05:48AM GMT

        Parameter identification of dynamical systems has been a hot topic due to its great applications in communication, engineering, neural network, phaysics, and so on. In this paper, synchronization based parameter identification of dynamical systems from time series is carefully revisited. It is shown, based on rigorous theoretical analysis and concrete counterexamples, that some recent research reports on this issue are incomplete or even incorrect. A linear independence condition is pointed out, which is sufficient for such parameter identification of general dynamical systems. Therefore, the theoretical works therein can be helpful both for the future analysis methods and applications.
      • Comment on this subject: 0 comments made

  • 7 votes

    Cell & Molecular Biology

  • 8 votes

    Neuroscience

    • Auditory fear conditioning modulates prepulse inhibition in socially reared rats and isolation-reared rats.

      • Nanxin Li, Junli Ping, Rongbin Wu, Chao Wang, Xihong Wu, Liang Li
        Original article citation: Behavioral Neuroscience 122," 107 - 118, (2008).

      • Categories: Neuroscience
      • Recommended by : Chun Wang on 07/30/2008 08:05PM GMT

        This fascinating study for the first time shows that isolation rearing could not only impair prepulse inhibition, a commonly used sensorimotor gating model of schizophrenia, but also significantly impair the attentional modulation of prepulse inhibition. The authors further demonstrate that this effect is modulated via metabolic glutamate receptors. This work provides a brand new animal model for investigating both neural bases and cognitive features of schizophrenia.
      • Comment on this subject: 0 comments made
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