Sepsis remains the leading cause of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and cardiovascular dysfunction in the ICU. Sepsis-induced cardiomyopathy (SCM) and sepsis-associated ARDS frequently coexist and share overlapping mechanisms, including cytokine-driven injury, endothelial disruption, microvascular dysfunction, and mitochondrial abnormalities. Despite their clinical relevance, these entities are often evaluated in isolation, overlooking the integrated heart-lung interactions that characterize severe sepsis and ARDS. This narrative review synthesizes current evidence on the shared pathophysiology and diagnostic approach to cardiomyopathy and lung injury in sepsis-associated ARDS, emphasizing the physiologic links that unify these syndromes. We review the immunologic, endothelial, and metabolic mechanisms that drive concurrent myocardial depression and alveolocapillary injury, with particular attention to microcirculatory failure, autonomic dysregulation, and mechanical ventilation-associated cardiopulmonary interactions. We then review diagnostic tools, including echocardiography, lung ultrasound, CT imaging, biomarkers, and advanced hemodynamic monitoring, and highlight the impact of integrated assessment on accurate phenotyping and management. Cardiomyopathy and ARDS in sepsis arise from common pathophysiologic drivers and should be understood as a unified cardiopulmonary phenotype rather than isolated organ failures. Early multimodal detection is critical for optimizing management strategies and improving outcomes.
This study develops a dual-dimensional framework integrating development capacity and ecological function importance to assess ecological product value realization suitability across 76 cities in the Yellow River Basin. Using multi-source data and the CRITIC weighting method, we identified four suitability zones: suitable (25.02%), marginally suitable (6.11%), marginally unsuitable (38.59%), and unsuitable (30.28%). The basin generated an estimated USD 2.15 billion in ecological product value in 2020. We propose differentiated pathways, including ecologically safeguarded green industrial transformation in suitable zones, ecological restoration in marginally suitable zones, protection-oriented management in marginally unsuitable zones, and compensation mechanisms in unsuitable zones. Here, ‘suitable’ denotes conditional opportunity for low-impact value-realization instruments under ecological safeguards, not permission for unconstrained development. The framework links ecological-product accounting with spatial planning while acknowledging that social, cultural, and governance dimensions require complementary assessment.
Global climates are rapidly changing and future climates are predicted to be characterized by extreme climatic events, especially prolonged drought and hot weather. In this study, we explored the effects of manipulated low and high soil water availability and soil temperature on soil food webs (as indicated by soil nematode communities) from contrasting soil habitats. Soils were collected from a relatively arid karst mountain peak, a relatively moist karst piedmont, and a mixed soil of these two was also tested. The results showed that water availability was the primary factor influencing the soil food web. Soil food web structures were mature under low water availability in mountain peak soils and under high water availability in piedmont soils. In the mountain peak soils, high water availability decreased the maturity index and structure index of soil nematodes, which was mainly due to marked increase in the absolute and relative abundances of low trophic level organisms (i.e., bacterivores and fungivores). In the Piedmont soils, high water supply increased the maturity index and structure index of soil nematodes, which mainly due to the increases in the absolute and relative abundances of higher trophic level nematodes, such as omnivores and predators. However, the nematode maturity index and structure index showed no significant response to variations in water availability when soils from the mountain peak and piedmont were mixed and cultured together. Although the overall effect of temperature on the soil nematode community was weaker than that of water availability, temperature exerted significant context-dependent effects. Particularly, moderate temperatures increased fungivorous nematode abundance under drought conditions in mountain peak soils but decreased it under moist conditions in piedmont soils. Notably, plant-parasitic nematodes showed no significant response to either soil moisture or temperature treatments across all soil types, indicating a high degree of stability in this trophic group under short-term fluctuations in water and temperature. Our results suggest that changes in precipitation may have stronger effects on soil nematode communities than increases in temperature. However, the interaction between temperature and moisture should not be overlooked, as it can shape nematode community composition in habitat-specific ways. In addition, drought-tolerant soil organisms may be available for improving the resistance of soil food webs to prolonged drought under climate change conditions.
Cell-free gene expression (CFE) technology is an appealing expression chassis for fieldable synthetic biology. Reagents for cell-free protein expression can be preserved, transported, or stored over long periods, even at elevated temperatures. Therefore, cell-free synthetic biology efforts are practical for applications such as fieldable biosensing and decentralized or on-demand therapeutics production in austere environments and at emergency or natural disaster sites. However, these systems still require incubation to operate under standard conditions (e.g., 16 °C to 37 °C), whereas the conditions in the application environment often lie outside these limits. To address this technological gap, we propose adding heat-shock chaperones from diverse organisms to expand the cell-free system’s operating range. We present a method for assessing protective protein candidates, and we demonstrate a 100-fold improvement in fluorescent reporter expression at non-standard temperatures and a widening of the temperature range for system operation by more than 4 °C, as measured by fluorescence from reporter expression. Moreover, we show that dual-chaperone systems can yield higher fluorescence output compared to single-chaperone ones. These chaperone-inspired systems may perform in environments where standard ones fall short, expanding their usability and application potential.
