606 research outputs found
Higher biomass accumulation by increasing phosphoribosylpyrophosphate synthetase activity in Arabidopsis thaliana and Nicotiana tabacum
Plants are able to produce all the organic compounds required for development and growth. As developmental processes and metabolic pathways use a common resource pool, the tight regulation of the distribution of metabolites between growth, production of defence compounds and storage products can be assumed. A transgenic approach was used to investigate the importance of supplying the key intermediate phosphoribosylpyrophosphate (PRPP) for plant growth and biomass accumulation in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and in Nicotiana tabacum. For this purpose, the Ashbya gossypii genes coding for either PRPP synthetase (PRS) or a mutated variant of the same gene were over-expressed under the control of a constitutive promoter. It was shown that increased PRS activity in A. thaliana or N. tabacum leads to a substantial increase in biomass accumulation under different standardized growth conditions. Growth enhancement was accompanied by significant changes in the amount of sugars and other metabolites. This study provides evidence that the supply of PRPP co-limits growth rates, and has obvious implications for biotechnological strategies aiming to increase plant biomass as an alternative renewable energy source
Band dispersion in C60(111): An angle-resolved photoemission study
Angle-resolved photoemission studies of single-crystal C60(111) films grown on GeS(001) reveal changes in valence feature line shape with emission angle and photon energy that are indicative of band dispersion. For an excitation energy (hν) of 10 eV, normal emission spectra show four sharp structures within the ∼1.1-eV-wide valence feature derived from the second highest molecular orbital (HOMO-1) of C60. For hν=8.1 eV, the 1-eV-wide HOMO-derived feature exhibits changes with emission angle mainly due to dispersion of 0.6 eV in the unoccupied bands. The distribution of electronic states underlying HOMO and HOMO-1 indicates that vibronic loss structures are not necessary to explain the width of these valence features
Convergence rates in expectation for Tikhonov-type regularization of Inverse Problems with Poisson data
In this paper we study a Tikhonov-type method for ill-posed nonlinear
operator equations \gdag = F(
ag) where \gdag is an integrable,
non-negative function. We assume that data are drawn from a Poisson process
with density t\gdag where may be interpreted as an exposure time. Such
problems occur in many photonic imaging applications including positron
emission tomography, confocal fluorescence microscopy, astronomic observations,
and phase retrieval problems in optics. Our approach uses a
Kullback-Leibler-type data fidelity functional and allows for general convex
penalty terms. We prove convergence rates of the expectation of the
reconstruction error under a variational source condition as both
for an a priori and for a Lepski{\u\i}-type parameter choice rule
Authigenic minerals reflect microbial control on pore waters in a ferruginous analogue
Ferruginous conditions prevailed in the oceans through much of Earth's history. However, minerals recording these conditions remain difficult to interpret in terms of biogeochemical processes prior to lithification. In Lake Towuti, Indonesia, ferruginous sediments are deposited under anoxic sulfate-poor conditions similar to the Proterozoic oceans, allowing the study of mineralogical (trans)formations during microbial diagenesis. Comprehensive pore water geochemistry, high resolution geochemical core profiles, and electron microscopy of authigenic minerals revealed in situ formation of magnetite, millerite, and abundant siderite and vivianite along a 100 m long sequence. Framboidal magnetites represent primary pelagic precipitates, whereas millerite, a sulfide mineral often overlooked under sulfate-poor conditions, shows acicular aggregates entangled with siderite and vivianite resulting from saturated pore waters and continuous growth during burial. These phases act as biosignatures of microbial iron and sulfate reduction, fermentation and methanogenesis, processes clearly traceable in pore water profiles. Variability in metal and organic substrates attests to environment driven processes, differentially sustaining microbial processes along the stratigraphy. Geochemical profiles resulting from microbial activity over 200 kyr after deposition provide constraints on the depth and age of mineral formation within ferruginous records
Important role of alkali atoms in A4C60
We show that hopping via the alkali atoms plays an important role for the t1u
band of A4C60 (A=K, Rb), in strong contrast to A3C60. Thus the t1u band is
broadened by more than 40 % by the presence of the alkali atoms. The difference
between A4C60 and A3C60 is in particular due to the less symmetric location of
the alkali atoms in A4C60.Comment: 5 pages, revtex, 2 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. B more
information at http://www.mpi-stuttgart.mpg.de/dokumente/andersen/fullerene
Physical weathering by glaciers enhances silicon mobilisation and isotopic fractionation
Glacial meltwaters export substantial quantities of dissolved and dissolvable amorphous silicon (DSi and ASi), providing an essential nutrient for downstream diatoms. Evidence suggests that glacially exported DSi is isotopically light compared to DSi in non-glaciated rivers. However, the isotopic fractionation mechanisms are not well constrained, indicating an important gap in our understanding of processes in the global Si cycle. We use rock crushing experiments to mimic subglacial physical erosion, to provide insight into subglacial isotope fractionation. Isotopically light DSi (δ30SiDSi) released following initial dissolution of freshly ground mineral surfaces (down to −2.12 ± 0.02 ‰) suggests mechanochemical reactions induce isotopic fractionation, explaining the low δ30SiDSi composition of subglacial runoff. ASi with a consistent isotopic composition is present in all mechanically weathered samples, but concentrations are elevated in samples that have undergone more intense physical grinding. These experiments illustrate the critical role of physical processes in driving isotopic fractionation and biogeochemical weathering in subglacial environments. Understanding perturbations in high latitude Si cycling under climatic change will likely depend on the response of mechanochemical weathering to increased glacial melt
ADI splitting schemes for a fourth-order nonlinear partial differential equation from image processing
We present directional operator splitting schemes for the numerical solution of a fourth-order, nonlinear partial differential evolution equation which arises in image processing. This equation constitutes the H−1-gradient flow of the total variation and represents a prototype of higher-order equations of similar type which are popular in imaging for denoising, deblurring and inpainting problems. The efficient numerical solution of this equation is very challenging due to the stiffness of most numerical schemes. We show that the combination of directional splitting schemes with implicit time-stepping provides a stable and computationally cheap numerical realisation of the equation
A combined first and second order variational approach for image reconstruction
In this paper we study a variational problem in the space of functions of
bounded Hessian. Our model constitutes a straightforward higher-order extension
of the well known ROF functional (total variation minimisation) to which we add
a non-smooth second order regulariser. It combines convex functions of the
total variation and the total variation of the first derivatives. In what
follows, we prove existence and uniqueness of minimisers of the combined model
and present the numerical solution of the corresponding discretised problem by
employing the split Bregman method. The paper is furnished with applications of
our model to image denoising, deblurring as well as image inpainting. The
obtained numerical results are compared with results obtained from total
generalised variation (TGV), infimal convolution and Euler's elastica, three
other state of the art higher-order models. The numerical discussion confirms
that the proposed higher-order model competes with models of its kind in
avoiding the creation of undesirable artifacts and blocky-like structures in
the reconstructed images -- a known disadvantage of the ROF model -- while
being simple and efficiently numerically solvable.Comment: 34 pages, 89 figure
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