The Role of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Symbiosis in Plant Adaptation to Drought Stress

Oral Session

Experimental study on combustion characteristics of Chinese RP-3 kerosene

AbstractIn order to illustrate the combustion characteristics of RP-3 kerosene which is widely used in Chinese aero-engines, the combustion characteristics of RP-3 kerosene were experimentally investigated in a constant volume combustion chamber. The experiments were performed at four different pressures of 0.1MPa, 0.3MPa, 0.5MPa and 0.7MPa, and three different temperatures of 390K, 420K and 450K, and over the equivalence ratio range of 0.6–1.6. Furthermore, the laminar combustion speeds of a surrogate fuel for RP-3 kerosene were simulated under certain conditions. The results show that increasing the initial temperature or decreasing the initial pressure causes an increase in the laminar combustion speed of RP-3 kerosene. With the equivalence ratio increasing from 0.6 to 1.6, the laminar combustion speed increases initially and then decreases gradually. The highest laminar combustion speed is measured under fuel rich condition (the equivalence ratio is 1.2). At the same time, the Markstein length shows the same changing trend as the laminar combustion speed with modification of the initial pressure. Increasing the initial pressure will increase the instability of the flame front, which is established by decreased Markstein length. However, different from the effects of the initial temperature and equivalence ratio on the laminar combustion speed, increasing the equivalence ratio will lead to a decrease in the Markstein length and the stability of the flame front, and the effect of the initial temperature on the Markstein length is unclear. Furthermore, the simulated laminar combustion speeds of the surrogate fuel agree with the corresponding experimental datas of RP-3 kerosene within ∼10% deviation under certain conditions

Earth reflectivity from Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) Earth Polychromatic Camera (EPIC)

Poster presented at 2017 AGU Fall Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana. POSTER ID: A33D-2387Earth reflectivity, which is also specified as Earth albedo or Earth reflectance, is defined as the fraction of incident solar radiation reflected back to space at the top of the atmosphere. It is a key climate parameter that describes climate forcing and associated response of the climate system. Satellite is one of the most efficient ways to measure earth reflectivity. Conventional polar orbit and geostationary satellites observe the Earth at a specific local solar time or monitor only a specific area of the Earth. For the first time, the NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) onboard NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) collects simultaneously radiance data of the entire sunlit earth at 8 km resolution at nadir every 65 to 110 min. It provides reflectivity images in backscattering direction with the scattering angle between 168º and 176º at 10 narrow spectral bands in ultraviolet, visible, and near-Infrared (NIR) wavelengths. We estimate the Earth reflectivity using DSCOVR EPIC observations and analyze errors in Earth reflectivity due to sampling strategy of polar orbit Terra/Aqua MODIS and geostationary Goddard Earth Observing System-R series missions. We also provide estimates of contributions from ocean, clouds, land and vegetation to the Earth reflectivity. Graphic abstract shows enhanced RGB EPIC images of the Earth taken on July-24-2016 at 7:04GMT and 15:48 GMT. Parallel lines depict a 2330 km wide Aqua MODIS swath. The plot shows diurnal courses of mean Earth reflectance over the Aqua swath (triangles) and the entire image (circles). In this example the relative difference between the mean reflectances is +34% at 7:04GMT and -16% at 15:48 GMT. Corresponding daily averages are 0.256 (0.044) and 0.231 (0.025). The relative precision estimated as root mean square relative error is 17.9% in this example

Changes of AM Fungal Abundance along Environmental Gradients in the Arid and Semi-Arid Grasslands of Northern China

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are ubiquitous symbionts of higher plants in terrestrial ecosystems, while the occurrence of the AM symbiosis is influenced by a complex set of abiotic and biotic factors. To reveal the regional distribution pattern of AM fungi as driven by multiple environmental factors, and to understand the ecological importance of AM fungi in natural ecosystems, we conducted a field investigation on AM fungal abundance along environmental gradients in the arid and semi-arid grasslands of northern China. In addition to plant parameters recorded in situ, soil samples were collected, and soil chemo-physical and biological parameters were measured in the lab. Statistical analyses were performed to reveal the relative contribution of climatic, edaphic and vegetation factors to AM fungal abundance, especially for extraradical hyphal length density (HLD) in the soil. The results indicated that HLD were positively correlated with mean annual temperature (MAT), soil clay content and soil pH, but negatively correlated with both soil organic carbon (SOC) and soil available N. The multiple regressions and structural equation model showed that MAT was the key positive contributor and soil fertility was the key negative contributor to HLD. Furthermore, both the intraradical AM colonization (IMC) and relative abundance of AM fungi, which was quantified by real-time PCR assay, tended to decrease along the increasing SOC content. With regard to the obvious negative correlation between MAT and SOC in the research area, the positive correlation between MAT and HLD implied that AM fungi could potentially mitigate soil carbon losses especially in infertile soils under global warming. However, direct evidence from long-term experiments is still expected to support the AM fungal contribution to soil carbon pools

The Role of AM Symbiosis in Plant Adaptation to Drought Stress

Symposium paper Part 1: Function and management of soil microorganisms in agro-ecosystems with special reference to arbuscular mycorrhizal fung

Numerical Analysis and Strength Evaluation of an Exposed River Crossing Pipeline with Casing Under Flood Load

Pipelines in service always experience complicated loadings induced by operational and environmental conditions. Flood is one of the common natural hazard threats for buried steel pipelines. One exposed river crossing X70 gas pipeline induced by flood erosion was used as a prototype for this study. A mechanical model was established considering the field loading conditions. Morison equations were adopted to calculate distributional hydrodynamic loads on spanning pipe caused by flood flow. Nonlinear soil constraint on pipe was considered using discrete nonlinear soil springs. An explicit solution of bending stiffness for pipe segment with casing was derived and applied to the numerical model. The von Mises yield criterion was used as failure criteria of the X70 pipe. Stress behavior of the pipe were analyzed by a rigorous finite element model established by the general-purpose Finite-Element package ABAQUS, with 3D pipe elements and pipe-soil interaction elements simulating pipe and soil constraints on pipe, respectively. Results show that, the pipe is safe at present, as the maximum von Mises stress in pipe with the field parameters is 185.57 MPa. The critical flow velocity of the pipe is 5.8 m/s with the present spanning length. The critical spanning length of the pipe is 467 m with the present flow velocity. The failure pipe sections locate at the connection point of the bare pipe and the pipe with casing or the supporting point of the bare pipe on riverbed

Generating global products of LAI and FPAR from SNPP-VIIRS data: theoretical background and implementation

Leaf area index (LAI) and fraction of photosynthetically active radiation (FPAR) absorbed by vegetation have been successfully generated from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data since early 2000. As the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument onboard, the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) has inherited the scientific role of MODIS, and the development of a continuous, consistent, and well-characterized VIIRS LAI/FPAR data set is critical to continue the MODIS time series. In this paper, we build the radiative transfer-based VIIRS-specific lookup tables by achieving minimal difference with the MODIS data set and maximal spatial coverage of retrievals from the main algorithm. The theory of spectral invariants provides the configurable physical parameters, i.e., single scattering albedos (SSAs) that are optimized for VIIRS-specific characteristics. The effort finds a set of smaller red-band SSA and larger near-infraredband SSA for VIIRS compared with the MODIS heritage. The VIIRS LAI/FPAR is evaluated through comparisons with one year of MODIS product in terms of both spatial and temporal patterns. Further validation efforts are still necessary to ensure the product quality. Current results, however, imbue confidence in the VIIRS data set and suggest that the efforts described here meet the goal of achieving the operationally consistent multisensor LAI/FPAR data sets. Moreover, the strategies of parametric adjustment and LAI/FPAR evaluation applied to SNPP-VIIRS can also be employed to the subsequent Joint Polar Satellite System VIIRS or other instruments.Accepted manuscrip

Regular Lossy Functions and Their Applications in Leakage-Resilient Cryptography

In STOC 2008, Peikert and Waters introduced a powerful primitive called lossy trapdoor functions (LTFs). In a nutshell, LTFs are functions that behave in one of two modes. In the normal mode, functions are injective and invertible with a trapdoor. In the lossy mode, functions statistically lose information about their inputs. Moreover, the two modes are computationally indistinguishable. In this work, we put forward a relaxation of LTFs, namely, regular lossy functions (RLFs). Compared to LTFs, the functions in the normal mode are not required to be efficiently invertible or even unnecessary to be injective. Instead, they could also be lossy, but in a regular manner. We also put forward richer abstractions of RLFs, namely all-but-one regular lossy functions (ABO-RLFs) and one-time regular lossy filters (OT-RLFs). We show that (ABO)-RLFs admit efficient constructions from both a variety of number- theoretic assumptions and hash proof system (HPS) for subset membership problems satisfying natural algebraic properties. Thanks to the relaxations on functionality, the constructions enjoy much compact key size and better computational efficiency than that of (ABO)-LTFs. We demonstrate the utility of RLFs and their extensions in the leakage-resilient cryptography. As a special case of RLFs, lossy functions imply leakage-resilient injective one-way functions with optimal leakage rate $1 - o(1)$. ABO-RLFs (or OT-RLFs) immediately imply leakage-resilient one-time message authentication code (MAC) with optimal leakage rate $1 - o(1)$. ABO-RLFs together with HPS give rise to leakage-resilient chosen-ciphertext (CCA) secure key encapsulation mechanisms (KEM) (this approach extends naturally to the identity-based setting). Combining the construction of ABO-RLFs from HPS, this gives the first leakage-resilient CCA-secure public-key encryption (PKE) with optimal leakage rate based solely on HPS, and thus goes beyond the barrier posed by Dodis et al. (Asiacrypt 2010). Our construction also applies to the identity-based setting, yielding LR-CCA secure IB-KEM with higher leakage rate than previous works

Paste structure and rheological properties of lotus seed starch–glycerin monostearate complexes formed by high-pressure homogenization

peer-reviewedStarch–lipid complexes were prepared using lotus seed starch (LS) and glycerin monostearate (GMS) via a high-pressure homogenization (HPH) process, and the effect of HPH on the paste structure and rheological properties of LS–GMS was investigated. Rapid Visco Analyser (RVA) profiles showed that HPH treatment inhibited the formation of the second viscosity peak of the LS–GMS paste, and the extent of this change was dependent on the level of homogenized pressure. Analysis of the size-exclusion chromatography, light microscopy, and low-field 1H nuclear magnetic resonance results revealed that high homogenized pressure (70–100 MPa) decreased molecular weight and size by degrading the branch structure of amylopectin; however, intact LS–GMS granules can optimize the network structure by filler–matrix interaction, which causes free water to transition into immobile water in the starch paste. The steady-shear results showed that the LS–GMS pastes presented non-Newtonian shear-thinning behavior, with higher homogenized pressure producing a smaller hysteresis loop area. During the oscillation process, the LS–GMS pastes prepared at 100 MPa exhibited the lowest loss tangent values in all the complexes, indicating a stronger resistance to vibration

Inhibition Effect of Triglyceride Accumulation by Large Yellow Croaker Roe DHA-PC in HepG2 Cells.

peer-reviewedThe phospholipids (PLs) of large yellow croaker (Pseudosciaena crocea, P. crocea) roe contain a high level of polyunsaturated fatty acids, especially docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which can lower blood lipid levels. In previous research, PLs of P. crocea roe were found able to regulate the accumulation of triglycerides. However, none of these involve the function of DHA-containing phosphatidylcholine (DHA-PC), which is the main component of PLs derived from P. crocea roe. The function by which DHA-PC from P. crocea roe exerts its effects has not yet been clarified. Herein, we used purified DHA-PC and oleic acid (OA) induced HepG2 cells to establish a high-fat model, and the cell activity and intracellular lipid levels were then measured. The mRNA and protein expression of Fatty Acid Synthase (FAS), Carnitine Palmitoyl Transferase 1A (CPT1A) and Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor α (PPARα) in HepG2 cells were detected via RT-qPCR and western blot as well. It was found that DHA-PC can significantly regulate triglyceride accumulation in HepG2 cells, the effect of which was related to the activation of PPARα receptor activity, upregulation of CPT1A, and downregulation of FAS expression. These results can improve the understanding of the biofunction of hyperlipidemia mediated by DHA-PC from P. crocea roe, as well as provide a theoretical basis for the utilization of DHA-PC from P. crocea roe as a functional food additive