Morphology of the immature stages of Panorpa qinlingensis (Mecoptera: Panorpidae) with notes on its biology

The scorpionfly Panorpa qinlingensis Chou & Ran is described and illustrated in detail for its immature stages, including egg, larva, and pupa. The egg is oval with chorion decorated with irregular polygonal network. The larva is eruciform and peripneustic, bearing eight pairs of abdominal prolegs. A pair of prominent compound eyes are present on head. The first instar larva differs from later instars in possessing a prominent egg burster on frons and with clavate setae. The pupa is exarate and decticous, taking the shape of the adults. The scorpionfly is bivoltine, overwintering as prepupal stage in the soil. The durations of the egg, larval, and pupal stages are 5–9 d, 19–27 d, and 8–18 d respectively for the first generation. Adults emerge from mid May to early June and from late July to mid August in the Micang Mountain, central China

Arbitrary slip length for fluid-solid interface of arbitrary geometry in smoothed particle dynamics

We model a slip boundary condition at fluid-solid interface of an arbitrary geometry in smoothed particle hydrodynamics and smoothed dissipative particle dynamics simulations. Under an assumption of linear profile of the tangential velocity at quasi-steady state near the interface, an arbitrary slip length $b$ can be specified and correspondingly, an artificial velocity for every boundary particle can be calculated. Therefore, $b$ as an input parameter affects the calculation of dissipative and random forces near the interface. For $b \to 0$, the no-slip is recovered while for $b \to \infty$, the free-slip is achieved. Technically, we devise two different approaches to calculate the artificial velocity of any boundary particle. The first has a succinct principle and is competent for simple geometries, while the second is subtle and affordable for complex geometries. Slip lengths in simulations for both steady and transient flows coincide with the expected ones. As demonstration, we apply the two approaches extensively to simulate curvy channel flows, dynamics of an ellipsoid in pipe flow and flows within complex microvessels, where desired slip lengths at fluid-solid interfaces are prescribed. The proposed methodology may apply equally well to other particle methods such as dissipative particle dynamics and moving particle semi-implicit methods

Giant negative magnetoresistance induced by the chiral anomaly in individual Cd3As2 nanowires

Cd3As2 is a newly booming Dirac semimetal with linear dispersion along all three momentum directions and can be viewed as 3D analog of graphene. As breaking of either time reversal symmetry or spatial inversion symmetry, the Dirac semimetal is believed to transform into Weyl semimetal with exotic chiral anomaly effect, while the experimental evidence of the chiral anomaly is still missing in Cd3As2. Here we report the magneto-transport properties of individual Cd3As2 nanowires. Large negative magnetoresistance (MR) with magnitude of -63% at 60 K and -11% at 300 K are observed when the magnetic field is parallel with the electric field direction, giving the evidence of the chiral magnetic effect in Cd3As2 nanowires. In addition, the critical magnetic field BC, where there is an extremum of the negative MR, increases with increasing temperature. As the first observation of chiral anomaly induced negative MR in Cd3As2 nanowires, it may offer valuable insights for low dimensional physics in Dirac semimetals.Comment: 4 figure

Genome replication engineering assisted continuous evolution (GREACE) to improve microbial tolerance for biofuels production

BACKGROUND: Microbial production of biofuels requires robust cell growth and metabolism under tough conditions. Conventionally, such tolerance phenotypes were engineered through evolutionary engineering using the principle of “Mutagenesis followed-by Selection”. The iterative rounds of mutagenesis-selection and frequent manual interventions resulted in discontinuous and inefficient strain improvement processes. This work aimed to develop a more continuous and efficient evolutionary engineering method termed as “Genome Replication Engineering Assisted Continuous Evolution” (GREACE) using “Mutagenesis coupled-with Selection” as its core principle. RESULTS: The core design of GREACE is to introduce an in vivo continuous mutagenesis mechanism into microbial cells by introducing a group of genetically modified proofreading elements of the DNA polymerase complex to accelerate the evolution process under stressful conditions. The genotype stability and phenotype heritability can be stably maintained once the genetically modified proofreading element is removed, thus scarless mutants with desired phenotypes can be obtained. Kanamycin resistance of E. coli was rapidly improved to confirm the concept and feasibility of GREACE. Intrinsic mechanism analysis revealed that during the continuous evolution process, the accumulation of genetically modified proofreading elements with mutator activities endowed the host cells with enhanced adaptation advantages. We further showed that GREACE can also be applied to engineer n-butanol and acetate tolerances. In less than a month, an E. coli strain capable of growing under an n-butanol concentration of 1.25% was isolated. As for acetate tolerance, cell growth of the evolved E. coli strain increased by 8-fold under 0.1% of acetate. In addition, we discovered that adaptation to specific stresses prefers accumulation of genetically modified elements with specific mutator strengths. CONCLUSIONS: We developed a novel GREACE method using “Mutagenesis coupled-with Selection” as core principle. Successful isolation of E. coli strains with improved n-butanol and acetate tolerances demonstrated the potential of GREACE as a promising method for strain improvement in biofuels production

Central Speed of Sound, Trace Anomaly and Observables of Neutron Stars from Perturbative Analyses of Scaled TOV Equations

The central speed of sound (SS) measures the stiffness of the Equation of State (EOS) of superdense neutron star (NS) matter. Its variations with density and radial coordinate in NSs in conventional analyses often suffer from uncertainties of the specific nuclear EOSs used. Using the central SS and NS mass/radius scaling obtained from solving perturbatively the scaled Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) equations, we study the variations of SS, trace anomaly and several closely related properties of NSs in an EOS-model independent manner. We find that the SS increases with the reduced central pressure $\widehat{P}_{\rm{c}}\equiv P_{\rm{c}}/\varepsilon_{\rm{c}}$ (scaled by the central energy density $\varepsilon_{\rm{c}}$), and the conformal bound for SS is violated for NSs with masses higher than about 1.9M$_{\odot}$. The ratio $P/\varepsilon$ is upper bounded as $P/\varepsilon\lesssim0.374$ around the centers of stable NSs. We demonstrate that it is an intrinsic property of strong-field gravity and is more relevant than the perturbative QCD bound on it. While a sharp phase transition at high densities characterized by a sudden vanishing of SS in cores of massive NSs are basically excluded, the probability for a continuous crossover signaled by a peaked radial profile of SS is found to be enhanced as $\widehat{P}_{\rm{c}}$ decreases, implying it likely happens near the centers of massive NSs. Moreover, a new and more stringent causality boundary as $R_{\max}/\rm{km}\gtrsim 4.73M_{\rm{NS}}^{\max}/M_{\odot}+1.14$ for NS M-R curve is found to be excellently consistent with observational data on NS masses and radii. Furthermore, new constraints on the ultimate energy density and pressure allowed in NSs before collapsing into black holes are obtained and compared with earlier predictions in the literature.Comment: 23 page