Distribution and density of the partition function zeros for the diamond-decorated Ising model

Exact renormalization map of temperature between two successive decorated lattices is given, and the distribution of the partition function zeros in the complex temperature plane is obtained for any decoration-level. The rule governing the variation of the distribution pattern as the decoration-level changes is given. The densities of the zeros for the first two decoration-levels are calculated explicitly, and the qualitative features about the densities of higher decoration-levels are given by conjecture. The Julia set associated with the renormalization map is contained in the distribution of the zeros in the limit of infinite decoration level, and the formation of the Julia set in the course of increasing the decoration-level is given in terms of the variations of the zero density.Comment: 8 pages,8figure

Enhanced tanshinone production in hairy roots of 'Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge' under the influence of plant growth regulators in liquid culture

Tanshinone constituents are the most potent diterpene diketones used to treat several diseases. We studied the influence of different plant growth regulators (PGR) on the growth and production of three tanshinone constituents using hairy root culture of Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge. Leaves of the medicinally-important plant S. miltiorrhiza were infected with Agrobacterium rhizogenes strain BCRC15010, which induced hairy roots in 78% of the explants. The best line of hairy roots was established on B5 liquid medium under dark conditions. The transformed nature of the root lines was confirmed by polymerase chain reaction using 'rol' B and C gene-specific primers. Adding different PGRs i.e., auxins, cytokinins and abscisic acid (ABA), enhanced the production of cryptotanshinone, tanshinone I and IIA. Tanshinone I and cryptotanshinone accumulation was 5- and 7.5-fold higher with the addition of 1.0 mg/l ABA and TDZ, respectively, compared to root of greenhouse-grown plant. Cryptotanshinone content was 6.3-, 5.0- and 3.75-fold higher in hairy roots grown under the influence of TDZ, ABA and BA, respectively, compared to a commercial herb. The devised protocol can be used to enhance tanshinone production

Phosphate removal from water using lithium intercalated gibbsite

In this study, lithium intercalated gibbsite (LIG) was investigated for its effectiveness at removing phosphate from water and the mechanisms involved. LIG was prepared through intercalating LiCl into gibbsite giving a structure of [LiAl2(OH)(6)](+) layers with interlayer Cl- and water. The results of batch adsorption experiments showed that the adsorption isotherms at various pHs exhibited an L-shape and could be fitted well using the Langmuir model. The Langmuir adsorption maximum was determined to be 3.0 mmol g(-1) at pH 4.5 and decreased with increasing pH. The adsorption of phosphate was mainly through the displacement of the interlayer Cl- ions in LIG. In conjunction with the anion exchange reaction, the formation of surface complexes or precipitates could also readily occur at lower pH. The adsorption decreased with increasing pH due to decreased H2PO4-/HPO42- molar ratio in solution and positive charges on the edge faces of LIG. Anion exchange is a fast reaction and can be completed within minutes; on the contrary, surface complexation is a slow process and requires days to reach equilibrium. At lower pH, the amount of adsorbed phosphate decreased significantly as the ionic strength was increased from 0.01 to 0.1 M. The adsorption at higher pH showed high selectivity toward divalent HPO42- ions with an increase in ionic strength having no considerable effect on the phosphate adsorption. These results suggest that LIG may be an effective scavenger for removal of phosphate from water. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Estimating near-surface air temperature across Israel using a machine learning based hybrid approach

Rising global temperatures over the last decades have increased heat exposure among populations worldwide. An accurate estimate of the resulting impacts on human health demands temporally explicit and spatially resolved monitoring of near-surface air temperature (Ta). Neither ground-based nor satellite-borne observations can achieve this individually, but the combination of the two provides synergistic opportunities. In this study, we propose a two-stage machine learning-based hybrid model to estimate 1 × 1 km2 gridded intra-daily Ta from surface skin temperature (Ts) across the complex terrain of Israel during 2004–2016. We first applied a random forest (RF) regression model to impute missing Ts from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Aqua and Terra satellites, integrating Ts from the geostationary Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) satellite and synoptic variables from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts' (ECMWF) ERA5 reanalysis data sets. The imputed Ts are in turn fed into the Stage 2 RF-based model to estimate Ta at the satellite overpass hours of each day. We evaluated the model's performance applying out-of-sample fivefold cross validation. Both stages of the hybrid model perform very well with out-of-sample fivefold cross validated R2 of 0.99 and 0.96, MAE of 0.42°C and 1.12°C, and RMSE of 0.65°C and 1.58°C (Stage 1: imputation of Ts, and Stage 2: estimation of Ta from Ts, respectively). The newly proposed model provides excellent computationally efficient estimation of near-surface air temperature at high resolution in both space and time, which helps further minimize exposure misclassification in epidemiological studies