Challenges of Vehicle-to-Everything Communication. Interviews among Industry Experts

By 2025 every new car sold will be connected to the Internet, leading to a disruptive change of road transportation, but also resulting in diverse challenges regarding Vehicle-to-Everything Communication (V2X). Prior research has mostly focused on the technological challenges of V2X and neglects to consider environmental and organizational challenges resulting from a highly interconnected and interdependent market. We conducted 19 semi-structured interviews with experts from multiple market players to achieve a more holistic overview of what challenges implementation and diffusion of V2X are facing. Our findings reveal that V2X is perceived as a critical information infrastructure coming with several challenges that must be tackled, such as security and privacy issues, lacking trust and acceptance, and entangled and unclear responsibilities. By synthesizing major challenges, we provide recommendations for future research avenues to overcome existing challenges and enable widespread diffusion of V2X to unleash its full potentia

Induction of aromatic ring: cleavage dioxygenases in Stenotrophomonas maltophilia strain KB2 in cometabolic systems

Stenotrophomonas maltophilia KB2 is known to produce different enzymes of dioxygenase family. The aim of our studies was to determine activity of these enzymes after induction by benzoic acids in cometabolic systems with nitrophenols. We have shown that under cometabolic conditions KB2 strain degraded 0.25–0.4 mM of nitrophenols after 14 days of incubation. Simultaneously degradation of 3 mM of growth substrate during 1–3 days was observed depending on substrate as well as cometabolite used. From cometabolic systems with nitrophenols as cometabolites and 3,4-dihydroxybenzoate as a growth substrate, dioxygenases with the highest activity of protocatechuate 3,4-dioxygenase were isolated. Activity of catechol 1,2- dioxygenase and protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase was not observed. Catechol 2,3-dioxygenase was active only in cultures with 4-nitrophenol. Ability of KB2 strain to induce and synthesize various dioxygenases depending on substrate present in medium makes this strain useful in bioremediation of sites contaminated with different aromatic compounds

Structural plasticity in root-fungal symbioses: diverse interactions lead to improved plant fitness

Root-fungal symbioses such as mycorrhizas and endophytes are key components of terrestrial ecosystems. Diverse in trophy habits (obligate, facultative or hemibiotrophs) and symbiotic relations (from mutualism to parasitism), these associations also show great variability in their root colonization and nutritional strategies. Specialized interface structures such as arbuscules and Hartig nets are formed by certain associations while others are restricted to non-specialized intercellular or intracellular hyphae in roots. In either case, there are documented examples of active nutrient exchange, reinforcing the fact that specialized structures used to define specific mycorrhizal associations are not essential for reciprocal exchange of nutrients and plant growth promotion. In feremycorrhiza (with Austroboletus occidentalis and eucalypts), the fungal partner markedly enhances plant growth and nutrient acquisition without colonizing roots, emphasizing that a conventional focus on structural form of associations may have resulted in important functional components of rhizospheres being overlooked. In support of this viewpoint, mycobiome studies using the state-of-the-art DNA sequencing technologies have unearthed much more complexity in root-fungal relationships than those discovered using the traditional morphology based approaches. In this review, we explore the existing literature and most recent findings surrounding structure, functioning, and ecology of root-fungal symbiosis, which highlight the fact that plant fitness can be altered by taxonomically/ecologically diverse fungal symbionts regardless of root colonization and interface specialization. Furthermore, transition from saprotrophy to biotrophy seems to be a common event that occurs in diverse fungal lineages (consisting of root endophytes, soil saprotrophs, wood decayers etc.), and which may be accompanied by development of specialized interface structures and/or mycorrhiza-like effects on plant growth and nutrition