Transcriptional Regulation of Grass Secondary Cell Wall Biosynthesis: Playing Catch-Up with Arabidopsis thaliana

Secondary cell wall synthesis occurs in specialized cell types following completion of cell enlargement. By virtue of mechanical strength provided by a wall thickened with cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin, these cells can function as water-conducting vessels and provide structural support. Several transcription factor families regulate genes encoding wall synthesis enzymes. Certain NAC and MYB proteins directly bind to the SNBE and AC elements upstream of structural genes and other transcription factors. The most detailed model of this regulatory network is established predominantly for a eudicot, Arabidopsis thaliana. In grasses, both the patterning and the composition of secondary cell walls are distinct from that of eudicots. These differences suggest transcriptional regulation is similarly distinct. Putative rice and maize orthologs of several eudicot cell wall regulators genetically complement mutants of A. thaliana or result in wall defects when constitutively overexpressed; nevertheless, aside from a maize, ZmMYB31, and a switchgrass protein, PvMYB4, function has not been tested in a grass. Similar to the seminal work conducted in A. thaliana, gene expression profiling in maize, rice, and other grasses implicates additional genes as regulators. Characterization of these genes will continue to elucidate the relationship between the transcription regulatory networks of eudicots and grasses

Lignocellulosic feedstocks: research progress and challenges in optimising biomass quality and yield

Lignocellulosic biomass derived from energy crops and agri-cultural residues is a promising renewable source for the pro-duction of transportation fuels and bio-based materials. Plants exhibiting C4 photosynthesis are amongst the most promising dedicated energy crops as they possess tremendous intrinsic effi-ciency in converting solar energy to biomass. Van der Weijde et al. (2013) provide an excellent overview of the potential of five C4 grasses from the Panicoideae clade (maize, Miscanthus, sorghum, sugarcane, and switchgrass) as lignocellulosic feedstock for the production of biofuels. The authors discuss yield poten-tial, biomass quality and genetic improvement of dual-purpose food and energy cultivars and dedicated energy cultivars through plant breeding and also highlight several research needs. Perennial growth habit provides a number of environmental advantages over annuals as bioenergy crops, including the requirement o

Four Decades of the Journal \u3ci\u3eLaw and Human Behavior\u3c/i\u3e: A Content Analysis

Although still relatively young, the journal Law and Human Behavior (LHB) has amassed a publication history of more than 1300 full-length articles over four decades. Yet, no systematic analysis of the journal has been done until now. The current research coded all full-length articles to examine trends over time, predictors of the number of Google Scholar citations, and predictors of whether an article was cited by a court case. The predictors of interest included article organization, research topics, areas of law, areas of psychology, first-author gender, first-author country of institutional affiliation, and samples employed. Results revealed a vast and varied field that has shown marked diversification over the years. First authors have consistently become more diversified in both gender and country of institutional affiliation. Overall, the most common research topics were jury/judicial decision-making and eyewitness/memory, the most common legal connections were to criminal law and mental health law, and the most common psychology connection was to social-cognitive psychology. Research in psychology and law has the potential to impact both academic researchers and the legal system. Articles published in LHB appear to accomplish both

Identifying and Unpacking the Role of Social Identity in Moderating Evaluations of Police‑Civilian Interactions

Scholars and policy makers rely on the theory of procedural justice (PJ) to further the twin goals of improving police-civilian relations and reducing crime. Substantial PJ research demonstrates that civilians evaluate fairness in police-civilian interactions based on voice, neutrality, trust, and respect. Although social identity is an important predictor and outcome of PJ, little research has examined how police officers, who have a unique social identity and sub-culture, evaluate fairness. The current research examined how police officers, as compared to civilians, evaluated fairness through the PJ mechanisms and whether social identity explained differences between the groups. Police officers (n = 125), recruited from local law enforcement agencies, and civilians (n = 151), recruited from an online participant pool, evaluated a randomly assigned PJ or no-PJ police-civilian interaction. Multiple group analyses and nested model comparisons revealed that the data fit the PJ model best when civilians and police officers were allowed to perceive fairness through different mechanisms. Differences between the samples were explained by self-categorization with the police. The direct effects of respect and gender on fairness, condition on neutrality, condition and voice on respect, and the interaction between condition and self-categorization on voice were responsible for the differences between the samples. Finally, a three-way interaction revealed that civilians who selfcategorized less with the police evaluated the PJ condition as providing less voice than more closely identified civilians, who were not different than police. This study replicated and expanded on PJ, policing, and social identity literatures

Temperature-dependent Raman scattering of DyScO3 and GdScO3 single crystals

We report a temperature-dependent Raman scattering investigation of DyScO3 and GdScO3 single crystals from room temperature up to 1200 {\deg}C. With increasing temperature, all modes decrease monotonously in wavenumber without anomaly, which attests the absence of a structural phase transition. The high temperature spectral signature and extrapolation of band positions to higher temperatures suggest a decreasing orthorhombic distortion towards the ideal cubic structure. Our study indicates that this orthorhombic-to-cubic phase transition is close to or higher than the melting point of both rare-earth scandates (\approx 2100 {\deg}C), which might exclude the possibility of the experimental observation of such a phase transition before melting. The temperature-dependent shift of Raman phonons is also discussed in the context of thermal expansion

Draft Genome Sequence for Desulfovibrio africanus Strain PCS.

Desulfovibrio africanus strain PCS is an anaerobic sulfate-reducing bacterium (SRB) isolated from sediment from Paleta Creek, San Diego, CA. Strain PCS is capable of reducing metals such as Fe(III) and Cr(VI), has a cell cycle, and is predicted to produce methylmercury. We present the D. africanus PCS genome sequence

Evaluación de la citotoxicidad de una mezcla de ocho contaminantes a concentraciones de relevancia ambiental

The ubiquitous presence of pollutants and the accurate evaluation of their potential risks for environmental and human health is an area of major concern. We have simulated an in vitro scenario of long-term exposure to a mixture of eight pollutants at real environmental concentrations using mammalian Vero cells. Our results demonstrate that cellular proliferation rates were significantly altered, either by inhibition or stimulation, depending on the mixture composition and the exposure time. We encourage the urgency of reviewing safety levels for emerging contaminants accepted by regulatory agencies, considering that mixtures of pollutants represent a threat for environmental and human healthThis work was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (CTM2008-00311; CTM2012-31344

Gauge factor of thick film resistors: outcomes of the variable range hopping model

Despite a large amount of data and numerous theoretical proposals, the microscopic mechanism of transport in thick film resistors remains unclear. However, recent low temperature measurements point toward a possible variable range hopping mechanism of transport. Here we examine how such a mechanism affects the gauge factor of thick film resistors. We find that at sufficiently low temperatures $T$, for which the resistivity follows the Mott's law $R(T)\sim \exp(T_0/T)^{1/4}$, the gauge factor GF is proportional to $(T_0/T)^{1/4}$. Moreover, the inclusion of Coulomb gap effects leads to ${\rm GF}\sim (T_0'/T)^{1/2}$ at lower temperatures. In addition, we study a simple model which generalizes the variable range hopping mechanism by taking into account the finite mean inter-grain spacing. Our results suggest a possible experimental verification of the validity of the variable range hopping in thick film resistors.Comment: 7 pages, 3 eps figures, submitted to Journal of Applied Physic