Litter decomposition in a subtropical plantation in Qianyanzhou, China

A long-term (20 months) bulk litter decomposition experiment was conducted in a subtropical plantation in southern China in order to test the hypothesis that stable isotope discrimination occurs during litter decomposition and that litter decomposition increases concentrations of nutrients and organic matter in soil. This was achieved by a litter bag technique. Carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations in the remaining litter as well as delta(13)C and delta(15)N during the experimental period were measured. Meanwhile, organic C, alkali-soluble N and available P concentrations were determined in the soils beneath litter bags and in the soils at the control plots. The dry mass remaining (as % of the initial mass) during litter decomposition exponentially declined (y = 0.9362 e(-0.0365x) , R (2) = 0.93, P < 0.0001), but total C in the remaining litter did not decrease significantly with decomposition process during a 20-month period. By comparison, total N in the remaining litter significantly increased from 5.8 +/- A 1.7 g kg(-1) dw litter in the first month to 10.1 +/- A 1.4 g kg(-1) dw litter in the 20th month. During the decomposition, delta(13)C values of the remaining litter showed an insignificant enrichment, while delta(15)N signatures exhibited a different pattern. It significantly depleted (15)N (y = -0.66x + 0.82, R (2) = 0.57, P < 0.0001) during the initial 7 months while showing (15)N enrichments in the remaining 13 months (y = 0.10x - 4.23, R (2) = 0.32, P < 0.0001). Statistically, litter decomposition has little impact on concentrations of soil organic C and alkali-soluble N and available P in the top soil. This indicates that nutrient return to the topsoil through litter decomposition is limited and that C cycling decoupled from N cycling during decomposition in this subtropical plantation in southern China

Promising thermoelectric performance in van der Waals layered SnSe2

SnSe as a lead-free IV–VI semiconductor, has attracted intensive attention for its potential thermoelectric applications, since it is less toxic and much cheaper than conventional PbTe and PbSe thermoelectrics. Here we focus on its sister layered compound SnSe2 in n-type showing a thermoelectric performance to be similarly promising as SnSe in the polycrystalline form. This is enabled by its favorable electronic structure according to first principle calculations, its capability to be effectively doped by bromine on selenium site to optimize the carrier concentration, as well as its intrinsic lattice thermal conductivity as low as 0.4 W/m-K due to the weak van der Waals force between layers. The broad carrier concentration ranging from 0.5 to 6 × 1019 cm−3 realized in this work, further leads to a fundamental understanding on the material parameters determining the thermoelectric transport properties, based on a single parabolic band (SPB) model with acoustic scattering. The layered crystal structure leads to a texture in hot-pressed polycrystalline materials and therefore anisotropic transport properties, which can be well understood by the SPB model. This work not only demonstrates SnSe2 as a promising thermoelectric material but also guides the further improvements particularly by band engineering and texturing approaches

Vitrification and plastic flow in transient elastomer networks

We investigate how the crossover temperature of the elastic-plastic transition, the ‘vitrification point’ Tv, changes under load for isotropic vitrimers and exchangeable liquid crystal elastomers (xLCEs), using the thermoplastic SIS triblock polymer as a reference. In all these cases, the elastic network cross-links are transient: physical micro-phase separation in SIS and covalent transesterification bonds in vitrimers. From the analysis of SIS we define Tv as the point when entropic rubber-elasticity contraction due to heating under load turns into the irreversible plastic extension due to cross-links breaking and reforming. In xLCEs, the response to mechanical stress is heavily influenced by the smectic liquid-crystalline order, which makes the material much stiffer than normal rubbery networks, and also leads to the shape-memory effect across the smectic-isotropic transition point. The vitrification in the isotropic phase of xLCE, and in isotropic vitrimers, was found to be independent of stress, which can be attributed to the thermal activity of the catalyst determining Tv and it not being mechanically coupled to the elastic network. Beyond Tv, with increasing stress the plastic extension rapidly increases with temperature, as cross-link dynamics becomes more apparent.This work was funded by the EPSRC (EP/J017639), the Ernest Oppenheimer Trust in Cambridge, and by China Scholarship Council.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polymer.2016.04.06

Low-Symmetry Rhombohedral GeTe Thermoelectrics

High-symmetry thermoelectric materials usually have the advantage of very high band degeneracy, while low-symmetry thermoelectrics have the advantage of very low lattice thermal conductivity. If the symmetry breaking of band degeneracy is small, both effects may be realized simultaneously. Here we demonstrate this principle in rhombohedral GeTe alloys, having a slightly reduced symmetry from its cubic structure, to realize a record figure of merit (zT ∼ 2.4) at 600 K. This is enabled by the control of rhombohedral distortion in crystal structure for engineering the split low-symmetry bands to be converged and the resultant compositional complexity for simultaneously reducing the lattice thermal conductivity. Device ZT as high as 1.3 in the rhombohedral phase and 1.5 over the entire working temperature range of GeTe alloys make this material the most efficient thermoelectric to date. This work paves the way for exploring low-symmetry materials as efficient thermoelectrics. Thermoelectric materials enable a heat flow to be directly converted to a flow of charge carriers for generating electricity. The crystal structure symmetry is one of the most fundamental parameters determining the properties of a crystalline material including thermoelectrics. The common belief currently held is that high-symmetry materials are usually good for thermoelectrics, leading to great efforts having historically been focused on GeTe alloys in a high-symmetry cubic structure. Here we show a slight reduction of crystal structure symmetry of GeTe alloys from cubic to rhombohedral, enabling a rearrangement in electronic bands for more transporting channels of charge carriers and many imperfections for more blocking centers of heat-energy carriers (phonons). This leads to the discovery of rhombohedral GeTe alloys as the most efficient thermoelectric materials to date, opening new possibilities for low-symmetry thermoelectric materials. Cubic GeTe thermoelectrics have been historically focused on, while this work utilizes a slight symmetry-breaking strategy to converge the split valence bands, to reduce the lattice thermal conductivity and therefore realize a record thermoelectric performance, all enabled in GeTe in a rhombohedral structure. This not only promotes GeTe alloys as excellent materials for thermoelectric power generation below 800 K, but also expands low-symmetry materials as efficient thermoelectrics

The Expression and Roles of Nde1 and Ndel1 in the Adult Mammalian Central Nervous System

Open Access funded by Wellcome Trust Under a Creative Commons license Acknowledgments We thank Prof Angelo Sementilli, Department of Pathology, Universidade Metropolitana de Santos, SP, Brazil, for the human sample collection. This study is funded by Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (HR07019 to S. Shen and C.D. McCaig), Medical Research Scotland (384 FRG to B. Lang, United Kingdom), Tenovus Scotland (G12/25 to B. Lang), Sino-UK Higher Education Research Partnership for PhD Studies (C.D. McCaig and Y.Q. Ding) and Wellcome Trust (WT081633MA-NCE to P.J.A. McCaffery, United Kingdom).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Cloning and expression of a tomato glutathione S- transferase (GST) in Escherichia coli

Glutathione S- transferases (GSTs) fulfill a diverse range of functions in an organism. In a previous study, a putative glutathione S-transferase gene (ShGSTU1) from a wild-type tomato, Solanum habrochaites G1.1560, was identified to be a key gene in pathogen resistant response against powdery mildew in tomato. In this study, ShGSTU1 was cloned into plasmid pET-28a, efficiently expressed in Escherichia coli upon isopropyl-β-D-1-thiogalactopyronoside (IPTG) induction, purified with Ni2+ affinity chromatography and biochemically characterized. The results show that the optimal conditions for the expression of recombinant ShGSTU1 in E. coli were growth under 37°C, and 4-h IPTG induction with 1 mM concentration. About 18.93 mg ShGSTU1 was recovered from 1 g wet bacteria. The recombinant ShGSTU1 exhibited enzymatic activity with specific activity 0.625 U/mg. These results might provide a significant foundation for the later research on the mechanism of ShGSTU1 in tomato resistance to powdery mildew.Key words: Tomato, glutathione S-transferase, expression, purification, enzyme activity