117 research outputs found
Inclusivity between digital trade, human development, and environmental quality: moderating role of green innovations in BRICS countries
This research investigates the role of digital trade, human development,
globalization, and green innovations on ecological footprints
(EFP) for BRICS countries. Unlike the earlier studies, this research
expands the empirical contribution while examining the moderating
effect of green technologies on the relationship between stated
explanatory variables and EFP. Initially, we testify the presence of
cross-sectional dependence, unit root tests, cointegration, and slope
heterogeneity and subsequently apply cross-sectionally augmented
autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL) using annual data from
1995 to 2019. The empirical findings exhibit the significance of digital
trade, human development, and green technology innovations in
complementing low EFP in the long run. However, globalization tends
to increase ecological footprints. Moreover, the findings in the short
run provide a symmetrical (positive/negative) effect of stated explanatory
variables on EFP; however, their marginal impact is lower.
Additionally, the moderating effect of green technologies on the relationship
between digital trade and EFP and between human development
and EFP is significantly negative, supplementing the existing
association. Therefore, an inclusive digital and human development
policy is imperative to ensure sustainable ecology
Families of superhard crystalline carbon allotropes induced via cold-compressed graphite and nanotubes
We report a general scheme to systematically construct two classes of
structural families of superhard sp3 carbon allotropes of cold compressed
graphite through the topological analysis of odd 5+7 or even 4+8 membered
carbon rings stemmed from the stacking of zigzag and armchair chains. Our
results show that the previously proposed M, bct-C4, W and Z allotropes belong
to our currently proposed families and that depending on the topological
arrangement of the native carbon rings numerous other members are found that
can help us understand the structural phase transformation of cold-compressed
graphite and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). In particular, we predict the existence
of two simple allotropes, R- and P-carbon, which match well the experimental
X-ray diffraction patterns of cold-compressed graphite and CNTs, respectively,
display a transparent wide-gap insulator ground state and possess a large
Vickers hardness comparable to diamond.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted by Phys. Rev. Let
Plant microbiomes : do different preservation approaches and primer sets alter our capacity to assess microbial diversity and community composition?
The microbial communities associated with plants (the plant microbiome) play critical roles in regulating plant health and productivity. Because of this, in recent years, there have been significant increase in studies targeting the plant microbiome. Amplicon sequencing is widely used to investigate the plant microbiome and to develop sustainable microbial agricultural tools. However, performing large microbiome surveys at the regional and global scales pose several logistic challenges. One of these challenges is related with the preservation of plant materials for sequencing aiming to maintain the integrity of the original diversity and community composition of the plant microbiome. Another significant challenge involves the existence of multiple primer sets used in amplicon sequencing that, especially for bacterial communities, hampers the comparability of datasets across studies. Here, we aimed to examine the effect of different preservation approaches (snap freezing, fresh and kept on ice, and air drying) on the bacterial and fungal diversity and community composition on plant leaves, stems and roots from seven plant species from contrasting functional groups (e.g. C3, C4, N-Fixers, etc.). Another major challenge comes when comparing plant to soil microbiomes, as different primers sets are often used for plant vs. soil microbiomes. Thus, we also investigated if widely used 16S rRNA primer set (779F/1193R) for plant microbiome studies provides comparable data to those often used for soil microbiomes (341F/805R) using 86 soil samples. We found that the community composition and diversity of bacteria or fungi were robust to contrasting preservation methods. The primer sets often used for plants provided similar results to those often used for soil studies suggesting that simultaneous studies on plant and soil microbiomes are possible. Our findings provide novel evidence that preservation approaches do not significantly impact plant microbiome data interpretation and primer differences do not impact the treatment effect, which has significant implication for future large-scale and global surveys of plant microbiomes
An efficient headland-turning navigation system for a safflower picking robot
This study proposes a navigation system for the headland autonomous turning of a safflower picking robot. The proposed system includes binocular cameras, differential satellites, and inertial sensors. The method of extracting the headland boundary line combining the hue, saturation, and value-fixed threshold segmentation method and random sample consensus algorithm and planning the headland-turning trajectory of a robot based on the multiorder Bezier curve are used as control methods. In addition, a headland-turning tracking model of a safflower picking robot is designed, and a path-tracking control algorithm is developed. A field test verifies the performance of the designed headland-turning navigation system. The test results show that the accuracy of the judgment result regarding the existence of a headland is higher than 96%. In headland boundary detection, the angle deviation is less than 1.5Ëš, and the depth value error is less than 50 mm. The headland-turning path tracking test result shows that at a turning speed of 0.5 km/h, the average lateral deviation is 37 mm, and the turning time is 24.2 seconds. Compared to the 1 km/h, the turning speed of 0.5 km/h provides a better trajectory tracking effect, but the turning time is longer. The test results verify that this navigation system can accurately extract the headland boundary line and can successfully realise the headland-turning path tracking of a safflower picking robot. The results presented in this study can provide a useful reference for the autonomous navigation of a field robot
Intrinsic Correlation between Hardness and Elasticity in Polycrystalline Materials and Bulk Metallic Glasses
Though extensively studied, hardness, defined as the resistance of a material
to deformation, still remains a challenging issue for a formal theoretical
description due to its inherent mechanical complexity. The widely applied
Teter's empirical correlation between hardness and shear modulus has been
considered to be not always valid for a large variety of materials. Here,
inspired by the classical work on Pugh's modulus ratio, we develop a
theoretical model which establishes a robust correlation between hardness and
elasticity for a wide class of materials, including bulk metallic glasses, with
results in very good agreement with experiment. The simplified form of our
model also provides an unambiguous theoretical evidence for Teter's empirical
correlation.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures and 3 table
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