1,907 research outputs found
Within plant resistance to water flow in tomato and sweet melons
Efficient water resource management in relation to water use and crop yields is premised on the knowledge of plant resistance to water flow. However, such studies are limited and for most crops, the within plant resistance to water flow remains largely unknown. In this study, within plant resistance to water transport (hydraulic conductance) was monitored in tomato (Lycopersicum esculuntum) and sweet melon (Citrullus lanatus) using the high pressure flow meter (HPFM) and evaporative flux (EF) methods. In the evaporative flux method, measurements of transpiration flux and leaf water potential were used to calculate the total resistance to water flow using Ohm’s law analogy. Measurements of tranpiration flux (Q) relationship, plant resistance calculated from the slope of their relationship, ranged from 6.57x10-01 to 2.27x10-03 Mpa m-2s-1 for tomato and sweet melon, respectively.The magnitude of whole plant hydraulic conductance calculated by the evaporative flux method and measured on the HPFM were not significantly different. This is probably due to that fact that Kp includes the hydraulic conductance of the root system, which offers the highest resistance to water flow in a plant, and the frictional resistance of the proximal part of the crown. Day time course of water relation parameters were monitored in melon and tomato (predawn, 1100 to 1400 h). The effect of time of day was pronounced on the dynamics of water relations, particularly around mid-day when sharp differences in the magnitudes of the measured water relation parameters were obtained. Minimum (predawn) leaf water potential (øl) ranged from 0.135 to 0.207 MPa for both crops. The greatest conductance was found in the leaf and the lowest in the root in both crops. While the highest within plant resistance to the flow is contained in the root system, the stemcomponent constitutes the least resistance (greatest conductance) to within plant flow of water in tomato. Repeated measurement analysis showed the existence of significant species effects on plant water relations (leaf water potential, evaporative/transpiration flux, xylem hydraulic conductance). Superiority within plant xylem transport and evaporative losses were obtained in tomato, from the relations of EF and Kh; this crop showed a higher hydraulic sufficiency than melon. The expression of hydraulic conductance of the root and shoot systemrelative to plant attributes did not eliminate differences in the magnitudes of conductance elements in tomato and melon. Differences obtained between melon and tomato in whole plant leaf and stem area specific hydraulic conductance (KI) indicate the carbon efficiency and, hence, the cost of resource allocation to areas of root surfaceand leaves for enhanced scavenging for water and mineral nutrients. Thus, application of mineral nutrients to enhance crop productivity should take into consideration the hydraulic conductance for specific plants
Synthesis and Properties of Poly[p-(2,5-dihydroxy)-phenylenebenzobisoxazole] Fiber
The novel polymer poly[p-(2,5-dihydroxy)-phenylenebenzobisoxazole] (PBOH) fiber was synthesized in the presence of 2,5-dihydroxyterephthalicacid (DHTA) and 4,6-diamino-1,3-benzenediol in poly(phosphoric acid) (PPA) using typical polycondensation conditions. The crystalline solutions of liquid PBOH in PPA were spun into fibers using dry-jet wet spinning. Furthermore, the thermostability and mechanical properties of PBOH were compared with poly(p-phenylene-2,6-benzoxazole) (PBO) in order to investigate the relationship between the chain structure and properties. The results indicated that the thermal degradation temperature of PBOH was above 750K and the tensile strength of the PBOH fiber was 3.1GPa, which were much lower than those of PBO fiber. The compressive strength of PBOH fiber was 331 M Pa, which was slightly higher than that of PBO fiber. In addition, molecular simulation was employed to explain why the compressive strength of PBOH fiber did not increase significantly compared to PBO fiber
Relations among Supersymmetric Lattice Gauge Theories via Orbifolding
We show how to derive Catterall's supersymmetric lattice gauge theories
directly from the general principle of orbifolding followed by a variant of the
usual deconstruction. These theories are forced to be complexified due to a
clash between charge assignments under U(1)-symmetries and lattice assignments
in terms of scalar, vector and tensor components for the fermions. Other
prescriptions for how to discretize the theory follow automatically by
orbifolding and deconstruction. We find that Catterall's complexified model for
the two-dimensional N=(2,2) theory has two independent preserved
supersymmetries. We comment on consistent truncations to lattice theories
without this complexification and with the correct continuum limit. The
construction of lattice theories this way is general, and can be used to derive
new supersymmetric lattice theories through the orbifolding procedure. As an
example, we apply the prescription to topologically twisted four-dimensional
N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. We show that a consistent truncation is
closely related to the lattice formulation previously given by Sugino.Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX2e, no figur
Driven Rydberg atoms reveal quartic level repulsion
The dynamics of Rydberg states of a hydrogen atom subject simultaneously to
uniform static electric field and two microwave fields with commensurate
frequencies is considered in the range of small fields amplitudes. In the
certain range of the parameters of the system the classical secular motion of
the electronic ellipse reveals chaotic behavior. Quantum mechanically, when the
fine structure of the atom is taken into account, the energy level statistics
obey predictions appropriate for the symplectic Gaussian random matrix
ensemble.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let
Non-perturbative construction of 2D and 4D supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories with 8 supercharges
In this paper, we consider two-dimensional N=(4,4) supersymmetric Yang-Mills
(SYM) theory and deform it by a mass parameter M with keeping all supercharges.
We further add another mass parameter m in a manner to respect two of the eight
supercharges and put the deformed theory on a two-dimensional square lattice,
on which the two supercharges are exactly preserved. The flat directions of
scalar fields are stabilized due to the mass deformations, which gives discrete
minima representing fuzzy spheres. We show in the perturbation theory that the
lattice continuum limit can be taken without any fine tuning. Around the
trivial minimum, this lattice theory serves as a non-perturbative definition of
two-dimensional N=(4,4) SYM theory. We also discuss that the same lattice
theory realizes four-dimensional N = 2 U(k) SYM on R^2 x (Fuzzy R^2) around the
minimum of k-coincident fuzzy spheres.Comment: 35 pages, LaTeX2e, final version accepted in Nucl. Phys.
Enhancing the cellular uptake of Py–Im polyamides through next-generation aryl turns
Pyrrole–imidazole (Py–Im) hairpin polyamides are a class of programmable, sequence-specific DNA binding oligomers capable of disrupting protein–DNA interactions and modulating gene expression in living cells. Methods to control the cellular uptake and nuclear localization of these compounds are essential to their application as molecular probes or therapeutic agents. Here, we explore modifications of the hairpin γ-aminobutyric acid turn unit as a means to enhance cellular uptake and biological activity. Remarkably, introduction of a simple aryl group at the turn potentiates the biological effects of a polyamide targeting the sequence 5′-WGWWCW-3′ (W = A/T) by up to two orders of magnitude. Confocal microscopy and quantitative flow cytometry analysis suggest this enhanced potency is due to increased nuclear uptake. Finally, we explore the generality of this approach and find that aryl-turn modifications enhance the uptake of all polyamides tested, while having a variable effect on the upper limit of polyamide nuclear accumulation. Overall this provides a step forward for controlling the intracellular concentration of Py–Im polyamides that will prove valuable for future applications in which biological potency is essential
The nature of iron-oxygen vacancy defect centers in PbTiO3
The iron(III) center in ferroelectric PbTiO3 together with an oxygen vacancy
forms a charged defect associate, oriented along the crystallographic c-axis.
Its microscopic structure has been analyzed in detail comparing results from a
semi-empirical Newman superposition model analysis based on finestructure data
and from calculations using density functional theory.
Both methods give evidence for a substitution of Fe3+ for Ti4+ as an acceptor
center. The position of the iron ion in the ferroelectric phase is found to be
similar to the B-site in the paraelectric phase. Partial charge compensation is
locally provided by a directly coordinated oxygen vacancy.
Using high-resolution synchrotron powder diffraction, it was verified that
lead titanate remains tetragonal down to 12 K, exhibiting a c/a-ratio of
1.0721.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev.
Geometry of Orbifolded Supersymmetric Lattice Gauge Theories
We prove that the prescription for construction of supersymmetric lattice
gauge theories by orbifolding and deconstruction directly leads to Catterall's
geometrical discretization scheme in general. These two prescriptions always
give the same lattice discretizations when applied to theories of p-form
fields. We also show that the geometrical discretization scheme can be applied
to more general theories.Comment: 10 pages, no figure, latex2
Estimation of communication-delays through adaptive synchronization of chaos
This paper deals with adaptive synchronization of chaos in the presence of
time-varying communication-delays. We consider two bidirectionally coupled
systems that seek to synchronize through a signal that each system sends to the
other one and is transmitted with an unknown time-varying delay. We show that
an appropriate adaptive strategy can be devised that is successful in
dynamically identifying the time-varying delay and in synchronizing the two
systems. The performance of our strategy with respect to the choice of the
initial conditions and the presence of noise in the communication channels is
tested by using numerical simulations. Another advantage of our approach is
that in addition to estimating the communication-delay, the adaptive strategy
could be used to simultaneously identify other parameters, such as e.g., the
unknown time-varying amplitude of the received signal.Comment: Accepted for publication in Chaos, Solitons & Fractal
Visual recognition of gestures in a meeting to detect when documents being talked about are missing
Meetings frequently involve discussion of documents and can be significantly affected if a document is absent. An agent system capable of spontaneously retrieving a document at the point it is needed would have to judge whether a meeting is talking about a particular document and whether that document is already present. We report the exploratory application of agent techniques for making these two judgements. To obtain examples from which an agent system can learn, we first conducted a study of participants making these judgements with video recordings of meetings. We then show that interactions between hands and paper documents in meetings can be used to recognise when a document being talked about is not to hand. The work demonstrates the potential for multimodal agent systems using these techniques to learn to perform specific, discourse-level tasks during meetings
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