Growth and physiological responses to water and nutrient stress in oil palm

The research was conducted to detect changes in growth, physiology and nutrient concentration in response to two watering regimes (well-watered and water-stress conditions) and to two nutrient regimes (with or without fertilization) of oil palm. Under stress conditions, changes in plant growth, dry matter allocation, relative water content, leaf relative conductivity, leaf N, P and K concentration are usually observed. These characteristics and related parameters were determined and the experiment results are listed as follows: (1) fertilization promoted the growth of oil palm under well-watered conditions, while under water stress conditions its effects on growth was negative. The ratio of root/shoot was increased under water stress condition; (2) relative water content and chlorophyll a/b content were gradually decreased while leaf relative conductivity was increased quickly under water and nutrient stress conditions during the experiment. It is obvious that water stress had a greater influence than nutrient stress on these parameters; (3) water and nutrient stress decreased leaf nitrogen and phosphorus concentration but increased potassium concentration; the combination of water and nutrient stress made significant effects on nitrogen and phosphorus concentration, but no significant effects on potassium concentration. Moreover, deficiency of both water and nutrients in combination had the greatest impact on changes in these traits of oil palm.Key words: Plant growth, physiology response, nutrient concentration, water stress, nutrient stress

Permian (Artinskian to Wuchapingian) conodont biostratigraphy in the Tieqiao section, Laibin area, South China

Permian strata from the Tieqiao section (Jiangnan Basin, South China) contain several distinctive conodont assemblages. Early Permian (Cisuralian) assemblages are dominated by the genera Sweetognathus, Pseudosweetognathus and Hindeodus with rare Neostreptognathodus and Gullodus. Gondolellids are absent until the end of the Kungurian stage—in contrast to many parts of the world where gondolellids and Neostreptognathodus are the dominant Kungurian conodonts. A conodont changeover is seen at Tieqiao and coincided with a rise of sea level in the late Kungurian to the early Roadian: the previously dominant sweetognathids were replaced by mesogondolellids. The Middle and Late Permian (Guadalupian and Lopingian Series) witnessed dominance of gondolellids (Jinogondolella and Clarkina), the common presence of Hindeodus and decimation of Sweetognathus. Twenty main and seven subordinate conodont zones are recognised at Tieqiao, spanning the lower Artinskian to the middle Wuchiapingian Stage. The main (first appearance datum) zones are, in ascending order by stage: the Sweetognathus (Sw.) whitei, Sw. toriyamai, and Sw. asymmetrica n. sp. Zones for the Artinskian; the Neostreptognathodus prayi, Sw. guizhouensis, Sw. iranicus, Sw. adjunctus, Sw. subsymmeticus and Sw. hanzhongensis Zones for the Kungurian; the Jinogondolella (J.) nankingensis Zone for the Roadian; the J. aserrata Zone for the Wordian; the J. postserrata, J. shannoni, J. altudaensis, J. prexuanhanensis, J. xuanhanensis, J. granti and Clarkina (C.) hongshuiensis Zones for the Capitanian and the C. postbitteri Zone and C. transcaucasica Zone for the base and middle of the Wuchiapingian. The subordinate (interval) zones are the Pseudosweetognathus (Ps.) costatus, Ps. monocornus, Hindeodus (H.) gulloides, Pseudohindeodus ramovsi, Gullodus (G.) sicilianus, G. duani and H. excavates Zones. In addition, three new species, Gullodus tieqiaoensis n. sp., Pseudohindeodus elliptica n. sp. and Sweetognathus asymmetrica n. sp. are described. Age assignments for less common species (e.g., G. duani, H. catalanoi and Pseudosweetognathus monocornus etc.) are reassessed based on a rich conodont collection

Controllable Synthesis of Magnesium Oxysulfate Nanowires with Different Morphologies

One-dimensional magnesium oxysulfate 5Mg(OH)2 · MgSO4 · 3H2O (abbreviated as 513MOS) with high aspect ratio has attracted much attention because of its distinctive properties from those of the conventional bulk materials. 513MOS nanowires with different morphologies were formed by varying the mixing ways of MgSO4 · 7H2O and NH4OH solutions at room temperature followed by hydrothermal treatment of the slurries at 150 °C for 12 h with or without EDTA. 513MOS nanowires with a length of 20–60 μm and a diameter of 60–300 nm were prepared in the case of double injection (adding MgSO4 · 7H2O and NH4OH solutions simultaneously into water), compared with the 513MOS with a length of 20–30 μm and a diameter of 0.3–1.7 μm in the case of the single injection (adding MgSO4 · 7H2O solution into NH4OH solution). The presence of minor amount of EDTA in the single injection method led to the formation of 513MOS nanowires with a length of 100–200 μm, a diameter of 80–200 nm, and an aspect ratio of up to 1000. The analysis of the experimental results indicated that the hydrothermal solutions with a lower supersaturation were favorable for the preferential growth of 513MOS nanowires along b axis

Observation of a ppb mass threshoud enhancement in \psi^\prime\to\pi^+\pi^-J/\psi(J/\psi\to\gamma p\bar{p}) decay

The decay channel $\psi^\prime\to\pi^+\pi^-J/\psi(J/\psi\to\gamma p\bar{p})$ is studied using a sample of $1.06\times 10^8$ $\psi^\prime$ events collected by the BESIII experiment at BEPCII. A strong enhancement at threshold is observed in the $p\bar{p}$ invariant mass spectrum. The enhancement can be fit with an $S$-wave Breit-Wigner resonance function with a resulting peak mass of $M=1861^{+6}_{-13} {\rm (stat)}^{+7}_{-26} {\rm (syst)} {\rm MeV/}c^2$ and a narrow width that is $\Gamma<38 {\rm MeV/}c^2$ at the 90% confidence level. These results are consistent with published BESII results. These mass and width values do not match with those of any known meson resonance.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Chinese Physics

Cell Nucleus-Targeting Zwitterionic Carbon Dots

An innovative nucleus-targeting zwitterionic carbon dot (CD) vehicle has been developed for anticancer drug delivery and optical monitoring. The zwitterionic functional groups of the CDs introduced by a simple one-step synthesis using beta-alanine as a passivating and zwitterionic ligand allow cytoplasmic uptake and subsequent nuclear translocation of the CDs. Moreover, multicolor fluorescence improves the accuracy of the CDs as an optical code. The CD-based drug delivery system constructed by non-covalent grafting of doxorubicin, exhibits superior antitumor efficacy owing to enhanced nuclear delivery in vitro and tumor accumulation in vivo, resulting in highly effective tumor growth inhibition. Since the zwitterionic CDs are highly biocompatible and effectively translocated into the nucleus, it provides a compelling solution to a multifunctional nanoparticle for substantially enhanced nuclear uptake of drugs and optical monitoring of translocation.open

Coherent excitation transferring via dark state in light-harvesting process

We study the light absorption and energy transferring in a donor-acceptor system with a bionic structure. In the optimal case with uniform couplings, it is found that the quantum dynamics of this seemingly complicated system is reduced as a three-level system of $\Lambda$-type. With this observation, we show that the dark state based electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) effect could enhance the energy transfer efficiency, through a quantum interference effect suppressing the excited population of the donors. We estimate the optimal parameters of the system to achieve the maximum output power. The splitting behavior of maximum power may be used to explain the phenomenon that the photosynthesis systems mainly absorb two colors of light.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

A Policy-Driven Large Scale Ecological Restoration: Quantifying Ecosystem Services Changes in the Loess Plateau of China

As one of the key tools for regulating human-ecosystem relations, environmental conservation policies can promote ecological rehabilitation across a variety of spatiotemporal scales. However, quantifying the ecological effects of such policies at the regional level is difficult. A case study was conducted at the regional level in the ecologically vulnerable region of the Loess Plateau, China, through the use of several methods including the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE), hydrological modeling and multivariate analysis. An assessment of the changes over the period of 2000–2008 in four key ecosystem services was undertaken to determine the effects of the Chinese government's ecological rehabilitation initiatives implemented in 1999. These ecosystem services included water regulation, soil conservation, carbon sequestration and grain production. Significant conversions of farmland to woodland and grassland were found to have resulted in enhanced soil conservation and carbon sequestration, but decreased regional water yield under a warming and drying climate trend. The total grain production increased in spite of a significant decline in farmland acreage. These trends have been attributed to the strong socioeconomic incentives embedded in the ecological rehabilitation policy. Although some positive policy results have been achieved over the last decade, large uncertainty remains regarding long-term policy effects on the sustainability of ecological rehabilitation performance and ecosystem service enhancement. To reduce such uncertainty, this study calls for an adaptive management approach to regional ecological rehabilitation policy to be adopted, with a focus on the dynamic interactions between people and their environments in a changing world

A Search for Dark Higgs Bosons

Recent astrophysical and terrestrial experiments have motivated the proposal of a dark sector with GeV-scale gauge boson force carriers and new Higgs bosons. We present a search for a dark Higgs boson using 516 fb-1 of data collected with the BABAR detector. We do not observe a significant signal and we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the product of the Standard Model-dark sector mixing angle and the dark sector coupling constant.Comment: 7 pages, 5 postscript figures, published version with improved plots for b/w printin

Measurement of the Forward-Backward Asymmetry in the B -> K(*) mu+ mu- Decay and First Observation of the Bs -> phi mu+ mu- Decay

We reconstruct the rare decays $B^+ \to K^+\mu^+\mu^-$, $B^0 \to K^{*}(892)^0\mu^+\mu^-$, and $B^0_s \to \phi(1020)\mu^+\mu^-$ in a data sample corresponding to $4.4 {\rm fb^{-1}}$ collected in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96 {\rm TeV}$ by the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. Using $121 \pm 16$ $B^+ \to K^+\mu^+\mu^-$ and $101 \pm 12$ $B^0 \to K^{*0}\mu^+\mu^-$ decays we report the branching ratios. In addition, we report the measurement of the differential branching ratio and the muon forward-backward asymmetry in the $B^+$ and $B^0$ decay modes, and the $K^{*0}$ longitudinal polarization in the $B^0$ decay mode with respect to the squared dimuon mass. These are consistent with the theoretical prediction from the standard model, and most recent determinations from other experiments and of comparable accuracy. We also report the first observation of the $B^0_s \to \phi\mu^+\mu^- decay and measure its branching ratio${\mathcal{B}}(B^0_s \to \phi\mu^+\mu^-) = [1.44 \pm 0.33 \pm 0.46] \times 10^{-6}$using$27 \pm 6$signal events. This is currently the most rare$B^0_s$ decay observed.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let