Elicitin-Mediated Plant Resistance

Qualitative transcriptional regulatory sequences functional in plants, plant tissue and in plant cells for inducible gene expression and quantitative transcriptional regulatory sequences for increasing the transcriptional expression of downstream genetic information in plants, plant tissue and plant cells are disclosed. Also disclosed are methods and recombinant DNA molecules for improving the disease resistance of transgenic plants, especially wherein an inducible promoter controls the expression of a protein capable of evoking the hypersensitive response in a plant

Pathogen- or Elicitor-Inducible Transcription Regulatory Element from the Tobacco 5-EPI-Aristolochene Synthase Gene and Plants Transformed Therewith

A tobacco epi-5-aristolochene synthase transcriptional regulatory element functional in plants, plant tissue and in plant cells for pathogen inducible gene expression and a method for increasing the transcriptional expression of downstream genetic information in plants, plant tissue and plant cells are disclosed

Transcriptional Silencing Elements and Their Binding Factors

The invention features an isolated gene silencing regulatory element that includes 5\u27 TACNNTAC 3\u27. Vectors, transgenic plants and seeds thereof that include such a gene silencing regulatory element are also disclosed. The invention further provides methods of decreasing the transcription of a DNA sequence in a transgenic plant using the isolated gene silencing regulatory element

New testing and calculation method for determination viscoelasticity of optical glass

Viscoelastic properties of glass within molding temperatures, such as shear relaxation modulus and bulk relaxation modulus, are key factors to build successful numerical model, predict forming process, and determine optimal process parameters for precision glass molding. However, traditional uniaxial compression creep tests with large strains are very limited in obtaining high-accuracy viscoelastic data of glass, due to the declining compressive stress caused by the increasing cross-sectional area of specimen in testing process. Besides, existing calculation method has limitation in transforming creep data to viscoelasticity data, especially when Poisson's ratio is unknown at molding temperature, which further induces a block to characterize viscoelastic parameter. This study proposes a systematic acquisition method tbr high-precision viscoelastic data, including creep testing, viscoelasticity calculation, and finite element verification. A minimal uniaxial creep testing (MUCT) method based on thermo-mechanical analysis (TMA) instrument is first built to obtain ideal and accurate creep data, by keeping compressive stress as a constant. A new calculation method on viscoelasticity determination is then proposed to derive shear relaxation modulus without the need of knowing bulk modulus or Poisson's ratio, which, compared with traditional method, extends the application range of viscoelasticity calculation. After determination, the obtained viscoelastic data are further incorporated into a numerical simulation model of MUCT to verify the accuracy of the determined viscoelasticity. Base on the great consistence between simulated and measured results (uniaxial creep displacement), the proposed systematic acquisition method can be used as a high accuracy viscoelasticity determination method.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Fabrication of small aspheric moulds using single point inclined axis grinding

Single point inclined axis grinding techniques, including the wheel setting, wheel-workpiece interference, error source determination and compensation approaches, were studied to fabricate small aspheric moulds of high profile accuracy. The interference of a cylindrical grinding wheel with the workpiece was analysed and the criteria for selection of wheel geometry for avoiding the interference was proposed. The grinding process was performed with compensation focused on two major error sources, wheel setting error and wheel wear. The grinding results showed that the compensation approach was efficient and the developed grinding process was capable to generate small aspheric concave surfaces on tungsten carbide material with a profile error of smaller than 200. nm in PV value after two to three compensation cycles

A Challenger to GPT-4V? Early Explorations of Gemini in Visual Expertise

The surge of interest towards Multi-modal Large Language Models (MLLMs), e.g., GPT-4V(ision) from OpenAI, has marked a significant trend in both academia and industry. They endow Large Language Models (LLMs) with powerful capabilities in visual understanding, enabling them to tackle diverse multi-modal tasks. Very recently, Google released Gemini, its newest and most capable MLLM built from the ground up for multi-modality. In light of the superior reasoning capabilities, can Gemini challenge GPT-4V's leading position in multi-modal learning? In this paper, we present a preliminary exploration of Gemini Pro's visual understanding proficiency, which comprehensively covers four domains: fundamental perception, advanced cognition, challenging vision tasks, and various expert capacities. We compare Gemini Pro with the state-of-the-art GPT-4V to evaluate its upper limits, along with the latest open-sourced MLLM, Sphinx, which reveals the gap between manual efforts and black-box systems. The qualitative samples indicate that, while GPT-4V and Gemini showcase different answering styles and preferences, they can exhibit comparable visual reasoning capabilities, and Sphinx still trails behind them concerning domain generalizability. Specifically, GPT-4V tends to elaborate detailed explanations and intermediate steps, and Gemini prefers to output a direct and concise answer. The quantitative evaluation on the popular MME benchmark also demonstrates the potential of Gemini to be a strong challenger to GPT-4V. Our early investigation of Gemini also observes some common issues of MLLMs, indicating that there still remains a considerable distance towards artificial general intelligence. Our project for tracking the progress of MLLM is released at https://github.com/BradyFU/Awesome-Multimodal-Large-Language-Models.Comment: Total 120 pages. See our project at https://github.com/BradyFU/Awesome-Multimodal-Large-Language-Model

Dextran and Polymer Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) Coating Reduce Both 5 and 30 nm Iron Oxide Nanoparticle Cytotoxicity in 2D and 3D Cell Culture

Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles are widely used in biomedical applications, yet questions remain regarding the effect of nanoparticle size and coating on nanoparticle cytotoxicity. In this study, porcine aortic endothelial cells were exposed to 5 and 30 nm diameter iron oxide nanoparticles coated with either the polysaccharide, dextran, or the polymer polyethylene glycol (PEG). Nanoparticle uptake, cytotoxicity, reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation, and cell morphology changes were measured. Endothelial cells took up nanoparticles of all sizes and coatings in a dose dependent manner, and intracellular nanoparticles remained clustered in cytoplasmic vacuoles. Bare nanoparticles in both sizes induced a more than 6 fold increase in cell death at the highest concentration (0.5 mg/mL) and led to significant cell elongation, whereas cell viability and morphology remained constant with coated nanoparticles. While bare 30 nm nanoparticles induced significant ROS formation, neither 5 nm nanoparticles (bare or coated) nor 30 nm coated nanoparticles changed ROS levels. Furthermore, nanoparticles were more toxic at lower concentrations when cells were cultured within 3D gels. These results indicate that both dextran and PEG coatings reduce nanoparticle cytotoxicity, however different mechanisms may be important for different size nanoparticles

STRUCTURAL SHAPE OPTIMIZATION BY ISOGEOMETRIC BOUNDARY ELEMENT METHOD

In Isogeometric boundary element method（IGA-BEM）, Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines（NURBS） which are used for describing the geometric boundary in a computer-aided geometric design（CAGD） are employed as shape functions of Boundary Element Method. IGA-BEM not only can accurately describe the geometric boundary, but also unify the design model, analysis model and optimization model, so it can avoid the repeated meshing and mesh distortion problems in the optimization process and it also can improve the efficiency of the design, calculation and optimization. In this article IGA-BEM is combined with particle swarm optimization（PSO） to study the shape optimization of two-dimensional linear elastic structure. Compared with the gradient-based optimization algorithms, gradient-free PSO algorithm can avoid the complicated sensitivity analysis process and make the optimization process easier. The efficiency and accuracy of the combined isogeometric boundary element method-PSO are demonstrated through two shape optimization examples

Title: Fabrication of small aspheric moulds using single point inclined axis grinding Fabrication of small aspheric moulds using single point inclined axis grinding Fabrication of small aspheric moulds using single point inclined axis grinding

Abstract Single point inclined axis grinding techniques, including the wheel setting, wheel-workpiece interference, error source determination and compensation approaches, were studied to fabricate small aspheric moulds of high profile accuracy. The interference of a cylindrical grinding wheel with the workpiece was analysed and the criteria for selection of wheel geometry for avoiding the interference was proposed. The grinding process was performed with compensation focused on two major error sources, wheel setting error and wheel wear. The grinding results showed that the compensation approach was efficient and the developed grinding process was capable to generate small aspheric concave surfaces on tungsten carbide material with a profile error of smaller than 200 nm in PV value after two to three compensation cycles