Virus-induced gene complementation reveals a transcription factor network in modulation of tomato fruit ripening

Plant virus technology, in particular virus-induced gene silencing, is a widely used reverse- and forward-genetics tool in plant functional genomics. However the potential of virus technology to express genes to induce phenotypes or to complement mutants in order to understand the function of plant genes is not well documented. Here we exploit Potato virus X as a tool for virus-induced gene complementation (VIGC). Using VIGC in tomato, we demonstrated that ectopic viral expression of LeMADS-RIN, which encodes a MADS-box transcription factor (TF), resulted in functional complementation of the non-ripening rin mutant phenotype and caused fruits to ripen. Comparative gene expression analysis indicated that LeMADS-RIN up-regulated expression of the SBP-box (SQUAMOSA promoter binding protein-like) gene LeSPL-CNR, but down-regulated the expression of LeHB-1, an HD-Zip homeobox TF gene. Our data support the hypothesis that a transcriptional network may exist among key TFs in the modulation of fruit ripening in tomato

Life cycle assessment of energy consumption and environmental emissions for cornstalk-based ethyl levulinate

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.This study analysed the sustainability of fuel-ethyl levulinate (EL) production along with furfural, as a by-product, from cornstalk in China. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted using the SimaPro software to evaluate the energy consumption (EC), greenhouse gas (GHG) and criteria emissions, from cornstalk growth to EL utilisation. The total life cycle EC was found to be 4.54MJ/MJ EL, of which 94.7% was biomass energy. EC in the EL production stage was the highest, accounting for 96.8% of total EC. Fossil EC in this stage was estimated to be 0.095 MJ/MJ, which also represents the highest fossil EC throughout the life cycle (39.5% of the total). The ratio of biomass to fossil EC over the life cycle was 17.9, indicating good utilisation of renewable energy in cornstalk-based EL production. The net life cycle GHG emissions were 96.6 g CO2-eq/MJ. The EL production stage demonstrated the highest GHG emissions, representing 53.4% of the total positive amount. Criteria emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) and particulates ≤ 10 um (PM10) showed negative values, of -3.15 and -0.72 g/MJ, respectively. Nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions showed positive values of 0.33 and 0.28 g/MJ, respectively, mainly arising from the EL production stage. According to the sensitivity analysis, increasing or removing the cornstalk revenue in the LCA leads to an increase or decrease in the EC and environmental emissions while burning cornstalk directly in the field results in large increases in emissions of NMVOC, CO, NOx and PM10 but decreases in fossil EC, and SO2 and GHG emissions.This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51506049), the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) (2012AA051802) and the Henan Province Foundation and Advanced Technology Research Project (132300413218)

Visual Working Memory Capacity Does Not Modulate the Feature-Based Information Filtering in Visual Working Memory

Background: The limited capacity of visual working memory (VWM) requires us to select the task relevant information and filter out the irrelevant information efficiently. Previous studies showed that the individual differences in VWM capacity dramatically influenced the way we filtered out the distracters displayed in distinct spatial-locations: low-capacity individuals were poorer at filtering them out than the high-capacity ones. However, when the target and distracting information pertain to the same object (i.e., multiple-featured object), whether the VWM capacity modulates the featurebased filtering remains unknown. Methodology/Principal Findings: We explored this issue mainly based on one of our recent studies, in which we asked the participants to remember three colors of colored-shapes or colored-landolt-Cs while using two types of task irrelevant information. We found that the irrelevant high-discriminable information could not be filtered out during the extraction of VWM but the irrelevant fine-grained information could be. We added 8 extra participants to the original 16 participants and then split the overall 24 participants into low- and high-VWM capacity groups. We found that regardless of the VWM capacity, the irrelevant high-discriminable information was selected into VWM, whereas the irrelevant fine-grained information was filtered out. The latter finding was further corroborated in a second experiment in which the participants were required to remember one colored-landolt-C and a more strict control was exerted over the VWM capacity

Dissociated Mechanisms of Extracting Perceptual Information into Visual Working Memory

The processing mechanisms of visual working memory (VWM) have been extensively explored in the recent decade. However, how the perceptual information is extracted into VWM remains largely unclear. The current study investigated this issue by testing whether the perceptual information was extracted into VWM via an integrated-object manner so that all the irrelevant information would be extracted (object hypothesis), or via a feature-based manner so that only the target-relevant information would be extracted (feature hypothesis), or via an analogous processing manner as that in visual perception (analogy hypothesis).High-discriminable information which is processed at the parallel stage of visual perception and fine-grained information which is processed via focal attention were selected as the representatives of perceptual information. The analogy hypothesis predicted that whereas high-discriminable information is extracted into VWM automatically, fine-grained information will be extracted only if it is task-relevant. By manipulating the information type of the irrelevant dimension in a change-detection task, we found that the performance was affected and the ERP component N270 was enhanced if a change between the probe and the memorized stimulus consisted of irrelevant high-discriminable information, but not if it consisted of irrelevant fine-grained information.We conclude that dissociated extraction mechanisms exist in VWM for information resolved via dissociated processes in visual perception (at least for the information tested in the current study), supporting the analogy hypothesis

Robust and Efficient Corner Detector Using Non-Corners Exclusion

Corner detection is a traditional type of feature point detection method. Among methods used, with its good accuracy and the properties of invariance for rotation, noise and illumination, the Harris corner detector is widely used in the fields of vision tasks and image processing. Although it possesses a good performance in detection quality, its application is limited due to its low detection efficiency. The efficiency is crucial in many applications because it determines whether the detector is suitable for real-time tasks. In this paper, a robust and efficient corner detector (RECD) improved from Harris corner detector is proposed. First, we borrowed the principle of the feature from accelerated segment test (FAST) algorithm for corner pre-detection, in order to rule out non-corners and retain many strong corners as real corners. Those uncertain corners are looked at as candidate corners. Second, the gradients are calculated in the same way as the original Harris detector for those candidate corners. Third, to reduce additional computation amount, only the corner response function (CRF) of the candidate corners is calculated. Finally, we replace the highly complex non-maximum suppression (NMS) by an improved NMS to obtain the resulting corners. Experiments demonstrate that RECD is more competitive than some popular corner detectors in detection quality and speed. The accuracy and robustness of our method is slightly better than the original Harris detector, and the detection time is only approximately 8.2% of its original value

A Seamless Image-Stitching Method Based on Human Visual Discrimination and Attention

Stitching gaps and misalignments in mosaic images can severely degrade the human visual perception of mosaic effects. Image stitching plays a key role in eliminating these unpleasant defects. In this paper, an image-stitching method for mosaic images with invisible seams is proposed, according to the research on the human visual system (HVS). By quantifying the human visual attention of images and visual discrimination about luminance difference and fine dislocations, each pixel in the stitching region is given a priority value for tracing a stitching line. Coupled with the processing of an optimal stitching line locating method and the multi-band blending algorithm, the pixels of discontinuous items in mosaic images decrease significantly and the stitching line is almost invisible. This study provides a new insight into the image-stitching field, and the experiments show that the results of the proposed method are more consistent with the human visual system in creating high-quality image mosaics

Morphology and Properties of Hydrogenated Nitrile Rubber/Poly Hydroxyl Zinc Monomethacrylate Composites by Curing with Peroxide

The morphology evolution of hydroxyl zinc monomethacrylate (HZMMA) in hydrogenated nitrile rubber (HNBR) during its formation, and effect of synergistic behavior of HZMMA and carbon black (CB) in HNBR on its properties, were investigated. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were used to probe the reaction of in-situ polymerized HZMMA. The results showed that an ionic polymer interpenetrating HNBR, due to homo-polymerization or graft polymerization of HZMMA solid monomer occurred, and poly-HZMMA particles, confirmed by FTIR and TEM, were formed during the HNBR vulcanization process. This kind of morphology for the HNBR composites played a very significant role in the HNBR reinforcement. At ambient temperature, the mechanical properties of HNBR composite filled with pure PHZMMA was much superior to those of the HNBR/PHZMMA/CB composites; however, when the temperature was increased to above 5°C, the decrease of the tensile strength for the latter was slower, and the tensile strength was always higher than that of the HNBR composites reinforced with pure PHZMMA at the same temperature. The elongation at break above 80°C was also always higher than that of the HNBR/PHZMMA sample. The HNBR/PHZMMA/CB composites showed excellent air oven aging resistance

Distribution Characteristics and Ecological Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals in Marine Sediments of Binhai County, Jiangsu Province

In recent years, research on heavy metals has become very popular, because the status of heavy metals can reflect the marine environment of a region. Based on this, this paper carries out the evaluation and analysis of heavy metals in marine sediments. Based on the content of the heavy metals in the coastal sediments of Binhai, Jiangsu, from coastal waters in the autumns of 2012, 2015, and 2018, the environmental quality was quantitatively evaluated using the geoaccumulation index and potential ecological risk. The sources of the heavy metals were identified by a multivariate analysis, and the changes over the years and the distribution characteristics were analyzed. Hg and Cr were at a clean grade, while other heavy metals contents indicated mild-to-moderate pollution in the three sets of monitoring data. The comprehensive ecological risk index assessment showed that Hg and Cd were at a moderate ecological risk level in the three sets of monitoring data. Overall, the study area exhibited a mild-to-moderate ecological risk level, with a continuously increasing trend. The overall content of heavy metal in this sea area is greatly affected by human activities, with high values occurring in ports, estuaries, and outer seas