A Soft Enveloping Gripper with Enhanced Grasping Ability via Morphological Adaptability

Hitherto, automated grasping with robotic grippers requires adjusting the posture and force of the fingers based on the size, geometry, stiffness, and pose of the objects. To provide a simpler but efficient grasping methodology, a soft enveloping gripper is presented and investigated how its morphological adaptability improves the grasping ability by comparing its performance with fingered grippers. Results show that this enveloping gripper can omnidirectionally envelop objects via active–passive interaction, which allows the gripper to 100% grasp the object located at different positions within range and keep their orientations. However, the grasping success rate and orientation error of the fingered grippers highly depend on the relative position and angle of the objects to the grippers, as well as the number of fingers. The dynamic vibration and decay time of the enveloping gripper when grasping a 500 g weight are, both, approximately one‐sixth of those of the two‐fingered gripper when grasping a 12.37 g cube. This enveloping gripper can automatically grasp objects (including deformable ones) lying in different poses without posture estimation and force control with a simple vision‐based automatic grasping method. The enveloping grasping method may open an avenue for simple, low cost yet powerful automatic grasping applications

Climate change-induced greening on the Tibetan Plateau modulated by mountainous characteristics

International audienceGlobal terrestrial vegetation is greening, particularly in mountain areas, providing strong feedbacks to a series of ecosystem processes. This greening has been primarily attributed to climate change. However, the spatial variability and magnitude of such greening do not synchronize with those of climate change in mountain areas. By integrating two data sets of satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) values, which are indicators of vegetation greenness, in the period 1982-2015 across the Tibetan Plateau (TP), we test the hypothesis that climate-changeinduced greening is regulated by terrain, baseline climate and soil properties. We find a widespread greening trend over 91% of the TP vegetated areas, with an average greening rate (i.e. increase in NDVI) of 0.011 per decade. The linear mixed-effects model suggests that climate change alone can explain only 26% of the variation in the observed greening. Additionally, 58% of the variability can be explained by the combination of the mountainous characteristics of terrain, baseline climate and soil properties, and 32% of this variability was explained by terrain. Path analysis identified the interconnections of climate change, terrain, baseline climate and soil in determining greening. Our results demonstrate the important role of mountainous effects in greening in response to climate change

Practice of Water Ecological Restoration of Large Urban Eutrophication Lake——A case of study of Donghu Lake, Wuhan

Submerged macrophytes are the main components of lake ecosystems, and restoration of submerged macrophyte community is an important part of restoring lake ecosystems. Taking Water Ecological Restoration Projects in Wuhan Donghu Lake as an example, Combined with the current situation of the Donghu Lake environment, the submerged phytoremediation area, the restoration species of each sub-lake and the submerged plant configuration plan were determined. The planting of submerged macrophyte adopts the process of “selecting the area - removing debris and repelling fish ecologically - improving the substrate - setting the line planting”. Since the project was implemented , the submerged macrophyte grow well, the coverage of plants reaches more than 70%, and the transparency can reach more than 120cm, which meets the design requirements basically

Fast Transit of Carbon Inputs in Global Soil Profiles Regardless of Entering Depth

Abstract Climate and land management changes are altering carbon inputs to soil. The consequence of such input changes on long‐term soil organic carbon (SOC) balance depends on the transit behavior of carbon inputs. Using observational carbon input and radiocarbon data in global soil profiles, we reveal that on average nearly 25% of new entering carbon leave soil in 1 year irrespective of entering depth, and the remained fraction after 30 years is only ∼13%. Nevertheless, the majority of SOC is older than 30 years in all soil depths. Together, these results demonstrate low transfer efficiency of carbon inputs to aged SOC which is the meaningful carbon component for long‐term SOC sequestration. Additionally, we reveal that SOC aging and carbon input transiting are two distinct processes, which should be simultaneously, but mechanistical‐separately, considered to predict and manage SOC dynamics in response to carbon input changes under climate and land management changes

New insights into multiple provenances evolution of the Jurassic from heavy minerals characteristics in southern Junggar Basin, NW China

The method of random forest was used to classify the heavy mineral assemblages of 2 418 Jurassic samples in the southern Junggar Basin, and determine the distribution of the heavy mineral assemblages from the same provenance systems. Based on the analysis of heavy minerals assemblages, ZTR index, sedimentary characteristics, U-Pb zircon ages, whole-rock geochemical and paleocurrent direction analysis, the study reveals that five important provenances were providing sediments to the southern Junggar Basin in the Jurassic period: The North Tianshan (NTS), Central Tianshan (CTS), Bogda Mountains, Zhayier Mountains and Kalamaili Mountains. During the Early Jurassic, NTS-CTS, Kalamaili Mountains and Zhayier Mountains are primary provenances, Bogda Mountains started to uplift and supply clastic materials in the Middle Jurassic. There are three sedimentary area in the Jurassic of southern Junggar Basin: the western part, the central part and the eastern part. In the western part, the clastic materials of the Early Jurassic was mainly from NTS blocks and Zhayier Mountains, and the sediments were dominantly derived from the Zhayier Mountains during the Middle–Late Jurassic. In the central part, the main provenance of the Early Jurassic switched from NTS to CTS. In the Xishanyao Formation, the main source went back to NTS again. The NTS was the primary provenance during the sedimentary periods of Toutunhe Formation and Qigu Formation. In the eastern part, the contribution of CTS and Kalamaili Mountains were considered as major provenances in the Early Jurassic−Xishanyao Formation, small proportion of sediments were from NTS. The Bogda mountains uplifted and started to provide sediments to the Junggar Basin in the sedimentary period of Xishanyao Formation, and became the major source during the Toutunhe Formation period, with small amount of sediments from CTS. The provenance from CTS was hindered during the sedimentary period of Qigu Formation owing to the uplifting of the Bogda mountains, and the sediments were mainly from the Bogda mountains and NTS. Key words: southern Junggar Basin, Jurassic, source to sink system, provenance, heavy minerals assemblages, random fores

Decoupling of soil carbon mineralization and microbial community composition across a climate gradient on the Tibetan Plateau

Soil microbes drive soil organic carbon (SOC) mineralization. Because microbial groups differ in metabolic efficiency and respond differently to temperature variation, it is reasonable to expect a close association of SOC mineralization and its temperature sensitivity (Q10 which is defined as the factor of the change of soil carbon mineralization induced by 10 °C temperature increase) with microbial community diversity and composition. However, these relations have rarely been tested. Here, we conducted an incubation experiment to assess the temperature responses of microbial α diversity and the relative abundance of microbial r- and K-strategists in soils from a wide range of ecosystems across a climate gradient in the southeast Tibet. The results indicated that the instantaneous α diversity and the relative abundance of r- and K-strategists are significantly (P < 0.05) influenced by temperature, but these microbial variables are poor predictors of SOC mineralization measured at the same time. Rather, microbial community diversity and the relative abundance of r- and K-strategists of fresh soils showed consistent and significant (P < 0.05) effects on both SOC mineralization and Q10 at different incubation stages. Importantly, path analysis indicated that microbial α diversity and r- and K-strategists exerts no independent effects on SOC mineralization and Q10 when variation in climate, SOC chemistry, physical protection, and edaphic properties are accounted for. Together, our results suggest that while soil microbial community diversity and composition are a strong proxy of SOC quality and availability, they are not a fundamental determinant of SOC mineralization and Q10

Plaque Bacterial Microbiome Diversity in Children Younger than 30 Months with or without Caries Prior to Eruption of Second Primary Molars

<div><p>Objective</p><p>Our primary objective is to phylogenetically characterize the supragingival plaque bacterial microbiome of children prior to eruption of second primary molars by pyrosequencing method for studying etiology of early childhood caries.</p><p>Methods</p><p>Supragingival plaque samples were collected from 10 caries children and 9 caries-free children. Plaque DNA was extracted, used to generate DNA amplicons of the V1–V3 hypervariable region of the bacterial <i>16S rRNA</i> gene, and subjected to 454-pyrosequencing.</p><p>Results</p><p>On average, over 22,000 sequences per sample were generated. High bacterial diversity was noted in the plaque of children with caries [170 operational taxonomical units (OTU) at 3% divergence] and caries-free children (201 OTU at 3% divergence) with no significant difference. A total of 8 phyla, 15 classes, 21 orders, 30 families, 41 genera and 99 species were represented. In addition, five predominant phyla (<i>Firmicute, Fusobacteria, Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes</i> and <i>Actinobacteria</i>) and seven genera (<i>Leptotrichia, Streptococcus, Actinomyces, Prevotella, Porphyromonas, Neisseria, and Veillonella</i>) constituted a majority of contents of the total microbiota, independent of the presence or absence of caries. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) presented that caries-related genera included <i>Streptococcus</i> and <i>Veillonella</i>; while <i>Leptotrichia</i>, <i>Selenomonas</i>, <i>Fusobacterium</i>, <i>Capnocytophaga</i> and <i>Porphyromonas</i> were more related to the caries-free samples. <i>Neisseria</i> and <i>Prevotella</i> presented approximately in between. In both groups, the degree of shared organism lineages (as defined by species-level OTUs) among individual supragingival plaque microbiomes was minimal.</p><p>Conclusion</p><p>Our study represented for the first time using pyrosequencing to elucidate and monitor supragingival plaque bacterial diversity at such young age with second primary molar unerrupted. Distinctions were revealed between caries and caries-free microbiomes in terms of microbial community structure. We observed differences in abundance for several microbial groups between the caries and caries-free host populations, which were consistent with the ecological plaque hypothesis. Our approach and findings could be extended to correlating microbiomic changes after occlusion establishment and caries treatment.</p></div