Lightweight conical components for rotational parabolic domes: geometric definition, structural behaviour, optimisation and digital fabrication

Although initially intended for academic purposes, the research shown in this paper was drawn towards the development of hollow lightweight conical com-ponents to materialise rotational parabolic domes. The starting point is a projec-tive interpretation of an Archimedean property of rotational paraboloid planar sections. This is used to discretise the parabolic surface with a set of tangent ellipses obtained via planar circle-packing algorithms. The ellipses are then mate-rialised with components composed of three truncated conical surfaces, which may be composed of several laminar materials. The geometry and economy of the material, the good structural behaviour, the simple solution for fabrication and assembly, and the tests on a full-scale prototype prove this component to be an efficient self-supporting system for wide-span structures against the use of solid boundary rings, not only for rotational parabolic domes, but also for a possible translation to other types of surface

Identifying the nature of surface chemical modification for directed self assembly of block copolymers

In recent years, block copolymer lithography has emerged as a viable alternative technology for advanced lithography. In chemicalepitaxy directed self assembly, the interfacial energy between the substrate and each block copolymer domain plays a key role on the final ordering. Here, we focus on the experimental characterization of the chemical interactions that occur at the interface built between different chemical guiding patterns and the domains of the block copolymers. We have chosen hard X ray high kinetic energy photoelectron spectroscopy as an exploration technique because it provides information on the electronic structure of buried interfaces. The outcome of the characterization sheds light onto key aspects of directed self assembly grafted brush layer, chemical pattern creation and brush block co polymer interfac

Highly informative SSR genotyping reveals large genetic diversity and limited differentiation in European larch (Larix decidua) populations from Romania

[EN] European larch (Larix decidua) is naturally distributed at high elevations in Central Europe. Romanian populations of L. decidua are scattered in different areas of the country. In this study, we used 12 highly informative genomic simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers for genotyping seven populations from different areas of Romania. The SSR markers were highly variable, with up to 11 alleles per SSR locus and an average polymorphic information content of 0.713. High values of observed (Ho = 0.542) and expected (He = 0.738) heterozygosities were observed. Cluster analysis of populations did not group them according to geographical distance, but some clusters contained populations from a similar altitudinal range. The partition of genetic variation revealed that two-thirds of the genetic variation was found within individuals (due to high Ho levels), while only one-sixth of the total genetic variation corresponded to variation among populations. A population structure analysis identified four genetic clusters, and in most cases individuals from a single population were assigned to several genetic clusters. Multivariate principal coordinates analysis confirmed the population structure analysis. SSR markers are a powerful tool for evaluating diversity, relationships, and the genetic structure of Romanian L. decidua populations, which have high levels of diversity and low genetic structurationPietro Gramazio is grateful to Universitat Politecnica de Valencia for a predoctoral contract (Programa FPI de la UPV-Subprograma 1/2013 call). Ioana M Plesa is grateful to the Doctoral School of the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca and ICHAT - Institute of Advanced Horticulture Research of Transylvania, and Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, for their support. Mariola Plazas is grateful to Spanish Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad for a post doctoral grant within the Juan de la Cierva programme (FCJI-2015-24835).Gramazio, P.; Plesa, IM.; Truta, AM.; Sestras, AF.; Vilanova Navarro, S.; Plazas Ávila, MDLO.; Vicente, O.... (2018). Highly informative SSR genotyping reveals large genetic diversity and limited differentiation in European larch (Larix decidua) populations from Romania. Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry. 42(3):165-175. https://doi.org/10.3906/tar-1801-41S16517542

Constructing living buildings: a review of relevant technologies for a novel application of biohybrid robotics

Biohybrid robotics takes an engineering approach to the expansion and exploitation of biological behaviours for application to automated tasks. Here, we identify the construction of living buildings and infrastructure as a high-potential application domain for biohybrid robotics, and review technological advances relevant to its future development. Construction, civil infrastructure maintenance and building occupancy in the last decades have comprised a major portion of economic production, energy consumption and carbon emissions. Integrating biological organisms into automated construction tasks and permanent building components therefore has high potential for impact. Live materials can provide several advantages over standard synthetic construction materials, including self-repair of damage, increase rather than degradation of structural performance over time, resilience to corrosive environments, support of biodiversity, and mitigation of urban heat islands. Here, we review relevant technologies, which are currently disparate. They span robotics, self-organizing systems, artificial life, construction automation, structural engineering, architecture, bioengineering, biomaterials, and molecular and cellular biology. In these disciplines, developments relevant to biohybrid construction and living buildings are in the early stages, and typically are not exchanged between disciplines. We, therefore, consider this review useful to the future development of biohybrid engineering for this highly interdisciplinary application.publishe

Location of chlorogenic acid biosynthesis pathway and polyphenol oxidase genes in a new interspecific anchored linkage map of eggplant

© Gramazio et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2014. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated

Design agency:prototyping multi-agent systems in architecture

This paper presents research on the prototyping of multi-agent systems for architectural design. It proposes a design exploration methodology at the intersection of architecture, engineering, and computer science. The motivation of the work includes exploring bottom up generative methods coupled with optimizing performance criteria including for geometric complexity and objective functions for environmental, structural and fabrication parameters. The paper presents the development of a research framework and initial experiments to provide design solutions, which simultaneously satisfy complexly coupled and often contradicting objectives. The prototypical experiments and initial algorithms are described through a set of different design cases and agents within this framework; for the generation of façade panels for light control; for emergent design of shell structures; for actual construction of reciprocal frames; and for robotic fabrication. Initial results include multi-agent derived efficiencies for environmental and fabrication criteria and discussion of future steps for inclusion of human and structural factors

Comparison of transcriptome-derived simple sequence repeat (SSR) and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers for genetic fingerprinting, diversity evaluation, and establishment of relationships in eggplants

[EN] Simple sequence repeat (SSR) and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers are amongst the most common markers of choice for studies of diversity and relationships in horticultural species. We have used 11 SSR and 35 SNP markers derived from transcriptome sequencing projects to fingerprint 48 accessions of a collection of brinjal (Solanum melongena), gboma (S. macrocarpon) and scarlet (S. aethiopicum) eggplant complexes, which also include their respective wild relatives S. incanum, S. dasyphyllum and S. anguivi. All SSR and SNP markers were polymorphic and 34 and 36 different genetic fingerprints were obtained with SSRs and SNPs, respectively. When combining both markers all accessions but two had different genetic profiles. Although on average SSRs were more informative than SNPs, with a higher number of alleles, genotypes and polymorphic information content (PIC), and expected heterozygosity (He) values, SNPs have proved highly informative in our materials. Low observed heterozygosity (Ho) and high fixation index (f) values confirm the high degree of homozygosity of eggplants. Genetic identities within groups of each complex were higher than with groups of other complexes, although differences in the ranks of genetic identity values among groups were observed between SSR and SNP markers. For low and intermediate values of pair-wise SNP genetic distances, a moderate correlation between SSR and SNP genetic distances was observed (r(2) = 0.592), but for high SNP genetic distances the correlation was low (r(2) = 0.080). The differences among markers resulted in different phenogram topologies, with a different eggplant complex being basal (gboma eggplant for SSRs and brinjal eggplant for SNPs) to the two others. Overall the results reveal that both types of markers are complementary for eggplant fingerprinting and that interpretation of relationships among groups may be greatly affected by the type of marker used.This work has been funded by European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 677379 (G2P-SOL project: Linking genetic resources, genomes and phenotypes of Solanaceous crops) and by Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (Grant AGL2015-64755-R from MINECO/FEDER). Pietro Gramazio is grateful to Universitat Politecnica de Valencia for a pre-doctoral contract (Programa FPI de la UPV-Subprograma 1/2013 call). Mariola Plazas is grateful to Spanish Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad for a post-doctoral grant within the Juan de la Cierva-Formacion programme (FJCI-2015-24835).Gramazio, P.; Prohens Tomás, J.; Borras, D.; Plazas Ávila, MDLO.; Herraiz García, FJ.; Vilanova Navarro, S. 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SILEX: a fast and inexpensive high-quality DNA extraction method suitable for multiple sequencing platforms and recalcitrant plant species

[EN] Background The use of sequencing and genotyping platforms has undergone dramatic improvements, enabling the generation of a wealth of genomic information. Despite this progress, the availability of high-quality genomic DNA (gDNA) in sufficient concentrations is often a main limitation, especially for third-generation sequencing platforms. A variety of DNA extraction methods and commercial kits are available. However, many of these are costly and frequently give either low yield or low-quality DNA, inappropriate for next generation sequencing (NGS) platforms. Here, we describe a fast and inexpensive DNA extraction method (SILEX) applicable to a wide range of plant species and tissues. Results SILEX is a high-throughput DNA extraction protocol, based on the standard CTAB method with a DNA silica matrix recovery, which allows obtaining NGS-quality high molecular weight genomic plant DNA free of inhibitory compounds. SILEX was compared with a standard CTAB extraction protocol and a common commercial extraction kit in a variety of species, including recalcitrant ones, from different families. In comparison with the other methods, SILEX yielded DNA in higher concentrations and of higher quality. Manual extraction of 48 samples can be done in 96 min by one person at a cost of 0.12 euro/sample of reagents and consumables. Hundreds of tomato gDNA samples obtained with either SILEX or the commercial kit were successfully genotyped with Single Primer Enrichment Technology (SPET) with the Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform. Furthermore, DNA extracted fromSolanum elaeagnifoliumusing this protocol was assessed by Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), obtaining a suitable size ranges for most sequencing platforms that required high-molecular-weight DNA such as Nanopore or PacBio. Conclusions A high-throughput, fast and inexpensive DNA extraction protocol was developed and validated for a wide variety of plants and tissues. SILEX offers an easy, scalable, efficient and inexpensive way to extract DNA for various next-generation sequencing applications including SPET and Nanopore among others.This research has been funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 677379 (Linking genetic resources, genomes and phenotypes of Solanaceous crops; G2P-SOL). David Alonso is grateful to Universitat Politecnica de Valencia for a predoctoral (PAID-01-16) contract under the Programa de Ayudas de Investigacion y Desarrollo initiative. Mariola Plazas is grateful to Generalitat Valenciana and Fondo Social Europeo for a postdoctoral grant (APOSTD/2018/014). Pietro Gramazio is grateful to Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for a Postdoctoral Grant (P19105, FY2019 JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship for Research in Japan (Standard)). The Spanish Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte funded a predoctoral fellowship granted to Edgar Garcia-Fortea (FPU17/02389).Vilanova Navarro, S.; Alonso-Martín, D.; Gramazio, P.; Plazas Ávila, MDLO.; García-Fortea, E.; Ferrante, P.; Schmidt, M.... (2020). SILEX: a fast and inexpensive high-quality DNA extraction method suitable for multiple sequencing platforms and recalcitrant plant species. Plant Methods. 16(1):1-11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13007-020-00652-yS111161Scheben A, Batley J, Edwards D. Genotyping-by-sequencing approaches to characterize crop genomes: choosing the right tool for the right application. Plant Biotechnol J. 2017;15:149–61.Jung H, Winefield C, Bombarely A, Prentis P, Waterhouse P. Tools and strategies for long-read sequencing and de novo assembly of plant genomes. 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Coding SNPs analysis highlights genetic relationships and evolution pattern in eggplant complexes

[EN] Brinjal (Solanum melongena), scarlet (S. aethiopicum) and gboma (S. macrocarpon) eggplants are three Old World domesticates. The genomic DNA of a collection of accessions belonging to the three cultivated species, along with a representation of various wild relatives, was characterized for the presence of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) using a genotype-by-sequencing approach. A total of 210 million useful reads were produced and were successfully aligned to the reference eggplant genome sequence. Out of the 75,399 polymorphic sites identified among the 76 entries in study, 12,859 were associated with coding sequence. A genetic relationships analysis, supported by the output of the FastSTRUCTURE software, identified four major sub-groups as present in the germplasm panel. The first of these clustered S. aethiopicum with its wild ancestor S. anguivi; the second, S. melongena, its wild progenitor S. insanum, and its relatives S. incanum, S. lichtensteinii and S. linneanum; the third, S. macrocarpon and its wild ancestor S. dasyphyllum; and the fourth, the New World species S. sisymbriifolium, S. torvum and S. elaeagnifolium. By applying a hierarchical FastSTRUCTURE analysis on partitioned data, it was also possible to resolve the ambiguous membership of the accessions of S. campylacanthum, S. violaceum, S. lidii, S. vespertilio and S. tomentsum, as well as to genetically differentiate the three species of New World Origin. A principal coordinates analysis performed both on the entire germplasm panel and also separately on the entries belonging to sub-groups revealed a clear separation among species, although not between each of the domesticates and their respective wild ancestors. There was no clear differentiation between either distinct cultivar groups or different geographical provenance. Adopting various approaches to analyze SNP variation provided support for interpretation of results. The genotyping-by-sequencing approach showed to be highly efficient for both quantifying genetic diversity and establishing genetic relationships among and within cultivated eggplants and their wild relatives. The relevance of these results to the evolution of eggplants, as well as to their genetic improvement, is discussed.This work has been funded in part by European Unions Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 677379 (G2P-SOL project: Linking genetic resources, genomes and phenotypes of Solanaceous crops) and by Spanish Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (grant AGL2015-64755-R from MINECO/FEDER). Funding has also been received from the initiative "Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting, Protecting and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives", which is supported by the Government of Norway. This last project is managed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust with the Millennium Seed Bank of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and implemented in partnership with national and international gene banks and plant breeding institutes around the world. For further information see the project website:http://www.cwrdiversity.org/. Pietro Gramazio is grateful to Universitat Politecnica de Valencia for a pre-doctoral (Programa FPI de la UPV-Subprograma 1/2013 call) contract. Mariola Plazas is grateful to Spanish Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad for a post-doctoral grant within the Santiago Grisolia Programme (FCJI-2015-24835). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Acquadro, A.; Barchi, L.; Gramazio, P.; Portis, E.; Vilanova Navarro, S.; Comino, C.; Plazas Ávila, MDLO.... (2017). Coding SNPs analysis highlights genetic relationships and evolution pattern in eggplant complexes. PLoS ONE. 12(7). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180774Se018077412

Negotiated matter: a robotic exploration of craft-driven innovation

This paper introduces a novel approach to craft-driven robotic innovation in architectural research. Here craft is not portrayed as a source of ornamental or historical inspiration, but instead as an open-ended process described by a framework involving material properties, diverging modes of knowledge production and representation, emergent tectonic configurations and embodied interaction with technology. To do so, this paper firstly contrasts a definition of craft (Pye 1968) with practices of robotic architectural production. Additionally, the notion of emergent tectonics resulting from negotiated material and technological processes is addressed by critically situating the theories of architectural tectonics by Kenneth Frampton (2001) and digital tectonics by Leach, Turnbull and Williams (2004) in the context of robotic fabrication in architecture. Finally, the ongoing project “Computing Craft” is presented as a case study illustrating a proposed framework for robotic craft-driven innovation