Improving Photostability and Antifungal Performance of Bamboo with Nanostructured Zinc Oxide

We report on the formation of zinc oxide (ZnO) films with various morphologies on bamboo to simultaneously furnish it with excellent photostability and antifungal properties. A simple two-step process was adopted, consisting of generation of ZnO seeds on the bamboo surface followed by solution treatment to promote crystal growth. Effect of reaction conditions on film morphologies was systematically investigated. Results indicate morphologies of ZnO films can be tailored from nanoparticles to nanostructured networks and irregular aggregates at the micron scale with different crystallinities through specific combinations of reaction conditions. The photostability and antifungal performances of coated bamboo were greatly improved and highly dependent on both crystallinity and morphologies of ZnO films

Tensile Properties of Single Rattan Fibers

The longitudinal tensile strength of single fibers of four rattan species, namely C. simplicifolius, C. nambariensis Becc. var. yingjiangensis, C. nambariensis var. xishuangbannaensis, and C. yunnanensis, was studied using a custom-built short vegetable fiber mechanical tester. The stress-strain curves produced by the four different rattans showed two distinct phases: a steep, straight segment in the initial phase followed by a straight line with a lower slope up to the breaking point. The respective average values for tensile elastic modulus, tensile strength, and elongation at breaking point of C. simplicifolius, C. nambariensis.var. xishuangbannaensis, C. yunnanensis, and C. nambariensis var. yingjiangensis canes were 10.61, 10.05, 9.10, and 9.54 GPa; 603, 566, 464, and 539 MPa; and 17.00, 17.24, 16.44, and 21.08%. The length position of the single fibers in the cane had variable effects on the three aforementioned properties for all four sampled rattan species. The tensile properties of C. simplicifolius fibers were highest. Compared with wood and bamboo, modulus of elasticity and tensile strength of the studied rattans were much lower, whereas elongation at breaking point of single rattan fibers was generally higher

IDENTIFICATION AND RECOGNIZATION OF BAMBOO BASED ON CROSS-SECTIONAL IMAGES USING COMPUTER VISION

Identification of bamboo is of great importance to its conservation and uses. However, identify bamboo manually is complicated, expensive, and time-consuming. Here, we analyze the most evident and characteristic anatomical elements of cross section images, that’s a particularly vital breakthrough point. Meanwhile, we present a novel approach with respect to the automatic identification of bamboo on the basis of the cross-sectional images through computer vision.Two diverse transfer learning strategies were applied for the learning process, namely fine-tuning with fully connected layers and all layers, the results indicated that fine-tuning with all layers being trained with the dataset consisting of cross-sectional images of bamboo is an effective tool to identify and recognize intergenericbamboo, 100% accuracy on the training dataset was achieved while 98.7% accuracy was output on the testing dataset, suggesting the proposed method is quite effective and feasible, it’s beneficial to identify bamboo and protect bamboo in coutilization. More collection of bamboo species in the dataset in the near futuremight make EfficientNet more promising for identifying bamboo.  

Sensitivity of several selected mechanical properties of moso bamboo to moisture content change under the fibre saturation point

The moisture dependence of different mechanical properties of bamboo has not been fully understood. In this work, the longitudinal tensile modulus, bending modulus, and compressive and shearing strength parallel to the grain were determined for bamboo of ages 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, and 4.5 years under different moisture contents (MC) to elucidate the sensitivity of different mechanical properties of bamboo to MC change. The results showed that the four mechanical properties of bamboo respond differently to MC changes. Compressive and shearing strength parallel to the grain were most sensitive to MC changes, followed by longitudinal tensile modulus, then bending modulus. This can be partially explained by the different responses of the three main components in the plant cell wall to MC change. For tensile modulus and bending modulus, the effect of bamboo age on the sensitivity to MC change was insignificant, while young bamboo (0.5 years old) was more sensitive to MC changes for shear strength and less sensitive for compression strength than older bamboo

MCIROFIBRIL AGGREGATES IN PRETREATED BAMBOO FIBERS ANALYZED WITH ATOMIC FORCE MICROSCOPY

Fiber primary cell walls of Ci bamboo (Neosinocalamus affinis) were analyzed with an atomic force microscope (AFM) to determine the arrangement of microfibril aggregates and the effect of pre-treatments (ultrasonic treatment and different drying ways) on the arrangement and dimension of microfibril aggregates and the cell wall topography. The microfibril aggregates in primary cell walls of bamboo fiber showed a randomly interwoven structure. Differences in the spacing between microfibril aggregates observed from the AFM phase images and the microfibril aggregates diameter determined from the AFM height topography of the nanostructure of primary cell walls of bamboo fiber were found relevant to the pre-treatments during the sample preparation. Besides, the microfibril aggregates in primary cell walls of bamboo were actually the aggregations of different numbers of cellulose fibrils. Moreover, the ultrasonic treatment could increase the roughness of bamboo fiber and exposure of microfibril aggregates. The data suggest that sample preparation and pre-treatments should be considered relevant to the arrangement and dimension of microfibril aggregates as well as the topography in studying the nanostructure of cell walls with AFM. 

Effect of Modification with Methyl Methacrylate on the Mechanical Properties of Plectocomia kerrana Rattan

This study aims to evaluate the mechanical properties of rattan/polymer composites prepared by polymerization with methyl methacrylate (MMA). The P. kerrana rattan samples were impregnated in a vacuum system and polymerized in an oven at 60 °C for 8 h, using 0.5 wt.% of azobisisobutyronitrile as a catalyst. The macro-mechanical properties of the treated and untreated samples were analyzed. The bending modulus and strength of the treated rattan increased by 206% and 215%, respectively. Additionally, the compressive modulus and strength increased by 109% and 107%, compared to untreated rattan. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images showed that MMA penetrated the cell lumen. Furthermore, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis revealed that MMA diffused into the parenchyma and vessels, but it was not found in the fiber wall. Thus, it can be inferred that the improvement in the mechanical properties of treated rattan was mainly caused by the strengthened parenchyma and vessels. Modification with MMA was shown to be an effective way to enhance the macro-mechanical properties of P. kerrana

A feature-based intelligent deduplication compression system with extreme resemblance detection

With the fast development of various computing paradigms, the amount of data is rapidly increasing that brings the huge storage overhead. However, the existing data deduplication techniques do not make full use of similarity detection to improve the storage efficiency and data transmission rate. In this paper, we study the problem of utilising the duplicate and resemblance detection techniques to further compress data. We first present a framework of FIDCS-ERD, a feature-based intelligent deduplication compression system with extreme resemblance detection. We also introduce the main components and the detailed workflow of our compression system. We propose a content-defined chunking algorithm for duplicate detection and a Bloom filter-based resemblance detection algorithm. FIDCS-ERD implements the intelligent file chunking and the fast duplicate and resemblance detection. By extensive experiments over the real datasets, we demonstrate that FIDCS-ERD has better compression effect and more accurate resemblance detection compared to the existing approaches

Variation of Tensile Properties of Single Fibres of Dendrocalamus farinosus Bamboo

This study investigated the mechanical behavior and the variation of Dendrocalamus farinosus single fibres, which were isolated from fibre bundles using a chemical method. A micro-tester was applied to determine the influence of the age of the bamboo sampled, as well as the longitudinal and radial positions, on three indicators featuring tensile properties at the fibre level. The results indicated that the single fibres had a brittle failure mode, resulting in average tensile strength and tensile modulus (MOE) values of 1.06 and 26.93 GPa, respectively. The differing ages and positions across the whole culm appeared to be minor in relation to their tensile properties, which reached a near-optimal state at 2 years old and remained fairly constant. This work could provide basic-data for further research on bamboo properties and increase attention to a potential supplementary material to moso bamboo in industrial utilization

Ger Luijten, Peter Schatborn and Arthur K. Wheelock (eds.), ‘Drawings for paintings in the age of Rembrandt’, Washington and Paris, 2016

Genlin Tian, Cheng Tao, Renwei Qu, Chang He, Jianjiang Deng and Qingjun Yan

3D Visualization of Bamboo Node’s Vascular Bundle

The vascular bundle is an important structural unit that determines the growth and properties of bamboo. A high-resolution X-ray microtomography (μCT) was used to observe and reconstruct a three-dimensional (3D) morphometry model of the vascular bundle of the Qiongzhuea tumidinoda node due to its advantages of quick, nondestructive, and accurate testing of plant internal structure. The results showed that the morphology of vascular bundles varied significantly in the axial direction. In the cross-section, the number of axial vascular bundles reached a maximum at the lower end of the sheath scar, and the minimum of it was at the middle of the diaphragm. The frequency of axial vascular bundles decreased from the lower end of the node to the nodal ridge, and subsequently increased until the upper end of the bamboo node. The proportion of parenchyma, fibers, and conducting tissue was 65.7%, 30.5%, and 3.8%, respectively. The conducting tissues were intertwined to form a complex 3D network structure, with a connectivity of 94.77%. The conducting tissue with the largest volume accounted for 60.26% of the total volume of the conducting tissue. The 3D-distribution pattern of the conducting tissue of the node and that of the fibers were similar, but their thickness changed in the opposite pattern. This study revealed the 3D morphometry of the conducting tissue and fibers of the bamboo node, the reconstruction of the skeleton made the morphology more intuitive. Quantitative indicators such as the 3D volume, proportion, and connectivity of each type of tissue was obtained, the bamboo node was enlarged mainly caused by the particularly developed fibers. This work laid the foundation for a better understanding of the mechanical properties and water transportation of bamboo and revealed the mystery of bamboo node shedding of Q. tumidinoda