Nowadays, the pollution of water has become worse in many parts of the world, which causes a severe shortage of clean water and attracts widespread attention worldwide. Bioinspired from nature, i.e. ...spider silk, cactus, Namib desert beetle, Nepenthes alata, special wettability surfaces have attracted great interest from fundamental research to water‐harvesting applications. Here, recently published literature about creatures possessing water‐harvesting ability are reviewed, with a focus on the corresponding water‐harvesting mechanisms of creatures in dry or arid regions, consisting of the theory of wetting and transporting. Then a detailed account of the innovative fabrication technologies and bionic water‐harvesting materials with special wetting are summarized, i.e. bio‐inspired artificial spider silk, bio‐inspired artificial cactus‐like structures, and bio‐inspired artificial Namib desert beetle‐like surfaces. Special attentions are paid to the discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the technologies, as well as factors that affect the amount of water‐harvesting. Finally, conclusions, future outlooks and the current challenges for future development of the water‐harvesting technology are presented and discussed.
Bioinspired from creatures possessing water‐harvesting abilities, a detailed account of the innovative fabrication technologies and bionic water‐harvesting materials with special wetting have emerged. Based on the corresponding water‐harvesting mechanisms of creatures in dry or arid regions, scientists find key factors that affect the amount of water‐harvesting, which is significant for future development of the water‐harvesting technology.
Developing drought‐smart, ready‐to‐grow future crops Raza, Ali; Mubarik, Muhammad Salman; Sharif, Rahat ...
The plant genome,
March 2023, 2023-03-00, 20230301, 2023-03-01, Volume:
16, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Breeding crop plants with increased yield potential and improved tolerance to stressful environments is critical for global food security. Drought stress (DS) adversely affects agricultural ...productivity worldwide and is expected to rise in the coming years. Therefore, it is vital to understand the physiological, biochemical, molecular, and ecological mechanisms associated with DS. This review examines recent advances in plant responses to DS to expand our understanding of DS‐associated mechanisms. Suboptimal water sources adversely affect crop growth and yields through physical impairments, physiological disturbances, biochemical modifications, and molecular adjustments. To control the devastating effect of DS in crop plants, it is important to understand its consequences, mechanisms, and the agronomic and genetic basis of DS for sustainable production. In addition to plant responses, we highlight several mitigation options such as omics approaches, transgenics breeding, genome editing, and biochemical to mechanical methods (foliar treatments, seed priming, and conventional agronomic practices). Further, we have also presented the scope of conventional and speed breeding platforms in helping to develop the drought‐smart future crops. In short, we recommend incorporating several approaches, such as multi‐omics, genome editing, speed breeding, and traditional mechanical strategies, to develop drought‐smart cultivars to achieve the ‘zero hunger’ goal.
Core Ideas
Drought stress (DS) significantly affects plant growth and development.
Plants respond and adapt to DS by modifying several physiological, biochemical, and molecular functions.
Advances in different conventional, biochemical, biotechnological, and breeding techniques reveal plant drought tolerance mechanisms.
Data from different approaches can be used with speed breeding for drought‐smart, ready‐to‐grow future crops.
Consumer choices reflect not only price and quality preferences but also social and moral values, as witnessed in the remarkable growth of the global market for organic and environmentally friendly ...products. Building on recent research on behavioral priming and moral regulation, we found that mere exposure to green products and the purchase of such products lead to markedly different behavioral consequences. In line with the halo associated with green consumerism, results showed that people act more altruistically after mere exposure to green products than after mere exposure to conventional products. However, people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products than after purchasing conventional products. Together, our studies show that consumption is connected to social and ethical behaviors more broadly across domains than previously thought.
This work, as a proof of principle, presents a sensitive and selective electrochemical immunosensor for Zika-virus (ZIKV)-protein detection using a functionalized interdigitated micro-electrode of ...gold (IDE-Au) array. A miniaturized IDE-Au immunosensing chip was prepared via immobilization of ZIKV specific envelop protein antibody (Zev-Abs) onto dithiobis(succinimidyl propionate) i.e., (DTSP) functionalized IDE-Au (electrode gap/width of 10 µm). Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) was performed to measure the electrical response of developed sensing chip as a function of ZIKV-protein concentrations. The results of EIS studies confirmed that sensing chip detected ZIKV-protein selectively and exhibited a detection range from 10 pM to 1 nM and a detection limit of 10 pM along with a high sensitivity of 12 kΩM
. Such developed ZIKV immune-sensing chip can be integrated with a miniaturized potentiostat (MP)-interfaced with a smartphone for rapid ZIKV-infection detection required for early stage diagnostics at point-of-care application.
Research on ethical decision making has been heavily influenced by normative decision theories that view intelligent choices as involving conscious deliberation and analysis. Recent developments in ...moral psychology, however, suggest that moral functions involved in ethical decision making are metaphorical and embodied. The research presented here suggests that deliberative decision making may actually increase unethical behaviors and reduce altruistic motives when it overshadows implicit, intuitive influences on moral judgments and decisions. Three lab experiments explored the potential ethical dangers of deliberative decision making. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that deliberative decision making, activated by a math problem-solving task or by simply framing the choice as a decision rather than an intuitive reaction, increased deception in a one-shot deception game. Experiment 3—which activated systematic thinking or intuitive feeling about the choice to donate to a charity—found that deliberative decision making could also decrease altruism. These findings highlight the potential ethical downsides of a rationalistic approach toward ethical decision making and call for a better understanding of the intuitive nature of moral functioning.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted people's lifestyles and travel behaviours, which may persist post-pandemic. An effective monitoring tool that allows us to track the level of ...change is vital for controlling viral transmission, predicting travel and activity demand and, in the long term, for economic recovery. In this paper, we propose a set of Twitter mobility indices to explore and visualise changes in people's travel and activity patterns, demonstrated through a case study of London. We collected over 2.3 million geotagged tweets in the Great London Area (GLA) from Jan 2019 -Feb 2021. From these, we extracted daily trips, origin-destination matrices, and spatial networks. Mobility indices were computed based on these, with the year 2019 as a pre-Covid baseline. We found that in London, (1) People are making fewer but longer trips since March 2020. (2) In 2020, travellers showed comparatively reduced interest in central and sub-central activity locations compared to those in outer areas, whereas, in 2021, there is a sign of a return to the old norm. (3) Contrary to some relevant literature on mobility and virus transmission, we found a poor spatial relationship at the Middle Layer Super Output Area (MSOA) level between reported COVID-19 cases and Twitter mobility. It indicated that daily trips detected from geotweets and their most likely associated social, exercise and commercial activities are not critical causes for disease transmission in London. Aware of the data limitations, we also discuss the representativeness of Twitter mobility by comparing our proposed measures to more established mobility indices. Overall, we conclude that mobility patterns obtained from geo-tweets are valuable for continuously monitoring urban changes at a fine spatiotemporal scale.
The neurotransmitter histamine receives less attention compared with other biogenic amines, because of its moderate action in the central nervous system (CNS). However, recent evidence suggests that ...histamine plays an important role in multiple CNS disorders including insomnia, narcolepsy, Parkinson's diseases, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, and cerebral ischemia. New insights are emerging into the potential roles of histamine receptors as targets for the treatment of these diseases. Although some histamine related agents have failed in clinical trials, current preclinical studies suggest that this neurotransmitter may still have extensive applications in treating CNS disorders, however, advanced studies are warranted. This review summarizes findings from animal models and clinical research on the role of histamine and its receptor ligands in the brain for treatment of CNS disorders. The development of novel histamine receptor ligands and gaining an in-depth understanding of their potential mechanisms are necessary stepping stones to unlock their wide-ranging applications in the clinical arena.
Ionic liquids with physico-chemical special characteristics such as the low melting point, adjustable acidity and good solubility have been used widely as the environment-friendly solvents; Cellulose ...are the most abundant natural renewable resources. Non-derivative cellulose solvents which being one category of ionic liquids have attracted enormous studies in cellulose recently. This review summarizes the dissolution and functional modification of cellulose as ionic liquids based on previous researches.
Climate‐resilient crops: Lessons from xerophytes Chen, Xi; Zhao, Chenchen; Yun, Ping ...
The Plant journal : for cell and molecular biology,
March 2024, 2024-Mar, 2024-03-00, 20240301, Volume:
117, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
SUMMARY
Developing climate‐resilient crops is critical for future food security and sustainable agriculture under current climate scenarios. Of specific importance are drought and soil salinity. ...Tolerance traits to these stresses are highly complex, and the progress in improving crop tolerance is too slow to cope with the growing demand in food production unless a major paradigm shift in crop breeding occurs. In this work, we combined bioinformatics and physiological approaches to compare some of the key traits that may differentiate between xerophytes (naturally drought‐tolerant plants) and mesophytes (to which the majority of the crops belong). We show that both xerophytes and salt‐tolerant mesophytes have a much larger number of copies in key gene families conferring some of the key traits related to plant osmotic adjustment, abscisic acid (ABA) sensing and signalling, and stomata development. We show that drought and salt‐tolerant species have (i) higher reliance on Na for osmotic adjustment via more diversified and efficient operation of Na+/H+ tonoplast exchangers (NHXs) and vacuolar H+‐ pyrophosphatase (VPPases); (ii) fewer and faster stomata; (iii) intrinsically lower ABA content; (iv) altered structure of pyrabactin resistance/pyrabactin resistance‐like (PYR/PYL) ABA receptors; and (v) higher number of gene copies for protein phosphatase 2C (PP2C) and sucrose non‐fermenting 1 (SNF1)‐related protein kinase 2/open stomata 1 (SnRK2/OST1) ABA signalling components. We also show that the past trends in crop breeding for Na+ exclusion to improve salinity stress tolerance are counterproductive and compromise their drought tolerance. Incorporating these genetic insights into breeding practices could pave the way for more drought‐tolerant and salt‐resistant crops, securing agricultural yields in an era of climate unpredictability.
Significance Statement
This work compare some of the key traits that differentiate between xerophytes (naturally drought‐tolerant plants) and mesophytes (to which majority of the crops belong). Incorporating these genetic insights into breeding practices could pave the way for more drought‐tolerant and salt‐resistant crops, securing agricultural yields in an era of climate unpredictability.
PDF
