Climatic conditions and cultural practices in the sub-tropical and tropical high-rainfall regions in which sugarcane is grown in Australia are conducive to rapid carbon and nitrogen cycling. Previous ...research has identified substantial exchanges of methane (CH
4) and nitrous oxide (N
2O) between sugarcane soils and the atmosphere. However, that research has been mostly short-term. This paper describes recent work aimed at quantifying exchanges of CH
4 and N
2O from fertilised sugarcane soils over whole growing seasons. Micrometeorological and chamber techniques provided continuous measurements of gas emissions in whole-of-season studies in a burnt-cane crop on an acid sulfate soil (ASS) that was fertilised with 160
kg nitrogen (N)
ha
−1 as urea in the south of the sugarcane belt (Site 1), and in a crop on a more representative trash-blanketed soil fertilised with 150
kg urea-N
ha
−1 in the north (Site 2). Site 1 was a strong source of CH
4 with a seasonal emission (over 342 days) of 19.9
kg CH
4
ha
−1. That rate corresponds to 0.5–5% of those expected from rice and wetlands. The many drains in the region appear to be the main source. The net annual emission of CH
4 at Site 2 over 292 days was essentially zero, which contradicts predictions that trash-blankets on the soil are net CH
4 sinks. Emissions of N
2O from the ASS at Site 1 were extraordinarily large and prolonged, totalling 72.1
kg
N
2O
ha
−1 (45.9
kg
N
ha
−1) and persisting at substantial rates for 5 months. The high porosity and frequent wetting with consequent high water filled pore space and the high carbon content of the soil appear to be important drivers of N
2O production. At Site 2, emissions were much smaller, totalling 7.4
kg
N
2O
ha
−1 (4.7
kg
N
ha
−1), most of which was emitted in less than 3 months. The emission factors for N
2O (the proportion of fertiliser nitrogen emitted as N
2O–N) were 21% at Site 1 and 2.8% at Site 2. Both factors exceed the default national inventory value of 1.25%. Calculations suggest that annual N
2O production from Australian sugarcane soils is around 3.8
kt
N
2O, which is about one-half a previous estimate based on short-term measurements, and although ASS constitute only about 4% of Australia's sugarcane soils, they could contribute about 25% of soil emissions of N
2O from sugarcane. The uptake of 50–94
t
CO
2
ha
−1 from the atmosphere by the crops at both sites was offset by emissions of CH
4 and N
2O to the atmosphere amounting to 22
t
CO
2-e
ha
−1 at Site 1 and 2
t
CO
2-e
ha
−1 at Site 2.
To achieve efficient development of high-quality product, manufacturing constraints must be fully taken into account at the early design stage. However, designers lack in-depth knowledge of ...manufacturing and production. Many time-consuming iterations of design changes are required between designers and manufacturing engineers. In order to minimize this knowledge gap, this paper presents an ontology-based product design framework for manufacturability verification and knowledge reuse to support the sharing and reuse of design and manufacturing knowledge. It aims at providing advices and feedback of restraints of manufacturing processes to the designers during the design process. The proposed framework consists of three major layers which include a foundation layer, a domain layer, and an instance layer. We use the Web Ontology Language (OWL), a standard of ontology representation language, to formalize the foundation layer. It contains the core product model and the standard ISO 10303 AP224 application protocol. The domain layer comprises extensional concepts and relationships for design and manufacturing integration and a rule base for manufacturability verification, which is represented in Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL). In the instance layer, an inference engine is developed based on ontology and rule inference. It provides recommendations of manufacturability. Two case studies are provided as application examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of the framework.
Repair of a double-strand break (DSB) by an ectopic homologous donor sequence is subject to the three-dimensional arrangement of chromosomes in the nucleus of haploid budding yeast. The data for ...interchromosomal recombination suggest that searching for homology is accomplished by a random collision process, strongly influenced by the contact probability of the donor and recipient sequences. Here we explore how recombination occurs on the same chromosome and whether there are additional constraints imposed on repair. Specifically, we examined how intrachromosomal repair is affected by the location of the donor sequence along the 813-kb chromosome 2 (Chr2), with a site-specific DSB created on the right arm (position 625 kb). Repair correlates well with contact frequencies determined by chromosome conformation capture-based studies (r = 0.85). Moreover, there is a profound constraint imposed by the anchoring of the centromere (CEN2, position 238 kb) to the spindle pole body. Sequences at the same distance on either side of CEN2 are equivalently constrained in recombining with a DSB located more distally on one arm, suggesting that sequences on the opposite arm from the DSB are not otherwise constrained in their interaction with the DSB. The centromere constraint can be partially relieved by inducing transcription through the centromere to inactivate CEN2 tethering. In diploid cells, repair of a DSB via its allelic donor is strongly influenced by the presence and the position of an ectopic intrachromosomal donor.
Self-signaling in voting Mechtenberg, Lydia; Perino, Grischa; Treich, Nicolas ...
Journal of public economics,
March 2024, 2024-03-00, 2024-03, Letnik:
231
Journal Article
Recenzirano
•We elicit votes on a ballot initiative on animal welfare in Switzerland that spurred campaigns involving widely shared normative values.•We find that voters agree more with arguments in favor of the ...initiative after seeing a message enhancing the self-signaling value of a Yes.•Voters are also more likely to anticipate voting in favor, and do report having voted in favor of the initiative more often.
This paper presents a two-wave survey experiment to examine the impact of self-image concerns on voting behavior. We elicit votes on a ballot initiative on animal welfare in Switzerland that spurred campaigns involving widely shared normative values. We send a message to voters about scientific evidence supporting the claim that “good-hearted people tend to be good to animals.” We interpret this message as a factor that may alter the self-signaling value linked to voting in favor of the initiative. We investigate how this message affects selection and processing of information, as well as reported voting behavior. We find that the message is effective in several ways: voters agree more with arguments in favor of the initiative, are more likely to anticipate voting in favor, and do report having voted in favor of the initiative more often.
Acoustic levitation in gaseous media provides a tool to process solid and liquid materials without the presence of surfaces such as container walls and hence has been used widely in chemical ...analysis, high-temperature processing, drop dynamics and bioreactors. To date high-density objects can only be acoustically levitated in simple standing-wave fields. Here we demonstrate the ability of a small number of peripherally placed sources to generate acoustic vortex fields and stably levitate a wide range of liquid and solid objects. The forces exerted by these acoustic vortex fields on a levitated water droplet are observed to cause a controllable deformation of the droplet and/or oscillation along the vortex axis. Orbital angular momentum transfer is also shown to rotate a levitated object rapidly and the rate of rotation can be controlled by the source amplitude. We expect this research can increase the diversity of acoustic levitation and expand the application of acoustic vortices.
The equiatomic multicomponent CoCrFeNiCuAl high-entropy solid solution alloy was synthesized by mechanical alloying (MA). The effects of milling duration and subsequent annealing on the morphology ...and structure evolution were investigated. Supersaturated solid solution structure can be obtained when the blended powder is ball milled longer than 42
h. The 60
h ball milled alloy powder shows refined morphology and excellent chemical homogeneity. The 60
h ball milled powder exhibits mean particle size of less than 5
μm, which are actually hard agglomerations of nanosized crystalline with crystal size of less than 50
nm. A BCC and a FCC solid solution structure phases appear when the 60
h mechanically alloyed powder was annealed at 600
°C for 1
h, which is attributed to phase precipitation of the metastable supersaturated solid solution. The simple solid solution structure can be maintained even after annealed at 1000
°C.
We report the atomic-scale structures and fluctuating dynamical behavior of size-selected Au55 clusters obtained by aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) coupled with ...systematic STEM simulations. No high-symmetry structures (face-centered cubic polyhedron, icosahedron, or decahedron) were observed in our statistical investigation. We find Au55 clusters that are characteristic of the theoretically predicted chiral structure and similar sister isomers (which together we define as the chiral structural zone). The chiral structural zone was found to arise repeatedly in the time-lapse sequences of images we measured, though other amorphous-like structures are also frequently observed. The approach demonstrated here can be applied to identify specific low-symmetry atomic structures in other small clusters and distinguish them unambiguously from high-symmetry isomers.
Persistent papillomas developed in ~10% of out-bred immune-competent SKH-1 mice following MusPV1 challenge of their tail, and in a similar fraction the papillomas were transient, suggesting potential ...as a model. However, papillomas only occurred in BALB/c or C57BL/6 mice depleted of T cells with anti-CD3 antibody, and they completely regressed within 8 weeks after depletion was stopped. Neither CD4+ nor CD8+ T cell depletion alone in BALB/c or C57BL/6 mice was sufficient to permit visible papilloma formation. However, low levels of MusPV1 were sporadically detected by either genomic DNA-specific PCR analysis of local skin swabs or in situ hybridization of the challenge site with an E6/E7 probe. After switching to CD3+ T cell depletion, papillomas appeared upon 14/15 of mice that had been CD4+ T cell depleted throughout the challenge phase, 1/15 of CD8+ T cell depleted mice, and none in mice without any prior T cell depletion. Both control animals and those depleted with CD8-specific antibody generated MusPV1 L1 capsid-specific antibodies, but not those depleted with CD4-specific antibody prior to T cell depletion with CD3 antibody. Thus, normal BALB/c or C57BL/6 mice eliminate the challenge dose, whereas infection is suppressed but not completely cleared if their CD4 or CD8 T cells are depleted, and recrudescence of MusPV1 is much greater in the former following treatment with CD3 antibody, possibly reflecting their failure to generate capsid antibody. Systemic vaccination of C57BL/6 mice with DNA vectors expressing MusPV1 E6 or E7 fused to calreticulin elicits potent CD8 T cell responses and these immunodominant CD8 T cell epitopes were mapped. Adoptive transfer of a MusPV1 E6-specific CD8+ T cell line controlled established MusPV1 infection and papilloma in RAG1-knockout mice. These findings suggest the potential of immunotherapy for HPV-related disease and the importance of host immunogenetics in the outcome of infection.
Gap junctions in retinal photoreceptors suppress voltage noise and facilitate input of rod signals into the cone pathway during mesopic vision. These synapses are highly plastic and regulated by ...light and circadian clocks. Recent studies have revealed an important role for connexin36 (Cx36) phosphorylation by protein kinase A (PKA) in regulating cell-cell coupling. Dopamine is a light-adaptive signal in the retina, causing uncoupling of photoreceptors via D4 receptors (D4R), which inhibit adenylyl cyclase (AC) and reduce PKA activity. We hypothesized that adenosine, with its extracellular levels increasing in darkness, may serve as a dark signal to coregulate photoreceptor coupling through modulation of gap junction phosphorylation. Both D4R and A2a receptor (A2aR) mRNAs were present in photoreceptors, inner nuclear layer neurons, and ganglion cells in C57BL/6 mouse retina, and showed cyclic expression with partially overlapping rhythms. Pharmacologically activating A2aR or inhibiting D4R in light-adapted daytime retina increased photoreceptor coupling. Cx36 among photoreceptor terminals, representing predominantly rod-cone gap junctions but possibly including some rod-rod and cone-cone gap junctions, was phosphorylated in a PKA-dependent manner by the same treatments. Conversely, inhibiting A2aR or activating D4R in daytime dark-adapted retina decreased Cx36 phosphorylation with similar PKA dependence. A2a-deficient mouse retina showed defective regulation of photoreceptor gap junction phosphorylation, fairly regular dopamine release, and moderately downregulated expression of D4R and AC type 1 mRNA. We conclude that adenosine and dopamine coregulate photoreceptor coupling through opposite action on the PKA pathway and Cx36 phosphorylation. In addition, loss of the A2aR hampered D4R gene expression and function.
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