Physiological Responses of Pea Plants to Salinity and Gibberellic Acid

Pea is a seed legume.It is rich in cellulose fibre and protein.It is also a significant source of minerals and vitamins.In this paper,we set out to better characterize the physiological responses of Pisum sativum L.to the combined effects of NaCl,100 mM and gibberellins(GA3).Our analysis revealed that NaCl caused a decrease in growth resulting in a reduction in root elongation,distribution and density,leaf number and leaf area,and a decrease in dry matter of roots and shoots.However,the contribution of GA3 in the salty environment induced an increase in these different parameters suggesting an improving effect of this hormone on growth of pea in presence of salt.NaCl also led to a disturbance of the photosynthetic machinery.Indeed,level of chlorophyll pigments(a and total)and photosynthetic activity were decreased compared to the control plants.However,the exogenous supply of GA3 restored this decrease in net CO_(2) assimilation,but not in chlorophyll content.Additional analyses were performed on the effect of salinity/GA3 interaction on osmolytes(soluble sugars and starch).Our results showed an increase in sugars and a decrease in starch in the presence of 100 mM NaCl.The salt-GA3 combination resulted in compensation of soluble sugar contents but not of starch contents,suggesting a beneficial effect of GA3 under saline stress conditions.Level of three main polyamines putrescine,spermidine,and spermine increased significantly in all organs of salt-treated plants.

Self-compatibility in peach[Prunus persica(L.)Batsch]:patterns of diversity surrounding the S-locus and analysis of SFB alleles

Self-incompatibility(SI)to self-compatibility(SC)transition is one of the most frequent and prevalent evolutionary shifts in flowering plants.Prunus L.(Rosaceae)is a genus of over 200 species most of which exhibit a Gametophytic SI system.Peach[Prunus persica(L.)Batsch;2n=16]is one of the few exceptions in the genus known to be a fully selfcompatible species.However,the evolutionary process of the complete and irreversible loss of SI in peach is not well understood and,in order to fill that gap,in this study 24 peach accessions were analyzed.Pollen tube growth was controlled in self-pollinated flowers to verify their self-compatible phenotypes.The linkage disequilibrium association between alleles at the S-locus and linked markers at the end of the sixth linkage group was not significant(P>0.05),except with the closest markers suggesting the absence of a signature of negative frequency dependent selection at the S-locus.Analysis of SFB1 and SFB2 protein sequences allowed identifying the absence of some variable and hypervariable domains and the presence of additionalα-helices at the C-termini.Molecular and evolutionary analysis of SFB nucleotide sequences showed a signature of purifying selection in SFB2,while the SFB1 seemed to evolve neutrally.Thus,our results show that the SFB2 allele diversified after P.persica and P.dulcis(almond)divergence,a period which is characterized by an important bottleneck,while SFB1 diversified at a transition time between the bottleneck and population expansion.

Cr-Doped TiO_(2)Thin Films Prepared by Means of a Magnetron Co-Sputtering Process:Photocatalytic Application

This paper deals with the effect of Cr content on photocatalytic activity of TiO2 thin films deposited on quartz and intrinsic silicon substrates by using the RF magnetron co-sputtering process. Some physical investigations on such sputtered films were made by means of X-ray Diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), Raman spectroscopy as well as UV-Vis-IR absorption techniques. The heat treatment under oxygen atmosphere at 550°C reveals that the crystalline structure of TiO2: Cr depends on Cr content. Anatase-to-rutile phase transformation occurs at a Cr content of about 7%. On the other hand, the band gap energy value of annealed TiO2: Cr films varies in terms of Cr doping and a transition around 7% of Cr is accrued. The photocatalytic activity of undoped and doped TiO2 films was evaluated by photo-degrading of the amido black under UV light irradiation. Modification of the chemical structure of titanium dioxide by Cr doping allows moving the photocatalytic activity of titanium dioxide towards visible light. The results indicate that films doped with 2% Cr exhibit the highest UV and visible light photocatalytic activity.

Industrial Food Quality Analysis Using New k-Nearest-Neighbour methods

The problem of predicting continuous scalar outcomes from functional predictors has received high levels of interest in recent years in many fields,especially in the food industry.The k-nearest neighbor(k-NN)method of Near-Infrared Reflectance(NIR)analysis is practical,relatively easy to implement,and becoming one of the most popular methods for conducting food quality based on NIR data.The k-NN is often named k nearest neighbor classifier when it is used for classifying categorical variables,while it is called k-nearest neighbor regression when it is applied for predicting noncategorical variables.The objective of this paper is to use the functional Near-Infrared Reflectance(NIR)spectroscopy approach to predict some chemical components with some modern statistical models based on the kernel and k-Nearest Neighbour procedures.In this paper,three NIR spectroscopy datasets are used as examples,namely Cookie dough,sugar,and tecator data.Specifically,we propose three models for this kind of data which are Functional Nonparametric Regression,Functional Robust Regression,and Functional Relative Error Regression,with both kernel and k-NN approaches to compare between them.The experimental result shows the higher efficiency of k-NN predictor over the kernel predictor.The predictive power of the k-NN method was compared with that of the kernel method,and several real data sets were used to determine the predictive power of both methods.

3D Model Simulating the Hydro-mechanical State of Unsaturated and Deformable Material during Hot air Drying

A three dimensional model to predict the hydro-mechanical state of unsaturated and deformable material during hot air drying has been proposed.The material viscoelastic behaviour was formulated using Bishop’s effective stress theory for partially saturated material using the liquid saturation as the Bishop parameter.The hydro-thermal and mechanical equations were coupled by the fluid pressure and the solid matter velocity.The model was applied to a deformable material(innovative clay-cellulose fibers composite)subjected to convective drying.A generalized Maxwell model with five elements,whose parameters were measured experimentally and correlated to water content was used to describe the material’s viscoelastic behavior.The hydro-thermal part of the proposed model was validated on the basis of a comparison of experimental and simulated drying rate curves.The Von Mises stress was simulated and compared to the experimental tensile strength in order to predict the time and the region of material failure.For a drying process at 95°C,the region of failure risk was identified.The failure may occur on the lateral surface of the slab in contact with air at a drying time of 2.5h.

Layer-controlled nonlinear terahertz valleytronics in two-dimensional semimetal and semiconductor PtSe_(2)

Platinum diselenide(PtSe_(2))is a promising two-dimensional(2D)material for the terahertz(THz)range as,unlike other transition metal dichalcogenides(TMDs),its bandgap can be uniquely tuned from a semiconductor in the nearinfrared to a semimetal with the number of atomic layers.This gives the material unique THz photonic properties that can be layer-engineered.Here,we demonstrate that a controlled THz nonlinearity—tuned from monolayer to bulk PtSe_(2)—can be realized in wafer size polycrystalline PtSe_(2)through the generation of ultrafast photocurrents and the engineering of the bandstructure valleys.This is combined with the PtSe_(2)layer interaction with the substrate for a broken material centrosymmetry,permitting a second order nonlinearity.Further,we show layer dependent circular dichroism,where the sign of the ultrafast currents and hence the phase of the emitted THz pulse can be controlled through the excitation of different bandstructure valleys.In particular,we show that a semimetal has a strong dichroism that is absent in the monolayer and few layer semiconducting limit.The microscopic origins of this TMD bandstructure engineering are highlighted through detailed DFT simulations,and shows the circular dichroism can be controlled when PtSe_(2)becomes a semimetal and when the K-valleys can be excited.As well as showing that PtSe_(2)is a promising material for THz generation through layer controlled optical nonlinearities,this work opens up a new class of circular dichroism materials beyond the monolayer limit that has been the case of traditional TMDs,and impacting a range of domains from THz valleytronics,THz spintronics to harmonic generation.

Online conflict resolution strategies for human activity recognition in smart homes

DCR-OL is a Distributed Collaborative Reasoning multi-agent model with an Online Learning thataims to identify human activities in smart homes from distributed, heterogeneous and dynamicsensor data. In this model, distributed learning agents with diverse classifiers, detect sensorstream data, make local predictions, communicate and collaborate to identify current activities.Then, they learn from their collaborations to improve their own performance in activity recognition.Conflict resolution strategies are applied to generate one final predicted activity when thelocal predicted activity of an agent is different from received predicted activities of other agents.In this paper, two conflict resolution strategies using online learning, w-max-trust and w-maxfreq,are proposed. We experimentally test these strategies by performing an evaluation studyon the Aruba dataset. The obtained results indicate an enhancement in terms of accuracy and Fmeasuremetrics compared to the offline strategies max-trust and max-freq and also to the onlineexisting one max-wPerf .

TiO_2 nanotubes as solid-phase extraction adsorbent for the determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in environmental water samples

An analytical method based on TiO2 nanotubes solid-phase extraction （SPE） combined with gas chromatography （GC） was established for the analysis of seven polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons （PAHs）： acenaphtylene, acenaphthene, anthracene, fluorene, phenanthrene, fluoranthene and pyrene. Factors affecting the extraction efficiency including the eluent type and its volume, adsorbent amount, sample volume, sample pH and sample flow rate were optimized. The characteristic data of analytical performance were determined to investigate the sensitivity and precision of the method. Under the optimized extraction conditions, the method showed good linearity in the range of 0.01-0.8 μg/mL, repeatability of the extraction （RSD were between 6.7% and 13.5%, n = 5） and satisfactory detection limits （0.017-0.059 μg/mL）. The developed method was successfully applied to the analysis of surface water （tap, river and dam） samples. The recoveries of PAHs spiked in environmental water samples ranged from 90% to 100%. All the results indicated the potential application of titanate nanotubes as solid-phase extraction adsorbents to pre-treat water samples.

On the Global Well-Posedness of 3-D Boussinesq System with Variable Viscosity

In this paper, the authors first consider the global well-posedness of 3-D Boussinesq system, which has variable kinematic viscosity yet without thermal conductivity and buoyancy force, provided that the viscosity coefficient is sufficiently close to some positive constant in L∞and the initial velocity is small enough in B3,10(R3). With some thermal conductivity in the temperature equation and with linear buoyancy force θe3 on the velocity equation in the Boussinesq system, the authors also prove the global well-posedness of such system with initial temperature and initial velocity being sufficiently small in L1(R3)and B3,10(R3) respectively.