Beyond Photoprotection: The Multifarious Roles of Flavonoids in Plant Terrestrialization

Plants evolved an impressive arsenal of multifunctional specialized metabolites to cope with the novel environmental pressures imposed by the terrestrial habitat when moving from water. Here we examine the multifarious roles of flavonoids in plant terrestrialization. We reason on the environmental drivers, other than the increase in UV-B radiation, that were mostly responsible for the rise of flavonoid metabolism and how flavonoids helped plants in land conquest. We are reasonably based on a nutrient-deficiency hypothesis for the replacement of mycosporine-like amino acids, typical of streptophytic algae, with the flavonoid metabolism during the water-to-land transition. We suggest that flavonoids modulated auxin transport and signaling and promoted the symbiosis between plants and fungi (e.g., arbuscular mycorrhizal, AM), a central event for the conquest of land by plants. AM improved the ability of early plants to take up nutrients and water from highly impoverished soils. We offer evidence that flavonoids equipped early land plants with highly versatile “defense compounds”, essential for the new set of abiotic and biotic stressors imposed by the terrestrial environment. We conclude that flavonoids have been multifunctional since the appearance of plants on land, not only acting as UV filters but especially improving both nutrient acquisition and biotic stress defense.     

TaNBR1, a Novel Wheat NBR1-like Domain Gene Negatively Regulates Drought Stress Tolerance in Transgenic Arabidopsis

Drought stress is an important factor that severely affects crop yield and quality. Autophagy has a crucial role in the responses to abiotic stresses. In this study, we explore TaNBR1 in response to drought stress. Expression of the TaNBR1 gene was strongly induced by NaCl, PEG, and abscisic acid treatments. The TaNBR1 protein is localized in the Golgi apparatus and autophagosome. Transgenic Arabidopsis plants overexpressing TaNBR1 exhibited reduced drought tolerance. When subjected to drought stress, compared to the wild-type (WT) lines, the transgenic overexpressing TaNBR1 plants had a lower seed germination rate, relative water content, proline content, and reduced accumulation of antioxidant enzymes, i.e., superoxide dismutase, peroxidase, and catalase, as well as higher chlorophyll losses, malondialdehyde contents, and water loss. The transgenic plants overexpressing TaNBR1 produced much shorter roots in response to mannitol stress, in comparison to the WT plants, and they exhibited greater sensitivity to abscisic acid treatment. The expression levels of the genes related to stress in the transgenic plants were affected in response to drought stress. Our results indicate that TaNBR1 negatively regulates drought stress responses by affecting the expression of stress-related genes in Arabidopsis.     

Blood flow in the rabbit aortic arch and descending thoracic aorta

The distribution of atherosclerotic lesions within the rabbit vasculature, particularly within the descending thoracic aorta, has been mapped in numerous studies. The patchy nature of such lesions has been attributed to local variation in the pattern of blood flow. However, there have been few attempts to model and characterize the flow. In this study, a high-order continuous Galerkin finite-element method was used to simulate blood flow within a realistic representation of the rabbit aortic arch and descending thoracic aorta. The geometry, which was obtained from computed tomography of a resin corrosion cast, included all vessels originating from the aortic arch (followed to at least their second generation) and five pairs of intercostal arteries originating from the proximal descending thoracic aorta. The simulations showed that small geometrical undulations associated with the ductus arteriosus scar cause significant deviations in wall shear stress (WSS). This finding highlights the importance of geometrical accuracy when analysing WSS or related metrics. It was also observed that two Dean-type vortices form in the aortic arch and propagate down the descending thoracic aorta (along with an associated skewed axial velocity profile). This leads to the occurrence of axial streaks in WSS, similar in nature to the axial streaks of lipid deposition found in the descending aorta of cholesterol-fed rabbits. Finally, it was observed that WSS patterns within the vicinity of intercostal branch ostia depend not only on local flow features caused by the branches themselves, but also on larger-scale flow features within the descending aorta, which vary between branches at different locations. This result implies that disease and WSS patterns in the vicinity of intercostal ostia are best compared on a branch-by-branch basis.     

Efficient Evaluation of Monitoring Top-t Most Influential Places

The continuous top-t most influential place (CTtMIP)query is defined formally and solved efficiently in this paper.A CTtMIP query continuously monitors the t places with the maximum influence from the ...     

Design of Sinh‐Domain filters using complementary operators

A new systematic method for designing Sinh‐Domain filters is introduced in this paper. This is achieved by employing an appropriate set of complementary operators, in order to transpose the conventional functional block diagram representation of each linear operation to the corresponding one into the Sinh‐Domain. The proposed method offers the benefits of facilitating the design procedure of high‐order Sinh‐Domain filters and of the absence of any restriction concerning the type and/or the order of the realized filter function. As an example, a third‐order Sinh‐Domain leapfrog filter is designed by employing the proposed set of operators. Two possible realizations are given and their performance has been evaluated and compared through simulation results. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于欠定盲分离的多目标微多普勒特征提取

连续波雷达多目标回波中多种微多普勒特征分离问题采用独立成分分析方法实现,该方法在使用中存在较大局限性,要求待分离的微多普勒特征之间必须是统计独立的,且仅局限于恰定和超定的方程组求解问题。然而,在多目标雷达观测场景下,雷达接收的混叠回波的个数通常少于目标的个数,各目标的微多普勒特征可能存在相关性。为此,提出了一种基于欠定盲分离的多目标回波微多普勒特征分离方法。该方法可以从少数原始混叠回波中分离出多个目标的微多普勒特征,对待分离的微多普勒特征限制性弱。通过数值仿真,证实了该方法的可行性。     

双频测距方法研究

建立了一个连续波极近程目标探测系统的模型,研究了双频连续波测距方法原理,对于高速近距离目标的探测进行了仿真,对双频测距和测速的精度做了统计和分析,验证了方法的稳定性和有效性,并对算法提出了一定的改进。     

简化傅里叶变换

传统的四种形式的傅里叶变换的证明,存在着理论依据繁多、一致性不好、数学分析和推导复杂等缺点。针对这一情况,本文介绍一种新的傅里叶变换的分析和推导方法。它用简单的分析和推导方法,将四种形式的傅里叶变换紧密地联系在一起。这个方法是根据周期函数的傅里叶级数的性质和利用数学的抽象性质,直接推导出另外三种形式的傅里叶变换。     

弹载斜视FMCW-SAR的改进距离堆栈算法

分析了弹载斜视FMCW-SAR的成像几何关系,建立了其点目标回波信号模型和推导了回波信号的二维波数域形式.大斜视情况下,二次以上的高次距离方位耦合项不能忽略,所以FMCW-SAR中常用的改进频率变标算法不再适用.提出的距离堆栈改进算法在聚焦深度范围内利用相同的斜距值进行距离堆栈操作,其计算效率提高了2D2f*/( 1.57cλ)倍.与改进的频率变标算法相比,不同斜视角仿真实验的结果验证所提算法的有效性和正确性.