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Bamboo plants are an essential component of tropical ecosystems, yet their vulnerability to climate extremes, such as drought, is poorly understood due to limited knowledge of their hydraulic properties. Cephalostachyum pergracile, a commonly used tropical bamboo species, exhibited a substantially higher mortality rate than other co-occurring bamboos during a severe drought event in 2019, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This study investigated the leaf and stem hydraulic traits related to drought responses, including leaf-stem embolism resistance (P50leaf; P50stem) estimated using optical and X-ray microtomography methods, leaf pressure–volume and water-releasing curves. Additionally, we investigated the seasonal water potentials, native embolism level (PLC) and xylem water source using stable isotope. We found that C. pergracile exhibited strong resistance to embolism, showing low P50leaf, P50stem, and turgor loss point, despite its rapid leaf water loss. Interestingly, its leaves displayed greater resistance to embolism than its stem, suggesting a lack of effective hydraulic vulnerability segmentation (HVS) to protect the stem from excessive xylem tension. During the dry season, approximately 49% of the water was absorbed from the upper 20-cm-deep soil layer. Consequently, significant diurnal variation in leaf water potentials and an increase in midday PLC from 5.87 ± 2.33% in the wet season to 12.87 ± 4.09% in the dry season were observed. In summary, this study demonstrated that the rapid leaf water loss, high reliance on surface water, and a lack of effective HVS in C. pergracile accelerated water depletion and increased xylem embolism even in the typical dry season, which may explain its high mortality rate during extreme drought events in 2019.

The growing interests have been witnessed in the evolution and improvement of artificial compound eyes (CE) inspired by arthropods. However, the existing CE cameras are suffering from a defocusing problem due to the incompatibility with commercial CMOS cameras. Inspired by the CEs of South American Shrimps, we report a compact biologically inspired camera that enables wide-field-of-view (FOV), high-resolution imaging and sensitive 3D moving trajectory reconstruction. To overcome the defocusing problem, a deep learning architecture with distance regulation is proposed to achieve wide-range-clear imaging, without any hardware or complex front-end design, which greatly reduces system complexity and size. The architecture is composed of a variant of Unet and Pyramid-multi-scale attention, with designed short, middle and long distance regulation. Compared to the current competitive well-known models, our method is at least 2 dB ahead. Here we describe the high-resolution computational-CE camera with 271 ommatidia, with a weight of 5.4 g an area of 3 × 3 cm2 and 5-mm thickness, which achieves compatibility and integration of CE with commercial CMOS. The experimental result illustrates this computational-CE camera has competitive advantages in enhanced resolution and sensitive 3D live moving trajectory reconstruction. The compact camera has promising applications in nano-optics fields such as medical endoscopy, panoramic imaging and vision robotics.

To determine the invasiveness of invasive plants, many studies have compared photosynthetic traits or strategies between invasive and native species. However, few studies have compared the photosynthetic dynamics between invasive and native species during light fluctuations. We compared photosynthetic induction, relaxation dynamics and leaf traits between the invasive species, Tithonia diversifolia and two native species, Clerodendrum bungei and Blumea balsamifera, in full-sun and shady habitats. The photosynthetic dynamics and leaf traits differed among species. T. diversifolia showed a slower induction speed and stomatal opening response but had higher average intrinsic water-use efficiency than the two native species in full-sun habitats. Thus, the slow induction response may be attributed to the longer stomatal length in T. diversifolia. Habitat had a significant effect on photosynthetic dynamics in T. diversifolia and B. balsamifera but not in C. bungei. In shady habitat, T. diversifolia had a faster photosynthetic induction response than in full-sun habitat, leading to a higher average stomatal conductance during photosynthetic induction in T. diversifolia than in the two native species. In contrast, B. balsamifera had a larger stomatal length and slower photosynthetic induction and relaxation response in shady habitat than in full-sun habitat, resulting in higher carbon gain during photosynthetic relaxation. Nevertheless, in both habitats, T. diversifolia had an overall higher carbon gain during light fluctuations than the two native species. Our results indicated that T. diversifolia can adopt more effective response strategies under fluctuating light environments to maximize carbon gain, which may contribute to its successful invasion.

Abstract Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG), the well‐characterized human‐derived probiotic strain, possesses excellent properties in the maintenance of intestinal homeostasis, immunoregulation and defense against gastrointestinal pathogens in mammals. Here, we demonstrate that the SpaC pilin of LGG causes intestinal epithelium injury by inducing cell pyroptosis and gut microbial dysbiosis in zebrafish. Dietary SpaC activates Caspase‐3−GSDMEa pathways in the intestinal epithelium, promotes intestinal pyroptosis and increases lipopolysaccharide (LPS)‐producing gut microbes in zebrafish. The increased LPS subsequently activates Gaspy2−GSDMEb pyroptosis pathway. Further analysis reveals the Caspase‐3−GSDMEa pyroptosis is initiated by the species‐specific recognition of SpaC by TLR4ba, which accounts for the species‐specificity of the SpaC‐inducing intestinal pyroptosis in zebrafish. The observed pyroptosis‐driven gut injury and microbial dysbiosis by LGG in zebrafish suggest that host‐specific beneficial/harmful mechanisms are critical safety issues when applying probiotics derived from other host species and need more attention.

Abstract Background The effect of pain genes (NAV1, EHMT2, SP1, SLC6A4, COMT, OPRM1, OPRD1, CYP2D6, and CYP3A4) have not been reported previously in kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC) patients and thus we made a comprehensive analysis of pain genes in the prognosis of KIRC and tumor immunotherapy. Methods In this study, TCGA, Kaplan–Meier plotter, Metascape, STRING, Human Protein Atlas, Single Cell Expression Atlas database, LinkedOmics, cBioPortal, MethSurv, CancerSEA, COSMIC database and R package (ggplot2, version 3.3.3) were used for comprehensive analysis of pain genes in KIRC. Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients were for co‐expression analysis. Immunotherapy and TISIDB database were used for tumor Immunotherapy. Results Representative pain genes (SP1, SLC6A4, COMT, OPRD1, CYP2D6, and CYP3A4) were statistically significant (p

As the core of reproducing the real nonlinear phenomena of traffic congestion, the investigation of car-following models, which take into account human factors, has consistently assumed a central role within the domain of transportation science. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that prior studies have invariably employed a fixed value for driver reaction time to stimuli, whereas it is imperative to recognize the dynamic nature of this parameter, closely associated with the instantaneous vehicle speed. To address this issue, this paper constructs a dynamic sensitivity coefficient (DSC), and further develops a nonlinear human factoring car-following model to reveal the relation between the reaction time and the current speed. Firstly, the linear critical stability condition and the mKdV equation of the model are derived by the linear stability analysis and kink–antikink solution analytic method, respectively. Then, the numerical experiments are conducted to demonstrate that the proposed model is more practical and can reproduce the real driving behavior and phenomena. Finally, calibration and validation results exhibit the actual vehicle trajectory can be simulated well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suppose $\mathfrak {g}=\mathfrak {g}_{\bar 0}+\mathfrak {g}_{\bar 1}$ is a finite-dimensional restricted Lie superalgebra over an algebraically closed field $\mathbf {k}$ of characteristic $p>2$. In this article, we propose a conjecture for maximal dimensions of irreducible modules over the universal enveloping algebra $U(\mathfrak {g})$ of $\mathfrak {g}$ , as a super generalization of the celebrated first Kac–Weisfeiler conjecture. It is demonstrated that the conjecture holds for all basic classical Lie superalgebras and all completely solvable restricted Lie superalgebras. In this process, we investigate irreducible representations of solvable Lie superalgebras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrowetting liquid lenses have aroused considerable interest among researchers in a variety of industrial applications and wetting sciences. However, conventional electrowetting liquid lenses face significant limitations in their optical power tuning range due to contact angle saturation. To address this issue, our research introduces a polyelectrolyte mixture (PM) composed of ammonium polyphosphate and potassium chloride, which enables a broad optical power tuning range for electrowetting liquid lenses. Through a comprehensive analysis involving viscosity, Raman spectrum, and contact angle measurements, we offer additional insights into the interdisciplinary mechanism of the PM in enhancing the electrowetting effect. Our investigation elucidates how the conformation of the polyelectrolyte and the formation of hydrogen bonds at varying concentrations can impact the electrowetting gain. By optimizing the electrowetting concentration of the PM (12.5 wt. % ammonium polyphosphate and 7.5 wt. % potassium chloride), we achieve a liquid lens with an extensive tuning range (−37.97 to +18.71 D) at 0–45 V, featuring a substantial aperture (6.4 mm) and a low threshold voltage (10 V). This PM formulation effectively mitigates contact angle saturation, thereby offering promising applications and paving the way for the development of liquid lenses with a significantly enhanced optical power tuning capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]