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Glyphosate, a broad-spectrum herbicide, poses a potential threat to human health and the ecosystem due to its toxicity. In this study, iron-based water treatment residuals (Fe-WTRs) were employed for glyphosate removal. The adsorption kinetics, isotherms, and thermodynamics, as well as the effects of pH, Fe-WTR particle size, and temperature, were explored. The results show that Fe-WTRs are an effective adsorbent for glyphosate adsorption, and the maximum uptake capacity was recorded as 30.25 mg/g. The Fe-WTR surface was positively charged, and low-valent iron dominated under acidic conditions, favoring glyphosate adsorption. Furthermore, smaller Fe-WTR particles (<0.125 mm) showed a faster absorption rate and 20% higher adsorption capacity than larger particles (2–5 mm). The kinetic analysis indicated that the adsorption process exhibits a two-step profile, conforming to the pseudo-second-order model, and the thermodynamic analysis indicated that it is a spontaneous, endothermic, and entropy-driven reaction. Finally, the Fourier transform infrared spectral analysis revealed that this process is mainly associated with the formation of metal phosphate through the ligand exchange of the phosphate groups of glyphosates with the hydroxyl groups of iron present in Fe-WTRs. In this study, we demonstrated the potential of Fe-WTRs as a cost-effective and efficient adsorbent for glyphosate removal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper briefly describes the implementation of the “multi-level” experimental teaching mode of “combination of hardware and software” and “combination of online and offline” in the experimental course of Analog Electronic Technology, and carries out the experimental teaching reform by combining the problem-oriented teaching mode. It has proved that the reconstructed experimental teaching system has effectively stimulated students’ interest in learning, and the teaching effect has been significantly improved.

The formation of internal cracks in continuous casting slabs is mainly attributed to the strain status and microsegregation near the solidifying front of the slabs. By analyzing the internal cracks of medium carbon microalloy steel, the obtained conclusions are that C, P, S, etc. enrich in dendrites and exist in grain boundaries, but these are just the internal causes, and the root cracking causes the tensile stress of solidification front. When the slab passes through the straightening segments, the liquid core thickness is large, and the liquid steel in the space of columnar crystals is not completely frozen. Therefore, the reduction effect of rollers results in the strain of solidification front exceeding the critical value. However, the corresponding strain in the arc and horizontal segments does not exceed this critical value, so the solidification front in the straightening segments would be much easy to crack. The statistics analysis shows that after soft reduction and straightening process are separately carried out, the occurrence rate of intermediate cracks is reduced by 41.3%.

Non-conventional peptides (NCPs), which include small open reading frame-encoded peptides, play critical roles in fundamental biological processes. In this study, we developed an integrated peptidogenomic pipeline using high-throughput mass spectra to probe a customized six-frame translation database and applied it to large-scale identification of NCPs in plants.A total of 1993 and 1860 NCPs were unambiguously identified in maize and Arabidopsis , respectively. These NCPs showed distinct characteristics compared with conventional peptides and were derived from introns, 3′ UTRs, 5′ UTRs, junctions, and intergenic regions. Furthermore, our results showed that translation events in unannotated transcripts occur more broadly than previously thought. In addition, we found that dozens of maize NCPs are enriched within regions associated with phenotypic variations and domestication selection, indicating that they potentially are involved in genetic regulation of complex traits and domestication in maize. Taken together, our study developed an integrated peptidogenomic pipeline for large-scale identification of NCPs in plants, which would facilitate global characterization of NCPs from other plants. The identification of large-scale NCPs in both monocot (maize) and dicot (Arabidopsis) plants indicates that a large portion of plant genome can be translated into biologically functional molecules, which has important implications for functional genomic studies. This study developed an integrated peptidogenomic pipeline and applied it for large-scale identification of non-conventional peptides (NCPs) in plants. The identified NCPs, which were derived from introns, 3′ UTRs, 5′ UTRs, junctions, and intergenic regions, showed distinct characteristics compared with the conventional peptides. Association analysis unveiled that dozens of NCPs identified are potentially involved in genetic regulation of complex traits and demostication in maize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seed germination, as an integral stage of crop production, directly affects Zea mays (maize) yield and grain quality. However, the molecular mechanisms of seed germination remain unclear in maize. We performed comparative transcriptome analysis of two maize inbred lines, Yu82 and Yu537A, at two stages of seed germination. Expression profile analysis during seed germination revealed that a total of 3381 and 4560 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in Yu82 and Yu537A at the two stages. Transcription factors were detected from several families, such as the bZIP, ERF, WRKY, MYB and bHLH families, which indicated that these transcription factor families might be involved in driving seed germination in maize. Prominent DEGs were submitted for KEGG enrichment analysis, which included plant hormones, amino acid mechanism, nutrient reservoir, metabolic pathways and ribosome. Of these pathways, genes associated with plant hormones, especially gibberellins, abscisic acid and auxin may be important for early germination in Yu82. In addition, DEGs involved in amino acid mechanism showed significantly higher expression levels in Yu82 than in Yu537A, which indicated that energy supply from soluble sugars and amino acid metabolism may contribute to early germination in Yu82. This results provide novel insights into transcriptional changes and gene interactions in maize during seed germination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]