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BACKGROUND: The extracellular space between the cell wall and plasma membrane is a battlefield in plant-pathogen interactions. Within this space, the pathogen employs its secretome to attack the host in a variety of ways, including immunity manipulation. However, the role of the plant secretome is rarely studied for its role in disease resistance. RESULTS: Here, we examined the secretome of Verticillium wilt-resistant Gossypium hirsutum cultivar Zhongzhimian No.2 (ZZM2, encoding 95,327 predicted coding sequences) to determine its role in disease resistance against the wilt causal agent, Verticillium dahliae. Bioinformatics-driven analyses showed that the ZZM2 genome encodes 2085 secreted proteins and that these display disequilibrium in their distribution among the chromosomes. The cotton secretome displayed differences in the abundance of certain amino acid residues as compared to the remaining encoded proteins due to the localization of these putative proteins in the extracellular space. The secretome analysis revealed conservation for an allotetraploid genome, which nevertheless exhibited variation among orthologs and comparable unique genes between the two sub-genomes. Secretome annotation strongly suggested its involvement in extracellular stress responses (hydrolase activity, oxidoreductase activity, and extracellular region, etc.), thus contributing to resistance against the V. dahliae infection. Furthermore, the defense response genes (immunity marker NbHIN1, salicylic acid marker NbPR1, and jasmonic acid marker NbLOX4) were activated to varying degrees when Nicotina benthamiana leaves were agro-infiltrated with 28 randomly selected members, suggesting that the secretome plays an important role in the immunity response. Finally, gene silencing assays of 11 members from 13 selected candidates in ZZM2 displayed higher susceptibility to V. dahliae, suggesting that the secretome members confer the Verticillium wilt resistance in cotton. CONCLUSIONS: Our data demonstrate that the cotton secretome plays an important role in Verticillium wilt resistance, facilitating the development of the resistance gene markers and increasing the understanding of the mechanisms regulating disease resistance.

At present,most multi-agent reinforcement learning(MARL) algorithms using the architecture of centralized training and decentralized execution(CTDE) have good results in homogeneous multi-agent systems.However,for heterogeneous multi-agent systems composed of different roles,there is always the problem of credit assignment,which makes it difficult for agents to learn effective cooperation strategies.To tackle the above problems,an adaptive reward method with end-to-end cooperation based on multi-agent reinforcement learning is proposed.It can promote the cooperation between agents.First,a batch regularization network is proposed.It uses a graph neural network to model the cooperative relationship of heterogeneous multi-agents.And it uses the attention mechanism to calculate the weight of key information.Also,it uses the batch regularization method to generate feature vectors.Besides,it guides the algorithm to learn in the right direction,thereby effectively improving the performance of heterogeneous multi-agent cooperative strategy generation.Second,an adaptive intrinsic reward network based on the actor-critic method is proposed.It can convert sparse rewards into dense rewards,which can guide agents to generate cooperative strategies according to the situation on the field.Through experiments,compared with the current mainstream multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithms,the proposed method has achieved significantly good results in the “cooperative-game” scenario.In addition,the visual analysis of the strategy-reward-behavior correlation further verifies the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Objective: Grounding on social learning theory (SLT), this study examines the effect of public leadership on project management effectiveness (PME). Further, this study examines the mediating role of goal clarity and moderating role of top management support. Methodology: Hierarchical linear regressions were used to investigate the relationships. PROCESS Hayes (2003) Model 7 was used for the moderation and mediation analysis. The data was collected from 322 Pakistani public sector developmental project employees. Findings: The results show that public leadership positively affects goal clarity (β = 0.049, p

The localization of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in GPS-denied environment is a difficult problem to be studied and solved.In this paper, the cooperative localization (CL) of UAV cluster system in GPS-denied environment is the main research points.Firstly, location confidence (LC) is proposed for the quantification of UAV's localization accuracy in GPS-denied environment.Secondly, a LC-based CL method, which can adaptively adjust the cooperative weight of each UAV through persistent excitation-based relative localization, is proposed to improve the accuracy of UAV cluster localization.Thirdly, a expand kalman filtering (EKF) is designed for UAV attitude calculation, which can be equipped in each UAV and used to fusing multi heterogeneous sensor data and the CL output.Finally, a multi-UAV cooperative localization system is implemented on ROS, and is verified in multi-UAV flight simulation scene of Gazebo.The simulation results show that the LC-based CL method can effectively alleviate the error accumulation of traditional inertial navigation system, and improve the accuracy of UAV cluster localization.

The hot rolling of strip is a multi-stage production process. There are about a hundred of control parameters and target parameters which are related to the quality of products directly in the multi-channel processes. It is the main development orientation for both the literal research and engineering practice to improve the quality of hot rolling products,by finding the information between the control parameters and target parameters,and making use of the information. It is investigated that combining data mining with the industrial features of hot rolling productions,the potentially,useful,ultimately understandable process knowledge can be extracted.The correspondence relationship between quality defects and control state can be got. Through a comprehensive analysis of control parameters weight vector and the set of high-risk relationships,the key control parameters can be find to improve. This method can reduce the economic losses,improve the production efficiency,and provide the scientific and accurate idea for the quality analysis of hot rolling strip production.

From the view of the mill main driving control system,instability model of the electromechanical system and control strategy were researched. In the premise of ensuring the steady and dynamic performance of the control system,the model of main drive of two inertial systems was simplified,the inside and outside disturbance of the system was observed by linear extended state observer. By linear feedback and dynamic error feedback method,the detection and control of electromechanical system failure were achieved. The closed loop controller design method based on simplified differential equation model was proposed,and validated by simulation and experiment. The results show that this study has a significant effect on solving the instability caused by load changes of rolling mill system.

One kind of detection and prediction method for abnormal grid voltage has been designed due to the case that modern power electronic equipment is sensitive to non-stationary time-varying voltage signal. This method sends the network voltage abnormal warning signal to control-circuits of modern equipment through detecting the grid voltage in time. To eliminate the conventional noise jamming of the voltage signal,this scheme adopts linear tracking differentiator to filter the signal. On this basis,wavelet transform modulus maxima are proposed in singularity detection,so as to accurately forecast abnormal harm points in power electronic devices caused by the grid voltage. Simulation and experimental results show that the wavelet analysis based on linear tracking differentiator can obtain the best approximation of the ideal signal and provide more useful forecasting signals for power electronics equipment,thus the fault detection speed and efficiency are improved significantly.

Sex pheromones are considered to play critical roles in partner communication of most parasitic Hymenoptera. However, the identification of sex pheromone components remains limited to a few families of parasitoid wasps. In this study, we functionally characterized a candidate sex pheromone component in Microplitis mediator (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), a solitary parasitoid of Noctuidae insects. We found that the body surface extract from female wasps could significantly stimulate courtship behavior of males. Gas chromatography‐electroantennographic detection (GC‐EAD) analysis revealed that a candidate semiochemical from extract triggered significant electrophysiological response of antennae of males. By performing gas chromatography‐mass spectrometer (GC‐MS) measurement, GC‐EAD active compound was identified as n‐octyl acrylate, a candidate sex pheromone component in female M. mediator. In electroantennogram (EAG) tests, antennae of male wasps showed significantly higher electrophysiological responses to n‐octyl acrylate than those of females. Y‐tube olfactometer assays indicated that male wasps significantly chose n‐octyl acrylate compared with the control. Furthermore, male wasps showed a remarkable preference for n‐octyl acrylate in a simulated field condition behavioral trial; simultaneously, n‐octyl acrylate standard could also trigger significant courtship behavior in males. We propose that n‐octyl acrylate, as a candidate vital sex pheromone component, could be utilized to design behavioral regulators of M. mediator to implement the protection and utilization of natural enemies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Servant leadership practice honesty, stewardship, and high moral standards while prioritizing the needs of subordinates. The moral concern of a servant leadership is to support others and put the needs of others first. We investigated the relationship between servant leadership, psychological safety, and knowledge hoarding in accordance with social learning theory in a survey of 347 workers across 56 teams. The results of this study illustrate that servant leadership is negatively associated with knowledge hoarding and positively associated with psychological safety. We also found that a mastery climate moderated the relationship between servant leadership and knowledge hoarding. This study highlights the theoretical and practical implications that contribute to the body of knowledge. It helps organizations that the presence of servant leadership may discourage knowledge hoarding by providing a psychologically safe mastery climate.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a record global crisis, particularly and extremely, for the service sectors. Due to extensive security measures, many service sector employees have to work remotely to maintain services. Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory, this research investigates the impact of servant leadership on the task performance of employees in virtual working environments during the COVID-19 crisis. Our theoretical model was tested using data collected from 335 individual employees in the education sector of Pakistan. SPSS version 26.0 was applied to find the hypothesized relationship between the study variables. To find the indirect mediating effect, we applied Model 4; for moderation, we applied Model 1; and for the moderation and mediation effect, we applied Model 7 of the Process Macro model of Hayes. The results of the study revealed that servant leadership is positively related to task performance in a virtual environment during crises. Furthermore, psychological empowerment partially mediates the relationship between servant leadership and task performance. Perceived supervisor support positively moderates the relationship between servant leadership and task performance. Moreover, the indirect effect of servant leadership on task performance via psychological empowerment is moderated by perceived supervisor support. The results provided guidance to the educational sector on how to lead effectively in times of crisis when service sector employees work predominantly in virtual environments. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.