Sustainable Production of Biomass-Derived Graphite and Graphene Conductive Inks from Biochar.

Graphite is a commonly used raw material across many industries and the demand for high-quality graphite has been increasing in recent years, especially as a primary component for lithium-ion batteries. However, graphite production is currently limited by production shortages, uneven geographical distribution, and significant environmental impacts incurred from conventional processing. Here, an efficient method of synthesizing biomass-derived graphite from biochar is presented as a sustainable alternative to natural and synthetic graphite.

How do drought and heat affect the response of soybean seed yield to elevated O? An analysis of 15 seasons of free-air O concentration enrichment studies.

The coincidence of rising ozone concentrations ([O]), increasing global temperatures, and drought episodes is expected to become more intense and frequent in the future. A better understanding of the responses of crop yield to elevated [O] under different levels of drought and high temperature stress is, therefore, critical for projecting future food production potential. Using a 15-year open-air field experiment in central Illinois, we assessed the impacts of elevated [O] coupled with variation in growing season temperature and water availability on soybean seed yield.

Feasibility and Acceptability of Mobile Phone-Based Surveys to Identify Mental Health Symptoms in Parents/Guardians of PICU Patients.

Objective: Parents experience psychologic distress during their child's admission to a PICU, but effective screening for parental mental health symptoms is not the standard of care. We aimed to test the feasibility and acceptability of a mobile phone-based mental health survey for parents/guardians of PICU patients to facilitate their support by the PICU team.

Design: Post hoc analysis of a single-institution pilot study conducted in 2022.

A guide to photosynthetic gas exchange measurements: Fundamental principles, best practice and potential pitfalls.

Gas exchange measurements enable mechanistic insights into the processes that underpin carbon and water fluxes in plant leaves which in turn inform understanding of related processes at a range of scales from individual cells to entire ecosytems. Given the importance of photosynthesis for the global climate discussion it is important to (a) foster a basic understanding of the fundamental principles underpinning the experimental methods used by the broad community, and (b) ensure best practice and correct data interpretation within the research community. In this review, we outline the biochemical and biophysical parameters of photosynthesis that can be investigated with gas exchange measurements and we provide step-by-step guidance on how to reliably measure them.

Similar photosynthetic but different yield responses of C and C crops to elevated O.

The deleterious effects of ozone (O) pollution on crop physiology, yield, and productivity are widely acknowledged. It has also been assumed that C crops with a carbon concentrating mechanism and greater water use efficiency are less sensitive to O pollution than C crops. This assumption has not been widely tested.

Manipulating atmospheric CO concentration induces shifts in wheat leaf and spike microbiomes and in pathogen communities.

Changing atmospheric composition represents a source of uncertainty in our assessment of future disease risks, particularly in the context of mycotoxin producing fungal pathogens which are predicted to be more problematic with climate change. To address this uncertainty, we profiled microbiomes associated with wheat plants grown under ambient vs. elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration [CO] in a field setting over 2 years.

Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence captures the effects of elevated ozone on canopy structure and acceleration of senescence in soybean.

Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) provides an opportunity to rapidly and non-destructively investigate how plants respond to stress. Here, we explored the potential of SIF to detect the effects of elevated O3 on soybean in the field where soybean was subjected to ambient and elevated O3 throughout the growing season in 2021. Exposure to elevated O3 resulted in a significant decrease in canopy SIF at 760 nm (SIF760), with a larger decrease in the late growing season (36%) compared with the middle growing season (13%).

Two decades of fumigation data from the Soybean Free Air Concentration Enrichment facility.

The Soybean Free Air Concentration Enrichment (SoyFACE) facility is the longest running open-air carbon dioxide and ozone enrichment facility in the world. For over two decades, soybean, maize, and other crops have been exposed to the elevated carbon dioxide and ozone concentrations anticipated for late this century. The facility, located in East Central Illinois, USA, exposes crops to different atmospheric concentrations in replicated octagonal ~280 m Free Air Concentration Enrichment (FACE) treatment plots.

Reductions in leaf area index, pod production, seed size, and harvest index drive yield loss to high temperatures in soybean.

Improvements in genetics, technology, and agricultural intensification have increased soybean yields; however, adverse climate conditions may prevent these gains from being fully realized in the future. Higher growing season temperatures reduce soybean yields in key production regions including the US Midwest, and better understanding of the developmental and physiological mechanisms that constrain soybean yield under high temperature conditions is needed. This study tested the response of two soybean cultivars to four elevated temperature treatments (+1.

Understanding home modification outcomes from the perspective of older people and people with a disability: informing home modification evaluation.

Purpose: There is limited evidence to guide therapists in home modification outcome evaluation. Involving consumers in evaluating home modifications is critical to progressing practice. This study investigated the home modification experience and outcomes most valued by older adults and individuals with a disability in Australia.

Climate change challenges, plant science solutions.

Climate change is a defining challenge of the 21st century, and this decade is a critical time for action to mitigate the worst effects on human populations and ecosystems. Plant science can play an important role in developing crops with enhanced resilience to harsh conditions (e.g.

Anatomical determinants of gas exchange and hydraulics vary with leaf shape in soybean.

Background And Aims: Leaf shape in crops can impact light distribution and carbon capture at the whole plant and canopy level. Given similar leaf inclination, narrow leaves can allow a greater fraction of incident light to pass through to lower canopy leaves by reducing leaf area index, which can potentially increase canopy-scale photosynthesis. Soybean has natural variation in leaf shape which can be utilized to optimize canopy architecture.

The leaf economics spectrum of triploid and tetraploid C grass Miscanthus x giganteus.

The leaf economics spectrum (LES) describes multivariate correlations in leaf structural, physiological and chemical traits, originally based on diverse C species grown under natural ecosystems. However, the specific contribution of C species to the global LES is studied less widely. C species have a CO concentrating mechanism which drives high rates of photosynthesis and improves resource use efficiency, thus potentially pushing them towards the edge of the LES.

Variation in leaf transcriptome responses to elevated ozone corresponds with physiological sensitivity to ozone across maize inbred lines.

We examine the impact of sustained elevated ozone concentration on the leaf transcriptome of 5 diverse maize inbred genotypes, which vary in physiological sensitivity to ozone (B73, Mo17, Hp301, C123, and NC338), using long reads to assemble transcripts and short reads to quantify expression of these transcripts. More than 99% of the long reads, 99% of the assembled transcripts, and 97% of the short reads map to both B73 and Mo17 reference genomes. Approximately 95% of the genes with assembled transcripts belong to known B73-Mo17 syntenic loci and 94% of genes with assembled transcripts are present in all temperate lines in the nested association mapping pan-genome.

High-throughput characterization, correlation, and mapping of leaf photosynthetic and functional traits in the soybean (Glycine max) nested association mapping population.

Photosynthesis is a key target to improve crop production in many species including soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.].

Advances in field-based high-throughput photosynthetic phenotyping.

Gas exchange techniques revolutionized plant research and advanced understanding, including associated fluxes and efficiencies, of photosynthesis, photorespiration, and respiration of plants from cellular to ecosystem scales. These techniques remain the gold standard for inferring photosynthetic rates and underlying physiology/biochemistry, although their utility for high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) of photosynthesis is limited both by the number of gas exchange systems available and the number of personnel available to operate the equipment. Remote sensing techniques have long been used to assess ecosystem productivity at coarse spatial and temporal resolutions, and advances in sensor technology coupled with advanced statistical techniques are expanding remote sensing tools to finer spatial scales and increasing the number and complexity of phenotypes that can be extracted.

Testing unified theories for ozone response in C species.

There is tremendous interspecific variability in O  sensitivity among C  species, but variation among C  species has been less clearly documented. It is also unclear whether stomatal conductance and leaf structure such as leaf mass per area (LMA) determine the variation in sensitivity to O across species. In this study, we investigated leaf morphological, chemical, and photosynthetic responses of 22 genotypes of four C bioenergy species (switchgrass, sorghum, maize, and miscanthus) to elevated O in side-by-side field experiments using free-air O concentration enrichment (FACE).

Changes in soybean cultivars released over the past 50 years in southern Brazil.

On-farm soybean yield has increased considerably in the last 50 years in southern Brazil, but there is still little information about how selection and breeding for yield increase has changed the agronomic attributes of cultivars. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the changes in soybean yield, seed oil and protein concentration, and changes in plant attributes that might be associated with yield improvement of 26 soybean cultivars released over the past 50 years in southern Brazil, sown simultaneously in a common field environment for two growing seasons. The average rate of yield gain was 45.

Predicting biochemical acclimation of leaf photosynthesis in soybean under in-field canopy warming using hyperspectral reflectance.

Traditional gas exchange measurements are cumbersome, which makes it difficult to capture variation in biochemical parameters, namely the maximum rate of carboxylation measured at a reference temperature (V ) and the maximum electron transport at a reference temperature (J ), in response to growth temperature over time from days to weeks. Hyperspectral reflectance provides reliable measures of V and J ; however, the capability of this method to capture biochemical acclimations of the two parameters to high growth temperature over time has not been demonstrated. In this study, V and J were measured over multiple growth stages during two growing seasons for field-grown soybeans using both gas exchange techniques and leaf spectral reflectance under ambient and four elevated canopy temperature treatments (ambient+1.

Historical Trends in Sweet Corn Plant Density Tolerance Using Era Hybrids (1930-2010s).

Over the last six decades, steady improvement in plant density tolerance (PDT) has been one of the largest contributors to genetic yield gain in field corn. While recent research indicates that PDT in modern sweet corn hybrids could be exploited to improve yield, historical changes in PDT in sweet corn are unknown. The objectives of this study were to: (a) quantify the extent to which PDT has changed since introduction of hybrid sweet corn and (b) determine the extent to which changes over time in PDT are associated with plant morpho-physiological and ear traits.

Approaches to investigate crop responses to ozone pollution: from O -FACE to satellite-enabled modeling.

Ozone (O ) is a damaging air pollutant to crops. As one of the most reactive oxidants known, O rapidly forms other reactive oxygen species (ROS) once it enters leaves through stomata. Those ROS in turn can cause oxidative stress, reduce photosynthesis, accelerate senescence, and decrease crop yield.