Widespread woody plant use of water stored in bedrock.

In the past several decades, field studies have shown that woody plants can access substantial volumes of water from the pores and fractures of bedrock. If, like soil moisture, bedrock water storage serves as an important source of plant-available water, then conceptual paradigms regarding water and carbon cycling may need to be revised to incorporate bedrock properties and processes. Here we present a lower-bound estimate of the contribution of bedrock water storage to transpiration across the continental United States using distributed, publicly available datasets.

Fiber Formation and Structural Development of HBA/HNA Thermotropic Liquid Crystalline Polymer in High-Speed Melt Spinning.

High-speed melt spinning of thermotropic liquid crystalline polymer (TLCP) resin composed of 4-hydroxybenzoic acid (HBA) and 2-hydroxy-6-napthoic acid (HNA) monomers in a molar ratio of 73/27 was conducted to investigate the characteristic structure development of the fibers under industrial spinning conditions, and the obtained as-spun TLCP fibers were analyzed in detail. The tensile strength and modulus of the fibers increased with shear rate in nozzle hole, draft in spin-line and spinning temperature and exhibited the high values of approximately 1.1 and 63 GPa, respectively, comparable to those of industrial as-spun TLCP fibers, at a shear rate of 70,000 s and a draft of 25.

Fabrication of piezoelectric poly(L-lactic acid)/BaTiO fibre by the melt-spinning process.

Poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) based piezoelectric polymers are gradually becoming the substitute for the conventional piezoelectric ceramic and polymeric materials due to their low cost and biodegradable, non-toxic, piezoelectric and non-pyroelectric nature. To improve the piezoelectric properties of melt-spun poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA)/BaTiO, we optimized the post-processing conditions to increase the proportion of the β crystalline phase. The α → β phase transition behaviour was determined by two-dimensional wide-angle x-ray diffraction and differential scanning calorimetry.

Washable Colorimetric Nanofiber Nonwoven for Ammonia Gas Detection.

The colorimetric sensor is a facile, cost-effective, and non-power-operated green energy material for gas detection. In this study, the colorimetric sensing property of a meta-aramid/dye 3 nanofiber sensor for ammonia (NH) gas detection was investigated. This colorimetric sensor was prepared using various dye 3 concentrations via electrospinning.

Digging deeper: what the critical zone perspective adds to the study of plant ecophysiology.

The emergence of critical zone (CZ) science has provided an integrative platform for investigating plant ecophysiology in the context of landscape evolution, weathering and hydrology. The CZ lies between the top of the vegetation canopy and fresh, chemically unaltered bedrock and plays a pivotal role in sustaining life. We consider what the CZ perspective has recently brought to the study of plant ecophysiology.