A KNOX Ⅱ transcription factor suppresses the NLR immune receptor BRG8-mediated immunity in rice.

Nucleotide-binding site and leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins are activated by detecting pathogen effectors, which in turn trigger host defenses and cell death. Although many NLRs have been identified, the mechanisms responsible for NLR-triggered defense responses are still poorly understood. In this study, through a genome-wide association study approach, we identified a novel NLR gene, Blast Resistance Gene 8 (BRG8), which confers resistance to rice blast and bacterial blight diseases.

Design of fully steerable broadband beamformers with concentric circular superarrays.

Concentric circular microphone arrays have been used in a wide range of applications, such as teleconferencing systems and smarthome devices for speech signal acquisition. Such arrays are generally designed with omnidirectional sensors, and the associated beamformers are fully steerable but only in the sensors' plane. If operated in the three-dimensional space, the performance of those arrays would suffer from significant degradation if the sound sources are out of the sensors' plane, which happens due to the incomplete spatial sampling of the sound field.

Evaluation of Multilevel Surgeries in Children With Spastic Cerebral Palsy Based on Surface Electromyography.

The root mean square (RMS) of the surface electromyography (sEMG) signal can respond to neuromuscular function, which displays a positive correlation with muscle force and muscle tension under positive and passive conditions, respectively. The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes in muscle force and tension after multilevel surgical treatments, functional selective posterior rhizotomy (FSPR) and tibial anterior muscle transfer surgery, and evaluate their clinical effect in children with spastic cerebral palsy (SCP) during walking. Children with diplegia ( = 13) and hemiplegia ( = 3) with ages from 4 to 18 years participated in this study.

Rashba spin-orbit coupling enhanced two-photon absorption and its polarization dependence in monolayer black phosphorus.

We investigate theoretically the impact of Rashba spin-orbit coupling (RSOC) effect to two-photon absorption (TPA) and its dependence on the polarization direction of the incident light in monolayer black phosphorus (BP) starting from an anisotropic two band k·p model. It is found that the TPA is enhanced several times by RSOC effect which is tuned by the external electric field. And the TPA response shows highly anisotropic, changing periodically with the polarization direction of incident linearly polarized light as the function of cosθ approximatively.