Belowground facilitation and trait matching: two or three to tango?

High biodiversity increases ecosystem functions; however, belowground facilitation remains poorly understood in this context. Here, we explore mechanisms that operate via 'giving-receiving feedbacks' for belowground facilitation. These include direct effects via root exudates, signals, and root trait plasticity, and indirect biotic facilitation via the effects of root exudates on soil biota and feedback from biota to plants.

Bilingual phonological development across generations: Segmental accuracy and error patterns in second- and third-generation British Bengali children.

Introduction: While developmental norms for speech sound development have been widely reported for monolingual children, and increasingly for bilingual children, little is known about speech sound development across different generations of children growing up in heritage language settings. The purpose of the present study was to gain a better understanding of inter-generational differences in the phonological development of British Bengali children.

Methods: Typically-developing second-generation and third-generation Bengali heritage children living in Wales (n=19), aged between 4 and 5 years, participated in a picture-naming task in Sylheti and English.

Efficiently Boosting Moisture Retention Capacity of Porous Superprotonic Conducting MOF-802 at Ambient Humidity via Forming a Hydrogel Composite Strategy.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) provided a versatile platform for the development of new solid protonic electrolytes but faced great challenges regarding their low chemical stability and poor moisture retention capacity. Herein, we presented the proton-conducting study for zirconium-based MOF-802, revealing that MOF-802 possessed excellent features of extra aqueous and acidic stabilities and room-temperature superprotonic conduction with a proton conductivity of 1.05 × 10 S cm at 288 K under 98% relative humidity (RH).

Cortical hemisphere preference and brainstem ear asymmetry reflect experience-dependent functional modulation of pitch.

Temporal attributes of pitch processing at cortical and subcortical levels are differentially weighted and well-coordinated. The question is whether language experience induces functional modulation of hemispheric preference complemented by brainstem ear symmetry for pitch processing. Brainstem frequency-following and cortical pitch responses were recorded concurrently from Mandarin and English participants.

DNA methylation of decedent blood samples to estimate the chronological age of human remains.

Chronological age estimation may offer valuable investigative leads in human identification cases. Bisulfite pyrosequencing analysis of single CpG sites on five genes (KLF14, ELOVL2, C1orf132, TRIM59, and FHL2) was performed on 264 postmortem blood samples from individuals aged 3 months to 93 years. The goals were to develop age prediction models based on the correlation between the methylation profile and chronological age and to assess the accuracy of the prediction.

Constraints on Cosmic Strings Using Data from the Third Advanced LIGO-Virgo Observing Run.

We search for gravitational-wave signals produced by cosmic strings in the Advanced LIGO and Virgo full O3 dataset. Search results are presented for gravitational waves produced by cosmic string loop features such as cusps, kinks, and, for the first time, kink-kink collisions. A template-based search for short-duration transient signals does not yield a detection.

Exploring the anharmonic vibrational structure of carbon dioxide trimers.

Our previously developed mbCO2 potential [O. Sode and J. N.

Failing at Remediation? College Remedial Coursetaking, Failure and Long-term Student Outcomes.

Colleges offer remedial coursework to help students enrolling in post-secondary education who are not adequately prepared to succeed in college-level courses. Despite the prevalence of remediation, previous research presents contradictory findings regarding its short- and long-term effects. This paper uses a doubly robust inverse probability weighting strategy to examine whether the degree completion and wage outcomes associated with remedial education vary by passing or failing remedial coursework.

A historical perspective on porphyrin-based metal-organic frameworks and their applications.

Porphyrins are important molecules widely found in nature in the form of enzyme active sites and visible light absorption units. Recent interest in using these functional molecules as building blocks for the construction of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have rapidly increased due to the ease in which the locations of, and the distances between, the porphyrin units can be controlled in these porous crystalline materials. Porphyrin-based MOFs with atomically precise structures provide an ideal platform for the investigation of their structure-function relationships in the solid state without compromising accessibility to the inherent properties of the porphyrin building blocks.

Plasmonic Imaging of Oxidation and Reduction of Single Gold Nanoparticles and Their Surface Structural Dynamics.

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have been widely used in catalytic electrochemistry. Heterogeneity in size, shape, and surface sites leads to variable, particle-specific catalytic activities. Conventional electrochemical methods can only obtain the collective responses from all the catalytic nanoparticles on the electrode surface; the heterogeneity of particle performance will be averaged.

Phosphoserine inhibits neighboring arginine methylation in the RKS motif of histone H3.

The effects of phosphorylation of histone H3 at serine 10 have been studied in the context of other posttranslational modifications such as lysine methylation. We set out to investigate the impact of phosphoserine-10 on arginine-8 methylation. We performed methylation reactions using peptides based on histone H3 that contain a phosphorylated serine and compared the extent of arginine methylation with unmodified peptides.

Coordinated decline of leaf hydraulic and stomatal conductances under drought is not linked to leaf xylem embolism for different grapevine cultivars.

Drought decreases water transport capacity of leaves and limits gas exchange, which involves reduced leaf leaf hydraulic conductance (Kleaf) in both the xylem and outside-xylem pathways. Some literature suggests that grapevines are hyper-susceptible to drought-induced xylem embolism. We combined Kleaf and gas exchange measurements, micro-computed tomography of intact leaves, and spatially explicit modeling of the outside-xylem pathways to evaluate the role of vein embolism and Kleaf in the responses of two different grapevine cultivars to drought.

Strategies of desiccation tolerance vary across life phases in the moss Syntrichia caninervis.

Premise: Desiccation tolerance (DT) is a widespread phenomenon among land plants, and variable ecological strategies for DT are likely to exist. Using Syntrichia caninervis, a dryland moss and model system used in DT studies, we hypothesized that DT is lowest in juvenile (protonemal) tissues, highest in asexual reproductive propagules (gemmae), and intermediate in adults (shoots). We tested the long-standing hypothesis of an inherent constitutive strategy of DT in this species.

Thread- and Capillary Tube-Based Electrodes for the Detection of Glucose and Acetylthiocholine.

An electrochemical sensor for the detection of glucose and acetylthiocholine (ATC) using thread- and capillary tube-based electrodes is described. Three nylon thread-based electrodes were fabricated by painting pieces of trifurcated nylon thread with conductive inks and threading the electrodes into capillary tubes. Two platforms, one paper-based and the other utilizing bubble wrap, were examined.

Stress gradients and biodiversity: monoculture vulnerability drives stronger biodiversity effects during drought years.

Climate change will increase the likelihood and severity of droughts into the future. Although diversity may buffer plant communities against the negative effects of drought, the mechanisms underlying this pattern remain unclear. Higher-diversity plant communities may have a higher likelihood of including more drought-resistant species that can compensate for drought-sensitive species ("insurance effects").

Molecular Evaluation of the Fairy Shrimp Family Branchinectidae (Crustacea: Anostraca) Supports Peripatric Speciation and Complex Divergence Patterns.

The Branchinectidae is a diverse and widely distributed group of anostracans. The majority of work on the group has focused on the morphological delineation of taxa and biogeography. Here we present a molecular phylogeny for select members of the family to better understand the distribution of morphological variation among species, and test biogeographic models of speciation for the group.

Combined high leaf hydraulic safety and efficiency provides drought tolerance in Caragana species adapted to low mean annual precipitation.

Clarifying the coordination of leaf hydraulic traits with gas exchange across closely-related species adapted to varying rainfall can provide insights into plant habitat distribution and drought adaptation. The leaf hydraulic conductance (K ), stomatal conductance (g ), net assimilation (A), vein embolism and abscisic acid (ABA) concentration during dehydration were quantified, as well as pressure-volume curve traits and vein anatomy in 10 Caragana species adapted to a range of mean annual precipitation (MAP) conditions and growing in a common garden. We found a positive correlation between Ψ at 50% loss of K (K P ) and maximum K (K ) across species.

Traditional vs. Affiliation Paths Model for Science Student Success.

The availability of academic and personal supports is known to have a positive impact on students' academic success, which can be particularly beneficial in the university setting. In the present study, we propose that participation in a university academic and climate support program increases students' academic success in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. The aim is to answer two research questions about the dynamics of the university setting as it relates to traditional higher education versus targeted support program's affiliation paths.

Proton Conduction of an Acid-Resistant Open-Framework Chalcogenidometalate Hybrid in Anhydrous versus Humid Environments.

Solid proton conductors are broadly applicable to various electrochemical devices; therefore, it is highly desirable to develop robust materials with high proton conductivity under both anhydrous and humid environments within a wide temperature range. In this work, we investigated the proton conducting properties of a 3D open-framework chalcogenidometalate hybrid, [CHNH][HO]AgSnSe·CHOH (), which exhibited both anhydrous and water-assisted proton conduction. Importantly, the excellent thermal and chemical stabilities of hybrid are superior to many MOF-based proton conducting materials.

The importance of street trees to urban avifauna.

Street trees are public resources planted in a municipality's right-of-way and are a considerable component of urban forests throughout the world. Street trees provide numerous benefits to people. However, many metropolitan areas have a poor understanding of the value of street trees to wildlife, which presents a gap in our knowledge of conservation in urban ecosystems.

Extinction filters mediate the global effects of habitat fragmentation on animals.

Habitat loss is the primary driver of biodiversity decline worldwide, but the effects of fragmentation (the spatial arrangement of remaining habitat) are debated. We tested the hypothesis that forest fragmentation sensitivity-affected by avoidance of habitat edges-should be driven by historical exposure to, and therefore species' evolutionary responses to disturbance. Using a database containing 73 datasets collected worldwide (encompassing 4489 animal species), we found that the proportion of fragmentation-sensitive species was nearly three times as high in regions with low rates of historical disturbance compared with regions with high rates of disturbance (i.

Endogenous Gamma-Hydroxybutyrate in Postmortem Samples.

Gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) is a naturally occurring molecule present in the human body as a catabolite of the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyrate (GABA). In the USA, GHB has a history of being manufactured illicitly and abused, with misguided proposed benefits for the body-building community and a persistent party drug with reported GHB overdoses occurring worldwide. The interpretation of GHB in postmortem biological fluids is complicated by the endogenous nature of the molecule.

Determination of Specific Absorbance (A¦) for Six Psychoactive Drugs Encountered in Forensic Toxicology.

Specific absorbance (A¦) is defined as the maximum absorbance of a 1% solution over a 1-cm path length measured via spectroscopy. Finding a reliable value for specific absorbance for a drug provides an important tool for the quantitative verification of concentration of analytical standards. Although many new drugs have emerged within the last ten years, many either do not have a reliable value for A¦, or a value simply has never been published.