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Unique to plants, growth regulatory factors (GRFs) play important roles in plant growth and reproduction. This study investigated the evolutionary and functional characteristics associated with plant growth. Using genome-wide analysis of 15 plant species, 173 members of the GRF family were identified and phylogenetically categorized into six groups. All members contained WRC and QLQ conserved domains, and the family’s expansion largely depended on segmental duplication. The promoter region of the GRF gene family mainly contained four types of cis-acting elements (light-responsive elements, development-related elements, hormone-responsive elements, and environmental stress-related elements) that are mainly related to gene expression levels. Functional divergence analysis revealed that changes in amino acid site evolution rate played a major role in the differentiation of the GRF gene family, with ten significant sites identified. Six significant sites were identified for positive selection. Moreover, the four groups of coevolutionary sites identified may play a key role in regulating the transcriptional activation of the GRF protein. Expression profiles revealed that GRF genes were generally highly expressed in young plant tissues and had tissue or organ expression specificity, demonstrating their functional conservation with distinct divergence. The results of these sequence and expression analyses are expected to provide molecular evolutionary and functional references for the plant GRF gene family.

There has been an increasing recognition of the efficacy of various clay mineral elements in absorbing heavy metallic ions, which can be attributed to their cost-effectiveness, widespread, precise floor area, and remarkable practical groups. A co-pyrolyzing calcite/biochar (CP-CAL/BC) composite was prepared in this study by co-pyrolyzing calcite (CP-CAL) and coconut shell (CS) at 650–750 °C. Several methods were employed to analyze the properties of the synthesized composite. The composite showed efficient adsorption of Pb2+ at a pH of 4.5, primarily by the process of monolayer chemisorption, which is influenced by the composite's pore structure and boundary layer diffusion. After several repeated experiments, it was observed that all of the CP-CAL/BC composites possessed exceptional regeneration capabilities, consistently removing Pb2+ at high rates. The CP-CAL/BC composite produced at 750 °C showed the greatest extent of resistance to corrosion, surpassing all other composites with a decrease in corrosion of 7.298 × 10−6 A/cm2. The present study confirmed that the CP-CAL/BC composite material has efficient adsorption features for Pb2+ and strong regenerative capability. Furthermore, the material synthesized at high temperatures demonstrated superior corrosion resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to establish a rapid and convenient microwave-assisted digestion method for sample pretreatment to determine amino acid profiles in natural products. This method was applied to analyze the amino acid profiles of Quisqualis Fructus (QF) from different planted origins. The microwave-assisted digestion conditions were optimized by a response surface methodology (RSM), and 17 amino acids in different planted origins of QF were determined by an automatic amino acid analyzer according to the optimized digestion conditions. The contents of 17 amino acids in QF from different planted origins were further analyzed by fingerprint and chemometric analysis. The temperature of microwave digestion at 167 °C, time of microwave digestion at 24 min, and a solid–liquid ratio of 46.5 g/mL was selected as the optimal digestion conditions. The total content of 17 amino acids in QF from different planted origins ranged from 71.88 to 91.03 mg/g. Amino acid composition and nutritional evaluation indicated that the content of medicinal amino acids was higher than aromatic amino acids. The results of fingerprint analysis reflected that the similarity between the 16 batches of QF ranged from 0.889 to 0.999, while chemometrics analysis indicated amino acid content in QF varied from different planted origins, and six important differential amino acids were screened. Compared with the traditional extraction method, microwave-assisted digestion with response surface optimized has the advantages of rapidity, convenience, and reliability, which could be used to study the amino acid profiles in natural products. The amino acid profile of QF indicated that it has a rich medicinal nutritional value. Different planted origins of QF have a high degree of similarity and could be effectively distinguished by chemometric analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of higher-order topological insulators and valley photonic crystals has recently aroused extensive attentions due to the great potential in flexible and efficient optical field manipulations. Here, we computationally propose a photonic device for the 1550 nm communication band, in which the topologically protected electromagnetic modes with high quality can be selectively triggered and modulated on demand. Through introducing two valley photonic crystal units without any structural alteration, we successfully achieve multi-dimensional coupled topological states thanks to the diverse electromagnetic characteristics of two valley edge states. According to the simulations, the constructed topological photonic devices can realize Fano lines on the spectrum and show high-quality localized modes by tuning the coupling strength between the zero-dimensional valley corner states and the one-dimensional valley edge states. Furthermore, we extend the valley-locked properties of edge states to higher-order valley topological insulators, where the selected corner states can be directionally excited by chiral source. More interestingly, we find that the modulation of multi-dimensional coupled photonic topological states with pseudospin dependence become more efficient compared with those uncoupled modes. This work presents a valuable approach for multi-dimensional optical field manipulation, which may support potential applications in on-chip integrated nanophotonic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Quisqualis indica L. (QIL) has a long history as a traditional Chinese herb in China, but the study of volatile components in QIL from different geographical sources has been relatively rare. Objectives: To establish an optimal headspace gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (HS‐GC‐MS) method to comprehensively analyse the volatile component profile and screen quality markers of QIL from different origins. Methods: Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimise the conditions for headspace analysis. The volatile components of QIL from four main origins of southwest China were analysed and identified by HS‐GC‐MS. The similarity of all samples of QIL was evaluated by fingerprint. The differences of the volatile components in QIL from different origins were distinguished by chemometrics. Results: According to the optimal conditions of RSM, a total of 31 volatile components were identified, including fatty acids, aldehydes, alcohols, alkyl pyrazines, and other volatile components. Similarity evaluation presented that there were 26 common volatile components with different contents in all samples. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that QIL from four different origins could be roughly divided into four categories. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS‐DA) indicated that QIL from different origins had obvious regional characteristics. Conclusion: The optimised HS‐GC‐MS method provided a strategy to rapidly, effectively, and accurately elucidate the volatile component profile of QIL from different origins, and seven important differential components were screened for quality evaluation and origin traceability. In the table of contents entry, a total of 31 volatile components were tentatively identified, including fatty acids, aldehydes, alcohols, alkyl pyrazines, and other volatile components. There were 26 common volatile components with more or less content differences and 5 non‐common components among different origins. The predominant volatile components in QIL were fatty acids, which accounted for more than 60% of the sum of volatile components, including oleic acid, linoleic acid, palmitic acid, and myristic acid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KNOTTED-like homeodomain (KNOX) genes are transcriptional regulators that play an important role in morphogenesis. In the present study, a comparative analysis was performed to investigate the molecular evolution of the characteristics of the KNOX gene family in 10 different plant species. We identified 129 KNOX gene family members, which were categorized into two subfamilies based on multiple sequence alignment and phylogenetic tree reconstruction. Several segmental duplication pairs were found, indicating that different species share a common expansion model. Functional divergence analysis identified the 15 and 52 amino acid sites with significant changes in evolutionary rates and amino acid physicochemical properties as functional divergence sites. Additional selection analysis showed that 14 amino acid sites underwent positive selection during evolution, and two groups of co-evolutionary amino acid sites were identified by Coevolution Analysis using Protein Sequences software. These sites could play critical roles in the molecular evolution of the KNOX gene family in these species. In addition, the expression profiles of KNOX duplicated genes demonstrated functional divergence. Taken together, these results provide novel insights into the structural and functional evolution of the KNOX gene family.

This paper uses the qualitative comparative analysis method to define the conditional variables and the outcome variables of the impact path of the sustainable development of green buildings in Tianjin. Secondly, the paper analyzes the relationship between the conditional variables and the outcome variables to pave the way for the subsequent suggestions on the sustainable development of green buildings. Finally, by assigning values to the cases, the truth table of the impact path of sustainable development of green buildings is generated, the impact path is established, and the impact path is analyzed through the three aspects of the government, technology and enterprises.

This paper investigates the cooperative optimal guidance of hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) in the terminal phase with consideration on time-varying velocity, aerodynamic forces, and practical constraints. The cooperative optimal guidance problem is formulated as an optimal control problem with time as the independent variable, which brings great convenience in controlling the impact time. We propose proper convexification techniques to convexify this problem and apply successive convex optimization to get the solution of the original problem. To achieve cooperative guidance of multiple HGVs with time coordination constraint, a deep learning–based approach is proposed to find an optimal common impact time assigned to all the HGVs. The training samples required by deep learning are obtained by convex optimization. An algorithm is then presented to summarize the cooperative optimal guidance strategy. In each guidance loop, the common impact time is updated according to mission conditions, and the guidance commands are generated by the successive solution procedure in real time. Numerical examples will be provided to demonstrate that the proposed cooperative optimal guidance algorithm is effective and efficient, and it can achieve better performance than a popular cooperative proportional navigation guidance law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher-order topological insulators have drawn great research attention in nanophotonics due to their ability to both support robust edge states and lower dimensional corner states. In this work, we present a theoretical proposal for achieving topologically switchable and valley-selective corner states based on two-dimensional C3-symmetric photonic crystals (PCs), with breaking of inversion symmetry. Through the concatenation of two valley PCs with contrasting topological indices, we demonstrate the emergence of two types of valley-locked chiral topological edge states resulting from the valley–valley interaction. More importantly, we find that the system exhibits two distinct types of corner states, characterized by strong robustness and high localization, when the PCs are spliced at a 60° angle. However, the corner states are absent when the splicing angle is set as 120°. According to the theoretical analysis, the selective activation of topological valley corner states is related to the sign flip of valley Chern number at the corner. Based on this feature, we further propose a topological photonic switching device, in which the corner can be lighted up or off selectively. By combining the benefits of higher-order topology and valley degree of freedom, our work provides an efficient and flexible method for light manipulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the high theoretical capacities, transition metal sulfides have attracted increasing attention as potential anodes for sodium-ion batteries (SIBs), but severely suffer from large volumetric variations, sluggish kinetics, and polysulfide shuttling. Herein, utilizing metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) as functional templates, heterostructured CoS2/FeS nanoparticles confined in a hollow N-doped carbon framework are successfully fabricated via a controlled ion-exchange reaction combined with subsequent carbonization and sulfurization processes. The construction of CoS2/FeS heterointerfaces promotes electron transfer and provides more active sites, while the derived N-doped carbon framework with a unique hollow interior effectively improves the electrical conductivity, alleviates the volumetric variations, and facilitates the sodium storage process with shortened Na+ diffusion paths. As anodes for SIBs, the optimal CoS2/FeS hybrid composite exhibits a high initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE) of 89.3%, a prolonged cycle life with a capacity of 494 mAh g–1 over 500 cycles under a current density of 1.0 A g–1, and an excellent rate capability of 428 mAh g–1 at 5.0 A g–1, showing the great promise for SIBs. This research offers an efficient and feasible approach for exploring and fabricating bimetallic sulfide heterostructures with a unique hollow structure for high-performance metal-ion batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cobalt disulfide (CoS2) has attracted much attention as anodes of sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) due to its high theoretical capacity. Nevertheless, the serious volume variation and polysulfide dissolution issues during cycling usually lead to poor electrochemical performance, greatly limiting its application. Here, by employing a CuCo-based metal organic framework (MOF) and bacterial cellulose (BC) as precursor and template, we have fabricated heterostructured CoS2/CuCo2S4 particles anchoring on an N-doped carbon framework (denoted as CuCo-S/NC) through ion adsorption and exchange reaction with a subsequent thermal annealing process. The generation of a CoS2/CuCo2S4 heterostructure which can boost the charge transfer rate in the hybrid composite has been investigated, while the introduction of an N-doped carbon framework derived from the BC could not only enhance the electrical conductivity but also improve the structural integrity by mitigating the mechanical stress and inhibiting the aggregation of active materials. Benefitting from the designed composition and structure, the optimal CuCo-S/NC electrode exhibits a high capacity of 889 mAh g−1 at 0.2 A g−1 and an outstanding rate capability of 394 mAh g−1 at 10 A g−1. The results achieved in this work indicate the great potential of this bimetallic MOF-derived template method for the rational design and fabrication of novel hybrid composite anodes for high-performance SIBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]