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Objective: To explore the potential of minor beans as ingredients for starch gel foods. Methods: The basic compositions were analyzed, as well as the hydration, pasting, and gel properties of five kinds of minor bean flours, including mung beans, peas, white kidney beans, red beans, and chickpeas. Results: The water absorption index （WAI） of Mung bean powder at 90 ℃ and the water solubility index （WSI） at 40 ℃, the water absorption was better. In gelatinization results, mung bean powder had the highest recovery value, and showed good gelatinability. The results showed that the hardness and chewability of mung bean gel were significantly higher than those of other mixed bean powder, and the gel had certain elasticity and strong chewability. Mung bean gel has no bubbles, uniform surface, good smoothness and longest stretching distance. Conclusion: Mung beans may be the most suitable raw material among the five kinds of minor beans as gel-based food ingredients.

Water availability plays a critical role in shaping terrestrial ecosystems, particularly in low- and mid-latitude regions. The sensitivity of vegetation growth to precipitation strongly regulates global vegetation dynamics and their responses to drought, yet sensitivity changes in response to climate change remain poorly understood. Here we use long-term satellite observations combined with a dynamic statistical learning approach to examine changes in the sensitivity of vegetation greenness to precipitation over the past four decades. We observe a robust increase in precipitation sensitivity (0.624% yr-1) for drylands, and a decrease (-0.618% yr-1) for wet regions. Using model simulations, we show that the contrasting trends between dry and wet regions are caused by elevated atmospheric CO2 (eCO2). eCO2 universally decreases the precipitation sensitivity by reducing leaf-level transpiration, particularly in wet regions. However, in drylands, this leaf-level transpiration reduction is overridden at the canopy scale by a large proportional increase in leaf area. The increased sensitivity for global drylands implies a potential decrease in ecosystem stability and greater impacts of droughts in these vulnerable ecosystems under continued global change.

Arctic shrub expansion alters carbon budgets, albedo, and warming rates in high latitudes but remains challenging to predict due to unclear underlying controls. Observational studies and models typically use relationships between observed shrub presence and current environmental suitability (bioclimate and topography) to predict shrub expansion, while omitting shrub demographic processes and non-stationary response to changing climate. Here, we use high-resolution satellite imagery across Alaska and western Canada to show that observed shrub expansion has not been controlled by environmental suitability during 1984-2014, but can only be explained by considering seed dispersal and fire. These findings provide the impetus for better observations of recruitment and for incorporating currently underrepresented processes of seed dispersal and fire in land models to project shrub expansion and climate feedbacks. Integrating these dynamic processes with projected fire extent and climate, we estimate shrubs will expand into 25% of the non-shrub tundra by 2100, in contrast to 39% predicted based on increasing environmental suitability alone. Thus, using environmental suitability alone likely overestimates and misrepresents shrub expansion pattern and its associated carbon sink.

Droughts in a warming climate have become more common and more extreme, making understanding forest responses to water stress increasingly pressing. Analysis of water stress in trees has long focused on water potential in xylem and leaves, which influences stomatal closure and water flow through the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. At the same time, changes of vegetation water content (VWC) are linked to a range of tree responses, including fluxes of water and carbon, mortality, flammability, and more. Unlike water potential, which requires demanding in situ measurements, VWC can be retrieved from remote sensing measurements, particularly at microwave frequencies using radar and radiometry. Here, we highlight key frontiers through which VWC has the potential to significantly increase our understanding of forest responses to water stress. To validate remote sensing observations of VWC at landscape scale and to better relate them to data assimilation model parameters, we introduce an ecosystem-scale analog of the pressure-volume curve, the non-linear relationship between average leaf or branch water potential and water content commonly used in plant hydraulics. The sources of variability in these ecosystem-scale pressure-volume curves and their relationship to forest response to water stress are discussed. We further show to what extent diel, seasonal, and decadal dynamics of VWC reflect variations in different processes relating the tree response to water stress. VWC can also be used for inferring belowground conditions-which are difficult to impossible to observe directly. Lastly, we discuss how a dedicated geostationary spaceborne observational system for VWC, when combined with existing datasets, can capture diel and seasonal water dynamics to advance the science and applications of global forest vulnerability to future droughts.

Vegetation composition shifts, and in particular, shrub expansion across the Arctic tundra are some of the most important and widely observed responses of high-latitude ecosystems to rapid climate warming. These changes in vegetation potentially alter ecosystem carbon balances by affecting a complex set of soil-plant-atmosphere interactions. In this review, we synthesize the literature on (a) observed shrub expansion, (b) key climatic and environmental controls and mechanisms that affect shrub expansion, (c) impacts of shrub expansion on ecosystem carbon balance, and (d) research gaps and future directions to improve process representations in land models. A broad range of evidence, including in-situ observations, warming experiments, and remotely sensed vegetation indices have shown increases in growth and abundance of woody plants, particularly tall deciduous shrubs, and advancing shrublines across the circumpolar Arctic. This recent shrub expansion is affected by several interacting factors including climate warming, accelerated nutrient cycling, changing disturbance regimes, and local variation in topography and hydrology. Under warmer conditions, tall deciduous shrubs can be more competitive than other plant functional types in tundra ecosystems because of their taller maximum canopy heights and often dense canopy structure. Competitive abilities of tall deciduous shrubs vs herbaceous plants are also controlled by variation in traits that affect carbon and nutrient investments and retention strategies in leaves, stems, and roots. Overall, shrub expansion may affect tundra carbon balances by enhancing ecosystem carbon uptake and altering ecosystem respiration, and through complex feedback mechanisms that affect snowpack dynamics, permafrost degradation, surface energy balance, and litter inputs. Observed and projected tall deciduous shrub expansion and the subsequent effects on surface energy and carbon balances may alter feedbacks to the climate system. Land models, including those integrated in Earth System Models, need to account for differences in plant traits that control competitive interactions to accurately predict decadal- to centennial-scale tundra vegetation and carbon dynamics.

BACKGROUND RESULTS CONCLUSION Rice bran, a by‐product of rice processing, has not been fully utilized except for the small amount used for raising animals. The raw material source requirements of microcrystalline cellulose are becoming increasingly extensive. However, the characteristics of preparing microcrystalline cellulose from rice bran have not been reported, which limits the application of rice bran.Microcrystalline cellulose was obtained from rice bran by alkali treatment, delignification, bleaching and acid hydrolysis. The morphology, particle size distribution, degree of polymerization, crystallinity, and thermal stability of rice bran microcrystalline cellulose were analyzed. The chemical compositions, scanning electron microscopy and Fourier‐transform infrared analysis for rice bran microcrystalline cellulose showed that the lignin and hemicellulose were successfully removed from the rice bran fiber matrix. The morphology of rice bran microcrystalline cellulose was shown to be of a short rod‐shaped porous structure with an average diameter of 65.3 μm. The polymerization degree of rice bran microcrystalline cellulose was 150. The X‐ray diffraction pattern of rice bran microcrystalline cellulose showed the characteristic peak of natural cellulose (type I), and its crystallization index was 71%. The rice bran microcrystalline cellulose may be used in biological composites with temperatures between 150 °C and 250 °C.These results suggest the feasibility of using rice bran as a low‐price source of microcrystalline cellulose. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atmospheric dryness (i.e., high vapor pressure deficit, VPD), together with soil moisture stress, limits plant photosynthesis and threatens ecosystem functioning. Regions where rainfall and soil moisture are relatively sufficient, such as the rainfed part of the U.S. Corn Belt, are especially prone to high VPD stress. With globally projected rising VPD under climate change, it is crucial to understand, simulate, and manage its negative impacts on agricultural ecosystems. However, most existing models simulating crop response to VPD are highly empirical and insufficient in capturing plant response to high VPD, and improved modeling approaches are urgently required. In this study, by leveraging recent advances in plant hydraulic theory, we demonstrate that the VPD constraints in the widely used coupled photosynthesis‐stomatal conductance models alone are inadequate to fully capture VPD stress effects. Incorporating plant xylem hydraulic transport significantly improves the simulation of transpiration under high VPD, even when soil moisture is sufficient. Our results indicate that the limited water transport capability from the plant root to the leaf stoma could be a major mechanism of plant response to high VPD stress. We then introduce a Demand‐side Hydraulic Limitation Factor (DHLF) that simplifies the xylem and the leaf segments of the plant hydraulic model to only one parameter yet captures the effect of plant hydraulic transport on transpiration response to high VPD with similar accuracy. We expect the improved understanding and modeling of crop response to high VPD to help contribute to better management and adaptation of agricultural systems in a changing climate. Key Points: Coupled photosynthesis‐stomatal conductance models alone underestimate vapor pressure deficit (VPD) stress effects on crop stomatal conductance and transpirationLimited plant hydraulic transport capability could play a role in plant response to high VPDA simplified representation of plant hydraulic model for capturing VPD stress on plants is proposed [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fully distributed hydrologic models are often used to simulate hydrologic states at fine spatio-temporal resolutions. However, simulations based on these models may become computationally expensive, constraining their applications to smaller domains. This study demonstrates that a nested-discretization based modeling strategy can be used to improve the efficiency of distributed hydrologic simulations, especially for applications where fine resolution estimates of hydrologic states are of the focus only within a part of a watershed. To this end, we consider two applications where the goal is to capture the groundwater dynamics within a defined target area. Our results show that at the target locations, a nested simulation is able to competently replicate the estimates of groundwater table as obtained from the fine simulation, while yielding significant computational savings. The results highlight the potential of using nested discretization for a detailed yet computationally efficient estimation of hydrologic states in part of the model domain.

The main obstacles to migrant workers starting businesses when they return to their hometowns are their own lack of financial literacy and aptitude, a lack of sufficient venture capital, and inadequate financing options. This paper conducts an analysis of the opportunities and challenges under the rural revitalization environment in conjunction with the Internet of Things Technology, through which a migrant labor entrepreneurship analysis platform is built. Data crawling technology is applied to capture internet data resources related to innovative entrepreneurship in the data collection module, and the entrepreneurship data is processed by the Internet of Things Technology. Based on the research, the approach suggested in this paper has its benefits for analyzing the opportunities and difficulties that migrant workers encounter in a rural revitalization context, in order to finally provide some theoretical support for pertinent research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of alkyl- and aryl-substituted iminopyridine Fe(II) complexes 1a⁻7a and Co(II) complexes 2b, 3b, 5b, and 6b were synthesized. The activator effect, influence of temperature, and, particularly, the alkyl and aryl substituents' effect on catalytic activity, polymer molecular weight, and regio-/stereoselectivity were investigated when these complexes were applied in isoprene polymerization. All of the Fe(II) complexes afforded polyisoprene with high molecular weight and moderate cis-1,4 selectivity. In contrast, the Co(II) complexes produced polymers with low molecular weight and relatively high cis-1,4 selectivity. In the iminopyridine Fe(II) system, the alkyl and aryl substituents' effect exhibits significant variation on the isoprene polymerization. In the iminopyridine Co(II) system, there is little influence observed on isoprene polymerization by alkyl and aryl substituents.

Molecular nanotechnology promises to offer privileged access to developing NIR‐II materials with precise structural and functional manipulation for transformable theranostic applications. However, the lack of an affordable, yet general, method makes this goal currently inaccessible. By virtue of the intriguing nucleic acid chemistry, here we present an artificial base‐directed topological single‐strand DNA encoding design that enables one‐step synthesis of valence‐controlled NIR‐II molecular nanostructures and spatial assembly of these nanostructures to modulate their behaviors in living systems. As proof‐of‐concept studies, we construct ultrasmall Ag2S quantum dots and pH‐responsive, size‐tunable CuS assemblies for in vivo NIR‐II fluorescence imaging and deep tumor photothermal therapy. This work paves a new way for creating functionally diversified architectures and broadens the scope of DNA‐encoded material engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]