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Transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) is mainly expressed in nociceptive primary sensory neurons and acts as a sensor for heat and capsaicin. The functional properties of TRPV1 have been reported to vary among species and, in some cases, the species difference in its thermal sensitivity is likely to be associated with thermal habitat conditions. To clarify the functional properties and physiological roles of TRPV1 in aquatic vertebrates, we examined the temperature and chemical sensitivities of TRPV1 in masu salmon (Oncorhynchus masou ishikawae, Om) belonging to a family of salmonids that generally prefer cool environments. First, behavioral experiments were conducted using a video tracking system. Application of capsaicin, a TRPV1 agonist, induced locomotor activities in juvenile Om. Increasing the ambient temperature also elicited locomotor activity potentiated by capsaicin. RT-PCR revealed TRPV1 expression in gills as well as spinal cord. Next, electrophysiological analyses of OmTRPV1 were performed using a two-electrode voltage-clamp technique with a Xenopus oocyte expression system. Heat stimulation evoked an inward current in heterologously expressed OmTRPV1. In addition, capsaicin produced current responses in OmTRPV1-expressing oocytes, but higher concentrations were needed for its activation compared to the mammalian orthologues. These results indicate that Om senses environmental stimuli (heat and capsaicin) through the activation of TRPV1, and this channel may play important roles in avoiding environments disadvantageous for survival in aquatic vertebrates.

Transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) is known as a receptor of capsaicin, a spicy ingredient of chili peppers. It is also sensitive to a variety of pungent compounds and is involved in nociception. Here, we focused on the structural characteristics of capsaicin, and investigated whether vanillylmanderic acid (VMA), vanillic acid (VAcid), vanillyl alcohol (VAlc), vanillyl butyl ether (VBE), and vanillin, containing a vanillyl skeleton similar to capsaicin, affected the TRPV1 activities. For detection of TRPV1 activity, intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) was measured in HEK 293 cells heterologously expressing mouse TRPV1 (mTRPV1-HEK) and in mouse sensory neurons. Except for vanillin, four vanilloid analogues dose-dependently increased [Ca2+]i in mTRPV1-HEK. The solutions that dissolved VMA, VAcid and vanillin at high concentrations were acidic, whereas those of VAlc and VBE were neutral. Neutralized VAcid evoked [Ca2+]i increases but neutralized VMA did not. Mutation of capsaicin-sensing sites diminished [Ca2+]i responses to VAcid, VAlc and VBE. VAcid, VMA, and vanillin suppressed the activation of TRPV1 induced by capsaicin. VAcid and VMA also inhibited the acid-induced TRPV1 activation. In sensory neurons, VMA diminished TRPV1 activation by capsaicin or acids. The present data indicate that these structural characteristics of chemical compounds on TRPV1 may provide strategies for the development of novel analgesic drugs targeting nociceptive TRPV1.

Boreal Eurasia is a region where the interaction between droughts and the carbon cycle may have significant impacts on the global carbon cycle. Yet the region is extremely data sparse with respect to meteorology, soil moisture, and carbon fluxes as compared to e.g. Europe. To better constrain our vegetation model SiBCASA, we increase data usage by assimilating two streams of satellite-derived soil moisture. We study whether the assimilation improved SiBCASA's soil moisture and its effect on the simulated carbon fluxes. By comparing to unique in situ soil moisture observations, we show that the passive microwave soil moisture product did not improve the soil moisture simulated by SiBCASA, but the active data seem promising in some aspects. The match between SiBCASA and ASCAT soil moisture is best in the summer months over low vegetation. Nevertheless, ASCAT failed to detect the major droughts occurring between 2007 and 2013. The performance of ASCAT soil moisture seems to be particularly sensitive to ponding, rather than to biomass. The effect on the simulated carbon fluxes is large, 5–10 % on annual GPP and TER, tens of percent on local NEE, and 2 % on area-integrated NEE, which is the same order of magnitude as the inter-annual variations. Consequently, this study shows that assimilation of satellite-derived soil moisture has potentially large impacts, while at the same time further research is needed to understand under which conditions the satellite-derived soil moisture improves the simulated soil moisture.

Here, the authors describe the construction of a forcing data set for land surface models (including both physical and biogeochemical models; LSMs) with eight meteorological variables for the 35-year period from 1979 to 2013. The data set is intended for use in a model intercomparison study, called GTMIP, which is a part of the Japanese-funded Arctic Climate Change Research Project. In order to prepare a set of site-fitted forcing data for LSMs with realistic yet continuous entries (i.e. without missing data), four observational sites across the pan-Arctic region (Fairbanks, Tiksi, Yakutsk, and Kevo) were selected to construct a blended data set using both global reanalysis and observational data. Marked improvements were found in the diurnal cycles of surface air temperature and humidity, wind speed, and precipitation. The data sets and participation in GTMIP are open to the scientific community (doi:10.17592/001.2015093001).

Aiming at getting any clue to the mechanism of characteristic behavior of meta-magnetic transition in CeRu2Si2 and the Ce 4f electronic states in Gd-poor contents, the (Ce-Gd)Ru2Si2 crystal mixed system was studied through magnetic measurements. A characteristic behavior of meta-magnetic transition observed in CeRu2Si2 was found to be reproduced in GdRu2Si2 in the temperature range between 30 K and 40 K. The meta-magnetic transition field was increased to higher field by the substitution of small amount of Gd contents of 0.01 and 0.02 at%. Furthermore, the reciprocal susceptibility in CeRu2Si2 (Gd=0) in temperature range between 15 K and 300 K revealed that the electronic state of Ce 4f was dominantly Ce3+, which was in accordance with a previous work, and the electronic states of Ce 4f in CeRu2Si2 could be described by the Van Vleck paramagnetic picture.

As part of the terrestrial branch of the Japan-funded Arctic Climate Change Research Project (GRENE-TEA), which aims to clarify the role and function of the terrestrial Arctic in the climate system and assess the influence of its changes on a global scale, this model intercomparison project (GTMIP) is designed to (1) enhance communication and understanding between the modelling and field scientists and (2) assess the uncertainty and variations stemming from variability in model implementation/design and in model outputs using climatic and historical conditions in the Arctic terrestrial regions. This paper provides an overview of all GTMIP activity, and the experiment protocol of Stage 1, which is site simulations driven by statistically fitted data created using the GRENE-TEA site observations for the last 3 decades. The target metrics for the model evaluation cover key processes in both physics and biogeochemistry, including energy budgets, snow, permafrost, phenology, and carbon budgets. Exemplary results for distributions of four metrics (annual mean latent heat flux, annual maximum snow depth, gross primary production, and net ecosystem production) and for seasonal transitions are provided to give an outlook of the planned analysis that will delineate the inter-dependence among the key processes and provide clues for improving model performance.

Agricultural use of wetlands is important for food security in various regions. However, land-use changes in wetland areas could alter the water cycle and the ecosystem. To conserve the water environments of wetlands, care is needed when introducing new cropping systems. This study is the first attempt to evaluate the water dynamics in the case of the introduction of rice-millet mixed-cropping systems to the Cuvelai system seasonal wetlands (CSSWs) in north-central Namibia. We first investigated seasonal changes in surface water coverage by using satellite remote sensing data. We also assessed the effect of the introduction of rice-millet mixed-cropping systems on evapotranspiration in the CSSWs region. For the former investigation, we used MODIS and AMSR-E satellite remote sensing data. These data showed that at the beginning of the wet season, surface water appears from the southern (lower) part and then expands to the northern (higher) part of the CSSWs. For the latter investigation, we used data obtained by the classical Bowen ratio-energy balance (BREB) method at an experimental field site established in September 2012 on the Ogongo campus, University of Namibia. This analysis showed the importance of water and vegetation conditions when introducing mixed-cropping to the region.

Larch forests are widely distributed across many cool-temperate and boreal regions, and they are expected to play an important role in global carbon and water cycles. Model parameterizations for larch forests still contain large uncertainties owing to a lack of validation. In this study, a process-based terrestrial biosphere model, BIOME-BGC, was tested for larch forests at six AsiaFlux sites and used to identify important environmental factors that affect the carbon and water cycles at both temporal and spatial scales. The model simulation performed with the default deciduous conifer parameters produced results that had large differences from the observed net ecosystem exchange (NEE), gross primary productivity (GPP), ecosystem respiration (RE), and evapotranspiration (ET). Therefore, we adjusted several model parameters in order to reproduce the observed rates of carbon and water cycle processes. This model calibration, performed using the AsiaFlux data, substantially improved the model performance. The simulated annual GPP, RE, NEE, and ET from the calibrated model were highly consistent with observed values. The observed and simulated GPP and RE across the six sites were positively correlated with the annual mean air temperature and annual total precipitation. On the other hand, the simulated carbon budget was partly explained by the stand disturbance history in addition to the climate. The sensitivity study indicated that spring warming enhanced the carbon sink, whereas summer warming decreased it across the larch forests. The summer radiation was the most important factor that controlled the carbon fluxes in the temperate site, but the VPD and water conditions were the limiting factors in the boreal sites. One model parameter, the allocation ratio of carbon between belowground and aboveground, was site-specific, and it was negatively correlated with the annual climate of annual mean air temperature and total precipitation. Although this study substantially improved the model performance, the uncertainties that remained in terms of the sensitivity to water conditions should be examined in ongoing and long-term observations.

Northern Eurasia experienced anomalous weather conditions in the 2003 summer. We examined how forest ecosystems responded to the meteorological anomalies during the period using the dataset collected at flux monitoring sites in Asia, including a boreal forest in Mongolia, temperate forests in China and Japan, and a sub-tropical forest in China, as well as the dataset from satellite remote sensing. From July to August 2003, an active rain band stayed in the mid-latitude in East Asia for an unusually long period. Under the influence of the rain band, the Gross Primary Production (GPP), of temperate forests was 20–30% lower in the 2003 summer than in other years due to significant reduction in the Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density (PPFD). The GPP of a cool-temperate forest in the north of the rain band was slightly enhanced by the higher PPFD; however, the GPP of a sub-tropical forest located in the south of the rain band was reduced by drought stress due to extremely hot and dry conditions. The correlation coefficients for the year-to-year changes in the PPFD and GPP during mid-summer were calculated, and the spatial distribution was examined. The spatial pattern of the PPFD was calculated by satellite data, and that of the GPP was estimated by a regression-type model, which was trained and tested by ground observation data. The correlation was positive in the mid- and high-latitudes since light was an essential factor of the summer GPP. On the other hand, a negative correlation appeared in the lower latitudes, suggesting that the water limitation was much more important than the PPFD in the region. Our study illustrated that the integration of flux data from wide areas by combining satellite remote sensing data can help us gain an understanding of the ecosystem responses to large-scale meteorological phenomena.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have the potential to improve wireless communication links by dynamically redirecting signals to dead spots. Although a reconfigurable surface is best suited for environments in which the reflected signal must be dynamically steered, there are cases where a static, non-reconfigurable anomalous reflective metasurface can suffice. In this work, spray-coated liquid metal is used to rapidly prototype an anomalous reflective metasurface. Using a pressurized air gun and a plastic thin-film mask, a metasurface consisting of a 6 × 4 array of Galinstan liquid–metal elements is sprayed within minutes. The metasurface produces a reflected wave at an angle of 28° from normal in response to a normal incident 3.5-GHz electromagnetic plane wave. The spray-coated liquid–metal metasurface shows comparable results to an anomalous reflective metasurface with copper elements of the same dimensions, demonstrating that this liquid–metal fabrication process is a viable solution for the rapid prototyping of anomalous reflective metasurfaces.

Abstract Recent progress in the understanding of the behavior of the interference channel has led to valuable insights: first, discrete signaling has been discovered to have tangible benefits in the presence of interference, especially when one does not wish to decode the interfering signal, i.e., the interference is treated as noise, and second, the capacity of the interference channel as a function of the interference link gains is now understood to be highly irregular, i.e., non-monotonic and discontinuous. This work addresses these two issues in an integrated and interdisciplinary manner: it utilizes discrete signaling to approach the capacity of the interference channel by developing lower bounds on the mutual information under discrete modulation and treating interference as noise, subject to an outage set, and addresses the issue of sensitivity to link gains with a liquid metal reconfigurable antenna to avoid the aforementioned outage sets. Simulations illustrate the effectiveness of our approach.

Microrobots are promising tools for applications that require micromanipulation, such as single-cell manipulation and surgery, tissue engineering, and desktop manufacturing. This paper briefly reviews common microrobot actuation mechanisms, then reviews current progress in several capabilities that are desirable for micromanipulation, with an emphasis on optothermal microrobots.

Gallium-based liquid metals have attracted attention as a conductive adaptable material that can be shaped to obtain reconfigurability. We demonstrate a two-dimensional array of liquid-metal conductive nodes, in which reconfigurability is achieved by merging and splitting adjacent nodes to reversibly shape a two-dimensional structure. The nodes are reconfigured using three different actuation schemes: 1) pressure-point actuation, where the liquid metal is actuated by pressing on the flexible superstrate; 2) surface-tension self-splitting, where the geometric shape of the node itself exerts a separating force on merged nodes; and 3) electrocapillary actuation where the liquid metal is actuated by a DC electrical signal. This is the first demonstration of a reconfigurable liquid-metal pixel array using liquid-liquid interconnects for prototyping reconfigurable devices. As a proof of concept, the proposed actuation techniques are used to reconfigure a liquid-metal nodal patch antenna, in which the liquid-metal nodes are reversibly connected and disconnected to change the operating frequency and polarization.

Controllable deformation of liquid metal by electrocapillary actuation (ECA) is empirically characterized in fluidic channels at the sub-millimeter-length scale. In 100-µm-deep channels of varying widths, the Galinstan liquid metal could move at velocities of more than 40 mm/s. The liquid metal could extend more than 2.5 mm into the channels at an electrocapillary actuation voltage of 3 V DC. The dynamic behavior of the liquid metal as it moves in the microchannels is described. These results are useful for designing microsystems that use liquid metal as a functional material.

A liquid-metal RF shunt switch is presented that combines a dielectric spacer over the RF path with electrolyte-filled capillary troughs to facilitate low-power electrical actuation. The switch demonstrates between 20and 30-dB isolation in the dc to 5-GHz range, and greater than 10-dB isolation from 5 to 11 GHz. This switch has between 0.2and 1.2-dB insertion loss from dc to 5 GHz.

Continuous electrowetting (CEW) is demonstrated to be an effective actuation mechanism for reconfigurable radio frequency (RF) devices that use non-toxic liquid-metal tuning elements. Previous research has shown CEW is an efficient means of electrically inducing motion in a liquid-metal slug, but precise control of the slug's position within fluidic channels has not been demonstrated. Here, the precise positioning of liquid-metal slugs is achieved using CEW actuation in conjunction with channels designed to minimize the liquid-metal surface energy at discrete locations. This approach leverages the high surface tension of liquid metal to control its resting position with submillimeter accuracy. The CEW actuation and fluidic channel design were optimized to create reconfigurable RF devices. In addition, solutions for the reliable actuation of a gallium-based, non-toxic liquid-metal alloy (Galinstan) are presented that mitigate the tendency of the alloy to form a surface oxide layer capable of wetting to the channel walls, inhibiting motion. A reconfigurable slot antenna utilizing these techniques to achieve a 15.2% tunable frequency bandwidth is demonstrated.