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Electro spark deposition technology is a manufacturing process based on conductive materials in the surface reinforcement and repair of metals, which has been widely used in industrial mold manufacturing, aviation automobile and other fields. In order to prolong the service life of metal products and improve the wear and corrosion resistance of metal surfaces, the researchers have improved the surface by using electro spark deposition technology. In this work, the electro spark deposition technology was briefly introduced. The application of this technology in the wear and corrosion resistance field for ferrous metals (including steel materials) and nonferrous metals (including magnesium, aluminum, titanium, copper and their alloys) was emphatically summarized. Finally, the shortcomings in the preparation of modified coatings on metal surfaces by electric spark deposition were pointed out, and its future development direction was prospected.

Superhydrophobic surfaces can seal the gas–liquid interface (GLI) under water to produce the drag reduction effect. Enhancing the stability and slip length of the GLI is an important issue in this context. Herein, we fabricate wettability step electrodes (WSEs) by creating an array of millimeter-scale circular superhydrophobic regions on a hydrophilic graphite plate by using an economical and efficient mask spraying method. When the WSE was electrified as an anode, the oxygen produced by the electrolytic reaction was preferentially precipitated in the superhydrophobic regions and ultimately formed an array of millimeter-scale GLIs. The evolution process of this GLI can be divided into a spreading stage and a growth stage. The results of experiments revealed that the spreading duration of the GLI increased with the diameter of the superhydrophobic regions (D) and decreased with the spacing between adjacent superhydrophobic regions (L). During the growth stage, the height of the GLI decreased with the ratio D/(L + D) and increased over the duration of electrification according to a 1/3 power-law relationship. Finally, we measured the slip characteristic on a single millimeter-scale GLI by particle image velocimetry. The result showed that the effective slip length of the GLI with a streamwise length of 2 mm can exceed 100 μm, thus confirming the potential of the millimeter-scale GLI for drag reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-harvest ripening of pineapples can be effectively postponed by refrigerated storage. Nevertheless, internal browning (IB) frequently appears in pineapples after refrigerated storage during the course of the shelf life at room temperature, which is known as chilling injury (CI). In this study, the chilling injury of pineapple fruit was induced by a low temperature (6 °C) and transferred to normal-temperature storage; the best concentration of 50 μmol/L of CaCl2 was selected by the IB appearance and electrical conductivity. Fruit quality, reactive oxygen species (ROS), antioxidants, and transcription factors were investigated. The physiological data results indicated that pineapples treated with 50 μmol/L of CaCl2 maintained fruit quality, decreased reactive oxygen species (ROS), and enhanced the antioxidant activity of fruits, alleviating internal browning (IB) symptoms in pineapple fruit. The expressions of related genes were also consistent with the physiological changes by the transcriptome data analysis. In addition, we focused on some related metabolic pathways, including phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, MAPK pathway, plant hormone, plant–pathogen interaction, tricarboxylic acid cycle (TAC), and fatty acid biosynthesis. We performed integrative analyses of transcriptome data combined with a series of physiology and experimental analyses on the internal browning of pineapples, which will be of great significance to extending the shelf life of pineapples through molecular biology in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the scheduling problem about the Automatic Vehicle Storage and Retrieval System controlling of the shuttle combined vehicles and the elevator to complete the storing and picking-up operations on the order in automatic three-dimensional warehouse. For the order with the pure storing operations or pure picking-up operations, it directly solve them similar to Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), and for storing and picking-up compound operations,it will respectively cooperate and schedule the elevator with one or two sets of shuttle combined vehicles to complete the task in the shortest time. Pertinent mathematical models has been established, and have been simulated and optimized with MATLAB. Compared with the conventional random access strategy, the current method can greatly save the travel time of the elevator and shuttle bus. The lower time consumption and higher efficiency indicates that the method presented is of significant value in both theory and practical usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fruits and vegetables in the Cucurbitaceae family contribute greatly to the human diet, for example, cucumber, melon, watermelon and squash. The widespread use of genome editing technologies has greatly accelerated the functional characterization of genes as well as crop improvement. However, most economically important cucurbit plants, including melon and squash, remain recalcitrant to standard Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation, which limits the effective use of genome editing technology. In this study, we describe the "optimal infiltration intensity" strategy to establish an efficient genetic transformation system for melon and squash. We harnessed the power of this method to target homologs of the ERECTA family of receptor kinase genes and created alleles resulting in a compact plant architecture with shorter internodes in melon, squash and cucumber. The optimized transformation method presented here allows stable CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mutagenesis and will lay a solid foundation for functional gene manipulation in cucurbit crops., (© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.)