Emission of volatile sesquiterpenes and monoterpenes in grapevine genotypes following Plasmopara viticola inoculation in vitro

The grapevine (Vitis vinifera) is one of the most widely cultivated fruit crops globally, and one of its most important diseases in terms of economic losses is downy mildew, caused by Plasmopara viticola. Several wild Vitis species have been found to be resistant to this pathogen and have been used in breeding programs to introduce resistance traits to susceptible cultivars. Plant defense is based on different mechanisms, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) play a major role in the response to insects and pathogens. Although grapevine resistance mechanisms and the production of secondary metabolites have been widely characterized in resistant genotypes, the emission of VOCs has not yet been investigated following P. viticola inoculation. A Proton Transfer Reaction‐Time of Flight‐Mass Spectrometer (PTR‐ToF‐MS) was used to analyze the VOCs emitted by in vitro‐grown plants of grapevine genotypes with different levels of resistance. Downy mildew inoculation significantly increased the emission of monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes by the resistant SO4 and Kober 5BB genotypes, but not by the susceptible V. vinifera Pinot noir. Volatile terpenes were implicated in plant defense responses against pathogens, suggesting that they could play a major role in the resistance against downy mildew by direct toxicity or by inducing grapevine resistance. The grapevine genotypes differed in terms of the VOC emission pattern of both inoculated and uninoculated plants, indicating that PTR‐ToF‐MS could be used to screen hybrids with different levels of downy mildew resistance. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Holographic watermarking for authentication of cut images

A watermarking technique, with a Computer Generated Hologram (CGH) coding system of the mark, is introduced and tested. The CGH watermarking can be used to authenticate parts of the original image. The hologram of the mark is embedded in the spatial domain by a blind additive embedding technique. The use of holography allows authenticating cuts of the original image, is the major novelty of this paper. The proposed methodology is characterized as an authentication technique, since it does not rely on the original image to decide whether the watermarked image has been altered or not and at the same time it is able to detect and localize any possible malicious change. Asymmetric cryptography is used to hide the hash information in an unambiguous way (non-repudiation property).     

An Algebraic Construction of Boundary Quantum Field Theory

We build up local, time translation covariant Boundary Quantum Field Theory nets of von Neumann algebras ${\mathcal A_V}$ on the Minkowski half-plane M ₊ starting with a local conformal net ${\mathcal A}$ of von Neumann algebras on ${\mathbb R}$ and an element V of a unitary semigroup ${\mathcal E(\mathcal A)}$ associated with ${\mathcal A}$ . The case V?=?1 reduces to the net ${\mathcal A_+}$ considered by Rehren and one of the authors; if the vacuum character of ${\mathcal A}$ is summable, ${\mathcal A_V}$ is locally isomorphic to ${\mathcal A_+}$ . We discuss the structure of the semigroup ${\mathcal E(\mathcal A)}$ . By using a one-particle version of Borchers theorem and standard subspace analysis, we provide an abstract analog of the Beurling-Lax theorem that allows us to describe, in particular, all unitaries on the one-particle Hilbert space whose second quantization promotion belongs to ${\mathcal E(\mathcal A^{(0)})}$ with ${\mathcal A^{(0)}}$ the U(1)-current net. Each such unitary is attached to a scattering function or, more generally, to a symmetric inner function. We then obtain families of models via any Buchholz-Mack-Todorov extension of ${\mathcal A^{(0)}}$ . A further family of models comes from the Ising model.     

Comparison of confinement characters between porous silicon and silicon nanowires

Confinement character and its effects on photoluminescence (PL) properties are theoretically investigated and compared between porous silicon (p-Si) and silicon nanowires (Si-NWs). The method is based on the application of the tight-binding technique using the minimal sp³-basis set, including the second-nearest-neighbor interactions. The results show that the quantum confinement (QC) is not entirely controlled by the porosity, rather it is mainly affected by the average distance between pores (d). The p-Si is found to exhibit weaker confinement character than Si-NWs. The confinement energy of charge carriers decays against d exponentially for p-Si and via a power-law for Si-NWs. This latter type of QC is much stronger and is somewhat similar to the case of a single particle in a quantum box. The excellent fit to the PL data demonstrates that the experimental samples of p-Si do exhibit strong QC character and thus reveals the possibility of silicon clustering into nano-crystals and/or nanowires. Furthermore, the results show that the passivation of the surface dangling bonds by the hydrogen atoms plays an essential role in preventing the appearance of gap states and consequently enhances the optical qualities of the produced structures. The oscillator strength (OS) is found to increase exponentially with energy in Si-NWs confirming the strong confinement character of carriers. Our theoretical findings suggest the existence of Si nanocrystals (Si-NCs) of sizes 1-3 nm and/or Si-NWs of cross-sectional sizes in the 1-3 nm range inside the experimental p-Si samples. The experimentally-observed strong photoluminescence from p-Si should be in favor of an exhibition of 3D-confinement character. The favorable comparison of our theoretical results with the experimental data consolidates our above claims.     

Phase shifting photoelasticity in white light

The availability of image acquisition systems has led to the development of digital photoelasticity both in monochromatic and white light. In particular white light has been used mainly with the following methods: Spectral Content Analysis, RGB photoelasticity and phase shifting photoelasticity. Phase shifting photoelasticity in the colour domain has been used effectively for the determination of the isoclinic parameter in order to reduce the influence of the isochromatic fringes. The method has been also proposed for the determination of the isochromatic fringe order. This paper concerns the general characteristics of phase shifting photoelasticity in the colour domain. Special attention is drawn towards the influence of spectral content of the light source, the spectral response of the colour camera filters, the dispersion of the birefringence and the error of quarter wave plates.     

The Impact of pH on Catalytically Critical Protein Conformational Changes: The Case of the Urease,a Nickel Enzyme

Urease uses a cluster of two Ni^II ions to activate a water molecule for urea hydrolysis. The key to this unsurpassed enzyme is a change in the conformation of a flexible structural motif, the mobile flap, which must be able to move from an open to a closed conformation to stabilize the chelating interaction of urea with the Ni^II cluster. This conformational change brings the imidazole side chain functionality of a critical histidine residue, αHis323, in close proximity to the site that holds the transition state structure of the reaction, facilitating its evolution to the products. Herein, we describe the influence of the solution pH in modulating the conformation of the mobile flap. High-resolution crystal structures of urease inhibited in the presence of N-(n-butyl)phosphoric triamide (NBPTO) at pH 6.5 and pH 7.5 are described and compared to the analogous structure obtained at pH 7.0. The kinetics of urease in the absence and presence of NBPTO are investigated by a calorimetric assay in the pH 6.0–8.0 range. The results indicate that pH modulates the protonation state of αHis323, which was revealed to have pK_a=6.6, and consequently the conformation of the mobile flap. Two additional residues (αAsp224 and αArg339) are shown to be key factors for the conformational change. The role of pH in modulating the catalysis of urea hydrolysis is clarified through the molecular and structural details of the interplay between protein conformation and solution acidity in the paradigmatic case of a metalloenzyme.     

Direct flow injection profiling of acyl glycerols from food products using isopropanol as solvent

This work proposes a novel method for the direct flow injection profiling of acylglycerols in edible oils and fats without preliminary extraction and consequent reconstitution in the injection solvent. The work exploits the outstanding performance of high‐resolution mass spectrometry to target unique elemental compositions even in the most complex matrices. The performance of isopropanol as the unique solvent for both the solubilization and analysis of acylglycerols was investigated in comparison with other classical methods involving preliminary extractions, sample recovery, and analysis. The calibrations of two triglyceride standards (triolein and trilinolenin) were successfully performed in presence and absence of oil matrix. As final application, the effects on the acylglycerol fraction of a heat treatment on three different fat samples (extra virgin olive oil, lard oil, and fat from dry cured ham—speck) were monitored. The proposed method is therefore suitable for a rapid evaluation of acylglycerol fractions in food lipid samples.     

Sliding mode control for a diffuse interface tumor growth model coupling a Cahn–Hilliard equation with a reaction–diffusion equation

We consider the sliding mode control (SMC) problem for a diffuse interface tumor growth model coupling a Cahn–Hilliard equation with a reaction–diffusion equation perturbed by a maximal monotone nonlinearity. We prove existence and regularity of strong solutions and, under further assumptions, a uniqueness result. Then, we show that the chosen SMC law forces the system to reach within finite time a sliding manifold that we chose in order that the tumor phase remains constant in time.