There is a balanced plant-water relationship in the primary vegetation of desert area. With the increase of population and social development in desert areas, people’s need for forest vegetation ecosystem’s goods and service have been changed. To meet the growing demand for plant community goods and services, more original vegetation has been changed into non-native vegetation such as in China loess plateau. However, with the plant growth, sometime soil drying happens and then becomes gradually serious with times in most of desert regions. Serious drying of soil eventually result in soil degradation, vegetation decline and agriculture failure，which influence the produce and supply of forest vegetation goods and service in market in dry year or waste of soil water resources in wet year, which wastes precious nature resources. In order to solve these problems, the soil water resources have to be used in sustainable way and plant-water relationship have to be regulated on Carrying Capacity of Soil Water for Vegetation in the key period of plant water relationship regulation, to carry out sustainable use of nature resources, high-quality and sustainable development of forest and grass or high-quality produce of fruit and crop in desert re-gions.

The UK economy is overly reliant on unsustainable production and consumption practices, depleting finite resources at rates that will increase production costs, business risk and economic instability. This over-consumption produces emissions and waste that cause climate change and environmental degradation, impacting on the wellbeing of people in the UK and beyond. The Resource Recovery from Waste programme (RRfW) promotes a transition towards waste and resource management in a circular economy that restores the environment, creates societal benefits and promotes clean growth by engaging relevant actors in the transition process. RRfW collaborates with academia, government, and industry to co-produce a shared vision and approach to realise such a transition. Reflecting insights from RRfW’s government engagement, this article presents a positive outlook for changing the UK economy and society. It envisions a long-term future for waste and resource management that maximises the value of materials by circulating them in the economy for as long as possible. Four themes and an approach are proposed, including recommendations for regulatory instruments and a stable policy framework. It recommends further collaborative research to capitalise on opportunities for economic growth, innovation and resilient infrastructure whilst contributing to quality jobs and welfare in all four UK nations.

Recent advances in nanomaterials have been heavily influenced by low-dimensional nanocarbon allotropes. In particular, carbyne has attracted attention for its potential as a true one-dimensional carbon chain with sp1 hybridization. To maximize the capabilities of this material, we employ a focused data-driven inverse design approach based on the carbon nanomaterials genome concept. This involves using deep learning neural network models to identify key descriptors tied to desired properties, enabling property prediction and reverse engineering of nanocarbons. Our iterative approach entails: (i) gathering growth/property data on nanostructures; (ii) identifying informative numerical/categorical predictors; (iii) developing deep learning models mapping descriptors to properties; (iv) refining models with new insights; (v) determining required descriptors/conditions for target properties via inverse mapping; (vi) validating models by synthesizing predicted nanostructures; and (vii) enhancing models with validation data. This allows uncovering hidden growth-property connections, precisely tuning nanocarbons for desired attributes. We introduce new methodologies including exciting synergistic effects, synchronizing atomic vibrations, active screen plasma, energy-driven transformations, surface acoustic micro/nano-manipulation, doping and directed self-assembly to expose relationships and integrate insights into the inverse design flow. This research promises to accelerate discovery of next-generation low-dimensional nanocarbons with exceptional properties and applications.

Growth factors, chemokines and cytokines guide tissue regeneration after injuries. However, their applications as recombinant proteins are almost non-existent due to the difficulty of maintaining their bioactivity in the protease-rich milieu of injured tissues in humans. Safety concerns have ruled out their systemic administration. The vascular system provides a natural platform for circumvent the limitations of the local delivery of protein-based therapeutics. Tissue selectivity in drug accumulation can be obtained as organ-specific molecular signatures exist in the blood vessels in each tissue, essentially forming a postal code system (“vascular zip codes”) within the vasculature. These target-specific “vascular zip codes” can be exploited in regenerative medicine as the angiogenic vasculature forming in the regenerating tissues has a unique molecular signature. The identification of vascular homing peptides capable of finding these unique “vascular zip codes” after their systemic administration provides an opportunity for the target-specific delivery of therapeutics to tissue injuries. Therapeutic proteins can be “packaged” together with homing peptides by expressing them as multi-functional recombinant proteins. These multi-functional recombinant proteins provide an example how molecular engineering gives a compound an ability to home to regenerating tissue and enhance its therapeutic potential. Regenerative medicine has been dominated by the locally applied therapeutic approaches despite these therapies are not moving to clinical medicine with success. There might be a time to change the paradigm towards systemically administered, target organ-specific therapeutic molecules in future drug discovery and development for regenerative medicine

Cornea severe inflammation produces opacity or even perforation, scarring, and angiogenesis, resulting in blindness. The cornea can be used to study the effect of new anti-angiogenic chemopreventive agents. We researched the anti-angiogenic effect of two extracts, Methanol (Met) and Hexane (Hex), from the seed of Cucurbita argyrosperma, in the inflamed corneas. The corneas of Wistar rats were alkali-injured and treated intragastrically for seven successive days. Clinical manifestation as opacity score, corneal neovascularization (CNV) area, re-epithelialization percentage, and histological evaluation were performed. Inflammatory (COX-2, NF-κB, and IL-1β), and angiogenic (VEGF-A, VEGFR1, VEGFR2) markers were assessed by immunohistochemistry. Cox-2, Il-1β, and Vegf-a mRNA levels were also determined. After treatments, we observed slim corneal thickness with lower opacity scores and low cell infiltration compared to untreated rats. Treatment also accelerated wound healing and decreased CNV area. The staining of inflammatory and angiogenic factors was significantly decreased. These effects are related to a down-expression of Cox-2, Il-1β, and Vegf. These results suggest that intake of C. argyrosperma seed can be used to attenuate the angiogenesis secondary to inflammation in corneal chemical damage.

To investigate factors associated with the success of switching to faricimab for type 1 macular neovascularization (MNV) refractory to intravitreal aflibercept (IVA). This retrospective cohort study included patients with type 1 MNV who were switched to faricimab because they were refractory to IVA at two centers. The main outcome was an extension of the treatment interval after 6 months, and factors related to the success or failure of the extension and visual and anatomical outcomes were assessed. The analysis included 43 eyes of 43 patients. Extended dosing intervals of more than 2 weeks were identified in 14 eyes (32.6%). A short dosing interval before the switch, the absence of polypoidal lesions, and a thin central choroidal thickness before the switch were identified as factors involved in successful extension. For patients with refractory type 1 MNV, switching to faricimab is a safe and potential option to extend from existing dosing intervals.

Multi-junction solar cells comprised of stacked III-V semiconductor junctions represent the highest-efficiency photovoltaic technology, with recent demonstrations exceeding 47% efficiency . Optimizing the design and thickness of each junction is critical for maximizing performance . This work utilizes Silvaco TCAD tools to systematically optimize a 5-junction cell based on AlInP, AlGaInP, AlGaInAs, GaInP, GaAs, InGaAs, and Ge similar to recent record cells . The junction thicknesses are varied using a predictive profiler to sample the parameter space . For each combination, the spectral absorption and I-V characteristics are simulated to determine the efficiency . Statistical analysis identifies the optimal thickness set that maximizes performance to 26% under 1 sun illumination .

This paper provides a review of an emerging field in the food processing sector, referring to efficient and safe food supply chains, ’from farm to fork’, as enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Recent advances in machine and deep learning are used for effective food production, energy management and food labeling. Appropriate deep neural architectures are adopted and used for this purpose, including Fully Convolutional Networks, Long Short-Term Memories and Recurrent Neural Networks, Auto-Encoders and Attention mechanisms, Latent Variable extraction and clustering, as well as Domain Adaptation. Three experimental studies are presented, illustrating the ability of these AI methodologies to produce state-of-the-art performance in the whole food supply chain. In particular, these concern: (i) predicting plant growth and tomato yield in greenhouses, thus matching food production to market needs and reducing food waste or food unavailability; (ii) optimizing energy consumption across large networks of food retail refrigeration systems, through optimal selection of systems that can get shut-down and through prediction of the respective food de-freezing times, during peaks of power demand load; (iii) optical recognition and verification of food consumption expiry date in automatic inspection of retail packaged food, thus ensuring safety of food and people’s health.

Fossils constitute the principal repository of data that allow for independent tests of hypotheses of biological evolution derived from observations of the extant biota. Traditionally, transformational series of structure, consisting of sequences of fossils of the same lineage through time, have been employed to reconstruct and interpret morphological evolution. More recently, a move toward an updated paradigm was fueled by the deliberate integration of developmental thinking in the inclusion of fossils in reconstruction of morphological evolution. The vehicle for this is provided by structural fingerprints – recognizable morphological and anatomical structures generated by (and reflective of) the deployment of specific genes and regulatory pathways during development. Furthermore, because the regulation of plant development is both modular and hierarchical in nature, combining structural fingerprints recognized in the fossil record with our understanding of the developmental regulation of those structures produces a powerful tool for understanding plant evolution. This is particularly true when the systematic distribution of specific developmental regulatory mechanisms and modules is viewed within an evolutionary (paleo-evo-devo) framework. Here, we discuss several advances in understanding the processes and patterns of evolution, achieved by tracking structural fingerprints with their underlying regulatory modules across lineages, living and fossil: the role of polar auxin regulation in the cellular patterning of secondary xylem and the parallel evolution of arborescence in lycophytes and seed plants; the morphology and life history of early polysporangiophytes and tracheophytes; the role of modularity in the parallel evolution of leaves in euphyllophytes; leaf meristematic activity and the parallel evolution of venation patterns among euphyllophytes; mosaic deployment of regulatory modules and the diverse modes of secondary growth of euphyllophytes; modularity and hierarchy in developmental regulation and the evolution of equisetophyte reproductive morphology. More generally, inclusion of plant fossils in the evo-devo paradigm has informed discussions on the evolution of growth patterns and growth responses, sporophyte body plans and their homology, sequences of character evolution, and the evolution of reproductive systems.