PubMed · 13013662
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R E BALES. 1953. Instrument development.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13013662/
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The effect of leaf-to-air vapour pressure deficit (VPD) was studied in well-watered, potted, 1-2-year-old plants of the leguminous tree P. juliflora grown outside in northern India. The long-term responses to VPD were analysed from diurnal and seasonal variations in gas exchange parameters measured in two cohorts of leaves produced in February and July, respectively. In general, inhibitory effects of high VPD were visible only when the VPD level exceeded a threshold of >3 kPa. There was a substantial decline in net photosynthesis rate and stomatal conductance at high VPD >4 kPa and transpiration showed a decrease in steady-state rate or feedforward response to VPD. The feedforward responses were visible in all seasons, although the plants were exposed to a wide range of VPD during the year and leaf relative water content was constant. The maximum quantum efficiency of PSII measured predawn was constant (around 0.8) in all seasons except summer. Short-term experiments showed that, although gas exchange was severely affected by high VPD in the leaves of both cohorts, the plant maintained a constant, water use efficiency in different seasons. High VPD also caused reductions in Rubisco activity, affecting carboxylation efficiency, and reductions in sucrose and starch content due to a decrease in the activity of sucrose-phosphate synthase. However, the relative quantum yield of PSII and electron transport rates measured at 1500 micromol m(-2) s(-1) were unaffected by increasing VPD, indicating the presence of a large alternative sink possibly, photorespiration. The overall results showed that P. juliflora can withstand high VPD by reducing metabolic activity and by effective adjustments in the partitioning of electron flow between assimilation and non-assimilation processes, which, in turn, imposed a strong limitation on the potential carbon gain.
The origin of whales (order Cetacea) is one of the best-documented examples of macroevolutionary change in vertebrates. As the earliest whales became obligately marine, all of their organ systems adapted to the new environment. The fossil record indicates that this evolutionary transition took less than 15 million years, and that different organ systems followed different evolutionary trajectories. Here we document the evolutionary changes that took place in the sound transmission mechanism of the outer and middle ear in early whales. Sound transmission mechanisms change early on in whale evolution and pass through a stage (in pakicetids) in which hearing in both air and water is unsophisticated. This intermediate stage is soon abandoned and is replaced (in remingtonocetids and protocetids) by a sound transmission mechanism similar to that in modern toothed whales. The mechanism of these fossil whales lacks sophistication, and still retains some of the key elements that land mammals use to hear airborne sound.
As a novel category of two-dimensional lipid clusters, dendrimers having an amphiphilic structure in every unit were synthesized and labeled "spider-web amphiphiles". Amphiphilic units based on a Lys-Lys-Glu tripeptide with hydrophobic tails at the C-terminal and a polar head at the N-terminal are dendrically connected through stepwise peptide coupling. This structural design allowed us to separately introduce the polar head and hydrophobic tails. Accordingly, we demonstrated the synthesis of the spider-web amphiphile series in three combinations: acetyl head/C16 chain, acetyl head/C18 chain, and ammonium head/C16 chain. All the spider-web amphiphiles were synthesized in satisfactory yields, and characterized by 1H NMR, MALDI-TOFMS, GPC, and elemental analyses. Surface pressure (pi)-molecular area (A) isotherms showed the formation of expanded monolayers except for the C18-chain amphiphile at 10 degrees C, for which the molecular area in the condensed phase is consistent with the cross-sectional area assigned for all the alkyl chains. In all the spider-web amphiphiles, the molecular areas at a given pressure in the expanded phase increased in proportion to the number of units, indicating that alkyl chains freely fill the inner space of the dendritic core. The mixing of octadecanoic acid with the spider-web amphiphiles at the air-water interface induced condensation of the molecular area. From the molecular area analysis, the inclusion of the octadecanoic acid bears a stoichiometric characteristic; i.e., the number of captured octadecanoic acids in the spider-web amphiphile roughly agrees with the number of branching points in the spider-web amphiphile.