The use of relative humidity control of protein crystals to overcome some of the shortcomings of soaking ligands (i.e. inhibitors, substrate analogs, weak ligands) into pre-grown apoprotein crystals has been explored. Crystals of PurE (EC 4.1.1.21), an enzyme from the purine-biosynthesis pathway of Bacillus anthracis, were used as a test case. The findings can be summarized as follows: (i) usin...

Food consumption and utilization is influenced by various biotic and abiotic factors. Under different environmental, feeding, and nutritional conditions, and with ingestion of the same amount of mulberry leaves, the silkworm shows significant difference in its ability to digest, absorb, and convert food to body matter. Here, influences of season, temperature, and humidity on food intake, assimi...

Paphiopedilum armeniacum is level-one protected species. As the original habitat destruction, Paphiopedilum armeniacum is at the brink of extinction now. In order to monitor the environment of the endangered plants such as Paphiopedilum armeniacum, to master the real-time changes of their environment factors such as temperature, humidity, light intensity, the design is based on AT89C51, regarde...

Botrytis cinerea is one of the most common plant pathogenic fungi that affects a wide range of greenhouse horticultural products and decreases their market value. B. cinerea can strongly decrease yield and post-harvest quality through latent infections. It is a highly water dependent fungus and a certain leaf wetness duration seems necessary for spore germination. However, during germination be...

The key objective of our paper is to monitor the soil’s moisture content during it’s dry and wet conditions with the aid of a moisture sensor circuit, calculate the corresponding Relative Humidity and irrigate it based on its nature , using a PC based LabVIEW system, NI ELVIS and an automatic water inlet setup. The moisture sensor circuit which is built on the NI ELVIS consists of two copper st...

Modern controlled environment cabinets with temperature control specifications to + O4°C and humidity control at 20°C of ±3 % between 55 % and 90 % are expensive. The standard cabinets available for biological work can limit fluctuations at 'constant' temperatures to +1 °C. Humidity control is primitive and the range of humidities attainable and the accuracy with which they can be held is unacc...

this paper aims at finding the long term coupled effect of high temperature and constant high relative humidity on the corrosion rehabilitated patches of chloride contaminated steel reinforced concrete. this paper is an extension of previous research in which the authors experimentally corroborated re-corrosion in the repaired reinforced concrete (rc) patches in the form of macro-cells. in prev...

[1] Simulations of warming climates with coupled climate models exhibit strong land-ocean contrasts in changes in surface temperature and relative humidity, but little land-ocean contrast in changes in equivalent potential temperature. A theory that assumes equal changes in equivalent potential temperature over land and ocean captures the simulated land-ocean warming contrast in the tropics if ...

The hygropreference of adult Cryptopygus antarcticus and Alaskozetes antarcticus was investigated over 2 h at 5, 10 and 20 degrees C, along humidity gradients (9-98% RH) established by means of different salt solutions. Two chamber arrangements were employed, linear and grid, to determine any influence of thigmotactic behaviour on distribution within the RH gradient. The humidity preference of ...