Ribosome-inactivating proteins (RIPs) are EC3.2.32.22 N-glycosidases that recognize a universally conserved stem-loop structure in 23S/25S/28S rRNA, depurinating a single adenine (A4324 in rat) and irreversibly blocking protein translation, leading finally to cell death of intoxicated mammalian cells. Ricin, the plant RIP prototype that comprises a catalytic A subunit linked to a galactose-bind...

Cultural methods such as crop fertilization can affect susceptibility of plants to insect pests by altering plant tissue nutrient levels. Research shows that the ability of a crop plant to resist or tolerate insect pests and diseases is tied to optimal physical, chemical and mainly biological properties of soils. Soils with high organic matter and active soil biology generally exhibit good soil...

In this paper we consider the remote control of a noisy linear time-invariant (LTI) plant over erasure channels located in both the plant-to-controller and controller-to-plant links. We restrict our attention to a class of controllers where all processing is affine, except for some elementary use of sensor-to-controller channel state information. For such controller class, we show that optimal ...

Human selection during crop domestication has resulted in remarkable transformations of plant phenotypes, providing a window into the genetic basis of morphological evolution. Recent progress in our understanding of the genetic architecture of novel plant traits has emerged from combining advanced molecular technologies with improved experimental designs, including nested association mapping, g...

A major interior landscaping project is a central component of a proposed corporate headquarters. While interior landscaping is a significant part of many such projects, typical plant losses of 20-40 percent each year are not acceptable for this installation. The client is confident of their ability to control important factors to sustain plant growth such as soil, irrigation, and plant compati...

This paper presents a methodology in the Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) framework to jointly optimize the linear control law and the linear parameters in the plant. The paper solves an integrated plant and control design problem which bounds the covariance of selected outputs. The method simultaneously designs the plant parameters and the controller. The proposed method also allows one to guara...

In this paper a method is introduced for finding all proportional integral derivative (PID) controllers that satisfy a robust performance constraint for a given single-input-single-output transfer function of any order with time-delay. This problem can be solved by finding all achievable PID controllers that simultaneously stabilize the closed-loop characteristic polynomial and satisfy constrai...