Studies on the softening behavior of in situ lignin of normal wood in a given species have never been performed before due to the relatively narrow lignin content and lignin structural variation within one species. Using transgenic trees with different levels of lignin content and/or syringyl to guaiacyl propane (S/G) ratio helped us to overcome this problem. Submersion three-point bending and ...

Two approaches to predict failure of soft tissue are available. The first is based on a pointwise criticality condition, e.g. von Mises maximum stress, which is restrictive because only local state of deformation is considered to be critical and the failure criterion is separated from stress analysis. The second is based on damage mechanics where internal (unobservable) variables are introduced...

Desalination and water reuse technologies are critical for solving water problems. Unlocking water resources through the minimization of reverse osmosis (RO) concentrate volume offers sustainable opportunities to meet the challenge. A pellet softening lime intermediate concentrate chemical stabilization (ICCS) reactor and a conventional lime softening ICCS for the treatment of RO concentrate we...

Three different samples of Ti -6Al-4V of size 10mm diameter x15mm height compressed at a strain rate of 102 sec -1 in a 100KN servo hydraulic machine (DARTEC, UK make) with three different initial temperatures. First specimen of Ti-6Al-4V was compressed at an initial temp 1123K from initial length 15 mm to 10mm then the temperature was reduced to 1073K and compressed to a length of 7 mm now the...

Persimmon (Diospyros kaki Thunb.), which is a climacteric fruit, softens in 3-5 weeks after harvest. However, little is known regarding the transcriptional changes that underlie persimmon ripening. In this study, high-throughput de novo RNA sequencing was performed to examine differential expression between freshly harvested (FH) and softened (ST) persimmon fruit peels. Using the Illumina HiSeq...

Fruit softening is mainly associated with cell wall structural modifications, and members of the xyloglucan endotransglucosylase/hydrolase (XTH) family are key enzymes involved in cleaving and re-joining xyloglucan in the cell wall. In this work, we isolated a new XTH gene, DkXTH8, from persimmon fruit. Transcriptional profiling revealed that DkXTH8 peaked during dramatic fruit softening, and e...

Apple is one of the most economically important horticultural fruit crops worldwide. It is critical to gain insights into fruit ripening and softening to improve apple fruit quality and extend shelf life. In this study, forward and reverse suppression subtractive hybridization libraries were generated from 'Taishanzaoxia' apple fruits sampled around the ethylene climacteric to isolate ripening-...

A key step in the HIV-infection process is the fusion of the virion membrane with the target cell membrane and the concomitant transfer of the viral RNA. Experimental evidence suggests that the fusion is preceded by considerable elastic softening of the cell membranes due to the insertion of fusion peptide in the membrane. What are the mechanisms underpinning the elastic softening of the membra...

The effect of geometric imperfections and viscous damping on the type of nonlinearity i.e., the hardening or softening behaviour of circular plates and shallow spherical shells with free edge is here investigated. The Von Kármán large-deflection theory is used to derive the continuous models. Then, nonlinear normal modes NNMs are used for predicting with accuracy the coefficient, the sign of wh...

A shadow of a numerical solution to a chaotic system is an exact solution to the equations of motion that remains close to the numerical solution for a long time. In a collisionless n-body system, we know that particle motion is governed by the global potential rather than by interparticle interactions. As a result, the trajectory of each individual particle in the system is independently shado...