The diversity of ectomycorrhizal communities associated with Quercus garryana on and off serpentine soils was compared and related to landscape-level diversity. Serpentine soils are high in magnesium, iron, and heavy metals and low in fertility. In plant communities on serpentine soils, a high proportion of flowering plant species are endemic. At three sites with paired serpentine and nonserpen...

Polyploidization is one of the leading forces in the evolution of land plants, providing opportunities for instant speciation and rapid gain of evolutionary novelties. Highly selective conditions of serpentine environments act as an important evolutionary trigger that can be involved in various speciation processes. Whereas the significance of both edaphic speciation on serpentine and polyploid...

This paper presents analytical and experimental results of an investigation of joint actuators and their suitability for a particular class of complex mechanisms: serpentine robots. In practice, serpentine robots usually comprise of multiple segments connected by joints. Some serpentine robots provide legged, wheeled, or tracked propulsion, and, in addition, actuation for the joints. We compare...

Habitat specialization plays an important role in the creation and loss of biodiversity over ecological and evolutionary time scales. In California, serpentine soils have a distinctive flora, with 246 serpentine habitat specialists (i.e., endemics). Using molecular phylogenies for 23 genera containing 784 taxa and 51 endemics, we infer few transitions out of the endemic state, which is shown by...

Many robot applications require mobility in constrained spaces and a high degree of flexibility. This paper describes the development of an autonomous serpentine robot. This robot is a 12 degree of freedom, untethered, hyper-redundant planar robot, named Kaa. Experiments were conducted in its application to mobility tasks that would be useful in locomotion among parallel pipe structures similar...

As the volume of CO2, one of greenhouse gases linked to global warming, in the atmosphere increases, there has been an increasing interest in CO2 sequestration. Aqueous carbonation, which involves the extraction of Mg from serpentine minerals and the subsequent carbonation reaction with CO2 to form the geologically stable mineral MgCO3, has been proposed as a promising CO2 sequestration technol...

Serpentine is formed during chemical transformation of ultrabasic magmatic rocks. The characteristics of serpenti ne soi l are its high Mg and low Ca contenI. Various factors have lead to the formation of specific serpentine flora and vegetation. In the serpentine flora both basophi10us and acidophilous plant species are present, and a small number of families and often genera predominate. Most...

There are more than half million tons of serpentine waste produced per year during mining operation in Taiwan. This study is to develop a process to manufacture fire-resistant geopolymer based on serpentine waste. The experiment results show that the waste serpentine-based geopolymer have very good physical/mechanical characteristics. For fire resistance tests, a 10 mm thick geopolymer panel wa...

Effects of simulated serpentine soil conditions (elevated Mg:Ca ratio and Ni concentration) on seedlings from populations of Virginia pine (Pinus virginiana Mill.) from serpentine and non-serpentine sites were evaluated in sand culture. We determined (1) how seedlings are affected by elevated Mg:Ca ratio and Ni concentrations, (2) if there are interactive effects between Mg:Ca ratio and Ni conc...