Yi Yang

© 2015 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Soil transplant serves as a proxy to simulate climate changes. Recently, we have shown that southward transplant of black soil and northward transplant of red soil altered soil microbial communities and biogeochemical variables. However, fundamental differences in soil types have prevented direct comparison between southward and northward transplants. To tackle it, herein we report an analysis of microbial communities of Cambisol soil in an agriculture field after 4 years of adaptation to southward and northward soil transplants over large transects. Analysis of bare fallow soils revealed concurrent increase in microbial functional diversity and coarse-scale taxonomic diversity at both transplanted sites, as detected by GeoChip 3.0 and DGGE, respectively. Furthermore, a correlation between microbial functional diversity and taxonomic diversity was detected, which was masked in maize cropped soils. Mean annual temperature, soil moisture, and nitrate showed strong correlations with microbial communities. In addition, abundances of ammonium-oxidizing genes and denitrification genes were correlated with nitrification capacity and NO3--N contents, suggesting that microbial responses to soil transplant could alter microbe-mediated biogeochemical cycle at the ecosystem level. This study proved that microbial responses to southward and northward soil transplants were asymmetric. Microbial responses at the community level to soil transplant can result in altered ecosystem-level biogeochemical cycle.

© 2016 AIP Publishing LLC.We present evidence for breathing modes in magnetron sputtering plasmas: periodic axial variations of plasma parameters with characteristic frequencies between 10 and 100 kHz. A set of azimuthally distributed probes shows synchronous oscillations of the floating potential. They appear most clearly when considering the intermediate current regime in which the direction of azimuthal spoke motion changes. Breathing oscillations were found to be superimposed on azimuthal spoke motion. Depending on pressure and current, one can also find a regime of chaotic fluctuations and one of stable discharges, the latter at high current. A pressure-current phase diagram for the different situations is proposed.

© CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration 2011.We present first measurements of charged and neutral particle-flow correlations in pp collisions using the ATLAS calorimeters.Data were collected in 2009 and 2010 at centre-of-mass energies of 900 GeV and 7 TeV.Events were selected using a minimum-bias trigger which required a charged particle in scintillation counters on either side of the interaction point.Particle flows, sensitive to the underlying event, are measured using clusters of energy in the ATLAS calorimeters, taking advantage of their fine granularity.No Monte Carlo generator used in this analysis can accurately describe the measurements.The results are independent of those based on charged particles measured by the ATLAS tracking systems and can be used to constrain the parameters of Monte Carlo generators.

© 2015 American Chemical Society. We demonstrate straightforward fabrication of highly sensitive biosensor arrays based on field-effect transistors, using an efficient high-throughput, large-area patterning process. Chemical lift-off lithography is used to construct field-effect transistor arrays with high spatial precision suitable for the fabrication of both micrometer- and nanometer-scale devices. Sol-gel processing is used to deposit ultrathin In 2 O 3 films as semiconducting channel layers. The aqueous sol-gel process produces uniform In 2 O 3 coatings with thicknesses of a few nanometers over large areas through simple spin-coating, and only low-temperature thermal annealing of the coatings is required. The ultrathin In 2 O 3 enables construction of highly sensitive and selective biosensors through immobilization of specific aptamers to the channel surface; the ability to detect subnanomolar concentrations of dopamine is demonstrated.

The counterfactual account of physical computation is simple and, for the most part, very attractive. However, it is usually thought to trivialize the notion of physical computation insofar as it implies ‘limited pancomputationalism’, this being the doctrine that every deterministic physical system computes some function. Should we bite the bullet and accept limited pancomputationalism, or reject the counterfactual account as untenable? Jack Copeland would have us do neither of the above. He attempts to thread a path between the two horns of the dilemma by buttressing the counterfactual account with extra conditions intended to block certain classes of deterministic physical systems from qualifying as physical computers. His theory is called the ‘algorithm execution account’. Here we show that the algorithm execution account entails limited pancomputationalism, despite Copeland’s argument to the contrary. We suggest, partly on this basis, that the counterfactual account should be accepted as it stands, pancomputationalist warts and all.