Minimum leaf conductance varied across 39 sub-tropical woody species with contrasting light requirement strategies.

Minimum leaf conductance (gmin) refers to the residual water loss through plant leaf cuticle and incompletely closed stomata. Despite its importance in plant drought adaptation, the variation in gmin across forest trees and the factors influencing it remain poorly understood. In this study, we quantified the gmin of 39 tree species with contrasting light requirement strategies (light-demanding vs.

Contribution of Carbon Dioxide Concentration to the Diurnal Variation in Land Surface Carbon Dioxide Uptake From the Atmosphere.

Gross primary productivity (GPP) is the key pathway for CO uptake by terrestrial ecosystems. Diurnal variation in atmospheric CO concentration ([CO]) can reach 5%-15%, yet the extent to which (CO) contributes to diurnal GPP variations across biomes and how this contribution varies across climate gradients remain unclear. Here, we used global half-hourly eddy covariance observations to quantify the importance of (CO) in driving diurnal GPP variations and investigated the environmental factors influencing this response.

Hydraulic vulnerability difference between branches and roots increases with environmental aridity.

The vulnerability of plant xylem to embolism can be described as the water potential at which xylem conductivity is lost by 50% (P). According to the traditional hypothesis of hydraulic vulnerability segmentation, the difference in vulnerability to embolism between branches and roots is positive (P > 0). It is not clear whether this occurs broadly across species or how segmentation might vary across aridity gradients.

Preparation and properties of hydrophobic films based on acetylated broken-rice starch nanocrystals for slow protein delivery.

Native and acetylated broken-rice starches (nanocrystals) with different degrees of substitution (DS) and their corresponding films were individually prepared, and the drug release profiles, weight loss, solubility and dispersion and surface morphology were comparatively studied. Bovine serum albumin (BSA) was used as a model drug. Acetylated native starch (ANS) DS 2.